The end of the end - 寿终正寝

At 6:05pm today I ushered my last student out the classroom door and ended my teaching enterprise that began 2:30pm Friday 22 July 2005.

I still remember that first day rather well: A week after my successful marketing meeting, I went to the client's office and then received each of my seven new corporate students for a fifteen minute Needs Analysis. The true scale of what I had gotten myself into became apparent: there were a wide variety of accents, issues and backgrounds and I had claimed that I could help them all effectively. Looking back, I can't say that I would have had the ability at that time to justify those claims; and still with the experience and knowledge that you can only get through teaching over three thousand hours of one-on-one teaching, it is hard to sustain. The lesson early is that you cannot fix; you instruct, support, motivate and facilitate the changing of habits, the learning of knowledge and the understanding and application of skills. And at first, some were quite happy with their English, but appreciated the amusement of a company-supplied teacher. Such encounters taught me the need to actively find out the motivations of the students and even be confident enough to confront students or get their managers involved. Another student had significant "fossilised" pronunciation issues (this means that the influence of his mother tongue is almost impossible to be removed). I learnt a lot about such conditions and recent students from Malaysia benefited greatly from the lessons learnt there.

At the end of that year, I was already positioning myself to jump back into the common pot of "employment" but missed out on my dream job with the Government security agency. That was a blow but the reason for me even looking was the conditions of my self-employment: I was struggling with the scale of the task; I'd failed to lure any other company into a contract; and I was only supporting myself financially with two full days of work a week. That finally changed in my second year almost a year to the day after I began: I found a new client. This was just incredible. After my second or third round of intensive cold-calling, I followed a name I had snared in a research call, and after my spiel I heard the most musical words for a cold caller: "You're exactly what we are looking for!" Apparently some Swiss employee was making noises about that company's responsibilities to seconded employees and that English support should be provided. And I came knocking at that time. With him came more.

This was the beginning of a rather magical period when I'd not only created myself a fulfilling full-time enterprise, but also had a juggernaut that threatened to drive me to my own expiration. My trip to China at the end of 2007 carried with it the dream and nightmare of weekly trips to Wellington, an excess of 30 hours of weekly tuition and no-one with me to handle that teaching burden. The Wellington lessons were a possibility that came from nowhere. My second client was just the Auckland office of an international company with offices throughout New Zealand. Two seconded Croatian workers in Wellington heard from their compatriot up in Auckland that English lessons were provided to them and they made some noise to have access to the same. And after a six month struggle to find a comparable tutor in the capital, they turned to their tutor up in Auckland. The suggestion sent me to cloud nine.

I was light with delight, but heavy with dread. As it turned out the dread was unwarranted: 2008 was a magical year, if only from a professional point of view. It was also the year that I finally felt fully in control of my powers, shaking off one of my perpetual self-doubts that I was not up to the job.

I would send one student out with a handshake and heartily welcome another one into the student's seat like a doctor would to patients. My mind would grasp a sentence and isolate the fascinating issue with it, scrawling it on paper for a graphical explanation. I had students explain the reason things are so with a perfect rendition of what I had taught. Naturally, a teacher's ego can easily go to far and take ownership of their student's learning when, in fact, it is the fruit of the student's talent and work that they have learnt. But I felt immense pride in these things I saw. And the friendships I made doing it were extraordinary: What other jobs can you help and chat with friends and get paid for it?

The decline when it came was not a surprise. Over the last New Year, I made plans in its anticipation. My industry, workplace training, is the kind that prospers in the good time and struggles in the bad. My income halved between 20 February and the 10 March this year. The dying phase has been an enjoyable time in that I've been able to travel, write and learn. While it was alive, this enterprise of mine, I hoped to breathe it back into life; and now, partly on a whim, I've set it aside, asleep, perhaps forever.

Naturally, this is just the ending of one phase of life. Another one is forming for me. But it is a time to look back on the passing of this entity. It was sad to leave both rooms that for quite some time have been mine. I could literally walk in and kick out those inside irrespective of title because I had it booked! I had my own cupboard with tea-cups, tea and books. They are now forbidden ground. I'll have the chance to see some of my students again first in my farewell and some in their home countries.

This has been a special four years and I will cherish it greatly.

Forum rules

These are the rules to a Chinese newsite's tennis forum I look at to read about the US Open:

请您注意
Please note:
自觉遵守：爱国、守法、自律、真实、文明的原则
Consciously follow the principles of patriotism, lawfulness, self-control, truth and civilisation.
尊重网上道德，遵守《全国人大常委会关于维护互联网安全的决定》及中华人民共和国其他各项有关法律法规
Observe online morality and follow the government's decision regarding internet safety and other relevant laws and regulations of the Peoples Republic of China.
严禁发表危害国家安全，破坏民族团结、国家宗教政策和社会稳定，含侮辱、诽谤、教唆、淫秽等内容的作品
It is strictly forbidden to jeopardise national safety, harm racial unity, national religious policies and social stability, including content with abuse, slander, ___ and ____ etc.
承担一切因您的行为而直接或间接导致的民事或刑事法律责任
You accept all the direct and indirect responsibility for civil and criminal acts caused by any of your behaviour.
您在新浪新闻评论发表的作品，新浪网有权在网站内保留、转载、引用或者删除
New Wave Net has the right to retain, republish, quote or delete the opinions you express here on New Wave News .
参与本评论即表明您已经阅读并接受上述条款
Participating in this discussion indicates that you have read and accepted the above conditions.

Considering the recent crackdown on Internet in China, especially Facebook and Twitter, some of these are clearly not window dressing. Some are humorous such as patriotism given as the first principle to adhere to. Civilised behaviour should really be more strictly enforced considering that on this particular site comments calling Selena Williams an orangutan (or gorilla) have been abounding for this whole tournament and probably every other tournament, without moderation.

Intermediate Tramping 101


On a crest of stress, I strode into two consecutive weekends out of town to play. To be honest, the preparation for both was an element in my anxiety, but the passing of both wound my mind down and relaxed my shoulders. The heart of the first weekend was the desire to do hard-out tramping; something that is not safe alone, but the number of potential companions are few; fortunately, longstanding leave was taken by one, and off we went.

The plan to trot through the Whanganui National Park was dashed by the immense impracticality of such an endeavour: it just is not a feasible tramp without a chauffeur. Plan B was to hop from forest park to forest park and that was what we did.

Completely incidentally the tramps went from easy to hard. The first walk was the summitting of Mt Pureora in Pureora Forest Park, which almost doesn't merit a mention apart from it marking the start. Oddly, I've been staring at this mountain for a while in my DOC brochure thinking it would be nice but it was a mere stroll. The biggest challenge of it was getting enough sleep the night after, as our cute cabin was also occupied by mid-age critical hunters and their leader, (General) John. John had trouble distinguishing between the hunters and the trampers in our hut and wanted to rouse us for the hunt by turning on the light and opening the curtains in the morning. He did, however, emphasise the need to make distinctions between trampers and deer when he had a gun in hand.

The next day was Colenso trig in the Ruahine Forest Park. I had once intended to stay there on the way back to Auckland from Wellington. The walk had a bodyslam of a start: straight up an insistent gradient. Trees frequently obstructed the path. Climbing through these became easier as we went, perhaps due to the familiarity of the task. Colenso trig was one of the first peaks on a range in the north-western section of the park. As we came through the tree-line and saw the grandeur of the whole set of mountains: their ravines, their snow-caps and their scale. We passed a tarn (a mountain lake) on the way up, before rising to the trig for a proper rest and appreciation of our view. It felt like a good challenge surmounted overall and we descending feeling proud in our ability.

We were the only ones in our huge cabin (more a batch, than a "hut"). There was a log burner there, on which I decided to test my skills. I've never started a fire by myself as I've never really been in houses with fireplaces or burners, but of course, the gist is well known: get paper, assemble kindling on it, and some dry thin sticks on them and should everything go according to plan, once there is ignition of these sticks, add bigger sticks. Easy? Well, it took me an embarrassingly long time but once done, we had our very own hot room. Coal sustained the heat long into the night. This experience served me well.

Our next target was the Kaweka Forest Park, just off the Taihape-Napier highway (Gentle Annie). We had planned our day from a DOC brochure, noting a high point Mt Kuripapango up which to ascend, then a track down to the Kiwi Saddle Hut to stay overnight deep in the park before looping around and back to our car on the second day. We aimed to leave early for this early but were completely foiled by a massive landslide onto the only road out from our hut. Lucky for us, trucks were already on their way to clear it but we were still delayed an hour and went on our way.

We found a carpark along Gentle Annie which had a sign indicating the mountain we wished to climb. We kitted up and set off. Compared to the previous day, the track did allow us a flat period to warm up, but the gradient was even steeper and harder than the previous day. I was genuinely running out of steam at one point. But patience rewarded us with the top of the ridge, but it was accompanied by a kicker: we had started from the wrong carpark. We had mistaken a carpark unmarked on our map as ours. Suddenly our original route didn't work so we decided on an alternative route, rested and prepared for a walk down to the hut. We were to be disappointed.

Though on our map, only Mt Kuripapango was marked as a highpoint, the track to the hut went much higher, one point being over a hundred metres higher. As soon as we marched onwards from our rest, we were greeted with curious patches of snow and fallen trees. The pines had been hammered here; at first I thought that someone had taken to them; then I thought wind must have dealt to them; but there was always an element of disbelief: How could wind have felled these huge trees as well as pulled so many branches down. The tree-traverses were more difficult than the previous day. Pine trees are not the most friendly trees for such; the mountain beech trees were far easier; but even they were cruel when, in what would be a delightful grove, the sheer quantity of little branches took away any scent of the path. The usual markers were scarce either due to tree-falls or a general lack. We employed all sorts of methods to determine the path, which time after time solved our navigation issues. Then we broke through the snow-line. Neither of us had experienced a backcountry track in the snow, and this added to our navigational problems. How do you know where to put your feet when everything is covered in snow? One foot is on a concealed shrub; the other falls down to the track. Time ticked onwards and how dearly we would have liked that hour lost to the landslide.

I should say that there were outstanding views. The Bay of Plenty was visible, huge mountains and valleys surrounded us. Earlier in the day I spotted my first New Zealand Falcon (Karearea), and now we were treated to a snowscape with mammal trails. We'd both done Kepler Track in Fiordland in low cloud denying us of views: here we had them.

But those were Heaven so it's appropriate that I tell you about Hell. Late in the day, tired from trudging and falling deep into snow, struggling to navigate with very few clues to use, we approached a mostly smothered cairn that marked an entrance into a patch of pine. We rested, looking up into the pine: the track terminated barely metres ahead with the carnage of pine completely blocking the way. I sighed and queried whether it really was the cairn to mark the trail. And it was responded that it really was. So we struggled forth. Each series of trees presented a near insoluble challenge: we were ascending uphill through a never-ending labyrinth of fallen trees without any markers to assure us that we were on "the right track". I was sapped. I'd already said on three earlier parts that I was a hair's breadth short of knackered, and as I hit the front to survey two possible ways through a wall of trees I sighed in resignation: This is impossible. I dropped my backpack down and took a deep breath before saying that I would quest forward without my pack. I broke a few pine branches and crawled into a little pocket and then scaled a narrow passage up to a little clearing, scrambled up to the next blockage, rolled over over it, fell waist-deep into snow and then crawled up to... another cairn marking the exit from the pine grove. Hell hadn't yet frozen over completely. We emerged from it with speed. There were suddenly constant stream of markers but were also treated to the inevitable setting of the sun. The darkness would come within an hour. I had a head-torch but it would mean nothing without markers should we still be in the snow. But then the snow relented and we were back to a rocky descending path. Markers lead us down and down: And through a gap in the trees at the bottom of the hill was a flash of white: Kiwi Saddle Hut awaited us. Simple elation!

We quickly set up in this basic hut, the centre of which was a tiny log burner. We may have been able to get by without heat, but it would have been nice to warm up with a fire. With my recent experience, I thought I'd give it a try, sacrificing my chinese magazine to attempt to get it burning. Page after page was reduced to cinders. It could have been the damp environment or I could have just been lucky the night before. We both gave it our best attempt: this fire was not lighting. I had just a page and a cover left when I decided to give it just one last try to assemble the perfect set up. I ignited the paper and it burnt well but slowly it started to fade again. I picked a leafy twig in a last move. We had been stripping the leaves off the mountain beech branches (on the assumption that they contained water and that would not be conducive to burning); this was proven to be a mistake when the leaves exploded into flames. I yelped and through more leafy twigs into the minature inferno, and then yelped for more wood. Suddenly the branches were igniting and then it was time to get the ax out to start getting some decent blocks of wood. And thus we had a warm, warm hut.

Really that the end of the trip, we slept, descended, drove back to the normalness of life. But there is a special mental space occupied when you are tramping in the mountains. It is so otherworldly that when you leave, suddenly a flavour is lost from one's palate.

Positives:

1. Our approach to staying on the track was accurate. Even though the track was concealed for long portions of the ridge by snow and pine material, often without any observable markers, we determined the route without fail.


2. The clothing we had was tested by a strong alpine wind and passed.


3. I started a fire despite limited means and slightly damp wood.


4. My fitness, though pushed to the limit, came through.

That all being said, I think our approach was rather lackadaisical: we both lacked equipment that would have made it easier and safer; we were planning a difficult walk off a crude map; and then there is the lingering question of whether we could have made an adequate bivouac in the snow?

This was something of a wake-up call. Though it will (likely) be my last rigorous tramp for quite some time, it might trigger me to make a few purchases to prepare for getting back into tramping when I get back. I'll also want to take a mountain safety course at some stage (they are run and they should be a necessity if we are doing that sort of thing). So what I intend to bring from now on to back-country huts:

Bring:

1. Fire-lighting material/coal in a moisture-tight container. Take something that can act as kindling as well as a fire source. A lighter or matches is, of course, a necessity.


2. Candles, both to use and to leave in the candle holders.


3. Gaiters. These aren't just creature comforts: Hikurangi should have taught me that without protection some areas are close to impassable. On this trip, a lot of snow came into my shoes, melting to water but remaining at a low temperature due to the outside temperature. This is not comfortable.


4. Off the main walks, all overnight tramps should be navigated with a topographical map. A compass is a nice accompaniment to this.

So, in summary, this has been a lesson in safe walking, a reminder that might save my life one day.

A Pincer Movement

The map has been drawn: The mist has mostly cleared from the next few months, just a few valleys and gullies yet to reveal their true contents. Around this scene, two fronts, a cold and a hot, have squeezed me terribly from both sides; with them, I'd fallen back, until recently, into an awful anxiety: My sleep, poor; tummy, contorted; shoulders, shrugged; my concentration, wayward; and this for almost three weeks. I'm glad to have reached the end of this track.

And busying myself as I had, somehow no great crises arose; well, until Thursday morning when I left on the bus leaving my car in the drive blocking my mother's morning commute. But that day was the day when finally I started to ease...

Reignition

Sometimes motivation is just like a switch: without it you might think you can achieve something, but several months later it becomes a mere memory; with it, action flows like breathing. And such is my ceaseless study of the Chinese language. In China, over a year and a half ago, and in the weeks after, again I found my stride and lifted my general level. And then the power dissipated in the competing demands of life.

Now, again, on the scent of an imminent trip, I've swung my mind into a complete state of lingual urgency: absorb everything, spare nothing: not even a single character. My listening has almost reawakened; I still occasionally am overcome by streams of language, but generally it all goes in. My vocabulary will be the hardest to reactivate but some promising signs have emerged already; I've been hearing four-character phrases that I haven't seen for ages and recognising them. Feeling I was being misunderstood by one of the many agents in China, I launched a comprehensive Chinese e-mail to clarify what is a major city and what is not, and why a position in a major city is of high importance to me. And reading, apart from a few rogue sentences, has been fine.

All in all, nothing will stop me till my direction changes, and that could be quite some time!

Where my heart is

Today I left my city-centre life and fell back to the suburbs. I'm the kind to get easily attached to a home. And my apartment was a fond place for me to live. It was the place that became mine so easily when I really needed a home; it was the place I emotionally convalesced from the worst trauma of my life; it was my base for the busiest part of my working life; and the launch-pad for my most prolific travelling. A home is so important to me that it was only when I found that I was leaving my apartment that I realised I'd also be preparing to leave New Zealand.

Last year winter had passed in the background despite the heavy rain. This year's winter has fizzled since June. It is so comforting that we have such mild winters. The prospect of a Chinese winter does leave me rather cold. I spent two holidays in the Chinese winter and felt dreadful each time. My only Taiwanese winter was blighted by some homesickness making the mild grey a darker shade of blue. In actual fact they'd only have the equivalent of a very mild New Zealand winter.

Perhaps, it is part of maturing that thoughts of seasons and of homes is what I'm thinking about most.

Warping to reality and back again

My drive to watch ten movies waned after my sixth film and life got so much more exciting and busy. How can life be so crowded? But with the end approaching, I saw a slot of time and a movie marked tentatively as: maybe, and launched myself into motion once more and made it up to nine.

We Live in Public

This is the first true documentary of my festival and it was well-worth it. The reality of the individual in the film, Josh Harris, is odd; but the film swallows you up so that half-way through the film, some of the unquestioned assumptions seemed not worth challenging at all. Only once the curtain came down did I marvel at how amazing such a person could create such enterprises and pull so many people into his life-vortex of creation.

Like many of the biopics I see, I had no clue about Josh Harris before seeing it, and but this time that would go for most of the audience who crowded into watching this movie. He is "the greatest internet pioneer that you've never heard of" after all! Before the dot.com bubble burst he was consistently two or three years ahead of technology. He is a definite odd-ball, beyond the normal sense of the word. He probably is the one we can blame for the Big Brother tv series through his extraordinary concept of Quiet: We Live in Public, which for him was "a study of Cultural History", for others it was the ultimate Orwellian / Anarchic experiment. His quirkly life is what is intriguing, where a man with a bent becomes a millionaire, loses it all and becomes just a man with a very odd bent.

This was the third film where the creator made an appearance. I give full kudos to the director for not trying to be an element in the film despite the chance to. I usually dislike the 'documentaries' at festivals often have their creators having significant screentime and roles. The drama behind the scenes was fascinating; while answering the questions a lot of this came out. Her filming process is fascinating as she starts filming without really knowing what will happen and then finds the purpose of the film, and years will often pass while she films more and finds how the story 'fits'. For her, the advent of Facebook was highly analogous to Quiet, and for that it perhaps is a salutory film to watch. This film won the Sundance festival and she is the only director to win that twice!

The screening though was plagued with technical issues. Firstly, the sizing was wrong meaning captions were half off screen; the film ceased at one point; then another time, the screen went dark while the audio intriguingly kept going (and what's more the audio at that point had started to refer to the nudity and sex at one particular 'world' he created, teasing the voyeuristic part of the mind with hidden fancies); at that point, they stopped the film all together. The director of the festival was there in person at the end to express his apologies to the audience and the director in person, and there might be an opportunity to re-watch the film with my ticket stub if anyone is interested due to the botched screening. Another of my picks, the Limits of Control was not screened at all at my preferred time due to technical issues in a previous screening. I hope that the only problems.

All Tomorrow's Parties

Music "documentaries" come in many flavours, and this is simply chocolate! With virtually no narration, it launches into performances at the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival, interspliced with fly-on-the-wall scenes of attendees getting up to mischief, performing, mixing and living. It is a 90-minute sonic experience.

The principle for ATP music festival is that it is a festival curated by a particular band, done without sponsorship, usually in a sea-side town with many attending bands and artists from the obscure to the well-known. The well-known were some of my favourites: Nick Cave, Grizzly Bear and Portishead; whereas there were also a few bands I want to know more about (Animal Collective and Battles). But all of the performances dazzled. The opening by Battles transcended music completely. Nick Cave performed Snoop Dogg's favourite song (of a few years ago), The No-Pussy Blues. Portishead, characteristically, outdid their studio recording in a blasting rendition of We Carry On. But some of the odd things was how so unlike any concert it really was. The bands and the audience were mixing closely, staying in the same accommodation. Performances were often done in the immediate lawn of the holiday inn. A character who I've never heard of The Lightning Bolt, in a courtyard, dressed in a gimp-suit with extra masking tape, at a drum-set, was surrounded by fans demanding him to perform a particular song: "Thirteen Monsters!"; "Mrrrmrrr Mrrrmrrr?" he clarified. The fans yelled again; he still seemed unclear; One fan put up tried to put display thirteen fingers yelling the title, before he suddenly showed comprehension and launched into the fastest drum-sequence, sending them into ecstacy. Grizzly Bear took a group at sunset to the water's edge with instruments to perform Deep Blue Sea to close the movie. All footage was taken not as some deliberate recording but as incidental, by fans and others. All told: Wow!

Antichrist

Oh, Christ! was perhaps what many people uttered, instinctively and without any irony, during this film. I committed myself to watching it, too, solely on the director, Lars von Triers. I've seen many of his movies and have huge appreciation for his range. Only with Dogville and Mandalay did he repeat a technique. Dancer in the Dark, the first movie of his that I saw, remains one of my favourite movies and may well be the reason I have so much patience with his movies, just as Mulholland Drive gave Lynch a mile of leeway to exploit.

Once committing though, any reading into this piece could only give one the heebie-jeebies. Just with the synopsis and an accidental spoiler listed with the movie's rating (as they need to state the objectionable things in the rating, it did allude to some of the undescribables that would arise), I went into the cinema and was immediately absorbed into this story of grief, evil and madness. The acting was magnificently good: Charlotte Gainsbourg won the best actress award at Cannes for her role (she was Stephanie in The Science of Sleep); Willem Dafoe must've been a good contender in his category. (And interestingly, they are two thirds of the whole cast!) For the first half of the movie they were the relationship; I could even relate to some aspects of it from life experiences; it breathed reality. As the movie progresses into physical and psychological isolation, the sounds and sights become more distorted. At one point I noticed that in amongst the bird-song and tree-cry of the forest, there was a background beat to quicken your heart. The screen image seem to bend occasionally; images flashed from nowhere. The pace was deliberately slow, but only to give you a sense of balance before it pummels you to the ground in a lightning attack, psychological or physical.

The movie made attempts at a greater meaning that I'm still trying to make sense of. And it also almost fell into the ridiculous with the intrusion of a fawn, a fox and frenetic crow as an allegory straight into the plot of the movie. Both Dogville and Mandalay had attempts at greater meaning too, and both strained to do so. Mandalay helped itself in this regard by having archival photos of Blacks in poverty and oppression backed to David Bowie's song The Young Americans just to make its point clear. My feeling is that it is meant as an some sort of an artistic redress for misogyny: the burning of witches, the oppression of women, and for the deeming of feminine nature as evil or corrupting. The film reaches into the guts of this idea and the turns the creature inside out, creating the embodiment of feminine evil as almost a mockery, as a woman Christ to be crucified, to be what the men had said the witches were - evil for the sex, and to be burnt for it. And then take this embodiment and inflict it on a pure man of reason, knowledge and chivalry tempting him into sin. And as I try to hold the movie in my head to write this, it is perhaps only then I can take the significance of the title: Antichrist.

Despite the trauma, I'm glad I saw this movie. I might be wrong with my interpretation and might have rolled my eyes at the intrusion of the symbolic fauna, but it was a true cinematic experience (surpassing Birdsong in its uniqueness), and a great way to cap off the festival. It was, for me, the best film of the nine I saw. (Regardless of my praise here, only go to see this if you are truly broadminded about film, truly tolerant of gratuitously inflicted cinematic pain and patient to let a film open itself slowly to you.)

Only two things are infinite

A week ago when shooting through a health shop I got some LSA, which, to those unacquainted with health food, is not some trendy drug but a blended mix of linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds. It can be thrown into smoothies or baking. I only got it because it was on special, but the reason most vegetarians would buy it is that it has lots of the oils that are in fish, but not in a great deal of plant foods, namely, Omega fatty acids, which, incidentally are good for the brain and focus. I had some in a smoothie yesterday morning but it either cursed me or was expired and had the opposite effect.

It all started after a good samaritan morning when I was being shouted lunch for my good deed. As I came back from the restroom and I was about to sit down, I attempted to remove my wallet from the back pocket (I hate sitting on my wallet) and found it wasn't there. A brief search of the cafe revealed it had been standing crease-up near the counter, completely unmolested by evil-doers. What a pleasant surprise!

Then later in the day, I left my home to go vege shopping, drove about 1o minutes, perused the odd vegetables at Mt Eden vege, bought some and headed back to the car, when the car demanded the keys and I was found wanting. I turned to find the cashier charging down the footpath after me, keys glinting in the sunlight. Service and dedication supreme!

Lady luck had insulated me from the worst aspects of my stupidity twice. But the third time she was utterly charmless. I got back to my car and drove a hundred metres down the road when something hit me: fortunately it was just a thought; unfortunately it was a disturbing thought. You see, I'm fond of saving time and also home cookery, which I must say is a bad combination. Before I had left home I thought that I could prepare for a dinner guest that evening by putting a small amount of lentils in a pot, covering them with water, turning up the heat to boiling, and then turning off the heat before leaving. This was the lentils can absorb water and cut cooking times in the evening. I had done this before. And regrettably I had nonchalently done it again: sans the very last step. I had left the lentils in less than a centimetre of water on the stove and full heat... for at least 25 minutes... and I was about 10 minutes from my apartment. I jolted myself out of shock and U-turned my way back homeward. I called both my landlord and flatmate to see if they were close enough to scream home and do whatever could be done, but I was the closest one.

A few months ago, there had been a fire alarm at our apartment complex. A smouldering in an underground carpark had set off the alarms for all the apartments (most of which would not have been in any conceivable threat), so I had visions of burly firefighters using a big ramrod to burst through the door and attend to my overcooked cooking. I pulled up opposite my apartment grounds, dashed across the road and while traversing the parking areas, detected in the air a whiff of one of those dreaded burnt odours, while still 30 metres from the door. I was pleased by the lack of alarm bells and a munted doorway as I shot up the stairs into my smoky lounge. I dashed to the stove-top, threw the smouldering pot into a full sink of water and opened all the doors, windows and extractor fans. But the main crisis was averted, and a jittery Daniel could collapse into a chair with a strong cup of tea.

I can tell you my lessons: lentils exposed to direct heat are reduced to a tar-like substance that will certainly doom any pot the process is carried out in; apparently white vinegar absorbs the burnt smell; my flatmate is completely unflappable; and the universe is certainly boundless.

Playing it straight

The next three movies I saw have been of a totally different flavour: all historically recreated films. There is a lot of merit to such films: they're educational, thought-provoking and, at times, challenging.

Firaaq

As a historical moment, the partition of India has always interested me. Gandhi really did interest me in this respect to show the sheer power of politics, allying themselves with religion, to wrench a whole intact civilisation apart. Firaaq documents another piece of the aftermath to the division, the 2002 Gujarat Massacre. The plot follows several ficitional families and individuals, based on real accounts, as they wrestle with the collective trauma after the incident. Only the first scene and the occasional background TV reports make any direct illustration of the true carnage of the days of violence; the viewer can only feel the residual fear and anger the permeates the whole film. The film was well done, although I'd say that some of the less savoury characters in it do seem more caricature than character. There seem to be clear distinctions the virtuous and evil, the perpetrators and victims, the saints and the sinners, that one feels that it might not necessarily be a fair depiction. One can only pursue the information for themselves.

Che

Che was, in fact, two movies in one: a whole 260 minutes of film for the price of a ticket! That in itself was a tempting proposition. The director (Soderbergh) is acclaimed, the subject of the film a significant personage and icon, it was an opportunity too good to skip. And so the first movie began on how Che was involved in the Cuban revolution. History dictates the flow, so all we can see is the nuances of his personality and life, a man of resolute principles, of humanism above all. The second film starts after he returned from nuturing revolution into the Congo and in complete secrecy slipped into Bolivia. History dictates his demise here and so we see how circumstance brought his life to an end. I remember a review after watching The Motorcycle Diaries saying that it was more a hagiography than a biography. This may apply to these films too in that without personal research it is hard to know whether Che is as virtuous as he is presented; indeed in the film his only shortcoming seems to be asthma. This may or may not be the case. The two films put flesh on the bones of knowledge that I had; the story was presented well with style and technique. It was a wholly worthwhile movie to watch.

Birdsong

"Before the first screening I told the audience that my movie was the most unique movie of the festival. But I hadn't read the festival programme. So since then I've read the programme and I can say with certainty that this is the most unique movie in the festival. It may also be the best movie in the festival. Well, we can discuss that after you've seen it. Regardless, it'll be a true cinematic experience." So said the director of Birdsong, Albert Serra.

Of all the movies so far Birdsong was the first arthouse movie. And as such, it needs to be approached with an open mind, infinite patience and a sense of beauty. This is the "historical" story of the three wise men coming from afar to visit the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. They are devoted a mere three lines in the Bible, which Albert decided to inflate to just over 90 minutes. What it seeks to do is provide real humans and humanity to an arduous journey that has become something sanctified, holy and totally devoid of humanness. We follow the through valleys and deserts as the bicker and navigate, go silent and quest forward, never mentioning their goal (the plot is known to all, there is no need to use their speech to indicate where they're going). Joseph and Mary are recuperating after the birth, Mary with baby, and Mary with her goat. And that is the simplicity of it. I did enjoy it, although even I would have wanted him to use time less as a tool.

"That is the most terrible film I've ever seen." So said the ill-tempered hypocritical woman I sat next to after enduring it.

Passing and fading

The news of the two trampers perishing was delivered by my last student for the day. It is sad to hear, as all deaths are. Death in the mountains is always a salutary warning to those with alpine proclivities.

Meanwhile, closer to sea level, I’m yet again proving the Daniel Paradox to be true; namely, the less busy I get the more careless I become. Yesterday I had assumed a student had moved his lesson rather than swapping with another student setting off a flurry of student-bothering texts; then I went to an evening lesson that wasn’t even scheduled. Today I arrived at work to find all my lesson plans were still on the printer at home. Am I even functioning?

Perhaps I am, maybe not, but my broadband certainly isn’t: it seems many separate factors are against me. Fingers-crossed tomorrow resolves the last issues. It has hampered my job search, while the Film Festival has siphoned off time I’d be using to redo my CV. I’ve informed one client about the possibility of my departure, which they were very sad about. They also said that there was very little chance of any more students for me.

Recently, I’ve chewed through many books in my low-gear way, Lolita being the current gristle. Two books before that I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Konrad. How can two classic English novels be written by people without English as their mother tongue? Genius does truly transcend language, and once it seeks the tools in any tongue, it glistens like a gem. My gosh! I would love to write like either.

With the impending arrival of my new flatmate, I detonated upon household duties: spring cleaning the fridge, reordering the pantry, discarding all my previous housemate’s leftover food, and putting all the rubbish and recycling out. It gave me a whole look at all whole range of foodstuffs I possess; and when I go, what shall I do with it all? So, henceforth I shall consume, empty, share and produce in a grand stock clearance. But my flatmate didn’t come yesterday or today as first thought: his car broke down in Wellington and will be delayed till Friday. Well, he’ll have to wait to receive my generosity!

Scream and Shout

The Film Festival has arrived and I am happy. After the disappointment at my lean pickings last year, I have now the opportunity and the desire to indulge in the movies I want to see. And with time in my hands, I've set the goal of watching ten! Here are reviews for the first few. (Don't worry, no spoilers!)

Thirst

Despite my disgust at most modern branding, I seem to strongly, and perhap hypocritically, follow particular bands, writers and certain products to extreme levels. Whether it be my complete collections of some musicians whom I consider genius, to buying 4-packs of Phoenix Ginger Beer to drink at home (and in cinemas!), there are some names that sparkle to me as if I were a magpie in a tree. When I saw Park Chan-Wook had a movie in the film festival guide, it was the only movie to earn an emphatic Yes! without consideration for content. Considering Almodovar, a well-regarded director didn't earn more than a cursory look, it should show my dedication. Park Chan-Wook earnt my adulation with Old Boy. He always brings a creatively violent, humorously gory take on what he does. Thirst is a vampire-priest tale - but one creatively and warmly done. How he came to be a vampire might have been a little unbelieveable, but how he deals with his problem, trying to avoid sinning in the process is amusing. Love enters, and love corrupts, and then there is no end of evil that can unfold. Moral: Being a vampire is not as fun as it first appears to be, and you'll be waiting for the other shoe to drop. A lot of blood is ceremoniously spilt. I love his characters too, the old matriarch of the family in particular.

Drag me to hell!

Horror is a genre that I rarely dip into. I was exposed to a good deal of horror movies in my childhood: my eldest sister indulging her fascination with it and, in doing so, filling my nightmares. Well, that is probably overstating it, but the truth is that I've always been of a jumpy, nervy disposition, and despite enjoying the thrill, I tend to spasm in shock at even a ruffle of paper on screen, and sometimes will seek leave of the room when there is an impending shock. The director cues me up with a soundtrack and a sense of foreboding, and I dance.

It was probably over 5 years since I last saw a horror in the cinema - and within the first five minutes of Drag me to hell, I was reminded of the usual way that I experience horror: in contortions. It was a proper horror movie, with all the traditional bells and whistles of horror. It was a sustained burst of adrenalin to the heart, enlivening, even though at times predictable.

Moon

As mentioned, I'm a name-dropping viewer. Sam Rockwell's name was my sole reason for watching this. He has dynamism on screen, and I've enjoyed him in other movies. Moon is about one man, Sam Bell, operating a Helium mining operation on the moon. And apart from the robot, Gerty, he is alone, bleakly isolated from Earth, his wife and daughter with two weeks remaining till he goes home, a long two weeks. He hallucinates; he talks to himself and his plants; yet messages from home drive him on. However, while on a routine trip in a moon buggy to a rock harvester, he has an accident and makes a rather astonishing discovery.

I enjoyed this movie. It never seemed to slow despite it essentially being the same actor on screen all the time. It also touches on many ethical issues about what technology could bring to us.

There is an odd background in the movie too: the director is David Bowie's son, christened Zowie Bowie (although apparently he changed his name since). David Bowie, of course, was made famous by the hit Space Oddity ("Ground Control to Major Tonk") and has other songs about life in space. An influence, perhaps?

Of camels, backs and the real cost of $20

My apartment life has been interesting. It was the bed on which I rested in emotional convalescence; it has been my base for travel; it has been the first place that felt really like my own. It always had another side to it though: the landlord.

When I first met her, I remember she just kept on talking; she seemed fine and that was a factor in my immediate choice in living here. But things panned out differently: from acceptable to bad and from bad to worse. It has all seemed so needless. She is very houseproud and seems to have found it hard to leave this place in the hands of lesser creatures. I'd say that she is naturally that way and feels an obligation to her parents to keep the flat in mint condition, and this obligation means using any means at all to achieve it. She is duplicitous; she lies: both black and white. Without going into the details, we confronted her about her excessive interference with the flat; she relented. For about six months there has only been a few moments of irritation. She still hasn't fitted a blind for one of my windows (I've been using cardboard to block out a street-light for almost a year!). She said she would but it never happened. Apparently she is planning a wedding, which makes it perhaps understandable, even if she has long been putting expectations of us without fulfilling her own responsibilities.

Thus we come to yesterday afternoon: I was informed that my rent would increase by $20 from August 10 due to "an increase in the market rent" (I was sceptical but, yes, apparently rents have increased, year-on-year, by between 5-10% on average apparently). I knew then that my time here was up. My falling income was already making the existing rent excessively taxing. Upon informing my flatmate of the rise, astonishingly I discovered that the market rise seems to have only applied to the street-facing room: mine. More astonishing was my flatmate's response: she gave her two-week notice to the landlord today. She had had an offer of a room at a friend's place and the certainty of my departure (we are good flatmate buddies) and the landlord's general conduct meant that she shouldn't turn down that offer. It is rather depressing that my landlord stooped to this weird tactic. I have spoken rather abruptly to her in the past (in immense frustration) and it has probably led to this, I'm thinking. Strangely ironic, though, was that it led to the good flatmate to give notice (The landlord doesn't have much of a problem with her). And I am a good tenant, and in terms of the common area, I'm a clean-freak (most of the time): If she wanted to keep the place tidy, she is shooting herself in the foot. It most of all is annoying.

Over the New Year I had thought through three likely paths for the year: (1) My business prospers in the face of adversity; (2) My business is somewhat affected, so I put effort into finding new clients, develop my writing skills and travel; (3) My business is heavily affected and I go on an ambitious trip to the United Kingdom and Europe, head back through Asia to work for between six months and two years before returning home. I've had my head on the second route without any ardent desire to cross the threshold into the third. My heart was not moved by the prospect of travel. When I received that e-mail though, I was moved: I could picture myself off. I'm not sure yet, but this weekend has been a great push. It can be a launch pad for a brand new course. All for the want of $20 a week.

Hidden highs

There are very few aspects of teaching that I don't enjoy. One of the ones I do enjoy immensely is just pronouncing words, preferrably multistress words, to model them for students: anXIety, eVENT, COMF'table. In my line of work, you can say them once, repeat them with exaggeration and drama. A single bugbear word can be several minutes of a lesson, first of all modelling the pronunciation with specific directions for tongue, tooth and lip locations; once mastering it, the student should next practice it in the context of a sentence, because producing a sentence takes some attention away from pronunciation - and pronunciation in real life has to be done with a lot of competing thoughts; and then they need to be monitoring themselves in speech to be aware if their accuracy has slipped. All of this entails a lot of repetition.

One of the recurring mysteries is how certain words can be so hard to say for some. ACcess, for one, is bothering one of my highly able students. He can say each syllable well, but together he either says: AXis or exCESS. When he stresses the first syllable, the vowel on the second automatically reduces; when he makes sure he says the correct vowel on the second, he instinctively stresses the second syllable, reducing the first. It does his mind in while I just get my kick from saying: ACcess, ACcess, ACcess.

There is also the mystery, constantly posed by another student, of how he is pronouncing what he is pronouncing. A common word like "that", he somehow mixes the "th" with "l" producing both sounds simultaneously. Usually mispronounced phonemes (sound units) are somewhere on a continuum of sound, like ten and -tain (from "maintain"). But there is virtually no continuum of sound between "th" and "l". I cannot replicate the sound (I may have once, but have no idea how I did it), yet he does it naturally when not monitoring the exact position of his tongue.

Of course, it's not always my students' pronunciation that can cause wonder; my own baffles me and others too. As stated in a blog sometime ago, my exuberant reading of difficult books in my youth caused me to create my own pronunciations for words I rarely heard. While teaching a few weeks back in the home of a friend, I defined a word my student, his wife, found: "AWry, that's when things don't go according to plan." The friend emerged from the kitchen cocking his head to one side to see this unfamilar word, before saying: aWRY. So much for the clouds of wonder that make an "infallible" teacher. "whilst" has also been mispronounced in a lesson by me.

Yesterday I borrowed a book I thought I must read: 100 words that everyone mispronounces. Here are the ones I have discovered that I fail at: niche, gnocchi, concupiscence, desultory, cadre, cache, lingerie, harass. (Of course, many of these have several "accepted" pronunciations which have to be considered correct.) While reading it though, I found one of my youthful pronunciations was in fact correct: BANal can have a first syllable stress!

Music reviews

Prior to this famine, my economic boom funded a lot of uncharacteristically expansive spending. One particular area for my extravagance was music. And though the party is indeed over, I’m still merrily continuing this indulgence. Listening to music has always been enjoyable, usually with a taste for the esoteric, dark or extreme. Here, I’ll review a few of my recent purchases:

Portishead, Third

Until this purchase, I only possessed one single, burnt, live album. Paradoxically, it is one of my favourites. My penchant for dark music is deep and the lead singer, Beth Gibson, must have had extraordinary pain in her life, for what else could she be channelling when she sings? If it is all a pretence, then she is simply extraordinary. And if it be from a truly dark vein of her being, then we should all buy the records for her psychotherapy.

Though Portishead, admittedly, doesn’t have that much variety in tone (only one song is any from the respite of intense blues, purples and greys: a ukulele song in the middle!), they innovate constantly and texture each song further and further; deeper and deeper. The sound is rich and you can feel yourself easily getting lost in it.

Bristol is their hometown; and should I go to the United Kingdom, I’d have to do a pilgrimage there. Massive Attack and Tricky, whom I adore, both originate there. A lot of the music of all three has an underlying bleakness and austerity. Opening the Third CD case, the tone is minimal with an electric dark blue tinting an urban scene with powerlines draping across. The picture on the back shows Beth, seemingly overwrought with sadness, microphone in hand, while her bandmates are at their instruments at their stations completely unaffected.

Overall, it is a darkly beautiful album. For me, it is one song too long; even I have my limits and the last song was probably the song that was most similar to their previous work, and broke from direly true to drearily despairing. I might just have to get their other two albums, though.

The Eels, Hombre Lobo

The Eels are a favourite of mine, and one of the musicians that I boast almost every recording. Much of the music has an autobiographical tendency and as such comes through as some of the most genuine, touching music you’ll ever hear. I was a little disappointed for the record and happy for him: there seems to be no more demons for him to exorcise and the album seems to be just him having fun and making music. It disappoints me in that without the emotional depths of the other albums, it leaves the music to speak for itself; and the music isn’t that original. It sounds like his previous work or him imitating other singers. There are a couple of songs which have sustained themselves through repeated listens, but others urge me to skip them. And it is not that they’re anything bad, just that they don’t inspire the listen to listen any closer.

Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear was one of the two bands that I heard on the terrifically good Australian radio station, Triple-R, that compelled me to buy. The song I heard was what I’d only call abstract folk, a folkish sound and instruments yet the vocalist set about being an instrument veering close to incoherence and sometimes singing in a fragile yet crisp clear words. The album I bought, at the brilliant Polyester Records on Brunswick no less, was Yellow House, thus named as it was recorded in a yellow house. My first listens were difficult, I recall; but then after returning home and properly listening to it unlocked a door to wonder. It had such a rich sound! The complete set of lyrics are written on the centre of the CD case, showing that the words are few, but repeated, rhythmically and with permutation. It was true listening music. The timing of their second release was perfect: I would buy anything from them.

Veckatimest, incidentally the name of the town they recorded in, on first listen disappointed me. They had discarded the folk sound of Yellow House completely in favour of more modern rock instrumentation. But the ethos remained the same: the voice is the richest instrument of all, winding its way through the sound and bursting through with sparks and, occasionally, ferocity. The lead singer is more audible but the songs are just as theatrical and non-standard. It is the perfect accompaniment to a winter’s day on the couch, in a sun beam.

Celestial Sights

Winter is a day away bringing the dark so much sooner and so much deeper; the moon has waned to a sliver; and from the eastern dawning horizon, Matariki (Pleiades, known in Chinese as 昴星团) has again reappeared. and there I was by the obelisk this morning to see it.

It was by a whim that I was there on One Tree Hill. A few nights ago I had had a sudden desire to go to the Stardome for their show and finally got there last night. Upon exiting, I picked up a pamphlet saying that the Matariki Breakfast was on the 20th. I made enquiries and only mid-question did it dawn on me that that date fell today (i.e., the following day). Coincidence alone is enough for me so I booked it, slept and burst out of bed at 5:20am to head to One Tree Hill.

The night sky this morning was beautifully clear. More surprising was the arrangement: Venus and Mars clustered together; Mercury near Aldebaran lining up Matariki; Jupiter overhead beaming brightly. In other words, beyond just being a great day to spot the eponymous constellation, it was a brilliant day to look at planets and the sky. The group of 80 plus people were quite sociable and I chatted with lots of people and even made a friend. My $30 purchase of secondhand binoculars the previous day was well worth it as I spotted Matariki early and got to enjoy it as well as share around my lenses.

Another burst of astronomical yearning is again upon me. I have been looking at telescopes in shops again. And I'm very close to buying one. I was glad to get the binoculars even though they are a little out of focus when using both eyepieces at stars. (I use one eyepiece for the stars.) The binoculars have also fed into my nature-obsession too, being of particular use at Ambury Regional Park yesterday.

Winter Solstice and Matariki signposted a huge change to my life last year, so this weekend will be a time for contemplation.

Distinction award

It is now customary for me to drink coffee rather than tea in cafes. It is not just that my palate has finally learnt to savour the bitterness of coffee, but the sheer disgust I have in paying the same amount for what is often a Twinnings tea bag in a cup (the sheer gall of it!). Aside from the tea cafes, there are, however, a few cafes that exceed expectation. One of these is Maggie Scott café on the Upper Reaches of Dominion Road (near Burgerfuel).

I sent myself there today, away from my usual writing haunt, upon espying a new tea brand, Tea Drop, which had a blend I hadn’t encountered: Lavender Grey tea. So I ordered, sat down and set up. My tea came over in a tea set but with the best arrangement I’d seen in a standard cafe: a tea cup and saucer; a 2 cup tea pot of hot water; and a tiny square saucer upon which a tagged silk tea bag sat. The latter is the distinguishing point: a tea aficionado rarely wants their tea to overbrew, and a little saucer is what is often desired for the spent bag or tea-leaf cradle.

It wasn’t perfect though: the Lavender Grey was pleasant, but not outstanding; they had a radio playing in the background; the china was unadventurous. But in terms of surpassing all other cafes on a single point, it does achieve a distinction.

Time and space

I've never had a problem with time: time is my blood; space, however, has always strained my imagination, whether it be judging gaps in traffic, whether it would be throwing small objects into bins or filling bags. After driving along the Summit road of the Port Hills in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon, boarding a plane and then resting at home that evening, I again scratch my head over the matter of space.

A Gorgeous Trip

Many desires cannot be consummated; the itch once scratched yearns to be scratched again. Travel is one of those. Set in motion by a promise to return to Wellington and designed to fulfil my hastily made vow to explore the lower Hawkes Bay, my road trip for the last weekend rapidly became the most ambitious tour of the year. The numbers say it all: 5 days on the road; 2084 kilometres travelled; 3 forest parks visited.

After an hour of teaching on Thursday morning, I filled up my car and went on my way. I hurtled to Taupo, and then through the autumnal beauty of the gorge highway to Napier. I didn’t know where I was to stay: My original plan of staying in the Kaweka Ranges at Te Puia Lodge was in doubt as the weather had been bad, but finally I received the call: yes, it was fine to stay there. I was caught unprepared: the Kaweka Ranges are accessed many ways; all I knew was that my way was to go to the end of Puketitiri Rd; and how was I to get to Puketitiri Rd? My fuel needle hovering over “half-full”, the sun heading to the North-western horizon, I scrambled around till I found my road and once upon it, I raced against the setting sun. And so on and on, Puketitiri Rd went. The map belied its full stretch. It was over half an hour till I sighted the snowy ranges and almost an hour till I saw a landmark on the map. My gas-tank pessimistically sagged well below “half-empty” toward the two bottom lines, a white one and a red one, that marked the bottom of the proverbial barrel. The road wound upon itself, through a gate and along a narrow road flanked by an unverged 50 metre drop and a rockface. At half past four, I landed myself in the car-park and I still had a 2-3 hour walk to the hut. The fuel needle rested for the night at half a millimetre above the white line. I reassured myself that the lines are not absolute, that there is still a buffer of fuel below the lowest line.

The track followed the Mohaka river gorge and was well-formed and easy to walk and run on. The last two-thirds entered into the spectacular. The river bent around huge bluffs and the mountains were nicely gathered around. Night fell too quickly and my headtorch went on; the delight of the view was reduced to the auditory pleasure of the river. The hut was unsurprisingly empty and pleasantly supplied with gas. The temperature went into a nosedive and to survive the night comfortably I put all my clothes on, put an emergency blanket over the top of my sleeping bag and put my towel around my neck, my woolly cap on and my sunhat over the top. I sipped my tea as the darkness overcame me.

I woke at 5:30, broke my fast and set off. I could wear just shorts and my tramping shirt and felt warm enough. The true beauty of the gorge was apparent with some scenes being simply breathtaking. I believe I could also hear the squeals of Blue Ducks in the river. As I followed the gorge down, I suddenly felt the chill. I became aware that all the mountains now had a green top and below a certain height were white: all the greenery below a certain level had frosted over. The mud crunched beneath my feet as I felt colder and colder. I arrived at the car. It was frozen over too. There were hot springs at either end of this trail but I was too rushed to go to either of them. My first taste of the Kawekas and it was a sweet and cool one. I want to taste it again.

After defrosting the car and packing up, I got in and set off again. I looked at the fuel needle: it was now on the white line. I was glad that I had joined AA just a couple of days before but was increasingly anxious about the prospect of running out of gas. I did my best to save petrol by coasting and trying to sustain speed the best I could. And at least the sun came out to thaw my fingers. Suddenly I was filled by another worry: There weren’t deer in the fields yesterday, so why were there now? Why is the mountain range on my left now? I knew in my heart that I must have taken a wrong turn but held onto a hope that I was just too focussed the day before. I decided to go to the next house I saw and knock to ask. The road-end, however, came to me first. Fortunately there was a house at the end as well and I leapt out to ask the farmer, who kindly clarified that my navigation was regrettably off: I had gone over ten minutes in the wrong direction and now the fuel needle was certainly on the red. I castigated myself thoroughly and roared off back down the road, then onto Puketitiri road again, round and round, coursing through the straights, the gate and past small communities. I was pretty resigned to running out: How long could this really go on? The needle was well below the red. This interminable road would have to end or the petrol. I coasted over a ridge and the horizon opened up to the bay view. Relief swept into me: Napier was almost here. I went through the semi-suburbia of Napier, turned into a Gull station and parked catatonically at the pump. After having a good drink of ginger beer, I got out of the car and filled up: 39.90L of petrol. I think I know the total capacity of my tank now.

Napier was a sight for sore eyes; it was warm and welcoming after my trauma. And it was only 10am! I decided to head up Te Mata peak as my main attraction here. Some of my students had told me about it and suddenly I couldn’t help but look at it: a huge blade of rock ripping from out of the ground near Havelock North. As my car went up the slope, I became the uncontrollably distracted driver of your nightmares. It was such an awesome view and every time I looked over my shoulder at the huge drop or the site back over the harbour I could barely contain my gasps or exclamations of amazement. At the top, it was easy to see tracks leading through the park. I want to go there again.

The Southern Hawkes Bay and Wairarapa were pleasant to drive through, the Ruahines and Tararuas following me down on my right. I had never been that good at remembering which mountain ranges were which but now I think I’ll never forget (even if I call the Ruahines the Rimutakas by accident). The blue and ochre of the Bay became the grey and green of the Wairarapa, which I have never visited. The main stop was to be Mt Bruce, New Zealand’s National Wildlife Centre for breeding threatened species. I saw Kiwis again and, maybe for the first time, a Kokako. It was spell-binding to watch. It was smaller than a tui and jumped rambunctiously around the leaf-litter before leaping onto the fencing ten centimetres from my face: “Mook-mook-mook?” it asked. I responded in kind, but he just repeated his question. According to Maori, this bird had the second best voice in the pantheon of NZ birds, behind the now extinct Huia, and this one expected me to sing! I continued south and the weather continued to intensify.

I drove to a hut at the bottom of the Tararua Ranges, and settled in for the stormy night. I got up at 6am and went on a walk to a lookout, while the weather took a little rest from its huffing and puffing. I really want to explore the Tararuas more. My only real concern was whether the Rimutaka Hill Road was open or not. It wasn’t, and my first trip through it was very enjoyable. It winds around the Rimutaka Range side of a gorge where it meets the Tararua Range. Just like Te Mata, the view could be lethal in its beauty.

From Wellington, I picked up a passenger and headed back over the Rimutaka Hill to go to the little known Cape Palliser. Unbeknownst to me, we were coming at the most perfect time. I had intended to do the Pinnacle walk but the storm that was centring itself on the lower North Island was powering up the seas and wind. Add onto that the fact that we arrive around high tide, you’ll soon get the picture: Behind a sign warning of falling rocks, rocks certainly were falling; sea spray hissed over the road; sea foam invaded the seal, imitating snow; miscellaneous driftwood strew the road. Yet on the other side stood cliffs and both jaggered and weathered rocks. We got to the end of the road where I climbed the stairs to the lighthouse (“Climb at your own risk”). The mid-section of the ladder felt perilous enough, but the last three steps were as risky as it could be. The wind-speed was horrifying. If you leant into it, it could more than hold you up, it could send you places. Descending was just as tricky. As we returned back down the road, I made a discovery. There were dozens of seals all along the foreshore. We somehow hadn’t seen them! And also new additions to the road had appeared since we had come down: a log had washed up and a whole tree had fallen over the road! This was nature at its rawest. I still want to go tramping here so I shall return.

The next day I left Wellington and after a quick look-see at the Otaki Gorge, went onwards through Wanganui to Mt Taranaki. As I entered the park, I saw a sign: “Kiwi zone: No dogs!” and immediately behind it, in my headlights was a ferret charging away like a greyhound. I sped up, lining him up with my left wheel but he broke to the left and dove into the undergrowth. The mountain itself was enshrouded in mist and I had to take it very carefully. Remnant snow was fringing some sections of the road too. At the top, the mist was so thick that to walk around without a head-torch could be enough to get quickly lost forever in the cold and the wet. Again, I was the only one staying at lodge but that gives one the freedom to spread out.

I woke at 6am and went on a short loop walk to see Dawson’s Falls, which was pretty small but good nonetheless. I headed down the mountain and the sun shone on me again for the first time since Friday morning. I headed onto the Forgotten World highway, a place I had always intended to visit. It was truly beautiful. It hasn’t got much development at all, but has all the material for a Great Walk and agricultural eye-candy, every corner an idyll. The jewel, Tangarakau Gorge, could only be gaped at, the only problem being that there were few places to stop to view it. And, further on, from a place called Nevin’s Hill lookout, there has to be the best view of Ruapehu I’ve ever had. As a whole the highway might be the best drive visually that I’ve been on, a Great Drive perhaps.

And then it was back via Taumaranui, Te Kuiti, Otorohanga to Ngauruawahia, and onward to Auckland. The last day was truly a case of sensory overload. I had to wonder if I had been reduced to a gibbering, gawping tourist: “Wooo, mountain; woooo, tree.” but on the way back through the agricultural Waikato, I realised what I had seen was truly special.
This reads more like a love letter to the North Island, and perhaps it is. I am suffering a particularly acute, yet peculiar form of patriotism; one that causes one to wish to possess the whole country in the mind.

The undulating track

“I’m not here,” the singer moaned weakly through the car's drone;
to his voice, we flew through the night to the Taupo lakeside;
where Youth Everlasting, with a subtle smile, spoke slightly;
laconically receiving us for the night.

I watered pine trees in the morn;
with water of steeped tea tree leaves, brewed before;
down a diversion, a turn, and another, till we reached the rocky roads;
populated by swine and equines, that’d lead us to the Waikaremoana lakeshore.

Panekiri bluffs rose tall, and with it we rose too;
we crawled our way along the path, past fungi and pot-heads;
we leapt from cliff tops, but the darkness smothered our eyes;
ascending the stairs, in the gloom, we pondered cackling dusk birds.

The next dawn a storm-head wound around an early squall, holding us;
‘Shall we go?’; ‘How could we go?’; if we’d left, well, who could know?
It blew a backpack across the decking; but it hurled us on our way;
we rounded the bends and found the shore to the calm.

The blighters bit and the hazelnuts twisted;
ligaments strained; the falls eventually came; and so did we;
She was wrong, y’know; that DOC girl, that is: Who could go so fast?
How could we be so wrong, to think we were fast, to take it so leisurely?

Our pursuer, the night, caught us by the legs again;
possums prowled at every corner, their blood eyes beaming red;
we suppered at a lean-to: if only it could have been the Party House;
arriving at the hut, cleaned, we slept to the clatter of nails and tails.

Dawn breaking, the veil over the hut lifted too: a roof of green and red!
The insects muttered overhead while we curled around the inlet;
for the first time, the sun emerged full to sweeten the shore;
but our pace was not reaching the time set.

Text bell, flat; one bar, flat; one bar, two bars, flat;
the boatsman’s call rang out in the distance;
fishermen cried out in vain in our service;
we could only rest and make new plans;

At a picnic table we assembled again;
and spoke of deception, miscommunication and more;
on the shore, I could once again talk with the outside world;
our trip out was imminent; the blighters bit; and, back, the car roared.

“I’m not here,” the singer moaned again through the drone of the car;
we were; talked of talk; but there’s no such thing as a free meal.
That fella naturally objected to the ideal; she talked it to death;
the night was finally a comfort as we came to the final reel.

The tail of the fish

The enigma of the Far North has finally been dispelled from my mind. It is now solid rock, temperate water and flowing warm sands of white, orange, yellow and grey. In my youth and in later excursions, I had never gone further north than Kerikeri; perhaps, at times, I even had doubts of the worth of a trip up that far: what would there be but metal roads, sand, marijuana and farmland? Inspired by the tales of my students, however, the Far North became the second of three destinations I vowed to visit this year. An Auckland Anniversary day plan foundered early, but fate dealt me a second chance: the internet meet-up group I had joined had proposed an Easter trip to Cape Reinga and around, and that was something I couldn’t possibly turn down.

Our first day, after escaping the greater Auckland area, had two major sights: a crag at Tokatoka and the Waipoua forest. The crag, the first walking of the trip, surpassed all my expectations: a steep climb and a stunning view over the Kaipara harbour and the Wairoa river. Night fell after our visit of the Waipoua forest and we car-ferried across the Hokianga harbour and eventually found our first camping site: Raetea forest park. For a free camp-site it was quite pleasant with a river flowing by and a well-maintained loo.

The next day, I rose early but not the earliest: our organiser is the first person to comprehensively beat me out of bed on a camping trip (and he did so on every single day). He’d already gone on several short walks by the time I emerged to cook my porridge! Day two was to be a big day: driving to the northernmost stretch of mainland New Zealand, the Aupouri Peninsula, tramping to Pandora’s Beach (near Spirits Bay), driving to Cape Reinga for sunset and then camping down in Tapotupotu Bay.

On the Abel Tasman track I had swum for what I thought was to be the last time of this warm patch at Awaroa. I was wrong: I swam four times this trip! I swam at Pandora’s beach with joy. Two others joined me. Large fish were swimming through each huge wave that crashed. You could body surf from the strength of the Pacific tide. I loved it! The sandy beach itself was utterly spectacular in its own right. Tramping in and out wasn’t anything special though, except for the effort that it required. Three of us enjoyed a run-tramp side-trip out to a summit, but otherwise it was just hard grind on a wide, unsheltered gradient.

Cape Reinga was different to how I expected, and it had apparently been very recently developed with a nice carpark, modern but befouled toilets, and a track leading to the lighthouse with plaques describing the significance. They have started to seal the road there too. This probably counts as a necessary development in view of the sheer number of people who go there and with a mind to prevent erosion and enable accessibility, even though it felt a China Tourism Board job, especially with recorded music playing as you went through the arches after the carpark. But have I yet said it was stunning? The view was special. The waters churned beneath us; North Cape and Spirit’s Bay stretched to the East, and the Three Kings Islands stood beneath the setting sun. Our group bonded at this Point.

Tapotupotu campsite is apparently the northernmost in the country and is famed for its biting insects, and this may be where Tramping Luck again shined on me. Although the weather was outstanding for the whole time we were there, there had been a cold snap mid-last week which may have killed all the nasties off. I was bitten once (I think) in the whole weekend and never had the need to use repellent. And the campsite, despite the numbers there, was very pleasant.

The next day got off to a slow start due to communication issues (I'll mention these later) but once we were off, it was grand. We launched into our biggest tramp, the Te Werahi Gate circuit. This covered a lot of the unique landscapes that Northland is famous for. We went through sandy, rocky areas, around capes and through the dramatic borderlines of desert-like areas and then thick bush and swamp. I swam at Twilight Beach, but the surf was a bit too timid for my liking. It was pleasantly exhausting with my joints filling with a pleasurable weariness.

In the late afternoon, we continued down the west coast to Te Paki stream, a gateway to Ninety-Mile beach. I’ve never been on the famous beach before and three of us indulged our tired bodies in the masochistic act of running up sand mountains. The sand cascaded down the sides like water with every stride. The top of the dune had a fine ridge: one side shaded and cool, the other side warm. The sand was the finest milled sort possible and you could bath in it with pleasure. We all charged down the sunny face of the dune. Someone even forward-rolled most of the way! After using the stream as a carwash, we headed further down to Rarawa beach, and oh, in the dusk cool, and with your knees getting swished by the warm Pacific water, it was bliss. Did it have the whitest sand ever? And how could New Zealand have such crystal clear ocean water?

Our final night was spent camping on the Karikari peninsula, just to the south-east of Aupouri peninsula, at a campsite called Maitai Beach. We arrived in the dark and after erecting our tents and feeding our stomachs went off to bed. The spells of these places are cast with the rising sun. I rose at 6:30am and had an Up&Go before donning my togs and heading for the shore. This was a plan I had had for the last few days: to have a morning swim. The breeze may have been cool but the water was the same temperature as it was during the day, a pleasant, tepid warm as I stepped my way deeper and deeper, passing the usual temperature-sensitive threshold points on my body with ease. I wore my goggles but could only spot evasive crabs sidestepping my potential onslaught. A fisherman patiently stood on the rocks nearby with a rod in hand. The morning sun was on me as I eventually emerged, and silhouettes along the beach approached: two of my companions were also out in the early morn. I pulled on a shirt and walked barefoot with them up the ridge that divided the bays and onto a knoll that looks out upon the whole harbour. It was the fourth day and I was now locked in a bodily ease that could last a lifetime. We descended and continued into the next bay.

One of my adventurous companions mentioned his desire to talk with the locals so I accompanied him up the hill to the baches. As we approached a gate, a Maori man waved at us, we waved back, and in turn he put his big dog in the house and shut the door. As we walked up the drive, he introduced himself as Henry and he happily chatted with us with his neighbour’s girl lurking at the side sipping tea and eavesdropping on the adults’ conversation. He said that he was always keen to build the personal connection with people, as without people, the world would be meaningless. He talked about his wariness of the Maori language resurgence - he didn’t put his children into kura kaupapa schools as he had a deep suspicion of the tradition that comes with it. (He spoke later of his grandfather as a hard man who may have contributed to the death of his wife, and thus denying his father the female nurturing of a mother figure. This may have been the tradition he feared.) He spoke of his fear of the gentrification of the peninsula and the stifling that multi-ownership (i.e., tribal collective ownership) can create. The land that his shack was on had been in his family’s hands for a very long time, mainly for dairy since who knows when. We left him to see whether our friends were ready to move on but I was left with the recurring thought that without a knowledge of the people, the land is just form.

After going to yet Another Breath-taking Beach (ABB), we headed for Coca-Cola Spring, which one of our car mates talked endlessly about. It is the name often used to refer to a popular freshwater lake on the Karikari peninsula. It’s name may say something of the namers because for me it was the colour of black tea; and it tasted like it too; or as one tester more specifically described it: Assam black tea. Three of us dove in completely. Fresh water is much colder than the ocean water and the initial wading was shiver-inducing. Three of us (each time I refer to three of us, interestingly it was a different three each time, me being the only common variable) lolled around in the water with a ball game called Commitment. The rest just sat and watched.
Diving under the surface was a surreal experience: you couldn’t see far at all. With your head under and eyes open you course through the brown darkness without any idea what is ahead.

From Karikari Peninsula we shot around Doubtless Bay. Fading small communities were bracketed by residential developments. In Taipa, a brick fireplace stands bereft of its house, alone and without comfort amidst a dairy paddock. The cows low and graze around it in the meadow of the present. It all acts as a reminder of the forces of change.

The main organiser was one of the more earnest people I’ve met, and it was saddening to disappoint him at times with our carefree attitudes. Like me, he was a time man; but I didn’t carry the burden of the planning and was mainly oblivious to what was left to do and what amount of time remained. Each one of us would take our time or do what fancied us despite his apparent urgency. The final slap in the face for him was on the trip home, when, at Mangonui, our vehicle predominantly wanted to “break from the convoy” and follow our own schedule to get back to Auckland. He still had two other sights he wanted the group to visit before we parted ways and his disappointment was palpable. There was irony, though, that our vehicle was lured to the first sight (Whangaroa had a crag that stood high and haughty, a temptress, softly drawing the attention of the menfolk in the car to knock the bugger off) and then bumping into them at the second sight, which appeared on our right and we thought it improper to pass by.

A side story for the trip was that of the Couple. They were fairly regular participants in the hiking meet-ups but always sustained an aloofness and desire for privacy that was at times incompatible with a group activity. They started on a bad foot: after arriving at the rendezvous point in Auckland almost an hour late, they nonchalantly stepped out of the car without any embarrassment, apology or explanation. During the weekend, they didn’t communicate or mix beyond the efforts of other group members to chat with them and operated on their own clock despite a tight schedule and rarely let others know what they were going to do when we arrived at each place. This wouldn’t have been too bad if one hadn’t been the driver of one of the two cars we took, carrying three others including the main organiser. The Couple frustrated him in particular to the point of saying: “I don’t care anymore.” He did still care, of course, a lot and bore the responsibility for their failures on himself as an organiser. There was a weird moment of redemption, though, where at Twilight beach they disappeared altogether without us knowing when they’d be back. Everyone was ready to leave, and some of the slower walkers had already left. But they were nowhere to be seen. They had been last spotted near a distant cave, so one of our members walked in that general direction to whistle and yell and, if necessary, go over by the cave to see. They may have fallen in. Eventually, in response, out from the rocks popped the obviously naked white body of the man. We gesticulated that we were moving onward, and we naturally thought they’d got up to some mischief in a pool or in the cave. Once they caught up with us came an interesting story: He’d spotted mussels in the cave, stripped off, dived in and started collecting them off the side of the cave. A stingray (which incidentally had been seen by another member earlier from the shore) had come into the cave freaking him to the point of leaping out of the water. He then broke open the shells and fed it by hand from the safety of the rocks. That evening he gave everyone else a nicely cooked mussel each. (Mine was donated to a lucky soul.)

I enjoyed this trip: I didn’t do any of the work planning it; I didn’t do any of the driving; I could just savour the experiences. There were places still yearning to be visited. I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Matauri Bay, Whangaroa Harbour or find out what is left on the west coast north of the Hokianga. It did open a world of new places that I would like to revisit, or places I’d like to share with others. The South Island sometimes feels like beauty without heart; the Far North felt like it had that heart and the form to match.