They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning
We will remember them. Lest we Forget

it's Anzac day today, a memorial of the landing of the ANZAC troops at Gallipoli. last friday there were tables set-up all over town selling poppies and people have been wearing them all week. there were dawn services at the war museum and memorial services all over the city. it's a national public holiday and people seem to be glad of the three day week-end but there seems to be more of a general consciousness of the reason for the memorial. the papers here have been filled with war stories; the library had books about Gallipoli and the Anzacs; signs around that say "we will remember them, lest we forget." all in all a distinct lack of commercialization about the whole thing - no sales for the week-end, no big movie releases. all so very different from our memorial day.

May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

i love the way the rain
melts away the edges
of the distant hills
green greys made soft
kissed by a morning
bow

today i saw a lovely red porsche with a bike rack (and a bike on the bike rack) on the back... it made me smile.

i've spent the majority of the last couple of days going through the company "induction" - ie standard training for incoming staff. it's been a rather odd experience, since i'm just the cleaning girl and kitchen help. at every other job i've worked it's pretty much been a case of getting dumped into the deep end of the pool and being told 'now swim - quickly.' it's what i've always thought should happen when starting a new job, actually telling people about forms, styles and standards for documents, giving a run though on how the email system works, how to file documents and then search for them, generally trying to make everyone who comes in feel as though they were part of the company community. And yet i almost feel myself resisting or vaguely resenting it. perhaps it's because i am "just the cleaning girl" and i don't see the majority of this applying to me. on the whole it's very interesting to see my reaction to the whole process.

when doing research for an academic type paper, when do you know you've done enough? i'm at the point where i'm re-reading articles that i somehow printed off twice without realizing it - and i'm not picking up that i've already read the whole bloody thing 'til i get close to a third of the way though...

sigh

i think i just don't want to start writing...

first day of work today. oh, yes - i've managed to get a job. it actually came through the other day in the late afternoon. i had a day to go and find suitable 'office' type clothes on a very limited budget. fortunately there is a decent secondhand shop just up the road that will yield up some very decent goods if one just sifts though it long enough. so i'm officially the new 'catering assistant' at a rather swank law firm on the harbor-side edge of downtown. in reality i'm the cleaning girl who takes apart the coffee machine, makes sure nothing is growing in the refrigerator, wipes down the counters and tops off the milk and biscuits every morning. i may get to do some baking and cookery type things, but i think my main function will be to clean... but we'll see how things progress.

our internet connection is freaking out.

i was listening to concert radio NZ but decided i'd had enough classical music for the morning (as it was fueling my desire to curl up with tea and read novel) and thought i'd switch over to wxpn out of philly.
now the internet has been slow all morning - pages taking longer than usual to load, radio coming in and out, but playing nonetheless. so i find station page, link to live streaming, load it into winamp and wait. and wait. now it become a test of wills. its been 'buffering' for the last 5 mins now reading 0% 20% 50% 80% 0% over and over and over.

i give up. 'net: 1 me: 0

i don't know what the deal is. the building is practically deserted during the day. who is choking up all of the bandwidth???

the rain drops run down the pane and i fear me the wind is blowing them in onto the window sill as well, in spite of the mostly closed window. my little basil plant in its over stuffed wee pot will get very little sunlight today. the wind makes our small room rather drafty and chill, but without the cracked window it is unpleasantly stuffy. the cars are backing up along the mortorway - it seems drivers do know how to drive cautiously, it just takes a spell of nasty weather to bring it out.

i have thus far spent the morning tucked away with my book, watching the window out of the corner of my eye to judge the time. but the clouds are thick and low - touching the tops of some of the higher buildings in the downtown and entirely hiding the tower (a word about the tower: picture the lower half an inverted Cloud City and you've about got it) - preventing me from being able to judge the light very well. so now the morning is nearly gone and i am no more inclined to turn from my book than i was a few hours ago. it still looks like it did at 7.30, why should i be wanting to be productive?
answer: because i've a term paper to produce in two an a half weeks time...

ah, i have news: my class schedule has taken yet another potential job from me. perhaps i will elaborate the subtle intricacies of my class schedule as laid out by this institution of higher education. but not now. i am disappointed - i actually wanted this one. a bookstore, even though located in a mall, is still a bookstore.

c'est la vie

what word describes the sound of air pouring fourth from a vent? one of those square ones you see in drop ceilings across the westernized world. "rushing"? "discharge"? "effusion"?
coupled with the tapping clatter of keys and the occasional bit of objuration coming from the disgruntled ESRI crafters it re-enforces the weighted silence of the grad student lounge.

what am i doing here?

i am "researching" for my next paper. this one is about farming subsidies. i will readily admit that i am feeling a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the topic. the propositions for my proposal are dull and lifeless; i wrote them because i had to but i don't know if they will actually lead to anything worthwhile, much less 4000-5000 words worth of something... objectively i am pretty sure that they are actually ok (i think, this could be wishful thinking though). but i, the researcher and scribbler of words, am finding nothing in what i wrote that is leading me to further thought on what more to write...

what am i doing here?

i don't want to be an academic. an inveterate scribbler of words out of touch with the world and reality who takes other papers and makes new ones to feed the endless cycle of journals and digests while feeding the ego with thoughts of informing those who form the minds of the masses... a scholar perhaps, learned, well-read, conversant, trained in the lore and practice of my immediate field and those related. but an academic?

one of the first things i was told about auckland and nz in general was that there are more cafes and coffee-type shops per capita than any where else in the world. now whether or not this is (f)actually true there are certainly a whole heck of a lot of them. no street is complete without at least two per block. add to this that every other cafe seems to also be a licensed bar and you have a rather interesting dynamic set up for job hunting...

"do you know how to make coffee*?"
"no, but i learn really quickly"
"do you know how to work behind a bar?"
"no..."
"well, i'm looking for someone who is already trained, but if no one comes up i'll be sure to get back to you"
"ok, sounds great. thanks for your time"

if you don't know how to make coffee* (*espresso, et al - they don't do drip coffee here) or how to pour drinks, you and your cv can go to the back of the line. and the idea of training is almost unheard of - if you don't already know what you are doing you are wasting their time.

back to the drawing board; there has to be something i can do in this soddering city...

*sigh*

i was saving up little things all week to share and now they are gone...

*sing-song*
all gone...

there was something about rain in the city - how it sticks and is messy and dirty - how natural bits that we take for granted in other towns, wind, rain, tree lined streets, all seem rather lost and distracted in this city - as if they are still trying to figure out why there are tall ugly buildings and mazes of pavement blending roads and sidewalks and alleys where there was forest and streams for so very long - how wind and rain are very old and have very long memories and become used to change so very slowly with much confusion in the between times

but i've forgotten it... i was not feeling so well for most of this week; but i'm better now.

in other news i turned in my first graduate paper today. "where does the answer lie? population control and the disjunction between the arguments" my thanks to em for her help in finding resources. i'll see about putting up a link to it somewheres abouts if anyone is interested (or perhaps even if there isn't any interest...)

signing off...