The view from heaven



Spa-pool vision. This is how I spent the majority of my weekend. Oh yeah.
Behind those clouds is Treble Cone, and on a clear day a lovely view up the Matukituki Valley, towards the Rob Roy Glacier. Nice.
Now I'm all glum because I'm back here and I have disgusting amounts of stuff to do and I really wanted to go to Hell and eat pizza and see War of the Worlds so I texted Ben and he never texted back probably cos he has no money on his phone cos he never does cos hes got no job so I asked Sheryl and she said we could see something else so we agreed on the Fantastic Four and then she found out she has no money so can't go after all and Tamara has to cook dinner for her mum and Tash is at work and Bridget isn't home and Sarah is also at work besides shes already seen it, as have most other peopleI know and I should know better than to arrange something at such short notice cos it hardly ever works out and I feel like Nigel NoMates.
Which is silly, because I've invited a fair few people to my going away dinner next week. And I know I don't have a huge amount of mates, and I'm fine with that, cos most people are either complete dicks or are stupid neither of which I can tolerate. I prefer to go for quality over quantity. Besides, I don't have the energy to keep up with loads of people.
But just in case I've missed anyone out, or if you need a reminder, my going away dins is next Wednesday at Tulsi, 6.30pm. My thoroughly marvellous (am channelling John Campbell. Its my new hobby, don't you know) sister is organising the whole thing, bless her socks.
Right. I'll see you then.


The definition of happiness, part one.
So pretty.
Please note the presence of Calvin and Hobbes book on the coffee table. This contributes greatly to one's happiness.


The definition of happiness, part two.
It is not possible to be wearing these socks and not be happy. I challenge you.



The definition of happiness part three: Waking up to this view from your house, and spending the weekend with two of your favourite bitches.

Now I'm happy again.

8 sleeps.

A weekend away, a photo essay.

Day one.
Doesn't, however, show the half empty bottle in the fridge.

Day two. Three girls vs. two boxes of steinlager and six bottles of wine. Saturday was a bit of a poor day for Team Boozer (tm), as one of us hardly drinks at all (not me, der!!) and another was feeling a bit rough after the bottle and a half of wine the day before (OK, that one was me.)

The final result: two beers left in the fridge (a present for the next person) and half a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the chilly bin (a present for me and my sister when I got home). Not too bad an effort, all things considered.
Wanaka being the wee town is it, we had to bag up all these bottles, drive ten minutes out of town and dump their smelly arses at the recycling centre.
Save the planet, and all that.

The remnants of a box of crackers, a block of blue cheese, a couple of tomatoes and a jar of dolmades.
Sigh.
I was so fucking happy while I was eating that.
It helped that I was sitting in the spa, of course....

This is what happens when you don't have a day off for six weeks.

Yours truly, looking particularly nice, en route to Wanaka.
Spa type goodness to follow.

Bloggy McBlog of Blogville, Blogland.

Now there's no need to be silly.

One of my students just came to see me, to talk about the essay questions I set for this paper I'm teaching. Fair enough. He had a perfectly valid question, but I was having immense difficulty answering it, not because I didn't know what I was on about (HA! like that ever happens!) but because he had the most beautiful eyes I've seen in years. Since the Russian dumped me. (bastard) (he had such pretty eyes...)
They were a lovely chocolatey brown, really kind eyes, and he had the longest thickest eyelashes I have ever seen on a man who wasn't in drag. They were just breathtaking. So I'm trying to explain to him about the principles of Athenian democracy and the ways in which MMP attempts to address the impractibility of participatory democracy in the modern world (am loving political theory at the moment, by the way) by creating a more comprehensive system of representation, and all the while suppressing the urge to stare into those lovely eyes.
*Swoons in manner of Mills and Boon character or similar*
What really made it interesting was the fact that I had been reading Ciavarro's blog, so the page was up there for Lovely Eyes boy to read all about porking Oprah. I saw him looking at it.

I have been getting a few strange requests as well. One student has just emailed me to ask for an extension for the essay which is due this coming Monday, on the grounds that he's only been in the course since the second week, and only found out the questions two days ago. Apparently the fact that the questions have been available via the course handout, the secretary's office and the website is inconsequential to his request. Needless to say, said request was greeted with a resounding "Are you fucking kidding me you complete knob-rash do I look like I give a flying fuck about your inability to distinguish your arse from your elbow, let alone find out the requirements for an essay, the due date and essay questions for which have been publicly available for a month?"
There's really no helping some people.

Am going to Wanaka tomorrow, so I may be absent for a while.
Don't cry, I'll be back.
Unless I manage to dissolve myself in the spa.

Did I mention the spa?....

Also Chad, once you've managed to drag yourself away from Worlds End and back to the Dead Centre, please let me know your blog address, cos I lost it when I changed templates. Either do the comment thing, or email it to clairenz@gmail.com
Spank you very much.

Right then. Who wants to buy a car?

Cos this sexy little beastie is most decidedly for sale.
Go on, I know you want it. It goes really fast. I've the demerit points on my licence to prove it. In other news however, I have been sitting here in my office for over an hour now, and guess how much work I've done?
FUCKING NONE!!!!
Oh yeah.

I had my last lecture this morning, and am Having A Break.

I've been working on lectures and assorted other things until 11 every night, and then getting really crap sleep cos I'm stressed, then getting up horribly early to do the same thing over again. Despite all my good intentions to take things easy before I left, I haven't had a day off for over six weeks. Theres some very good news about that though. I have one tutorial to take this afternoon, and one tomorrow morning, then I'm done and on Friday I'm going to Wanaka to sit in the spa, kick some Trivial Pursuit arse, walk up some mountains, sit in the spa some more, drink some chardonnay, sleep lots, and read. And sit in the spa. Perhaps I mentioned the spa once or twice?

We have a spa. Its on the front deck of the house, and its got a wee shelf to put your wine glass (or bottle) on and theres a fantastic view of the mountains and the lake and general NZ type beauty. So thats where I'll be. Soaking in the spa.

I'll take some photos. Heres me in the spa. Heres the view from the spa. Heres me drinking wine in the spa. Heres Hesty and Sarah drinking wine in the spa. Heres me eating my dinner in the spa. Heres me draining the spa to get rid of all the booze and food from it.

Fifteen sleeps until New York. Feck.

Hmmm.

When viewing my blog in IE the content doesn't appear until the bottom of all the sidebar stuff. On my sister's computer at home, and on my office computer at Other University (where I am now and its windy and cold and generally sucky), there is no Firefox, so I can't see what it looks like, and I only have access to the internets via my laptop in my other office. So I'm seeing a big gap where there should be blog, and only sidebar stuff, until I get way down the page.
So, the question is, what have I done wrong, and how can I fix it?
Presuming of course, that I'm not the only person experiencing this issue.

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

Du hast mich gefragt, und ich hab nichts gesagt

Wouldn't you like to have this as a lecturer?
No, didn't think so.
Notice please, the strategically positioned hand. It has a double purpose, making the subject look as though she is engaged in very serious thought, while actually acting to cover up the onset of "Oh fuck I'm nearly thirty and never got pimples when I was a teenager why the fuck am I getting them now" attack.
Attack of the latent acne. Theres a horror movie if ever I heard one.
Perhaps its indicative of my emotional age, which is about 15, most days. Is that when people get pimples?
Don't ask me, in my experience people get pimples for the first time around their mid-twenties. Normality has never been one of my strong points. I've always been near the extreme of everything, but not enough to be at the extreme. Second tallest at school, third highest score for two scholarships, second youngest in class, not quite second best, but annoyingly close to first.
Second best is not an accusation I would ever throw at myself. Perhaps by now, dear reader you have come across the sheer immensity of my ego, and realise that I do not consider myself second best. Fuck, if anyone considers themselves second best and are happy with that, then they need to come and see me and I'll give them a serious kick in the pants.

Well now I've forgotten what I was going to blog about.

My friend came to see me today, and we were generally being dickheads, as you do, and I managed to get this photo of him.

It looks very much like hes doing something very rude to me.
I can assure you that hes not.
Hes cute though, have a wee perve.

Nice teeth.
I think I may well be For The Bash (tm) for posting pictures of him on my blog.
Who knows, perhaps I can hook him up with some willing young girl.
Any offers?
"Planet Claire, whoring out her friends since January 2004"

Sad day weather



Claire's a little glum today. With weather like this, are you surprised?
Happy Claire will be back later. She's out right now, please leave a message and she will get back to you as soon as possible.

Mmmm. Chocolate.



This is the block of chocolate that my sister bought for me and my bro-in-law (ie her hubby) to eat while she was away for a long weekend in Auckland. Notice the assorted objects in the picture, there to provide scale, so that the sheer hugeness of our chocolate block can be fully comprehended.
So, she left on Thursday at lunchtime. Needless to say, by Friday night the chocolate was completely gone.
But now my beloved sister has returned to reclaim possession of her children, and Aunty Claire is once again free. Phew. I need a drink.
Am giving serious consideration to a tubal ligation. I have no philosophical objection to having children, in fact I think that me and the object of my stalking affections would have lovely babies. But damn, I would need a serious amount of speed to cope with being a parent.

The other day I saw an old woman walking down the road and she had on a purple head scarf and the way it was tied around her head made it look like she had a pruple moustache and beard.

The frost this morning was really pretty and I wanted to stop and take a photo to post it but I couldn't stop cos some fucknuts was driving right on my arse and I would have been smashed into. Frosts in Canterbury are so picturesque. I will miss them.

I am so tired that my peripheral vision is starting to get a little shaky. The next stage is hallucinations. Well, more so than usual.

The Paris Hilton thing went down quite well. I'm curious as to whether anybody else in the world has managed to integrate Paris Hilton into a lecture on political economy.

Three weeks and two days.

I just managed to include Paris Hilton in a lecture about Marxist theory.
Yay for Claire.

Three weeks and three days.

London calling

Its a bit fucked up, because NZ is so close, psychologically and historically, if not physically, to the UK, in fact it was only 60 years ago that we became a legally distinct entity. If I can remember correctly, the Statute of Westminster was adopted in NZ in 1947.
London is the place we all go, on our "Big OE". We all start off there, get crappy flats in Shepards Bush and Camden, and take trips through Europe on weekends. Its so much a part of our identity that we feel attacked. I'll bet that every person in this country either knows or knows of someone in London. Without trying I can think of 6. It would be 7, but for the grace of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra my beloved cousin is in Wellington.
Mr Blair handed it very well. Not that I am a huge Blair fan, the whole Iraq war thing caused me to lose a healthy amount of respect for him, but in my mind I was comparing him to GW after September 11 2001, and the glaring distinction to me is that Mr Blair seemed genuinely upset. I saw a photo of him this morning standing on the steps of the Gleneagles Hotel, and he looked like a man in pain. Theres a certain posture that a grieving man has, where they look smaller than they actually are, like the stuffing has been kicked out of them a bit. He looked like that. From my interpretation of GW on September 11th he had been told "look upset, something bad has happened". Mr Blair held himself together with grace and composure and then after attending to business at Downing St, went back to the G8 summit, as if to say Fuck you buddy, you can't stop us. After September 11th, the whole country stopped moving, planes were grounded, and the country shut down. Today, Londoners were encouraged to get back to work, to get on a bus or walk, to keep on with their lives.
Already, London wins. Even bombing the underground can't stop them.
Thats the thing with terrorism. If you let them stop you, then they win. If you believe the fear, if you let the terror get to you, then they win.
Terrorism is a means of warfare that strikes at your strongest survival instinct: Fear. If you deny them that, they got nothing.

Disclaimer: this blog is written by a middle class private school white girl who has never been on the recieving end of anything remotely terrorist. Still, its my blog, so get fucked.

Scary thoughts

Its official. I am now a lecturer. Yes, at a real live university. With real live students. They sit there and listen to what I say, and write it all down, and ask me questions and everything.
I am responsible for their education. Well, for the next three weeks anyway, until my section of the course is finished.
Still, I'm quite impressed.
Until in about a month and a half when I become a student again.

I made a decision last night.
I have the option of bucket loads of work in the next four weeks, lots of research and stuff, but given that I'm about to embark on a full-on PhD programme at a pretty fucking good (and therefore pretty fucking full-on) university, I think I'm going to take it easy for a while. Sure, I have to complete my lecturing contract, and mark their essays, and corrupt their young minds a little, and do a bit more research work on the project, and rewrite some stuff (which actually sounds like a lot of work, but I've got four weeks), but I'm also going to Wanaka for a weekend with my best girlfriends (minus one who will be in Melbourne) to sit in the spa and drink champers, and I will spend time with my sister and my parents and friends and generally not burn myself out. (That was a really long sentence. Sorry.)
Cos that seems a bit dumb really. This scholarship thingy is probably the best opportunity I have ever been given (aside from being blessed with these legs) and I think I'd be a daft cow to not give myself the best chance possible to kick its arse, and go into it all set to go, rather than being a burned out wreck.
So, its 40 hours a week or less (although 30 would be better) and this weekend is the last one that I will spend in my office. I'm going to hang out in the Arts Centre and go to the movies and go out for dinner and take walks in the hills and all that fun stuff that normal people do.
So there.
I'm ignoring the fact that I have about $7 until next Thursday. Man, thats not even a movie ticket. Arse.

Auckland, where the Orcs come from
(The recycling of crap jokes continues.)


Customs St, Auckland, Friday July 1st, 2005. Yes, heres another photo essay. Heres Claire, not doing any work. Fun.
I got up on Friday at 5am, took my bro-in-law to work, and got my bad self to the airport in time to get a 7.40 am flight to Auckland that was full of business men in their posh suits, and a young woman I felt really sorry for. She was crying for most of the way, I think she was off somewhere and leaving her family behind. Poor wee lass. I fell asleep on the plane, and the steward woke me up to say we were landing, and I had been snoozing with my mouth wide open. Charming. So all those nice business men and crying girl got to check out my fillings and tongue piercing.
Lucky them.
So I got there and it was sunny and raining, and got on the bus with a very loud young man who was also on his way to the consulate for an interview. Once we had found the building (thanks to the nice bus driver who dispelled all myths about Auckland bus drivers by being not a bastard) Mr Shouty took off to get some food at McSatan, while I got a cuppa and a muffin and then took a wee walk. Where I saw the above cool buildings.
And these motorcycles, reading posters all in a row.

I'm the perfect tourist, I'll take a photo of anything.
I went to the Consulate, and stepping out of the lift on the third floor, I was confronted by about 10 people all squeezed into a small hallway, queuing up to get let in. We had to all wait in line, and leave our bags at the security desk, and go through a metal detector, which I ALWAYS set off. I wear a silver bracelet on my left wrist that doesn't really come off, and have done for years. I'm used to it, and I told the guy that it would be my bracelet that set the thing off, but I forgot my metal hair clip that I was using in my attempt to look A Little Respectable (tm). Anyway, they finally let me in, without a cavity search (any day without a cavity search is a good day, as far as I'm concerned) and I had to queue up again and talk to one man who was sitting behind a glass screen, I felt like I was visiting him in prison. So I talked to him, and gave him some of the bits of paper I had filled in, and as it turns out I had filled in one I wasn't supposed to. Form Dfs25975Ge89 (yeah ok, I made that up, but its close enough) was supposed to be filled in by all male applicants. While I may be the height of the average male, I am certainly very much a woman (emphasis on the WOAH!!!) so I looked a bit silly there. What a surprise.
So after I talked to him, I had to sit down and wait to talk to another man who was sitting behind a glass screen, and he looked at all my paperwork, and started asking me why I was going to Syracuse and what my course was all about and stuff, so I answered him, and said that I had some more documentation if he wanted to look at it, to which he replied "Oh no, don't worry about it, I just like learning about what people are doing its so interesting". So, he took my passport and assorted paperwork, and said that I would get it back on Tuesday.
However, I think my passport left Auckland before I did, because it was on the doorstep by 10am on Saturday. Complete with visa.
Yay.
There is, however, a large envelope attached to it that says in big black letters "To be opened by immigration official at port of entry". My mum suggested that it may say "nah, just kidding, please send her back to New Zealand". To which I may or may not have responded "Yeah, fuck you very much".
So once I was finished with the Spanish Inquisition (which I did expect, actually) I went outside again, and this time it was cold and raining. I went to find my sister who was cutting things out of fishies' brains, and by the time I found her it was warm and sunny (about 20 minutes later).
We found my friend Katy and went to Rakinos for a wee nibble, and I had a yummy red fizzy orange juice thing.
Rakinos has the coolest windows ever.
Here they are.



Then Emma and I walked back to the lab where she cut up some more fish brains and I wrote some lectures. By this stage it had got cold and rainy again, and was getting back to warm and raining. Then it was warm and sunny and not raining, and then I went to get on a bus to the airport and it was cold and raining and grey again.
Once I was on the bus it got warm and sunny again, but only for about ten minutes before it went cold and grey again. I wandered round the airport for a while listening to my new favourite cd (Garden State soundtrack, buy it now or you're for The Bash) and then got on this plane
and went home and was very tired after my Big Day in the Big Smoke and had a glass of wine and watched a movie with my other sister and went to bed and had a big sleep and all was well the end.