we missed the party...

As you can see we were coming prepared! hen and i gave len and k their swandri’s and Ug Boots and we called into Foursquare to pick up a few party essentials. we were a bit ahead of time and decided to go for a ‘bit of a burn – up country…

Well it was going ok but then hen got a bit excited about the new improved Lucy the Valient and there was an open gate… we ended up doing a few doughnuts in a paddock and getting stuck!

Apparently according to the helpful lass who gave us a lift out we can get the tractor out in the morning and resuce the car but well the shame of it all is … we missed the party!

Luckily we had a few supplies with us...

Instant Jet Lag

Mon dieu! I can somehow process that I have landed now after a really long trip. My body is still in Finnish time but I not sure what it is back there, and what day it is supposed to be anywhere. I am at Puk's, "dazed and Confused" but can't wait to meet Helen and Vicki. Soon!



This picture of me trying to stay awake was taken by a young Swedish man Joakim in the Singapore airport where we had some beer and a great conversation about Ursula le Guinn and alternative societies.

in the air

– last minute dashing around the house [fond farewells to the chickens] before my friend Kath and I drive to the airport - I have to relinquish control at this point but luckily I can see the control panels and nothing seems to be flashing dangerously

Taking off from Hokitika airport and seeing the weather ‘over the hill’ I see why the co-pilot was questioning why I would be leaving the coast in weather like this - once over in the east the country is covered in cloud





Looking down on the fluffly landscape reminds me of another plane landing [the sun was in a similar position and the plane’s shadow played a flickering movie as the clouds parted and closed around our descent

coming into Wellington another time I saw a complete circular rainbow on the wingtip as we descended toward the sea and that tiny looking airstrip

Luckily Hen is ready with Lucy and away we rev heading north to Raetihi to the warm welcome of Lynne and Grant at the villa unfortunately don't have time to unfold the skis and do a few turns on snow covered Ruapehu!

she's like a new car ...

i've picked up the valiant & she's like a new car - all smooth & quiet, none of the old whiny graunchy gearbox : ) and she has synchromesh in first! the transplant is from a VC which is a couple of years younger than lucy (she's an AP5) - but she also has a door from a VC so it's all good.

i've been at the airport this morning, dropping off rosa casado for her flight to dunedin ... and then back to the airport to collect vicki!

just in the nick of time ...

she's ready! lucy the valiant has her new gear box installed, she's purring like a pussy-cat and all ready to be loaded up & we'll head for the hills. it's a relief - it would have been such a disappointment to leena & karla not to travel in style.

better get packing!

lift off

Len and K will be getting on the plane soon!


They will get to see movies, drink bloody mary’s, sweat at Singapore airport and watch the little plane inch its way over the brightly coloured world [i love that bit]

I’ll be flying too today – in a tiny 18 seater over the alps [depending on which path they choose through the peaks i might get to choose a few lines for the trip back...]

from Christchurch to Wellington the next stage will be a bigger version - hardly the same exciting take-off – getting pushed back into your seat, no Singapore girl with hot towels and soothing voice… although Wellington can provide quite exciting landing at times!

I think I’ll take my backpack too – the way the car repairs are going it looks like we might be hitching to Auckland!

disarray, data-ray

shit, they're getting on their planes over there & nothing is ready here : ( thanks to the inclement weather, lucy the valiant's gear-box transplant is still somewhere in transit in the snowy mountains up north. i haven't heard anything from vicki-puk about picking them up in auckland, i think she's still buried in the magic flute. and there's no food in my fridge. at least they can stay at vi's friends' place in auckland. at least they have packed hats.

I am leaving tonight

I hate packing!

My suitcase is way too small for almost one month long trip, so I decided to take my rucksack instead. Still, it is like trying stuff a hippopotamus to a... to a... I don't know. Invent something tiny yourself!


After the workshop I am supposed to travel around NZ, to Wellington at lest and Auckland and give some presentations about Accidental Lovers, it'll be great to show the material (as it is now, in this phase of the production) to new audiences and hear their comments. I suppose I'll have plenty of time to finish those slides on the plane. 30 hours! sigh.


One of my big perversions is that I LOVE New Zealand accent. I hope my stay there is long enough to pick that up. My English-speaking friends and colleagues in Finland, prepare to be shocked when I return!

Hatware

I have been told it is wintertime in New Zealand. With the experience of Finnish extremity I am not really sure what NZ winter means. How cold will it be? Help me choosing which hat to pack with me? Which one will be good for the NZ conditions?

musing on sun and small change

in Hari hari i have a paddock that will eventually become where i live and work – over the last two days i have been there enjoying as much sun as these short day allow and doing battle with weeds amongst the native planting – one of the Kowhai I put in two years ago is now taller than me!

i have kowhai seed pods for the ‘souvenir pack’ I am assembling to give to K and Len. They are so beautiful the shapes of the pods, the yellow seeds inside and the tui beckoning yellow flowers in spring [Kowhai is a word for yellow in Te Reo - the language of Maori]

the flowers used to feature on the 2 cent coin but it has gone. Soon to be followed by the 5 cent [featuring our very own dinosaur the Tuatara] – at least Len and K won’t have too much difficulty working out their small change when they are here :)

Kate Sheppard features on our $10, along with Edmund Hilary and Sir Apirana Ngata and Ernest Rutherford... and of course queenie

Other items in the pack are a map of NZ badge, and a piece of pounamu from here – Te Wai Pounamu - all wrapped up in Pukeko Print paper!

Midnight sun and female visibility

This weekend was Juhannus, i.e. midnight sun festivities in Finland. Cities get empty as everybody travels to summer retreats and festivals to celebrate. Not me though, this is the first time in my life that I spent the midsummer in Helsinki. It was great, a wonderful dinner outside with couple of other friends that didn't want to go anywhere and hardly no one else around. Then to sauna and midnight walk in a very very quiet city.

Actually, we don't have midnight sun in southern parts of Finland, sun goes down 22:49 and get up 3:56 in Helsinki. This leaves a fair amount of light anyway :) This picture was taken approximately at midnight.



Why am I telling this in here? I don't really know. It just that quite often I hear Finland compared to New Zealand. Both countries have, although really different, very unique and beautiful nature, which leaves its marks to the citizens.

Ooh, and the female power! New Zealand was first nation to grant women the right to vote. Finnish women got the right as the 2nd nation in 1906, and Finland was the first country in the world to have women in the parliament, 1907. Does it reflect anywhere nowadays? I'm not sure because there are countries (Sweden) where equality between genders is more advanced.

Although I would claim that ABC's plays empower women, our Dress The Nation plays that reflect the current political events happening in a global scale, have of course the known male politicians as front figures, because the lack of women in the high power places. And perhaps even the classic men go to war, women are victims -trail. But how visible is the gender in DTN and DTN2? Maybe it would be interesting to trying to make a point of that in DTN3, which we'll probably start to develop in scanz.

Really Ready

It might seem superficial, but once I have pinned down the outfit
I'm going to be wearing for most of the trip, then I'm really ready.
These are my German army boots, broken in and handed on by two
German women. Wool socks are essential if these boots are to take
me where I need to go, and as you have noticed, I have delicate feet.
The 1960s wool checkcoat is called a 'car' coat, which means I might have
to spent quite a bit of time in the Valient. This is one of my handknit wool
scarves - everyone gets one for Christmas, if you don't have one yet,
its on its way. Finally, Finnish handknit mittens. I have a wide selection of these mittens. Some are Estonians. I imagine they will be highly coveted in NZ.
Ok. Really really ready now.

hazardous conditions

we're having the coldest winter i can remember for some time; almost all the routes between wellington and auckland have been closed by snow, ice and slips. the desert road - the main state highway - has been closed for 2 days, and alternative mountain routes are also closed. earlier this morning the taranaki route was closed with a truck accident. meanwhile down in south canterbury the power is still out - some people haven't had power for 12 days.

i hope karla & leena are prepared for the rugged conditions here. we kiwis are hardy pioneering folk who don't bother with such comforts as central heating ...

valiant update: the mechanic says the old gear box was completely knackered, he doubts we would have made it to auckland, it could've gone at any moment. he's had to track down a second hand box, which arrives this morning, so already it's costing more and taking longer ...

navel gazing and star gazing

Lying in bed I look out at a glittering square of sky – do Karla and Len get to see skies like those here?

The peppering of bright stars filled with the talcum of more distant constellations, the milky-way a flick of an unclean paintbrush its opaque trail splattered with clouds of stars and patches of black – no star holes suggesting doorways to elsewhere

As solstice they leaving their longest day to fly towards our shortest - while in the air will they watch the north star disappear and perhaps notice Matariki [seven sisters or Pliedes] maori new year – a starry navigation to the beginning of a new direction in the journey of Avatar Body Collision

Perhaps on the way from Auckland to New Plymouth we can stop at Waitomo – a boat ride through the subterranean tunnels with glowworms as avatars for stars!

First Step

gearing up

as the sun touches the snow on the mountains outside i start to gather images to share and incorporate into a record of the expedition ahead

next week i plot a course from here, out of the valley, past a lake, through primordial podocarp forest, travelling up the coast to the airport in hokitika and flying to Wellington to meet Helen

together we will drive to Auckland to meet Karla and Leena who journey from the sun in the northern hemisphere into the wildness of Aotearoa this winter

while voyaging to this meeting, leaving our various realities for our residency at SCANZ under the conical peak of Taranaki, i imagine how the dislocation will affect us once we are together

in my bread and butter existence i travel a lot, and am used to seeing the others from my kitchen and borrowed phonelines around the country, in the hallway at my sisters, in a friends bedroom, a motel or a school

i am excited to think of us all together, a road trip from Auckland to New Plymouth the four of us inside the windows on the landscape of lucy the valient

so different from the desktop windows into the realtime situations we usually meet from - looking at hats on a wellington wall, into the medialab at Helsinki, or a residence in south east london

with camera and ipod I want to record the journey in the time honoured tradition of the road trip

– colliders in physical space - the effect will be cinematic!

Jandals, kai & no. 8 wire ...

strewth, i've rulised that k & len aren't akshully gunna unnerstand a buggery thung win they git to godzone; we're gunna hevta busta gut to get them upta speed with the kiwi vernacular, i reckon. akshully being pakeha, they'll needta learn the protocol for the powhiri, or someone might hev a wee hissy fit, eh. we'll hevta stock up on L&P, hokey pokey, peanut slabs, vegemite (oops shit vegemite's akshully 'stryne usn't ut), weetbix end akshully monteiths too (vi & i both being mainlanders, even if i'm a temporary defect - d'ya reckon we cud git some sponsorship outta monteiths? that'd be choice!).

ez thus whole malarkey uz akshully running on the smell of 'n oily rag end a but of no.8 wire, we're gunna hevta get up at sparrow's fart 'n' put un the hard yakka or ilse we'll all be sucking the kumera - end i'm not taking the piss!

but at least we'll be out un the wop-wops, eh, up the proverbial boohai, if y'know what i mean. akshully it's gunna be a but of a dag, rully. she'll be right, eh bro? whadayareckon? sweet as(s).

Tickets, money, passport & nicotine gum

Yay, today I got my plane tickets on mail! This is it:

FINNAIR - AY 97
WED 28JUN HELSINKI FI SINGAPORE SG 2335 1815
1 STOP HELSINKI VANTAA CHANGI 29JUN

THU 29JUN SINGAPORE SG AUCKLAND NZ 2100 1030
NON STOP CHANGI AUCKLAND 30JUN

I'll be in Auckland 30th, 10:30 AM. I can't bare to count how many hours I have to spend in an aeroplane, tin can. Smoker's hell.

Warning for those that'll meet me in Auckland. I'll be desperately chain-smoking first four hours. Then I can talk.

Change of Gear[box]

today i took the valiant in to have her gear box surgery, in readiness for the long drive ahead to collect k and len from the airport. i hope she will be fully recovered in time - it's only just over a week and they will be here!!!!

must try to think of something special for k's birthday ... i wonder what she would like.

Change of Mind

I think I will go to Poland instead. Anyone care to join me?

It has begun

Aah, this is it. The journey begins when you start to plan it. Only couple of weeks and I'll be in New Zealand!