South = cold

Wow. Time flies.
We are moving out tomorrow morning for our South Island trip, which means we did all the packing and house-cleaning today. I still haven't finished the report that was due yesterday, now I really HAVE (have, have!) to write it. Few hours to go.

We met the future inhabitants of the house already, a bunch of Chinese people. They managed to get a big heater for the living room and small heaters for all the other rooms. But, you know, they will have horrendous energy bills if they use them all.
Anyways. I'm going back to my report-work.

That was 20 Liston Crescent 2006. Six weeks living in backpackers, here I come!!

Happy New Year!

Yesterday, Alex and me went to the Marae at uni at 6 in the morning to attend the New Year's celebration, called Matariki. It was freezing, and clotheswise I was not prepared to sit outside for an hour. The beginning was quite interesting, but at the end there was one guy talking in Maori for half an hour, so it was pretty boring. I was in desperate need of a blanket and a babelfish.

double-decker checker

I tell you guys, the weekend was fabulous!
Despite the fact that there is this 8000 words report due on Tuesday, I was going to Auckland for the weekend to go to Colin and Jesse's farewell party. The two are going to India, Colin for 6 weeks and Jesse for a month, so it was the last chance to see Colin, and the last chance to see lots of other people who attended the party.

I went to Auckland in the morning by bus. It was a double-decker bus and I had one of the front seats. Which was great :-) Good spot to take some photos..

Finally arriving in Auckland, I went to help at the SAFE stall. Was quite encouraging I have to say. So many people have not heard of battery hens before, they have no idea where their food comes from. The response was really good, people were interested, listening and could see the benefit of making different decisions. The best discussion was with one guy who said that he would always buy the cheapest, but after talking to me for a while he wasn't that sure any more. I got him by asking him if paying 1$ less is also that important when he goes out to have some beers..

After the stall, I went to Alice and Billy's place. They are so generous and let me stay over night at their place every time I come up to Auckland. I was going for a walk with Alice, her sister Sue and her dog (can't remember his name..). Billy was watching the World Cup in the meantime ;-) After that, I went to get some food for the potluck party in the evening. I then cooked and watched TV at the same time (works quite well), and then it was almost time to go to the party already!

I forgot to bring my camera unfortunately, but you know, sometimes it is better to enjoy the situation anyways. Ended up talking with Jesse for quite a while. He is planning to live in Taiwan next year, what I find very exciting. Hope that it is easy for him to be vegan there. Not everything I heard was positive..

I almost forgot dancing that evening (too much talking ;-)), but I had at least a few minutes of dancing with Colin at the end of the party.
The food was of course aweseome, did not know where to start :-) Pizza, spring rolls, sushi, salad, carrot soup, bread and beetroot rice (by manu), fruits, chips and dips, pie, and and and. Marvellous :-))

I wanted to go back to Hamilton early in the morning, but I managed to sleep until 9:30, and when I finally was back in the city centre it was 11am, and the next bus left at 1. So I decided to walk around and have some food and chill out a bit more. The bus was a bit late, and after arriving in Hamilton and walking home for about 50 minutes, I was back home at about 4:30. Report is still waiting to be written..

Anyone who wants to write a report?

Cooking instruction

Did you ever want to know what the best way to peel a potatoe is?
Then have a look at this video:
How to peel a cooked potato in one shot

Otherwise, dont :-)

By the way, I had my first and last exam yesterday, YAY! Was not too worried about it and it went ok (I hope). They have a very strict system here. You are allowed to bring pens and a bottle of water, nothing else really. And you need to have your student ID right next to you. If you need to go to the toilet, one of the supervisors is guiding you to the door (and they write down who went for how long). You are not allowed to leave in the last 15 minutes of the exam, I was lucky to being able to leave right at the beginning of this time. I had choir rehearsal right afterwards, and I came home 2 minutes before I was picked up for it.

The chor is part of a theatre performance that tries to make aware of the wetlands in the Waikato area, funny thing. Dress rehearsal today, performances the following 3 days.. I'll try to take some pics today.

The final countdown

You might have realised that I start writing blog entries when I should REALLY do sometihng else. Well, right now I should finish 3 projects within 1 week or so, plus an exam on Tuesday. Fun!

But, you know, by the end of this month we will have moved out of our house, we will be travelling down to the South Island, we will attend a conference, then travel around for 2 weeks, and then it's only 2 weeks left before we are on the way back to Austria.

Strange feeling..

Welli Weekend

Haven't written about the AR conference weekend in Wellington yet. All in all: it was fabulous! I met so many people, was stuffed with vegan food, didn't get more sleep than 5 hours per night, an learned a lot about Animal Welfare / Animal Rights in New Zealand/Australia.

I went there by bus. Left Hamilton Thursday evening at 10. Unfortunately the bus was crowded, and I only got one of the seats in the middle. I was hoping to have 2 seats so that I cold get some sleep. But no.

Anyways, I was in the bus trying to find a position where I could at least doze a bit - which was really hard. The bus stopped every now and then, either to stuff more people into the bus, or to give the crowd a chance to go to the toilet and buy some refreshments. The man next to me was so kind to change seats for the last 2-3 hours, and so I could at least lean my head against the window for a while.

I finally arrived in Wellington at about 7am, Friday. I had some time before the conference started, so I walked to the venue and took some dawn photos. It was just great. Dawn is a good time to arrive in a nice city :-)

Finally at the conference venue, I was asked to be the official photographer (after they have seen my cam, hehe). I still had to prepare my 5min talk, so I used the rest of the time before the official start to do that. Went fine in the end.

The 2 days of conference were full with a tight programme, only interrupted by tea and lunch breaks. Which meant a lot of cakes, cookies, and all the other food (I'm still impressed as you might see ;-)). I got a lot of information about NZ Animal Rights groups, about the current situation in the country (visualised with really sad and shocking video/photo footage).

The conference was also good for me because I am currently working on a NZ version of the "Why Vegan?" booklet by VeganOutreach and I could contact people to get photos and other resources for it. Didn't succeed in finding someone who would support the project financially. But it is too early to ask for funding anyways..

I knew that OdESSA was playing in Wellingon on Friday, and those of you who have read my blog will know that I kinda had to go there :-) Actually it was 4 of us going to the concert where 3 bands were playing. The OdESSA people still recognised me, and they even wrote me a message on mySpace the next day (hihi).

Saturday evening, the conference people had dinner together at an Indian restaurant, and we went out after that. So not a lot of sleep that night eigher. Which was ok because the hall where some of us slept was not too fancy. We didn't have running water Sunday morning, the toilet was not that nice then I must say..

Sunday was the day where different Animal Rights groups had their member meetings. I attended the meeting of SAFE, the group I am mostly working with. Good meeting, nice to see that there are activists in all the small rural places around the country. One woman went vegan this weekend. She is living on a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere, she will have a hard time telling her husband about it I guess..

After the meeting we went to a farm sanctuary outside Wellington. The weather was not too good, but I still enjoyed it a lot. I am a big fan of the pigs I must say. Really friendly and easygoing animals :-)

On the way back to Hamilton I had 2 seats and could actually sleep a bit. And we arrived half an hour earlier, so I could manage to walk home before it started to rain heavily. Yay!

Oh yeah, big thanks to Wolfgang for commenting my photos :-)

Flick Flack Flock

Hi guys!

Have you ever heard of Flock before? No? It is new browser based on the Firefox code, which does a nice job easing your (aehm, my) Internet addiction. It has a nice system of saving favourites (aka bookmarks), which you can share online (using del.icio.us, for example). This is cool because I can have the same bookmarks on different computers. I can upload photos to my Flickr account and write new blog entries directly from the browser.

It is still a beta version and it still a bit buggy (couldn't set up my Flickr account while using the uni cache), but I think it is worth to have a look at. What I don't like is that is uses Yahoo! as primary search engine, I'm just so used to Google..

Enough advertisement now.

Blogged with Flock

Wellington, here I come!!

Yesss, I am leaving today for a weekend trip to Wellington. It is national Animal Rights conference weekend, which I am very much looking forward to!
I realized pretty late though that I cold tell something about the Austrian situation there, but I managed to get 5 minutes of time to speak in front of all the people. Yay!!

That means: I have to prepare stuff..
Seeyaa, and have a nice weekend guys!

Speech recognition is art.

We had a meeting with Bill today, about our speech recognition project. I kinda like the information that we came up with. Geek art *hehe*.

Corrections of profile information

I have changed my profile information a little bit. It was really cold the last few days - probably not as cold as the current European summer (haha), but at least you guys have warm houses! Did I ever mention that insulation is not a well-known concept in kiwi-land? During the day, it is warmer outside than inside. During the night, it is just cold and damp everywhere.

Anyways, I managed to get cold a couple of times, which resulted in me being sick, wich finally resulted in me having to take antibiotics. Hurray. But I can stop taking them after tomorrow. Yay!!

Oh, by the way. The small red thingy on the picture is our heater. No central heating or something, plain-vanilla as it gets.

Love is in the Air Guitar

Have you ever attended an air guitar contest? No?
Well, I have. You might have heard that the Air Guitar World Championships take place in Finland. For that event, there are nationwide tournaments even here in New Zealand! I have attended the final for the Waikato area. It was not too exciting (and probably no world champion around the contestants), but at least fun to watch :-))
I have been there with a bunch of Germans, Kiwis and an Irish. There were live bands playing in town (much like every week), and we listened to 2 of them after the air guitar thing.

Deer farm visit

Guess what, starting to write blog entries after quite a long time of blog abstinence is hard! But to avoid working on my paper, I'll do anything :-)

So, there is my recent story:
Yesterday I have visited a deer farm. Logan invited me to see the place where he grew up, and as I've never seen farmed deer before, I was keen to see it. I was invited for lunch, so we left some time in the morning to be there on time. The farm is in the south, in a village called Aria. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so I cannot provide any self-made images of the trip (I was hopping mad because of that!!).
Anyways, we were driving south for about 1 1/2 hours, the weather was not too good, but also not too bad.
We passed the closest supermarket about half an hour before we arrived. Then we passed a lot of fields with sheep and cattle on them, before we finally arrived on the farm. Logan's parents were already awaiting us, lunch was ready. His mum put a lot of effort into providing vegan food for me, incredible! She even bought soy milk and soy cheese for me!
In the afternoon, we drove along the fields and watched the animals. Haven't worn gum boots for a while, but it was fun walking around in the mud (hehe). One of the deer was held as a pet for many years, but the owner had to move and could not keep the animal, and so it is now living on the farm. She (can't remember her name) is still very confiding, and so we were able to pet her (haven't stroked a deer before!).

Logan also showed me the apparatuses used for weighing, removing the horns, sheering and tuberculosis testing. A lot of it was very shocking to me. Efficient work seems to be the most important thing, no idea if animal welfare plays any role. At least they are using anaesthesia for removing the horns.. The dogs are kept on chains ("they are working dogs!"), and deer is brought to the slaugterhouse when they are 10 months old (the pet deer is 19 years old and will probably live for another 4 years..). And they love (possum and rabbit) hunting and fishing.

I often can't understand how animals can be seen so differently. The farmers family is really nice and caring, and I was so warmly welcomed there. Even my vegan lifestyle was not a problem! But then, non-human animals are not a lot more than things for them. A lot of people seem to forget (not be aware of) the fact that humans are not the only ones who feel pain. Weired..

Back to yesterday. We stayed for dinner there, and I could take a whole bag full of fresh apples and kiwis and a pumpkin with me. *mjam*

Definitely worth the trip. Thanks Logan for the invitation!!