˜ apteryx wa: April 2007

apteryx wa

my maori name

kia ora,

i'm entering my third week at my new job as a "communications assistant" at the office which oversees the education and training of caregivers and healthcare providers. i write letters and proofread documents that use words i sometimes don't understand--sometimes because those words are jargon related to the caregiving industry, and sometimes because parts of the documents are written in the maori language. while frantically bringing myself up to speed on the appropriate ways to construct a letter with maori greetings, i learned that everyone at my office has both an english job title and a maori job title.

so last week, i was sent to laurie's office to receive my maori name. he spent some time asking me about what i do and how i feel about my job, and he came up with this: "kai tuhi," which roughly translates as "to convert symbolism into expression." the communications team as a whole is called "ngati tiwai," (which means "the people of the heart of the tree") so my full title is "kai tuhi o ngati tiwai."

i asked laurie if i could keep my name even after i leave new zealand. i don't think anyone has ever made that request before, so he didn't quite have an answer. but he didn't say no, so that settles it--i'm keeping my name.

mauri ora,

kai tuhi

de facto confiscation

regrettably, we have relinquished our passports to the chinese. and there is a hint of fiasco in the air. multiple times in the past couple weeks i've tried contacting the chinese embassy to no avail. emails go unanswered. phone calls are returned, but every answer provokes new questions. we've hired a chinese travel agent to act as liaison, but apparently her communiqués go unanswered as well. now there is a dispute over the amount owed in order to issue our visas. the embassy's website provides misinformation regarding the fees. and perhaps our liaison didn't send all the money we provided with our visa applications. we've mailed more money to the embassy, but now it turns out the amount requested from us and the amount requested from our liaison are different. there are too many cats in the tearoom.

meanwhile, in a bizarre coincidence indeed, kryptonite has been discovered in a serbian mine.

we saw a whole lot of the south island a couple of weeks ago. it was easter weekend, which is the big, 4-day autumn holiday down here similar to thanksgiving in the states. so we took off and did a four night loop of the lower half of the south island. we stayed at lake tekapo, queenstown, te anau and dunedin. some of the cooler stuff we saw were mt. cook, milford sound and the cadbury chocolate factory.

i forgot the camera though. and our disposal camera didn't do justice to all the sights. so you'll just have to imagine how beautiful the scenery was (except what del posted below, of course, and anything else she wants to put up).

lots of petrol to get here


slope point--the southernmost part of the south island--one of the sights on our 2000 km marathon easter-weekend car trip.