Beginning of Day 4

Day 4 since I started travelling, I mean. So far it's been two very loooooong days (from around 6.30am to around midnight, and that's before you count the timestretch from switching time zones), one night of intermittent sleep, and a day and a night that were rather more reasonable, sleepwise. Despite that, since I've gotten here I've been waking up about 5.30am when the morning light starts seeping in around the curtains - yesterday I was able to get back to sleep and conked out until 9.30, but today that just isn't gonna happen. (I think this means I've adjusted timezones. Yay!)

Fun with Trams
Prague really does public transport. The most common building type is 5-6 story tenements that may cover an entire block, and the population density means that it's very cost effective to put on a lot of public options (trams and buses and three metro lines.) You're supposed to buy a transport ticket and validate it when you first get on the bus or tram or whatever, but this is not very well signposted for Us Crazy Foreigners, which is paired with a non-trivial number of locals who do not like to talk to strangers - the conversation "Can I buy a ticket from you?"/"No."/"Where can I buy a ticket?"/"I don't know" is one I've heard several times between a tram driver and a hapless tourist. I've also met some very lovely and patient people, just that there's been a certain amount of reactions ranging from a bit panicked, disdainful, or stolidly answering the question as asked and moving on without volunteering any further information. I don't think people are hostile, exactly, just very very self contained. This kind of marries with the way the buildings are set up - our hotel is part of a big quadrangle built around the block with an interior courtyard, which I think is very common in the Old Town (with lots of frilly decoration). The newer buildings tend to be very stark orthorhomboids, and graffiti at ground level is very common, but you'll often see some very beautifully manicured parks and gardens, at least some of which belong to specific buildings, and the balcony gardens and window boxes I've seen are absolutely gorgeous. So, yeah, I think it's very much a city of people minding their own business. It's also a lot emptier than I would have expected, there's lots of room on the streets to walk around, and usually room in the buses, which makes me wonder if a lot of people have taken off on their summer holidays. Also, despite occasionally seeing signs warning about pickpockets, this place doesn't set off any of the threat triggers I got in places like Athens or even Market St in San Francisco. (In Joburg, I wasn't actually allowed out of the family house we were staying at without an escort, so we won't even use it as an example.) As a f'r'instance, the day before yesterday we came home around midnight and got off at the wrong stop so did a fair amount of walking to get home - on Friday night in the old town, there were people out and about but they were almost all inside cafes and restaurants - no drunks, no people spilling out of bars, no people that you think you should really keep your distance from.

On Tourism
For the last couple of days we've basically been doing wind up of the tournament stuff. After I left the hotel on my first day I went off to find Repton at his tournament ground (lots of getting lost on trams for which I blame jetlag) and hung around with his mates, and walked through a green park, and then we went to this big End of Tournament party. Sadly, I just missed Repton's final game (they won, and came 17th in their category). The party was very full on, with a boat ride on the river - twas nice, although I was too tired to get the most out of it, I think. Yesterday we went and watched the final games for each category (some scarily athletic people, my yes) and did good byes with Repton's team, and today the official tourism bit starts. :-)

(Reading back through this post, it's a bit jumbled, but oh well. Take care, all.)

Funny things to look at

One's cat crouching on a sloping bannister, facing downwards, realising that actually her claws are in the wrong direction to stop her inexorable downwards slide. The scrabbling noise was quite amusing, too.

Tonight I played in the first game of the new frisbee league, which is about four months since I last played a game of frisbee, and rather longer since I played outdoors. Asthma much less than feared, lovely sunny evening, friendly people to play with, and am now very stiff as I've done no running in a very long time.

Ending the Week on a Win

So, I've made it through the first three weeks at Firstlight.

Progress so far:
- I'm on to real work, albeit needing a fair amount of advice and checking, still.
- I finished the project I was working on for the week. Yay!
- I've been cycling in to work every day, and I've noticed this week that all the extra exercise is starting to pay off in hill-climbing ability. Also, alas, I'm now hungry All The Time. Even keeping a stash of fruit and hot cross buns on my desk is not keeping up. It's like being Repton, darn it.

And in frisbee:
- I got female MVP for our game tonight! Yippee! :-)

Flat Out, Naked.

Actually, Flat Out, Nude (N.U.D.E is the Nelson Ultimate Frisbee club.) They run an annual tournament on Tahuna Beach, which I went to with Repton this weekend.

The short summary:
Saturday - rather soggy, and we staggered back to the motel feeling very staunch. The organisers skipped lunch and one of the rest breaks in order to get people out of the rain as soon as possible, so we played straight through from 9am to 2pm with 10 minute breaks in between each game. I had a lot of fun despite the wet, although I had a Lot of trouble running on the sand and didn't get my hands on the disc very often. There was a pirate party in the evening, which I thought about going to, but decided against because I didn't much feel like being rained on again. In our short dash to a closer restaurant, I did discover that the pirate coat Cat made for me several years ago has quite reasonable waterproofing properties (I'd left my regular coat at the beach by accident.) Our team ended the day fourth out of ten teams.

Sunday - rather nice weather, apparently all the other tournaments in this series have been just as lovely. Had a lot more fun in the warmer weather, and my playing Did Not Suck. Sometimes it was even Anti-Sucky and I did cool things like catching a really long throw and participating in really smooth throwing sequences. No layouts, but I'm finding the idea less daunting after a full on collision with a girl who was going for the disc at the same time as I was. I think she had only a marginal chance of catching it, but was OK for her to call it a foul because I felt guilty about knocking her to the ground. Repton of course played beautifully throughout. We ended the round robin fourth out of ten teams, which meant we had to play two more games, unlike the single placement games for the lazy bums (;-)) who were lower than us in the rankings. The Semis were a lot of fun and hard out, and our final game was scarily close and also very hard out. We ended, as you might have guessed, fourth. (There's something about that number...)

Sunday evening - Trip home sucked - our plane was delayed, and Repton and I spent close on an hour and a half cooling our heels in the airport before the airline staff cracked and shifted us to a different plane. Glad to be back, although my cat has been spending the weekend bonding with my flatmate and doesn't seem to think of me as the centre of her world anymore. (Sigh.) I'm rather stiff, but not as badly as expected and my ankle, which has been giving me problems lately, is a lot less sore than I was worried about, mostly due to mammoth taping efforts on Repton's part. Also, I found the tournament as a whole to be a lot less exhausting than the other ones I've been to, so I guess I must have gained some fitness over the last nine months or so since the last time I played in one.

I feel like I've had a borrowed weekend.

It's not just the cat. Yesterday, I meant to go to frisbee practice and didn't, I went to the library and did some fabric shopping instead. Today, ReptonInfinity meant to go to his training camp and didn't, so we biked around Oriental Parade and Frank Kitts Park and had ice cream instead. (Repton is not so slack as I, he's out due to an injury. :-()

It's been ... nice.

On Frisbee

A number of people I know are off this weekend playing in the Ultimate Frisbee Indoor Nationals. I just head from ReptonInfinity. He says his team won three out of four games and he's going to have an ice bath. I think that means he's having fun.

In other news, I've been fairly depressed lately but life seems to be looking up. Sorry for being a wet blanket and all.

Cold Enough To...

So on the weekend I went up to Rotorua with ReptonInfinity and a nice American chap called Sam who hitched along for the ride so that Repton and Sam could go to the Brass Monkey frisbee tournament. It turns out that Brass Monkey is for Repton what SF conventions and NAAMAs are for me - he goes every year, hangs out with the same group of people from all over the country (with some new additions), and they all have a bunch of traditions about what they do, like always going to the same Backpackers, and counting the seconds for a new person to figure out how the lock to the hot pool works.

On Saturday, the two of us were straight out tourists and went to visit a thermal area called Waimangu, which over a hundred years ago held the eighth natural wonder of the world, the Pink and White Terraces, and now has lots of cool landmarks and features left over from the explosion of Tarawera in 1886. What I thought coolest, (well not coolest literally) was the lake that looked like someone had dug out a footpath around it. In fact, they hadn't, but the lake fluctuated in water level a lot, and the silica rich water had built up the ledge just as high as its overflow level. Also, we found out the joys of off-season tourism - a 4km walk, and no-one in sight until we got to the boat jetty. Also we did gondolas and luges at the Skyline Skyrides place, which had nice views and whizzing around fast and that.

On Sunday, I started off as a proper groupie and watched Repton being a black ninja spider out on the field for a while on a Very Cold Day before losing groupie status and buggering off to a cafe to get warm and do some study. Yes, there are people that enjoy running around all day in the cold and wet, but I'm not one of them. I think it's highly relevant that all the players got a scarf with their registrations. Last year it was wooly socks and the year before beanies. Not a co-incidence. :-)

I think we all enjoyed ourselves...

It's Friday, And My Colleagues Don't Have Enough Work To Do...

Currently they've built a 9 high tower of coke and beer cans on the filing cabinet and are throwing a frisbee at it. Their aim stinks. The best they've managed so far is knocking two cans off the top. Dearie dearie me. Maybe I should move out of the firing lanes...

In other news, I've spent a week in Auckland beavering away and actually managed to solve something. Sort of. Also, I'm -
OK, they finally knocked it down with a resounding crash, I'm glad I don't have to clean it up -
nauseatingly well rested and prone to waking up at 6 in the morning. I put this down to the fact that my hosts (the lovely Donald and Tanja) who are often a hive of social activity have had a fairly quiet week, so we're all going to bed quite early. (The hive is on hold for various reasons, including a frequent guest acquiring a new boyfriend, another buggering off to Scotland, and Tanja being dewisdomised yesterday.) As strange as it feels to be awake and chirpy at 6.30 in the morning, I can only say that it's a mug's game and I want nothing of it. Well, OK, maybe a little of it. Still, I like that dozy warm feeling you get in the morning when you're all snuggly and don't have to get up quite yet. Particularly if there's company...

In other other news, I was one of the GMs for a Mordavia day game on Wednesday - I spent most of it in the spiral stair case having private conversations with players. There's something about those player plots, they take a while to get moving, but once they're going they have an awful lot of momentum. ;-) Also, Adam gave me a ride there on his shiny yellow Triumph motorcycle, and it is a sad fact that it took me most of Thursday morning to find someone I could brag to who would realise how incredibly cool that was. (Like a Kourier from Snow Crash letting someone hitch a ride on their skateboard, maybe.) Fortunately, my boss who's on a school camping trip near Ruapehu checked his email that morning and was able to make appropriate Ooh and Aah noises.

Anyway, back to Wellington on Sunday. I should probably get some work done...

Hooray For Being An Unemployed Bum

Well, not that I'm actually unemployed, just that I've finished up my holiday job, and I have the rest of the day to enjoy it.

Things that have been happening lately:
-I went to a Haunted House. It was very noisy, with lots of heart pumping frights along the way. I find it interesting, though, banging things and blood spatters will give me a fright, but for true serious fear it's generally the quiet psychological getting-into-your-imagination that really creeps me out. There are some photos.
-I went to a leftover party at Malcolm, Judy, Gordon and Lisa's house. The food and company were lovely, as always. Then we climbed Mt Albert. I can remember back when I thought that that was a big serious hill...
-I've been having royally awful computer problems all week, which is why it's taken me until Friday to clear out my workload. Grrrrrr.
-I went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie with John on Monday. Premieres are interesting. On the one hand, they decorate the theatre and have actors dressed up as pirates having fights, clambering out on ropes, and generally haranguing the audience. On the other hand, you have to hang out in Very Long Queues and then sit in the theatre staring at a blank screen for half an hour before the movie starts. The movie itself was great, lots of sustained and well executed silliness, combining gorgeous stunt scenes, well timed acting, photo realistic CGI and the ever pressing question of "Will Keira Knightly get to kiss Johnny Depp?" I loved it.
-I went to a frisbee training session on Wednesday which involved teaching us the basics of speed mechanics. It was lots of fun, and now I have sore muscles in unusual places in my legs.
-I have worked out the precise cutoff temperature at which Babe will cease to be a hunched up miserable cold feline, and start being a lolling relaxed happy warm cat. It's 16.5 degrees. The pair of us have been hanging out in my room for most of the previous three days because it was easier to heat, and the new clock that Cat gave me happens to have a thermometer on it. It was fascinating watching the change that half a degree in air temperature can make on my cat.
-It's nice and sunny today. I think I'm going to go have a walk.

Frisbee

So we just had an incredibly hardout, incredibly fun game in which we drew against Not 2 Serious, who are not only at the top of the league, but have only previously lost one game this season. So not only am I feeling extremely pleased with myself, but I'm still so hyper my hands are shaking.

Way to go, guys!

On Breakfalls...

So this evening at our frisbee game, I made an involuntary but extremely exciting horizontal flying dive. To the good people at Sword and Shield who taught me how to breakfall, I didn't do the slap-hand-on-ground thing, but did (by reflex or accident) manage the land-on-side-and-cushion-head-with-shoulder thing. So I have a slightly stiff neck and a grazed elbow, and hopefully things won't get any more exciting than that. Thanks for teaching me how to breakfall, guys!
(Would someone please give Steve Hodgson a hug for me and explain why?)

(And once again, I muse on the paradox that a non-contact sport like frisbee is, practically speaking, more dangerous than sword fighting.)

Hooray! My birthday is only one hour and four minutes away.

tristissimam mortem Q. H. Flacci lugebimus

Yesterday in Latin we reached the chapter in which Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the daring hero of the epic tale of life, love, battles, and the pursuit of poetry which has been informing our Latin class for the last year and a bit, finally pops his clogs. So we wore black armbands in his honour. (Also, it's the last chapter of the book, and now we shall be reading Catullus. It looks hard.)

And in other news, one of our frisbee teams won the game last night, and the other drew. It was a very good turnout actually.

Updates

So, what has little Steph been doing with herself, lately?
Well, I went to a Frisbee tournament, I went to work (in Auckland), and I went to Easter Camp. Also, today was the start of the University Games, although I'm getting over a cold and slunk off home after the first game to get some sleep.

Memorable bits from the last couple of weeks (in no particular order):
- Getting a shiny new sword, made just for me! (Thank you Darren.)
- Actually managing to figure out a problem that was happening at work and come up with a solution. It was a frustrating few days to start with. :-(
- Watching a couple of friends break up with fairly vindictive timing within about 10 minutes of arriving at Easter Camp.
- Being told by my sister that there was a girl there that wanted to hit on me within about 10 minutes of arriving at Easter Camp. (She didn't, but it was a rather surprising thing to be told.)
- Seeing, in Waiouru, an ad for fetish and leather supplies outside the local Subway. Supplying the army trade maybe?
- Realising that people in small towns like Pahiatua are actually quite cool about people in weird clothes invading their supermarkets (unlike three_monkey's Christmas experience).
- Being in a story circle that lasted for, like, three hours. "Sing a song, tell a story, ask a riddle, do a dance, or go hide in the cow byre until an angel inspires you." (People who were really stumped were let off with autobiographical anecdotes, like the first time they fell in love, or that time they almost died. Although I'm not sure that that's being let off lightly.)
- Getting home. Thank you for looking after Babe, Edward, she's looking happy and comfortably squishy.
- Relaxing in a spa pool working out kinks afterwards. Thank you for keeping me company, John. :-)

I Ache Therefore I Am...

I'm currently holed up in Auckland saying Ow being fed tea by the lovely Tanja and cuddly Donald and am shortly about to curl up and sleep like a log.

I spent the weekend at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament, my first (hey, I guess that means I'm no longer a frisbee virgin). It was extremely full on and much fun. Saturday was bloody hard work - four games back to back and all but one of them went to the full 100 minutes allowed. We had one half hour break after the third game, basically because the Christchurch team we were playing against made their point total of 13 relatively early which gave us time to stagger off the field and have lunch before our last game. The last game was the one that we won (against Palmerston North), but I and I think several of the other players very much hit the wall part way through and started subbing off after very short times on the field.

Today we only played one game, again against Christchurch. For that game, the score on paper looks extremely unappealing, 13-1, but I'm actually not dissapointed because I think that our team was playing very well throughout and Christchurch were a very tough team to play against. Also, as Tanja put it this evening, it's a lot more fun to lose to an excellent team than to win against a mediocre team, and this morning's game was the former. We defaulted for the rest of our scheduled games because the rain was persisting down, with some hail for extra spice, and we thought that we'd be noble and allow the other women's teams to skip one of the scheduled slots and be done a couple of hours ealier. At least that's the party line. ;-)

This afternoon I spa pooled and swam and was the cheering section for the men's and women's finals. For the women's side, Christchurch won against the Wellington serious team (see, I said that they were good) and for the men's side, the Wellington team (for whom repton_infinity plays) won in an extremely close and exciting match. I found it very interesting watching the difference between the way that men and women play: the guys are extremely athletic and fast, but that comes with an aggressiveness that means lots of foul calls and the occasional injury timeout which means that the game is very stoppy-starty. The women's games seemed a lot more continuous and dynamic and flowing to me.

Tucked in to my weekend was also hanging out with Cat and Michael. We went to see Kinky Boots on Saturday evening ("In what hell could I have inspired something burgundy") and Cat came to watch the games for a bit and mess with my team mates heads ("Steph, are you OK? Why aren't you warming up with everyone else?" "Oh, I'm fine, I'll catch you up.") They were very admiring of Catherine's Jedi cloak, by the way.

Anyway, what with one thing and another, I'm feeling very staunch, but would very much like to go to sleep now. Take care all.

Frisbee Win!

We won our game! Convincingly, even, with a final score of 6-3.
Also, lots of fun to play, the last point was a series of improbably bizarre catches, house_monkey made a spectacular point scoring dive roll, and I got to run around lots which thankfully cleared the bad temper I'd been nursing all day.
(You know that you're having a bad day when you find yourself wishing that everyone else in the world but you had died in a plague. Stupid work laptops. Stupid crowds.)
But it's all better now. :-)

And now for the news...

1. Babe has ceased to leak, to the relief of us both. Now I can remove all the strategically placed towels that have been protecting the upholstery.
2. I've been back at Varsity for the last three days. It's good to be back, but all of a sudden I'm feeling stupid again, and I'm not loving the crowds.
3. I can now finger spell my name.
4. I got turned down as a group leader for the PASS programme. Bah! For maybe 12 hours of not-very-well-paid work, they sure do give people the run-around.
5. The frisbee game last night was much fun, albeit with an unprecedented number of collisions, falls, near-misses and plain just falling over one's feet. One of the last was me (although since I was scoring a point at the time, I ain't complaining), although the scariest part was when John ran over the girl I was marking and I had to somehow navigate over the pair of them.
6. Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday. Our frisbee team celebrated with pancakes. Is anybody in the team actually a Catholic? Anyway, the pancakes were good, thank you for the idea, John. Now, what to give up for Lent? Smoking?
7. I'm all of a sudden feeling very tired and deflated. There's been a lot of stuff happening lately, and it all seemed to catch up at once. Yesterday's late night is probably not helping any. :-(

Steph

La la la.

We won our latest Frisbee game and I scored one of the points. Hooray!
It was a really close game the whole way through, with a final score of 7-6 and a tie-breaker point to be played out after the whistle blew. It was a very impressive point, too - a massive lob from Mashugenah to be caught by Repton_Infinity waaay down the other end of the field. A very fun game. :-D

(The asthma inhaler seems to be helping, although I had a very impressive coughing fit the first time I subbed off. Damn dust.)

Commonplace Book

Big whorls have little whorls
   That feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lesser whorls
   And so on to viscosity.
-- Lewis F. Richardson

This was Richardson's summary of his 1920 paper "The supply of energy from and to Atmospheric Eddies" and can be found here, along with the two poems it's parodying. Gotta love physicists with a sense of humour.

In other news, our frisbee game last night was a draw. Go us!
(It's one of the more endearing traits of Ultimate Frisbee that there are no referees, but it does mean that sometimes people's idea of the score at the end of the game can be a little bit hazy. This time round, it turned out that both teams had thought that the other team was winning, so we compromised on a 12-12 split.) Also, one of the opposing team members said something nice to me about my playing at the end of the game, which still has me smiling. After the game our team decamped to my house for an evening of sausages, chips and conversation. It was a pretty good night.

Well, At Least It Wasn't Windy...

The frisbee game tonight was somewhat damp. Actually, it was very damp, and to add to the insult of being a drowned rat, I was the only girl there for the first half, which meant that I couldn't sub off. Phew.

All of which is lots of exaggeration for dramatic effect, because it turns out that a little bit of rain makes for a very fun game. We didn't get nearly so overheated and there were some amazingly spectacular dives and slides. Also, because I take my victories where I can find them, I survived a frisbee game where I wasn't allowed to sub off in the first half. (Tanja, thank you, you have officially saved my life. :->)

It was very very good to crawl into warm dry clothes when I got home, though.

The Frisbee Team