Travel Photos

For those that are interested, Repton put his travel photos up here for our edification and education.

(See, no mandatory slideshows or anything.)

I'm on my way

From misery to happiness todaaaaay, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh...

Actually, this has been a really good trip, although I am in bouncy halfway home mode at Singapore Airport. Have had limited internet access this past several days, so the short version is we went to Manchester to visit Repton's Gran, aunt and uncle, who all turnd out to be both lovely, and really interesting. (1) We also lit out for a day to Windermere, one of the town's in the Lake District, because I felt like it (had to talk Repton into it, and really glad I did.)

Repton is currently collapsed in a heap at the gate looking interestingly pale, either from air sickness or a stomach bug, and I'm about to go back and deliver some anti-nausea meds [fingers crossed]. (2) I did some wigging out on the day of our flights (in the evening so we did some wandering around shoe shopping first, and Central London on a Saturday afternoon is an intimidating experience, not to mention the airport) but am now feeling perfectly fine if a little spacey, which I guess is the difference for me between a bit tired and wading through noisy noisome crowds, and a lot tired but quiet and calm. Each to their own I guess.

Anyway, off to the gate! See y'all soon.

(1) I'm still in Public Transport Envy mode, mind. When we got train tickets they said "Just take any train, they leave every twenty minutes. It'll take a couple of hours or so." To Manchester.
(2) Interestingly, I get a little bit sick often, but hardly ever very badly. Repton is healthy as a horse until he's sick as a dog, and unfortunately right now it's the latter. Hopefully he'll be feeling somewhat better by the time I get back.

London's Burning...

Actually, London's pretty neat, although this feels like the epitome of the flying visit - we've been doing a certain amount of wandering around looking at famous things from the outside, then going into a few Really Neat places and enjoying them in more depth. The highlight today was visiting the British Museum with a friend from Auckland whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years in spite of, you know, living on the same island and all. We're in the Friends and Family Zone with a vengeance - there was a family reunion for my dad's side of the family on Sunday, and John is seething with relatives (all nice.) Tomorrow we go to Manchester for a few days (and more relatives.) Hope to get to visit the Lake District on a day trip, as well, perhaps. (Short post, internet on a timer.)

Arrived in London

We've made it to London, and are staying for the next couple of days with my cousin Jot, who is as warm and kindly as I remember, and in very short order we were gossiping about family as if we hadn't seen each other for a couple of months, instead of the seven years it's actually been.

We're in Islington right now. I'm being a total geek, and every time I see a place name on the tube map I keep thinking of one of the characters or horrors in Neverwhere. Eh well.

It's also a good 10 degrees cooler than on the continent, which means that I can wear long trousers again and go for a walk at a reasonable speed without risking an asthma attack, both of which I've missed. (It's very frustrating when you want to go out and have an uncomplicated good time finding out about the new exciting place, except it's physically exhausting just getting from A to B, and that's before you've even started looking at stuff.) Anyway, I suddenly have bounce, vigour and vim, and feel like I've ended the 'being cultural' part of my holiday and can move onto the 'relaxing and seeing what happens part'. Today, we're off to a family reunion with a bunch of Sells (relatives through my greatgrandmother on my father's side.) We shall be the Distant Cousins From The Southern Hemisphere. Will let people know how it goes.

Last full day in Berlin

Found a swimming pool. It was lovely.

London ho!

In Berlin

Iäm quite liking it here - the city has a very open architecture and layout, vast areas of greenspace, and the people seem pretty laidback and friendly. There have been complete strangers who smiled at me or started conversations who weren't even other tourists! (Or shopkeepers.) I'm glad I visited Prague, but Repton's comment to some other frisbee people we happened to run into that it was 'impressive but also oppressive' strikes me as pretty valid.

This place also Does public transport underground train lines, overground train lines, trams, buses, and they#re also pretty friendly to cyclists. And dogs. Iäve seen a whole bunch of dogs around, always on leads or close control of their owner, and they go on trains and buses and bicycles (the latter in carry baskets) just like anyone else. (In Prague, too - one theatre we went to had a sign saying that dogs were welcome to come into the auditorium.) Iäve yet to see a single solitary live cat that wasnät on a poster or a pottery mug - I assume they#re liked, or they wouldnät show up in advertising, but only as apartment pets, maybe?

Itäs still Hot, although a bit easier to catch a breeze. I got my first sunburn yesterday on a bike tour despite three applications of sunscreen, because I just kept sweating it off. Today has felt a bit easier, although that may have been because we went out to Potsdam, a smaller nearby and highly decorative town that used to be chocful of 'royal residences# and we hung out on a boat tour and the truely enormous park of the Sanssouci palace. My current goal is to find a swimming pool that is open in the evening and nearby, and hopefully wonät do that nude bathing thing (first place I checked, does, and Iäm shy.)

Apologies for the horrid typing, am using a European keyboard and some of the keys arenät where I expect them and messing with mz touch typing.

Take care,

Stephanie

Moving on

It's Tuesday morning (Tuesday I think?) and we're about to move on. It's been a good visit, except for the stinking hot bit (Mad Dogs and Englishmen have nothing on it - walking home from the supermarket yesterday at 6.30pm felt like being hit by a brick.) Repton's pretty glad to move, he says he has language fatigue and figures he'll feel a bit better in Germany where at least he's studied the language some.

It's been pretty interesting to be here. I mean, there's stuff that's supposed to be the Official Tourist Experience, both the putting the city's best foot forward like going off to look at important buildings, and concerts as 'cultural experiences', and being shown places that were significant to famous people that lived in the city, and then there's the worst foot, like being a target for pickpockets and sellers of smutty playing cards (hasn't been a problem, actually, but was in Athens), but there's also the experience of just being in a different city and seeing the way things are different, like the buses and trams always start with a terrific jerk and you never talk to the driver (they're actually in a little cabinet with a door to further discourage importunate tourists), and the way the tap water tastes really good, and the standard font on official signs is a bit different - not Arial, but a slightly wider sans serif font, and that the street signs are plaques on buildings and never have an equivalency for "St", it's always things like "Melanouva 2".

Anyway, we have to go get on our train soon. Looking forward to the scenery, but also being able to put my feet up for 5 hours. :-)

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.)

Arrived in Prague

But feeling very weary and a bit spacy. Looking forward to getting into my room (not available for another three hours) and really hoping my luggage turns up today (checked in bag has been mislaid.) Am feeling philosophical about it. Am going to venture out to lunch and maybe see if I can find the stadium that John is at this afternoon.

It is very hot (about 30 degrees) and doesn't have nearly as many people wandering around the streets than I would have expected - maybe people have cleared out for their summer holidays? The bits of the city I've seen from the taxi were interesting - a big jumbled up mix of old, frilly buildings that are kind of rundown, smushed up against more modern and better kept architecture, but it's not like they have zones where it's one way or the other, it's all just mixed together. And the people here are very fond of green tree-filled parks, which looks like a pleasing attitude to have.

First leg done...

Have made it to Singapore - very long day, am deliberately ignoring the time in New Zealand because I figure it will make it a bit harder to switch time zones. Is now 7.30pm, and have to stay up until 11.30 to catch next plane, hopefully will be tuckered about and able to sleep by the time I get on it. Heard rumours about a rooftop pool, but haven't managed to see any signs yet - may be in different terminal. Have that very hazy feeling you get from being up too late, with no intention of going to bed anytime soon - onward to the shower! (Have I ever mentioned that I really like Changhi Airport?)

Up, up and away!

Am off to go travelling. Huzzah!

To Good Timing

A couple of days ago, we got the plumber in to fix a hot tap that had recently gotten very stiff. So he pulled it open, fiddled with the spring, and all that which returned it to regular operation and all that, but it's important that it was the hot tap, because it meant that he had a look in the hot water cupboard.

"Did you know your hot water cylinder is leaking? A couple more weeks and it could burst and flood the flat downstairs..."

Meep.

So he had a word with the landlords and was around again today with a brand new water cylinder. Some things I found out:
- we have a neighbour who will take the time to check if she sees something strange like a flood of water coming out of the drain pipe
- my cat was seriously unimpressed by the proceedings (still hiding under the bed when Repton got home)
- the plug that connected our cylinder to the mains electricity was Very Hot. (I think it was maybe replaced in the process, as it feels a good temperature now.)

Double meep.

To good timing! Huzzah!

Super Sparkle Action Writing

I've spent the last two weeks on a major larp writing jag, in conjunction with my Evil Co-writer (TM), Cat. No seriously, on Monday night of Queen's Birthday Weekend she was sending begging emails saying "Please make it stop! I can't sleep becaue it's all going round and round in my head!"

Things have been going pretty well, and fortunately we've worked most of the way through that horrid dry patch where it's no longer easy but it's also not yet done - still a couple of characters who don't have quite the zing I want, but on the other hand six are at proofreading stage, and there are another nine in pretty good shape. Also, we've had some pretty fun moments in there, as well as this wonderful bit where we realised that fixing a problem with one character could at the same time act as the key to making another character really interesting and also make some of the stuff we put into that person pretty much at random look like we'd planned it all along. I love it when that happens. :-)

Should really finish the player pack background stuff and send out the casting emails...

(Tomorrow, my regular group gets together again. We're going to play a horsepunk game.)

I think my cat is pretty smart

So the background is this:

In the middle of the night, Macca can get very enthusiastic and bouncy, like really bouncy, and it's a pain in the neck. As a method of last resort, I can spray her with a water mister, which judging from her appalled body language she hates and despises with every fibre of her being.

The thing is, setting up negative associations with pets doesn't always work the way you expect (a friend told me a story about someone who tried to train his cat not to jump on the bench, but instead trained his cat to jump on the bench and cringe), and she hasn't really made the connection that certain behaviour will get her misted, and that it would be a good idea not to do the behaviour. But she has worked out that if the water mister is pointing at her, it's a good idea to find something else to do, so I've only actually had to spray her a couple of times.

That's not the smart thing. The smart thing is that in every day life she doesn't give a toss about the Water Mister of Doom, and will happily sleep next to it, and happily watch me pick it up and move it around. It's only when she sees me move my hand to the trigger that she feels at risk and hightails it. Pretty neat, huh?

(Yep, I know that talking about cats is horribly cliched and I've reached my quota for the year. As you were, etc.)

To good planning

Dear Diary,

Today I successfully gave a book back by figuring that the person who owned it would probably be on the same bus into work as me. They were. :-)

In other news, my birthday was really nice, this week I signed a new contract to go work for Kiwirail Network/Ontrack, the weather is bad, and a Larp I wrote for Chimera last year is having a private rerun because someone thought it would be a nice way to celebrate her birthday. How cool is that!

Have also started to write my Larp for next Chimera in August. Is it a good sign that I'm sniggering as I type?

Going Out With A Bang

My regular campaign game just ended, after running almost every week for well over a year (nearly a year and a half maybe?) It really does feel like the end of an era.

It was huge. Ivan originally billed it as a 'troupe-style' game, not quite in the pure Ars Magica sense where people take turns GMing, but we all had multiple characters, and the storylines spread out over many worlds and, through the art of flashbacks and time skipping, an extended period of time. As you can see from the character map below, the phrase 'a cast of thousands' isn't far from it:*

It was a pretty big rollercoaster in terms of play style, too - we went through silly comedy, intense character drama, political machinating, with every now and then a mountain blowing up.** In the end, though, it turned out to be a horror game, which given that the plot had done a lot of meandering surprised us a lot. We realised that the turning point had been when we invented some fun child characters, one of whom was our imaginary pirate friend (with a Sinister Background), who was both totally evil and wanted to eat everyone on the ship, starting with our friends and family, but also really liked us and wanted to be our friends - resolving Cap'n Pi's plotline made for some complete WTF moments. (I hadn't realised that ransoming our family back from the completely real military coup with an imaginary hat could be topped, until today, when we rescued the Guys Who Could Save The World from an armed base by means of a song and dance routine, and a flower.) I think, by the end of the game at least, Cap'n Pi really loved us, and it was us who had to kill him in order to save humanity, by fighting our way to his centre of power and giving him a 'gift', an infophage antivirus that manifested as a treasure chest overflowing with gold. I still feel really sad about this, two hours later. Thank heavens we get to debrief with liquor tomorrow.

Great game, Ivan!


(*) This is actually still incomplete - I realised earlier today that we were still missing some characters like The Bruces, the dirty lawyer, and most of the imaginary characters.
(**) Later in the game this included 30,000 crew spaceships and entire planets. By the end it got big.

Losing the vote

Actually, having it cancelled. Is that a good description? Maybe "from it's mother's womb untimely ripped" is a better phrasing.

To explain, the Region Council of Canterbury (ECan) just got fired so a new bunch of National cronies could be appointed in their place. This process took one day. New elections are going to be who knows when, certainly not this year when the local authority elections are meant to take place. Possibly not ever: the National/Act philosophy seems to be summed up in the phrase: "Keeping Democracy As Far Away From You As Possible."

Yeah, I'm kind of pissed about this.

For your viewing pleasure, some rhetoric from one of the MPs opposed.

Round Trip

Today I had to go to Palmerston North to spend a day talking to some people. Since the office was 50m from the train station, and I refused to drive the work ute offered to me, I took the Overlander train there and back again. Observations: train crew were massively good value,* the food has upgraded to Wishbone meals, and spending an hour waiting for the train at Palmerston North station is very tedious. Had a very productive day, and am now quite thoroughly tired.

G'night.

* I mean, seriously, they weren't just maintaining a cheerful good temper on a 14 1/2 hour round trip that had to stop for an hour part way there because of a serious incident on the line (nothing to do with train or track operation, a people thing) they did it with style, looking out for little old ladies and offering to carry the bags of a mother with a young baby and make calls to check there were rides for people.

Tonight, we shall make Calzone!

From scratch. It was yummy.

There's this thing about me. Baking, I'm fine with, I've been doing it since I was a kid. But anything to do with yeast hits my Advanced Science buttons and I feel like I'm tinkering with a chemistry set wondering when it's going to explode.

No explosions, just tasty tasty goodness.

Amazing Technicolour Dream Bruises. Or Something Like That.

This is the most ghastly looking image. The bruise on my left leg, I think, is from the rail of my bike; the scratches on my right shin are from the pedal.

Also impressive and a bit sorer, this was also from the bike rail (basically got broadsided and got more damage from being tangled in the bike than hitting the ground.)

Least impressive and most sore (although the bruise has developed some since yesterday.) I think this is where I got hit by the van. The sore area is all around the big muscle at the top of my arm (deltoid I think) and has been making raising my arm above a certain point difficult. This has been getting better over the course of the day.

Anyway, if you're going to have a major accident that you lived to talk about, you might as well brag about it, right? Went cycling again today, hopefully will feel less gunshy in a bit. A pox on drivers!