Random Ramblings on Wellington Part 1 of at least 1.

My first note will be, rather boringly, on the weather. I was informed, before leaving for the place that I should make good my farewells to the sun due to the fact that, if Richard Dawkins was born here, there might currently be a bestselling book on New Zealand shelves titled The Sun Delusion. I was also informed that Wellington is a very windy place. Now, I will grant you I've only been here a brief time in, well, summer but while I can certainly attest to the latter fact, the former one is bullshit. I've seen plenty of sun and there is good reason to believe that, given the truth of the latter fact I will continue to do so. I have, in point of fact, seen rain clouds racing across the sky that I like to think were having the following conversation¹:

Cloud Leader: Looks like we're going in full throttle!

Cloud one: Target's coming up.....

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: We're coming in too fast!!!!

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: Rain's away!!!!

Cloud five: Did you hit?

Cloud Leader: Negative. Just. Scratched. The surface.

My second note shall be about coffee mugs. This relates to Victoria University in comparison to UQ. More specifically, the tea room. The tea room at Victoria is, unlike that of UQ, furnished with the following:

1. Coffee beans, free.²
2. A coffee ginder, functional.
3. Tea, milk, sugar, etc.., long list thereof.
4. A fridge, frosty.
5. A boiling water dispenser, hot.
   
6. Plungers and coffee pots, aplenty.
7. A stove, also hot - but only when you want it to be.

Given that all of this is the case, I can find it in my heart to forgive the following omission:

8. Mugs, in large supply.

Now, up until now I had taken a similar attitude towards coffee mugs as I had to pens, umbrellas and wine knives. These aren't things you buy. There's just a common pool of the things. More are constantly being injected into the system as gifts and promotional items and people are constantly losing them, then subsequently finding another one someone else lost. But I needed a mug. Being forced to buy one, I resolved upon getting a good one. This was not, it turns out, an easy task. I wanted the kind of mug where, when pulling an all-nighter to meet the kind of deadline that, if missed, could result in your left testicle being fed to wild pigs, you could look down at it and develop the pleasing delusion that everything is going to be O.K. This was, it turns out, no easy task. I looked, and looked and looked but to no avail. Having failed to purchase a mug I then resolved upon stealing one. I would find a quirky cafe with interesting cups and make good my escape post-haste. Unfortunately, while I could find plenty of quirky cafes, they all had dull cups. I lost hope. I trudged dejectedly back towards uni, when I chanced upon a strange little shop. There were numerous flowers on a sign which read:

Fancy World
It becomes a dream....

Barely daring to hope, I made my way around a store filled with various Japanese Hello Kitty style objects. Finally, I saw it. It had a pig on it. In answer to the question on one side of said mug I answered, weeping tears of joy, "No, I do not know the story of cute pig 'lulu'." Wiping away the tears and presenting my stiff upper lip, I continued "But the tale of this pig intrigues me. I am hungry to know it. Tell me more, Oh muse......". Sadly, there was little in the way of hard facts to be had on the other side of the mug save to say that the pig was crying in that Japanese cartoon type stylised way that just screams Waaaaaa!!! at you. There was, however, a speech bubble which said "Why she don't like me?" along with a squiggle reminiscent of a pig's tail. It would seem that our unfortunate lesbian pig had taken a sadly non-reciprocated liking to another sow³. The sorrow of Lulu touched me deeply, dear reader, and I made good my purchase. It came also with a lid that doubles as a saucer and a porcelain spoon⁴! Having wasted an entire morning on this search, I took the directest route back to uni⁵.

My last note relates to the results of a survey widely publicised here. According to Durex, New Zealand women are the most promiscuous on the planet. It seems, then, that perhaps the time is ripe for an "irresistible force vs immovable object" type of experiment: Will New Zealand women sleep with mathematicians?

Only time will tell.

¹I am aware, of course, aware that there is at least one person who regularly reads this blog and hasn't seen the original Star Wars movies. Let us all take a moment to reflect in sadness on the reference they're missing here....

² A footnote is in order here about coffee generally in Wellington. It's good. There are, you are informed, more cafes per square unit of area here than in New York (assuming of course that your unit is not sufficiently large as to include all of New York). The thing is, though, they all know what they're doing. There is actually a distinction in ordering a flat white and a latte here, other than the type of cup you get it in, for instance. I recall once being thrown behind an espresso machine at QPAC when someone ordered a takeaway latte. I picked up the take-away cup, stared at it for a while and turned to my colleague quizzically: "What" I asked "is the difference between a takeaway latte and a takeaway flat white", to which my colleague replied "hmmm.... I guess there isn't one".

³ I have since devoted a good deal of thought to the 'why' question with which Lulu seemed so concerned. Possibly, of course, the sow in question just likes boar. Possibly she has various objections to Lulu's poor grasp of Syntax. Maybe, Lulu, you're just too whiney.....

⁴ I suspect it may have been intended for children.

⁵ This involved a staircase. A big one. Oh fellow Brisbane-ites, you have no idea about what a big staircase really means. Wellington, being on a fault-line has bits of the city which are just suddenly much higher than other bits, and the university is on a hill. There are staircases on which, while climbing them, you expect to see the skeletal remains of people holding flags who just didn't make it. It was just such a staircase I was forced to climb carrying my piggy treasure.