i came, i saw, i had coffee

miss hot dogs and mexican food
the ketchup is disgusting
need more money
i wonder if i speak differently
haven't watched tv in 7 months, not by choice
haven't seen a live rugby match yet
love the fact that they give marshmallows with coffee
love david sedaris. he makes me laugh out loud
miss 206
miss t diddy and tum tum
the internet's too slow
love my coffee plunger
miss thrift shopping
love the clear, blue skies
hate the intense wind
like the classes, so far
miss all the dling
miss biking, sort of
miss apt parties, all the freaky stuff, sushi buffet
miss arizmendi bakery
sick of hearing about bush

i wish i brought my polaroid with me. i'm sick, my heater's broken and i hate my hair.

i finally got around to listening to martha wainwright. what a great, live voice.

they just downsized the coins here and it gets so confusing when i wanna get rid of my change bc i have to look twice now. the cool thing is that they round off the total price at supermarkets bc we don't have pennies.

i quite like this series. i guess in principle i'm against mcdonalds...their fries are damn good though.





--"The McMonster" plrd.com

this is for my photography class. i'm exploring space in the hostel.

last sat i played chess, had some guinness and got into the subject of religion. we pretty much all believe there's one higher, unnamed power out there. one of them believes in trying different religions; he's tried morman, islam, christianity, etc. if all deities come from one higher power, and most religions in some way or the other preach good will and peace, then i guess it makes sense to keep trying until you find the one that fits you. but i can't help wondering, can i get the so-called direction and guidance in life without religion? sometimes, i wonder if it's worth checking out; most of the time, i just can't be bothered. i'm busy enough with school. school--the perfect perpetual excuse. it's just the 1st week of the new trimester and i'm already behind on reading. wth. i guess that's partly my fault but who wants to read dickens when you have harry potter. but that's just the english major in me.

I got yelled at by the cafeteria lady for wearing jandals (kiwi word for flip-flops) this morning to brunch. She was so rude; she said something along the lines of "people dropping knives and cutting their toes off..." Seriously lady, pop some valium. I've been wearing jandals all year. This is bullshit.

Hello everyone, I'm still alive. yay. I just got back from a south island trip during the winter break. We rented a campervan that came with buttons for gears--weird huh? The campervan was lots of fun--it beats the hassle of moving your stuff in and outta backpackers places. I couldn't park that thing for the life of me though. I was trying to get outta a dead end at a creepy holiday park one night and heard bam! this loud scratching noise and found out I had hit a fence. Jason was in the passenger seat and said go! go! so I high-tailed outta there. I also almost got us killed while driving up to Milford Sound. We were running out of time, the roads were really curvy and I was driving pretty fast. Despite the icy roads and all, driving through the south island, especially outside the cities, is gorgeous because of all the snow. Very few people live in the south island so it has that desolate, untouched feel. Some highlights: good food, good wine, snow fights, scary driving, star gazing, bungying!! The bridge I bungyed off of didn't seem that high from a distance but it felt pretty damn high when I was about to jump off. The moment right before I jumped, I forgot I was attached to a cord and felt as if I was about to jump to my death. But I couldn't really think cause they tell you to smile to the camera and count 3,2,1 and you're gone. The freefall was all of 1-2 seconds but it was definitely worth the thrill. I want to do a higher one now. We also happened to arrive in Dunedin and Queenstown just in time for their winter carnivals. Queenstown came alive with the music and energetic crowd, the glow balls and mulled wine, the hot chocolate and ice cream, all backlit with the snow-capped mountains. Anyways, you can see some pics in flickr under "winter south island" set.



other random happenings:
-my toenail fell off. finally. it was gross but deep persuaded me to take a pic of it.
-i found the perfect pen--HI TEC from japan. it's so fabulous i can't say enough about it. fine point, smooth writing, perfect amt of ink. GAH. i've been obsessing over this too much.
-kozyndan MAY be coming to Wellington for a show late this year...

I went to the lib today to print out my assignment and I managed to get to reading done for shakespeare. oh how i hate the beloved shakespeare right now. people are shocked that i don't like the man who epitomizes the rich history of the word, the great symbol of literary tradition, the man who encapsulates human emotions...he just irritates me. And after a semester, I still can't appreciate him. There should be some inner shame in this confession, coming from an Eng major, but my ice queen self says screw shakespeare--one more week and I never have to read him again.

I realized I prefer a practical approach to English, something I didn't think was possible until I took this New Media class this semester. In my last year as a student, I found something reassuring, reaffirming and very real about English in this class. It couldn't have come at a better time, when I'm stressing about what to do after school while I should be stressing about finals, when a part of me says just go with the flow but paranoia, fear, reluctance eventually seeps in and overflows. There was always time to avoid the so-called real world and now, when there's no time left, I just want to make more time.

But the bubble has popped. It doesn't mean that I'll actually see you when you walk past me on the streets, no no; I'm just glad I found some focus in my major, some passion in the subject. Now what I would really like is to be a food critic on the Food Network, one of those that get to travel around the world and eat. So maybe the bubble hasn't popped just yet.

Quick weekend recap:
Sat-Yummy food. Went to fidel castro's--great coffee, company, vibe. Took Amanda out for sashimi, then off to Espressoholics. And coffee again on Sun. I need to start bringing my camera around again.

I mean, call numbers are there so we can find the damn book right? RIGHT?! It's so irritating looking for information that isn't there, pouring over old articles only to find one line useful. And it just so happens that the exact year of the journal that I want is the only year that's missing from the shelf. I think I've learned more about the Vic library this past week than I'll ever know about Davis' library. I even went down to the basement where they store pre-1970s stuff in movable rows. Oh yes. Rows and rows with handles on the side so you can "open" the row that you want by turning the handle. It's pretty creepy--someone could get squished if not careful, or die.

But the library is full of information, including gossip. I was at a computer terminal and couldn't help but overhear these two chicks next to me talking, loudly I might add. I heard something like "prefessor" and "relationship" and...omg is one of them sleeping w/ the professor? I picked up enough to figure that both of them had a little something with the "hot" law prof. The chick next to me got all huffy-puffy and stalked out...Woman, you're sleeping w/ your professor. Please. At least he'll give you the books you need.

That was, sadly, the most interesting thing that happened all day. Other than me accidentally walking into an office in a corner of the library, looking for a book. hmm >_

is it possible for allergies to somehow cross hemispheres bc i am sneezing like it's spring in davis except it's almost winter right now. i wake up on the verge of exhaustion, feeling like some snot-dripping slob with some serious baggage under the eyes. this is so annoying, not to mention the loud-ass construction outside. and i lost one side of my earplugs. gah. i can't wait for this semester to be over.

my bruised toes are healing nicely. they may be gone by spring.

I remember hearing about an article that says South Korea is the most broadband-connected society in the world right now. Not only that, there are cases where people have actually died because they've spent too many hours in front of the computer, living in cyber realities. Some genuinely believed their cyber reality was their real reality. What is real reality anyway? In a media-saturated, corporate-driven world, it's easy to take the I'm-happy-as-long-as-I-don't-know attitude. God knows I'm happy in my caffeinated world and if anything happens to my favorite tv shows I just might cry. But it's scary to think that, despite the gorgeous ipods and travel-friendly laptops, technology hides its other potential to manipulate, to blur the lines of digital reality and real reality and to kill. It's scary to think that books like Bladerunner, written almost 40 years ago, envisioned a future we're not that far from today.

Believe it or not, I was thinking about this after another person asked me what I wanted to do with my major. I think there's a common misconception that studying English Lit is a soft discipline, a dreamy, right-brain sort of thing to do. Studying a book also uses those left-brain skills in math or science through its analysis, observation, definition and discrimination of the text. And given the new digital age we're entering, I think our relationship with books, in their paper medium, is important in its humanity.

But that's just me. Now if I can only find a job...

Some pretty drawings, by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson, whose work is apparently also in the new Anthropologie catalogue. I love the detail and whimsicality.


(images from Jacob Magraw-Mickelson)

so this is supposed to be the long overdue post on my trip to the south island 2 weeks ago. for all y'all that don't know, nz is made up of two islands, north and south. some of my relatives still ask "how's austrailia?" and i you know what i say? "great." haha i've been putting this off and got hella shit due this month so, as always, i'm updating at the most inopportune times. i took a ferry to picton to meet up with will and gabby. picton's pretty but boring:


a 'wow' moment. i was in a cafe passing time, looked up and noticed the mountains the background.


we stayed at a friend's parent's vineyard and had a fancy schmancy lunch. it'd be so fun biking tipsy through the vineyards. haha


what's fantabulous about the south island is how dramatically the landscape changes in just a couple of hours. our road trip looked something like this:












after wanaka we went tramped the rob roy track and i managed to slip and fall and hit my head. by now i don't think i need to explain what happened cause there seems to be a reoccuring slip and fall trend going on but i'm gonna do it anyways. i was gonna slide down this huge ass rock and somehow toppled forward and bam! there goes christine, AGAIN. so now a got a whole new set of bruises on top of the others which are healing quite nicely...except for my bruised toenails. i swear my injuries just get worse and worse.

now for some randomness...this is in christchurch--a waiter at some wedding in the park


this cracked me up:


4 people have tried since 1994 and failed:


we had some random convos in the car and decided that, if we were to categorize people by elements, i'm air and will's water.

ooo like that tv show back in the day! what was it....captain planet?

anyone else can't wait to see this movie? i vaguely remember reading something about kirsten dunst showing her ass in the opening scenes(?) haha random. all this makes me think about watching virgin suicides back in the dorms and analyzing it to death. but seriously, there is so much symbolism..


Cat - the underwater pic is by diego alborghetti.
Lona - our season's are reversed. when it's hot in davis, it's freezing here and when it's cold up yonder, i'm slowing gettting skin cancer down under.

pic by diego alborghetti

i like a little goth now and then, especially gothic illustration -- think tim burton's nightmare before christmas. deep thinks i'm morbid but i like reading about what happens to human cadavers and for some reason i'm loving the color black right now. i used to almost never wear black. granny phuong should be proud.

right now i think edward gorey's stuff is pretty fantastic. here's a link to one of his books, "the gashlycrumb tinies" :
http://www.wickedsunshine.com/GoodVibes/TheGashlycrumbTinies.html

oh and i found this song by a swedish group, the arks. it's a bouncy song, kinda like ELO-Mr.Blue Sky. check it out.

i went tramping over the weekend in the tawera ranges, just north of welly, and managed to get myself the fattest bruise ever. it's disgusting and little side bruises seem to be popping up around it. the tramp was great because we got to cross a river, learn how to use a compass and map to navigate around the bush. crossing the river was scary shit--we had to wade along the banks to find an area shallow enough to cross and the current was pretty fast, not to mention the water was muddy and i couldn't see where to step. so, of course, i slipped on a rock and fell halfway into the water. it was pissing rain saturday night and the tracks were all flooded on sunday, making it even easier for me to slip and fall which, of course, i did. i fell forward on a fat rock and bam! it looks like i got beat up. it was more embarrassing than anything.

oh but it gets better. the river was totally flooded so we had to take the "wet weather track" and somewhere along there i fell behind my group. the bush looks totally different after it rains. despite the water and mud and falling on my ass, it feels like the forest is old but still active, beaten but still living. anyways, the track then was well-defined so i wasn't worried too much cause i usually caught up with the other tramper once in a while. after i crossed the bridge i reached the plains on top of the mountain and got to this intersection with two paths forking out in different directions and no signs. i'm in the middle of a huge grassy plains area with nothing around except the mountains in the distance. the sheer enormity of it all was overwhelming. i was like fuck, there are no signs pointing to a carpark, i have no compass or map, it's gonna get dark in an hour or so, the nearest hut is 4 hours away, and all around me are mountains. i freaked out and started second guessing myself about whether or not i had gone the right way, if i should backtrack etc and somehow started walking towards the right track. i kept walking faster and faster, thinking about what i should do if i really do get stuck in the mountains and then it started hailing. so between the rain and contemplation of death, i saw one of my group members ahead going down a side trail. thank god i saw him because the track i was on kept going straight and i would've followed it if i had not seen him and taken the side track down back to the car park.

so, all in all, it was a good tramp and way more challenging than the first one. except, i can't really bend my left knee now and my toe nails feel like they're gonna fall off.

this is where i live

i popped in an art gallery today and lo and behold, kozyndan stuff on the walls! all signed prints. gah. they had the bunny "uprisings" you love so much cat, as well as supercool $70 tshirts. there was other art on the wall but not as interesting as kozyndan. that was my "moment" for today--it reminded me of home. also, i'm into ebaying again. bad bad bad.

i don't have any new pics but here's my room with a lovely view of the fire escape. it's TINY, and getting smaller every day. i need to decorate.

what's yours?






::credit to welly bf

if y'all interested in alice in wonderland/trippy stuff/existentialism, i recommend "automated alice." it's insane. there's not much going on except that i have mucho work due soon which puts an end to my "vacation." my little coffee press is my best friend nowadays...and i swear my racoon eyes are back! i can feel them, poof! like squished marshmallows on the side of a smore. i look terrifying. O.O our little semester break is coming up soon and i'm still deciding what to do...more tramping, maybe road trip with someone (hint hint DEEP). i'm also beginning to think about what to do after university, which coming up sooner than i'd like. after coming out here, i really don't want to go home but where to? cat, get a sofa ready. imma coming.

pigeons are funny little things. i notice they run really fast over here. have you ever just started at a pigeon? they really are flying rats though. i think we need to come up with some sort of pigeon birth control.

my floor had a cocktail party where all the guys dressed in suits and the girls in dresses. it was cute to see everyone into it and actually making an effort to look nice. we probably spent a couple hundred dollars on alcohol and etc. i must say we were very well-behaved. We didn't get busted by the RAs one bit. it's funny listening to the radio here cause they play the same things we do back home. i guess i thought it might be somewhat different but nope, that's kelly clarkson singing. The international arts festival is also going on and i was so excited when i first heard about it and got all gung-ho about attending it since it's gonna be held in wellington but noope, too expensive. there was this acrobatic team from france that i wanted to see but it was 75 freakin dollars! :sigh: BUT i did get to check out Yann Arthus-Bertrand's FREE and super cool photography exhibition, "Earth From Above." check it out if you have some time(use internet explorer). it's great stuff. i miss lona's netflixing. in my desperation i started a membership at a local video shop with a big fat $1 rental sign on its window. not bad not bad. i rented the new pride & prejudice which i found sappier then the bbc version but nonetheless good. it's interesting that a guy's immediate reaction to pride & prejudice, or anything jane austen, is "boring and slow." i wonder if most guys feel that way; i can see how jane austen's novels can be perceived as girly though. anywho, i got BIT BY SANDFLIES and i don't know how or where or when. my feet just started itching like crazy a couple days ago and there are these tiny bumps around my feet that seem to get fatter every day. >_