kiwi_grrl

You want to know something funny? I find myself missing the thanksgiving holiday ...

Oh not the actual being meaning of the holiday, because anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of history knows that none of the mythology that hovers around this holiday ever actually occurred, not to mention, the rape, pillaging, murdering and downright extermination of native American peoples before and after the first 'thanksgiving' ... hell, it's not even a specifically American holiday, having its roots in historical pagan European harvest festivals.

But I digress.

The thing I really enjoyed about this day was that, unlike Xmas, this holiday came with no expectations of presents (despite retail's best attempts to advertise 'thanksgiving gifts'), but rather was simply a time for family, friends, and/or loved ones to get together and eat, and be together, annoying the shite out of one another, and falling into food comas.

The epitome of this holiday for me was friends who complained one year about their mother actually making REAL cranberry relish from scratch ... they wanted the cranberry jelly that came out of can with a slurp and a plop, still in the shape of the can (I actually learnt how to make sure it does that btw, lol), because that was what they grew up, and thanksgiving is nothing if not all about tradition ... real or not.

It's not enough to bring a side ... no, there needs to be green-bean casserole with crunchy fried onion strings on top. There has to be dressing, and gravy, and mashed potatoes and sweet-potatoes, not to mention the required pumpkin-pie (which I never developed a taste for, I hate to admit) ala can-of-reddi-whip.

Not to mention, these strange jello-molds with multi-coloured marshmallows floating inside ... which for some bizarre reason that I couldn't figure out, counted as a vegetable. And if you had southern friends around, there would be some variety cooked greens, which virtually more pork/bacon content than green content.

These items are virtually non-negotiable I found in the tightly governed thanksgiving table ... tho there was becoming more and more accepted room for the 'tofurkey' apparently.

Living in the northern midwest as I did, the end of November naturally would have cooled off considerably (naturally with Chicago's blink-&-you-miss-it Fall season) in the weather ... so there's the crisp snap of the cold air, possibly fires in chimney (unless you lived in the city, where the only thing you'd notice was that people were sealing their apartment windows.

On thanksgiving day itself, you'd have a number of other traditions ... no matter how much prep you have done previously, there is the absolutely necessary "oh fuck I got the ... " statement, with the then resulting trip to the mental institution otherwise known throughout the year as the 'supermarket', wherein virtually the entire population of a particular area will have descended like ravenous locusts bent on stripping shelves clean of very particular and select items.

To get a sense of America's sense of itself, one only needs to see one's first stacked mountain of cranberry jelly cans in a supermarket. If anything symbolises America's self-focus, size, risky precariousness, and particularly devastating consequences, it would have to be that HUGE pile of cans.

Then, of course, there is the zipcode-sized turkey itself.

Seriously, when the bird you are eating is bigger than a basketball by a good margin, someone has been truly fucking with your poultry. But Americans will gladly, and with zeal, consume this steroid-ridden, hormone-pumped, never-occuring-in-nature, behemoth without a second thought.

Sausage-making and politics indeed.

Naturally, of course, the turkey comes with a sidekick ... tryptophan. For those not familiar with this little amino-acid, it is something that occurs naturally in most poultry, and virtually all invertebrates, but in the turkey it reaches levels that are truly epic in proportion, and has the most wonderful stuporous effect in humans when consumed.

How do I know this? Because my very first thanksgiving in America, some 8 years ago, I ate heartily of the bird, but being my foreign, turkey-novice self, had never built up the resistance to the thing that Americans have, given they have grown up with the stuff .... I barely made it to the couch before passing out in something that for me was the mother of all food-comas.

I got shit about that for a long time :)

But food-comas are themselves part of the milieu here ... one is expected to pass out and sleep for a while after consuming half your body-weight in food and things that vaguely resemble food (still don't want to think about that jello-mold shite). There will be groaning, and moaning, along with repeated exclamations that one should not have had so much (although, safely in the knowledge that come next year, or hell in a month's time, one will do precisely the same thing).

After said sleep, one will also go back and graze as one will, on the remains of the meal. Because there certainly will be remains, as another tradition of thanksgiving will naturally be turkey, gravy and dressing sandwiches for the next couple days. That there SHALL BE too much food for the number of people present to ever humanly consume is all a part of things.

However, I must not forget one important addition either; football.

Love football or hate football (I, personally, definitely developed a taste for the sport ... the spectacle was something simply beautiful), the Thanksgiving Day Match was something timed to occur after people had finished eating their way through their groaning table o-food. I'm not joking here. I loved the game ... and actually really looked forward to that moment one staggered away from the table, having removed as much grease as possible from one's fingers, collapsing to watch grown men pound on one another while packed in virtually indestructible armour.

Seriously, these guys have more protective-wear than the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm thinking the players get their food after the match ... one would hope so, at least, or there would be some seriously bad effects on the field, one would imagine, or else they really don't celebrate at all.

Which is ironic, given that thanksgiving is something that is supposed to be being enjoyed simultaneously be everyone in America ... so, naturally, non-white people are running around for the entertainment of white Americans, not realising the contradictory nature of such a supposedly egalitarian tradition. One only has to think of who the people running the supermarkets and food-shops on that day to see the similar phenomenon. Hell, if one watches the news and not the football that day, one will often only see the second-or-third-tier news-presenters on, those without the seniority to get the day off ... which, given the way in which inequality works in the US, will inevitably mean they, too, will generally be people-of-colour.

Of course, one doesn't think too much about such, as yet again, the news opens with a number of stories of explosions and fires caused by people deep-frying their turkeys without any actual experience nor real knowledge of how to do so properly.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the deep-fried turkey explosion, think of dropping a near-frozen naked bird virtually the size of a bean-bag into a furnace-hot deep-frier, generally filled too high with oil, with a naked flame underneath, and you can imagine the result ... seriously, search on youtube, there's an infinite supply of the eyebrowless perpetrators. In fact, it's almost like cluelessness is a part of the experience.

This will then be followed by images of people volunteering to feed people in homeless shelters (although the volunteers would never go near such virtually on any other day of the year), and troops lining up in their food-hall somewhere overseas to take their fill as well.

But, in all seriousness, thanksgiving, even for the most cynical and snide of us, is about being with the people one wants to be with (or, at least, the people one is expected to be with). It's the major tradition that all these other parts of the wider thanksgiving tradition orbit around ... because in addition to the exploding turkeys, the well-meaning shelter-volunteers, the troops munching through reheated frozen turkey slices, there will be the images on the TV of people in airports and the like, moving across the US in numbers virtually unseen at any other time of the year but Xmas (and probably more so than that, given the secular nature of thanksgiving).

They'll be going home, if they can, to be with those they will share this day with ... even if they have to go a thousand miles out of their way to do so.

Of course, naturally, this is a touch difficult for queer people, as often we don't have the best of relationships with our families, nor, given the 'family' centrality of the holiday, are we often allowed to be open about who we are, for fear of 'ruining' the holiday, or 'making it all about us'. And if you want to bring along your 'friend' ... well, there might not be enough food (despite the virtual mountains of such, and the fact that your straight-siblings' screws-of-the-week are naturally invited).

But we're willing to do this, for the day, because the tradition is loved so much. We know it's not real. We know it's about obscene over-consumption. About it's rude supermarkets, it's dodgy food, and representation of so many things that can be wrong in our society.

But it's still loved, and simply enjoyed for what it is.

And I miss that. Really.

With apologies to Rachel Maddow: this is your moment of geek ... photo exposition of people in NYC unintentionally doing the exact same thing together ... seriously cool.

http://www.v1gallery.com/artist/show/3/

As I sit here in a cafe in downtown Wellington, working on a couple applications, on another gorgeous Spring day (although it's supposed to turn to complete arse weather-wise later), I can't help but think of the differences being gay in two different cultures, and the impacts that has (hey, you try going this long without making love to the woman you are in love with, and see how much your mind turns to such matters, okay?).

Not to mention, I am rapidly discovering that I am not as much of a homebody as I thought I was. While I'm hardly a social party butterfly by any stretch of the imagination, I am realising quite quickly that I can't spend more than a day or so around the house before I start going stir crazy ... when society crumbles and we're all hunkering down in our secure bunkers against the hordes of devolved barbarians and/or zombies, I'm so going to be one of the first to die ... I'll attempt to go out for an espresso and be eaten or something.

But that's a different matter.

Anyway, back in Chicago I lived in the number one queer neighbourhood in Chicago ... no, not Boystown, Andersonville; the gayboys got priced out of boystown during the gentrifying housing bubble boom (damn rich straights moving into our neighbourhoods), so they moved to where all the lesbians were already living, the neighbourhood known amongst the queer community as 'girlstown', and after a while 60640 quietly became the densest LGBT zipcode in Chicago, with boystown and Oak Park just a little ways behind.

I've noticed the phenom of the 'gay neighbourhood' across virtually all the cities I visited in the US, and heard about a lot of such even in the places I hadn't gone. Negatively referred to often as the "gay ghettos", they are a particularly American thing. And the interesting factor is, that they crop up in a city regardless of size. I mean, we have three of such in Chicago, but then we're the 3rd biggest city in America. And virtually everyone in the country knows what the communities in LA and NYC are.

But this also crops up in far smaller cities all across the nation. The neighbourhood might not be as densely gay as say boystown or Andersonville are, but they nonetheless are known as being where one lives as queer. I think it is to a certain extent a product of how LGBT people in America still aren't allowed to enter entirely into US society to varying degrees, so they craft alternative counter-community structures to provide sub-cultural support, in much the same way as immigrant groups, contemporarily and historically, also have in the US. In a way that many towns in feudal Europe historically existed as city-states to protect their own interests and defend against power outsiders that may want to oppress, one could say these neighbourhoods operate similarly.

Although, without the moats, ramparts, and boiling pitch ... hmmm, things we could learn from the past, one must think? I'd like to see the raving bigots picket a Pride Parade under the threat of pike-men in rainbow livery. It would be metaphoric.

So to combat the bigotry and prejudice against LGBT people across the US generally, the islands of progressivism and tolerance tend to produce these bastions of peace where people can be safe in who and what they are. The gayboys can flirt openly in starbucks, the lesbians can hold hands walking down the street, trans-people can live openly, without experiencing the outright harrassment and violence that so characterises LGBT lives elsewhere in the US.

However, this doesn't exist in Wellington (the gay neighbourhood phenom I mean, not the gaily-attired pikemen ... tho not them either, strangely enough).

In fact, this isn't so much the case in really any part of NZ. The only place I can think of would be in Auckland, simply due to size (1.2 million and counting), but even given the fact that the greater Wellington region has a population of a half-million (bit of a drop-down from Chicago's population, I have to say), it should easily have such a neighbourhood, especially for a city with an alternative culture like Wellington does.

And in noticing this, one also notices that Wellington also doesn't have a Chinatown or the like, or neighbourhoods known for particular ethnicities. It's not that it doesn't have neighbourhoods were one ethnicity dominates, because it does, but these are more aligned along the lines of socio-economic status, and then the consequent correlations with ethnicity, rather than ethnicity per sae. Again, there are such in Auckland, but again Auckland is more the exception that proves the New Zealand rule, if you will.

So, I wonder, is the assimilationist nature of the NZ approach to groups such as LGBT's, where we have all but equality (not quite there as yet, but when compared to the US, we are miles ahead) producing identity categories that perhaps don't require the same degree of subcultural protection as elsewhere? There isn't the same degree of salience that produces the need to clump in neighbourhoods along such lines?

Because, if so, I don't know how exactly to react to that.

On the one hand, it's wonderful that we have that degree of acceptance in a culture, that we are considered that much a part of society; it is what we have been striving for, after all (I mean, in NZ everyone, whether they be a boy/girlfriend, significant-other, wife/husband, live-in-lover, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever is referred to as one's 'partner' ... use of the terms does in no way denote any particular sexuality at all).

However, on the other hand, I really loved living in a neighbourhood where us queers were the majority, where we were the ones you saw out and about most often. We were the visible dominant group, and when the whole rest of society isn't at all, that's a really wonderful feeling. Ie you get to feel what the rest of society feels like all the time. I can't count the amount of times I got this wonderful warm glow from seeing my fellow queers out simply being themselves.

And I do feel like I've lost something in not having that so much anymore.

Maybe I an nit-picking, I mean, I'd rather have this tolerant and accepting a society than not. Having rights is a really good thing, and not something to be scoffed at in the slightest.

But yet, still ... I'd like to see those gay pikemen out and about.

So, a friend of mine and I spent a friday walking around the different scooter stores in downtown Wellington, and this was the best deal we found:



(btw, that's a little under US$1,200 approximately in current exchange rates)

I sat on the bike, felt my weight on it, my size, had it started for me ... absolutely adore the thing, it was soooooo wonderful.

I really shouldn't do this to myself, because I can't really spend that kind of money right now till I have a job, but I soooo need and want one. I have no other kind of private transport at the moment, and the 15-20 walk up the steep hills of Wellington home to my sister's place from the train station is killing me.

But yeah, can't have it, so I really shouldn't torture myself like that ... guess popping this up on the blog is me indulging myself a tad in the same way, or just knowing it's the only thing I can really do at the moment with it.

*sigh*

So, given today was pretty damn full, I figured since this was my first moment to sit on the couch I'd actually do an update.

First off ... bad news ... my wonderful girlfriend and I decided to end our relationship. Not because we aren't still very much in love, or that we don't miss each other desperately, but rather because trying to craft lives on opposite sides of the planet with that a major a tie in place can tear one apart. So, when one loves, one must be prepared to let go for the sake of that person.

The day it happened was painful as hell, but she and I have been talking lots, supporting one another and being there for each other ... actually reminds me why I fell in love with her in the first place and continue to be such. So, for all of you that consider me a friend, please don't demonise her or anything (because I know friends can do that), because she's the one helping me the most, as I am trying to help her. Yes, I am hurting, but that's a part of life.

As to the job search, things are tighter than we thought they would be. Don't get me wrong, they are certainly better than they were a half year or so ago, and they are certainly improving, but the job market is restricted. Last calendar year, from what I am hearing from the recruitment companies, things were miles easier and my job search would have been over faster than a Sarah Palin governorship.

That said, there ARE jobs out there, and I have been popping in applications, so we'll see what happens. I even did some research today and found another couple of positions to apply for (there is another as well that I am really hoping for, keep your fingers crossed for me). It's just going to be a matter of time, not to mention opening myself up to other possibilities, such as short-term contracting positions, for something to happen. I've also been networking with a member of parliament (our version of a federal congressperson) and she is connecting me to some people she knows, so things may develop out of that.

Being back continues to be the most weird thing, as it is so eerily familiar and yet supremely foreign. I realise I have said this before, but it honestly how it all feels. Don't get me wrong, the more I am here, the more I am falling in love with Wellington ... last night it was the 5th of November, which for the non-Commonwealthians out there, means it was Guy Fawkes Night. My sister, my mother and I watched the huge 20 min fireworks display from the Botanical Gardens stop of the Cable Car (Wellington is like a combination of Seattle and San Francisco, so it's REALLY steep) as the fireworks went off from barges in the harbour. Today we drove out to the airport to drop my sister off, and because it was such a gorgeous day we drove around the bays out there, this startlingly-blue ocean, against the lush green tree-covered slopes, the parade running all long the sea, and the beautiful tall thin houses that litter all of Wellington.

Not to mention, alongside Auckland, Wellington is one of only two real cities in New Zealand. In much the same way that the only real two cities in America are New York and Chicago (and maybe Boston), as the rest are exaggerated towns and endless suburbs. It feels dense and packed-in, with a vibrancy and a life (I would even say more -so than Auckland, even tho that's 3 times bigger) that only the real urbanity of true cities possess. I love that, it's what drives me to live in the downtown area here when I am employed (like I did in Chicago ... even when I lived with my girlfriend, we would go up to the roof of her building, and gaze out on the huge skyline of Chicago you could see from such), and can't imagine living in anything else.

I think that's one of the things that is contributing to making me not feel at home here really, as I am living with my sister. She's wonderful, and incredible, and bonding with her again after around 2 decades of not even living near one another has been great, and we've been having a ball ... but it is her home, not my space. I am effectively living out of a suitcase, even given that my clothes are in a wardrobe, in that none of this is mine. And that really really blows. It may seem like a small thing, but trust me, it's a biggie.

There is one thing about being back in New Zealand in general that I really do love ... how NICE people are. I'm doing a lot of cold-calling and talking to people, and they're all more than happy to help me out, and answer questions, and go out of their way to assist me. I mean, sure, you run into some people that aren't so much, but on the whole, it's been terrific. I finally find out what all those tourists were telling me about NZ that I guess I didn't really believe. Of course, I'm often asked where I am from, as apparently my American accent is stronger than I ever thought it was, and even if they don't ask, you can tell from their facial expressions that their brains are trying to figure out and pigeon-hole me based on my accent, and they just simply can't. Which let me tell you, can quite throw you to see in your birth country.

But as I told my love earlier today on skype, I am in part an American now, so I guess it comes with the territory.

Oh, and meat pies are just as wonderful and awesome as I remember ... especially my fav, steak and kidney ... yum. I'm bingeing on Wheatbix in the morning for breakfast, and I swear I have drunk more tea in the last month or so than I have in virtually the whole time I lived in the US. And 'V' is the nectar of the gods *grin* Not to mention a burger from a kiwi take-aways shop ... damn those things rock, with egg, and pineapple, and beets, and tomato, lettuce, pickles, cheese, etc, etc, etc ... and simply good kiwi chips (ie fries, but big, thick, and floppy) with a little vinegar, watties and (for my family) mayo.

Don't worry, have been anally healthily eating around all this stuff :)

Speaking of which, my sister has entered her and I as a team for a triathlon coming up in early december ... she is doing the swim naturally, and I'm doing the run of course ... we debated who was doing the cycle, but her cycle fitness is better than mine, and it's her bike, so she's doing that leg as well as the swim. She registered our team as 'Twisted Sisters' ... lol

My sister and I are doing a tri together ... and I have to say, that's pretty damn cool. It may not feel like it to me just yet, and probably won't for a while as I still feel like I should be in Chicago with my love, but it seems I've come home.

Ahem.

To the 53% of Maine voters who today voted for bigotry, prejudice, inequality and discrimination.

Ahem.

Fuck you, you fucking fucks.

You slimy, disgusting, inhuman, bags of rotting skin ... you petrified heartless pieces of vomited excrement ... you ... oh fuck it, I can't be shitted coming up with another intelligent insult and squandering brain-cells on those shivering terrified bigots.

Go fuck yourself ... all you did was enshrine hate today and dehumanise people.

Maybe we should take some of your civil rights away, just so you know how it feels.

You snivelling fucking worms.

Taken in a food court in Wellington, New Zealand ... they called this a 'burrito' ... hell, the place even had a variation of 'Mexico' in the name ... this thing could be many things, but a 'burrito' I think not. I know from burritos (I was a grad student ... trust me, cheap mexican food was a staple), but THIS is no burrito.

Lamb (yes, lamb), cheese, shredded lettuce, something they called bbq-sauce, "hot" salsa *snort*, and sour cream ... all wrapped in something vaguely resembling a tortilla, but more like a really thin pita.

Um ... yeah.

I so miss my girlfriend.

That is all.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

I have to say, this is quite wonderful news ... I have issues with how Obama is doing a number of things, but this could certainly be worse ...

Obama picks openly gay lawyer for ambassadorship

By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama said Wednesday he planned to nominate an openly gay lawyer as the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. If confirmed by the Senate, David Huebner would become the third openly gay ambassador in U.S. history and the first pick by this administration. In a statement released from the White House, Obama said he looked forward to working with Huebner and is confident he will represent the United States well in the Pacific region.

Huebner is based in Shanghai, where he handles international arbitration and mediation cases for a U.S. firm. A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, he is also the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's general counsel and previously served on the group's board.

He also has chaired the California Law Revision Commission, served as president of the Los Angeles Quality and Productivity Commission and taught at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law.

Obama's announcement is a gesture just days before he speaks to a gay rights fundraising dinner on Saturday and gay activists march on Washington on Sunday.

Click through for the rest:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_GAY_AMBASSADOR?SITE=WHIZ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Okay, so last week, I got my iPhone back from being unlocked, which allowed me to use it back here in New Zealand ... I then signed up with Vodafone NZ, the iPhone carrier here in NZ.

Luckily, because I was bringing an iPhone to the party and not having to buy one as part of a plan, I wasn't restricted to the specific iPhone plans as provided by Vodafone NZ, so I was able to find a slightly cheaper plan, namely for $50 I got:

100 MB data
60 mins of voice
600 texts
1 Bestmate (ie someone you can call & text for free)
(btw, incoming calls, texts, etc aren't charged)

And those numbers are per month. Yes ... per MONTH. I'll let you Americans pass out and recover for a moment.

...

Even I, prepared as I was for the drop in provisions that cellphone service, was a tad shocked ... I mean, I can think of the new-ish US cellphone company 'Cricket' which was offering unlimited voice, unlimited texts, and unlimited data for around US$40. Now, admittedly 'Cricket' doesn't have the best coverage, and when you get to companies that do, like Verizon, things get a smidge more expensive, but it's still in the ballpark in terms of services.

This is in part caused by the fact that in New Zealand, internet usage always has caps on it. My mother has a cheap broadband service, and is restricted to 1 GB a month. Think about that for a moment, how quickly you would use that up? Stream a few youtube vids, or a radio stream, or download some podcasts and/or vidcasts, and you're done ... and you'll do that in a few days, or even a week. Now, my sister and her husband have a higher limit on their data cap than my mother, but they pay a LARGE amount for such, and honestly, it's not that much more.

This is, in part, caused by the fact that we have only one cable connecting New Zealand to the rest of the world, so ALL data has to come over via that limited pipe, so one has to pay through the nose for bandwidth, both as the networks, and to the individuals they sell the space on to. Now, I've read that they're prepping to put down another cable to Australia, to be finished in 2011, and that will alleviate a number of these problems, but I'm not expecting to have anything like what the US currently is, anytime soon.

What this has all meant is that I have to think twice, or three, or four times, about using my iPhone for anything. I have to think about which apps I will put on it, and which I won't ... which take a lot of data, and which don't ... I've also turned off all push functions on everything, and set everything to manual. Particularly because it is impossible to find open/free wifi networks in NZ, in cafes or the like ... you have to pay for access to anything. So I can't even use open/free wifi networks to alleviate things when out or about.

Of course, I could pay more for more minutes, but I have to factor in the fact that I'm going to have to get a landline myself when I get my own place, so my 'phone' costs will include both types of phone now. It's not going to be like in the US, where one can replace your landline completely with a cellphone (I didn't know anyone really with a landline honestly). Further, it costs you extra to call a cellphone in NZ (hence why in NZ cellphones have different 'area' codes in front than do landlines) than it does a landline (this is again different from the US, where you can't tell the difference between a cellphone number and a landline number just by looking at it), so it behoves one to have a landline to be called on.

This means some definitely different everyday cellphone usage around you ... I notice on the street hardly anyone talking on their cellphones, instead you'll see them texting. Similarly there is a real dearth of smartphones, both in use, or in the stores, and because of such, their prices are enormous, because there's no economy of scale to bring them down, as hardly anyone will buy them.

This is going to definitely take some getting used to ... it's like I've stepped back two decades.

You know, I am noticing the different ways in which gender operates in NZ. I have previously described it to Americans as having the median in both masculinity and femininity red shifted towards the masculine when compared to the US norm, and while I would say that's still certainly true, I should have realized that it would also never be quite as simple as that.

Specifically, the idea that the system is merely a shifted alllegory of gender in the US certainly incorrect. Particularly there seems robe a greater degree of standard deviation in terms of masculine gender presentation that is allowed as appropriate. In other words, the narrowness, and hence high brittle nature, of US masculinity isn't present anything like the same degrees. I have seen presentations of manhood here that would have had Americans remarking.

Now, in part that lack of remark is due to the kiwi cultural privacy practice, where unless something effects you, we don't tend to comment on it. Hell, there's proscriptions and censured against such. But even given that, there's a level of acceptance of such that speaks to, if not normality, a lack of deviancy in any really significant amount.

Further, when one adds in a greater acceptance of a higher degree of informality in dress presentation for both men and women (please note I am saying informality and not casualness here, as there is an important distinction) one can see how this would contribute to the shifting.

In regards to women, where one of the most obvious examples lies is in body types. There are far less extremes here when it comes to size, with less of the obviously skinny, but similarly less of the overtly obese. I would even argue that there seems to be more of a homogenity amongst kiwi women that is quite curvy.

One pronounced difference I have noticed however, is in the higher degree of athleticism amongst women here. Now note I am not saying something like gym-going or similar. What I mean is that muscularity seems to have more acceptance, even possibly standing as an ideal, than I ever saw in the US, something I have to say pleases me greatly.

I am going to have to think of this more ... I'm also noticing race here, so I'll talk about that and it's intersections with gender later ... it's 3am and I should be asleep.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

So, I'm sitting outside a Starbucks (some things, regardless of hemisphere, do stay the same for me) at the far end of Willis Street in Wellington, early on a Friday morning, watching all the people walk to work. It's cold, just a few degrees above freezing celcius, and all our breaths are fogging as we do what we do.

The rain has stopped, thank goodness, as that is what it did all of yesterday and last night ... I don't mind rain per sae, but in walking around a city as steep and hilly as Wellington, having everything be slick is not the most comfortable experience, I will say.

This is all so incredibly surreal.

It honestly doesn't feel like I am really back here permanently ... it feels like a holiday, like I am vacationing and eventually I will wake back up again to reality in Chicago ... I phoned my wonderful girlfriend a couple days ago and her accent, her American accent, didn't sound like an accent to me. It hit me mid-way through chatting with her that she just sounded normal to me, unaccented if you will (added, naturally, to the fact that it was HER voice, which being her, just so makes me feel like things are right with the world).

This is in marked contrast to the fact that here I seem to be surrounded by accents, particularly kiwi ones, something my ear has heretofore reacted to immediately as something for me to notice, because it was so rare for me to hear it, and my brain has yet to cotton-on to the fact that it doesn't have to do that anymore. I'm starting at everything hence. And of course the American accent that I have in part picked up, gets me asked where I am from. I have a surprisingly hard time answering that ...

But you know what I really notice? Or rather, notice the lack thereof?

Black faces ... there are virtually no African-Americans here. I mean, sure, there are bucketloads of Asians, Pacific-Islanders, Maori, Indians, etc ... but the thing is, especially in living and working/studying in downtown Chicago, darker faces are a part of your everyday life. They are your friends, your colleagues, your lovers, your president, the person you laugh with at a CTA booth, on billboards, TV, in magazines ... NOT having them there as part of your world just feels like a hole exists, like there is something missing. I can only but imagine what it must be life for those of African descent here to see no-one around that reflects your face back to you. It took me a while to figure out what the feeling was, but there it is.

Oh, sure, there are the obvious things ... like everyone walking/driving on the left side of the sidewalk/road, the different shops, NZ money, smaller cars, the fact that everything costs so much more, the different slang, the way kiwis don't heat their homes and buildings at all close to the degree Americans do ... these are the things one is really aware of. They're obvious, so they don't sneak up on you, or exist in the background unaccounced, making you feel irrationally unsettled.

And I'm realising that just as when I first arrived in the US eight years ago, and it was the small hidden things that tripped me up there, that really made me feel 'foreign', so is it here on my return to New Zealand.

I am really left wondering where I belong.

Of course, rationally, I know I'm here permanently (for the foreseeable future at least) ... after all, I've renewed my drivers licence, I now have a bank account and a library card. Later today I am picking up my cellphone, I have an appointment at WINZ (the unemployment office) in 30 mins, and I have job-related interviews already lined up for next week, hell I even have a loyalty coffee card ... these things should be clues to such.

And yet, as achingly familiar as everything is here ... I can't help wonder, where is home now?

More later ....

Well, I have arrived safely in New Zealand ... just so you all know ... I got in late friday morning, after having fog in Auckland send us to Christchurch to sit on the tarmac for a while, before returning back to Auckland just before midday.

After spending Saturday in Auckland, where I got to see a good friend of mine that I went through undergrad with, my mother and I took off on a two day road-trip down to Wellington. We had a wonderful time, had incredibly gorgeous weather, overnighting in Taupo (although it dawned there -2 C that morning). It was great ... if you're interested, here are some of the pics I took during the trip:

http://picasaweb.google.com/sarah.bickerton/AucklandToWellingtonSept09

I'll write more later about my feelings about this all later ... but I thought I would let you all know I made it.

Okay, how the poop is it legal to have a religious statue, any religious statue, let alone one this huge, suddenly appear on the grounds of a state university? I was walking today across my (now old) university, UIC, and to my shock I found this:



My girlfriend had warned me about it, but I didn't quite grasp how fucking huge the thing was ...

However, I don't care if it's done through the veneer of a student group or the like, this is really bloody offensive. You've got faith? Wonderful, awesome, good for you and all that. But why do you need to try to convert everyone else that doesn't, or has a faith other than yours? *sigh*

This would be one of those moments when I realise that for all the assimilation I've done into US culture, I'm definitely still not an American.

Due to things out of my control, I'm having to change the location for my going away party that I have listed below.

The old location was my apartment, the new location is my girlfriend's apartment ... email me if you need it.

So, as many of you know, and some of you may not ... Sarah is returning home to New Zealand come mid-September (tickets are almost booked!)

*pause to allow gushing sobs, rending of hair, scoring of bodies, and cries of anguish*

It's time for me to start my career, start being an adult, actually experience this thing called money, start paying off loans, and stop being a student for the first time since February 1994 *ahem*

This means, due to the whole not-being-an-American-thing, and the global-recession-thing, I'm a-headed back to the land of the long white cloud ... Aotearoa ... New Zealand.

This is bittersweet naturally, because I've had 8 years here in the US, have an incredible girlfriend who I love very much, friends I love very much, and a cat who I love very much ... there's much loving, in other words.

So, due to said bittersweetness ... needs must, and one must throw a party!

I will supply some beer, soda, but rather I would prefer it if everyone could bring BYOB, that way we can all get hideously smashed much, much easier ... will supply the usual chips, etc, though.

So, please do come, as I will be gone a couple weeks after this party, and I would hate so much to miss anyone ... the party is at my apartment my girlfriend's apartment (see above post) in Chicago, at 7pm on Saturday August 29th, 2009 ... if you don't have my address, my contact email is under the 'User Info' link on the left of the blog. I've forward-dated this entry, so it should stay at the top of the blog until after the party.

(oh, and I know there are a lot of people who read this around the world ... so if you're not in the US, you're still invited, but I totally get the inability to attend *smile*)

RIP Ted Kennedy 1932-2009

Senator Kennedy, you are the reason so many of us are proud to call ourselves liberals today, politically as well as personally. You walked your talk, and while you had your faults, they were the kind of faults we all have as humans, and you stood up for all those that didn't have the power to stand up for themselves, making the nation and the world recognise, even in small part, the way in which how our society is formed has responsibility in depriving so many of power, chances, and a place in that society.

I can only imagine what a better world we would be living in today should you have been the Democratic pick for President against Reagan.

You will be missed, more than really many of us can know today, and may well be considered the greatest senator of the 20th Century.

Whose America?

You know, I read the piece below, on an excellent blog 'Stuff White People Do' (which has a more critical, non-humorous, racial-analysis approach than the blog most people are familiar with 'Stuff White People Like' ... you know, the blog that makes white people feel comfortable with the shit they pull? Well this one isn't designed to make white people comfortable, which is something I personally really like) ...

http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/08/miss-their-america.html

... and it struck me in terms of something that has been mulling about in my head ever since I saw the first 'tea-bagging' protests, through the anti-Sotomayor protests, to now the insane nutjob 'I don't want better health-care' protests, and all the other whack-job protests in between.

Namely, it's been the centrality of Obama to each ... whether it be him as 'Curious George' or as some caricature of Hitler ... the framing of such has been around "Taking Our Country Back".

In fact, you'll hear that from Republican political leaders ... not to mention 'cultural' conservative leaders like Limbaugh and O'Reilly ... often using such a phrase. Now, while I'll certainly agree that this hasn't been the first time in history such a phrase has been used, it has seemed to have taken on particular use now, to the point where it, and variations on such, have been trotted out over and over again.

And this has been particularly so when it comes to the Anti- Health Care Reform protests, because while we all noticed quite prominently how overwhelmingly white the tea-bagging protests were earlier this year (one of my favourite memories was of a small number of 50+ old white people trickling in with their signs from the suburban train-stations downtown), a similar notice hasn't been made to how white the protesters seem to be with the anti government option protests.


Apparently there is some hating on pubes going on ... that or there should be "No Education" 4th line added.


I'll expect this guy at the next pro-choice rally ... and I'm struck wondering what this woman has against heath.

(click to 'embiggen' on either photo)

While I have noticed a considerably more diverse population amongst the pro-reform crowd:





But yet, I'm not seeing much comment on this.So, we've got two things going on here as I see it.

One, the racial nature of these protests, where the historical have-nots are protesting for everyone to be included, regardless of ability, while the historical haves are protesting to keep the system hierarchical and based on ability to pay.

I would argue in regard to this first point, that it is far easier to conceptualise yourself as being able to pay for something, regardless of your actual current ability to do so, if you're one of a sub-culture/community/group that has always pretty-much been able to do so. Namely, a group with privilege in society. It is far harder to do such conceptualisation when one has experience, whether as an individual, or culturally as a group, of the realities of the inability to access society's institutions when one has a need to.

One a wider scale, however, this is about change, and a pretty fundamental one at that, from the historical way America views itself as having constructed itself, namely the bootstrap myth, if you will. The America many of these people are seeing are ones where people of colour are gaining powerful positions, are numbering more and more, and America's power internationally is waning considerably. Throw in the insecurities and vulnerabilities of the past 8 years, and you've got a recipe for a considerable perceived threat. And unless you live in urban areas, where people of colour predominate, you'd have a hard time seeing any other reality than a white-washed 'America' under 'attack'.

Hence, a wish for a return to something that was seen as less safe ... and that is an example of classic privilege. Safety, or rather the feeling that one is safe, is a privilege, whether that be as a country or as an individual. Many minorities, whether they be off-colour or otherwise, will often speak of the constant state of a lack of safety, of actually being persecuted. It's a Soc 101 basic credence that the ability to expect that the police will assist you is an expression of privilege in our society.

So, that brings up the second thing going on here ... what America do they want 'back'? And it is in returning to what I noted above about the centrality of Obama as a focus in these protests. This isn't like with Bush, where it was the actual man himself and his attitude, personality, and approach were focused on, rather this time the repeated caricaturing of Obama is something that crops up. It's his image, or rather what he represents, that seems to be the thing targeted.

And he is a really virulent symbol. Many African-Americans were interviewed around the inauguration and post-election about what this meant, and so many spoke of the power of having someone that looked like them in the position of highest power in this country. Many people of other ethnic groups spoke similarly. But, naturally, the flip-side of this is that those that always knew that the top job in the US would be occupied by someone that looked like them were confronted with the realisation that this was no longer the case.

What often results (particularly so when one looks at the succession of protests) is a general feeling of unease and insecurity, one that they can't readily identify the cause thereof. As a sociologist it's pretty obvious, namely the loss of an aspect of cultural privilege. And the anti health care reform protests are classically this, because extending rights and institutions such as health care to everyone is a fundamental challenge to the privilege of thinking they're designed for you. It's not nice, naturally, as one has to think that having the expectation that all institutions being open to you is a pretty good feeling. That society is designed for you, is a nice way to live.

And, naturally, one would want to go back to that time where one didn't feel this unease and insecurity. Where one had those privileges one has lost (especially given one doesn't perceive such as privileges ... rather just 'the way things are'). But what America is that?

It's an America of racial privilege, of white dominance, of the man in the White House looking like all the other previous men to hold that address. It's of de-facto slavery, of the ability to ignore the lives and realities of those different from you. Of believing that your way of doing the world is the best, the only, the correct, and the good way.

It's an America where they own everything. Where whites own everything. They want THAT back.

Hi everyone,

Thought I would just post a quick note here and see what happened, as it certainly couldn't hurt.

I am selling my year-old 19 inch CRT TV for $40. And I am selling my DVD player for $20. However, if you were to take both off my hands together I'd give them to you for $50 total.

My email address is listed in my user info. Of course this is restricted to those in the Chicago-land area as you would have to come pick it up.

So, I booked my tickets home this morning ...

I'm leaving Wednesday September 16th, arriving Friday September 18th ... I haven't booked the Chicago to LA leg as yet, because I can find a cheap deal by doing that separately (my budget is really tight, hence wanting to get something as cheap as possible).

It's really real now ...