Goodbye New Zealand

Sitting in the Auckland airport at 6am, waiting for my flight to Hong Kong I’m attempting to process the last 6 months of my life. It’s a very odd feeling to just pick up and leave the place you’ve been living, where you’ve had awesome friends, a job, and an incredible time. I’ve just had the most amazing year of my life and I’m leaving it all behind because I want to go home. During my travels over the past year I’ve had moments of homesickness, but they were always short lived. I never got to the point where I just wanted to get on a plane and see my family, friends and city again so strongly that it was all I could think about until a month ago. So I decided to go home. It’s hard to explain, I know Vancouver will always be there, but I think after a year of travel I’ve come to appreciate my home even more, and it’s just where I want to be right now. Sometimes in life you just know you need to do something, and you can’t explain why, but you know it’s the right thing to do. And that’s how I feel about going home.

I’ll never forget all the people and places I’ve seen in New Zealand. I’ve been constantly blown away over the last 6 months at the kindness and hospitality of people here. I could never begin to repay it. I really hope some of the people I’ve met come to Canada so I can invite them into my home and show them some of the Canadian wilderness and wonders. And I’ll miss everybody so very very much. A good friend of mine once told me it’s better to say farewell, and not goodbye. I can’t assume I’ll never see the people that have filled my life the past 6 months again, that would be to painful. So instead I said all of my goodbyes while looking forward to when our paths cross again, where ever in the world that might occur.

It’s funny how we end up certain places in the world. Sitting in the Dunedin airport with my Canadian friend Madelaine we recounted how I ended up in New Zealand to begin with. Two and a half years ago when she was trying to decide where to go on exchange in NZ a friend of hers told her about the OUTC, and that made her decide to come to Dunedin. She met somebody and moved back to New Zealand after her year of exchange there. I’d heard lots of stories about Dunedin and the tramping club from Madelaine and it sounded like the kind of place I would enjoy, so I decided to spend some of my year of travel working in New Zealand. 6 months ago I stepped off the plane with only my working visa in hand and a good friend to pick me up at the airport. No job or place to live, just a general faith that things would work out as they always have during my travels.

And they certainly did work out, incredibly well. In fact looking back on everything it’s a bit hard to believe how well things worked out. Within a month of arriving in NZ I had a job at the University of Otago and a place to live. I’d done my first couple of tramping trips, visited some old friends in Christchurch and was beginning to get involved in the OUTC. I’ll always remember that first trip with Madelaine, 5 days spent in the Borland Mountains in Fiordland. We didn’t see a single other soul. Perhaps that’s what blows me away the most about New Zealand, wherever you go in the wilderness you just don’t see any other people, and all of the sights are absolutely incredible. It was an exhausting trip, on day three I sat tired on a rock and asked Madelaine “are all the trips in the tramping club this hard? Because if they are I don’t think I’m going to survive.”

Turns out they weren’t, the OUTC was as much a social club as it was about tramping. And it became the social center of my life for 6 months. It’s been awesome, and it’s the people that made it that way. From David and Madelaine, to whom I will never be able to repay the kindness I received in getting myself set up in New Zealand. To Claire who informed me of everything I needed to know to survive in the OUTC and regaled me with stories of years past (I can only hope I have made it into her tramping club story books). My flatmates who must have thought I was a bit nuts going away every weekend, “that crazy Canadian”. Tim and Sarah with their quircky sense of humour and velociraptor awareness. Nick, who I went on several trips with and had great chats with about all things OUTC that drove me nuts. Rowan always asking me to make him breakfast in bed on tramping trips and making fun of me for my teletubby booties, jacket and anything else he could come up with. Colleen, for her random but true observations about the world and never exaggerating. Erica, for being American. Cleo, for always being super happy and upbeat, and just loving tramping. Peter for stirring shit up, Brittany for the random acts of kindness. Sarah and the Saturday trips to the farmers market. Paula for always saying exactly what was on her mind. Of course then there are all the places I spent time with and met these people. The Cook for Tuesday happy hour, Eureka for better happy hours and Tonic for good beer with David. Clubs and socs, the gear room and the Otago room for all the trip planning insanity that went on there. And all the wilderness, Paradise, Fiordland, the Borland mountains, Mavora Lakes, Luxmore Hut and the Kepler Track, Te Anau, Christchurch and TWALK, Copeland, Arthurs Pass, Otehake, Golden Bay, Alex, real fruit ice cream in Cromwell, the lake at Wanaka, Mt. Aspiring Hut, Big Hut, Mt. Brewster, Rock and Pillar, Flagstaff, Mt. Cargill, even Gore. I will miss all these people and places. I also know I’ll cross paths with at least some of them again. They will always be my friends and remembered fondly with a smile and a laugh.

I’ve come home because I want my normal life back; however crazy that might seem. One with my friends and family, I’ve learned how important those close connections to home are to me. I guess in the end I chose those over the fun of travel because they’re more important to me then all the new experiences and places in the world I might see. I don’t know if this is the end of Tracy Travels yet or not. I might get itchy feet again in a year or two, but for now I’m going to stay put somewhere familiar for awhile and just love life as it is here in Van with the mountains and ocean, my family and friends.

Me on my first NZ tramp in the Hunter Mountains

Flatwarming costume party

When I moved into my flat my flatmates decided that they needed to have a second flatwarming party in honour of their new Canadian flatmate. Really it was a good excuse to have a party and we quickly agreed it should be a costume party. We tossed around a few ideas for themes including pirates, pimps and hos, crossdressing and world of warcraft but in the end settled on alternate universe. As in “what would you be in an alternate universe?” Really this meant we could dress up as anything we liked! The saturday of the party none of us had costumes of course so we went to the local savemart (NZ equivalent of Value Village) in search of inspiration. I found a hilarious pair of camouflage print ballet slipper shoes and decided to go as camouflage girl. I was mildly concerned I wouldn’t be able to find anything else to match the shoes, but my fears were quickly gone as it turned out there was TONS of camo stuff in the shop. My flatmates decided upon the alternate universe personalities of emo boy, the queen of hearts, hippie girl, a penguin and pirate wench. In the end we all had fabulous costumes. In preparation for the party we made jello shots, and cupcakes filled with brandy. When I asked Amelia why she was cutting the tops off the cupcakes she responded with “to fill them with alcohol of course!”. Silly me asking questions like that. I introduced the New Zealanders to the yummyness that is 5 layer dip and lemon chocolate chip cookies and they were very impressed with my culinary skills (or at least dip and cookie making skills). I also accused them of having watered down beer (it’s 4% here, pretty much like drinking water) and they didn’t seem to appreciate that very much. All in all it was a hilarious party with tons of dancing and lots of good times and revelry. And I might even be able to wear some pieces of my costume again … just by themselves though, not in full camo-gear.

—————————————

jandals = flip flops, sandals, thongs
heaps = lots (used all the time, as in “I have HEAPS of chocolate”)
loo roll = toilet paper
fringe = bangs (my flatmates thought it was HILARIOUS when I made a comment about somebody’s “bangs” after I explained I was talking about their hair)

Kayaking in Dunedin

I joined the uni kayaking club here because they have lots of river boats and free sessions to teach you to roll a kayak, which is always something I’ve wanted to do. Today was their introductory session, on the ocean, in the pouring rain. About 60 people showed up and they only had 30 boats so we huddled together on the shore awaiting our turns. Then when it finally was our turn after practicing a few strokes in the boats and paddling around we all had to flip and dunk ourselves in the ocean! I’ve ocean kayaked quite a bit before, but river boats are completely different. They’re much more responsive to paddling, which meant that since I’m used to putting a lot of power into strokes to move around in long skinny ocean kayaks I was spinning around a lot and constantly almost flipping myself over in small fat river boats. Not that it mattered much in the end when we all flipped ourselves over. Most of the people at the kayak session were exchange students from around the world, but over half of them were from the states! I was a bit disappointed because I didn’t exactly come to NZ to hang out with Americans. Although one friend in the tramping club told me most of them tend to drop off once they realize it’s cold, wet, and kind of hard work tramping in New Zealand …

Tomorrow is the tramping clubs first hike of the season. Which is more of a 2 hour walk really up a hill above town called Mt. Cargill. My Canadian friend Madelaine and I have planned to wear our harnesses and rope up as if we were doing glacier travel while walking up the hill. If anybody asks us what we’re doing our response will be “safety first of course!”. That is if we can keep a straight face. Either people will think it’s hilarious, or we’ll be “those weird Canadians” for the rest of the year.

Toga parties in Dunedin

This happened in the city I’m living in a few blocks away from my flat … toga party riots

Integrated Genomics Research at the University of Otago

I thought I would write a little bit about the job I got here in Dunedin. If you’re interested in genomics or bio-informatics or are just killing some time read on …

I’m working in a biochemistry lab at the University of Otago doing some bio-informatics related programming for them. For those of you unfamiliar with what bio-informatics is, wikipedia defines it as “the application of information technology to the field of molecular biology”. A simple explanation is that computers are very useful in storing and analyzing the huge amounts of data you acquire when doing any kind of research in molecular biology, whether that be genomics, proteomics or something else.

In my lab they are mainly studying microRNA, particularly the untranslated regions. Right now I am modifying a web application called Galaxy, which allows researchers to do large scale genome analysis. It provides a single place to draw on data from many different sources and use integrated tools to analyse the data. It also provides a simple API for developers to add their own tools. I am currently working on adding tools to the Otago University version of Galaxy that specialise in microRNA analysis.

If none of that made sense to you then just take my word for it, it’s pretty cool stuff!

Learning Python

Warning: This posting contains content that only people with an IT background may find mildly amusing. If you’re not one of those, feel free to stop reading now.

I’ve been teaching myself python at work, since I have no previous experience with it and will need to do some scripting. I typed in the following, which failed miserably:

>>> if !a:
File “”, line 1
if !a:
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

and then thought to myself, “friends have told me python is very easy to code with, maybe I’ll try this”:

>>> if not a:
… print “hello”
…
hello

Which worked beautifully and brought me great joy! Why don’t other languages work so nicely?

Finding work in New Zealand

I won’t be picking fruit! I’ve managed to find myself a job here in Dunedin working for the University of Otago in their bioinformatics department, which I’m pretty excited about. I owe my friend Madelaine a lot of thanks for hooking me up with the job, I was feeling a bit surprised because everything worked out so easily. I’ll be working on adding some new tools for visualization of genomic data for the next 3 months in a biochemistry lab. It’s a bit odd though to be thinking about working again full time after nearly 6 months of travel and not work. I’m actually really looking forward to living somewhere semi-permanently and not living out of a backpack for a while. First though I have to find myself a place to live, which is proving to be a bit frustrating, but entertaining as well. There are tons of students flats (NZ speak for houses) in Dunedin looking for flatmates (if you ask about roommates they look at you funny). However, most of them are 1st and 2nd years, and as much fun as re-living that period of my life sounds, I don’t think I want to spend the next 3 months partying *every* single night. Dunedin is known as being somewhat of a university-party town. I spent this weekend looking at places to live because the weather is terrible for going outside due to a cyclone hitting the west coast … yes a cyclone. Here’s a short summary of the places I’ve looked at so far, feel free to vote for your favorite:

1. 4 guys, 19 – 20 years old, quiet, one deer hunter, one offered me a kayak from his parents place, pros: nice guys, kayak cons: they might find out how old I am and call me old

2. 1 Asian girl from Auckland, upon looking at her place I asked her if anybody was living there currently because there was no food in the cupboards and no furniture, to which she responded that she’d been living there for a week …

3. Giant boarding house of 13 rooms, friendly landlady

4. Boarding house of 5 rooms, all pink with flowery bedspreads, pros: ok with only a 3 month lease, cons: creepy landlord and no other tenants yet (bad sign in a city full of people looking for a place to live)

Looking for a place to live in NZ

I’m back in Dunedin and looking for a place to live. Here are some of the more entertaining posts online for flatmates:

“2 existing flatmates. Professional father and 16 year old daughter.”

“3 existing flatmates. Current flatmate is a small Chinese family”

“We should probably be able to procure some venison off one flatmate (a keen hunter) from time to time, and I have apricots for africa (live on an orchard). Otherwise none of us have any real dietary requirements.”

My NZ Dictionary

OK so some of these words people may have heard of, but here are the few things I’ve been told so far to watch out for so I don’t make a fool of myself, although that will probably happen anyways.

boot = trunk of car
tramping = hiking (I briefly considered entitling my blog “Tracy Tramps NZ” but then it was pointed out to me that most of my readership was North American and might interpret that title in a rather different way)
courgette = zucchini
about is pronounced phonetically as “aboot”
bach = holiday home for rent
pants = underwear
trousers = pants

I spent my first weekend in NZ at a friends familys’ bach near Lake Tepako which was relaxing and nice for sleeping to get over my ridiculous jet lag. And I got to see lots of the countryside, which was full of tons of sheep, apparently NZ has 20 sheep to every person. And if you constantly point them and all the cows out while driving in the car with surprised cries of “look! there’s a sheep!” you will be given dirty looks. Then on the way home we stopped at these neat boulders on a beach. They were giant (up to 1.5m in diameter) perfectly round stones in the sand left behind by some volcanic activity a long time ago. My plan for now is to spend the next 2-3 weeks doing various tramps with friends and then actually find a place to live and a job in the city of Dunedin in mid February.

Forty hours later I’ve made it to New Zealand

After 40 hours in transit and 4 flights I’ve finally made it to Dunedin, New Zealand, where I plane to live and work for the next 6 months or so. It’s super warm and summery here and surprisingly I don’t feel totally exhausted after the 2 days it took to get here. I realized while sitting in Vancouver looking at the in flight information about my flight route that it was kind of ridiculous. To fly up and over Alaska, then down past Japan to Hong Kong on my way to New Zealand seemed to be a completely out of the way route to getting here. But I’ve made it safe and sound and I don’t think I’ve been happier about getting off a plane before. I’m definitely not getting on another one anytime soon. Something about breathing only recycled air in planes and waiting rooms for 2 days straight is kind of gross. I plan to update my blog similarly to how I did when I was in South America so hopefully I’ll have some fun kiwi stories soon!