Auckland - Weeks 5 + 6 - Earthquake

-- 11/12 to 11/25/2016 --

I really, really needed to take my mind of US election results, so I went out to a tri-annual, public gaming convention out in the Remuera neighborhood. I took the hour walk out there through nice areas of Auckland I hadn't been in before, and found a bridge clubhouse (as in the card game - people have club houses for playing bridge here apparently) stuffed with games and gamers sitting around a bunch of card tables. 

For anyone interested in setting up open game events, they had an interesting social cue for helping players find games to join. Here, there was a big library of games for people to choose from. Typically, one or two people would grab a game they found interesting, and as they're setting it up they put a black pirate flag on their table to signal to other people that they need more players. If they had no idea about how to play the game they were interested in, the host could also put up a white flag, to signal that they need help from more-experienced strangers. [They also sold poker chips worth 1 quarter of a pizza each, with different colors representing different flavors, so at dinner time they could just order enough pizza to match the number of chips they sold during the day.]

I got to the clubhouse in the mid-afternoon, and sat down to play a game called Captain Sonar, in which two teams of four face off as the crews of opposing submarines in a Battleship-style duel to the death. It is a total thrill, especially as one team closes in on the other. Success hinges on good communication between all of the players, and to a lesser extent on the Captain's decision-making.

For the rest of that weekend I continued coming up with distractions by going to the farmer's market (the central city market was not happening, but they did have excellent lemon-curd doughnuts) and playing pick-up soccer in the Domain (the big public park just 15 min walk from my apartment). That Sunday night, I was feeling refreshed and ready to take on the new week again. I was in my room, watching Netflix and getting ready to call it a night, when my building began gently rocking back and forth.

We were feeling an 7.8 magnitude earthquake, but it originated over 600 km to the south in Kaikoura and almost no one else in Auckland noticed it. I think our building was just particularly sensitive because it's so tall, and hopefully not because it's poorly designed. The building swayed for about a minute. Sehui was freaked out, so we went down the stairs and exited the building. About 50 other people were gathered around, and I started looking up information on the USGS website. After about 15 minutes of no aftershocks everyone started going back inside. People will be dealing with the effects of the earthquake for months and years to come in Wellington and down in South Island, but Auckland hasn't been affected at all.

During Week 5 I went to an Auckland Parkour community training session and had a really good time. There seems to be a big difference between the parkour I've seen people practicing in New Zealand and the parkour people generally practice in the United States. I'll just have to explore the differences in a separate post after I've gotten some more experience with the group's members, but the short version is they remind me a lot of the group I used to train with at Santa Cruz in really good ways.

On the next weekend there was a big International Naval Review, the 75th in New Zealand's history. About 9 different military ships from New Zealand and other countries around the Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Chile) were docked at the wharves downtown, so John, Sehui, and I went out to see them when they were open to the public on Sunday. The best ship hands down was the bark Esmerelda, a Chilean tallship, but it wasn't open to the public. Instead, we waited in line for an hour and a half to go inside the Korean ROKS Chungbuk. It was an underwhelming tour overall.

After seeing the Korean ship, I split off from John and Sehui, grabbed a curry-and-meat pie from an all-day breakfast shop, and got on a bus to Birkenhead across the harbour to check out New Zealand's 'best' climbing wall. Unfortunately, the climbing gym was also very underwhelming, with no bouldering problems to speak of, and very short limits on the maximum height we were allowed to climb without ropes. They basically restricted bouldering to an area with an overhang and left climbers to come up with their own problems using holds that were in place for lead-climbing routes. It ended up being very frustrating and tiring to deal with.

In grad school news: I turned my laughably broad research question around and came back with a narrower question and a 1-page proposal for my project. Thegn and Melinda still couldn't tell what my actual topic was, so I revised it and on Tuesday I brought back a new draft, which they liked much better. They kept pressing me for more details on my research design, so I went home to try and work out a better proposal. And then I got sick for the next two days, which ruined my productivity. I basically lost the second half of the last week and spent it almost exclusively in my bed. 

The cold I got also ruined my plans to celebrate Thanksgiving in New Zealand. I was hoping to roast a chicken and cook up some sweet potatoes, gravy, and green beans for me and my flatmates, but I didn't have enough energy to get out of the house or deal with any of that stuff in the kitchen. I only left the apartment to get some tea, lozenges, smoothies, and Indian food. Fortunately, I did end up getting to skype with Jess and with my family on Friday. It was perfect seeing that everyone else was having a good Thanksgiving and I'm also glad that I got to vicariously experience the holiday.