Gettin' a Little Culture

About 12 years ago, I visited New Zealand for the first time through the People to People Student Ambassador program.  During this trip, we learned about Maori culture and stayed in a marae.  I remember learning about their traditions and eating exceptional food made with the hangi.  I also remember the unique artwork.

Today, Kate and I walked to the Otago Farmers Market to check things out.  On the way back, Kate mentioned that the Otago Museum had an exhibit of wildlife photography.

I stopped in to check it out since the entry fee was in my price range (free).  I enjoyed the photography.  There was a cute picture of a boar's face covered with snow, another with three penguins waddling back to the ocean, and some more intense pictures of the human presence in nature (typically, rubbish in streams and rusty cars in fields).

Next, I meandered into the Tangata Whenua (People of the Land) gallery of Maori culture.  It was fun to look at the intricate detail in the carvings.  Heaven knows I lack the patience and artistic ability to create anything like that!

The sign next to the carving above read:

Ngati Porou carvers near Napier made these carvings in the late 1870s for the Hawkes Bay chief Karaitiana Takamoana.  Chief Karaitiana planned to erect a whare-Runanga with them, but he died in 1879 and the incomplete carvings were abandoned.  Dr. T. M. Hocken who had heard of the carvings secured their loan for the New Zealand Exhibition of 1889-90, where they were set up as a house.  At the conclusion of this exhibition the carvings were purchased by Hocken and gifted to the Otago Museum. 

I was also impressed with my camera's ability to capture the artwork sans flash.  I have been using a Nikon Coolpix S8000 digital camera, but hadn't used the "museum" mode until now.

Unfortunately, lunch time was near and I had to depart (I get a little cranky when I'm hungry!).  Since I know I can drop in at the museum just about any time, I'll be sure to go back to check out the other exhibits.

I won! Who wants to come kayaking?!

Today was an awesome day! Our research team finished stuffing envelopes then stuffed ourselves with yumminess from Velvet Burger (I texted my email address to them just before we went and received a text for a free 1/2 order of chips as we walked over).

Before...

After...

When I got back to my room I had an exciting email waiting for me.  Recently, I was one of nine students who posted their blog to the University of Otago International Office Facebook page.  Today, I was picked to win a $100 voucher for kayaking because of my little blog you're reading.  So, I get to plan a trip to Abel Tasman National Park to see the folks at The Sea Kayak Company.  Cool, huh?!

Interestingly, this is good timing.  Five years ago, on April 9, my dad died from cancer.  One of our last trips together was camping in Acadia National Park in Maine.

I love that I can use the voucher in November to celebrate dad's 65th birthday.  This also gives me time to save up money to get there.  (I. am. broke.)  Kate suggested a big trip before she's done with her program and we may be able to rent a camper van and do a last hurrah before she leaves.  It's very roughly 10 1/2 hours to get there ('B' on the map below) from Dunedin ('A' on the map below).  Here's hoping I get lucky and win some gear from L.L. Bean for the trip!

I think dad would be so proud that his love of the outdoors is being carried on!

Sign. Fold. Stuff. Repeat.

The fun has begun!

We're getting ready to send out questionnaires for the three-year follow-up of our Women's Health and Well-being study.  For the last two days, we have handwritten over 1,000 women's names in the greeting line of our letter that summarizes last year's findings and announces the questionnaire coming next week.

In the midst of signing, folding, and predicting what it will be like when we start our work preparing the questionnaire mailing, I got my first taste of survey research methodology humor.  Someone asked why we have to go through the hassle of adding personal touches here and there;  after all, it is taking hooouurrrrss to get this all done.

Then someone, with her best Jerry Seinfold imitation, simply said, "Dillman!"

At the end of today, we finally started stuffing the envelopes.

Heidi and I took a break from the action to speak to parents at a nearby preschool.  The school is implementing the Healthy Heart Award program and wanted nutritionists to speak about healthy lunchbox choices.

When we walked in, we saw a room full of under 5s eating cut up pineapple, apples, grapes, slices of cheese, crackers, celery, hummus, pita bread and other deliciousness for lunch.  On the wall behind the little ones was a collage of food wrappers from items found in the kids' lunch boxes earlier this year.  Cookies, chips, gummies and other sweet things were all represented on the wall.  I thought it was a great reminder to all of us that the children are just as happy eating the fresher, nutrient dense foods.  The teachers hope that the education parents are getting through the program will reduce the amount of high fat/sugar/salt foods in kids' lunch boxes.

Heidi talked about reading food labels.  One father pointed out that fresh foods cost more.  He made a valid point.  I replied that what we're doing for children by buying them fresh fruits/vegetables, leaner meats, whole grains, etc is actually investing in their health to improve it down the road.  It is hard to imagine the eating habits of a 3-year-old affecting them at 13, but I hope I helped him think about things a little differently.  I also mentioned taking small steps - when they look at food labels at the grocery store this week, buy foods with less sugar.  Then, the next trip to the grocery store they can pick a different nutrient to focus on.  If we had more time, I would have busted out some of my knowledge from a "Balanced Diet on a Budget" talk I did in the senior centers at home.

Tomorrow will involve more envelope stuffing, but I don't mind!  The others on my research team are tolerating the music I put on our special Envelope Stuffing Party playlist which includes such great tunes as "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" by Jet, "Jump Around" by House of Pain, "and "Groove is in the Heart" by Dee-Lite.  They all agree that the dance party vibe makes getting the job done a lot more fun!

This is Ladies' Night! Alright! Alright!

It turns out that anyone who becomes a social outcast while working on a PhD has no one to blame but themselves.  I've had so many opportunities to meet new people and this weekend was no exception.

Friday evening, I joined some folks from the Department of Preventive and Social medicine for a drink at Ombrellos.  The topic du jour was conferences - how to choose them and how to get funding to cover expenses.  Definitely valuable information.  I enjoyed presenting posters at conferences as an undergrad and now I'm looking forward to putting a year's worth of Toastmasters skills to the test for an oral presentation at a conference in an exotic location.

Next up for the evening was the "Anything But Clothes" party.  At first, I was mortified, but then I realized it was meant to be an opportunity for people to show off their creativity (or, wear a garbage bag).  Kate and I showed up with sleeping bags in hand and shimmied into them before cracking open our beer.

Last night, a fellow grad student with a little help from Facebook's "events" feature, organized a ladies' night out.  There was talk about pink drinks, dancing, and red high heels on the event wall.  It was sounding pretty much like a bachelorette party without the embarrassing rituals.  I was psyched for it!

We met up at Pequeno, located down a dark alley, at 10pm.  I was one of about 16 gussied up gals who showed up for a good time.  The pink drinks that we were looking forward to cost $16-22 a pop, so I settled down with a nice $8.50 glass of Mud House Merlot and took very sporadic dainty sips.

One by one, I met new people.  One person was studying parasites and another was studying possums (research has yet to uncover why they eat what they eat and she was going to be the one to do that).  You can't make this stuff up!

When the dancing mood struck, we moved on to Pop Bar in the Octagon.  It was a small space with a lot of people.  Shoulders and hips were moving from all directions directly at me; I felt like a pinball!  We stayed for a while, enjoying time away from checking email,  Facebook, and tmz.com (I'm still waiting to find out if Jessica Simpson had her baby!).

Today is all work, no play.

(Thanks, Mom, for the Post-it notes!)

Initially, I welcomed the challenge to teach myself how to use Stata with open arms.  I was bound and determined to become a lean mean analyzing machine.  Then I started reading the 300 page "Stata for Dummies" book.  At some point, I read a sentence about Stata's default date being January 1, 1960.  Every date and time (to the millisecond) is calculated from that point. I think.  The very thought that this program may very well be analyzing data for my journal submissions and my dissertation with a random default date is almost too much to bare.

To put it bluntly: how am I supposed to take this program seriously when it has a random date floating around behind the scenes?

It's like trying to take a powerful person seriously when they have the bottom of their pant leg tucked accidentally into their sock - it doesn't effect the powerful person's decision making, but the silliness of the situation makes you somewhat doubtful about their abilities.

There's nothing wrong with the date per se.  It's just so... weird... to have it in the back of my mind when I'm trying to do something simple, such as calculating women's ages even when January 1, 1960 has nothing to do with their birthdate.

On top of that, this is a program that relies on the user typing in a lot of code.  Remember the days of DOS command line interface?  Yeah, that's a little taste of what I'll be dealing with.

Then again, what's more plausible is that I have blown this Stata thing way out of proportion because I misread something.  Ultimately, I need to embrace it or at the very least allow Stata to be my frenemy.