TV and radio interviews

The TVNZ piece from Farewell Spit was broadcast on Wednesday night’s Close Up show, and you can also watch it on the web.  It’s quite surreal to see myself on telly, but it’s a really good piece and a nice memento of a fun day’s mullet-hunting.

And while we’re at it, I’ve also tracked down an audio file of my RadioLIVE interview with Marcus Lush earlier this month.  Sadly you can hear background noise towards the end - I was conducting the interview from a phonebox in the foyer of my hostel in Napier and of course nobody walking past would have assumed for a moment that I was doing a live national radio broadcast.  Also, as you can hear, the interview ends rather abruptly as we collide with the 8am news. 

But apart from that, it was good fun and I think I did quite well.  I also enjoyed meeting Marcus later on in the trip in Invercargill.

My inbox has now gone mad with emails from New Zealanders, which I will have to go through at some point, and my website is about to exceed its bandwidth.  I think I need to go and hide in a bunker for a while.

Reflections on New Zealand

A friend has emailed me on the back of the New Zealand photos I recently uploaded, with a few questions about the place.

It reminded me that I haven’t really written a “Springer’s final thought” about the trip and about the country, despite having done lots, seen lots and hugely enjoyed it.  So here goes.  And apologies this is a bit of a long one.

Culture

What amazed me about a country that’s really only 150 years old in its modern definition, is that it has such a strong sense of heritage.  And I don’t just mean that of the Maori or immigrants’ lands of origin: more than that, New Zealand has hung on to all its “old stuff” intently.

Most towns and cities have plenty of buildings from the mid to late 1800s, and while there is no shortage of modernity and the skyline of Auckland, for instance, could rival anything in the “new world”, New Zealand seems less brash and Americanised, and more in touch with settler-era heritage, than for instance Australia.  New Zealand’s small towns are quaint and characterful whereas those in Australia I visited were perhaps just a little soulless.

Despite its youth, its geographical isolation, the huge immigration that has shaped it and continues to do so (or perhaps because of all that?) it’s a country that seems gently confident with itself and its sense of identity.

People

That means, therefore, it’s hard to define the people.  They’re all immigrants - even the Maori, as some whites were keen to point out to me.  There’s a mix of influences from the older settler countries such as those in the British Isles, 20th century migration such as from the Netherlands or eastern Asia, and now significant waves from the Pacific Islands.  More Polynesians, apparently, now live in Auckland than any other city.

But what is clear is that they are laid back, friendly, hard-working, and always interested to talk.  I had some great chats with some random New Zealanders, experienced some great kindness, and really got a sense that they’re a top bunch of people.

And someone told me that 25% of all immigrants came from Scotland.  Exploring the exhibition on The Scots in New Zealand at Te Papa, the National Museum, it was phenomenal to see exactly how much one nation’s immigrants (often the landless, uneducated and poor) contributed to the character and success of New Zealand in terms of culture, music, industry, religion, and government.  It was also amusing to note how important the Scots were in both the early temperance movement and alcohol industry.

The exhibition made me think.  Scots, too, have been defining influences in so many other countries, such as Canada, the USA, Australia and of course England and the wider UK.  If only the Scots had as much confidence in their ability to shape Scotland as their ability to shape elsewhere, we really would be the best country in the world.

Geography

With everything from glaciers to huge mountains to lush forests to golden beaches, New Zealand has it all.  It’s a big but empty country, slightly bigger than the UK’s landmass but with under a tenth of the population, there’s plenty to explore.  The scenery is breathtaking, and I had more than a couple of “wow” moments.

The hillwalking is supposedly brilliant, and the network of paths, huts and information centres seem plentiful well-organised without reducing it to something tacky or over-commercialised.  Of course they don’t call it “hillwalking” - and don’t make assumptions like I did when I saw a book entitled “101 Great Tramps”. 

The weather, too, is fantastic - while it’s hot in summer, especially in the north, you’re never too far from a reasonable breeze to keep things cool.  It rained a couple of times when I was there, mostly in the south, and I guess will do so more in the winter, but temperatures seem to rarely be too low or too high: effectively, the best bits about British weather.

Overall

In short, New Zealand is just brilliant.  If you were going to build a country from scratch - geography, people, climate, the lot - you’d be hard-pressed to beat it.  It’s like Scotland turned up to 11, albeit without the plentiful supplies of Irn Bru, trains, dark humour and proper football.

I’d definitely go back - but I’d take longer, see more, do more, relax more, and do lots of hiking.

And not knacker myself by flying out in the one go.

Perth railway station, again

I was in Dundee today for work.  I’m just home after a long journey. 

I headed down yesterday afternoon and spent the night in Dundee, and thought it was going to be a smooth, easy journey, with what looked to be a mercifully short seven minute changeover in Perth, a station for which I have already expressed my dislike.

Sadly, though, circumstances were conspiring against me. Due to floods (they happen every year - will we ever learn?) it was a replacement bus from Pitlochry. You would have thought that on a route where driving and taking the train takes more or less the same time, we’d have still made it into Perth in plenty time to still catch the Dundee connection.

To my bewilderment, however, we arrived half an hour late, and while passengers were shepherded onto their replacement buses for stations to Edinburgh, the obligatory man in fluorescent jacket told me that there was no replacement for Dundee, despite the fact that the train I should was on should have arrived in Perth in time to catch it. I didn’t bother arguing. It wasn’t his fault.

Loads of other stuff probably was, but not this.

However, the next train was not for another hour and a half. I couldn’t contemplate sitting in Perth station watching… well, at that time on a Sunday night, there wasn’t much of a world passing by to watch. So I headed up the road to the nearest pub.

Strangely, despite being in the middle of town, Perth railway station is ostensibly nowhere near any decent pub, so I made do with the bar at the Best Western Hotel across the road. Yes, a chain hotel. Not a good move.

The bar was deserted apart from a couple of staff cleaning, and the noise of a music channel playing on the TV, and the fact it was “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston did not fill me with confidence.  I took a deep breath, ordered a pint of Stella, and settled down with the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy, which I am currently re-reading. I bought it in New Zealand to entertain myself on the flight back (more on that in a later post).

However, concentrating on the restaurant at the end of the universe was not easy with a station playing in the background that I suspect was called “Crap Cheese Through The Years”.  Ronan Keating followed Whitney, Take That followed him, and then Snow Patrol, Atomic Kitten and various other purveyors of soul-destroying commercial pop added to the mood.

I began to emphathise with Marvin the Paranoid Android as I read, and wondered whether I might have been better off in the station after all.

As it turned out, sitting having my mind numbed in the pub was marginally better than what greeted me back at the station once I’d finished my pint. An amorous young couple sat next to me on platform 2, fully absorbed in each other and coming up for air so infrequently I wondered whether they had evolved into amphibians.

Not long before the train was due, they got up and staggered past me. The girl - a thin skeleton of a human being - broke away from her boyfriend, and asked slurringly whether this was the platform for Dundee. Not hugely enthralled by the prospect of a conversation with her, I replied in the affirmative without removing my iPod headphones. She thanked me, then sat beside me far too closely.

“You having a good night?” she slurred. Headphones still in, I replied briefly but politely that I was (despite the fact that I wasn’t).

“Good. We’ve just been kicked out of a pub for having sex.”

This time I did take my headphones out.

“For what?”

“For having sex in the toilets of a pub. They kicked us out.”

She paused, clearly waiting for some sort of response from me.

“Well, I can see their point,” was all I could think of.

Her boyfriend called her. I suggested she should go. She did.

The train pulled up a minute or so later. I wanted to be sure I got on a different carriage from them, but they were back engrossed in each other’s company so I just got on. Luckily, only the boyfriend then unsteadily boarded.

The girl stood on the platform and bade her boyfriend goodbye with a hand action that would make this post a “certificate 18″ were I to spell it out. A simple wave or blown kiss would have sufficed, I felt.

But then perhaps anything can happen at Perth railway station.

Usually, though, it’s nothing whatsoever.

I am not sure which I prefer.

Closing Pandora’s box

I am spending this evening catching up on some of the emails I received while I was away down under but have not had a chance to read or reply to. One is from Pandora.

Pandora is basically a free internet-based music website, that creates custom-built “radio stations”, based around the music you tell it you like.  It’s an ingenious system - you tell it the bands or styles you like, it plays you similar stuff, and you modify the selection by telling you which of the songs you like and which you don’t.

Not only is it a great way to ensure you only listen to music you like, but it also is a great way of discovering new music.  It seems to have a vast database, and for instance it supplied me with a number of names who are similar to Ulrich Schnauss which I want to follow up.

However, the email from Pandora, which is based in the USA, contained bad news.  Due to boring and complicated legal reasons, they have had to restrict access to the site, meaning that anyone outside the USA can no longer access it.

It’s a real shame, because the real losers are small and obscure bands whose music is showcased in a way it might not otherwise be, and I enjoyed discovering artists I would never have heard of were it not for Pandora.

Like with much of the opposition to free music sharing, it seems to be about the record companies, rather than the bands themselves.  You rarely hear new and emerging bands complaining about file-sharing: these days, and thanks to things like MySpace, free music is how they make themselves heard.  Conversely, it’s the commercial interests of record companies that leads to most of the opposition to free music.

It’s a shame that Pandora has been forced to restrict itself like this.  But for those readers based in the land of pretzels, you might find it an interesting way of discovering new music.

I hope the restriction on the rest of us is lifted one day soon.

New Zealand pictures

Last night, I uploaded a pile of photos to my Flickr page, completing my New Zealand set.

It was a frustrating process - firstly because they were all sitting on my personal laptop (which of course is missing its wireless card), and so needed to be transferred to my work laptop and uploaded from there.

Secondly, I found that a CD that I had burned photos onto while down under got badly scratched and a number were lost - including many from the wonderful day at Motutapu Island, and the visits to Mullet Creek and Mullet Point north of Auckland. 

Let that be a lesson, boys and girls.

However, there’s still plenty from elsewhere, including Wellington, Auckland, Napier, Mullet Bay in Southland, and one of the highlights of the trip, the conquest of Mullet Channel on Farewell Spit.

Farewell Spit is a beautiful part of the world - a long finger of sand jutting out of the north of South Island, and a haven to all sorts of bird and marine life.  I was kindly offered a tour by the excellent Farewell Spit Eco Tours who’d read about my mission in the local paper, and whose website and blog gives an amazing overview of the kinds of wildlife you can see there.

TVNZ came along for the ride too, and I believe the piece they put together will be broadcast soon and will also be online.  I’ll let you know the link as soon as it goes up. 

Hurley Burley

I’ve got back from a few days away from work to discover two interesting things.

George Burley is going to be the new Scotland manager.  This is good news, and he was always my favourite from among the apparent shortlist.  His amazing management of Hearts in 2005 broke the Old Firm hegemony until - in one of Romanov’s numerous fits of insanity - he was sacked for… er… well, nobody really knows.  Burley has generally suceeded in his English appointments before and after Hearts, and his attacking style of football may suit a Scottish team who are already riding high and could do with continuing to step away from being simply hard to beat and towards being a real force to be reckoned with.

So here’s to the World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign.  And to the forthcoming friendly against Croatia, where it will be interesting to see what sort of game and team Burley plays.

The other exciting news, and probably the thing I have been looking forward to the most in the last few months, is the return of Lost to TV screens.  Season 4 will hopefully resolve some of the mind-blowing cliff-hangers we were left with after season 3, and I absolutely can’t wait to see what happens.  I think the first episode is on something like the 3rd or 4th of February.  Not long to wait…

Oh, and there’s no news about the mystery in my flat.  No evidence of the missing stuff, no further clues, and no further strange happenings.  So far…

Things that go bump in the night

I got up about 9am today, to a somewhat odd scene in the living room.

The first thing that made me notice that all was not as it seemed was when I powered up my computer to put the radio on.  The internet didn’t work, and I realised that the external wireless card (which connects the laptop to my wireless network) was missing (I am currently blogging from my work computer).  The speakers were also unplugged from my own laptop, which I do not remember doing.

Then as I looked round, I noticed one or two other strange things: a couple of dirty dishes that I’d left on the table were moved, and one was on the floor, upside down.  A packet of salami, that had been in the fridge, was sitting on the table (opened, but none extra eaten, I don’t think).  My camera and the wire that connects it to the laptop were missing from the table where I had been uploading photos on to the laptop.  I found the camera on my mantlepiece, and the wire on a bookshelf, along with my iPod which I had left on my sofa.  I checked my camera case, and a memory card and adapter are missing.

Strange, you might think.  I instantly thought that maybe I’d been sleepwalking.  I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, but my body clock has been out of kilter since getting back (I am fine this morning though, thanks for asking) and so who knows what state of mind my subconscious was in.

Then I noticed the cigarette ash on the living room floor, in between the table and the window.

I don’t smoke.  I detest smoking.  Even if my subconscious fancies a sly puff now and then, I don’t possess any smoking materials.  There aren’t even any matches in the flat.  I live miles from the 24 hour Tesco which is the only place I can think of where you can buy cigarettes in the middle of the night.

So maybe I’d been broken into.

Admittedly, I was up briefly at 5am to go to the loo, and I noticed that I’d accidentally left the door was unlocked and the guard chain off, and so I put the guard chain on before going back to bed.

Maybe, I thought, someone had been in the flat between 10pm and 5am, during which I was dead to the world.  And they’d stolen my laptop wireless card, my camera memory card and adapter, and nothing else, moved a few things around, and had a quick smoke.

Surely not?

Perhaps if I have a good hunt around the flat I’ll find all the missing stuff.  But I don’t really have time - I have to catch a train in a couple of hours and am totally unprepared for the next three days’ work down south.  And that still wouldn’t explain the stuff that’s been moved, or the cigarette ash.

So I will just have to endure this slightly unsettled feeling until I get back.

Any ideas?

Jetlag

I’ve been home nearly 24 hours and feel pretty good, although my brain thinks it’s the middle of the night and wants to sleep, despite it being only half past four in the afternoon. I can’t blame my brain’s confusion, though - it’s dark outside already.

To keep myself awake (as if my own enigmatic, charming company was not enough), I’ve been uploading photos and drinking Irn Bru.

Here’s some snaps from Australia, where I spent a week visiting friends before New Zealand. The one above is probably my favourite, although I also like this, this and this one.

Work travels will prevent me uploading New Zealand photos until probably next weekend. Tomorrow afternoon I am heading to Edinburgh in advance of a meeting on Tuesday, then I am in Perth until Thursday night.

Back to reality…

Singapore

One of these days I am going to be in Singapore and not be brain-dead from flights across time zones.  And maybe see something more than just an hour or two of the airport.

Two flights down (Wellington to Sydney and then here), two to go (to London then Inverness).

I’m knackered already so can be fairly sure I’ll sleep well when I get back home.

No amusing anecdotes to regail you with just now, although on my flight out of Wellington I was sharing the plane with the Wellington Phoenix team.  They didn’t recognise me. 

Not that they let on, anyway.

Renaming more stuff

I’m in Blenheim, having a toilet and internet stop (not simultaneously).  It’s the last major town before Picton, and in a couple of hours I will sail from there back to Wellington.  Tomorrow will be my last full day in New Zealand, and I fly back on Friday.

I’ve had a great (though very whistle-stop) tour of the South Island, and I will no doubt rave about how fantastic this country is when I get home, catch up with myself, and upload some photos.

However in the meantime, I think I need to get a rant off my chest - New Zealand needs to rename a whole heap of stuff.

Take the most northerly and southerly provinces: they’re called, wait for it, Northland and Southland.  There’s even an area in Southland referred to as Northern Southland.  I mean come on, surely New Zealanders can be more imaginative than this.  How about calling them the Pointy Bit and the Flat Bit, respectively?

And then there’s the two main components of New Zealand - the blandly-named North Island and South Island.  A poor show from the early settlers, and their descendents should have a go at thinking up better names.  There are, for example, several Kiwi double-acts that you could rename the islands after - Lemon and Paeroa; League and Union; or Fush and Chups.

Or perhaps even Edmund and Hilary, to commemorate the recent death of apparently the most famous New Zealander.

Not that I knew “Sir Ed” was a New Zealander until I got here and found his mug on the five dollar notes (something else that needs a new name - how about calling the currency the Kiwi?).

To be honest, the only famous New Zealanders I could have named before coming here are Helen Clark, the Prime Minister, and the Celtic player Chris Killen (who even then wouldn’t be all that well known over here I guess).

In fact, I reckon I could name more famous Belgians than famous New Zealanders.

Anyway.  Best hit the road again.  One last stretch of driving to go…