Seasons, Shortages, and Aisle Seats

In New Zealand, we turned the clocks back this weekend -- it seems like a sort of April Fool’s joke that seasons officially change here on the first days of months rather than according to the earth’s tilt relation to the sun. The observable effect is the same: the days are shortening and the air is no longer filled with the scent of bloom and growth.  My short-sleeved tops were thrown back in the suitcase a few weeks ago, and the weather is becoming, as they charmingly say here, unsettled. The wind and rain that flooded Fiji last week is heading to New Zealand, and let’s face it, I can have wind and rain at home, where I can also hug Bill, pet my cats, and camp out in my studio.

So I’m heading to the airport today. Call me crazy (or, more precisely, a tad homesick) but I’m looking forward to sitting in my cattle class aisle seat and scrolling through the choice of movies that will divert me before the Ambien and the magic of chemistry allows me to wake in San Francisco. Whenever I’m faced with a long flight I think about how The Future we were promised as little baby boomettes never eventuated. How I’d like to say “Beam me up,” and arrive home in minutes, where an army of automated devices would free me for more leisure time to ride my jet pack. The future we got, the one with Skype and GPS and books being read to me on a device no larger than a pat of butter, is equally fantastic, of course, but there are moments when I still pine for my robot maid and paperless society (except for the paper of books, which I’m not yet ready to give up).

Back in the present here in the land that’s like home but not quite like home, what Kiwis are learning to live without for the foreseeable future is Marmite. Yes, almost as scary a prospect as the incoming blow from Fiji is the run on the salty, smelly, slightly sweet spread that Kiwis prefer on their morning toast.  The production glitch is yet another aftershock of Christchurch’s earthquakes, and it was reported as if the switch to Vegemite, which is produced in Australia, might result in a national identity crisis. So some things are indeed just like home, including the media which can manufacture high drama over the shortage of brown sludge. No Kiwi I talked to seems to be concerned with the empty spot on the grocery shelf where Marmite used to be, but the papers do seem concerned about that potential hole on page 2.

My bags are packed and I’m happy to head home, in small part because I have next year’s return to the Southern Hemisphere on my calendar and passion fruit preserves in my bag. But don’t blame me for the dearth of Marmite in NZ, because I promise you, there just wasn’t room for any of it in my suitcase.

Currencies and Conversations

David Unaipon, Aboriginal author, inventor and political leader.

When my taxi left the Melbourne airport and whisked me downtown, we rode on highways large enough to feel at home in Southern California to a city which recently rediscovered its waterfront, building tall new business headquarters while managing to preserve some heritage buildings and some green space. A city with pretty good public transportation, a growing bicycle presence, and a happy opinion of itself, which is shared by much of the rest of the nation. A place a lot like, say, Portland – and you think, this is a very American place.

But then you notice the British spelling of colour and centre, the teens in their anachronistic school uniforms more at home in mid-century Oxford, the Union Jack on the Southern-Cross festooned flag,  and Queenie on the five dollar bill and you think, oh, this is a very British sort of city.

The desire to file a new experience under something I already understand can be an impediment to learning very much about the new place I’m in. Australia is neither the US nor the UK, as a slightly more thoughtful look around the place reveals. My “look around the place” usually starts with its visual and literary arts, but when I really start paying attention, I notice clues in less obvious places. Take the Australian currency, for example. Old Queen Bess is indeed on the fiver, but the other denominations feature a socialist poet, the author of Waltzing Matilda, the founder of the flying doctors, a woman who arrived in Australia as a convict and went on to business success, an educator and an Aboriginal icon. A balance of women and men, and even a nod to the people who received none of this currency (or any preceding one) to pay for the land that used to be theirs. Writers and activists, populist songwriters, and not a politician among them. Does that give us a clue about the culture?

After a few days of wandering and mentally storing up cultural confusions, I am grateful to have a class full of smart women to bring my questions to. When I asked them for a list of Australian books and movies I shouldn’t miss, they provided not only their lists, but their reasons why the films and writings were important. Some of the women were weary of the stereotyped outback Ozzie in movies like Crocodile Dundee, one wanted the world to know that most Australians lived in urban environments and thought “the outback is as boring as batshit.” The books and films dealt with modern issues of immigration, the history of their native people, the skew-whiff Australian sense of humor, and the penchant for gritty true-crime dramas.

But here’s the interesting part of the conversation: after the women recovered from their surprise of having been asked, my questions made them think about their country in a way they hadn’t in a while, and their thoughtful answers expanded my understanding of their society. Books, films, art work, even currency are good paths into understanding, but conversations with intelligent women are high speed freeways.

Our discussions made me think about how my travel is changing as I age: no more backpackers digs for me, and no more shared loos at the end of the hall. And it isn’t just how I travel that has changed;  why I travel has changed as well. I used to travel to see a work of art, a view from the sea, a building that had witnessed huge historical shifts. It’s the people who fascinate me the most now -- the conversations they include me in and the cultures they create. It does help, I admit, if the cultures they’ve created yielded interesting art work and chose to locate near an ocean view. Throw in the ability to make a good decaf trim flat white and I’ll be happy to book a ticket.

Waiheke Island

Or 72,800 seconds 

Uber--precise sign seen today at the Waiheke Island ferry terminal.

My classes are over, so I took advantage of a blue sky day to sail to Waiheke Island. Wouldn't you?

Mussels and kumara chips at the imaginatively titled Beach Front Cafe on Onetangi Beach

We Officially Welcome You To Australia, Sort Of

The Official Seal of Australia

What do you do to make your home secure, but still welcoming to guests? I had almost two hours to ponder this question as I waited in the “Other Visitors” Customs queue at the Melbourne airport. When my Kiwi friend Ailie and I rolled off the plane and saw a line snaking up almost to the end of our terminal, we wondered what kind of huge tour group had just disembarked from what giant aircraft. I rolled my bag of quilts through the terminal, up through the ubiquitous Duty-Free shops, chatting with Ailie and glancing at the line, trying to figure out what kind of tour group would appeal to 50 Japanese teenage boys, a group of Muslim women, and a patchwork of Asians, Europeans and North Americans of all ages and colors. Then I looked up to the signs instructing Ailie to head to the left, to the short line for Australian and New Zealand passport holders, and me to the right, being one of the “Other Visitors.” I looked to the right, and the light dawned. Yes, I would have to head to the right, but I’d also have to head back down into the terminal, past the group of Japanese teens, past the polyglot crowd who had not in fact signed up for a multicultural tour of Oz, to the end of the now even longer line in the Customs Twilight Zone.

      

 

Killing and stuffing the animals honored on your nation's official seal to create a life-size diorama of it is the definition of either irony or cluelessness.

Two hours in a queue without access to a book or other amusement gave me lots of time to watch people perseverate over Angry Birds or ignore the prominently displayed no cell phone placards to call friends who apparently needed a description of the length of the line in which they were standing (advice to cell phone users: being bored in a purgatorial line does not give you license to call someone to describe your boredom). It also gave me time to compare my various experiences in Customs. The first few times we arrived in NZ, back in the 90’s, the Auckland terminal was small and funky and manned by volunteers offering you travel info and a cuppa while you waited for your passport to be stamped and your luggage to be sniffed. The Customs agent in Amsterdam joked with me about why I was attempting to show him my passport when he was simply waving me through. Post 9-11, I had been so schooled about the perils of joking with uniformed officials in airports that it was a few beats before I realized he was waiting for a laugh rather than an explanation. Then there was the mobile Customs agent on the bus into Switzerland from Lake Como who disappointed me by not stamping my passport at all. Here’s just another experience, I told myself as the minutes slogged by in the under lit, barely air conditioned Melbourne queue. I began to hope for a bit of excitement, perhaps an appearance of the security force the placards threatened would come and fine anyone using a cell phone – especially since the fines could easily have bankrolled the salary of a few more Customs agents to move us through at a less deathly pace.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the Tourism Boards who spend a mint enticing visitors to enter the country could work hand in hand with the government employees who comprise the first impression of your visit? It’s a bit like extending increasingly plaintive invitations to a friend to visit, then going off for a bit of a ramble, leaving your socially awkward third cousin at home and not telling him to expect a guest.

While morphing the seal to provide instructions on the use of a hand dryer might be the definition of the Australian sense of humor.