Mootpoint

So, I’ve arrived and the travel has officially begun. Wonder who won/lost all those bets on whether I’d ever leave? Not that, I note, anyone came to make sure I actually got on the damn plane!

Monday was a mammoth day of travel, not helped by some poor connecting flight booking action which saw me spend a good seven or so hours in the international Terminal at Auckland Airport. Not the most exciting place on earth, but perhaps one of the few (as Tim has also noticed) that doesn’t sell chewing gum. Now you know.

The trip up from Christchurch was actually pretty smooth, and included a bonus stopover at Wellington (awesome flight booking skillz, seriously) which gave just enough time for a hurried coffee and goodbye with Will. At Auckland, a rather less hurried coffee and goodbye was had with Ben, Jude, Mark and Daz, who were all nice enough to drive me between terminals (avoiding the sun-shower, or sun-rain, or whatever we decided it was in the end) and keep me company for a bit.

But the real highlight of the day had to be the thirteen hour flight from Auckland to San Francisco. Ooo yeah, I’d forgotten how much fun sitting in a seat for that long can be. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone sitting between me and some old guy from San Diego who lost interest in any conversation before the plane had left the tarmac, so the trip was a lot more comfortable than it might otherwise have been, physically and socially. The food was nice, the movies were cool, and I managed to snatch about three hours sleep in total.

Lis met me at the airport, and we drove in to San Francisco (after I figured out how to use, or at least avoid the panic reaction induced by, the electronic seat belts WTF? I mean really…) to meet her flatmate (Inbal) and go check out the place we’re house-sitting for the next few days. It’s very, very cool – everything there is definitely in its right place. Wine drinking, chatting, listening to and swapping music, and general laying around was the order of the day until we finally realised we were hungry, and a late (c.1 am) dinner was had. Turns out that as Lis had just got back from Mexico, and I’d just flown in from New Zealand, the power of our jet lags combined meant our bodies thought it should probably be about 2 in the afternoon next Thursday.

All up it meant my travel day was about 36 hours long with about six hours of sleep at most sprinkled throughout. I’ve since decided to get over the jet lag by completely ignoring all signals my body is sending me. Seems to be working so far.

Yesterday was the first real day in the city, and it involved breakfast with friends (David and Valentin), and many, many hours of walking through (what I assume are) typical San Francisco neighbourhoods. The houses are very cool, especially the wrought iron gates to the little entrance ways/courtyards just off the street (which I’ll get some photos of before I go), but I guess the most surprising thing was the sheer number of New Zealand native plants dotted throughout. The streets are literally lined with pohutukawa and cabbage trees, in darker corners there are pungas, and the occasional broadleaf can be found in gardens as you walk past. It’s quite weird, but also kind of excellent, to see what I’ve always considered “native” in a context that renders it “exotic”. Fellow travelers in this whole overseas expedition thing I’ve gone and signed myself up for, easing me into being away from home.

The walk took us up to Upper Haight (pronounced “Hate”), through a variety of used clothing stores, past some fantastic houses and beautiful parks and into at least one cool little coffee shop. The latter is just one reason why I’ve been very quickly disabused of the “You won’t be able to find decent coffee in the States” notion I was primed with before I left – espresso is everywhere, and its been pretty good so far… you just have to make sure you ask for espresso specifically, cos if you ask for coffee, it comes in a pot.

Ha ha! Filtered.

The evening involved another bottle of wine, more music, and more new people to meet (Uriel). Cool conversation commenced, and only occasionally veered into incomprehensible linguistic territory, during which I made myself useful, foraging for food and cleaning kitchens and the like. Speaking of being incomprehensible, it turns out I speak differently to Kiwis than to non-Kiwis, such that when I spoke to Lis, my accent and style of speaking changed to the point that Uriel (an Israeli with excellent English), who could understand me perfectly when I talked directly to him, could barely understand a word I was saying. Not all that surprising, but definitely interesting to have it pointed out while in the company of linguists.

Anyway, the upshot of all this talking was that it’s been decided that I will become Lis’ life coach, for a nominal fee plus airfares out to wherever she might be in future. Although keeping up with her jet-setting ways may prove somewhat tiring, one suspects.

Today we’ve come out to Stanford so I can explore (which I’ve largely failed at, hence this blog and a string of emails some of you may have received) yet another campus. My impressions of it are that it is big, and rich, and quite pretty, in an incredible standardised, stylised, almost sterile kind of way (I’m going to wander a bit more later, and take some pictures, and find some distinctive coolness about the place to try and combat this impression). I’ve also noticed that regardless of how it looks on the outside, inside it would seem to be just another university, with that same university corridor feel, and that same university smell. I’m beginning to think campuses (campi? I don’t know if this word exists, but it’s much cooler, and as Tyra suggested, does sound like it should involve sauteeing in butter. Which would undeniably make university a tastier, more fattening, place to be. But I digress…) are my natural environment. I’ve yet to decide quite how sad this is, given I don’t really want to be an academic.

I’ve also decided to start taking photos of those blue and red US teen movie party cups. I’ve already seen a few lying about the place, and I think finding these in their natural environs will be a much more satisfying form of photographic essay than simply taking pictures of monuments and the like. So hopefully I’ll find a few more on my travels over the next few weeks, otherwise my cunning plan will be for nought.

Oh, and in case people haven’t clicked on any of the links above, photos from here and other parts of the trip can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/masonnic/, a site which will almost certainly be updated more often than this blog, as I’m way more paranoid about losing my photos than forgetting to write screeds about the daily minutiae of traveling from campus to campus around the globe.

Update: So, it would appear that cabbage trees and pohutukawa are in fact considered invasive species in many places around the world now. Seems only fair, given the number of invasive plant species New Zealand has to deal with.