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Published: November 12th 2007
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Hello hello. I know I made fun of the seals and it seems some of you have taken offense to that. Mainly the nature loving hippie's, aka my parents. If I was being completely serious in this blog then I would have gone into the intricacies of their migration and the coldness of the water in relation to their 2 layers of skin. But no I am not really being serious when I call them lazy. I'm making a joke at their expense. But don't worry I'm pretty sure they don't read my travel blog. Like uncle Phil said, they lack opposable thumbs.
So where in the world did we travel these last couple days. We drove south along the coast from Kaikoura to ChristChurch. ChristChurch has a strong European feel to it which means it lacks the Kiwi culture, but it was a nice change of pace. We got into our hostel that had free hi-speed internet! Bonus! That allowed us to catch up on South Park episodes that we missed. Yes, we are true world travelers.
The first day we checked out the botanic gardens and the local art museum. As you can see from the
pictures I am ripping off my dads macro style, but it's ok, it's in my blood. The botanic gardens had some very nice flower displays, an incredible array of trees, a conservatory, and a really weak bonsai exhibit. All in all the gardens were decent, but if thought about in terms of money, they were amazing because they were free. As compared to the Chicago botanic gardens which cost, but are great for the price. Catch 22.
The art museum was celebrating 125 years of New Zealand art, so there was a large contemporary exhibit that both confused and intrigued me, but mainly confused. The art varied from painting to video and to sculpture. One of the cooler pieces was a 7 ft tall golden heart made out of some kind of foil, with all of the continents on it. I couldn't take any pictures of the pieces, but I could take pictures of the building, as you can see.
The next day we checked out the local museum which had some exhibits that we hadn't seen yet thankfully. We have been to many museums and are starting to see the same old stuff. Maori, European settlers, volcanism,
plate tectonics, Moa, etc. It's all very interesting unless you see it in every museum. So luckily we got a small exhibit on Egyptian mummies. I knew most of the info, but one interesting tidbit was that the scarab beetle was somewhat worshiped by the Egyptians because of its behavior. The beetle will roll up a ball of its feces where it then rolls it around with it wherever it goes. It uses it for nutrients and to lay its eggs in throughout its life. The Egyptians believed that it symbolized one of their Gods moving the sun and the moon over their heads, logically concluding that scarab beetles should be revered. I poke fun, but actually I hold the Egyptians in high esteem for how advanced they were for their time.
After the museum we took a ride along the peninsula where we got some spectacular views of the city scape and the coast. There were even some kids hitting golf balls off the ridges. At least they were practicing golf technique.
Yesterday we left ChristChurch and drove 5 hours further south to Dunedin. Dunedin is a college town so we have seen many indications of the
college life. Many bars with live music, cheap food, college kids, all tell tale signs of the college kid. We set up tours for today of the local brewery and the cadbury egg factory. I think today is going to be a vacation for our taste buds 😊
Oh yeah and before I go I saw Blood Diamond last night. I only heard good things from people who had seen it and the reviews were decent as well. However, I thought it was a big shiny piece of crap. I know this is not the popular opinion. If you look at it as strictly an action film then it was decent, but if you look at it as a film that is taking true events and trying to make the viewer feel the pain and the suffering in the region of South Africa, maybe even enough to do something about it, then you don't cast big name actors like Leo Di Caprio and Jennifer Connoly, and then focus on their little love affair, while your side story is the African American trying to get back to his family, who only has a quarter of the screen time Di Caprio
has. Plus you don't have big budget Hollywood style action sequences with crappy editing and cliche dialog. Di Caprio was very good, I give the movie that, but after seeing Hotel Rwanda and then this, comparing them in terms of making you FEEL the atrocities that are happening to the people, then Blood Diamond to Hotel Rwanda is like comparing Windtalkers to Saving Private Ryan.
That was a little bit of a tangent, but I like my movies done well 😊
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Kam the man
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so i just bought anew camera. it's a nikon d40x, and it'll be here on thursday. it's a step down from your dad's d80, but i couldn't shill out an extra 400 hundo for that one, hopefully i won't kick myself in the ass later for that decision. it's a 10.2 megapixel and i'm already super familiar with all the controls so i'm looking forward to getting it. unfortunately it doesn't have secondary status window, which may piss me off a lot, but we'll see. so what's with all these macro shots? are you trying to make all the small people in the world feel even smaller? you would. i want more girls gone wild in churches pictures. that's where the real action is at.