Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Scattershooting

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Peter Deloise. Some more random things I've been thinking about.

-The stars at night may be big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, but they seem to be much more plentiful deep in the heart of the highlands of Central Otago. Never have I seen more stars. Nor have I ever seen the Milky Way more clearly. Absolutely stunning. And speaking of stars, familiar constellations such as Orion, are upside down here--it's kinda weird.

-Do fingernails grow more quickly in the Southern Hemisphere? I've found that I need to clip them more frequently here.

-I heard this little nugget the other day: "It's all a matter of perspective. To an earthworm, digging in the garden is much more enjoyable than fishing."

-It's a funny thing about money. When I first got here, the price of things had no real intrinsic meaning to me. I was constantly trying to do the math--based on the current exchange rate with the US Dollar--to figure out what things were "worth." But even then, I found myself spending fairly indiscriminately. But now that I have an income (such as it is) in Kiwi Dollars, prices have a whole new (and very real) meaning to me. When you only make $12.50 an hour, all of a sudden that $11 for takeaway fish and chips and a Coca-Cola means something very real.

-We've been doing a lot of "bunch thinning" at the vineyard this week. Bunch thinning is when you remove smaller, less-ripe bunches from the vines so as to remove their energy drain from the plants so the already bigger and more-ripe bunches can get even more so. It's a very Spock-like philosophy: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

-I drove the vineyard truck for the first time today, and with a bed full of people... I stalled out. It was quite embarrassing, and I took a pretty good ribbing for it. I mean, I know how to drive a stick. I drove a stick for years. But in my defense, I've never had the shifter to my left. It took some getting used to. Thank goodness all the peddles were at least in the same relative position.

-"Would you fancy a cuppa tea?" I've come to really enjoy being asked that question because I've come to really enjoy drinking tea. "That would be lovely. Milk, one sugar, please." And it got me to wondering why the English custom of tea drinking never really caught on in America like it did in all the other lands colonized, or once ruled, by the Brits. It was that whole Boston Tea Party thing, wasn't it?

-Given my new-found respect for the price of goods, I bought the generic, store-brand Muesli (read, granola) cereal from the supermarket the other day. The store-brand name: "Sanitarium." Am I nuts, or is that a crazy name for breakfast cereal?

Cheers!

1 comment:

  1. If you're nuts, then Sanitarium is the perfect name for your cereal.

    ReplyDelete