Language Barrier Revisited during time of Drought

Still loving it here. Lots to learn and lots to enjoy.

We keep having cloudy evenings with all of the harbingers of impending rain; mare's tail cloud formations (picture included), high humidity, but no measurable rain and the Auckland area is feeling this dearth of water. There is talk of water rationing, but no action yet.  Have planted a few starts and hope to be able to stop watering soon.

Less defined Mare's Tail

Beautiful Mare's Tail

Have found a Spanish class at the local community center and will be happy to start learning again. But right now I'm concentrating on overcoming the language barrier in my NZ community.  Oh my, it's a real struggle at times.  One neighbor suggested a Thai restaurant, which she called Thai 'payshon'.  "Oh" I said, "can you repeat that?"  "Well" she says, "Thailand is a small country in SE Asia, and...."  After the geographical-socio-political description, which I did not interrupt, I asked, "Yes, but what is Payshon? How do you spell it?"   So now she probably thinks I'm illiterate as she responded, payshonately (patiently), "P-a-s-s-i-o-n".  The food was good at the restaurant, expensive for what it was, but good. 

Had friends from work over yesterday for lunch. They discussed the day they spent an hour on line looking for the descriptive 'ig'.  As in 'you are such an ig.'  Finally they called dad at work and he inquired among the locals to discover that this is 'egg' and refers to the young girl being very 'brainy'.  This is at least a positive appellation for one who is language impaired! ;)

Our guests did assure us it is time to apply for our NZ temporary residency to compliment the work visas. Will do that this week and report.

All good, J

Yum Cha or Dim Sum

Lucky Seafood Restaurant

Yum cha (drink tea)

Dim sum (small tastes)

Yesterday I had lunch with two women I’m getting to know here in NZ. They are both intelligent and interesting to me.  One was born and raised in Singapore the other in the Philippines.  With my background being the US it makes for a good mix.  

Ever since taking my first Cultural Anthropology course at 18 and actually meeting Margaret Mead 5 years later I have been hooked on learning about other cultures.  I love the titillation of hearing about mundane practices in other countries, which would be considered quite risque in the US.  Oh there seem to be so many!  This I know harkens back to the puritanical foundation of US history and the veneer to ‘propriety’ proffered by the US media.  More on these perceived differences later right now I’ll concentrate on the wonderful yum cha or dim sum we enjoyed.

The Lucky Seafood Restaurant in Manukau, a suburb of Auckland, has an upstairs dining area with tables set wide enough apart to allow the carts of small tastes of Chinese foods to pass through.  The women pushing the carts are of Asian descent and speak a very little English.  The food is freshly prepared in the kitchen, plated in servings of 3 to 4 and arrives on the table at just the right temperature to enhance the seasonings.  I tasted chicken feet for the first time, and found them to be chewy and savory, with lots of cartilage to feed my nails.  This goes into my ‘everything once’ category.  All of the other tastes were of the typical varieties, but the pièce de résistance was the sesame ball at the end of the meal.  This is a wonderful mixture of oil, salt, and sugar rolled into a deep fried hollow ball of dough with just a dollop of sweet bean mash inside and lovely sesame seeds coating the exterior.  The sesame ball must be eaten warm with a nice hot tea.   

A young woman who works as a hostess told us that one yummy bite had Spanish in it.  Sure enough there were green leaves evident through the translucent steamed dough.  When one of my friends corrected her pronunciation explaining that the bun held spinach not Spanish the young woman was jubilant. "I've learned a new word!" she said with delight.  She said she is from Hong Kong and is obviously working hard to perfect her language skills.  She will do well here.

Off to meet the day with a walk into Howick Village and a few errands.  Laundry on the line, dinner sorted, I feel like a real NZ woman! All is good. J

Kiwis of East Indian descent taking wedding pictures on the beach by our home.

"We’ll Sort You Out!” per ‘NZ Speak’

“It’s good to keep things sorted.” Or a friend who got a dinner from me said, “Thanks for the entre, now one meal is sorted.”

In New Zealand it’s important to be sorted.  That is all ducks in a row, all things taken care of.  So it’s all sorted out, but sorted is just fine as well.

This makes me smile.  Sort is our word of choice when listening to NZ speak.  We were discussing over dinner last night that we are understanding more and interpreting better, but the ‘colloquialisms’ are interesting to us. Kind of like the US Midwest, “Yous guys” or “You betcha!”  Or the Southern "Bold potatoes".

Received a very nice birthday gift from my brother, an Asian year of the horse small metal statue from Thailand.  I’d been looking for one and haven’t been able to find any here  I thought that, as in most countries, the Asian communities have small shops with kitschy items to represent their culture at a small price.  But the only celebratory horses I could find were in the Buddhist Temple gift shop.  These were priced from $100. and I don’t value them that much!  Gold paint on plastic is not my thing. A young Chinese woman from the mainland, a local shop keeper, said that the Chinese don’t pay attention to the ‘superstitions’ about animal years.  I’m wondering if this is true and if the ’49 revolution so changed the mainland’s culture as to diminish these practices.  More questions, more time to ponder, more people to ask,  so happy to be here.  J

Sailing and Meditating

What is the difference between 8 year old kids sailing and a group of adults meditating at the local temple.  The kids were having much more fun.

When I arrived home on Friday afternoon I grabbed my cell phone and took pictures of a group of school kids learning to sail for PE class.  It was wonderful.  They had beached the small boats and were laughing as they tried to get them back onto the water and sailing pleasantly.  New Zealanders pride themselves as sailors and they certainly have the wind and water to enjoy it easily.  They also pride themselves in raising children who value the sport.

Now for the meditation.  We were quite excited to go to the free community meditation group this morning.  I took some cash, assuming the Monks would like a donation, and was justly rewarded.  As we arrived there were about 20 people seated in the waiting area adjacent to a small temple to Buddha.  The female monk, called a nun, took us in, had us sign a ledger and said our donation was $5. each; so much for donations.  I was going to donate anyway, but was fully aware that the young man working with the nun was ‘mindful’ of my placing the $10. note in the donation box.  We then were presented with small candles and told to place them in front of the Buddha and were ushered outside for some morning tai chi.  After this we returned to the chamber adjacent to the small temple and we were then instructed in the art of mindful meditation while walking.  It was good to learn about the technique.  Then the nun lead us around the grounds and into the parking lot, with arms swinging and legs synchronized to her left/right pattern like small ducks following in a neat line.  We were warned not to look around but to keep our thoughts and eyes on the task of walking while meditating.  As I am usually wont to do, I broke with the rules and stepped out of line to strike a bell just to hear it’s sound, and I fully expected the long arm of the religious to strike me as well. (Didn't happen.)  Then we returned to the antechamber and meditated for about 30 minutes in silence.  It was very relaxing.  But the finale was our Buddhist Nun sermonizing for 45 minutes, about 40 minutes too long.  She verbally meandered on about the good of discipline and perils of being a typically greedy current day society member.  Oh my!  I could feel my husband recoiling at the typical ‘Sister Mary Righteous’  lecture as I recoiled at the ‘Monsignor Kiss My Ring’ tirade.  I wonder what the Buddha would have done!

But the grounds are lovely and we’ll go back just to find our own peace.

Sailing is its own meditation!

All good here on a sunny day, J

Four hours difference to Seattle, and I love graphs!

       

Morning sun reflected on nearby bluff

           

With daylight savings time on the mainland US there is a 4 hour time difference shore to shore.  Shortly it will be 5 hours as we move away from daylight savings time here and move further into autumn. Awakened this morning to an outside temperature of 14 centigrade about 57 Fahrenheit.   So we are getting chillier nights.  The days are still a balmy 75F (23.9C ) degrees.  I hope to be able to quickly translate centigrade to sweater, coat or sleeveless weather the way I do Fahrenheit now.  From nursing school I learned to: °C  x  9/5 + 32 = °F

(°F  -  32)  x  5/9 = °C

But that is not really getting the tactile sense of warmth or cold on our skin. This graph helps.

C          F

40.6     105.1

40.4     104.7

40.2     104.3

40.0     104.0

39.8     103.7

39.6     103.3

39.4     102.9

39.2     102.6

39.0     102.2

38.8     101.8

38.6     101.5

38.4     101.2

38.2     100.8

38.0     100.4

37.8     100.1

37.6     99.7

37.4     99.3

37.2     99.0

37.0     98.6

36.0     96.8

35.0     95.0

34.0     93.2

33.0     91.4

32.0     89.6

31.0     87.8

30.0     86.0

29.0     85.2

28.0     82.4

27.0     80.6

I also want to be able to translate these temperatures to baking items in the oven.  Here’s what I know:

Temperature	Celsius	Fahrenheit	Gas Mark
Very Slow	120	250	1/2
Slow	150	300	2
Warm	170	325	3
Moderate	180	350	4
Moderate Hot	190	375	5
Moderate Hotter	200	400	6
Hot	220	425	7
Very Hot	230	450	8

Gas Mark means nothing to me, but the way we travel it may be somehow important in the future. 

Quiet days now with lots of sewing. I'm borrowing a friend’s machine.  As I’ve sewn since I was about 10 years old, making doll clothes, it’s comforting to hear the sound of the machine needle working away on fabric.  My Mom enrolled me in a Singer sewing class at age 12 and I made my first dress.  I still have the merit medal and still love the drone of the machine.  There is a sense of accomplishment in completing projects and living with the results.  Well most of the results anyway.

Off to meet the day and feel good about the results! J