Life in Timaru- Our Neighborhood

Today was the first day clear enough to see the snow-capped Southern Alps that are the western backdrop to Timaru.

I knew they were there, but could only see them distinctly today. The Pacific is to the east, small hills to the north and south, and the Alps to the west. The hospital is six stories high and has great views to all directions. My office window overlooks the Botanic Gardens, a beautiful wooded section across the street from our house. There are two ponds,

an aviary, a play ground, a consevatory and fernery, a bowling green,

a statue of the Scottish poet Robert Burns,

and the ubiquitous cenotaph. There are lot of these around, and to be fair, I had to look it up in Wikipedia myself, and I quote: "A cenotaph is a tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον (kenos, one meaning being "empty", and taphos, "tomb")."

Living in Timaru suits us quite well. It is not a tourist destination; travelers usually pass by here on their way to elsewhere. It is a town of genuine working unassuming Kiwis, but as you can tell from this and previous posts it has much to recommend it; the mountain and ocean views, Caroline Bay, many good restaurants and cafes. With its location in the middle of the South Island, nothing here is too far away, but being on the coast, we don't have the ice and cold the inland does. Last week was the rainiest in 35 years here, but nothing like what we are used to in Fort Bragg. To many people, coming here is to go to a smaller town, but not when you come from Fort Bragg. It is a pleasant 15-20 minute walk to a nice (but not flashy) downtown area;

it has a good movie theater, library, art gallery, and museum, several handsome older churches. As an aside, the museum has a recreation of  a machine a local man, Richard Pearse, may have flown in March 1903, before the Wright Brothers.

This thing looks unlikely to have flown to me, and I don't think even the natives think he did this. Ex Post facto oral history includes this item: "Two young girls, the Fraser sisters, remember arranging a pile of potatoes so they could 'pelt that crank Pearse' if he flew near them."  Amusing, in a Monty Pythonesque way. There is more than enough to keep Fayne and I entertained and engaged for the next six months.
This is a very comfortable place for us, especially as we settle in more. We are adapting to make our home warmer (lack of central heating is a British tradition). Everyday, we notice little things missing, things that we generally have tons of at home. We couldn't ship everything here, and we spent much of the last four months thinning out our possessions. For each item (slippers, clock radio, DVD player, etc.) we have to decide how important is it to our comfort for the next six months; do we start re-accumulating or do without.
To be honest though, our life here is a little odd. It is very much like life at home, but 20% askew, like a parallel universe. (Not really Bizarro World- that has a negative connotation.). The climate is very similar but colder. They speak "English", but not really. First of all, you will hear every kind of accent imaginable, especially from all corners of the former British Commonwealth and Asia. The New Zealand accent itself must be the strangest of all English dialects. They seem on their way to eliminating all short vowels. For example, "better" is pronounced "beeter". When one doctor said "I am looking for a simple keess", he didn't mean "kiss" but "case". And they usually speak very rapidly. At least once a day, I will be standing at a register, and the smiling clerk will pleasantly rattle off something completely incomprehensible to me. I take my best guess as to whether it is "do you have our discount card?", "paper or plastic?", or "enough rain for you?". I too smile and say either "yes" or "no" and hope it is either the correct answer or is taken as a jovial answer ironically opposite of the right answer. People don't seem to notice.
People told me before I came here "its like turning back the clock 30 years". There is something to that, but that too is a little off. They do constantly play popular music from the 60's and 70's, and many TV shows of that era are shown ("Magnum, PI" anyone?), but there is also Oprah and Letterman and American Idol, and new movies. Depressingly, there are also news stories of drugs, alcohol, crime, gangs, oil spills, etc.
Also, they do drive on the other side of the road here, and it is tomorrow (compared with the good old USA).
Foreign travel is a much different experience now than it was even 5-10 years ago. We can and do talk to and see our daughter Sofia and Granddaughter Kimarra (BTW, did you know she is the most special baby in the whole world?) nearly daily via cell and Skype, and I also call my mother weekly. It is still very far away, but time and space are warped.
Enough musings for now.
PS-A final shout-out to my Best Man, David Nishikawa. A few weeks back, I posted a mostly black nocturnal non-flash image allegedly of a kiwi bird. David "adjusted" the photo electronically to bring out a somewhat impressionistic image of the elusive avian. Bravo, David!

PPS- We have been watching "The Flight of the Conchords"...it is twice as funny after having been in NZ. We especially enjoyed the episodes with the Prime Minister and "Little New Zealand".