42 days and counting...

Autumn has arrived here in New Zealand and I notice that I'm increasingly thinking about returning to Finland. 42 days and counting by my reckoning. During the last 2 months there's been little time for blogging activity in the way that I managed in January and February. That can also be read as an effect of me getting off my butt more and moving around this amazing land. I've also found it more sociable to use Facebook and Twitter (or both combined) to tell briefly what I've been doing and where I've been.

I have now amassed thousands upon thousands of images which are already archived on 1TB disks but which also need lots of editing. And soon I need some more disks it seems. I've got funding from the Finnish Art Council to make on exhibition this year so that's my artistic aim no.1 for the time being. The most rewarding part of the sabbatical has been, for me, to get back into working as a photographer. That has been both a creative and technical challenge as so much has changed since I was an active photographic artist in the late 80s and early 1990s. I always joked in recent years that I was master of Photoshop version 1.0.7. Digi photo pioneers will understand the joke, and the challenge I've had to catch up.

My research subject, which, described roughly, was location based media services in New Zealand has also been quite a challenge. But at least I've been learning why state of the art mobile media services are not yet developed here. Similarly the whole Broadband development here seems to still be years behind many other Western countries. The new New Zealand government has pledged to make huge improvements but, then again, so did the government before them. My meeting with experts and officials will continue till the end of May.

TK (my wife for those that don't know) was here and left back for Finland again last week :-( So it's back to lonely bachelor life again, this time in an increasingly chilly house on the side of Mount Vic. Last night I rummaged through the cupboard in the bedroom and uncovered an electric blanket. Cold and lonely....and suffering from a bad back. Miserable me.

Looking towards mass media for escape, comfort and uplifting experiences I braved the wind last night and went to see Slumdog Millionaire at last. OK, everyone has already seen that ages ago, I know. It is a great film and it brought back personal memories of the Mumbai slums from my visit there in 2007. And I was wondering whether the same notion can be applied to the country, India, and this film. They say that India defies definition and, typically, 'that whatever you say about India, the opposite is also true'. I was thinking that maybe this is really saying that, in a nation where there really are just so many people, so many more and so tightly packed into those major sprawling centres that, really, everything happens, can happen and will happen. But, as we know and fear, it's usually the bad and sad things that happen. I really thought that Jamal should have failed on the last question. The ending was just so Hollywood, getting the cash AND the girl.

Returning home and with nothing decent on TV I was somehow sucked into the euphoria surrounding the relatively recent appearance of unemployed 47-year old Scottish spinster, Susan Boyle singing a song from Les Miserables on Britain's Got Talent; heart warming with 5 stars.

This morning, re-chilled, when I checked the viewing stats on YouTube again it seems that her performance is about to become the most viewed audiovisual performance in Internet history to date. I still haven't seen a picture of her cat, Pebbles, but surely that will come. Only 10 days after her 'jaw dropping' vocal performance Susan Boyle and her story is extremely well documented in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Boyle. I also noted that some people are advertising to non-British residents that they are 'setting up' ways for them to vote for Susan Boyle in the next rounds of Britain's Got Talent. It's all quite fascinating in terms of Media business: Global media companies doing 'nationally-based' business (revenue on nationally restricted voting mechanisms) with TV but distributing those shows globally later (strengthening their brand and supporting record sales) now being challenged by the power of Internet-based social media for immediate access to the shows (non-restricted viewing) and also the possibility to influence the outcome of the competitions (non-restricted voting possibilities). If I were a TV executive I might start employing people to calculate different business models because...over 100 million people on the Internet around the world, in less than 2 weeks, wanting to view and support a 47 year old, unknown Scottish woman in a talent show might have some implications!?

The Flight of Dean and TK by ferry to Abel Tasman

My blogging has become extremely inefficient lately. Truth is that I've been rather busy and, perhaps more importantly, it seems a better use of my limited time here to be out and about, instead of stuck in front of a computer.

TK arrived from Finland on Monday afternoon, luckily only 10 minutes late this time. This morning, March 19th, we are sailing off to South Island again. This trip we shall not travel thousands of kilometres by road but shall limit ourselves to adventures in and around the Abel Tasman National Park in the northern part of South Island. The park is said to be one of the most beautiful in New Zealand and gives great opportunities for trekking by foot, boat or kayak. We plan to try all three modes.

I don't expect to find any phone or wireless networks there so e-mailing, tweeting and blogging will be on hold till next week. The weather forecast for the next days in that region is pretty good (unlike most of New Zealand) so we are looking forward to some active exploration and a few thousand more photo opportunities.

Deliverance

This post intersects the ongoing diary of our South Island tour with coverage of a Sunday afternoon walk in the Rimutaka Forest Park. Despite the weather forecasts of last week this weekend was surprisingly pleasant and made it possible for me to enjoy outdoor concerts in Wellington, part of the Wellington Jazz Festival on Saturday, as well as an afternoon walking in Rimutaka on Sunday.
As Mikko (a student of Media Lab here on study exchange) and myself didn't make it out to the park until after 15.00 it was decided we would make the 90 minutes walk to the Orongorongo river. Regular followers may remember that this has been the subject of an earlier post in which yours truly took a wrong turn on the ridge track and found himself 6 kms downstream from where he should have been, with somewhat tricky and sweaty consequences.

The sun was high in the sky and the only aim was to enjoy the scenery, capture some nice images and have a picnic lunch at the river before taking the same route back. And that is what we did, without mishaps and detours. In fact the river was so inviting that I was compelled to throw myself into it once we arrived, the cool relentless current washing me off downstream, at least for a few metres.

The return walk was more leasurely, mainly due to the improved quality of light in the early evening and the photo opportunities that arose. The river track takes you through various forest types, each with their own particular character. It is not surprising that this track is sometimes noted as being the most popular short walk in the Wellington region. Despite that we only met about 25 or so other trekkers during the entire afternoon including three rifle carrying lads and a dog at the river. No jokes about moonshine stills were made. Well, fortunately they didn't look like the Georgia hillbillies from John Boorman's Deliverance ;-)








Towards the final section of track a lone walker approached us from behind enquiring whether we had working phones with us. But, as we expected, there was no phone network to be found there. Peter explained he, an Englishman, had been staying in the valley campsite the night before but, today, on his trek to the peak of one of the nearby hills had become lost due to the lack of sufficient signage up there. (This all had a very familiar ring to it ;-) He had ended up on the river, 5 kms from where he should have been, was forced to make his way along and over the river for 5 kms in order to reach the track again. Because of this had missed the chance to catch the bus back into Wellington.

We were very happy to help him out, of course. The irony of the situation was not confined to the fact that we had found a(nother) lost Englishman in Rimutaka but that he was also sporting a Weta Digital teeshirt, advertising his employer. Weta is one of the key companies here in the New Zealand creative industries, the core of my research at Victoria university. So, I had found my first local contact in Weta at last and in very amusing circumstances. The arse rocket was waiting in the car park and the cold beer I'd bought on the way out to the park was still very cool in the boot - a tasty reward after the afternoon's exercise.

Gold diggers and Glacier riders

This post may take some time to re-organise. I am more than a little frustrated, trying to make blog posts from home. Despite upgrading my Telecom NZ ADSL contract I honestly have to say that the experience of 'broadband' here is bringing back memories of the days of ISDN connections in Finland well over 10 years ago. Well, actually, that was quite reliable but slow compared to our modern-day broadband. The ADSL here is just totally unreliable and slow. The worst 'feature' is that my net connection actually drops off the Internet totally about once every ten minutes! So whatever process is happening then it's time to start again from zero. Things are a little better at the university so I expect I'll have to complete my blog posts there next week.

This post is about day 3 of our recent trip to South Island. We left Hokitika and continued heading South down State Highway 6 towards the Southern Alps and made our first stop at the old gold mining town of Ross. The Ross gold fields were famous within the gold rush of the 1860s but the majority of gold mining activity ended already in the early 1870s. Ross provides good opportunities for visitors to explore the spirited days of the gold rush when, for example, there was so much gold being dug that successful miners were seen lighting cigars with bank notes in the saloons and the largest nugget found, the Roddy Nugget, was used as a doorstop in a hotel. I also heard that some geologists believe that the town (village?) is actually still sitting on a mass of gold deposits and that 'it would be a good idea' to bulldoze the whole place and mine it thoroughly. The residents of Ross are, no doubt, of a different opinion.









After briefly experiencing the modern-day landscape of Ross and its photo opportunities we continued down route 6. The forests became more exotic and the huge pastures were familiar from the picture book images of New Zealand we've all seen.



It's interesting to remember that this is all man made and that those massive solitary trees in the fields were once a part of an all embracing diverse forest cover that stretched from the high mountains to the sea. The drive is, anyway, very pretty and soon we are heading up towards the mountains, crossing numerous one-way road bridges, driving through canyons and over passes with endless hairpin bends.



We took a detour to the end of Franz Josef glacier, one of the two most famous here. There were a lot of cars and buses in the car park but the people soon get well dispersed along the various paths to the viewing decks and walkways along the valley.



Even from a distance the glacier was impressive, somewhat 'dirty', but impressive. We continued on into the Fox Glacier village, a hub for outdoor activities of all kinds in the area. The weather was clearing and while we had lunch outside people we being briefed in front of the store next to the cafe on how to be good passengers on a helicopter trip. There were lots of advertising signs for helicopter and small plane trips in the region. It was very tempting. Tarja and Tessa got more interested and soon, while they ate, I had managed to book us a flight for later that afternoon; 40 minutes flying up Fox glacier, around Mount Cook and then down along Franz Josef glacier and back to the airfield. There was also a possibility to land on the glacier, weather permitting.

We were driven to the airfield on the outskirts of the village, home to the 20 or so helicopters working in the valleys there. This makes the airspace in the glaciers relatively busy. Pilots negotiate their routes by talking to each other constantly. Flying along the edge of the ridges, dodging heavy clouds and the surprising blasts of updraft from the hills, flying here is not for the faint hearted.

The flight was fantastic, the best I've ever experienced. We were all very happy even though the cloud prevented us from landing on the high slopes. That meant that we had more time to fly and also take in the slopes of Mount Tasman as well as Mount Cook. We also got to circle above one of New Zealand's highest waterfalls, depositing masses of frosty water down into the depths of the glacier. I can't help thinking that we should really get fit enough to make some of the long treks here, to see some of these wonders close up and stride those majestic ridges up towards the glacial peaks. The helicopter is just too easy, almost an ethereal experience. After landing I can't help wondering whether that all just happened. Too much for the senses in 40 minutes! Luckily I have about 500 images to remind ourselves it was real. Here are a few examples.





































After the exhilarating flight we decided to stretch our legs with a visit the end of Fox Glacier, despite the fact we were well behind schedule and were uncertain of where we would stay that night. The stones along the valley were extraordinary and TK collected a few examples for her collection.





The sun was dropping slowly in the sky as we headed further south and, luckily, as the last threads of gold stretched across the pastureland before us we came to a charming but rather desolate farmyard holiday chalet site, just before Jacobs River. The accommodation was fine and we soon hit the sack in preparation for the long drive across the hills to Queenstown the next day.