Category Archives: Observatory

The earthquake

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I was at Shinjuku Station when it started swaying. Shinjuku Station is said to be the busiest train station in the world – two million people pass through it every day.

I was with my friend James, and we were planning on catching the Yamanote train to Harajuku to check out all the crazy pop culture. But then the swaying happened.

It felt like the earthquake simulator at Te Papa. It wasn’t the sort of gentle Wellington quake that I’m used to. It was this weird swaying, like standing on a platform on top of a giant spring.

It actually took a little while to figure out that it was an earthquake and not a random Japanese public transport bump. When I realised, I headed for a wall, fearful of debris, though the building seemed to be intact. My mental what-if earthquake plan, formulated post-Christchurch, was put into full effect.

After the swaying stopped – except it didn’t so much stop as just slow down -I noticed that everyone around was not paniced or freaking out. There was a general sense of calmness.

We headed up to the platform for the Yamanote train. The train was there at the station, but just sitting there, doors open, people inside. A station guard made regular announcements over the PA, but they were all in Japanese. A woman on the platform asked if we spoke English, and explained that all services had been cancelled. Hey, thanks!

Another announcement was made and suddenly everyone on the platform left. We followed, not really sure where to go.

Leaving the station, a large group of people were stood staring up at a public TV playing the news channel, watching the almost unbelievable scenes unfolding.

The streets outside the station were full of people. They were calmly walking along, in two neat lanes. I’d guess they were in normal rush hour pedestrian protocol, only it wasn’t normal rush hour.

I wanted to sit down and just have a steady floor. We decided to look for a Starbucks and – as if by magic – we turned a corner and there was one.

In New Zealand, I don’t normally go to Starbucks but this time it was absolutely where I needed to go. I ordered a big ol’ grande latte, took a seat and just took a little comfort in that warm, milky beverage.

We ended up walking to the hotel of my friend and Tokyo resident Matt’s parents (Air New Zealand’s cheap flights had lured four of us over here). The lift is out of order, but the hotel has power, water and – importantly – heating.

Getting only snippets of news from my iPhone, I wasn’t really sure of what was going on in the rest of the country. TV news revealed a fuller, awful picture.

At the moment we’re sitting around eating snacks from the local konbini (convenience store), and having beers. And man, a beer is welcome.

Having internet has been great – being able to quickly send messages to many on Twitter and Facebook is a valuable service. But I am aware that this is a luxury of such a modern, wired country as Japan.

Yesterday I was planning to take the shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka, but now those plans don’t seem so possible. Now I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow.

QLD5: Cruising through the jungles of QLD

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North of Brisbane is the Sunshine Coast, though when I was there it was getting a reputation as the Rain Coast. It had been raining a lot in October, and the wet earth contributed to the devastating flooding a few months later.

But on the day I visited the Sunshine Coast, it was a lovely sunshiny day. My bro and I rented a car and went for an explore up the coast.

Now, that's cool

There were no specific plans, and our first stop ended up being the seaside town of Coolum. It’s a bit resorty, but Mondays in October were obviously not the busy season.

In fact, it all felt a bit like a beach that under normal circumstance would have been a lush tropical destination, but due to all the other neighbouring lush tropical beaches, it was just another nice beach, having to be content with its ordinary reputation. Well, at least they don’t have to rake the sand for needles.

Thrillingly, a sign by a car park in Coolum warned of it being “swooping bird territory” during “breeding season”, but didn’t actually say when the season was. It was like an avian form of Russian roulette – was it breeding season? Would my head get some unwanted bird love? Visitors were advised to wear a hat or umbrella to help ward off those frisky birdies.

Actually, the different fauna was really interesting. The protected but annoying ibis is the scourge of outdoor cafe seating. Walking along the riverbank I’d see exotic creatures like the Australian water dragon hanging out on the footpath, and the Sunshine Coast introduced me to bush turkey down by the beach.

Bush turkey

That bush turkey’s beach was Noosa Heads, which is a lovely tropical beach and/or a vile tourist resort. On one hand, you can enjoy an ice cream down by the beach or browse the local bookshop. On the other hand, you can go to the Hugo Boss shop and buy a suit, because obviously buying a suit is what one goes to a subtropical beach to do.

Ugh. Noosa Heads is a bit rubbish, but that’s its thing. What’s more fun is cruising down the Sunshine Motorway listening to King Kurt’s 1983 psychobilly classic “Destination Zululand“, singing along with half-remembered lyrics distorted by 25 years.

We stopped off at the Buderim Ginger Factory (after previously discovering that it’s not actually located in Buderim) and toured the ginger factory and stocked up on various ginger products (including some marmalade that ended up putting my suitcase 1kg over the weight limit, which I had to pay extra for. Boo.)

And so we returned to Brisbane, passing under Steve Irwin Way and paying respects to the Crocodile Hunter and/or stingrays.

Now, if turns out, I didn’t just have a wee Queensland holiday. I was able to experience some of the best bits of it before they were munted by the floods. The next time I return, it’s going to be to a different state.

Art vs moisturiser

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I have a semi-regular gig as the Senior Culture Commentator and Wellington Correspondent on The Discourse Weekly Show podcast, hosted by two of my favourite dudes, Morgan and Ben.

The lads gave me an assignment: to review the European Masters exhibition at Te Papa. But here’s my dilemma – and this is a massive secret and you have to promise not to tell anyone, ok – I don’t actually know anything about art.

Well, I know a bit from playing “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego”. The time-travelling, crime solving heroine had to identify her targets partly by figuring out their favourite artist.

But yet despite playing this “edutainment” computer game, it did not edutain me much. I left knowing who Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt were, but I did not know what their paintings looked like.

And it didn’t leave me with a lifetime love for art. I didn’t take any art subjects at school and was surprised to get an A for the design strategies course I took at tech. But then in 2003 I visited the Centre Pompidou and realised that there was much more to art than landscape and portrait paintings. (Yeah, I was 28 when I figured that out.)

Suddenly my horizons expanded to the world of contemporary art. Ha, take that symbolic-fruit-bowl-of-sexual-awakening! Eat it, noble-clasping-handkerchief-lady.

But I don’t even have the vocabulary to describe art. I kind of know what abstract expressionism is (and how it was all a CIA plot) and surrealism and possibly cubism too. And dadaism. But if I have to go into it in deal, I’ll end up sounding like one of those delusional Etsy sellers, throwing in keywords galore in an attempt to art-up their craft creations.

So when visited the European Masters exhibition, I couldn’t do a straight review. I paid my $22.50, went along and looked at the paintings. Sweet. But I was much more intrigued by the exhibition gift shop.

As well as the standard art souvenirs of posters, postcards and books, there were a few unusual items. European Masters-branded hand and body lotion, hand and nail cream, and something called “body silk”. I’m not sure what the connection is between hand cream and Monet.

There were also fridge magnets and keyrings, made from copies of artworks cropped into an arbitrary circle or rectangle shape and given a new purpose. And European Masters-branded sketching pencils, but with the added irony of sketching not being allowed in the gallery itself.

I enjoyed the art, but I’m far more intrigued by the souvenir moisturiser. And this may possibly be a larger manifesto for my perspective on art and/or life in general.

Romantic rights

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On the way back from Masterton, while passing through Upper Hutt, I spied one of the Tui “Yeah right” billboards, It mentioned something about a 35-year-old woman. “Hey,” I thought. “I am a 35-year-old woman. Perhaps this is relevant to my interests.”

I didn’t want to have to go back to Upper Hutt to check out the billboard in full, but thankfully Tui have a Twitter account where all the latest billboard slogans are tooted. It was there I found this:

Single woman, 35 y/o, attractive, great personality, with no issues. Yeah Right.

As soon as I read it I felt tears spring to my eyes. “Aue,” I wailed. “I am single, 35 years old, not conventionally attractive, with a rubbish personality, and many many issues! How will I ever find a Tui-drinking partner in the 18-35 demographic?”

After spending the entire day in bed eating supermarket pick ‘n’ mix sweeties and watching season five of “Sex and the City” on my VCR, I slowly came to my senses.

I realised that pretty much all my friends who are “single” (worst concept ever) and over the age of 30 do have issues. But this is what makes them who they are. We can’t all be ironed out into flawless robots of perfection. Sometimes it’s nice to be a little bit messed up, to have that grit in your oyster.

Maybe there are Tui-drinkers who see that billboard and nod sagely, “Bro, that happened to me. She was a hot older woman, but she turned out to be a nutter.”

That Tui billboard exists in a different universe to me. I don’t have to worry about what Tui-drinkers in the 18-35 demographic think of me as a single 35-year-old woman, because I just don’t play that game.

The awfulness of the previous period of time

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In my iTunes library, I have songs that mention the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, either looking back in anger or forward in excitement. “Goodbye, ’70s!” sneers Alison Moyet; “Heading for the ’90s, living in the ’80s,” notes one-hit wonders the Escape Club.

But what happened to the ’00s? Where were the songs from the late ’90s that looked forward to the new decade. Oh yeah – the millennium is what happened.

Instead sights were set beyond the next 10 years; pop music extended itself 1000 years into the future. The Backstreet Boys and Robbie Williams and Will bloody Smith all got visionary and futuristic about Y2K and beyond.

Then, suddenly, along comes 2010 with barely a dent made in the millennium, and the sudden realisation that a whole decade has past and it probably wasn’t as magical as it seemed like it was going to be.

Though, it would have been a major downer if someone had released a song in 1999 that imagined a new millenium of terrorism, financial crises and Susan Boyle. Yeah, imagine this in an R&B lite style, perhaps with a Fred Durst rap later on:

Aeroplanes flying into buildings.
Poor Wall Street tumbles to the ground.
Frumpy spinster becomes a pop star.
These are the things that will define the next decade.

Well, there were actually some good things that happened in the ’00s. It’s just a lot more fun to dramatically declare that the whole decade was awful and therefore bring on the ’10s because shit cannot possibly be worse.

Ditto with the 2009, which was also awful and 2010 will be better. But I seem to recall that 2008 was awful and 2009 would be better. Et cetera.

Somehow when I look back at the 2000s, the thing that sticks out the most for me is the three months I lived at my parents’ place in Hamilton (late ’01, early ’02), where I spent most of the time sitting on the couch, watching the strange choices of music videos on Juice TV (Heather Nova, wtf).

Perhaps this period sticks out because I was unenjoyably living in Hamilton and watching dull music videos all day. Or perhaps I remember it because I was fresh from the National Young Writer’s Festival in Australia, feeling confident and inspired about my writing talents, and being very productive.

I hope that when people look back at the 2000s and declare it to be awful that it’s really just about a couple of specific events, and that they didn’t actually live through 10 whole years of awfulness without any effort to make things better. Because that really would be awful.