I Love This Place/I Hate This Place

Tuesday
We start a process of exploring Wellington's neighborhoods one by one to figure out where we would want to live should we decide to stay here.

Newtown: Thrift shops, dime stores, kebabs, chippers and good coffee. All in all we give it the big blah.

Over the hill to Kilbirnie: much bigger and bland as they come. We head into the organic food shop which is very small but stocked with brands I recognize, including corn chips that are not flavored with cheese product.

Melbourne seems better and better.

I write to Vic prof to express real concerns about my ability to engage in a project with a field component due both to conditions (gale force warnings one out of every three days in the Cook Strait) and a dive program experiencing growing pains. Would it be better at Melbourne Uni?

Tuesday night is cold - really cold.


Wednesday
First thought of the day: We should move to Melbourne. I write to two profs at Melbourne Uni.

Then I get a comprehensive response from Vic prof in which he more than adequately addresses all of my questions and then proceeds to introduce me to his other students. Wellington sounds great.

We walk over to Brooklyn, take a wrong turn and end up panting up a really steep hill where we are rewarded with views of the Cook Strait. Despite the fact that we're several miles from the coast and on top of a hill, I can see the white caps. We wind through residential streets to the "center" of Brooklyn which is fairly appealing and features a malay/chipper/thai/chinese/burger joint. More cute houses and lots of parks and I realize that I wouldn't mind living here as long as we were on the lower part of the downtown side. Living in Wellington for three years doesn't seem so bad.

We hit downtown at about 5:00 and it's full of people leaving work. I am wearing about four layers not including hat, scarf and coat. We pass women in skirts and light coats and feel like we're the coldest people in Wellington.

We realize that there is no hidden section to Wellington that we have not yet discovered. Nope, what we've seen is what we'll get, which is a polite way to say that it's small. Really small. We wander in search of somewhere to get good appetizers for a decent price. Nothing. More nothing. We eat in some cafe and realize that every one is much younger than us. Most people our age live in London or Sydney. Maybe we should follow their lead.

We end up back at the Dubliner which is quiet and comfortable. Z mis-orders, and we sip at a beer that tastes like it had an unfortunate run-in with a gewurztraminer and work our way through yet another crossword puzzle. We agree that Wellington may just be too small, though if we ended up here for a PhD program it wouldn't be bad. Melbourne would probably be better.

Back into the cold we go to meet Neener. We walk in circles until we realize that there are two burger kings and she meant the second one. She introduces us to more of her friends. They are outgoing, interesting, occasionally incomprehensible (hate sounds like "hit" and a "pin" is a pen) and two of them are hilariously drunk. We sip cocktails in a bar straight off the set of LA Confidential and talk. It's a fabulous night and we have a great time. And everyone agrees that it's really cold, which makes us feel much less wimpy.

Walking up the driveway we see scorpio twinkling overhead near a smudge of the milky way. Z and I agree that we will probably stay here.


Thursday
I get a response from a prof at Melbourne Uni who has a really interesting take on my research questions and is currently seeking funding for a similar study.

Melbourne?