Riot

Much to my surprise word and news of the annual Dunedin student riot actually reached North America.

First off I wasn't in it. I however do live only 3 blocks from it's location, but this space is occupied by the botanic garden which was locked up during the events in question.

Second though we did try to go see if we could see something we missed the first round of riots by an hour, and the second round won't happen till an hour after we all went to bed. When we went we headed up to a safe far away look out point.

I did manage to get some pics of a fraction of the aftermath, but the city was quick in cleaning the mess up. Due to homework tonight I'll have to wait to post these later.

My final comment on this is that what New Zealand calls a riot is not the same as a North American riot. The only difference between this and the celebrations of the Flames or Oilers making the Stanley cup is that riot police showed up here and escalated things.

There was next to no damage to buildings. It was just a LOT of broken bottles and burnt coaches (a Dunedin student trademark)



I assure you I didn't take this footage, just found it on youtube, but give you a far more accurate idea of the event then I could

This Week In Review

Nothing to earth shattering going on in life at moment.

I'm a week away from control take 2. As of such I'm not going to take too much time on this post, but trying to get back in the blogging habit.

A number of random interesting things did happen this week. Some for good others for bad...

Quiz Night

The local neighborhood (which my current school is located in as well) held a fund raiser for a boy in my school who is in need of some medical stuff. It was in the form of a trivia quiz night. Entering a team of a mere four (smallest team present) international students (emphasis on there being NO kiwis on this team) we took second out of 20 teams. I wish I could claim credit, but in all honesty the main credit go to my co-teamers. I did however know that a Honey Bee needs to hit 2 million flowers to make a kg of honey!

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Spring Arrives (for good we hope!)

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A streak of nice weather hit this week that has been a nice morale booster, but not ideally timed for school planning. Well I sit here working on this post, and my school plans the sun shines warm and bright for the second day in a row... BOO!

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I did manage to manage to get outside yesterday, and enjoy the weather. While in the park I managed to spot for the first time since April some of my fav inhabitants of the garden. Little New Zealand skinks.

Their very shy and even more fast! Yet I was able to snap these 2 along with 3 others of these typically elusive lizards.

A Departure

It can't all be good and fun stuff I'm afraid. Mid week a bomb shell was dropped on us in the senior wing of the hall. One of our key note residents informed us only 2 days before hand of his impending disappearance.

As of Friday night Dr. Peter left the hall and New Zealand forever to seek his fortune in Hong Kong. He will be missed. Despite the last minuteness of our learning of his leaving (a secret of his own design it should be noted) we were able to throw him a going away dinner.

So that's the last little while of my life in brief.

Now back to "wonderful wonderful" planning and homework... Groan

Like X-Mas Only "Better"

Life has been busy as (that's a kiwi form of slang. To say "insert verb or noun" as), and as of such my life has been fairly boring due to the static routine of homework and planning.

At the same time I haven't posted on my blog in about a month. So I'm taking a bit of time here while buzzed on pain killers (I didn't realize the headache pills I bought had caffeine in them) to fix that situation.

Now the events in this post occurred 3 weeks ago. Oops, but here it is none the less.

Due to the otherwise none existence of a life this feels like it was JUST yesterday. I'm sadly not kidding.

So due to the fact that by the time X-Mas rolls around the corner everyone will be gone from the hall, the good people here at Salmond had a X-Mas in July event.

The dining hall was all done up to be festive and X-Masy. I certainly approved of the use of tube lights!

A very yummy and holidayish meal was served by nearly every member of the kitchen staff (who all dressed in Santa gear).

Fun was had by all including at my table Owain and Peter.

Santa even put in an appearance. I was told that had the hall not had something else in mind for me at this event I was the prime candidate to be Santa. Not a bad casting call I'd venture, but again they had something else in mind for me...

I've had a minor secret down here for the last few months. Not a very tightly held one or covered up mind you. To many of you reading this blog this is old news, but I'm officially admitting it.

Since the Salmond Ball I've been going out with a girl here at the hall named Rhonwyn. She's an Aussie marketing student from Tasmania.

Why do I pick this entry to bring this up? Well a tradition here at Salmond for the X-Mas night is Santa to circulate with a missile toe and expose all the various relationships that are on about the Hall.

Me and Rhonwyn were the feature couple of this ritual out of 10.

Now for those of you on facebook the pick of our kiss may be up. So I thought I'd beat the rumours by going on the record.

So added to the planning and homework is hanging out with Rhonwyn I guess. So I have a bit more of a life then I admit I guess.

I'll try to post something sooner this next time around (but my track record hasn't been so good these last 2 months... Oops again)