Fortnight tomorrow

So, I've been here a fortnight tomorrow - it's gone past so quickly! Apologies to all for slow replies and not posting - between internet calamities, work and settling in things have been rather crazy.

Firstly, pictures - the most important part :) This is just a small selection of the HUNDREDS I've taken. Gotta love Energiser Lithium. My plan is to put up a few more, including of London and Cambridge, on Flickr shortly (under user philtweir), though the ones there at the mo are all of NI & places on Christmas trip. Also, if I get a chance, I'll do a fast-paced photo slideshow of the journey and arrival, so the 28 hours of flying, flies past (so to speak).

Naturally, this is a very long post so don't worry, you're not supposed to have to trawl through the entire thing but if a photo catches your eye, there should be enough in the caption to give a bit of context!

So, firstly a rather cool photo from the plane (of which there are several) - much more amazing in real life but still...
Someone said the Himalayas, but we weren't too sure. Lots of ice and isolated ruler-straight roads going for hundreds of miles too over Russia was cool to see (we went over Moscow, in fact - it looks weird on an atlas, but makes sense on a globe)

After half an hour off sitting in Hong Kong, we headed on and I got my first glimpse of New Zealand going over the Bay of Islands:
(correct me if this is wrong!) Really beautiful, sadly the photos don't show it well - I think the other people on the plane were getting fed up with me going, "It's amazing, it's just really amazing, it's so beautiful, isn't it beautiful..." etc. etc. But it was, so, er, there.
[Random coastal valley town North of Auckland]
After arriving in Auckland there was lots of queuing - LONG story. Connecting flight went down to Wellington, right at the bottom of the North Island
[From the Southern-Eastern coast of the North Island]
[Wellington - you can see the narrowest part of the Cook Strait, separating the North and South Islands]

As Dunedin Airport is a fair way outside the city, there aren't any aerial shots of it and, to be honest, I still haven't been up high enough on a clear day to get a good view. Hopefully I'll get a chance this week.

An airport taxi took me to Knox College, where delays had meant I'd missed most people, so a helpful student (the College Beadle) got me my keys and I explored for a while before taking a quick nap until the other Fellows appeared. For 7 hours. Oops. However, for the first time ever, I'm living in a room with a King Size bed, so that's my excuse :D In fact, the college interiors are really cool - antique furniture and all kinds of interesting ornaments and pictures. Also, some bright spark had the foresight to put a rocking chair-cum-recliner-cum-armchair in my room, which I'm well chuffed about.
[Some nice furniture - looking a lot less bare now... :)]

Anyway, moving on - as part of my exploration I found some other parts of the college:
[Excuse me being posh but this photo looks a lot worse in colour, due to the light. It's the SCR - the Fellows Common Room, where we gather for G+T before dinner and generally recline when not busy being all academicky]
[This is the Chapel - the photo is somewhat deceptive, as it is rather wide for its length, which gives a good spacious feel. The services are rather similar to those in Corpus chapel, though with a Presbyterian-style order of service. Incidentally, the Choir is particularly good and some talented choral scholars have arrived this year, which has been great]
[I've been trying to keep the photos in order, but it took me surprisingly long to get a decent photo of the front of the College - this one was actually taken earlier today. My room is the window on the first floor at the right hand end {corrected from 'left'} of the scaffolding (builders are currently re-enforcing the chimneys)]

Haven't yet got photos of the Hall or much of the rest of college and tantalisingly, there is a beautiful old-school 'Stack Room' in the Library which is out-of-bounds until renovation work completes in April...

So, over the following couple of days I met the other resident fellows, who are a great bunch and we're having lots of fun getting settled into the new academic year. Since my only photos of us are in fancy dress, I won't embarrass them by putting them on publically accessible webspace, but will stick some of them up on Facebook soon. We've had a somewhat intense week as the Freshers' Week, Orientation Week here, is a big thing - lots of fancy dress, Freshers' initiations (which as a fellow, I got to watch from a safe distance ;) ), jacket & tie events and so on, so work has only began for most of us this week.

[The College Garden party on Saturday from my room - nibbles and Champers in the marquee :)]

So a couple more photos of the surroundings:
[From the road running up beside the college - this is definitely a hilly city, which is doing wonders for my calves, if nothing else!]
[A fairly representative selection of student flats, close to the University - one thing you notice is that, at least in the parts I've been in so far, no two houses look the same and it is rare that any two beside each other are the same colour. However, they don't have central heating so are freezing in winter. Having said these are representative, actually, verandas and mini-balconies are very common - a lot of the houses are really old compared to UK suburbs, so they look nice but there are plusses and minuses living in them!]
[Dunedin Railway Station, allegedly the most photographed building in New Zealand becoming slightly more photographed]

By this stage you've probably notice a lot of the photos look rather dismal and rainy - it bucketed down here for a week (and is due to start again). Every time I meet someone, they explain that this is very unusual and, to be honest, I can't help noticing that Belfast had record rainfall when I was there, Cambridge was flooding after the snow and now I arrive in Dunedin... I'm thinking I could find more useful places to sell my rain-making talents.

[These guys were well chuffed. Actually, Dunedin has lots of ducks, particularly around the Botanic Gardens, where at first I thought I'd seen a nice sizeable rockery, until it began to waddle in various directions. But then I'm a bit slow on the ole uptake anyway]

Actually, the Botanic Gardens are another point - most of the 25 min walk to the Department from College is through the hillside Botanic Gardens - rather different than in Belfast or Cambridge, these are mainly quite dense foliage, aside from a few more formal gardens:
[The route to the office runs about half-way up the far bank - as mentioned, some bits are less dense, but this is pretty representative of most of the walk. The higher parts are split into American and Southern African areas, as well as other plant regions]

Some of the really nice things walking through the gardens are the smells and sounds - there are crickets of some kind going all day long and lots of unfamiliar bird calls (not that I'm particularly familiar with bird calls anyway).

[Unfortunately, this'll only have significance for Cambridge peeps. Apparently it's a bit of an institution here - it's a contraction of The Gardens Bar (I think?) and heaves with students on a good evening. Notice how heavy the rain is!]

[As you may have noticed, there are a lot of trees about the place relative to back home, though these photos are probably not entirely representative being around the Botanic Gardens. The river is the Water of Leith which winds its way down through the University to the Harbour - not particularly sizeable and shallow, but scenic none the less!]

[These are actually the College gardens, which are on a rather steep slope, as you can see from the steps. These are remarkably dense and ferny, so half-way down the slope you feel you could be in miles away in a jungle somewhere!]

[This is rather a waste of photo space, but it shows just how dense the fog gets when it gets dense! On a normal day, you'd be able to see for miles from here (Signal Hill) - the whole city, Harbour and across to the Pacific. Not Sunday week ago! Strangely though, you could got a real sense of space in front of you, even if you couldn't see it]

[Despite the general dampness of the above pictures, the last few days have been stunning and I'm already lightly sizzled, with the fair Emerald Isle skin becoming rather more ruby red. This was taken this afternoon - the North-east valley from the front of college. As you can see, there are plenty of roses around the front of Knox - they've got a brilliant bloom at the moment, with lots of colours of roses about the place. Still getting used to summer in March!]

The weather here, as the photos show, tends to go from one extreme to the other - cloudless to raining - I have to admit, I much prefer rain or sun to grey, so not missing cloudy dismal skies! Still, it's supposed to be a nice Autumn and I find it's easier to get nice photos in the sun :)


[Views of and from the terraces in the Botanic Gardens - a lovely stretch where the panorama across the North of the city suddenly appears]

So a bit about the University - it's a similar age to QUB (bit younger I think) and has some great architecture about it. A common combination is very dark stone with light edgings, which I really like:
[The Registry Building - the equivalent of QUB's Lanyon Building or Kings' Chapel in Cambridge, tends to crop up in photos and University stuff rather a lot]

The Maths & Stats department is in a building just across the Leith from the Clocktower (the Leith is actually running below the shot in the above photograph).

[This is the office, shared with a slightly ambiguous number of people - there are normally up to 3 or 4. The half of the desk on the near side with the water on it is mine. Since there's a fairly small postgrad contingent in Maths, it's all quite cosy and some genius realised that we could pay for the coffee by using the proceeds from the snack machines near the lecture theatres, so we're kept sufficiently caffeinated to be productive :)]

The other piece of surprising news is that, the college was in need of a Senior Tutor fairly quickly, so I've taken it up and finally have obtained an Unseen University (Terry P) title :) Unlike Corpus, this is not a pastoral role, but entirely academically focused, organising the college's teaching schedule (it has a number of weekly supplementary tutorials) and providing a point of contact for academic concerns. Some may suggest I was more of an academic concern myself, but sure, experience begets wisdom or something like that. Maybe not so much...

Anyway, it's almost 1am and my alarm is set for seven, so I'd better finish up and go to bed. Just finally to add apologies to those who I owe emails and messages to - I hope to sending them tomorrow! All your encouragement and best wishes have been so much appreciated and particularly Mike's card from his Nuclear Relaxation conference in India which completely confused me when I looked at the postmark!

With best wishes and distant wavings

Phil