Cultural Cognitive Dissonance

It was a slow day at the gym, and a couple guys who work there were bored. One had a tennis ball, the other had some kind of stick – it looked like the handle from a golf club. They looked around sheepishly - no boss in sight - before one wound up for the pitch and the batter assumed his stance. But then something weird happened: the ball hit the ground and bounced up, the batter scrunched his shoulders and turned the bat down, vertically, to strike the ball. Their motions were fluid, completely natural, since - of course - that’s how they’d been playing ball all of their lives. But it was so, so wrong.

After suffering through one of the wettest Decembers on record, we’ve been enjoying glorious weather all summer long. But the forecasters have been warning that the tropical high pressure ridge we’ve been living under was breaking down, and we should expect rain all weekend. And sure enough, Friday morning it felt like the monsoon had arrived.

I’ve gotten back into the swing of studying, spending my days at U of Auckland’s law library (and hiding books from the poor undergrads as necessary). So I was rather surprised and disappointed that the library was to be closed for four days. (And Ali was dumbfounded: U of C’s libraries were open virtually every day of the year, and geeks like him had access 24/7 – 365 days a year.) But it certainly was nice not to have to go out in the rain.

Yesterday was Good Friday, but I was surprised that the entire country shut down. No mail. No newspaper. Liquor licenses of pubs and restaurants were suspended. Foodtown – our local supermarket: closed. Even the Chinese grocery store closed for the day.

Easter, of course, is that time of year we all associate with bunnies and chocolate eggs, pumpkins and . . . haunted houses? (At the Royal Easter Show, a big country fair-like event with farm animal judging and giant produce competitions, carnival rides and candy floss, one of the favorite attractions is, indeed, the Haunted House.) And it’s the season when the days are getting shorter. We abandoned daylight savings time last weekend, so it gets dark early now, by 6:30. But there’s consolation, too. The markets evidence the season’s harvest, overflowing with massive amounts of eggplant, peppers, grapes, apples and many varieties hard-shell squash (all referred to here as pumpkin) and kumara (Maori for sweet potatoes - it was their staple food).

The biggest news story all over the world this week was the Terri Schiavo travesty. But locally we’ve been following another story, about the progress of a New Zealand woman with severe motor-neuron disease who went to China for stem-cell therapy. Within 3 days of surgery, she had not only regained the ability to swallow, but was walking about and was beginning to speak intelligibly for the first time in months. She was obviously a vibrant person, who’d been struck down by a debilitating disease. Her speedy recovery was nothing short of miraculous. The irony that this woman went to China, not the U.S., for leading-edge medical treatment, should be lost on no one.

Cheers,
Sandie