rumpelsnorcack

I went to the first lesson of my Maori course last night and it was really good. Well, we didn't learn anything I didn't already know but the lecturer seems very cool and the course looks very interesting. One of the things we will be doing at some point is to go and do a noho marae where we stay two nights on a local marae to learn tikanga (literally, 'the right way' or I guess it means the customs). I've been on marae stays before but it's been ages since I went so it'll be really interesting. The one we are going to is at Akaroa which is a lovely place so we feel very lucky.

I've been looking through the coursebook for the first module and it's really interesting. We also get a CD and DVD (they cater for all learning styles with audio, visual and kinesthetic tasks for each section) and I've gone through both of those as well. There is a really interesting documentary thing on the DVD about cultural respect in this country, or rather about the lack of it. It's sad that this was made pretty recently (I'm thinking 2009 like the coursebook) and yet the people they interviewed had some pretty divisive stories they had experienced. The title of this post seems to be at the centre of what they are trying to do - that if more people speak and understand the language that is the key to understanding and respecting the culture. I do like that it all seems to go hand in hand and I think the noho marae will be particularly interesting. Sadly we don't do that til March next year. Still, it's something to look forward to :)

I also went to a very interesting earthquake lecture tonight on liquefaction. I first have to say that all these scientists must think all their birthdays have come at once. This guy was appointed to the university a few years back and is an international expert on liquefaction. He gets here and a few years later he gets a perfect example of liquefaction on his back door. There was another one who arrived in the city for his sabbatical last year mere weeks before the September quake struck and who has obviously been enjoying seeing a quake up close and personal so to speak.

Anyway, this guy explained pretty clearly what happened and why. He kept using the term 'unprecedented' to describe what happened here and you start to get this sense that the answer to last weeks 'is this normal?' question is in actual fact 'well, not really.' It's not normal to get 5 reasonably major events in one place within one year (though last week's lecture showed that it has sort of happened elsewhere before). He didn't say what the other two of the 5 were, but I assume they were the Boxing Day one and the other one on June 13th. The most interesting thing was probably that there are all sorts of different soils under the city and sometimes they are different even under the same building and so a lot of the instability of our CBD buildings is because they subsided differently at different parts of their foundations. The burning question as to why the strip of land I live on has been fine was also answered - it's because our sand is dune sand and not alluvial sand. That means it was denser and so reacted differently. In fact his answer to most questions was pretty much always, 'the soil there is x, y or z so that means that it did x, y or z in reaction to the shaking.' It was all very interesting and the one thing he stressed over and over again was that you can't isolate buildings or houses or whatever and treat them as individual items, you need to treat the whole city as a system and look at what will work for that system as a whole in order to make it all work best in another such event. Next two weeks are on the performance of different types of buildings so that should also be interesting.

Also in the news this week is a design for a cardboard cathedral created by Shigeru Ban (and done for free as a gift to the city) and it looks like it could be bloody amazing. Of course people are up in arms and think it's a dreadful idea but in my opinion it's a good thing. People want roads and houses and shops rebuilt but it's not like that's not happening. It is. There are more road works going on than I can shake a stick at and insurance is dealing with most of the shops and housing issues so I don't see what the issue is. It's a temporary structure that will be a place to go not just for religious purposes, could attract people to see it because you know ... cardboard and buildings don't generally go together, and it won't cost that much to make. It's also something being actually constructed in a place that has seen a lot of destruction over the last year. He also wants to use local products and people and wants a stained glass window designed and made locally to go in it. How is building something unique, and employing local talent to do it, a bad thing? *grumps* I don't get people. I mean, yes obviously I know there are people in some very bad situations but not building this building isn't actually going to change that. Anyway, I think it's interesting. I hope the feasibility study gives it the go ahead and I hope it happens. They plan on having it done by Feb 22nd next year and that would be awesome :)

Also, I finally managed to get some photos into this entry.