Written at 18 East Street - Room 8, Newton, Auckland
After three and half weeks, I’ve got my visa application in.
Until the student visa displaces the working holiday visa I’m on now, I can’t
start my PhD. While I’m waiting I’ve been doing work for one of the other
members of the group… there must be some up-side to reading data off of a
spectrometer as particles of carbon drop out of solution – I challenge anyone
to follow Rule 34 up with “UV-Vis spectrometer” – but at the moment I haven’t
found it. Granted, the results should lead to something interesting but this is
my first view of what work is like divorced from the analysis: sample, dilute,
analyse… deliver data.
Last Thursday I moved out of my room in the hostel. Goodbye
Mel, Clem, Chloe, Launa and Nick! And Louise and Josh and plenty of others.
Speaking of Josh: on one of my last evenings at the hostel, leaning against the
handrail outside the front door, Josh – a guy about my age, curly hair, a Kent
accent – asked me what my last name was. Out of the blue, I was a little
surprised, and when I told him there followed a few moments of talking about
‘March’ and ‘Marchant’ it emerged that I knew Josh when I was in Sunday School.
His parents knew, and maybe still know, my parents and we grew up together.
Being 23, having travelled across 12 countries, the odds are probably for
something like this… still, it’s pretty cool that in the two weeks I’m staying
at a hostel of no particular significance, in a country that’s 18,327*
kilometres from my place of birth that I bump into someone I knew when I had a horrific
bowl-haircut and was always getting concussions.
My new home, a single room in a shared house, is quite
comfortable (if a bit small). The bed has a couple of built in units – a chest
of drawers and a set of shelves – and a desk attachment. It wasn’t until I
started pulling away the bed to stuff my cases behind it that I realised that
the desk actually rotates out from the bed, and the hanging set of shelves on
the underside of the bed folds into the vacancy between the two units. Vwala!
If anyone wants to come and stay, all I need to do is clean up the whole floor,
the whole of the desk and then slide the desk into the bed frame… the floor
space would accommodate one friend or two very close ones.
While work occupies enough of my time not to make life
boring, there have been quite a few gaps in my social life…
The one lesson so far of swing dancing went rather well.
Firstly, it was free – a great opening move to seduce a stingy student – and secondly,
the other classmates were good partners, all except for one woman who, no blame
to her, was way too short for me; I felt like I was dancing with a child and my
shoulder dipped uncomfortably. The Charleston, the style of swing dance for
this lesson, has a two-bar pattern with lots of standing-leg taps and flicks
and counts on mid-air movements: the ‘swing’ really is the thing, I had to
relax and go with it before it felt natural.
Running will always be my go-to when I’m in need of a fresh
breath to clear my head. Auckland has hills that murder calves and puts another
arrow in the heel of Achilles; taking a stroll has rapidly turned into a game
of strategy, whereby one attempt to maximise the distance without contesting
the elevation. When it comes to running, I’ve come up with a wholly different exercise:
I, Nathan March, vow to traverse every street in a 2 mile
radius of Auckland CBD before the end of my first year. There’s a map up on my
wall and a faithful pink highlighter that will bear witness to my journey.
Thirdly, I tried MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). To say the least,
it was an experience: range martial arts like karate and Tang Soo Do are to MMA
what Formula1 is to Nascar; they’re both fast, they’re both close-up, but the
shine in MMA only lasts as long as the starting line. The very first move we
were taught was a double leg takedown (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVi2pzMgt6U);
within a minute of starting the class, I was throwing a guy who has 15 kg on me
to the floor (and he me likewise). Ordered to grapple on the ground and maintain
submission positions, like I was 8 and fighting my brothers all over again, my
muscles were wrenched, squeezed and stretched like they haven’t been since
Joseph would pick me up and throw me onto the sofa. 4 nights later? I’m still
having trouble coughing, the tug on my stomach is pretty deterring.
Guess which one am I going back to? For two nights a week,
before long three, I’ll be going along to Maai Hyoshi Dojo for a mixture of Muay
Thai, boxing and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ). If I’m all healed by tomorrow
evening I’ll have my second session.
What makes Brazilian Jiu-jitsu so attractive as a martial
art to me is the constant validation it enjoys in the UFC – I could offer a
decent breakdown, but most everything I know comes from a blog post from Sam
Harris (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-pleasures-of-drowning),
my original inspiration for finding a club. Simply put, if you don’t know BJJ
or some similar grappling art you’re doomed in the UFC. I don’t plan to put any
of this to the test, but I can understand Harris’s comments about the ‘delusions
of martial prowess’ prevalent in formalised martial arts – Tang Soo Do may have
taught me how to dismount a horseman, but even I have to admit that I’ve
already experienced probably the most threatening behaviour from a mount that I’ll
ever experience: this past summer the stallion ridden by one of my kids from
camp opted to urinate, splashing my boots, while I stood beside.
In summary: I’m going to start work in a few weeks, I’ve
found new and invigorating ways to get hurt and I’ve found a place to live that
gives me slightly more room to fill than a sardine that’s kicked all the other
sardines out of the can and hammered out the walls a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment