Feral Students
Overall, I think that the undergraduate students at the university are no more destructive than their US counterparts. There is the issue of binge drinking, but that is accepted as a problem faced by Kiwi society in general rather than just the student population. (There are advertising campaign on the television directed at this issue with the expressed theme of “It’s not how much we’re drinking, its how we’re drinking). The university hosts concerts and events during the year and although there will be beer bottles littering the grounds and toilet paper hanging from trees trees afterwards, overall the destruction is no worse than the aftermath of WILD at Washington University in St. Louis. There are also student social groups which host parties and other events and these are well organized. ENSOC, the engineering social group even owns its own fire engine (a train would obviously have been a better purchase, but it is far less practical) and has offices in the engineering building. However, there are a few times a year where all bets on the behavior of the students are off because some of the students seem to turn feral for a day.
The first of these is the Undie 500 which is an annual road trip between Christchurch and the university in Dunedin. To participate in this very large event, students decorate cars, each of which must be worth less than $500 and have a current registration and warrant of fitness. The event is really well organized and there are strict rules about drunk driving as well as about littering. Some of the students get really into the trip and come up with elaborate decorations for their cars and costumes as you can see in the video link from TV2. However, once the students got to Dunedin this past year, riots broke out. That is not to say that the Undie 500 participants rioted, but rather in the festivities afterwards there were riots. A common thing for hooligans to do in New Zealand is to burn couches and several were burnt this past year.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4178979a11.html
There were signs up at the university in Dunedein warning students “it’s not just a couch, it’s your degree” because they risk getting thrown out for rioting. Unlike past years, however, the police are using videos from the riots to track down students to prosecute them.
More recently, New Zealand celebrated Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes was part of a conspiracy to blow up the British Parliament in 1605. He was caught and he and the other conspirators were hung, drawn and quartered. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated on November 5 in the UK and former British colonies to mark the foiling of the plot with bonfires, fireworks and the burning of the ‘guy’, usually an effigy. In New Zealand, stores can legally sell fireworks for the three days preceding the holiday and the night of November 5 is marked by professional fireworks on the beach and amateur fireworks everywhere else. Here at the university, the day was also marked by burning couches and even a random car in the car park was burned.
Cricket
The warm, summer weather marks the start of the Cricket season and the pitch near where I live is packed with payers every weekend. There are tents on the sidelines, flags marking the differing playing fields and a lot of people dressed in all white, including white hats. Cricket is a sport that I don’t pretend to understand quite yet. One of these days, I should sit down with someone who is willing to teach me and watch a few games on television.
Fishing Tales
A few weeks ago, my friends Sascha and Daniella, Daniel and Julie and I drove up to Kaikoura for a day of fishing. Kaikoura is about a 2 1/2 hour drive and is where the whale and dolphin watching tours are located. We had chartered a boat from Kaikoura Fishing Charters which was a company that some of my friends had used in the past and they highly recommended the trip. We arrived at the company’s office a little early and found it empty, so we sat at a nearby picnic table to eat lunch. As we ate, a man walked up and after bidding us hello, climbed into a nearby tractor with a very large boat trailer on it and drove off towards the harbor. We discussed this and debated about whether they were bringing the boat up, because surely not. But, a few minutes later the very large boat was being towed up the hill towards us.
We were introduced to our crew of two men and after we climbed on board the boat, the tractor was started and we were driven the few hundred feet down the road to the harbor. As we made our way to the harbor, we came to the realization that it was just the five of us on the charter. We had originally been told that there was space for ten and so we were pleased to be a small group and to have the boat to ourselves.
The tractor backed the boat into the water and once the boat started floating, the crew fired up the motors and we were off. It was a gorgeous day and the ocean was really calm. As we cleared the harbor, we saw our first seal frolicking nearby. The crew slowed the boat so that we could take photos and then we were off again.
Once we were out of the harbor, our first stop was to pick up some crayfish pots which the fishing company had placed. Crayfish look a lot like lobster, but lack the front claws. We pulled up two different pots which were loaded with the crayfish. Any crayfish that was too small or had eggs was thrown back, but we were left with eight crayfish to take home. At $80 each if you order them in the restaurant, we were already ahead on what we had paid for the trip!
We continued on our way and the day was just gorgeous. The sun was shining and the snow
covered Alps were just a short distance away. We went a bit further into the ocean before the crew cut the engines and began to hand out fishing rods. Each rod came with a line with three hooks and a weight so that the line would sink to the bottom, about 100m below. Each of the hooks was baited with scraps from other fish which had been caught on prior trips and we dropped our lines into the ocean, allowing the reel to unwind until it stopped. What was amazing was that after only a minute or two, the fishing pole began to bob, the sign that a fish was on the end. So began the several minute process of reeling in 100m of line but once we did, we usually had two or three fish on the line! We were mostly catching sea perch which are beautiful, orange fish with gigantic eyes. For every eight perch we also caught a blue cod, some of which were quite large.
This process went on all afternoon. We would drop our line, wait a few minutes, reel in and bring two or three fish
onboard. In the meantime, the crew was busy filleting the fish that we caught. From each fish, they were able to get two good filets, with the rest of the fish being saved as bait for the crayfish pots. For some reason, in no time we accumulated a crowd of birds around the boat. There were cormorants which would dive after the bait on our lines as we dropped them into the water. It was amazing to see them go down after the line and sometimes they would actually grab the bait. There were albatrosses which were amazing to watch as they ran across the water, flapping their massive wings to get themselves into the air. And there of course were seagulls which would land when no one was looking and swipe goodies from the bait container. We even had a visit from a group of dolphins which jumped out of the water to see what we were doing as they swam past.
In all, we spent five hours in the water. Five hours of pulling in fish after fish. In the end, I would just take breaks because how many fish could we get and five hours in the New Zealand sun is a long time. The crew provided us with coffee during the day and they cut up a fish for us to eat as sushi as well. Some of it was raw and some of it they cooked in vinegar to be eaten with sauce.
We estimated that the five of us caught over 300 fish. Judging by the number of fillets that I have in my freezer, this is a conservative estimate. Once back in the harbor, the boat was pulled back up onto the trailer and we were driven to the office. The crew busied themselves by bagging up all of the filets and the few whole fish that we had opted to keep intact. We had brought coolers with us and these were filled by all of the filets, fish and crays. As we were packing up, friends of the owners came over and offered all of us beers. So, we wound up hanging out in the boat, drinking beer and chatting with everyone for a while. It was a nice end to the day. We eventually got down, paid our $110 for the day and got back into the car. Everyone was really happy with the day and how much value we got for the money. It was easily the best value thing we had done in NZ because we came back with hundreds of dollars of fish each. Does the glacier give you ice to take home with you? No.
That night, we cooked the crayfish. The really odd thing is that we were told to first drown the crayfish in tap water for twenty minutes before cooking them. Failure to drown them would result in them freaking out in the boiling water and dropping off all of their legs. OK. Anyway, they were delicious as were the filets that we cooked. We divided up all of the fish and once home, I further divided up my fish into smaller bags to put into the freezer. That way, I just needed to pull out a bag each time I wanted to cook a meal rather than having to deal with a gigantic block of frozen fish.
In all, it was a fantastic day and we are just waiting to clean out our freezers before going again. I should be done eating fish sometime next April.
Overall, I think that the undergraduate students at the university are no more destructive than their US counterparts. There is the issue of binge drinking, but that is accepted as a problem faced by Kiwi society in general rather than just the student population. (There are advertising campaign on the television directed at this issue with the expressed theme of “It’s not how much we’re drinking, its how we’re drinking). The university hosts concerts and events during the year and although there will be beer bottles littering the grounds and toilet paper hanging from trees trees afterwards, overall the destruction is no worse than the aftermath of WILD at Washington University in St. Louis. There are also student social groups which host parties and other events and these are well organized. ENSOC, the engineering social group even owns its own fire engine (a train would obviously have been a better purchase, but it is far less practical) and has offices in the engineering building. However, there are a few times a year where all bets on the behavior of the students are off because some of the students seem to turn feral for a day.
The first of these is the Undie 500 which is an annual road trip between Christchurch and the university in Dunedin. To participate in this very large event, students decorate cars, each of which must be worth less than $500 and have a current registration and warrant of fitness. The event is really well organized and there are strict rules about drunk driving as well as about littering. Some of the students get really into the trip and come up with elaborate decorations for their cars and costumes as you can see in the video link from TV2. However, once the students got to Dunedin this past year, riots broke out. That is not to say that the Undie 500 participants rioted, but rather in the festivities afterwards there were riots. A common thing for hooligans to do in New Zealand is to burn couches and several were burnt this past year.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4178979a11.html
There were signs up at the university in Dunedein warning students “it’s not just a couch, it’s your degree” because they risk getting thrown out for rioting. Unlike past years, however, the police are using videos from the riots to track down students to prosecute them.
More recently, New Zealand celebrated Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes was part of a conspiracy to blow up the British Parliament in 1605. He was caught and he and the other conspirators were hung, drawn and quartered. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated on November 5 in the UK and former British colonies to mark the foiling of the plot with bonfires, fireworks and the burning of the ‘guy’, usually an effigy. In New Zealand, stores can legally sell fireworks for the three days preceding the holiday and the night of November 5 is marked by professional fireworks on the beach and amateur fireworks everywhere else. Here at the university, the day was also marked by burning couches and even a random car in the car park was burned.
Cricket
The warm, summer weather marks the start of the Cricket season and the pitch near where I live is packed with payers every weekend. There are tents on the sidelines, flags marking the differing playing fields and a lot of people dressed in all white, including white hats. Cricket is a sport that I don’t pretend to understand quite yet. One of these days, I should sit down with someone who is willing to teach me and watch a few games on television.
Fishing Tales
A few weeks ago, my friends Sascha and Daniella, Daniel and Julie and I drove up to Kaikoura for a day of fishing. Kaikoura is about a 2 1/2 hour drive and is where the whale and dolphin watching tours are located. We had chartered a boat from Kaikoura Fishing Charters which was a company that some of my friends had used in the past and they highly recommended the trip. We arrived at the company’s office a little early and found it empty, so we sat at a nearby picnic table to eat lunch. As we ate, a man walked up and after bidding us hello, climbed into a nearby tractor with a very large boat trailer on it and drove off towards the harbor. We discussed this and debated about whether they were bringing the boat up, because surely not. But, a few minutes later the very large boat was being towed up the hill towards us.We were introduced to our crew of two men and after we climbed on board the boat, the tractor was started and we were driven the few hundred feet down the road to the harbor. As we made our way to the harbor, we came to the realization that it was just the five of us on the charter. We had originally been told that there was space for ten and so we were pleased to be a small group and to have the boat to ourselves.
The tractor backed the boat into the water and once the boat started floating, the crew fired up the motors and we were off. It was a gorgeous day and the ocean was really calm. As we cleared the harbor, we saw our first seal frolicking nearby. The crew slowed the boat so that we could take photos and then we were off again.
Once we were out of the harbor, our first stop was to pick up some crayfish pots which the fishing company had placed. Crayfish look a lot like lobster, but lack the front claws. We pulled up two different pots which were loaded with the crayfish. Any crayfish that was too small or had eggs was thrown back, but we were left with eight crayfish to take home. At $80 each if you order them in the restaurant, we were already ahead on what we had paid for the trip!
We continued on our way and the day was just gorgeous. The sun was shining and the snow
covered Alps were just a short distance away. We went a bit further into the ocean before the crew cut the engines and began to hand out fishing rods. Each rod came with a line with three hooks and a weight so that the line would sink to the bottom, about 100m below. Each of the hooks was baited with scraps from other fish which had been caught on prior trips and we dropped our lines into the ocean, allowing the reel to unwind until it stopped. What was amazing was that after only a minute or two, the fishing pole began to bob, the sign that a fish was on the end. So began the several minute process of reeling in 100m of line but once we did, we usually had two or three fish on the line! We were mostly catching sea perch which are beautiful, orange fish with gigantic eyes. For every eight perch we also caught a blue cod, some of which were quite large.This process went on all afternoon. We would drop our line, wait a few minutes, reel in and bring two or three fish
onboard. In the meantime, the crew was busy filleting the fish that we caught. From each fish, they were able to get two good filets, with the rest of the fish being saved as bait for the crayfish pots. For some reason, in no time we accumulated a crowd of birds around the boat. There were cormorants which would dive after the bait on our lines as we dropped them into the water. It was amazing to see them go down after the line and sometimes they would actually grab the bait. There were albatrosses which were amazing to watch as they ran across the water, flapping their massive wings to get themselves into the air. And there of course were seagulls which would land when no one was looking and swipe goodies from the bait container. We even had a visit from a group of dolphins which jumped out of the water to see what we were doing as they swam past.In all, we spent five hours in the water. Five hours of pulling in fish after fish. In the end, I would just take breaks because how many fish could we get and five hours in the New Zealand sun is a long time. The crew provided us with coffee during the day and they cut up a fish for us to eat as sushi as well. Some of it was raw and some of it they cooked in vinegar to be eaten with sauce.
We estimated that the five of us caught over 300 fish. Judging by the number of fillets that I have in my freezer, this is a conservative estimate. Once back in the harbor, the boat was pulled back up onto the trailer and we were driven to the office. The crew busied themselves by bagging up all of the filets and the few whole fish that we had opted to keep intact. We had brought coolers with us and these were filled by all of the filets, fish and crays. As we were packing up, friends of the owners came over and offered all of us beers. So, we wound up hanging out in the boat, drinking beer and chatting with everyone for a while. It was a nice end to the day. We eventually got down, paid our $110 for the day and got back into the car. Everyone was really happy with the day and how much value we got for the money. It was easily the best value thing we had done in NZ because we came back with hundreds of dollars of fish each. Does the glacier give you ice to take home with you? No.That night, we cooked the crayfish. The really odd thing is that we were told to first drown the crayfish in tap water for twenty minutes before cooking them. Failure to drown them would result in them freaking out in the boiling water and dropping off all of their legs. OK. Anyway, they were delicious as were the filets that we cooked. We divided up all of the fish and once home, I further divided up my fish into smaller bags to put into the freezer. That way, I just needed to pull out a bag each time I wanted to cook a meal rather than having to deal with a gigantic block of frozen fish.
In all, it was a fantastic day and we are just waiting to clean out our freezers before going again. I should be done eating fish sometime next April.
Togs
Lastly, one of the classic TV advertisements during the summer here in New Zealand. Enjoy
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