Week 34- Boats, Bateaux, Støvler

Back into the swing of university I flew through classes on Monday morning before going to an orientation for the ‘unleashed space’ at the university. This is essentially a workshop where students have the opportunity to work on projects that they may have outside of their coursework. The range of equipment is extremely extensive with 3D printers, laser cutters, routers, soldering irons and even sewing machines available completely free of charge! I spent most of the afternoon cooking food for the coming week and freezing some of it.

After class on Tuesday I played some ping pong with Ulysse on one of the free outdoor tables. Admittedly, the paddles were a bit sticky but it was good fun and great to be outside in the glorious sunshine! I ordered some photos to be printed and I was going to collect them that afternoon when I got a message from Elliot (American frisbee guy who I met in Perth, Melbourne and Cairns) to say that he was in Auckland and keen to hang out! I went to the park on my bike and we hung out for a few hours, threw a frisbee for a while before he had to go to the airport to fly to Asia. By the time I was home from that it was time to leave for frisbee training. I just hung out and did my rehab before heading home.

I had a physio appointment on Wednesday morning and we decided it was time to go see the sports doctor. I rang up the clinic and was able to get an appointment the next day, much to the surprise of my physio. I enjoyed vegan lunch with Harry and Marlene and Marlene’s friend, Amy, before I cycled to collect the photos I had printed. Some of them were for my own album and some of them were for putting up in the apartment as decoration. When I got home that evening I went throwing with Marlene on a patch of grass near our building. This grass is right beside the main university street and the fact that it was raining and dark out meant that the inevitable happened and the frisbee was thrown onto the road.

The sports doctor was called Simon Kim and we did a general assessment of my body mechanics and didn’t think there was too much of an issue, other than he thought my hips were lacking some motion. He decided to send me for an x-ray to look at my hips and said that he would see me in two weeks’ time. He also gave me a program to follow and said if there was no progress in the mean time we would look at an MRI. Thursday was also International Women’s day so I put up a sign on Marlene’s ceiling to wish her a happy international women’s day but she didn’t notice until the following morning. I went to frisbee in the evening and then when I came home Harry was there and we attempted to make cookies in our tiny oven (it’s smaller than a standard microwave). Amazingly, the cookies were a success.

I don’t have much class on Fridays so I was working away in one of the computer labs when the fire alarm went off. There weren’t many of us there so we just sat there to begin with, assuming it was a drill, before we went downstairs. I wanted to leave to another building but my bike was inaccessible so I waited on the road. I had lunch with Marlene and Harry and then in the evening Marlene and I watched a film called Captain Phillips. It’s about a US ship captain whose ship is raided by Somali pirates. We found the film on Ulysse’s hard drive and although the English speaking was in English, the pirates needed to be subtitled and this was in French. I could get the jist of what was being said but I feel I may have lost some of the film’s meaning!

There was a big frisbee event on Saturday morning which was named ‘Throwchella’. The idea was a kind of frisbee festival with various games including spikeball and disc golf being played along with actual frisbee. There was a barbeque and some drinking but generally everyone had a great day in the sun (once we found some space in the park as the booking had accidentally been made for the wrong day!). When I got home, Ulysse had made us all pancakes which was a delicious treat. In the evening I went to Liam’s 21st (a friend from one of my classes last semester). Despite arriving about 45mins later than specified, I was the first guest through the door. I met his family and chatted for a while before the other guests appeared. It was a great evening with plenty of music, good food and great speeches. I felt honoured to even be invited, and left a lovely message, in Irish, in the book he had to sign.

I decided to get up at 04:00 on Sunday to watch Ireland beat Wales in the six nations which, thanks to France beating England, meant we won the whole tournament! I went back to sleep for a few hours and then in the afternoon Marlene and I went to a High-Performance Yacht Design conference as part of the Volvo Ocean Race. The Volvo Ocean Race is a boat race around the world. In its current edition all the boats are the same and are sailed by teams of various nationalities. The conference had speakers from various sections of the industry, from the material designers, fluid mechanics modellers, boat builders, boat recycling and the boat and foil design itself. I found the whole day extremely interesting and it was great to see some of my lecturers there too. I was completely drawn in by the whole design process and got to network with some of the speakers too. The day got me thinking about potentially staying on in New Zealand after my exams to do a research project of some kind. The other thing I found very entertaining was a guy who spoke about boat renovations and how boats are being too well made these days. Despite the beauty of the whole thing, his parting comment was that renovation magazines should be wrapped in cellophane and put on the top shelf with the rest of the porn!

After the talks we walked along the viaduct to look at some of the boats. We saw one boat that cost $650,000 to rent a week! There was also a big exhibition for the ocean race with short films and a cut out of one of the boats. We played in the boat for a while before enjoying more of the music on the viaduct and then cycling home.