Kiwi'd

Intro: Holly, Dan, Thimo

I love the last panel.
This introduces all of the main-main characters in the comic.
Also, Holly is not 12. Really.

Here's the link to the Kiwi'd Comic Set. Hopefully it works.

posted by Hoot @ 5:45 PM 0 comments

Comic

This is me bring productive on the weekend.
I am definitely going to have to work on my doodle-skills, because right now, they're pretty subpar. But I think the characters at least vaguely resemble the people they're supposed to be...
Anyway, the art style is something of a hodgepodge between anime and 'other'. I'm trying not to be too anime-esk, but I don't know how else to draw my character that's quick and easy for me.

These are just some sketches...hopefully I'll get a finished story-arc or two actually done sometime in the near future.

posted by Hoot @ 5:11 PM 0 comments

Productivity in Class

This isn't to say anything negative about Kiwi-style of teaching, but today I was definitely in a 'mind wandering' mood during classes. And when my mind is off wandering, my hands tend to occupy themselves with doodling random characters. It took until my Maori lecture for me to be actually productive. Do not adjust your screen, my handiwork is just rather...sketchy. But I can be self-critical on my own time. The point of this is that it means I -might- just be able to summon up the energy to work on my comic, instead of hiding behind the excuse of a lack of a tablet pen.
From left to right: Holly, Dan, Anjali (discussing the gerbil song); Moi et Thimo (discussing...who knows what....but I did manage to shrink Thimo and give us both -really- weird body poses)


















Also, The Retrophonic Funk Machine.
That was the band that played last night. Brilliant blokes.

posted by Hoot @ 2:17 PM 0 comments

Almost There

I have only three more classes to get through before I'm free for the weekend. Yes, free, free I say. I plan to do loads of absolutely nothing so that I can enjoy myself. Or maybe I'll go out and see the glow worms.
For the past two nights I decided to take the plunge and act like a normal college student. Normal, not by Kiwi standards but by American standards. That's right, I went to a -real- bar on Thursday, where I basked in the glow of reggae and cheap beer. I also learned that there is a 'definite difference' between Kiwi-based reggae and 'real' reggae. Apparently it's faster down here. Since I don't listen to much reggae, I'll leave it to the experts.
Last night I went to what I shall call a 'pseudo-bar'. The 'bar', called Refuel, is actually located on campus. This isn't something you'd ever see at Bryn Mawr, or any of the Tri-Co. In any case, the band that played was stunning. Electric guitar, electric base, a synthesizer (?), drums, trumpet, two saxs, and a trombone comprised the band -- an eclectic mix which made for amazing music. I think the band was made of primarily students, and I think one of those students is in my Chinese Cinema class... so hopefully I can get a CD or something.

posted by Hoot @ 10:40 AM 0 comments

Culture Shock

In reference to the last post... thinking Deep Thoughts makes my brain hurt. Not because the exercise is particularly difficult, but because my brain operates much like a defunked version of google. The moment I do a search on a particular issue, too many search results come up and I have trouble putting them into a coherent format.
Plus it bums me out, since I know that somehow what I said could be construed as offensive.

So a lighter topic: Culture Shock 2.0!

Half of the culture shock that I've experienced while I've been here has NOT been a result of Kiwi-life. Visiting New Zealand is much visiting a part of the United States with a funky accent. Like when I go down to visit my relatives in Mississippi: The food is different, and they have different stores, but in the end it's pretty much all the same. Except here we don't have Walmart. Instead, they have pirate treasure for money.

So I guess most of my culture shock has simply been revolving around the issue that I'm going to a large university (the University of Otago is 10X larger than my home institution), it's co-ed, and it has different weather. The first two issues were relatively easy to adjust to -- I have rapidly fallen in love with the whole idea of 'flatting' (remind me of that statement when the bill comes), and the library is gorgeous. Being around male-folk isn't particularly 'scary' or 'weird' for me, since all of my siblings are brothers...but it still took some getting used to walking into a room of over 200 people and having the testosterone smack me in the face.

The other aspect of the 'big university' life that I'm still getting used to is this entire train of thought involving 'parties'. In my group of friends back at Bryn Mawr, our version of a 'party' involves us sitting around and watching a movie together. If we're feeling particularly frisky, we -might- even go out to see the movie in theaters. This isn't to say that parties are an alien concept to me, but they also aren't a big occurance at my college. Here, there are parties every night -- mostly in the area where I live. Keggers are a natural thing instead of being 'exciting' and 'new'. It's definitely still weird to me, this focusing on drinking. But what's even more odd is that it seems the group of people I've fallen in with also don't have this focus on drinking either -- not big keggers, anyway. I wonder if it's because we're international students, or it just happened that way? The impression we've definitely gotten is that Kiwis drink like fish.
Strange.

But not as strange as waking up every morning to the sound of a seagull screaming outside your window. Or seeing people dressed constantly in surfer wear, or barefoot. Or the fact that the weather changes every five minutes -- literally, one minute it's sunny, the next it's raining, and then hailing, and then raining, and then sunny...all in the span of one hour. I'm definitely going to need to get a new windbreaker and raincoat. I wonder if some of these oddities are just because I'm not used to living near the shore, or if it's New Zealand?

posted by Hoot @ 7:27 PM 0 comments

Influence of other Cultures

Looking back through some of my entries and I can see some of my frustration with blogger coming through. That and the fact that my tendency for sarcasm and irony just doesn't convey itself well through electronic mediums.

So. Scratch that plan.

Instead of going through my daily activities, I thought I'd try to take this blog into a different direction. More dangerous waters, as it were, since I'm going to wade through some of my observations about kiwi life. Not to make any grand sweeping statements, so much as to just be...well...more scientific. If I'm capable of such a thing. This isn't to say I won't still post the occasional blurb about my life, especially if I've done anything interesting... but I also want to take a moment to take aspects of the Kiwi culture and put it out there for other people to think about.

However.... I'm not an expert. I'm going to say things that are wrong. I'm going to be unable to find the proper phrasology or be unable to articulate my thoughts accurately. The latter is a problem I always have, the former is one I hope to overcome.

The first can of worms I want to open up is what will undoubtably be a reoccuring topic: The influence of other cultures upon New Zealand. The influence of their Scottish heritage, the influence of Maori, American (US) culture, Asian culture, etc. I'm going to try to be as politically correct as I possibly can, so I just want to preface by saying that my babblings are just a stream of consciousness, a breeding ground for thought, as opposed to an actual Statement of Fact.

One of the primary reasons I was excited about coming to New Zealand was because of the Maori culture. Being part Native American myself, and having studied Native Americans for years, I was absolutely thrilled to be given the chance to look at a different indigenous culture, particularly one that we don't hear about on the East Coast of the USA. To see how it was taught, to see what the influence of the past had on the present, to see how the two cultures (Euro and Maori) are influencing each other.

I cannot help but think, from the perspective of Native North Americans and just minority studies in general, that New Zealand is making amazing leaps with addressing minority-group discrimination. This isn't to say that the Maori aren't discriminated against, because that would be far, far far far from the truth. It's just that, through the rose colored glasses of an outsider, and one who is studying at a university (where social change often takes place in the first place), it just seems like they're doing at least Something Right.
It's not just that the signs are in English and Maori. It's not just that they have a center devoted to Maori, or that they push awareness of Maori and Pacific Islander issues out into the public eye. There seems to be this tremendous movement to not so much as integrate Maori into mainstream society so much as form a symbiotic relationship between Euro-culture and Maori-culture. My rose-colored glasses give me such great hope for the future.

It is remarkable for me that New Zealand is putting this much effort into being political correct. I'm still making generalization here, but let me put it this way: to most Americans, Native Americans are still exotic. They are an unknown quantity. Many people are vaguely aware that many, many tribes are stuck on reservations somewhere in the West, and that they're suffering because of it. More people know that Native Americans run casinos...and many of those people actually think that they're making money off of it, and thus don't need support. But I would also be willing to bank that more people are aware of the social strife of other ethnic minority groups in the States. We're a large, diverse country, and it's -hard- to be aware of 'all the issues'...but because the Native Americans are not in the public eye, except in the occasional advert for Land O' Lakes butter or Western reruns, most people don't know that they're some of the poorest people in the nation.
To New Zealanders, Maori are people. At least, that's what I see at the University of Otago. They aren't something exotic, they're the guy who sits next to you in Geography 101. They're the people in your clubs, and their issues matter because they're as much a part of the university as you are. But even in the greater nation, I would imagine that many people are still -more- than well aware that Maori exist. They have their own TV station, a BRILLIANT move imho on utilizing mass media. At the very least, people will see their station as they flip through the channels.
This isn't to say that I haven't noticed where their presence is lacking. In many, many of the adverts on TV, it seems like they have the 'token Maori' character. Or none at all. Many of the TV programmes here still feature primarily white actors....meaning, the TV programmes they don't import from the UK or US.

In any case, I'm not trying to say that Maori have it 'better' than the Native Americans. I just feel like there is progress being made here for this indigenious culture that is not being made in the US. And it makes me wonder -why-. Is it the small size of New Zealand? The fact that Maori have, nearly since the beginning, 'stood' as a relatively unified group of people since the introduction of Europeans to their land? That they still stand unified? Is it because Maori are making use of the Euro-based culture, alla TV?

One aspect that I really want to study more while I'm here is how the Maori culture is preserving their traditional identity while yet straddling the (for lack of a better term) 'modernization' going on around them... most cultures (not just cultures like Native Americans, but -any- group of people that have a combined cultural identity) have to deal with change. It's always fascinating for me to figure out how they go about it.



It's definitely an issue that I am eager to learn about... and as I learn more about the Maori, hopefully I'll be able to tell where their culture interacts and influences the Euro-culture.


I got a little off-topic here... oh well, that's what you get for stream of thought.

posted by Hoot @ 2:37 PM 0 comments