Instagramming about home

A few days ago my friend Heather challenged me on Instagram. The social photo network has recently become my home for image creativity. I still publish my photos on Flickr, but Instagram is more fun, with a better community and wider reach amongst my friends. It's where my pictures have an audience.

So what's an Instagram challenge? Well, after shooting, editing, filtering and sharing the first few hundred photos, Instagram can become a little same-y. So apart from taking Instawalks (more on that next week), Instagrammers challenge each other to shoot photos on a certain theme. Heather's theme for me, quite innocently chosen, was 'at home'. She tells me she imagined that I would photograph pretty still lives around the house. Maybe a view from the terrace (it's a great view). Little did she know that her theme would throw me into full-on retrospective mode. Here are the results, with my comments, as the photos are more symbolic than pretty:

Shot one of my latest #5shotchallenge with the theme of #athome. This is my writing setup at my favourite cafe. It's as much my home as anyplace ever is.

I do spend my most productive days in cafes. Despite a good desk, a comfy sofa, and few distractions, the place where is sleep and eat is not the most conducive for writing. Since my work is who I am, where I work must be where I belong, right?

Shot two of my @5shotchallenge on a theme of #athome. Packing to move house is my way of cutting down on the clutter. Time to travel again, to make another place my home.

We move house multiple times a year. Some years we have a steady base, but others we seem to be constantly on the move. Packing suitcases, choosing what to take and what to put into storage is becoming ever easier. Right now we are just changing accommodation for our last month is Johannesburg, so the process is pretty painless. Still, I have trouble thinking of this place, or the last one, or the one before that, as home. The few possessions I cart around, the data on my laptop and the few cherished items of jewellery, the odd knock-knack and the essential camera gear - those embody home more than the actual location they are stored in.

Shot three in my #5shotchallenge on a theme of #athome - every morning, wherever I am, as if by magic, a cup of tea appears by my bedside. #stuartrules

And here is the real deal. The routine, the daily habits, the things we do together, those are the moments where I feel I belong. Wherever I am, I have learnt, my habits don't change. I used to imagine that if I were just in this other, better, place, then I could be a better person. I have realised that location is largely irrelevant. Who I'm with, what I do, not where I am, is what matters.

Shot four of my @5shotchallenge on the theme of #athome - this is not my home literally, but since we are Easter egg hunting together, and eating, laughing, chilling together, my friends are where I belong today.

Who I'm with, indeed. Just last weekend, leaning back in my chair during an Easter brunch with friends, I had a moment of utter contentment at spending time hanging out with some nice people. I have friends all over the place, which makes it sometimes hard to keep up. So being able to be in the same place with a few of them is a pleasure. Virtual connections help, like Facebook, email, Skype. Nothing beats a communal Easter egg hunt, though.

Last shot in my @5shotchallenge on a theme of #athome - I've been trying to think of the least cheesy way to say this, but there is really no way to avoid this: I am his home and he is mine.

'Home is where the heart is', they say. I have nothing to add.

Trying a new thing

So what with the house move and travelling and writing the book (more on that later) I find myself short of time to keep up my diary. I have been writing it since I was fourteen, and I am not about to pack it in now, but for the time being I am looking for a quicker outlet. So I came up with keeping a visual diary, a quick drawing of events every day. It also keeps me in sketching mode, something I have neglected criminally in the last few years, and allows me to practice drawing. I focus on three major events of the day (not as easy as it sounds, I've had a lot going on lately) and try to visualise them. My naturalistic drawing of objects has always been quite terrible, ditto faces and bodies, but I am not letting that stop me. Here are more samples. The sketchbook gives me background colours, but I have decided to move on to a daily calendar type book from January 1st.

My home from the air

We went flying today, now that Stuart has his license current again. This is first time I have seen the Ruhrgebiet from the air. It's hard to describe how I felt, privileged and awed, surprised at the shape this conurbation takes from the air. Travelling around it on the ground, despite the frequent fields and parks, the Ruhrgebiet feels like a big city, Bottrop joined to Oberhausen which is inseparable from Essen, which is invisibly connected to Bochum, which slowly seeps into Dortmund and so on. From the air there really is no join at all, our navigation takes place along the grid of motorways and canals: the A2 to the North, the Rhine to the West, Ruhr to the South, and Dortmund airspace preventing us from going too far to the East. In between we discover a mass of surprises: The vast swathe cut by the Rhine-Herne canal which is mostly invisible from the road, a fat waterway filled with barges and edged by industrial sites, and the occasional marina;





Canal lock near Gelsenkirchen

I had no idea that they were still working mines, or related coal industry, and there they are, mine shaft elevators, smoking chimneys, black coal heaps. And right next to the filth vast fields are being shorn of their wheat, as if we weren't in the middle of an industrial belt. The local mountain scenery of slag heaps, those monuments to the local past consisting of steel making waste and toxic left overs of the coke industry are not as visible as I expected, as overwhelming as they are when driving along a road only to have a sudden hill rearing up off the plains. I guess landscape flattens out from this high angle. Those slag heaps that have been crowned by a post modern artifice like a wind turbine or Recklinghausen's horizon observatory stick out, the rest melt into the general park/forest/nature area, covered as they are in mature trees and other old vegetation.





Horizon observatory in Recklinghausen

 There were surprises like the extensive prison site right near the A42 motorway that no one has ever noticed before, or the strange industrial shapes of water towers, gas containers, coal trains and water clearance ponds. And bridges. There are many, across train lines, canals, rivers and roads, and many are architectural fancies with colourful lines and abstract swirls. Or naturalistic ones, like the dragon bridge in Recklinghausen.





Of course we spend some time house spotting, looking for my mum's house, my brother's. Our own is unfortunately directly below us as we approach finals on the airfield, therefore invisible. We missed many other places of interest, so there will be another flight soon.

And suddenly I am realising that this may, after all my professing that I am a European, a World nomad, that I don't belong to a place, after all that this may be my home. Although I am not sure yet.

The rest of the photos are here:

Location:Zeppelinstraße,Mulheim,Germany

Skype is good for travellers

I can't begin to explain in how many ways Skype is keeping us connected right now and how much we are going to rely on it on the trip. We have had an account with Skype for years, although we had a bumpy start when they ate some credit of mine a few years back. But lately it has got more and more handy.

To start with we use SkypeIn, which gives us three local numbers in different countries. We have a landline number in Germany my family can call, one in the UK for Stuart's family and our friends, and one in Wellington for Merryl's gang and everyone we keep in touch with there. This means that people in those countries only have to call a landline in their country, not the expensive South African number. As a result people actually call us, which makes us feel more wanted ;-)

The money we spent on a Skype phone that doubles as a landline (it's hands-free and the base station connects to the router. Looks just like a normal phone) has been so worth it. All our international calls go through SkypeOut, where we pay a monthly fee for free calls to lots of countries. Stuart can make his conference calls, I can chat with my mum - brilliant. The phone displays all the Skype contacts which sync with Addressbook on the Mac, so we don't have to type in numbers. It also displays voicemails and any missed calls we receive via Skype. This alone has made it so much easier to use Skype to make calls. Before I was never logged in on the computer at the right time, and the sound quality is just like a normal landline call without having to dig out the headphones.

When we are on the road, we will have a satellite phone for emergencies, but people will still be able to leave us messages on voicemail, and since we get an email notification we can actually respond when anyone pings us. I am also hoping that we will be able to make use of Skype on the iPhone when we are at a hotel or other place with wifi.

I know this all sounds like a sales pitch, but after years of not really seeing the point (we had 2 hour long international calls for NZ$5 from New Zealand and pretty cheap rates from Dubai to most of Europe, so weren't too bothered so far) I am now a total convert. The only problem is that calls to Dubai are still really expensive, so it's not been an option to call anyone there.

This is driving me crazy!

There are many little inconveniences when one moves countries a lot, but none seem so deliberately infuriating and purposely designed to force me to tie myself in knots while trying to do something simple than DVD region coding. Man, as if it wasn't enough that I have to rip or re-buy my films if I want to watch them on my iPod, but to stop me from watching stuff on my computer just because I buy DVDs in a variety of countries that have been randomly assigned to different regions, that is just too stupid.

Of course my Mac should have a region free drive, and of course I could just wait to buy DVDs until I am back in Europe, or I could pay for a download from iTunes and then deal with the DRM on that and pay extra for the bandwidth to get the film that isn't all that much cheaper than a DVD in the first place and includes no extras, but why? How did we get to a place where I am a criminal for wanting to watch a movie? Soviet Russia much?

Grrr.

Just to give you an idea how totally ridiculous these regions are, here is a map. South Africa with Europe, why? And Australia with NZ and South America, good idea! At least Leo doesn't have this problem (as long as he stays out of the US).

Plugs of the World

I was going to write a long rant about the lack of standards related to anything from plugs to water hose connectors, to gas bottles, never mind electronics, and the annoyance factor for us travellers, but then I discovered this map and I realised that this is just another opportunity for neogeography, and that I shall map my experience of non-matching connectors in my life instead of complaining about it.

Map: Eurocom

What I love about Germany part 4

So I am returning from a weekend in England on a flight that is arriving late into Düsseldorf at 10.30pm. It's a good hour on the train till I get to my bed at the best of times and now it's late at night. I am prepared to spend 80€ on a taxi. As it turns out there is a regional train with one change to Recklinghausen AND a bus that will get me to within 5 minutes walk from home. All for 10€! Pretty cool. And that's not even to talk about the fact that you can buy an all areas ticket for the month for about 80€ - which even let's you take friends along for free on the weekends. Or the cool Fahrplan (Link opens iTunes) iPhone app that can tell you where the nearest bus stop is and what time the next bus is due. I have always been convinced of the value of public transport. It is an efficient way to move people, it keeps down pollution and gives me time to read and think.

What I love about Germany part 3

Fairs are great. They happen at every -generally catholic - holiday, Easter, carnival, All Saints, specially around spring and autumn times, as if to bracket the outdoor and indoor parts of the year. There are rides, of course, big swirly scary gravity-defying ones that make me green round the edges just looking at them, neon lit with speeds too fast for the human organism; old-fashioned slower ones that are more my thing: the big wheel, bumper cars, Kettenkarussell (the one that looks like a spinning top with seats on chains hanging from the sides).

And candy floss, candy apples (I prefer their German name Paradiesapfel: apple of paradise), chocolate waffles, ice cream, licorice and if I'm really lucky, Turkish Honey.

As a bonus this time we had a firework display. Brill!

Going back in time and place

To Nottingham for a weekend and nothing much has changed in the last 5 years... Or so it seems. On closer inspection it turns out that some friends have a new puppy, some are pregnant, some are engaged or even married, some have acquired a new kitchen or published a book. My old home and friends are not so unchanged, after all.

What I love about Germany. Part 1

Mineral water in crates. You return them to a machine that counts how many bottles you have and gives you your deposit back. All sorts of recycling including batteries. There are collection boxes in the shops next to the rack of new batteries. Brilliant. Train stations and airports have bins where you can separate paper, plastic and cans.

Clarkson on Joburg

Jeremy Clarkson has a big mouth, and he gets a lot wrong, but this article is interesting for the sharply divided comments from ex-pat and resident South African readers.

Geography of a house move

View Larger Map

Until I looked at the output of the car GPS I hadn't realised how much driving I did to sort out the various bits of our exit from New Zealand. It puts me in a melancholy mood to remember my last lunches with friends, the views across the bay from the waterfront. I am equally glad that the endless disposal of superfluous bits and pieces is over. My favourite trip was the last one, to drop the car off at Van Lines for shipping. If you click on the "View Larger Map" link you can investigate the whole map on Google. Enjoy!

I'm in love...

The answer to all my prayers, well at least the ones revolving around cheap international calls, is called SkypeIn online numbers. With the power of the internets, a Skype enabled phone on a local landline and a monthly fee I now have three local phone numbers (New Zealand, UK and Germany) where our friends can reach us without having to endure horrendous international charges. And we can, using the Skype phone, make free calls to landlines in lots of countries with great sound quality - I don't think my mum has noticed that I am calling her over Skype) for that same monthly fee. Yay! (Except for Dubai, which still costs shed loads for some reason, probably to do with Etisalat). So if you live in one of those countries and want to call me, email me and I'll let you have my number.

The strangest coincidence

My last days in Wellington, now that we have well and truly moved out (the inspection went off without a hitch today), are spent at Combie and Sarah's house in Mt. Victoria. By a strange coincidence I have a bedroom with a view of Oriental Bay and the Rimutakas, exactly in the opposite direction from the view we had when we first moved to Wellington. In fact I can see Carl and Elisabeth's place, where we spent those first few cold and windy weeks, in the distance perched on the hill. Weird, a reversal of direction, then arriving and now leaving, looking forwards and back... You get the drift.

Goodbye Wellington! It was nice knowing you.

The prize for most unbureaucratic process goes to...

The AA for de-registering my car for free and without asking for any paperwork bar my driving license number. Plus the guy who did it was from Cape Town, so we could have a nice chat about South Africa while I filled out the - very simple - form. As opposed to Vodaphone's shenanigans.

Musing on Moving

Why is it that the one time my place is in tip top shape is the day before the movers come? Yesterday this house was streamlined. I knew where everything was, what possessions I own and that all of them are things I actually value. It was beautiful. Of course, today everything is packed into pristine white boxes, inaccessible for the next 6 months.

Vodaphone rant

With every house move there has to be a rant, because the least fun job when leaving a country is the cancellation of bills and accounts. Water rates, rent, car insurance, tax, landline phone, internet, mobiles... I could go on. Cancelling involves navigating through imprenetable websites, waiting for hours on the phone to atrocious hold music, sending letters and visiting dingy offices.

The prize for most ridiculous excuse for refusing to cancel a contract so far goes to Vodafone New Zealand. Vodafone has a track record for flakiness, cancelling international roaming just as I leave for Australia or changing contract details without notification, inevitably resulting in endless calls to the outsourced call centre. From the beginning, despite signing a contract in person in the shop, my bills said "Mr.". Knowing the haphazard results from calls, I never bothered changing it. When I called to cancel my account today I was informed that I could not do this because I was not male as per the account details. The fact that I know the date of birth, password and any other details was to no avail. Even the supervisor was adamant that they would see my passport in person to verify my gender. The back and forth went on for so long that I was starting to doubt my identity at the end.

Oh well. I guess I will be trying to find a male who can make the call for me. It's almost like being back in the Middle East...

...in which the cat is an Internet star

One of the more horrible aspects of our house move is the question of what to do with the cat. She won't like travelling on the very long trip to Germany (hell, I hate it and I get a seat and peanuts and lots of movies as opposed to a box in an unheated cargo hold). We won't be there at the other end to pick her up (although Mark and Martina kindly volunteered to look after her for the time we are in South Africa) and with our frequent absences we wouldn't be able to provide a good home to her in Germany anyway.

So the hard decision was to find her a new home in Wellington. I had been putting it off again and again, until finally I really needed to get on and find a place. But where do you publicise the fact that your cat needs a new home? Facebook? Lots of kind messages but no offers. The local SPCA? This garnered a few terse references to websites and the underlying message: "Just don't bring her back to us, we have 90 kittens to dispose of first." Ask friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends? Everyone who likes cats already has one. Someone mentioned TradeMe (for you non-Kiwis, that's the local version of eBay). But that's where you sell stuff, right? Apparently not, as the listings were full of cuddly dogs, glamorous cats and a few budgies. My expectations of success were low as there were so many other pets listed, but I gathered all the cutest photos of the cat together and Merryl wrote the most amazing copy and, to coin a phrase: A star was born!

Within half an hour we had a phone call and text message (it was 10 at night) with people interested in seeing the cat, and the next three days until we took the ad down we had 10 requests. the story changed from being desperate to finding someone to take her to sifting applicants. So I asked everyone interested to visit here and meet the cat and then I planned to go to their house and see if it was suitable. I had a mental questionnaire from: "Do you have a cat flap?" and "How much time do you spend sitting on the sofa?" (the cat loves to perch on laps) to "Are you planning to move house anytime soon?" Not really, but people did volunteer the most amazing amount of personal information. I had a long email from a guy in Petone who specified his income and career prospects in great detail to let me know he was capable of looking after a pet long-term. The whole thing turned into an adoption process.

The happy ending to this is that Ariadne now lives with a nice Texan couple in Kelburn whose 6 year old daughter has been collecting cat points to earn the right to a pet on her birthday. She is already planning to build a cat fort and has a large selection of cat toys and plastic bags (the cat likes the crumpling sounds of carrier bags - I know, not normal), so I think Ariadne is not going to be bored. Her name might change to a more 6 year old friendly version - that's ok, we mostly called her fluffybums and kitty, anyway.

The TradeMe page is already gone, but for those of you interested in seeing Merryl's fabulous copy, read on:

"Feline Greetings (purrr, head bump) My name, my formal name is Ariadne, but my friends (YOU) can call me 'kitty', 'cat', 'puss' or 'fluffypants'. I like them all. My parents are moving to South Africa at the end of January and I hear the lions and cheetahs are very jealous of my beautifully rare patterns and overall cuteness. Since I am so polite and well-mannered, I would prefer to avoid THAT particular cat-fight and just relax in NZ. I am the type of cat that loves to join you in the gorgeous sun or the garden; running away from spiders and pawing at the slaters. When I'm indoors, I like to hunt down the noisiest plastic bag in the household, roll around in it and nap in it too. I enjoy the relaxed household, not too much chaos, but not so I'm alone all the time - I like it when you guys are home :) then I can talk to you and have some bonding time. I think the little sproggs will be ok for me, but they have to promise to be nice to me and not chase me lots, running is tiring you know? And I don't think I'm that keen on doggies, they are so loud and obnoxious. And like I said earlier, most cats are jealous of my beauty, so how about I just be the only kitty cat in the household? :) more pats for me that way. Please call me when you are going to watch tv or a film, I'll come running, sit right on you and watch it with you - just dont wriggle to much please, WHY do humans wriggle so much? O, and do let me know where the sunny spots in the house are please, I cant get enough of the sunny spots! They make me so happy. I must admit, I am a youthful and lively 4yr old, but EVERYONE says I look ATLEAST half my age. oh so nice, well...I do dont I? My parents say I tend to put on a 'winter coat' during the chillier season - so I enjoy my dining and napping! What's so wrong with that? Come and visit me any time you like, we can talk about our common interests and hobbies. I would love to meet you! kitty kisses xx "

navigating around

After years of resistance - and living in countries where I either knew my way around or where the road system was transitory, to say the least - I have finally succumbed to using a GPS navigator for the car (a "Navi" in German). It has made me aware of and transformed my hesitancy of getting around in South Africa, and made me more adventurous about using back roads in New Zealand.

Ever since we talked about going to Johannesburg we have been getting aghast looks and dire warnings about the danger of being out on the road in the murder capital of the World. Advice has ranged from keeping all doors locked and never going out after dark, to keeping a car length space at traffic lights so that in the case of a car jacking attempt it is possible to swerve past the car in front. It has made me hesitant to drive on my own. To be fair, the first few weeks in the crazy traffic of Dubai were pretty nerve-wracking, but there the issue was confined to being accidentalyy in on purpose being rammed by a speeding Landcruiser, not robbed and murdered on the open road, as people have been predicting.

All this has changed now that I have the dulcet tones of Sally the navigator telling me to "in 200 metres turn left" and "recalculating" when I miss a junction. She is amazingly easy to program and even lets me download my routes to my Mac when I return so I always knew where I went. The fear of getting lost is gone now so I know whatever else happens I will aways find my way home.

The Essentials

I guess I have found my local supermarket. It's essential, obviously, once we get over eating out, but often surprisingly hard to find. While there are plenty of multinational chains (Carrefour in Dubai, Spar in Johannesburg) it sometimes takes a few attempts to find the place with the right food at the right price. Surprisingly here it turns out to be Woolworth. They may be going bust in the UK, but here they are the local equivalent of Marks and Sparks fool hall. So far the other places I have tried are either too far to walk or have a crummy fruit selection. How is it that a country with almost permanent summer can't produce nice peaches or decent banana?. I blame it on the global food crisis. Anyway, Woolworth it is for now.