New Zealand trip

My face was in a scowl for a solid hour this morning as I made my rounds. It didn't reflect the mood I was in though, I was simply trying to bite raspberry seeds in half the long way, the hard way, the way that if you succeed you end up splitting them in two in a single satisfying slice with your teeth. It rules, but your facial features suffer as your tongue struggles to make it happen. This is the face i greeted the students with today.

I opened the door to the first classroom and did a quick count of everyone inside. Students were getting cocky in my second week on the job - waving at me and making faces (today I answered their faces with my scowl). If you ever want to get on the bad side of a group of professors i recommend interrupting their class to stand in front and count everyone inside. Do this for 10 hours a day for 2 weeks.

It's this job counting students that brought me to the beautiful Kelburn campus of Victoria University in Wellington. Between my counting I had plenty of time to listen to my ipod and explore the campus. Vic Uni is an interesting place. New Zealand, with it's recently legalized prostitution, Universal health care and civil unions may be more liberal than the U.S., but Victoria University blows mainstream New Zealand out of the water in their liberal idealism. Elections for student government happen to be coming up, and are around the same time as the NZ government elections. This means the entire campus is drowning in posters advertising students running, government parties looking for students votes, and special interests trying to influence the votes of students just now getting thier right to vote.

Posters for student government candidates tout their anti capitalist credentials with one simply showing "Justin" being arrested and a short anti capitalist catch phrase. Here that might be good enough to get elected into student government - this is the same student government organization that in 1977 sent $15,000 in student fees to the Viet Cong so they could buy a tank.

Victoria University was the second campus that Helen Clark, the prime minister of New Zealand, decided to visit in a re-election campaign yesterday. Clark is the liberal Labour party candidate, so I assumed she'd be well received. Counting people was getting boring, so I decided to attend the rally and maybe catch a glimpse of the prime minister...

Good old fashioned fun filled chaos describes the rally pretty well

No security check, no one to block the door and ask who I was going to vote for, and only 4-5 visible police officers. The students for National party were in force to boo, the Labour students were there to cheer and the minority parties were there to prance around in thongs hoping to make the paper. The guys in thongs almost made it to the stage and were allowed to aimlessly wander around after the rally and protest the fact that they weren't allowed on stage to whomever would listen. After the rally students there to support National or Labour concentrated on outdoing the each other with their chants and I concentrated on shaking the prime minister's hand and snaping a blurry picture.

Today saw another candidate, from the minority party Act, visit the campus. He has almost no chance of winning, no policy and no pride. Once he gave his position, and he had only one - tax cuts, he went into an attack on the Labour party. It wasn't an attack on the Labour party though, it was an attack on Helen Clark and the only critique he had dealt with her looks, which he made fun of for the next 15 minutes. At first the boos from the audience mixed with some cheers created a circus scene that bystanders like me could laugh at - a little fat man making fun of his opponents appearance.

His speech went on, grew more vicious and the students got louder. The humor was lost and it became painful to watch. I left to search for a pastry with raspberries in the hope of more seeds to occupy the second half of my day.

Dentists should use the jowl to get a better look at patients teeth.

The Jowl is being spread. In this entry it takes center stage and we examine various european countries and their citizens attempts at the jowl...

Germany

We'll start with a German jowl, represented by Monica below. To be honest, the Germans don't really like to jowl (or maybe it's just girls in general).
Ireland

They get better when the Irish take a shot at it.


Holland

Hiba represents the Dutch

England


I haven't seen this guy since this picture was taken. I think he just wanted to jowl for us.

Wales

The Welch jowl is my favorite European jowl so far

Accross the Atlantic the US group jowl represents
Southern Hemisphere jowls coming soon

New Zealand products: