Posts by Megan Wegan
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Late to this lovely thread, my excuse is we just got kittens and I was distracted :)
Pics please.
So for me, home isn't a place, it's a group of connections with people and the things those people mean to me. When I'm closest to the centre of those connections, then I'm home.
I always thought I was a bit the same, and I have been surprised by how sad I have been over some of the physical places in Christchurch. The Arts Centre, most notably, but this made me cry yesterday. (Although, a good deal of that is thinking about the fact that 4 days before the earthquake, Emma and I walked down those streets, and joked about the earthquake recovery.)
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to giovanni tiso,
It’s like a bollocks millefeuille.
New favourite phrase. Can I put in a pre-emptive WOTY nomination?
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I echo Jo's sadface. Who will tell me what I want to watch?
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I was talking about this subject to a friend at the weekend (Canadian, lived here for almost a decade), and he said something that struck me as rather lovely, and also quite sad.
"Because I've moved around so much, home has become the place where I'm not. Or the place I'm going back to."
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to linger,
I would say the older they are, the more likely they are to be in the "overall slower" group. It probably has something to do with received style, and NZBC training and all that stuff. These days we're taught it's OK to sound like a New Zealander, as long as you sound like a New Zealander everyone can understand.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I haven’t been into a McDonald’s for many, many years, but am heartened to hear they now have libraries, and librarians, on site
- are they near the toilets?I should have said, a librarian (and a sports monitor, and crossing guard - is that what we called them?) at the school over the road.
Apparently the "good kids" got the free maccas. It was very exciting, given the only other 'fast food' I'd ever has was Georgie Pie on a family trip to Auckland. Sigh. To be 10 again.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to linger,
An alternative – as yet unresearched, and not supported by Robb et al’s results – is that (some) NZ speakers might be more “bursty” than speakers of other varieties (which would mean that words are on average spoken more quickly, but without necessarily affecting the overall number of words/minute).
I don't know if this counts, but I spend a fair amount of time listening to newsreaders. One thing I have noticed is that there's 2 different styles. (Well, there's lots, clearly, but for the purposes of this.) Some speak consciously slower, overall. Their pace is even throughout a story. And others speak faster, but leave longer gaps between phrases. They probably average out about the same speed (we aim for about 3 words per second), but of the readers I like, they are mostly from the second lot, because they sound much more natural, and "new zild-y".
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One place this is really noticeable is podcasts and radio
I'm trying to slow down, I swear!
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I have two homes.
To use Tom’s Christmas analogy, way back on the first page, I always say I am going home for Christmas. Because I am. But when I come back to Wellington, I am coming home too.
Christchurch is home. It’s where most of my family is, where a fair whack of the people I love are. My parents are there, my brother. It’s where the children I care about are (my friends in Wellington being mostly childless, debauched individuals). Where Emma is. And Isabel and Megan and a bunch of other people I hold dear.
It’s also where most of my memories are stored. My first kiss, the first time I got drunk, my school and university years, my graduations, throwing up on the steps of the Casino. The school building that burnt down when I was 10. My walk to school through Linwood park. The Linwood McDonalds, where as a librarian, I got to go before it opened, so the staff would have people to ‘practice on’. School balls. My grandparents’ funerals (technically Ashburton, but I am counting it). Weddings and christenings and parties and most of the things that made me who I am. Of course, there’s the bad memories, too. The time I found a girl who had just been raped in The Square, the time I got my ribs broken, the heartbreaks and awful, mean people. But still, I’m horrified by how many of the buildings that contain those memories are gone, are reduced to rubble. How much of my home, touchstones, aren’t there anymore. I will be down in a couple of weeks, and I am dreading it.
For all that Christchurch is home, Wellington is even more so. It’s where I’ve chosen to live. It’s where I’ve made my life. It’s where I ran away to, in some ways, but it’s worked out. I did a Political Science degree. Of course Wellington was where I would end up. And after a few days in Christchurch, I long for it.
I’ve been thinking Megan and I should simply merge our friend collections. It’s about that time, surely.
We’ve done quite enough of that already, haven’t we my love?
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I have always had a fantasy of a library with dark wood and leather chairs and a basset hound curled in front of an open fire.
So it is with great glee, I share, via @saslockey on Twitter, Basset Hounds Running.