Lev Lafayette's journal

On Sunday visited the Dunedin Art Gallery, which had a pretty average "Private Utopia" collection on display from the British Council, which did however include one amusing piece, a short film, "Human Report" (2008) by Marcus Coates, a pseudo-documentary of human beings by a sapient booby set in the Galapolas. Also of interest from the main 'Belonging' display was Charles Monet's, La Debacle (1880) which I connected with Emile Zola's novel of the Franco-Prussian War of the same name which included a scene reminiscent like the painting. Surely I am not the first to notice this? After the gallery made our way to the impressive Dunedin museum; their shipping, Maori and islander, and wildlife dispalys are particularly good.

The following day made our way to our secret South Pacific baseRavensbourne property and met one of the new tenants, who dutifully informed us that the main hall is now a regular practise haunt for various musicians on the Flying Nun label. As rocknerds we couldn't ask for better visitors; plus the tenants are keeping the place in very good condition, which is obviously pleasing. With some time to spare went down to Port Chalmers for viewing of their great little maritime museum before returning to the main city for lunch with our Ravensbourne neighbours, Heather and Mark (who keep an eagle eye on our property).

At this juncture, caseopaya and I went on our separate ways for a while. I had some enrolment issues to sort out at the University (when you have multiple birth certificates with different names etc this sort of thing happens), followed by a visit with Professor Kwok-Wing Lai the Director of the Centre for Distance Education and Learning Technologies to discuss my thesis, and then a catch up with David Eyres and Jim Cheetham where we discussed a variety of matters technological and the limits of human rationality. Meeting up with caseopaya again, we had a quiet night in as we prepared for the next leg of our journey into Southland and Fiordland.