Paper anniversary

It's official: today marks exactly 1 year that I've lived in New Zealand. That's kind of crazy. It also vividly reveals to me that moving abroad for a permanent/indefinitely long move is a whole different ball of wax than going abroad for a long time, such as a year or two. It's home here, now, despite my robust affinity for the US.

I'm about to go back to the US for a few weeks, so blogging will be lighter than normal for awhile. Here are two random thoughts to hold the Lucky Few over until then.

1) This is totally random, but remarkable: if you want to go to Med School or Law School here, you can do so straight out of high school. No need for a BA: Law and Medicine are treated as the professional schools that they really are. And students can generally write well after high school here, so why bother with a BA?

2) Most of the Lucky Few who read this blog are in the US. However, among others, I've mentioned it to someone who's in China now and a friend who served in Iraq for several months. While in China and a US base in Iraq, respectively, these people could not access Josh is in New Zealand! I never knew I was worthy of censorship, but it's a sad commentary on both human rights in China and the lack of freedom to read in the US military. Now that I'm about to post this on-line, I'm afraid they'll come after me!

Odds and Ends

End of the term is here, and it's been very busy trying to get a lot done before I go back to the States in a couple of weeks. I actually had to just shelve a paper I was excited to work on, which was/is very disappointing.

Anyway, enough blabbing about work. Here's more evidence that the US health care system is worse than state-sponsored health care systems.

Also, here are some random pictures from Wellington. The one of the central town and harbour is from the Staff Club. Not a bad place to have a drink--we can be found there most Thursdays or Fridays during happy hour. I live across the town on the opposite hill--that's Mount Victoria. The other elevated picture is taken from Mt. Vic., heading further southeast, when Julie was here. There are some nice hikes up around there on the town greenbelt, and some great views. That picture is pointed pretty much at Antarctica, the mouth of the harbour, and a bit of the runway you'd land on if you were to fly into Wellington. The other two are from that harbour mouth, on what's known as the Eastern Walkway, which turned out to be very nice. It was a bit too hazy for any good pics on the day that Ramon (colleague and friend) and I did that walk, but there are some awesome views of the South Island and its mountains from up there.