adventures in Dunedin - part 1
July 11, '04

(click on the first picture to get started; captions are at the bottom of each picture page)

the view from George Street, walking back to my flat My good ol' flat. Yes, it is more like a house than an apartment. No, I do not know what kinds of plants those are, but I intend to find out. And yes, that is a sliding door. Which explains why it would not open no matter how hard I pushed (and pulled).
It is so hard to take decent photos of a room. Anyway, this is mine. Dunedin Railway Station
The front of the railway station, along with patterned bush gardens. This is the Taieri Gorge Railway train waiting to depart later that day from Dunedin station.
(surroundings) looking the other direction down the tracks (apparently there is an "indoor kart raceway" down there)
I couldn't believe it, they had all these flowers outside of the station! It's the middle of winter now, people! I'm pretty sure they weren't fake... The view out my window - hehe, I wish. Close though; I took it from just up the street. You can see across the bay to Otago Peninsula. The closer tall building is part of the Uni (as they call it here).
So, as the finale event of the International Science Festival happening right here in Dunedin, there was a world record attempt for the most people "firewalking". This means walking barefoot across burning coals. For Mr. Guinness, the distance walked across the coals must be at least a meter, and the coals must be at least 400° C. I'm not kidding here. This is the fire before it died down enough to walk on. Along with all the people watching. Anyway, we thought, heck, why not?
There were also people twirling fire batons and torches of various shapes and sizes. And a drum band playing (not visible in this picture). Quite exciting. I think the fire twirlers have a Uni club. Anyway, we figured we would join in, and unfortunately didn't get any pictures (it all happened very fast), but this gives you a good idea of what it felt like. Yes, OUCH. I was thinking, it's ok, it's physics, physics is never wrong. So how do you explain the burns on my feet, huh huh? I want my.. feet back?
This guy in a wig seems pretty chill. Yikes. There were lots of newscasters and cameras around.
Oh, also it turned out that there has never before *been* a world record attempt for the most people firewalking, so this was guaranteed to go in the record. So yeah, I officially helped make history (and have the scars to show for it...) Yeah, she looks calm. But that's because she just took her first step into the 700 degree burning inferno and her muscles haven't had time to react. Hehe, yes I'm a little bitter but also quite amused by the whole ordeal.