The rest of Armageddon was rather quiet. We sold more issues of Funtime Comics, and I bought comics off the other artists.
I had lunches with a couple of people I didn’t know very well - on Sunday with Shenya, who reads my journal and whom I knew vaguely when she lived in Christchurch, and on Monday with Craig, who’s the partner of Leonie, in whose house I used to board and who couldn’t be there due to influenza. Both were Good Lunches, with none of the cannonfire, screeching howler monkeys and mangled carcasses somersaulting through the air that so typify the Bad Lunch.
Also on Monday, but somewhat earlier than the Good Lunch, I went to visit CWA New Media and discovered that I was instead visiting Te Kete Ipurangi across the road. Fortunately, I had been furnished with an address and a name and I was dimly aware that Te Kete Ipurangi is an educational organisation and that CWA New Media did their website for them. Education is a funny business, and more so in Wellington where the relationships between organisations seem to be rather fluid. It turned out I was able to brainstorm some ideas, and my project has not been very rigourously determined yet. Essentially they have a website for primary students and they’d like to do something similar for high school students, but appropriate to the age level. Should I be short-listed for the Fellowship, it will be to determine whether I’m a good person to do a project, not whether I’m a person with a good project to do. And that’s the sort of useful information you only get if you meet people in person.
Later on Monday, but still earlier than the Good Lunch (which consisted of a bagel with cream cheese and lox and a lemon meringue pie) I bought a reproduction of Gordon Walter’s Kahukura which I had wrapped in bubble wrap and brown paper with orange warning stickers, and which I carried around downtown Wellington for a while. This proved an interesting exercise, as it was slightly too large to fit under one arm and required two hands to carry. Thus I held it before me like a shield and ploughed through the bemused pedestrians of Lambton Quay.
I also bought Interface by Neal Stephenson and his uncle George, previously published under the pseudonym “Stephen Bury” until Mr Stephenson became so famous that the pseudonym became pointless. Besides which, it’s kind of hard to hide his particular writing style. It’s a fine combination of media politics, neurology and cyberpunk, and I’m going to read some more of it now. When next I return, I shall regale you with tales of the Post Primary Teacher’s Association conference, and all that occurred therein except that of which I cannot speak because we were “In Committee” at the time. But if you want the short version there were many motions and amendments, an endless supply of complimentary mints, and we were requested not to wear our duck masks during the Minister of Education’s speech.