I have found Pakeha New Zealanders to be a little schizophrenic about how they see themselves as New Zealanders. Pakeha is a Maori word describing white New Zealanders of European descent. The word Pakeha has been said to have originally meant various things: ‘pale’, ‘ghost’, ‘white pig’ and ‘white lice’, but its origins are still a source of debate. Today, it is a word in common usage, and perfectly acceptable.

My husband always refers to himself as Pakeha. When filling in forms, if he has only the option ‘European New Zealander’ to tick under ethnicity, he is livid. “I’m not European!” he’ll exclaim. “My family has lived in New Zealand for five generations. In what sense am I European?!”

Others, many from older generations, are offended by the word Pakeha. Perhaps they feel a loss of identity at being defined in a non-European way. They cling to the traditions of the Old World.

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Give that obscure object of your desire a full-body massage. Once you have them naked and relaxed on that massage table, moaning with pleasure under your firm yet gentle grip, you’re already more than halfway there!

This epiphany came to me yesterday at the spa, not coincidentally as I lay there getting a massage. She was a not unattractive woman about my age, in jeans and a white polo shirt, with shoulder-length black hair. Every now and then she’d lean over to wrench a joint a bone a muscle and her hair would gently brush my skin. I felt a huge wave of affection for my masseuse. I wished I were king, so I could eliminate income tax for masseuses and masseurs.

Anyway. Try it and let me know if it works!

A lot of us end up somewhere else than where we start out. Some of us are now writing about the experience at Lost in Transit.

http://lostintransit.org is a group weblog by expatriates living around the globe. Go take a look at it, it really seriously rocks.

Leif Utne has a blog!
And I own more shares than anyone else right now! They only cost a penny!

Use a tortoise to apply wax to your floor. Put a small blob on the hardwood floor, and let the turtle walk over it. In no time, you’ll have a uniform coat of wax throughout the room.

Works for tortoise shit, anyway.

Aw, she just woke up from hibernation. Isn’t she cute. Day or night, when I come into our office at home to do something important, like manage my Blogshares, the tortoise comes out of whatever corner she’s been hiding in and walks around my feet, her little claws clicking on the maple floor.

Sort of the tortoise version of an excited little dog happy to see you and running around yapping.

Put on your bathing suit, swim around. Stand by the bubble jets. Swim to another pool, the one with salt water and music playing below the surface so the bass riffs sort of goose you. Swim over to a third pool. Go to the sauna area, get naked. Try out the steam room. Take another shower. Try out the “castle sauna” with interesting antique-looking paneling inside. Get something to drink. Go to a meditation room, with fake stalactites and stuff, and water beds to rest on, and lights and a looped recording of new age music. Get up 45 minutes later. “Gosh, I almost fell asleep,” you say. “You were snoring for a few minute there,” your spouse says. Eat lunch. Go to the Finnish sauna. Some show off does an “Aufguss” which is a ceremony where he pours water over the stones and flaps a towel around, the instant humidity really makes you sweat. When he finishes everyone claps. Then back to the meditation room for a few more minutes, get something else to drink, and over to the Asian meditation room. Different looped tape of new age music, this time piano, harp, strings and either a singing saw or a very wild soprano. Then over to the massage room for a full body massage.

I don’t see how people do it. Man am I happy I have to work tomorrow.

Have the day off for a Hindu holiday. Heading for a spa with my wife. More later.