A brief dip in the pool

I spent four extraordinary days in New Zealand and when I boarded NZ 2 in Auckland yesterday it seemed as though I had just stepped off NZ1. There is an element of madness in flying around the world twice in a week but there is also the sense that one has passed through Lewis Carroll's looking glass, or CS Lewis's wardrobe. It is as close to magic as one gets in the modern world.

And New Zealand is another world, in so many ways. From late summer to early spring (witness the hailstorm), from day to night, from the crisp diction of Trinity High Table to the lazy, but beautifully familiar vowels of the antipodes. And then there is the disarming kindness of home, exaggerated in my first activity, an intravenous vitamin C session at the little "complementary medicine" clinic in Newtown, where the entirely female staff of receptionists, nurses and doctors greeted me as a long lost friend and tended to me amidst enquiries about my overseas adventures.

The week was packed with activity, the book launch of course, an extended TV studio session with media superstar and erstwhile psychologist, Nigel Latta, meetings at Magritek, with Zealandia, with Glenda Lewis from the Transit of Venus project, three radio interviews, a submission to the City Council, a catch-up with fellow amateur economist Shaun Hendy, and of course, in addition to the IVC, a blood test, an X-ray CT and, just before boarding the plane back to New Zealand, a consultation with my Wellington Hospital oncologist.

The primary reason for my dip back in the New Zealand pool was the need to deliver the "Chancellors Lecture". To my astonishment, tickets to the Town Hall venue were sold out a week before and the packed auditorium of 1400 people helped create an electric atmosphere. I post a couple of links below. Rugby world cup madness must have contributed to the occasion which ended in a standing ovation of disproportionate enthusiasm. But, to be truthful, I did enjoy myself.

My oncologist wasn't so gloomy after all. My cancer has progressed but only slowly, so that I can now plan a few more months of fun ahead. Most remarkably he brought up the matter of my IVC treatment, expressing some interest, confessing to me that he had been reading up on it and suggesting that it may have some therapeutic value. To hear this from my hospital oncologist only confirmed an impression that I had indeed passed through the looking glass and had joined the mad hatter's tea party.

http://sciblogs.co.nz/just-so-science/2011/09/15/inaugural-chancellors-lecture-professor-sir-paul-callaghan/

http://www.civicsquare.co.nz/?p=584

http://vimeo.com/29126569