As Fi Bows to Peer Pressure

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Exciting!! I know I promise not to post too much politics on this blog but it’s still exciting to see myself listed on other websites . . . I’m in the top 5 for the electorate, YAY!!!

I have just returned from Dunedin (well I flew in last night) and tomorrow morning I’m off to TSCF conference in Ngaruwahia so there’s a whole heap of posts that I’ve just added and you won’t hear from me again for another week-or-so now caus once we return it’s uni time again . . . it’s been an INSANE month. Four trips, four places, 14 days in Welly, and not much work done but I’m feeling optomistic . . . I will be collecting Sweden data today, oh the funnity :oP

Anyway I’ve discovered that a lot more people look at my blog than I thought, it’s quite exciting. I also discovered, however, that I haven’t actually blogged that I’m ‘dating’/'going out with’/’seeing’/someone even suggested the word ‘courting’ Dave and some friends have had to check Dave’s blog to find out (sorry about that Kathy!!) so here’s a basic update: Yes I’m running for Parliament for Wellington Central for United Future and yes I have a fabulous boyfriend whose name is Dave and you can go to his ’something’ to find out more about him (see blog links . . . see I haven’t mastered the link thing yet) :oP On Monday university starts. I have not written 30,000 words, in fact I’ve written none so I have a HUGE amount to do!!! I am doing quite a bit of candidate stuff and I need to work that into my timetable, a couple of forum things and a quiz night (which you are all invited to!!) . . . that’s what else I have to do today: make posters for the quiz night :o) So I’m going to get on with my bits and pieces and blog again in a week or so once I’m back and settled back into uni life :oP

My favourite quote from FPS: Feminist speaker says ‘Men should spend more time thinking about women’s bodies.’ . . . Hmmmmmm!!!!

http://newnuwebguy.proboards21.com/

It turns out that according to someone I’m beautiful . . . and it’s not even caus I said I was. How sweet!! I think I have connections in the right places :oP I’ve only just discovered it :o)

(I’m having linky issues . . . anyone know how to solve my problem, when I try to link the appropriate post to this blog post, it screws it up . . . I don’t know how to fix it . . . how do you do the linky thing in your blog Adam????)

I am sitting in bed in Dunedin and mulling over the last week, while listening to my favourite ‘contemplation’ song. It’s weird how a song can you transport you back to another world . . . there’s echoes here of a time far gone . . . but that’s not what I’m contemplating. Tomorrow I fly home and I’m only now starting to wish I had more time. I screwed up, I did a great job of avoiding social contact and it left me quite lonely and sad. I caught up with Rach B and Kathy while I was down but otherwise I spent a lot of time being a loner . . . one day I spoke to a sum total of two shop assistants . . . and that was it . . . for no particular reason . . .

FPS was good because I spoke to a couple more people each day but I just ‘wasn’t myself’ when it came to going up to people and asking questions. I was shy!!! I don’t know . . . maybe I’m just having an off week, it’s the first time I’ve ever been so shy in my life . . . maybe I struggled to connect with many of the people but that’s never really stopped me before caus I tend to pursue friendships :oP I hope it’s not permanent, I much prefer being happy and social and everything :o) Anyone got any theories?

So what have I been doing? I have spent the last week in Dunedin at Otago Foreign Policy School (FPS), which went from Friday 24th June – Monday 27th June. Basically it’s a conference-y thing on aspects of Foreign Policy. This year’s theme was Human Security & Development: Meeting the Millennium Development Goals? Since this is one of my ‘pet subjects’ and something I have a huge interest in and passion for, I thought it would be very interesting to go and hear what some experts, from both the academic field and those that work in development.
Since the people reading this are unlikely to be entirely interested, I’ll just run over some basic points and if you want to know more, write a response to the post and I’ll email you :o) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are 8 goals which set out the UNs member states development commitments. This includes halving extreme poverty (less than a $1 a day) by 2015 etc. I think I’ll post the goals properly in a post after this. Dr Peter Adams, as Executive Director of the NZ Agency for International Development (NZAID), gave an overview of NZAID. New Zealand gives 0.27% of Gross National Income (yip that’s 27 cents for every $100) as Aid. This is shared out in a number of ways, which would take an awful lot to explain, but the key point is that NZ has committed to raise that to 0.7% by 2015. It would be great to see it heading that way slightly quicker! The problem with Aid, as raised by Dr Stephen Knowles, is that it is often given for strategic reasons to certain countries, not necessarily the ones that are actually the poorest or the most in need. There’s a bigger issue here and it definitely is complicated but although it is an issue, it’s certainly one that can be improved so that the system works better. As Robert Patman said, ‘Politics is often about disagreeable choices’.
There were a number of feminist speakers at the school, which provided . . . another side to the debate (I’m being polite). They definitely had many valid points but I’m not sure I agree with their overall arguments. The most interesting speaker for myself was Dr Thomas Pogge, who spoke about the measuring poverty for MDG1. Basically there are a number of things that are ‘somewhat flawed’ about poverty statistics, not least the measuring of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), and it’s something I’d noticed but never had time to further explore so I found his paper very interesting and useful! Ask me about it . . . it really is a case of there being lies, damned lies, and statistics :oP Another interesting point he raised is that while some 30% of all deaths are poverty-related, when we draw up goals to eliminate poverty, we talk of ‘halving poverty’ in 19 years (1996 was when the first poverty goals emerged), which just doesn’t cut it! If we put the label ‘genocide’ on the deaths, we wouldn’t be telling people that we’d like to halve the number of people dying in the genocide in 19 years, would we? Grrrr . . . it was good to find another person who thinks that this is really really important!!!!!
So much else happened but that will do for now . . . I might write up more later but basically the conference was incredible and despite my lack-of-socialness I am really glad I went! It reminded me, as these things always do, of what I want to do, what I know I can do, and why I need to do it!

You know what I like about travelling around NZ? Almost everywhere else I go has Life FM! And although it tends to drive me nuts sometimes (don’t get me started), I love listening to the music, even if it’s teeny-bopper mostly-ish caus I don’t get to listen to it often and I never fail to find a song that brings me closer to God, which is incredibly good when I’m travelling . . . so although I’m not entirely sure that I’d listen to Life FM all the time if we had it in Welly, I love having it everywhere else so I can tune in occasionally and catch up on music that I haven’t heard for ages, or ever :o)