Auckland, taken from that footbridge that goes over
Wellesley St between the top end of Albert Park and AUT
I’ve got a bit of travel coming up, for a number of reasons.
I’m off to Lincoln next week for the international Radio Conference, and I’m looking forward to hooking up with Matt Mollgaard and Peter Hoar from my old department at AUT.
There’s a bunch of other people from radio studies going to be there (we pretty much all know each other, so it’ll be great in that respect) but there are some people I’ve been meaning to visit since I first got to the UK, and that I haven’t seen yet, so this will be the chance to finally catch up for the first time since the conference in Madison, WI.
I’m going to be in and out during that conference though… Lincoln on Monday, then I’m giving a workshop in Wolverhampton on Tuesday, then back to the conference Wednesday and Thursday, and on the way home, I’ll be giving a seminar in Leicester for the Musicians Union.
My presentation for the radio conference is at 9.30 in the morning on the last day — so it’s not as if anybody will be there to hear it.
At the end of this month, I’m embarking on a spot of research that will involve going and interviewing musicians and people from record labels in some different towns. This came pretty much out of the blue in the last few days, and it’s a great opportunity to get out, see a bit of the UK and find out some more about the music biz.
The itinerary for the research project looks like this:
Once I get back, there’s a week where I’m probably going to be locked in a room, transcribing interviews, writing up findings and so on. I’ll be taking the camera with me, and with a bit of luck there’ll be something worth blogging as I travel about the place.
It’ll be school holidays, so no doubt Jake will join me for some of that.
He’s just got back from a week away himself. I’ll be leaning on him to write a decent post about that over at his blog — but I’ll let him catch up on a bit of sleep first.
And then, at the end of November, it’s off to New Zealand. First time back there since I came to the UK in 2004. Jake’s coming with me, but Bobbie’s going to stay behind because of work. Looks like she’s going to take a couple of days in Prague by herself as a consolation prize.
First stop is a couple of days in Auckland, just to recover from the jetlag thing, and then I’ll leave Jake with Mum and Dad and head straight down to Dunedin, where I’m giving a paper at the IASPM Conference.
I’ll be back in Auckland on the 2nd of December for Jake’s 15th(!) birthday and his cousin Aaron’s 14th — then I’m pretty much just going to take it easy, catch up with a few people and see what’s changed. Jake will pop down and visit some of Bob’s side of the family in Wanganui and I’ll probably spend a bit of time savouring decent coffee on Ponsonby Road or something.
Dad’s birthday is the 8th, and then we’ll head back around the 12th. A bit of a flying visit, but I have work to get back to.
And speaking of birthdays, I just realised I only have 2 more months of my 30s remaining. Yikes. Bobbie says she’ll be able to trade me in for two 20 year-olds at the Husband Exchange.
Is that how it works?
