We teamed up with some fellow students for the ride to Wellington and the ninth annual New Zealand molecular ecology meeting on Friday. After an early start everyone settled into his or mostly her corner of the university bus we had hired and the trip began. Our first stop was in Hamilton, one of New Zealand’s many drab farming towns. It has three things in it’s favour however, first, it has a nice river running through it, secondly, the roads are good and you can therefore get away from it really fast, and thirdly, and this was the reason for our special stop for Chris, it is the birth place of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This is commemorated by an almost life size statue of Riff Raff. In 1952, the creator of Rocky Horror, Richard O’Brian (who played Riff Raff in the movie) emigrated with his family to Tauranga, NZ, where his father had purchased a sheep farm (what else). Well to be quite honest, actually Hamilton is the place where he cut peoples hair before earning enough money as an actor to get the hell out, but we don’t want to split hairs here.
After a long drive from Hamilton, sadly without a stop at the Kapiti Cheese and Ice Cream Factory, we almost reached Wellington, except for some last minute species collecting on another of New Zealand’s beautiful and breathtaking beaches. So many invertebrates, so little time…
But alas, rising levels of concern about not being in time for dinner at our destination forced us onwards. And although the strange inhabitants of that neck of the woods tried to scare us off with scarecrows, we finally made it to our for biologists so typical air conditioned hotel rooms with whirlpool, snooker table, king sized beds and Scandinavian buffet scout hut with bunk beds.
How to make biologists very happy #241: free food.
The next day was packed with talks, but the first thing to come to attention where strange mugs with the enlightening slogan „shaping the future together“ pasted on them without any further information. This lead some not to be named folks in our crew to compose an all new low in corporate jingles.
The talks started off with Alana’s brilliant presentation of „“Oh mother when art thou?“ Low mtDNA diversity in long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas)“, through very good talks by Doro and Jess (on Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins MHC genes and seriously sick cats, respectively) to the very interesting (and very good) talk by Melli on „Tracking Lapita Peoples through Phylogenetic Analyses of Pacific Rats“. More talks followed, then a soccer match, afterwards beer, party, interesting insights into some Artiodactyla species hooves, more beer, bad jokes, beer, extremlely bad jokes and so on. The next morning saw even more talks, and Alana getting the prize for the best talk in form of the new book „Ghost“.
Score! The South Island team does it again, shortly before their first goal and the end of the game.
An interesting and colourful choice of footwear always breaks the ice at parties (Photo by Eva).
The Auckland delegation, from left to right: Chris, Mell, Martin, Eva, Shane and Doro, upfront Jess and Alana. (Photo by Eva)
…and a bunch of total strangers playing stupid.
On the way back Mell and I played the German version of „I spy with my little Eye“ which went somewhat like this: „I spy with my little Eye something that is white.“ To which the correct answer was of course „sheep“. Then it’s the next persons turn to spy something that is for example „green“, which would have been „grass“. This merry game went on for about eight hours, and the answers strangely always turned out to be „sheep“ or „grass“. A brief stop at Mount Doom brought some entertainment, till at last we got back on Sunday ready and eager for a new weeks workload.
