[tag=IN | lemma=be] | [□]
[tag=IN | lemma=be] | [□=□]
[tag=IN | lemma=be] | [!□]
Although you may find it hard to believe , we did n't spend all our time sailing . For Ian , musical life resumed when we returned after six months in the doldrums in Calgary . Within three days she had chosen her courses , found a house very near the university with about six other students ( it varies ) , and was working part-time to support herself . Maybe next year they 'll star in the Proms ? Then from Belfast to Glasgow for a weekend playing jazz with Gary , an ex-member of the Ian Witten trio who deserted New Zealand a year ago for the grey skies of Scotland . Although a little dubious at first , she found that she really enjoyed the work - - especially driving all those flashy cars ! Talking of the volcano - - although Ruapehu is only a couple of hours drive from us and can be seen from the top of Hamilton 's tallest building ( a mere seven stories ) , life was not in the least affected by the eruptions except that the airport was sometimes closed at night because of drifting , incredibly gritty , volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere . Ian was staying with the Andreaes ( in whose house , we guess , Anna was conceived 23 years ago ) , and Anna joined them for some nice meals . After hiking for over an hour , the mystery was eventually revealed to be a packing case and other assorted pieces of driftwood , stacked up in a primitive sculpture , now only a few hundred metres away . We've anchored in bays on a dozen different islands , with many more left to explore within long-weekending distance . We hiked along canyons , through high alpine meadows filled with wild flowers ( and the occasional ptarmigan ) , by azure lakes , past lofty waterfalls , up to crystal glaciers riven by huge crevasses , and over many passes . The first , in March , took in New York ; a conference at Princeton University in New Jersey ; seminars at NEC Research and Drexel University in Philadelphia ( where who should turn up but Robert Aish , a friend from Essex days thirty years ago ) ; a " distinguished visiting lecture " at Texas A & M University ; a visit to ex-colleague Lloyd Smith ( the man who originally hired Ian at Waikato ) at New Mexico Highlands University ; Grand Falls , Colorado ; and the annual Data Compression Conference at Snowbird , a ski resort outside Salt Lake City . Judy ( a long time ago Saul was Ian 's graduate student , now he 's a professor too ) and their two kids in their gorgeous house looking up to the Three Sisters . If you get within 20 yards of them , they rumble into reverse and back off . Of course our family felt pretty exposed at that tragic time , spread over Australia ( Anna ) , London ( Pam and Nikki ) and Canada ( Ian ) , with lots of travel plans , and ten weeks in the US ahead of us . The first thing we did in Calgary was go out and buy winter clothes for the kids : although the weather was mild by Canadian standards , it was a bit of a shock to our California-conditioned Kiwis . But that may have been the Titanic 's last trip , for rumor has it that it spent the remainder of the winter marooned on an iceberg in a car park in southern Calgary . Ian was taken aback to learn from the radio that the challengers were out there jousting in the pre-start melee . We've hidden our bodies in sarongs from the burning sun , watched the moon rise over gently-rippling water at dusk , and lain on deck gazing at fabulous star-studded night skies . A few years ago we started to put our letters on the World-Wide Web , and have occasionally corresponded with strangers who notice them , but to come up on The Guardian 's radar - - we were flabbergasted . Noam Chomsky , originally an American linguist who was Ian 's hero in his days of speech synthesis at Essex and now a leading left-wing intellectual in the US , came to Waikato to give an inspirational , and awe-inspiring , speech on the new world order .