Day off
y potential cold remains at bay, so I decided to use my day off to attend a few writers’ festival events. The first was a talk by psychologist Michael Corballis about his new pop-psychology book The Wandering Mind. It’s based on the idea that letting your mind wander is actually a good thing, because that’s where creativity comes from. It was quite an interesting talk, though not really enough so to inspire me to buy the book. But definitely worth attending though.
After that talk I had an hour or so to kill before the next one I was interested in, so I thought I’d go for a wander for a bit and see what had changed in town (that’s one thing about central Christchurch – it’s guaranteed to look different every time you see it, with buildings still being knocked down, and a (very) few new ones being built). I had my camera with me, so I was taking photos of random things that caught my eye (I’ll post some tomorrow – it’s too cold in the study tonight to want to sit here long enough to sort through them!). The weather was just mild enough to feel like Spring really is on the way, and I was enjoying my walk so much that I decided it was much nicer being out in the fresh air than in a stuffy conference room, so I didn’t bother going back for the other talks – I just kept walking, stopped off for lunch in the Re:Start mall, then wandered through the Botanic Gardens (where the daffodils are starting to come out) and up to Riccarton to catch a bus home. I reckon I walked around for about three hours in the end.
So not quite the day I’d planned, but still a most enjoyable one!