visiting my buddy in new zealand

my buddy leeann, she's south african -- we worked concurrently and shared our lives a little along with 2 other canadians and also before that an american couple in tonghua in northern china near the border with north korea -- coincidentally a few months later we aforementioned south african, 2 canadians and i found ourselves again living in the same city: guangzhou..... in between tonghua and north korea actually benji made acquaintanceship with some female that would end up becoming benji's wife, for better or worse, probably worse.............. leeann is an amusing character with an infectious laugh who studied law, like my father, and now practices a kind of law to do with government home rentals here in new zealand.... her husband is a likeable guy, also south african......... this is my 2nd time visiting leeann's household in auckland and wifey's first time here

we saw some interesting art works at the local gallery here today and will post some of the paintings by and by.... the best ones were from 19th century english painters and suchlike, not necessarily famous like constable but very capable artists.......... one of them shows a scene from a 15th century escape of nobles in feudalistic europe via a moat on a boat to some abbot in a castle side door.... things like that.... and paintings of Maoris in early 19th century, etc..... it also brings to mind a visit to a museum in fiji in the capital city -- they had some interesting exhibits there to do with fijian soldiers serving in the british army

it's interesting to mention that the term 'west' and 'the west' are not necessarily watertight..... south africans like leeann and roger have very mixed genes and it's unclear what exactly kinds of genes they have, or really important, but south africa's english influence means it's a hub to other english places like new zealand (or fiji)..... so in this sense south africans can be 'western' too and then benji's wife would be considered by some people as 'western' too being that we live in sydney and she's 'white' (or european) however the russians were really going for the opposite extreme of 'western' with their whole colonization movement

in this picture, the famous egyptian, cleopatra, performs magic rites, whilst the artist is most likely english and somewhat victorian or edwardian (ie., english), the details in this image depicts detailed egyptian symbols, cleopatra (from around 2300 years ago) is shown here as young and devoted intelligently to her rites