alt.polycon report
[originally posted to alt.polyamory, slightly edited]
Firstly, getting to the hotel was entertaining, because I couldn't remember its name. I knew it was a chain, so I hadn't paid much attention to the chain name, and had fixated on "Anzac" as the part of the hotel name that was distinctive. Luckily there's only one other hotel on Anzac Avenue and it doesn't mention Anzac in its name anywhere. (By the end of our travels, I had "Copthorne" well and truly fixed in my head - they're rather common around NZ).
We immediately had to rush off to buy a coat for James, and got back just in time for opening ceremonies, where everyone who was there introduced themselves and told the story of how they'd ended up at APC14. RA continued straight into the "out and about" panel. I thought the most interesting points raised were that people typically aren't out, in order to protect children or smooth relationships with family and friends, and typically are out because it means having to only keep track of one story.
The other issue dear to my heart is that it's quite hard to be a poly-friendly mono, given general social obliviousness to poly. RA thought (and I agree) we need an equivalent slogan to "straight but not narrow". I'm just using "poly-friendly" for now.
The "love is blind" panel has been covered well by others, although I didn't expect that what it was mainly going to be dealing with is the insecurity people feel about whether the other person really truly loves them, or is deluded. This is possibly because this is a problem I don't have - and I think this is where my experience parts ways with most others. The sense I get is that most people trust they have friends but are insecure about being loved. I'm insecure about whether anyone would want to be my friend, but by the time I'm in an actual romantic/sexual relationship with someone, I'm pretty confident it's for the right reasons.
I can't remember whether it was before or after that panel that trixtah led an expedition (micheinnz, James, myself) into the wilds of Auckland in search of good coffee. We got to Brazil just before closing, and got to see the fabulous manual coffee machine. Brazil apparently has a distinctive blend of beans. I scored a truly fabulous hot chocolate, because there were left-overs from another customer's order.
On Saturday, I tried to lead the first panel, on communication. The most interesting part of that panel was definitely when three complete strangers turned up half-way through, and turned out to be the now-famous New Zealand Triad (I don't believe they have ljs). But there was some interesting stuff about people who need background noise (and what kind) and people who need silence, and similar issues about incompatible levels of distraction while communicating.
The thing that amused me the most about the OSO panel was the discrepancy between "pivots" who let their SOs negotiate with each other over who "gets" the "pivot" when, and "pivots" who were totally squicked by the mere thought of the idea. Nice squirmy bodylanguage from saluqi's side of the circle.
Lunch was another trixtah-led expedition (saluqi, James, myself) for coffee, this time to Ponsonby. I still don't drink coffee, but they sure know how to make hot chocolate in Auckland. Trix then led everyone in the introversion panel. I'm still not sure if the overall cozy group dynamics of this alt.polycon was due to (for most of us) being part of a largish poly-to-poly-friendly group for the first time in our lives, or because we're (nearly) all rampaging introverts and the group was just big enough not to be totally overwhelming.
I decided to skip the next panel, and epi_lj felt the same way, so we hung out in the con suite, which was pretty much perfect given the way I was feeling at that point. I was ready for poly horror stories, given I don't have any to tell. I don't know what it says that we ran out of poly-specific stories pretty early on and it turned into generic embarrassing relationship moments.
Then there was the Sichuan restaurant, which I think submarine_bells has covered pretty well, at least at our half of the table. The restaurant staff were well-intentioned, and I'm impressed by how well they accomodated 14 walk-ins, but: meat, chilli-free and Sichuan - choose any two.
It seems appropriate, somehow, that the new & old relationship energy panel devoted most of its time to old relationship energy. It's a bit harder to point to, but also a lot harder to misjudge.
Even though I'd tried to pace myself, I was a bit overwhelmed the rest of the evening. Other people sensibly leave the room, but I just pull into myself, and didn't realise what I was doing until later. I'd like to apologise to anyone who might have wanted to talk to me.
Luckily, I was able to fix a lot of my stress with a run around the Domain Sunday morning. It's a bit scary to need exercise like medication at least every 48 hours (based on later events on this trip) but at least there's something that works.
Running also let me work up an appetite for the decadent brunch. I've never had chicken curry for breakfast before, but it worked quite well. And although the chocolate cake was good, I thought the gluten-free little cakes held up extremely well in comparison. The biggest problem with the brunch was trying to get to spend more time with various people.
The tricky emotions panel has also had good coverage on alt.poly. The thing that struck me the most was that the discussion on dealing with boredom/complacency/irritation turned into how to live with depressed partners.
The final panel on poly hemispheres brought out explicitly what I thought had been one of the underlying dynamics of the whole con - namely that we're pretty thinly spread out down under and most of us don't get a lot of in-person contact with other poly or poly-friendly people.
I'm rather slow to make friends and one weekend isn't really enough, and on the other hand I wasn't managing the intensity all that well. Everyone seemed nice and worth getting to know better, and I'm sorry I didn't do a particularly good job with the time I had, but I'm not sure what I could do differently, other than disappear to go running more.
So the sort-of-post-con Apples to Apples game was definitely one of my favourite parts of the con - I was beginning to get comfortable and there were fewer people to get comfortable with. That was pretty much the end of the con for me - James and I weren't around enough the next day to do much of anything.
The following week was pretty amazing, with jetboating, James throwing himself off a cliff attached to a measly rope, glowworm caves (different from submarine_bells's), takahe (now officially my favourite flightless bird), getting lost in a two-level maze, waterfalls, wondering what on earth I was doing *that* far up a glacier and how exactly I was going to get myself down again, adding 80-odd shots to Lake Matheson's reputation as the most-photographed lake in NZ, jade, blow-holes, nikau palms, and more, all backed by gorgeous snowcovered mountains and a near-total absence of traffic lights.
I shall write about that in more detail later.
Firstly, getting to the hotel was entertaining, because I couldn't remember its name. I knew it was a chain, so I hadn't paid much attention to the chain name, and had fixated on "Anzac" as the part of the hotel name that was distinctive. Luckily there's only one other hotel on Anzac Avenue and it doesn't mention Anzac in its name anywhere. (By the end of our travels, I had "Copthorne" well and truly fixed in my head - they're rather common around NZ).
We immediately had to rush off to buy a coat for James, and got back just in time for opening ceremonies, where everyone who was there introduced themselves and told the story of how they'd ended up at APC14. RA continued straight into the "out and about" panel. I thought the most interesting points raised were that people typically aren't out, in order to protect children or smooth relationships with family and friends, and typically are out because it means having to only keep track of one story.
The other issue dear to my heart is that it's quite hard to be a poly-friendly mono, given general social obliviousness to poly. RA thought (and I agree) we need an equivalent slogan to "straight but not narrow". I'm just using "poly-friendly" for now.
The "love is blind" panel has been covered well by others, although I didn't expect that what it was mainly going to be dealing with is the insecurity people feel about whether the other person really truly loves them, or is deluded. This is possibly because this is a problem I don't have - and I think this is where my experience parts ways with most others. The sense I get is that most people trust they have friends but are insecure about being loved. I'm insecure about whether anyone would want to be my friend, but by the time I'm in an actual romantic/sexual relationship with someone, I'm pretty confident it's for the right reasons.
I can't remember whether it was before or after that panel that trixtah led an expedition (micheinnz, James, myself) into the wilds of Auckland in search of good coffee. We got to Brazil just before closing, and got to see the fabulous manual coffee machine. Brazil apparently has a distinctive blend of beans. I scored a truly fabulous hot chocolate, because there were left-overs from another customer's order.
On Saturday, I tried to lead the first panel, on communication. The most interesting part of that panel was definitely when three complete strangers turned up half-way through, and turned out to be the now-famous New Zealand Triad (I don't believe they have ljs). But there was some interesting stuff about people who need background noise (and what kind) and people who need silence, and similar issues about incompatible levels of distraction while communicating.
The thing that amused me the most about the OSO panel was the discrepancy between "pivots" who let their SOs negotiate with each other over who "gets" the "pivot" when, and "pivots" who were totally squicked by the mere thought of the idea. Nice squirmy bodylanguage from saluqi's side of the circle.
Lunch was another trixtah-led expedition (saluqi, James, myself) for coffee, this time to Ponsonby. I still don't drink coffee, but they sure know how to make hot chocolate in Auckland. Trix then led everyone in the introversion panel. I'm still not sure if the overall cozy group dynamics of this alt.polycon was due to (for most of us) being part of a largish poly-to-poly-friendly group for the first time in our lives, or because we're (nearly) all rampaging introverts and the group was just big enough not to be totally overwhelming.
I decided to skip the next panel, and epi_lj felt the same way, so we hung out in the con suite, which was pretty much perfect given the way I was feeling at that point. I was ready for poly horror stories, given I don't have any to tell. I don't know what it says that we ran out of poly-specific stories pretty early on and it turned into generic embarrassing relationship moments.
Then there was the Sichuan restaurant, which I think submarine_bells has covered pretty well, at least at our half of the table. The restaurant staff were well-intentioned, and I'm impressed by how well they accomodated 14 walk-ins, but: meat, chilli-free and Sichuan - choose any two.
It seems appropriate, somehow, that the new & old relationship energy panel devoted most of its time to old relationship energy. It's a bit harder to point to, but also a lot harder to misjudge.
Even though I'd tried to pace myself, I was a bit overwhelmed the rest of the evening. Other people sensibly leave the room, but I just pull into myself, and didn't realise what I was doing until later. I'd like to apologise to anyone who might have wanted to talk to me.
Luckily, I was able to fix a lot of my stress with a run around the Domain Sunday morning. It's a bit scary to need exercise like medication at least every 48 hours (based on later events on this trip) but at least there's something that works.
Running also let me work up an appetite for the decadent brunch. I've never had chicken curry for breakfast before, but it worked quite well. And although the chocolate cake was good, I thought the gluten-free little cakes held up extremely well in comparison. The biggest problem with the brunch was trying to get to spend more time with various people.
The tricky emotions panel has also had good coverage on alt.poly. The thing that struck me the most was that the discussion on dealing with boredom/complacency/irritation turned into how to live with depressed partners.
The final panel on poly hemispheres brought out explicitly what I thought had been one of the underlying dynamics of the whole con - namely that we're pretty thinly spread out down under and most of us don't get a lot of in-person contact with other poly or poly-friendly people.
I'm rather slow to make friends and one weekend isn't really enough, and on the other hand I wasn't managing the intensity all that well. Everyone seemed nice and worth getting to know better, and I'm sorry I didn't do a particularly good job with the time I had, but I'm not sure what I could do differently, other than disappear to go running more.
So the sort-of-post-con Apples to Apples game was definitely one of my favourite parts of the con - I was beginning to get comfortable and there were fewer people to get comfortable with. That was pretty much the end of the con for me - James and I weren't around enough the next day to do much of anything.
The following week was pretty amazing, with jetboating, James throwing himself off a cliff attached to a measly rope, glowworm caves (different from submarine_bells's), takahe (now officially my favourite flightless bird), getting lost in a two-level maze, waterfalls, wondering what on earth I was doing *that* far up a glacier and how exactly I was going to get myself down again, adding 80-odd shots to Lake Matheson's reputation as the most-photographed lake in NZ, jade, blow-holes, nikau palms, and more, all backed by gorgeous snowcovered mountains and a near-total absence of traffic lights.
I shall write about that in more detail later.