Celebrated 41 years around the sun with family, friends and good food, today!

Rest in love my beautiful friend. We celebrate you every day. ❤️

Another glorious Auckland day, took advantage of the late summer weather to do the Hunua loop with the girlies and Jinkxy! I love this for me! And what a beautiful country!

One last road trip before going back to work!

And just like that, my annual leave comes to an end and I have to return to the real world on Monday. Well, let's go 2025 lmao

Got to attend the premiere of Tinā tonight at the Civic and the standing ovation from the crowd said it all. Beautiful film with tons of hearty laughs and poignant moments. Not a dry eye in the house. Highly recommend!

Spent the past 3 days with our Pacific Early Career Academics Network (although I'm not longer early career lol) at UoA at an amazing retreat filled with fellowship and lots of catching up on emails lol. 2025 has started off so well! Here's to a better year for us all.

Casually living my best life in Samoa and telling people to get out of my light and videos lol

Sunset dreams in my beautiful Samoa 🇼🇸

Debuted my new military style haircut at the beach in Samoa today 😎 love being home for a break and hanging with some friends 🧡

Beautiful Samoa 🇼🇸

Morning from a steamy Samoa, happy to be home for a week. Thank goodness the rain has paused so our mountain can come back into view.

Also, for anyone interested, my PhD is officially available online 🤗 researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/bitstreams/a...

Sighted in the wild while walking through Ponsonby this evening.

A fave thing to do in summer is to take advantage of the numerous bush walks in and around Auckland 😍 another gorgeous day in the 09.

Beautiful day in Tāmaki today. Jinkx and I took a walk down to Westhaven Marina and took in the Waitemata Harbour views. Lovely when Auckland is like this.

Happy New Year from my house to those who celebrate.

My mum's still in England and she insists on video calling me just before midnight so she can watch the Sky Tower fireworks from my phone. Lady, do you realize I wanna go sleep already 😴

Not long to go before fireworks and drunkeness takes over my doorstep lmao Happy New Year to those who celebrate.

Merry Christmas Tāmaki Makaurau, from me and my nephew, baby Iverson the latest addition to our family, the youngest member of our clan with the cutest smile!

Lordt I love Auckland City when ya'll are all gone and it's a hot sunny day like today. Long may it last lol

Out of office up, and my Summer break has begun, see you at the end of February University of Auckland! Despite 2024 being a tough MF year, walking out of the year on a high - had my promotion to over the bar confirmed - new phase beginning in 2025! I am excited. Ok bye everyone!

"I can buy myself flowers" - but it's nicer when it comes from your workmates wishing you a speedy recovery. It's been a dark week over here, for many reasons, flowers remind me that after darkness the light ans joy will follow. Like we say in Samoan, "e koe oso le la," the sun will rise again.

Defunding humanities and sciences, and reducing blue skies funding by 50% is not only an attack on the research community, it is a brazen attack on universities, what research can inform their teaching, and what subjects are fundable.

Something I think isn’t really obvious to non-researchers is that the vast, vast majority of NZ government science spending already goes to funds which are targeted at direct economic outcomes. The Marsden Fund was the last, inadequate bastion of fundamental research funding. 🧪

It’s a dark day for research in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ramifications for the country are huge. Minister Judith Collins has just announced our blue-skies funder will no longer fund humanities & social science research and that 50% of what is funded must have economic benefit.

The attempt to sell academic freedom as "you must debate nazis" instead of "robust, curiosity based research should be supported" has been farcical. And more successful than it should be. In part b/c ivory tower bashing is easy, but in part b/c we haven't been great at selling the value of research.

Feels important to be clear about the reasons why this has been done. It is explicitly an attack on Māori research in particular. I have chosen not to link to the blog directly, but if you want evidence of the racism driving this you only have to look at the comments on any of those posts.

My nurse is Korean and so I've been practicing my Korean with her while the Security Guard is Samoan, so I've been switching between 3 languages all day. I miss this. Being stuck only using English most of the day is boring.

After visiting so many other Islands in our side of the Pacific Ocean this year, I am convinced that Samoa has the most oppressive heat. That must explain why we're the most explosive and volatile of all Pacific Islanders lmao (completely unscientific observation, just vibes, mostly vibes lol)

Kia orana Rarotonga! It's your turn to shine Anuanua of the Cook Islands! (View from my accommodation)

Where we spent our Sunday in Tonga today! 😍 Pangaimotu Island. Swam, had lunch, swam some more, then took the boat back to Tongatapu before dinner. Couple more days here then off we go again.

2 nights here in Tonga we've been collecting survey responses from Tonga's Rainbow community for their own version of Manalagi and the response has been amazing, 80 people have showed up, far more than I thought. Testament to the amazing organising of the Tonga Leitis Association!

Visited the Queen Salote Memorial College Bazaar today, where students make traditional Tongan arts and crafts to sell to the public. Individual students' names as creators are listed with the item, and when you buy the item, the sale goes toward paying their school fees.

View from my hotel in Tonga, the weather has been just beautiful since I've been here. We have our big community meeting in Nuku'alofa tonight. Looking forward to meetinTongatapu's locals this evening!

Off to Tonga tomorrow for some research work, I swear this transnational life is not the one. Can't wait to come home and stay home. Is it Christmas yet? Lol

Mate it's been nearly a year since I posted on here and checked this app. Now that a lot of my mutuals have migrated here, I'm back! Lol

Kia ora Brisbane. Lovely to be here.

Looking at our new cabinet and ministers outside of cabinet and it’s inspired me to know that I guess anyone - no matter how unqualified - can be a minister or associate minister in our country. What a win for our democracy 🙃

Well then, that announcement sucked.

Hi, it’s me talking about some of the data from the Manalagi Survey. newsroom.co.nz/2023/11/15/c...

Photos from the Manalagi Survey Community Report launch at the Māngere Arts Centre! Truly a phenomenal evening!

Photos of some of the speakers from our symposium- it was truly incredible to have so many Pacific Rainbow+ scholars, practitioners, advocates, creatives all in one place in talanoa with each other!!

Spent past 2 days launching the Manalagi Survey Report with our communities at an incredible community-focused Pacific Rainbow+ symposium. pmn.co.nz/read/educati...

The white cis-gays are always the weakest link. Lol

People complain about me blocking too much but listen, I have been online since AOL chatrooms in the 90s. That's thirty years of arguing with people online and I am TIRED. I'm not doing it any more, especially not with people who show up with bad faith BS. I don't owe anyone discourse. No. Shoo.

Good and important research about rainbow Pacific communities here www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Radio NZ moved so quickly I didn’t even know that we have our first article written on the Manalagi Survey Community Report :) First-of-kind research finds NZ's rainbow Pacific community commonly faces healthcare discrimination www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Press release about Manalagi. Hope to see some of you there next week :) www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2023...

My favourite Samoan dish is kalo (taro) and luau (palusami) - must be wrapped in banana leaves for extra flavour - and coconut cream in Samoa is on another level of freshness, richness and flavour. Nothing we have in NZ tastes anywhere as good as what gets made here from people’s own gardens.