Tea bags, and pens, and lottery draws! Oh my!

Yes, as the title of the post suggests I've been doing a lot of reading and writing about unconditional incentives.  In 2009, a research team here pilot tested our postal survey mailing method and less than 60% of the women who were contacted returned their questionnaire.  That's a problem when you want to follow women for five years to collect data that you'd like to generalize to all the New Zealand women in the target age range.

So, they included little tokens of appreciation - University of Otago pens with the study name, individually wrapped tea bags and conditional lottery draws - in the questionnaires to increase the response rates.

Oh, and a few randomly selected people received cold hard cash.  $$$

Guess who was more likely to return her questionnaire?

Foodies Need Not Apply

How can something that looks so cute and so pretty taste so weird?  The treat above is a piece of lollie cake.  It is "unique" to New Zealand.  Probably for good reason (I really didn't care for it).  Check out the recipe for an idea of what those polka dot things are.

What else have I eaten over here?  Well, to tell the truth, it's hard sometimes to tell if we're eating an authentic NZ dish, a different ethnicity's dish, or something else entirely (you cannot tell me that "savoury hamburger buns" is from any ethnic group!).  I guess that is catered resident-living for you. 

But, no worries!  I treated myself to a $13.50 pancake and $4 coffee at Capers in Dunedin on Monday.  It really was quite good.  I had raspberries and white chocolate drizzle on mine. Yum!  Luckily, we had a coupon for buy one pancake, get one free.  Could you Americans believe two pancakes and a coffee would have cost $34.50 (tip included in price)?

Cruisin'. Not Quite the Riviera, But, Um, Close?

This weekend, I joined fellow Abbey College residents for an Otago Harbour wildlife cruise.  The day started off decent (it wasn't raining, just gray), but started to turn while we were on the boat.

We still saw some neat things.  Some birds came out of the water from nowhere.  At first, someone thought they were penguins, but they were actually shag.  

There were sea lions, too.

Once we reached the lighthouse, the water started getting VERY rough!

So, we turned around and headed back.

Next time, we're hoping to see an orca or some Hector's dolphins.