i've just received my second tresspass order. i wish i could say it was for my daring political activism (i did trespass on the waihopai spy base back in the late 80s but i got away with that, & i'm sure i've crossed the line many other times) but sadly, these trespass orders are being served on me by the owner of the house next door to mine in wellington. ironically, i'm not even in the country at the moment and haven't been for a couple of months, so i'm not sure exactly what motivated this most recent notice - perhaps the last one (issued to me in 2005) has expired.

a trespass order doesn't really mean much, as the police kindly explained to me after i received the first one. it's easy enough to serve a trespass notice - you just download and fill out a form, and send it to the person you wish to not trespass against you. but my chances of actually getting charged with trespassing (if i was inclined to enter his property, which i'm not) are probably slimmer than my chances of having him meet his legal responsibilities with regards to his foliage (which i have accepted are almost nil, while he is still alive). i can see how easily neighbourly disputes escalate into small wars ...

all of this is of course another great excuse for procrastination around my research, but i'm happy to report that structured procrastination is ok - in fact it's more than ok, it's beneficial. Angela Chu and Jin Nam Choi demonstrate that active procrastinators perform well in unpredictable and dynamic situations (like academic research, or neighbourly disputes... ) in their article "Rethinking Procratination: Positive Effects of "Active" Procrastination Behavior on Attitudes and Performance. Basically, active procrastinators function well under pressure and achieve as much as possible in the least possible amount of time by not spending any more time on a task than necessary but still meeting deadlines. we make deliberate decisions to procrastinate on certain tasks in order to get other things done.

so this week i have not trespassed against anyone, i have practiced active procrastination and as a result before finishing the second draft of my methodology chapter, i wrote a case study on UpStage for the Asia Commons, constructed a minature scale model of the empire state building and did a shitload of other stuff you don't need to read about.

as for the matter of the trespass notices - i think the best response at the moment is further active procrastination on my part : )