Touch ... smell ... hear ... see ... taste. Rowena Orejana, Joanna Davies, Hayley Hannan, Sophie Bond and Rebecca Blithe meet five Aucklanders whose jobs mean they experience life in extraordinary ways.
Play it by HEAR: David Jenkin
David Jenkin hits a piano key. "You compare the octaves," he says, his finger hitting another key at a higher octave, "and, say this one. Essentially, you listen to whether the strings are in phase with each other or out of phase and they interfere. You get rid of that interference so that there is completely smooth and harmonious sound."
The Birkenhead resident has been in the piano tuning business for 25 years.
It is more than a business to him, though. It is his calling.
Taking up music at the University of Auckland, Mr Jenkin considered becoming a composer. But practicality overrode ambition. He decided to become a teacher, instead.
"I wasn't particularly happy there. I took a holiday job at a piano shop just because of my practical abilities helping restore second-hand pianos for sale and just found I really enjoyed it," he says. He trained at academies in Europe, most recently with Steinway in London.
There is a seriousness to Mr Jenkin and, as he explains his work, he becomes more of the teacher he once was.
"There's a set of rules about the relationships. It's actually quite exact," he demonstrates with another key. The note trembles and hangs on in the air. "Wowowowow," he sings and listens as he hits the next note.
He then plays them simultaneously, the two notes vibrate loudly in the small, windowless room in the basement of Auckland Town Hall. "Those two beat speeds, that interference rate is the same.
"To the average ear, they wouldn't necessarily hear what I've just pointed out to you," he says. To be honest, I didn't hear the difference either. "But that's what we are taught to hear. My hearing has been rewired, if you like, specifically to be able to judge beat rates or lack of beat rates interference," he explains.
Where one listens to music, Mr Jenkin hears tonal quality. "When you hear pianos on the radio and you think, 'Goodness me, why on earth did they record on that piano? It sounds absolutely awful'," he smiles. "I think people who are truly involved in their work, they're thinking about it all the time."
But piano tuning, he adds, requires more than the sense of hearing. It also requires the sense of touch, judging when the tuning pins achieve the perfect tension, whether the keys are perfectly level or how it feels to play.
The art of piano tuning, however, seems unappreciated in New Zealand. In Europe, there are traditional training courses supported by governments.
Mr Jenkin, president of the Australasia Piano Tuners' and Technicians' Association, says the association foresees New Zealand and Australia needing about 12 piano tuners a year. But, over the last 25 years, only six people have apprenticed — five of whom were trained by him. — Rowena Orejana
SIGHT for sure eyes: Rachel Lacy
In a room of neutral walls and wooden benches, Rachel Lacy devises new colours.
Lining shelves are vials of pigments and small bags of vibrant powders. Small paint bottles of liquid colours wait in a line, yellows, reds and greens.
In one bottle, ultramarine blue almost glows in front of pale walls.
"I doubt you'd want to use just that on your walls, it's very intense," says Mrs Lacy as she puts on a jacket to protect her clothes.
At Aalto Colour, a family-owned business — set up by Mrs Lacy's mother Prue Cook 20 years ago — staff create paint tints and colours for clients.
"Someone has brought in an aubergine before and wanted us to replicate the colour, and another person brought in a pair of red knickers and wanted us to copy the colour, but the textures can be a challenge because they impact on colour, too."
For Mrs Lacy and other colour designers at Aalto, the hardest part is making colours to match a client's expectations.
"It's a really subtle process because everyone sees colour differently. We might show someone a blue but they might think it looks more grey. Often we find what we're looking for through a series of happy accidents."
Another difficulty is making colours that look good under different types of light. "I might make something that can look so beautiful when I mix it but, under an incandescent light, it could look grey, so we have to test all of the colours in a light-box to see what they will look like on a wall in a room."
So how does someone develop an eye that can distinguish between tiny shifts of tone or shade? Mrs Lacy says 20/20 vision is fine.
"You don't need to have spectacular eyesight. I think a good colourist is someone who is really interested in their job. My mother has worn glasses her whole life, but she is one of the best colour makers and is internationally recognised as such.
"When making colour, curiosity is more important than 20/10 vision."
What appeals most to Mrs Lacy about her work is its combination of science and art.
"I find colour really interesting, and I've never met anyone who isn't interested in talking about it. A lot of people don't realise how many different colour pigments combine to make a paint colour. There is a lot of chemistry involved in making colours, but a lot of alchemy, too."
Often, Mrs Lacy reveals, there is more to a colour than meets the eye.
"By the way," she says in passing, "Mars is actually brown. NASA used filters to change the colour to red." — Joanna Davies
A TASTE for it: Estee Mathias
A large spoonful of berries plunges into yoghurt, a spoon swirling to create a blushing ripple. Next to it sits a pot of glistening strawberries, whole fruit bobbing in goopy jam. It's just another day at work for Estee Mathias, who's paid to eat and develop new dairy products.
We're in the lab at Fonterra's factory in Takanini, where Estee works as a product development technologist. In her white overcoat, looking very much the scientist, she explains her title is a fancy way of saying she devises new dairy products.
"Taste is definitely the most important sense in my job. There's no doubt that people eat with their eyes but, ultimately, if it doesn't taste good, people won't keep buying it."
Estee's job combines her love of food and science. She's always been "obsessed with food", and so a job in food science is a dream come true. She says she comes from a family of great home bakers — one aunt is celebrity foodie Peta Mathias — and her sense of taste was honed growing up. "I've got an openness for unusual or unconventional flavours."
Estee works with ice-cream and yoghurt. Today, she's framed by a refrigerated wall of every yoghurt imaginable. It takes self-restraint not to sample them all.
To develop a new flavour, Estee works with staff researchers and external suppliers. Their insights give her marketing information: the consumer she's creating for, what they like, what they want, and trends.
The external suppliers pitch Estee the flavours, thick, jammy concoctions she mixes with a dairy base.
A new flavour may take anything take from two months to a year to perfect. During this process, Estee is constantly playing around with mixes and combinations, tasting for off or oxidised flavours and flavour notes. Surely, a strawberry is just a strawberry?
Not quite, she explains.
"Strawberry is one of the most complex flavours. You have got your more confectionery flavours, and then you have your more true to fruit flavours."
The tricky part is developing a strawberry to suit the product she's delivering to the consumer who will eat it.
"The flavour delivery is how a flavour is perceived in your mouth. There's a type of flavour for the everyday breakfast or the snack yoghurt, but our Kapiti range is more indulgent."
Even after the months of sampling and developing, Estee loves the products. She still has the Kapiti Butterscotch yoghurt every morning on her porridge. — Hayley Hannan
The SMELL of success: Matt Greenwood
Matt Greenwood lifts the lid on the small cup of freshly brewed Kenya Bold tea leaves and sticks his nose in the gap.
"This is the way you want to do it," he says and takes several short, rapid breaths through his nostrils. "It's called a bunny sniff," he smiles before picking up a green tea and giving it the same treatment. "This blend was made for me in China, cooked up in a wok. If you sniff the leaf it tells you a lot about the tea's character."
He's called a taster, and his slurping and spitting is impressive, but he says it all begins with a sensitive schnoz. "If you've got a cold you cannot taste. From a tasting perspective, really, you taste with your nose."
Born and bred in England, Matt visited India as a teenager for a cricket tournament and fell in love with the country. Later, while studying Portuguese port wine during a university exchange, he became interested in a sensory profession and thought wine-tasting might suit him. But he decided a position as a trainee tea-taster would allow him to use his senses and return to his beloved India.
He's been in New Zealand with the Bell tea company for seven years and still travels internationally on his search for the leaves he uses in his blends.
No one will get far in this profession without a good nose, he says.
"The aroma of tea is important all the way through the process. The tea estate managers will use the smell of the green leaf to know when it should be picked.
"People associate aroma with wine, coffee, perfume, but it's important for tea, too. Before a consumer has tasted they've already started making up their mind from what it smells and looks like. So I think, when we're creating blends for the public, it's really important to get that right."
"One of my other great loves is perfume and scents, and I have a lot that I own for different reasons. I have a great interest in how scents are put together and I think that stands me in good stead when it comes to tea blends."
And his advice to you, dear reader: "With tea, take a moment to smell the liquid and smell the infused leaves. The steam is the volatiles in the tea evaporating, so immerse your head in it and give it a good sniff. I think in some ways that can connect you more with the estate and the land which it came from." — Sophie Bond
Magic woman TOUCH: Miho Kodaira
Classical music filters from behind a door at the top of a narrow staircase. Stepping into the warm, softly lit room, we are greeted with a kind smile and gentle handshake from reflexologist Miho Kodaira.
Unenthused by a 9 to 5 job parked at a desk, Miss Kodaira trained in reflexology, an ancient Chinese technique that massages pressure points in the feet to relieve pain and tension elsewhere in the body.
"I was fascinated by the idea of healing the whole body through two little feet," says Miss Kodaira.
To a large degree, her sense of touch has come naturally. As a child she remembers how much she enjoyed giving her grandmother shoulder massages and walking on her dad's back to help loosen his spine and shoulders.
"In Japan we have a word 'teate', it means hands, touch, take care. I like this word, being hands-on to look after somebody. For me, it's easily tuned into. I always felt it was easy to use this sense, more so than verbal communication."
Through the sense of touch she communicates with people and alleviates their ailments.
"Hands-on treatment can deliver love and care to anybody without talking. We cannot fake the feeling through touch. It's the intention, it's sort of an intuitive feeling. If you care as you do the stroke, they will know. If you just do what the textbook says, it won't reach their heart. We search knots and conditions through hands and thumb. It's almost like a conversation to the body."
From this sensory conversation, Miss Kodaira learns about a person's emotional wellbeing.
"Each organ represents an emotional state. Swollen or sweaty feet might mean they are carrying a lot of sadness," she says.
"I treated a friend who miscarried. There was so much pain in the soles of her feet, there was a sadness."
It is not uncommon for clients to go from being closed off and nervous to crying during a session with Miss Kodaira. "They open up and we get to know each other. Sometimes, people start crying, or feel released. So that's a kind of privilege as a therapist."
She says often touch works where words fail.
"Sometimes you don't need the words. What you need is for somebody to be there, by touch you can deliver instantly. What I like about western culture is hugs. You're sending the love and support." — Rebecca Blithe
Sense in the city
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