Because she is obsessed with Elvis, and also maybe due to some expe­ri­ences on tour bus­es that she alludes to but nev­er puts her pho­tos on flickr from, our intre­pid pub­lish­er decid­ed to treat us all from the Welling­ton­ista tow­ers to lunch at Harem to cel­e­brate the launch of the new URL.

All the Welling­ton­ista crew were able to make it, so it was amus­ing to see the dif­fer­ent dress styles from our branch­es in dif­fer­ent quar­ters rep­re­sent­ed. We were also had a token JAFA as a guest, who showed up to the table talk­ing on his cell­phone (There’s a rea­son why stereo­types are so amus­ing, and usu­al­ly it’s because ha ha, it’s fun­ny because it’s true. And I was hap­py to pro­vide the token skirt-over-pants fash­ion infamy that is appar­ent­ly very Welling­ton, but is also very use­ful some­times).

We talked more about the 48 Hour Film Fes­ti­val, the exact loca­tion of the big tree in Kel­burn, the assort­ment of Lyle Lan­leys debat­ing furi­ous­ly with each oth­er, the cor­rect way in which to pro­nounce cer­tain blog­gers’ names and how they have bad taste in piz­za, whether or not Alan would be mob-blog­ging the lunch this time, that the World Cup can be viewed at Sco­pa which saves those who aren’t usu­al­ly sports fans from hav­ing to go to yucky bars to perve at hot boys, how stalky it would be to stay in a par­tic­u­lar hol­i­day home in Ota­ki, and, once she was gone, whether or not Martha would be passed out in Civic Square by now after two tasty Turk­ish Efes Pil­sners. I think the gen­er­al con­sen­sus was that a good time was had by all.

By way of a restau­rant review, we had two plat­ters — one with meat that was pounced upon and devoured swift­ly (except the cala­mari), and one with­out that was eat­en slow­er, with deli­cious­ly but­tery gar­lic bread and more turk­ish bread to mop up the assort­ment of dips. It was tasty food served unmem­o­rably (which is fine) in exot­ic Dis­ney­landy set­tings, although I do have to say that while many have raved about the toi­lets, no amount of fake wood with holes could cov­er up the fact that they were still lit by flu­o­res­cents. But I think the mar­ti­ni was drink­able, despite being shak­en, so that’s a true test, although I’m sure Tom will fill us in lat­er. Work is so much sweet­er when there’s booze involved…