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…