Our Kris has been doing an AMAZING job with all her the­atre reviews, while the rest of us slack off, so let me attempt to put that slight­ly more in bal­ance with one post about all the things I’ve been mean­ing to write about for­ev­er.

Eat / Drink / Pow­er / Peo­ple / Pods

Jano. Go there, eat there.

six courses of food in minature

Many peo­ple ask us for rec­om­men­da­tions on Twit­ter, which I love, espe­cial­ly if you give us a lit­tle cri­te­ria (don’t ask “where should I eat?” ask “where should my group of 8 friends eat near Courte­nay Place?” etc). If you’ve asked for a place that’s a bit spe­cial late­ly, I would have told you to go to Jano. Let me tell you again, go to Jano. They have sim­ply the best degus­ta­tion I’ve ever had in Welling­ton, at a ridicu­lous­ly rea­son­able (in the con­text of degus­ta­tions) $160 includ­ing wine match­es. The ser­vice is amaz­ing, the food is lus­cious (we had HOT CHEESE for dessert in our degus­ta­tion) and it’s cozy and inti­mate and every­thing you could pos­si­bly want in a roman­tic restau­rant. As long as you can walk up stairs.

Hanging Ditch. Go there, drink up.

A cocktail with sprigs of rosemary and clumps of skewered ginger

When we wrote about our Web­stock Warmup drinks (Web­stock was amaz­ing, by the way, of course), we said we were hav­ing it in our new favourite bar, and Hang­ing Ditch con­tin­ues to make us very very hap­py. They have a drink made from Fix & Fogg peanut but­ter! And every sin­gle one of their cock­tails is beau­ti­ful! And the staff are just so love­ly! And they do air-fried crumbed camen­bert! And you can always get a seat! We should­n’t tell you about this bar, because if it becomes too busy and we can’t get a seat, we might cry. So go there on nights that aren’t Wednes­days and we’ll all be good. Per­haps we should stop speak­ing about our­selves in the roy­al we though.

Flick yourself

We got invit­ed along to the launch of Flick Elec­tric’s new app Choice last week and had a bloody good time at the par­ty.

Choice is a world-first app that shows Kiwis the real time car­bon impact of the elec­tric­i­ty we use. This means, for the first time, we can make a Choice about when we use elec­tric­i­ty to reduce our envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Choice! is free for all New Zealan­ders – whether they’re a Flick Elec­tric Co. cus­tomer or not – because we reck­on every­one should have choice.

Right now at 9.01pm for exam­ple, I can tell you that NZ’s emis­sions from elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion between 8pm and 8.29pm were 594t C02e, pri­mar­i­ly from coal and gas. More hand­i­ly, the app says “maybe right now is not a good time to run the dish­wash­er”. I’ll take any excuse to stay on the couch, thanks!

Chose a cleaning company who take responsibility for its workers

Speak­ing of sit­ting lazi­ly on the couch, when Goodnest first launched, I got a cou­ple of good cleans, but their ser­vice had been dete­ri­o­rat­ing, with clean­ers doing half-assed jobs, one clean­er los­ing my house key and anoth­er mak­ing some bed linen dis­ap­pear from my house (a search of Twit­ter reveals many oth­er peo­ple who are just as dis­at­is­fied too). Goodnest’s response: “well if that clean­er did­n’t do a good enough job you can ask for some­one dif­fer­ent next time” (this despite their “100% sat­is­fac­tion guar­an­teed” on the front page of their site) and then “oh they’re con­trac­tors, not our employ­ees, we’re not respon­si­ble for any theft”. Fuck that.  So I was thrilled when some­one tweet­ed a link at me today for The Fresh Desk. I haven’t actu­al­ly used them, but they actu­al­ly train their staff and very impor­tant­ly PAY THEM A LIVING WAGE. So I will def­i­nite­ly be try­ing them out some­time in the future.

You’re soaking in it

And just to com­plete my trans­for­ma­tion into Shel­ley Bridge­man, I should tell you that last night I got into my space­ship and flew back to my home plan­et

A floatation pod awaits, looking ominous

For all of you Simp­sons watch­ers who’ve longed to see the world through Snow­bal­l’s eyes, Welling­ton now has a place for you! The Salt Pod float cen­tre opened in Thorn­don a cou­ple of weeks ago, and when I saw a cheap vouch­er to try it on Grabone, I snapped it up. I did not hal­lu­ci­nate, or indeed even man­age to relax my mind, but my body def­i­nite­ly felt a ton bet­ter after an hour float­ing peace­ful­ly on 500kg of epsom salts. Plus, the show­er after­wards was almost worth pay­ing for by itself, so bliss­ful is a rain­fall head. I sug­gest not eat­ing for at least two hours before you go, because I end­ed up feel­ing the tini­est bit sea­sick, but I would go back, if some­one else was pay­ing, OR if I knew I had an inten­sive night of standing/dancing to recov­er from in a hur­ry.