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.