Author: Joanna

A better cheese than that from a whale

If you haven’t been down to Break­er Bay lately to get your­self a lump of whale oil (I’m not sure what’s more dis­gust­ing – whale vomit or the bile that the same-named blog splurts out) and you’re not the type to buy such a thing on trademe, the Wel­ling­tonista would like to make the fol­low­ing cheesy sug­ges­tions:

• “I nom­in­ate that Mex­ic­an place down Left Bank that did that diabol­lically cheesy thing (quesa­d­illa?) I had that one time. It was like a cheesy soup. I believe I stared death in the the face. The deli­cious, plasticy face.”
• “The ooozy oozy brie as part of the fant­ast­ic anti­pasto at Gusto in Petone
• Any cheese from the Dutch Shop in Petone (but I have a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for the cumin gouda)
• Fro­mager­ie at Kirk’s
• Truffle (small but inter­est­ing selec­tion)
• Sagana­ki (ouzo-flamed Greek cheese) at Duke Carvell’s
• Quat­tro Form­ag­gio pizza at Scopa (and no doubt else­where)
• Chow­’s blue cheese & pea­nut wontons
• “Oh, and Arbit­rageur has some fant­ast­ic cheeses to chose from for their anti­pasto selec­tion.”

So there’s a few start­ing points for you. Just don’t get too cheesed off if you have crazy dreams after­wards…

Tid bits and tasty things

• If you’re in town before 6pm today, sneak into the Soft­ware Free­dom Day at the Michael Fowl­er Centre for a free Havana cof­fee. Don’t tell them that I sent you though.
• The pre­vi­ously men­tioned Kayu Manis (you’re a manus!) – the Indonesian/Malaysian res­taur­ant on Cuba Street is now BYO, which makes its $18 mains much more pal­at­able. Also, the food is super fresh tast­ing, and the atmo­sphere is much nicer than your stand­ard Malay­si­an joint, so we sug­gest that you check it out.
• The fre­quently apo­strophe-cata­stroph­ic Elec­tric Aven­ue now sports a ban­ner advert­ising its music quiz on Thursday nights as being the only music quiz in town. Appar­ently Abel Smith Street, home to the music quiz on Thursday nights at the Cross is a sub­urb.
• Radio Act­ive 89FM’s Handle the Jan­dal, the nation­wide DIY music video com­pet­iton, is back for 2008 and is call­ing for entries for this year’s com­pet­i­tion, to be held Novem­ber 27 at Wel­ling­ton’s St James Theatre. Go to Radio Act­ive’s site for more inform­a­tion.
• Don’t for­get to sign up for Bowl­ing League.

Bowling league is back: bigger, better and braver than before!

Oh my stars, we are so very excited to announce that the Wel­ling­tonista Bowl­ing League for 2008 is about to start. Next Thursday Septem­ber 25 to be exact, at 6.30pm at The Lanes on Wake­field Street. What does this mean for you/your organisation/social circle? It means that you have to find three friends to form a team (or more, mem­bers can rotate in and out at will), come up with a name and register here before next Tues­day 23 Septem­ber so we can come up with a table and you can start insult­ing your com­pet­i­tion.. The league will last for as many weeks as there are teams (with a max­im­um of eight teams due to the space I’ve booked), minus one, as we’ll play round robin.

The rules on the night are as fol­lows:

• If at the end of the game your team’s sum total (total of all four play­ers) is high­er than your oppos­i­tion’s then you get four com­pet­i­tion points.
• If your team con­sumes more than four bever­ages (or aver­ages more than one per play­er) you get a bonus com­pet­i­tion point
• The team with the highest sum total on the night gets an extra bonus point.
• There will be one ran­dom league point awar­ded on the night in an area of our choos­ing. The first one will be for the best-dressed team.
• Trash-talk­ing AND frat­ern­ising with the enemy are both highly encour­aged.

So if you booze up and roll like a god your team could come away with sev­en points.

We really did have a tre­mend­ous amount of fun last year, made new friends, busi­ness con­tacts and drink­ing bud­dies, so what are you wait­ing for? Sign up already!

Back in ‘Nam (someone is pleased to think of the children)

I’m hav­ing flash­backs. There’s three courses of deli­cious food. There’s an auc­tion with amaz­ing goods to be won like a stay in a French villa, a 32 inch TV and an assort­ment of wines. There’s a com­mit­ment to raise $6000 for Save the Chil­dren and cycle 400km in Viet­nam.

Hang on a second, it’s not a flash­back at all! It’s an upcom­ing event – a Viet­namese ban­quet and char­ity auc­tion on Septem­ber 29 at Res­taur­ant 88. Tick­ets are $50 and are avail­able from their web­site, and you should get one. If you don’t like Viet­namese food or good causes, do it purely because Click­Suite won the most out­go­ing award in last year’s Wel­ling­tonista Bowl­ing Awards, so you’re guar­an­teed good com­pany on the night.

Free the software, free yourself!

Soft­ware Free­dom Day (SFD) is a world­wide cel­eb­ra­tion of Free and Open Source Soft­ware (FOSS) to be held this year on Sat­urday 20th Septem­ber, 2008.

Our goal in this cel­eb­ra­tion is to edu­cate the world­wide pub­lic about the bene­fits of using high qual­ity FOSS in edu­ca­tion, in gov­ern­ment, at home, and in busi­ness – in short, every­where!

So what’s hap­pen­ing in Wel­ling­ton? Well, there’s a hack­fest, a bar camp and free cof­fee all day long. Check out the soft­ware free­dom day site for more inform­a­tion…

‘Safe For Life’ Women’s Self Defence Seminar – Wellington

Although the last thing in the world that I want is for the Wel­ling­tonista to come across like tra­di­tion­al fright­en­ers media, I think we can all acknow­ledge that some­times the world can be a scary place for women (and men), so here’s some­thing you can go to that might make it a little less scary.

Pro­tect, who teach real­ity-based self-defense, is run­ning a sem­in­ar entitled ‘Safe For Life’ in Wel­ling­ton on Sat­urday Octo­ber 18. If you don’t want to take the bus out to Khan­dal­lah by your­self, how about you go with Leaf, Prob­ably?

I haven’t been to one of their courses, so I can­’t tell you what it’s like, but I do appre­ci­ate that they advert­ise one of the things that they teach is con­fid­ence, which will provide a healthy remind­er that no one is ever ask­ing to get attacked or deserves it (just be wary: pos­sibly NSFW).

Don’t forget to win yourself a new phone

Today’s the second to last day to enter our com­pet­i­tion to win a new Voda­fone phone because we’re going to draw it at noon tomor­row. Hav­ing had a 6121 for a couple of weeks now, I have to tell you that it’s pretty damn awe­some for check­ing your email on, espe­cially while wait­ing for your bags at air­ports. Except for today when the net­work did­n’t seem to be work­ing. So what are you wait­ing for?

Con­grat­u­la­tions Cat! The Ran­dom­izer picked your num­ber, so you’ve won your­self a fant­ast­ic new phone. We’ll be in touch to get your deliv­ery address.

And Bingo was its name O

Sure, you already play Hip­ster Bingo at the SFBH, but have you thought about play­ing the real game instead? From the good people who bring you the movie quiz at the Para­mount comes a new way to spend your Sunday after­noons: Hangover Bingo!

It will be hap­pen­ing for the first time at 2pm on Sunday 7th Septem­ber at the Cour­tenay Arms.

Settle down in front of a warm fire, with yummy food, some hair of the dog and a few leis­urely games of bingo!

Cash Money to be won plus loads of oth­er good­ies. Go along and make it a suc­cess so that it can become a reg­u­lar event.

Win a new phone! Go mobile in Wellington thanks to Vodafone

As a web­site for people who are con­stantly on the go around Wel­ling­ton, we recently got con­tac­ted by Voda­fone who wanted us to know that they’re chan­ging the way their mobile inter­net works.

Voda­fone is mak­ing it even easi­er for people to con­nect to the inter­net – wherever they are – with the launch of revamped mobile data pri­cing and a smart backend that reformats webpages for easy view­ing on a mobile screen.

Now, for up to just $1 a day on the days you use it, cas­u­al users of the mobile inter­net can browse the world wide web eas­ily and inex­pens­ively… without com­mit­ting to a fixed monthly data con­tract.

The new $1 a day cas­u­al rate gives cus­tom­ers up to 10MB of data.

And how do we know this is actu­ally true? Because we’ve got a new Nokia 6121. And even more excit­ingly, we’ve got one to give away, so you can have a chance to find out for your­self too. Find out how after the jump.

If you like movies, quizzes and the Paramount, boy do we have a deal for you!

Are you still in with­drawl from the Film Fest­iv­al? Are you try­ing to come up with any reas­on to head back to the theatre, even if it’s just for the ice cream?

Guess what? From this Thursday onwards, the Para­mount Theatre is start­ing a weekly movie quiz “A quiz in 60 minutes” at 9pm in the Para­mount Bar.

Movie fans will be invited to take part in this unique and free quiz night to com­pete for a chance to win a fort­night’s free movies for two people and a num­ber of oth­er spot prizes.

“There are a lot of very know­ledge­able movie fans out there; we are really look­ing for­ward to offer­ing some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent. I don’t think any oth­er cinema has done this before in Wel­ling­ton” say Kate Lar­kindale, Man­ager of the Para­mount.

“After the suc­cess of the film fest­iv­al this year, we are excited about this quiz night. People will be able to see a movie at after work and then have a drink and stretch their brains for an hour”.

The quiz night will be only 60 minutes long, cov­er­ing all areas of film, and all dec­ades. Movie quotes, Oscar win­ners, theme tunes, Movie taglines, act­ors, dir­ect­ors – it’s all in there!

Check out the Para­mount web­site for more inform­a­tion.