Author: Joanna

Roxy: with pizzazz but no storming…

We’ve reviewed Roxy before, but hav­ing had the exper­i­ence of being the only people din­ing there at 7.30pm on a Thursday night, we thought it was pretty import­ant that we review them again. Espe­cially since we saw that now (like many oth­er places we really should round up) they’re offer­ing BYO on Mondays and Tues­days.

First up, I should say that my opin­ion of their break­fast has changed con­sid­er­ably since I left that last com­ment. I’ve been there for break­fast many times with the brunch club, and they’re always deli­cious, quick with the cof­fee which is sorely needed on Sat­urday morn­ings, and oh my stars, those hash browns – wow. In fact, they were nom­in­ated for Best Break­fast in the 2007 AWAs.

Something to mull over

Hav­ing observed a steam­ing hot urn of it at the South­ern Cross on Sat­urday night, sur­roun­ded by blankets and hot water bottles, we want to know: where can one get the best mulled wine in Wel­ling­ton, how much will we have to pay for it, and approx­im­ately what alco­hol­ic per­cent­age will it be? 

Do our work for us in the com­ments sec­tion. Thanks!

A diamond in the rough

What are you doing on Sat­urday? How about you go on a treas­ure hunt to find me* your­self a dia­mond ring? iChild on twit­ter explains it:

So, what’s this all about then?? Story goes, guy bought ring for girl, girl did­n’t want ring. Guy could­n’t give it to anoth­er, and does­n’t want to sell it. Guy also hap­pens to be the guy behind Donoogle.com …Guy decides that rather than just hav­ing this ring sit­ting around, he would cre­ate a treas­ure hunt around Wel­ling­ton to give away said ring and use it at the same time to pro­mote this choice web­site which every­one should use!

So if you want to par­ti­cip­ate, you should start fol­low­ing donoogle_com. It does seem a little bit astro­turfy to my eyes, but hey, treas­ure hunts are always fun. Espe­cially if you do it dressed up as a pir­ate. Or a panda.

*(Although I must state for the record that I would rather have a single dia­mond on my ring, and I’d like it to be aprox­im­ately the size of my fist, thanks.) 

Restoring our faith in humanity one step at a time

This morn­ing-ish, I was jug­gling head­phones, iPod, scarf, hat, satchel and extra bag on the bus, as well as try­ing to text, and unbe­knownst to me, I man­aged to drop my phone on the bus.

When I got into work, I had a mes­sage on my answerphone from my mum, say­ing that she’d got a call from someone who had my cell­phone, and that I should call my num­ber to arrange a pick-up. Right now I’d like to take a moment to say that every­one really should have an ICE (in case of emer­gency) num­ber saved into their phone, it really makes everything much more awe­some.

So I called my phone, and a lovely girl answered, and after a brief freak­out (“You’ve got my phone and you’re in Tarana­ki???? Ooooooh, Tarana­ki STREET!”) I arranged to grab it off her at the rail­way sta­tion this after­noon. I bought some chocol­ate, and met her, she gave me my phone, I gave her the chocol­ate, and she told me that this morn­ing get­ting off the train she’d dropped her phone, and someone had called out to her about it. Yay happy karma!

Any­way, my point is, this story is full of happy good­ness. I mean, you can only ima­gine how many top secret Wel­ling­tonista secrets and dirty pho­tos that my phone con­tains. I’m so glad I got it back so eas­ily, and I hope that you will all con­sider doing a good deed tomor­row as well. Wahoo.

Storm in our coffee cups

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but the weath­er lately has been some­what less than pleas­ant. Unless you hap­pen to be a wave­watch­er or rather crazy surfer, that is, in which case there have been some rather spec­tac­u­lar things to see. If you’re the kind who’d rather stay inside nice and warm, here’s a fant­ast­ic video that Dave Framp­ton has made to show you what you’re miss­ing

Storm in slow motion from Dav­id Framp­ton on Vimeo.

Women are appealing

A book sale worth walking up a hill for

It’s sale time at Vic Books again, both at the Kel­burn Cam­pus and the Pip­itea store by the train sta­tion.

The sale runs from Monday May 11-Thursday May 28, and if you’re clev­er you’ll fig­ure out a way to get to the sneak pre­view with wine and nibbles at the Kel­burn shop, from 3pm, Thursday May 7th.

‘Tis the sea­son of twis­ted umbrel­las, so it’s time to stock up on books which will keep you enthralled des­pite the weath­er. Our fam­ous sale fea­tures fiercely dis­coun­ted fic­tion, polit­ics, his­tory, art & archi­tec­ture, sci­ences and cur­rent affairs. Uni­ver­sity Press & oth­er aca­dem­ic books, qual­ity hard­backs and paper­backs, chil­dren’s books and more.
Dur­ing the sale we will also be hold­ing spe­cial dis­count days:

• Thursday May 14th: for one day only, 25% off all chil­dren’s books not already dis­coun­ted.
• Thursday May 21st: for one day only, 25% off all fic­tion not already dis­coun­ted.
• Thursday May 28th: for one day only, 25% off all non-fic­tion not already dis­coun­ted.

 

Rumbles is ready to rumble with DB

There’s been quite a bit of news around DB Brew­er­ies try­ing to copy­right the already in use name ‘radler’ lately, and one Wel­ling­ton liquor shop – Rumbles on War­ing-Taylor street has had enough.

As seen on the Real Beer page: 

Join us in a boy­cott of DB Brew­ery’s products and sup­port NZ Beer…

In response to what we per­ceive to be bully-boy tac­tics and a dir­ect attack on the emer­ging boutique beer industry, Rumbles Wine Mer­chant will not be stock­ing the fol­low­ing products brands untl the threat of leg­al action has been lif­ted. We make no apo­lo­gies for any incon­veni­ence…

And you can read more about it on the Rumbles blog. Go Rumbles! Just read­ing about this makes me thirsty, I could really go for a Ben­nett’s right about now…

Review: Little India, Cuba Mall

It’s a Tues­day night. Rather, it’s 5.55pm, approx­im­ately. You walk into a restraur­ant that has its ‘OPEN’ sign up. The man behind the counter talk­ing on the phone that gives you a “I am on the phone” look. You nod politely and look around the res­taur­ant. It is totally empty. When he finally pauses his phonecall, he ges­tures you towards the six-seat­er right in front of the door and dis­ap­pears again, appar­ently to fin­ish off his ter­ribly import­ant phone call. You retrieve a bottle of wine from your bag, even though a glass of water first would be nice. The wine is a screw cap, but it takes you a couple of minutes to crack. No sign of water or menus, so you pull out your copy on NW and start the sudoku, even though you’d really rather order an entree before the rest of your friends arrive because you’re totally starving. and the intense heat in the res­taur­ant and the HI NRG Ban­gra is really really offput­ting.

How­ever, even though you’re not par­tic­u­larly fast at Sudoku, you man­age to com­plete the entire thing before the waiter returns with menus for the whole table. You order some sam­o­sas, and turn your atten­tion to the smal­ler cross­word, which you plow through before your little pastry par­cels show up. The crust of the sam­o­sas is not melty, the cab­bage scattered on the plate has def­in­itely seen bet­ter days, and the tam­ar­ind sauce seems unusu­ally con­cen­trated. For $5.50, it is accept­able, but not with that kind of ser­vice.