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.