Hey all, just did a site upgrade (from Dru­pal 5.something to 6.17, for those that are inter­est­ed).

I seem to have lost some com­ments off the last cou­ple of posts — they should be recov­er­able and back online tomor­row.

If you notice any­thing else amiss, drop us a line at our info email address.

(Inci­den­tal­ly, this new theme is tem­po­rary — we’re work­ing away on anoth­er one in the back­ground — this one was just eas­i­er to use with the upgrad­ed sys­tem instead of upgrad­ing the old theme, which was rid­dled with, errr, idio­syn­crat­ic code).

Te wiki o te Reo Maori is draw­ing to a close, with the finale being held at the mar­kets on the water­front this Sun­day. This year’s theme is ‘te mahi kai’ (the lan­guage of food) and what bet­ter place to cel­e­brate than the food mar­kets on Wellington’s water­front. 

So go grab your fruit, vege and gourmet good­ies from Har­bour­side and City Mar­kets and live the lan­guage of food in te reo.  There will be biligual sig­nage, haka, waia­ta and the release of the a biligual CD of songs Tipi Haere Te Reo.  

For­mal­i­ties kick of 8.00am at Har­bour­side Mar­ket and there will be enter­tain­ment until mid­day. 

Over at the City Mar­ket (inside the Chaf­fers apart­ment build­ing) they will be doing what they do best: mak­ing us drool with treats from their kitchen.

Te Kihi­ni Makete i tenei wiki: Kau tunuumu Grey­town, hupa pauke­na Pine­haven penu ma te mina-auahi, he paku hirika­ka me te kokonati,Wairarapa pai ika, pai kaimoana, Kawakawa parau­ni.
Mar­ket kitchen this week: Braised Grey­town beef, manu­ka smoked mash Pine­haven pump­kin (pauke­na) soup, hint of chilli & coconut Wairara­pa fish pie, dill mash. Kawakawa brown­ie.
 

Kaua e whaka­ma ki te korero maori.

(Again apolo­gies: macrons give our site indi­ges­tion)

So many pre­sen­ta­tions are like real­ly real­ly weak broth, with only a hint of actu­al con­tent float­ing around in far too much weak sauce. If only we could turn up the heat on that soup and sim­mer it down to a con­cen­trat­ed jus burst­ing with flavour and taste. Would­n’t that be awe­some? No filler, just killer! That’s what the Ignite series of talks aims to do: 

Have you ever been to a 60-minute talk and lament­ed that there was only five min­utes of good con­tent?  Imag­ine if you could hear only that five min­utes…

that’s Ignite Welling­ton!

Come along to the sec­ond Ignite Welling­ton and be inspired, amused, edu­cat­ed and amazed!  We have an array of tal­ent­ed Welling­ton speak­ers, who will each speak for five min­utes on top­ics that range from couch­surf­ing and Ernest Ruther­ford, to Out­doorKnit, wall­pa­per and build­ing the dream!

At the heart of Ignite is its fast-paced for­mat.  All pre­sen­ters must give their talks in just five min­utes — using 20 slides that appear on screen for only 15 sec­onds.

The evening will start with an Ignite Con­test, which will help par­tic­i­pants unleash their inner cre­ativ­i­ty.  The last event had teams build­ing the tallest pos­si­ble struc­tures out of spaghet­ti and marsh­mal­lows

Ignite is hap­pen­ing on Tues­day August 3, at the Para­mount The­atre from 6.30pm-10pm. Ignite is free, but you need to reg­is­ter in order to guar­an­tee a seat. For more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the full list of speak­ers, check out their site. You can fol­low also them at @ignitewelli and become a Face­book fan

 Con­grat­u­la­tions to Nicole and her fan­tail for win­ning our Rata com­pe­ti­tion. This week, to cel­e­brate Welling­ton on a Plate, thanks to the love­ly Pos­i­tive­ly Welling­ton Tourism, we have a $100 vouch­er to the Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er on the cor­ner of Willis & Boul­cott to give away.

The restau­rant gets its name from the build­ing’s orig­i­nal pur­posee — it was con­struct­ed for Dr. Hen­ry Pollen in 1902, with his fam­i­ly liv­ing on the top floor and surgery on the bot­tom. Leg­end (or just hearsay?) has it that not too long after that moved in a troop of ladies to take care of oth­er needs of the body besides med­i­cine, before even­tu­al­ly it was refur­bished as a posh restau­rant we once took my grand­moth­er to, but I can’t remem­ber the name of it.

So, speak­ing of stick­ing things in buns, part of Welling­ton on a Plate is Burg­er Welling­ton, in which over 30 Welling­ton restau­rants and cafes are cre­at­ing spe­cial burg­ers and you get to vote for the win­ner. The Gen­er­al Prac­ti­tion­er’s con­tri­bu­tion sounds espe­cial­ly good:

An unfor­tu­nate num­ber of Welling­ton­istas are rather fond of mak­ing rather ter­ri­ble puns quite fre­quent­ly, which means a lot of my time is spend mak­ing “Badoom chish!” sounds. Imag­ine how much cool­er it would be if the jokes were bet­ter and instead of me, there was a whole damn band play­ing the rim shots. Wait, you don’t want to have to imag­ine it? You want it to be real? Well, have we got the gig for you then!

Remem­ber TAWA-nom­i­nat­ed Rob­bie Ellis and the bus lane you put through his heart? Well, he’s been work­ing on a new show called Band Sub­stances:

It’s musi­cal stand-up com­e­dy with a full band!

Join some of Welling­ton’s favourite musi­cal come­di­ans:

• Gabriel Page
• Sarah Harpur
• Car­lo & Cyn­thia Wake­field from Young and the Wit­less IV
• The Fringe Bar Opera Soloists and more!

It’ll be Band to the Bone! (Jo’s note: BADOOM CHISH!)

The show has with Jerome Chan­dra­hasen as MC and Rob­bie as musi­cal direc­tor.

You know how there is often cool free stuff hap­pen­ing at lunchtime if you have your ear to the ground (actu­al­ly Twit­ter may well be the mod­ern dig­i­tal jun­gle drum or smoke sig­nal if you know how to fos­sick and fil­ter, you could just just fol­low us on Twit­ter).  We have had com­plaints in the past about post­ing juicy tid­bits a lit­tle too close to the time for ya’ll to cram into your busy diaries. 

Well, suck it up peo­ple, you may have missed the free titi (mut­ton­bird) tasters at Mid­land Park on Mon­day or the noo­dles today at Waga­ma­ma but at least you have time to make a packed lunch for a free lunchtime con­cert tomor­row for Te Wiki o te reo Maori in the Illot the­atre, Town Hall.  This con­cert will fea­ture the spine-tin­gles of Ria Hall who bought the house down at the Sev­en Sis­ters con­cert at Te Papa last month.  There will be a range of per­for­mances, includ­ing the Ngati Poneke maori club juniors and fresh back from the world expo in Shang­hai Ele­na vio­lin­ist, with her world-class kapa haka clas­si­cal fusion and impres­sive mohawk. 

So BYO kai and enjoy this cel­e­bra­tion of the Maori lan­guage and cul­ture.  This is what liv­ing and work­ing in cen­tral Welling­ton is about peo­ple: free access to cul­tur­al trea­sures, excite­ment and hap­pen­ings every­where, even on your lunch hour. 

Where: Illot The­atre, Town Hall

When: 12.30 — 1.30 Wednes­day 28 July

Cost: Free

Not that it needs any pimp­ing by us, but thought you should know that Waga­ma­ma in the Merid­i­an build­ing on the Water­front is giv­ing away free noo­dles today from 12 — 2.00pm.  We are talk­ing don buri, udon and beef noo­dle sal­ad here peo­ple, well worth wait­ing in line for if you have the time.

Behold the line at 11.30am last year.…