Oh how we love ye.

Well, not neces­sar­ily all of ye, and maybe not espe­cially these col­our­ful little num­bers as they meth­od­ic­ally strip the buds from the flower­ing cherry tree. You, Rosella, made this Wel­ling­tonista wish moment­ar­ily for the .410 he used to use as a kid. But that would be crim­in­ally irre­spons­ible in a built-up area, as well as a ser­i­ous digres­sion from the sub­ject mat­ter of this post­ing.

Onward.

This week is Land­care Research’s Garden Bird Sur­vey:

The basic format of the garden bird sur­vey is that people spend 1 hour dur­ing a spe­cified week in winter watch­ing birds in their home gar­dens, pub­lic parks, or school grounds, and record­ing the largest num­ber of each spe­cies they see at any one time. When repeated over a num­ber of years this will provide valu­able inform­a­tion on changes in dis­tri­bu­tion and pop­u­la­tion trends of birds in our urb­an envir­on­ment.

This recent fine weath­er provides the per­fect oppor­tun­ity. It’s inev­it­able that you’ll prob­ably not see the occa­sion­al spec­tac­u­lar vis­it­or in the hour you choose, like that fal­con that was hunt­ing the West­ern Sub­urbs a few years back, but at least you’ll be doing your bit for sci­ence.

And what could be nicer than a quiet hour out­side count­ing the birds?

I’m not usu­ally a polit­ic­al fly, but I do like rak­ing muck, so I could­n’t res­ist post­ing this image from a cam­paign poster. Thanks to the (deeply flawed, of course) Elect­or­al Fin­ance Act, now we know who’s really behind the Nation­al Party:

Any sug­ges­tion that they’re fin­anced by C Untts would be vul­gar sock-pup­petry, so I won’t stoop to that. Oh, if you insist.

Last week­end’s Sunday Star Times Sunday magazine had a fun essay by Leah McFall lament­ing how hard it is to meet-cute in Wel­ling­ton – that is, have one of those lovely romantic-com­edy style acci­dent­al meet­ings with the fel­low of your dreams, usu­ally involving some­thing quirky like bagels or poodles. It’s impossible here because, as we all know, in Wel­ling­ton every­one knows every­one.

The essay isn’t online (boo, Sunday magazine!) but I thought it was worth shar­ing this bit, where Leah comes up with a mag­ni­fi­cent meta­phor for Wel­ling­ton’s dat­ing scene:

It’s like when you step onto a 16-seat pro­pel­lor plane. There’s the guy at the top of the steps who rips your tick­et, stows your laptop and passes round the Min­ties. Then he puts down the lol­lies, tugs on an earpiece, strides to the cock­pit and starts the igni­tion. That’s what you’re deal­ing with, in Wel­ling­ton: the man who is every­where. How can you meet-cute with that? You’ve met him before.

Being a recent arrival to these parts, there are still many social dots I’m yet to con­nect, but I’m already find­ing strange con­nec­tions in places I’d least expect it.

But per­haps there’s an advant­age to this small-vil­lage scene? After all, if every­one knows every­one, you’re soon going to hear what your pilot’s crash rate is like.

Some­times, a bar is too pre­ten­tious even for me. Though by “pre­ten­tious”, I don’t mean what some people seem to mean by that: expens­ive, styl­ish, ambi­tious or glam­or­ous. No, it’s bars that make a great show of aspir­ing to all those qual­it­ies, and yet end up being the same-old same-old Cour­tenay Place tack, that really set my mand­ibles on edge.

You know that most gig pro­moters live in Auck­land, eh? And that Auck­landers don’t know we exist, right?

As a response to the Auck­lo­centri­cism (it’s a word, ok) of the tour­ing scene, a bunch of loc­al pro­moters have sprung up, ban­ded togeth­er and gen­er­ally defied the odds to bring some amaz­ing inter­na­tion­als to intim­ate Wel­ling­ton ven­ues over the last few years. Which means we don’t have to travel to see our favour­ite band, and tak­ing a punt on an unknown quant­ity is a lot easi­er and way less expens­ive than trekking up the island. Plus the like­li­hood of hav­ing a quiet beer next to the main act after a show is ramped up sev­er­al notches when it’s at SFBH or Bodega.

Which brings me to I Heart Hiroshi­ma. They came over from Aus­tralia in April to sup­port Rata­tat in Auck­land, but they could­n’t make it down here. Rata­tat, how­ever, played to a sold-out crowd at Bodega and knocked our socks off. They told IHH about it, and the band begged indie Wel­ling­ton pro­moter Palo­mino Agency to bring them down to see us. They’re play­ing at Bodega next week – Fri­day 18th – so do us all a favour and go see them! Their songs have been all over tv and radio recently, but if you haven’t heard them, and you liked Rata­tat – or you like the fab loc­al sup­ports Thought Creature or Little Pic­tures – take a punt. Tick­ets are only $20+bf right now from Slow­boat on Cuba St so why would­n’t you?

Charlie Watts was once asked in an inter­view wheth­er he ever tuned his drums. When Charlie replied in the neg­at­ive the inter­view­er asked him “why not?”

“Because every time I hit ’em, they go out of tune.”

I am minded of this story every time I hear the Strike guys strik­ing up for they give their gear a fear­ful wal­lop­ing at times (as well as plenty of beau­ti­ful, subtle and fun moments, too).

“Ele­ment­al”, Strike’s new show is well in to it’s first week and audi­ences of all ages are lov­ing it. Described by Simon Sweet­man in the Domin­ion as “an amaz­ing show” and Aaron Wat­son in the Cap­it­al Times as “end­lessly invent­ive” and “not to be missed” this show is a smash hit.

There are sev­en­teen per­cus­sion pieces in the show, includ­ing newly-com­mis­sioned com­pos­i­tions from Gareth Farr and com­poser-in-res­id­ence Tak­umi Motokawa, and the ensemble play hydro­phones, pyro­phones, dip­po­phones, Bed­ford trucks, and even the occa­sion­al per­cus­sion instru­ment, as part of a tre­mend­ously the­at­ric­al con­cert exper­i­ence.

The sea­son con­tin­ues at Down­stage until 26 July and you can find more inform­a­tion here.

Full dis­clos­ure: I work for Down­stage and you’ll often find me at the top of the Han­nah Play­house stair­case, wel­com­ing pat­rons to the ven­ue.

So tonight was the Sil­ic­on Welly magazine launch party (which we twittered about yes­ter­day), and nat­ur­ally I was there, rep­res­ent­ing for the Wel­ling­tonista. I was inter­ested to see that in this IT net­work­ing occa­sion, the ratio of guys to girls was about 7/2, and in talk­ing to the rare woman there, I found that – like me – the major­ity of them worked in pro­ject man­age­ment, comms or organ­isa­tion. As Wel­ling­ton’s offi­cial Queen of the Geeks Brenda has asked before (sorry, I can­’t find the link, maybe she’ll com­ment with it) – where are all the female pro­gram­mers at? And if you look at the cov­er of this issue of Start-Up, you’ll see that only ONE of the Sil­ic­on Welly honorees is female. What’s going on, people?

I don’t have the answers, so I sup­pose all I can do is pro­mote some gender-sep­ar­ate events. Pretty Pretty Pretty which is the girlie site I run with Well­ling­tonista PAG Amy, is hav­ing a big girlie party to cel­eb­rate our third (month) anniversary, and if you’re a lady, you’re invited. Mean­while, in response, the boys are hold­ing anoth­er Chap’s Night that you might hap­pen to come across. Enjoy!

I’m a big fan of real-time bus inform­a­tion – elec­tron­ic signs that use GPS tech­no­logy to tell you pre­cisely when the next bus is com­ing, rather than hav­ing to rely on the the­or­et­ic­al arrival time of the prin­ted timetable.

These have been up and run­ning in Auck­land for a few years now, and when I was liv­ing there it made catch­ing a bus just that much easi­er.

For example, I could avoid sardin­ing myself into a packed bus if I knew there was anoth­er one com­ing along soon. And instead of just wait­ing at the bus stop, I’d know if I had enough time to grab a cof­fee or browse in a shop before the bus came, or even walk for a bit to the next stop. And if a bus was run­ning late, I’d know that too.

So it’s excit­ing to see that the Great­er Wel­ling­ton region­al coun­cil are in the pro­cess of plan­ning a real time bus info sys­tem. They have a sur­vey up (run­ning until July 20), want­ing to know what sort of inform­a­tion you’d like, how you’d like it delivered, etc. And there’s also the pos­sib­il­ity to register interest in being part of a focus group.

Take the sur­vey now plz.