One year on…
This posting brought to you by Sandy Mamoli (deeply honoured inaugural guest blogger).
Have you got something to say about Wellington? Would you like to guest on the Wellingtonista? Drop us a line and we’ll add you to the door list.
I discovered the Wellingtonista on day two after my arrival. It took them almost year to discover me …
In fact, it took them exactly a year. I celebrated my one year New Zealand anniversary last Friday with the contradictory emotions of someone who simultaneously feels like a true long-term Wellingtonian and a rookie who has just stepped off the boat.
I am still struggling with a wee bit of culture shock – complaining about Wellington’s provinciality and second-world infrastructure while marveling at the vibe, friendliness and genuine feeling of community one can only find in Wellington (I think).
Apart from being with a Kiwi partner who has been too long out of the country to remember anything useful and having read halfway through a travel guide I didn’t know much about New Zealand a year ago. And my former life in Vienna, Copenhagen and Amsterdam proved to be way too limited an experience of the world to shelter me from the surprises I was in for.
If you can use some exotic booze…
…there’s a bar in Cuba Mall. Okay, so that doesn’t swing quite as well as the original, but those with a longing for outrageous costumes and hard drinking, but who can’t stomach the Sevens, ought to know that it’s Tiki Bar weekend at Matterhorn.
That’s right: you have one more night to savour concoctions based on classics by Trader Vic and Beachbum Berry; bar staff dressed as Hawaiian deities; bubbling cauldrons of lethally refreshing punch; and some of the cheesiest slices of lounge exotica ever committed to vinyl.
Te Papa turns TEN
Wholly schmolly, has it really been 10 years … yes, it has!
In my early days in Wellington it was a goal of my ex-wife and I to at least stay in Wellington for the opening of Te Papa .. and now, here we both are able to celebrate its 10th Birthday.
Who remembers the mural-ed fence around the building site with the wee holes to check out progress?
I love Te Papa and it is just awesome to be able to take my son and daughter along to it as well (of course they adore the place). Mind you those coloured panels facing Cable Street are still a bit crap in my mind.
Te Papa (that’s “(y)our place”) celebrates its first decade on Saturday 16th February with a host of events including:
(after the break)
Art-Stalker: Man on a mission
Well, you’d really have to know your way around to guess today’s piece just by the photo here.
One of the things I’ve been enjoying is not having to wander too far from the apartment to find some amazing[ly weird] stuff around for you to look at.
This piece is in Jack Ilott Green. You know, the little garden just off Jervois Quay, the one where they’re constantly promising to build something useful. At the moment it just seems to be a refuge for pot smokers.
OK, since I’m keeping you in suspense, here’s the side view!
Yeah, the Wellingtonista are thinking it too. Bloody strange bit of art.
It has this same bias relief on all four sides, and although the entire sculpture seems to be getting a little knocked about it’s still in good form.
Problem is, no-one is certain what in the heck it’s supposed to be. If you have any suggestions, fell free to leave them in comments.
But first! What is it!
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
As we approach the apex of the international awards season the biggest week for quality cinema releases in memory is upon us. With 8 Oscar nominations, the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men leads the pack and opens today at Readings, Lighthouse Petone, Paramount, Sky City Queensgate and the Embassy. Based on a Cormac McCarthy gothic crime novel, No Country reportedly sees the Coen’s back in their finest form since Fargo . Josh Brolin (American Gangster) plays a hunter who stumbles on a suitcase full of money and decides to keep it. He doesn’t realise that one of the biggest badasses in screen history (Javier Bardem) is coming to get him – and the money.
George Clooney as Best Actor is one of seven Oscar nominations gained for Michael Clayton, a paranoia-thriller about a corporate fixer who uncovers a plot that cannot end well for his clients – or for him. Written and directed by first-timer Tony Gilroy (co-writer of the Bourne trilogy), Michael Clayton brings to mind 70s classics like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor (directed by Sydney Pollack who stars in Michael Clayton). Readings, Empire, Lighthouse Petone, Penthouse and Sky City Queensgate.
Flickr: Wellington is more than just a Group
Huh? “Flickr … Group” … what are you blithering about man!?!? It’s okay, you’re not alone as I had to have the whipper-snappers sit me down in my bath-chair and explain what the jolly Moses they were talking about. It seems that using this newly fandangled Internet we don’t have to store all our photos in a cardboard box under the spare bed any more. No, we can “post” them up to the Web and let the world* see our holiday snaps.
Flickr is one such place that lets you post your photos.
And, you can tell the world where the pictures came from by either popping them onto a map or adding the place name as a tag/label.
You can even join up with like minded folks and share your photos in “community photo albums” (groups) on any subject you care to dream up.
Aha, you probably saw where this was going a lot quicker than I did when the young uns were explaining it to me with the use of short words, diagrams and plenty of naps in the sun to recover.
Bloggers Predict: 2008
So last night, the good people of Unlimited Potential held their annual Bloggers Predict event, in which they get a bunch of guys (emphasis on the all maleness of the event) to say what they think is going to happen over the year.
The Bloggers
- David Farrar, of Kiwiblog fame
- Mauricio Freitas, Geekzone Guru
- Hamish MacEwan, local visionary
- Philip Fierlinger, turntable technologist
- Tom Beard, Wellurbanite
No doubt those nice people will post about what their predictions were, so let me instead tell you what my predictions are, and then after the jump, I will share with you my thoughts on the night in note form.
My predictions
- Hopefully they’ll try harder to get a woman on the panel. “They’re all at the Linux Conference” is not good enough, because while I do love Brenda, turns out that there actually are other females interested in technology in Wellington. I suppose they could argue that no women approached them in 2007 about doing it, but meh.
- Face to face contact will make a comeback, facilitated by internet arrangements, like Facebook Events, etc. The stigma of meeting someone over the internet will be almost entirely gone.
- All new workplace Codes of Conduct will specifically mention blogging
After the jump, my nonsensical (did I mention there was free beer?) notes from the night.
Bars and Bites
This is in the vein of The Wellingtonista Bar Fly-les, but I thought I’d give it another name since it’s about food & coffee as well as drink.
- Have I been unobservant, or has Offbeat Originals only just started offering lamb as an option in their famous burgers? And tapenade as an accompaniment?! [insert drooling noises here]
- The Buena Vista Social Club seems to have been successful as a certain mayoral campaign. It has closed (rather inconveniently for certain fringe shows), though it is apparently due to reopen as a gay bar called S&M. No comment.
- If you’ve been putting off enjoying Simply Paris’ excellent cassoulet, patisserie, Merguez frites baguettes or pain perdu by their bizarre choice of “Nespresso” in place of coffee, then rejoice! for they now have a proper espresso machine and Orb coffee. You’ll still have to put up with the twee décor and occasionally slow service, though the more than occasional hotness of their staff should make up for the latter.
- Forgive me for shouting, but … TIKI TIKI TIKI! It’s not quite the proper Tiki Bar that the Wellingtonista have long been gagging for, but Matterhorn are having a Tiki Bar weekend this weekend, complete with vintage tiki mugs, dry ice, special cocktails and silly hats.
Wellingtonista on the Wheels of Steel
Spinning the platters that matter on VBC from 7 to 9 tonight on behalf of the Wellingtonista will be… Dan S.
Hardy souls happy to be enraged or enlightened by some blasts from the past (many tunes will be conjured from actual vinyl artifacts) can tune in on 88.3FM or by visiting http://www.vbc.org.nz/ where they will stream the content direct to your PC speakers. I’ll try and make a recording of the show for podcast conversion but, in the likely event I am consumed by panic, I make no guarantees.
Stephen’s intro to version 2.0 still applies:
The show will go from 7 – 9 pm, NZDT (GMT+13). The studio line is +64 4 463 9994 if you feel like ringing up and abusing/encouraging me.
Summer city
For some of the smallest Wellingtonistas the most important part of the council’s Summer City festival has finished with the end of Fairy Trina‘s wildly popular run of Enchanted Tales on Saturday.
And this evening marked the end of a series of pretty interesting evening Gardens Magic events with a gig by OdESSA. But fear not – there’s still lots more excitement for everyone between now and the end of March when the festival wraps up.
We’d recommend picking up one of the guides from the library or other spots around town; or failing that, download a copy from the council’s event website.
Then, assemble your own programme of activities. Hmmmm… maybe those same small Wellingtonistas would like to see The Phoenix Foundation on Valentine’s Day? Because their parents sure as hell would…