I purchased Fodor’s Guide to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific (1979) at the Book Fair for $2. It has a little section on New Caledonia, which notes “the air is full of tangos and stirring marches”, you may see “ferry crowded with outer islanders in a dazzle of gay muumuus” and Anse Vata beach is “where topless French and Australian beauties expose their assets with delicious nonchalance”. This is where I’m staying!!!! Woo-hoo - naked Australians!!! (?)

I also decided to get with the new millennium and buy the latest Lonely Planet guide, which also includes Vanuatu. I have now concluded that I should have actually gone to Vanuatu because a) the weird John Frum cargo cult, celebrating 50 years of waiting for the man in the steel bird who will bring Lucky Strikes and Glen Miller LPs to the village, and b) the bislama pidgin. I can’t be bothered brushing up on my high-school French, but I would happily learn to say things like “Hamas I blong wan naet?” (”How much I belong one night?” or “How much is it per night?”). Though I have memorised this phrase en francais, “Donnez-moi le vin et le fromage.” Awesome.

My holiday will also involve a very brief visit to Auckland - just a brief stopover before my flight to NC. I was thinking about going earlier in the day, but somehow I’m don’t feel quite ready to go back to central Auckland just yet. I wonder why.

The weather today in Wellington has been cold and grey and rainy, which is excellent. Hopefully this will mean that when I touch down at Tontouta airport, the warm tropical weather will seem all that extra bit more appealing.

And I’m trying to figure out what to do about the sun. See, I don’t like the sun. I burn easily. It’s much easier for me to have all-over pale than take one of the two choices on offer to Pakehas who want darker skin - zebra stripes from tanning or that orange hue of fake tan. So I’m going to try to not get any sun, but it might be hard.

Hopefully I can find some sort of cafe de internet thing when I’m there. Cos I’ll tell you what - I can’t do relaxing holidays. If I go somewhere, I must explore.

I went to two art exhibitions - the giant Affordable Art Show at the TSB Arena and the much smaller Drawing Parallels exhibition at ROAR! gallery.

The Affordable Art Show was full of the kind of art that people buy to decorate their homes with. Before I went there, I’d been out looking for a new duvet cover, and with duvet designs in mind, I was disturbed to see the same sort of designs showing up on lots of the paintings. But it’s the kind of art that people buy exactly because it matches their duvet.

A very common design would be a crimson-based piece with lots of different elements painted on it in a scrapbook fashion - maybe some pebbles, the ubiquitous Samoan bird motif, an old newspaper clipping (made older looking by a yellow varnish), a black and white photo, and some other coastal-inspired designs, something lacy, and plenty of gold paint.

Why is this so common? Is there some sort of programme on The Living Channel on how to make this?

My favourite piece in the show was a by-the-numbers portrait of Ozzy Osborne called “Prince of Darkness” (not Prince of Light Entertainment?), on sale for a mere $1000. Oh, the dark blue would go so well with the curtains in the guest bedroom.

Over at ROAR!, there was art of a different kind. ROAR! specialises in outsider art, but the Drawing Parallels was a group show open to anyone, really, with an emphasis on drawing.

The walls were covered with pieces from different artists using all sorts of different techniques and media (including my new favourite - felt-tip pens).

When you see a piece where the artist has sketched all the different meals she’s had every day in hospital, you know there’s not a duvet in the world that would match that.

Porirua

I got the train to Porirua. This is the furthest north I’ve been since I moved to Wellington. One day I’ll make it to Levin. One day.

Porirua’s town centre reminds me a bit of Manukau. It’s very automobile-focused, but is trying hard to be pedestrian friendly. But it’s really hard, as a pedestrian, to deal with a town centre that has a great whacking mall in the middle of it. There are just so many dead edges around it - totally designed on a scale that can only be enjoyed in a car.

I passed by the historic McDonald’s - the very first one in New Zealand. I didn’t realise it at the time. If I’d known, I would have gone in and had a cheeseburger and then rolled out my vinyl offcut, played Mirda Rock on my ghettoblaster and done some breakdancing.

There are a couple of streets near the mall that have been turned into a pedestrian mall and covered with canopies, in a sort of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em move”. The pedestrian mall was practically devoid of pedestrians. Instead it was full of very young teenagers kicking around broken umbrellas.

The train conductor didn’t clip my ticket on the way home, so a return trip might be in order.

Holiday

A few days ago I bought some crazy-cheap flights to New Caledonia in September (or, as they say in New Caledonia, Septembre. It’s just as well they were cheap because New Caledonia isn’t. I’m currently utilising the mighty power of the interwebs to find a hotel in Noumea that a) I can afford, and b) isn’t a complete shithole.

Hotel review websites have been useful, especially reading the reviews from my fellow countrymen and Australian neighbours as they come to grips with la vie francais “We could not get a good flat white coffee anywhere,” moans one tourist. Oh, funny that a French territory would not serve Australasian-style coffee.

And should I feel comforted that “My partner and I (and his stepchildren)” from Hamilton liked a certain hotel? Or should I take that as a sign to stay away? I’m spurred on by the visitor who reckons, “Noumea was a bit feral.” I already knew that, which is one of the reasons I’m going back.

Bonus Poetry

Over at the Wellingtonista, I was inspired to write a sonnet about a recent brawl in Manners Mall.

Hanging with the goths in Manners Mall -
a scuffle in the Loaded clothing shop.
A shoplifter, so 111 was called
but even still the ruckus didn’t stop.
Nunchakus were brandish’d, ninja style.
The shop staff locked themselves out in the back
I hadn’t had some biff now for a while,
so I turned ’round and gave some guy a whack.
A Strathmore chick did kick me in the nuts.
I fell down hard and I began to wail.
My hardcore gangsta plan ran out of luck,
as the po’liceman, he took me off to jail.
I’ve vowed to never go out after dark.
It’s so much safer here in Churton Park.

And I knew that my job would involve getting all my work edited and corrected, and that I’d receive a list of all the mistakes I’d made with explanations of what I did wrong. I figured I’d maybe make one or two mistakes per episode, and that would be it.

But then I got back the edit notes to the very first episode of Shortie I’d captioned and… it was three pages long. I felt dumb and illiterate. I was sure someone would soon drag me into their office and tell me it had been a terrible mistake and it was back to the dole for me.

However, that didn’t happen. Instead I got better and better. I learned about comma splices and attributive hyphens and the difference between “my pimp Carlos” and “my pimp, Carlos”. But I still got things wrong; I still made mistakes.

What I came to realise is that English is hard. It’s a bastard mongrel of a language. It has all these bits and pieces from all over the place, so while there are lots of rules that children quickly pick up really quickly, there are all these annoying exceptions that you have to memorise - like that the plural of child is children, not childs.

But then there’s the curious thing about English - you can mess with it and it still makes sense. Having excellent grammar and spelling is just a bit of oil to lubricate the works and make the message flow out clearly. But if you don’t oil it, the message is sill there and it still makes sense… eventually.

As much fun as it is to laugh at the poorly constructed ‘about me’ statements on NZDating.com, if I read that HuGGGy1 says he “enjoy sports like dinner concerts im reliable watching videos”, it might take me a while to work out what he’s trying (oh, he’s trying) to say, but eventually I can get the message.

To be really good at English, you have to be a total nerd. You have to practise, practise and practise and train your brain to do things in a certain way. You know how really good musicians have got that way because they’ve spent hours and hours practising? It’s the same thing with English.

And I’ve come out the other side of it realising that it’s more fun being the guy in a punk band who can’t really play his guitar but is having heaps of fun bashing out some tunes with his friends, rather than the lone guitarist spending hours in his room practising a lightning-fast guitar solo but missing out on life.

After I left captioning and returned to a world where I wasn’t surrounded by professional word nerds, I had to tame myself. I was back in a reality where people don’t always like having their spelling or grammar corrected. I’m sure they fear it makes them seem stupid or illiterate, so I want to say, “No! It’s not you! We’re all like this! Perfect English is really hard!”

Free your semi-colon and your arse will follow.

Lower Hutt is strange in that it has this normal main street with normal shops on it, and then you turn a corner and there’s a great whacking mall taking up a giant block. And it’s one of those bad malls that doesn’t want to exist on the outside - just a giant white monolith. They call it Queensgate, and it was in there that we had lunch.

Publicly I’m going to pretend I was disgusted with this shrine of consumerism, but secretly I’m going to revel in the shiny and vow to go back. I mean, it’s the only proper mall the Wellington region has - perhaps it’s best that way.

Then on to Craft 2.0. It’s an indie craft fair, with a distinct lack of tea cosies and doilies. And as the name might suggest, there’s an internet, web 2.0, vibe to it - using technology and online communities to add to the craft experience. These modern crafters sell their goods online on places like Felt and Etsy

I bought a cool pendant of a bird (possibly a robin!) and a brooch from Sue of Supervery, a cool knotted brooch by Caroline McQuarrie, and one of Amy Galvin’s lovely little Russian doll brooches. (In case you were wondering, brooches are so hot right now). Mr Stephen bought a skull, with which he is going to subvert the corporate world.

Taking in the full TheNewDowse experience (motto: “ToiletsToTheLeftOfTheCafe”), we then had a look around at the rest of the gallery. I was particularly taken with My House Surrounded By A Thousand Suns, an exhibition of outsider art - particularly by mentally disabled adults who have been attending art workshops.

There’s some really good stuff in there. Some artists are wild and vibrant, others have a wicked sense of humour, others spend hours painstakingly filling in squares, and others show a brilliant sense of space and balance. It inspired me.

Over-the-counter cold/flu remedies eventually demanded that the outing would draw to an end, but it was, nonetheless, a splendid day out.

On Sunday I decided to go to Johnsonville. One of my plans is to explore more of the greater Wellington region because at the moment my experience of Wellington is limited to central Wellington, Newtown and, uh, Lower Hutt.

Johnsonville was at the top of my list because the Johnsonville train is celebrating 70 of eletrification (hooray!), and I heard there was a mall-type-place there.

So I got the train. It uses older carriages than the rest of the Wellington trains because the newfangled ones don’t fit through the Johnsonville tunnels. The train I was on rattled and clattered and at one stop the doors kept opening and closing, causing the conductor to investigate.

It was also interesting seeing a few of the train platforms along the way had the same seating design as the one I get off at for work. Only these ones weren’t covered in tags, nor did the brick edging have “Question Authority” and “Fuck the System” scribbled on it. The good people of Khandallah are perfectly happy fucking the system on their own, thank you. They do not need a written reminder.

Finally Johnsonville loomed into site. I got off the train and was faced with the Johnsonville mall. I was disappointed. It wasn’t even a good bad mall. It was just a few aisles of mundane shops and a disappointing foodcourt. Across the road was a Warehouse and a supermarket. And there was a McDonalds and another supermarket. I was so disappointed, I think there was even more disappointment than the time Phil from C4 caught me smoking. And that’s serious disappointment.

So I headed back for the train, only I missed it, so I mucked around until the next one came, but I missed that too. (What is up with all these trains leaving on time? Why can’t they be like the Hutt Valley line and leave a couple of minutes late?) Finally the last train from Johnsonville met me at the station and I got out of there.

I think I’ll go to Porirua next. I won’t possibly be disappointed there.

A few days ago I was listening to my iPod on shuffle on the way home from work when Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” came on. It’s a cool song. It was released in 1980 and is a feel-good tribute to Bob Marley, with the classic forget-your-worries-and-have-a-good-time theme.

But then the second verse came along and Stevie sang of one of his reasons to be jammin’:

Peace has come to Zimbabwe
Third World’s right on the one
Now’s the time for celebration
‘Cause we’ve only just begun

Oh no.

It’s hard to hear that lyric now without feeling sad. Back when that song was written, Zimbabwe had just won independence from the British and Mugabe was going to usher in a new era of strength, hope and, uh, peace.

Things weren’t supposed to go in totally the opposite direction.

Plastic Fan-frickin’-Tastic

I was in at Salvation Army shop in Naenae, when I found a tape called “We Carry The Cup” - the official EP soundtrack for the 1986 America’s Cup campaign. It features the #1 smash hit song “Sailing Away”, which is probably the worst song ever in the history of anything ever. Ever.

I realised that someone born after, say, 1983, would have no memory of the magical time prior to 1986 when New Zealanders did not generally care about boat racing. They probably have no memory of cassette tapes either.

I showed various people the tape and one of the first things a lot of them said was, “Do you have tape player?” Yeah, I have a double cassette deck in my stereo (high-speed dubbing!). As totally obvious as it is, I didn’t realise that ordinary stereos don’t have tape players any more. They’re about as archaic now as a cathode-ray television. My stereo seems so old I feel like it should have doily on top of it.

Photos? Oh, why not!

Jesus of Naenae was such a staunch Housemartins fan, he shaved a cross into the side of his head.

“It’s a giant moth - a moth as big as Godzilla. If only there was some word we could use that would evoke both the scary sci-fi of a Godzilla-like creature and general mothiness. Oh, I know - Mothzilla!!!!”

What, you mean your local copy shop doesn’t do laminating? Get with it!

Fortunately, most of the letters were able to be delivered to their intended recipients, but one particular package containing a manuscript of an apparent romantic novel, was so badly damaged that not only was the entire envelope destroyed, but most of the pages too.

What follows are the last remaining words from the few undamaged pages. It is hoped that the original author can be found.

Page 1:

“Here, I want you to have this,” Auntie Nola said, passing Veronica a small folder. “It’s a ticket for a week-long cruise on the SS Good Times. I won it at the church gala, of all places! I’m too old for a cruise ship, but you, my dear, well, it might be just what you need. Might finally find a fellow!”

Page 15:

“What do you mean it’s a virgin pina colada? What, pineapple juice and coconut cream? That’s not a cocktail - that’s a detox, and I didn’t come here to detox!” Veronica was outraged.

Isaiah the bartender shrugged and passed the yellow drink to her. “Sorry, ma’am - there is no alcohol onboard this ship - captain’s orders.”

Veronica took the drink and mooched over to a deck chair on the Lido deck. What sort of ship didn’t have rum? And would she ever find love aboard the increasingly bizarre SS Good Times?

Page 38:

“I’m sorry, miss. The buffet has been closed due to a norovirus outbreak. But we have some packets of chips if you’re hungry.”

Page 82:

“This is only a bikini! How is this offensive?! I demand to see the captain!” Veronica was furious.

Page 85:

“Ah, I think I see where the confusion has arisen,” said the captain. “This is actually the SS God Times. We are a floating mission ship, bringing the word of the Lord to the South Seas.”

“Oh, you’re kidding me.” Veronica was outraged and furious. “Well, what am I supposed to do for the rest of the week? Pray?”

“Perhaps you would like to visit our Christian bookstore,” the captain suggested. “It’s the largest floating bookstore in the southern hemisphere. We have a large section for Christian singles.”

“Oh, Captain,” Veronica purred. “My bikini seems to have come loose. Could you be a dear and tie me up?”

“Uh, no. I’m… happily… married…”

Page 257:

“I’m your captain now, you bad bad boy,” she screamed.

“Shiver me timbers,” the captain moaned.

Page 258:

“Look, uh, this is kind of awkward. I don’t even want to see you again, let alone marry you. I was just bored. I mean, stuck on a ship for a week with no booze, not even shuffleboard… I was just looking for some good times.”

Veronica couldn’t find her bra, but it didn’t matter. The gangplank had been lowered. The real world awaited.

“But I think I’m going to check out that Christian singles website you recommended. Bye, captain. Thanks for the rum.”

THE END

• When the night’s getting on and your voice is starting to get a little hoarse (pony!!!), go for the punk. Singing “Anarchy In The UK” or “Lust For Life” is much easier to sing than anything with one of those melody things.
• But don’t try to match your hoarse voice with “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Yeah, Bonnie Tyler sounds like she gargles gravel, but she can sang, yo. You’ll get about 25%, if you’re lucky. The rest will sound like you have throat cancer.
• Don’t pick a song because it’s the theme tune to your favourite James Bond movie (”Live and Let Die”) and because there’s a cool jazzy version of it in the movie. Cos the karaoke machine will, of course, have the Paul McCartney and Wings version, which is an overwrought crapstravaganza. And what sort of lyric is “If this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give in and cry…”?
• If you got attitude, it don’t matter if you can’t sing, man. Pick a song that you like and belt it out. If the karaoke machine is half-decent, it’ll add some subtle effects that’ll help even out the crap.
• If the Deftones “Shove It (My Own Summer)” is on the list, and if you have a pal that you can sing it with, don’t. Cos even though it’s really fun to scream your arse off, your audience will hate you very quickly.
• If someone picks “Under Pressure”, everyone will think it’s SingStar time and start rapping “Ice Ice Baby”. Bonus points to anyone who can rap the whole thing.
• Don’t do “Wannabe”. The rapping bit is really fast and the singing is high. The Spice Girls make it look far too easy. (Wot, you mean you actually have to be able to sing properly to be a Spice Girl, etc.)
• Avoid songs with long instrumental breaks (re “Live and Let Die”). Cos while the soundalike karaoke track is going off on the instrumental, you’ll just end up standing there with the microphone. All attempts to dance will make you look like a dad.
• Make sure you actually know the song before you attempt to sing it. Nothing is quite as lolz-inducing to your fellow karaokers as you rewriting the first verse as “Rising up, back on the street… Um, I don’t actually know how this bit goes. Uh…”
• It’s quite fun to do Nsync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me”, cos you get to do all the me’s as “maaaay”. You can flush out all the closeted Nsync fans who’ll be secretly singing along.

Photo courtesy of beguilejapan’s Flickr stream.

I was sad that I couldn’t be part of F:Rad 2008, but apparently I am credited as an excellence consultant, which would probably be the “Hey, you can do serious! Go for it!” phone call with the director on the Friday night of competition weekend.

I’m really happy for Dylan, Andy and James - who’ve been the core of Fracture Radius right from the first year in 2003, when they made the appallingly bad “F.I.T” - and for the rest of the team, both amateurs and professionals, who no doubt worked hard and had much fun on 48Hours weekend.

But now my loyalties are torn! “The End” will be in the national finals, but then so will the Wellington winner, Smashing Pants’ “Darlene”, which I also have tons of cinematic love for. Ugh - does this mean I’ll have to support the Gisborne winner instead?

Auckland’s got a scenic photo of the city at night, with the sort of orange sky you’d normally only get if there’d been a volcanic eruption in the Philippines or something. The Sky Tower looks so bright and white, it’s as if they took a 1995 photo of the city and photoshopped a contemporary, daytime image of the Sky Tower into it. It’s all "Look at me! I am slick and urban! I am a world-class city - just like Sydney and Melbourne!!!!"

Whereas the Wellington card has a detail from some Para Matchett’s sculptures on the City To Sea bridge. He’s one of my favourite New Zealand sculptors (did you guess that aready from my Flickr icon?) so I’m happy to have that in my wallet.

I was planning on writing something earlier, but I got all sensitive artist about where I was going to write. I realised Virginia Woolf was right about needing a room of one’s own to write. And it took a while to get the interwebs connected.

I flew down on a rainy Auckland afternoon. Now the awful rainy weather has been seared in my memory as “Auckland”, alternating with a blissful, tropical summary image that somehow has palm trees and white sand around Queen Street.

For the first three weeks I stayed with Jo and Stephen, who were kind and lovely and let me use their spare room, which is really all one needs. I shall give a naive 1990s R&B/pop-album-note-style shout to them: “Yo, peace! Thanks for the spare room. Say no 2 drugz!”

Then I found a flat, centrally located, and have managed to figure out where the nearest awesome coffee place is (Schoc, 11 Tory Street).

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting the move and settling in to be like, but it’s turned out to be surprisingly easier than it seems it should. It hasn’t been without a few hassles or emo interludes, but it’s gone rather well for the whole ‘moving to another city and starting a new job’ thing.

Oh, but I know what you’re thinking. “Robyn, tell us, wot r some of the differences between Auckland and Wellington that you have noticed so far plz?”

All right, here you go:

Weather
I never had to pay attention to the weather in Auckland. It was usually grey and overcast, sometime a bit more sunny, other times a bit more rainy. But in Wellington, I’ve started reading the weather report. I know now what a southerly feels like. I’ve also had the unusual experience of coming indoors after some extremely windy weather and discovering that the wind appeared to have opened a wormhole to 1987 and brought back my hairstyle from when I was 12 years old.

Public Transport
I used buses quite a bit in Auckland, and I noticed that most of my fellow bus-goers were students or people in lower socio-economic groups. In other words, they were taking the bus because it was cheap. Whereas in Wellington, I see business people taking buses and trains to work. They look like they could easily afford to drive to work but choose not to.

Trains
I’m living in Wellington but working in the Hutt Valley. The quickest way to work is the train. Trains are still a novelty for me - it’s all a bit Thomas the Tank Engine, wahey, toot-toot, etc. I’m lucky that I’m travelling against the rush hour so I can enjoy the luxury of near empty carriages. When the full trains pull into the station in the morning, I don’t envy the sardine-like commuters.

Foods
It boils down to this: more Malaysian satay, fewer Chinese and Middle Eastern. More Japanese restaurants, but hardly any takeaway sushi places. And cafes are more likely to have affogato on their espresso menu, which is just fine with me. Also, I highly recommend the Kiallas Greek cafe in Newtown - especially their pancakes.

48Hours Film Competition
I sadly couldn’t take part this year with Fractured Radius, my old team in Auckland (not that they needed me: they just went ahead and make a totally brilliant serious film - serious! - that’s scored them a place in the Auckland finals!), so I volunteered to help out with Wellington. This involved handing out ping-pong balls on kick-off night, marking off completed films on the Sunday night, and helping with the judging process. As always, hard work but tons of fun.

The main difference between Auckland and Wellington 48Hours films is that the landscape seems to play a greater part in Wellington films. It’s harder to pretend that Lambton Quay is downtown Chicago, or that Lower Hutt is Central Park. Auckland is dirty streets, Wellington is hills and flats and harbour and sharp shadows.

By the way, the Wellington final is on Wednesday at the Embassy theatre. You should come. It’s going to be good.

Closeness - Things
Everything is close in Wellington. I like that I can walk places and go to things without having to work out some sort of elaborate transport plan. If it’s not a little walk away, it’s a pleasant stroll away.

Closeness - People
I’ve lost count, but it seems that about half my workmates know someone who I also know. I’ve already had the experience of walking down the street and running into people I know. This might seem ordinary, but it barely happened to me in Auckland, and only seemed to happened frequently to hugely social people.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to figure out how to unpack three rooms worth of stuff into one room without it looking like the abode of a crazy Trade Me lady.