Is this thing on?
Feb. 20th, 2009 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mundensSeems like I've gotten out of the habit of updating here. I mean I don't think I even posted about my last visit with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seraphs_folly two weeks ago. This is partially because I often write from work, and I've actually been quite busy recently, developing a prototype for the Police, and consulting for a couple of banking industry modernizations. But it's a Friday afternoon and I have a slight lull over afternoon coffee, so a quick update.
The visit withseraphs_folly was lovely, going to some wonderful and expensive breakfasts, eating far too much, wading in the sea with my love and her dog, and having numerous odd things happen, that made me think of a term familiar to role-players - 'game bleed-through", where things that occur in game somehow inexplicably end up in the real world, except it wasn't a game that was bleeding thru.
Some of the examples I can't talk about in public, but one was that on the way back from Sumner I saw a sign for "Thai Food" something which is quite common, and though that maybe one might use the Thai for food or that even "Thai cuisine" might serve to distinguish one from the many signs saying "Thai food." I invented "Thai Kai" which might be an interesting Maori-Thai fusion restaurant.
seraphs_folly suggested that one could use "Thai Po", as it would be both a great little pun , and she thought that "po" meant a type of food somewhere in Asia as well. Then, that evening as we drove into town looking for food, we saw a new restaurant, labelled "Thai Pho", a Vietnamese-Thai fusion. seraphs_folly swears she hadn't seen the restaurant before, and I can confirm it certainly wasn't there the last time I was in that bit of Christchurch a few weeks earlier.
Things happened that were a surprise, as well as enjoyably painful, and there some photos made, of which lucky people have seen at least one, my love posing with her new drum. Overall it was a lovely weekend and it was a shame I had to come back, but being picked up at the airport byjarratt_gray (& evie_fae, who'd come to keep him company) was a ice way to ease back into being home. They picked me up because I'd been lending them my car as theirs was out of action, and I saw a lot of the Piwakawaka couple over that week, with jarratt_gray dropping me at the train station and picking me up, so that he could use the car during the day. This was all a cunning plan to get jarratt_gray cooking, and it worked well, with him cooking up a lovely Japanese feast for evie_fae and I last Saturday evening.
It consisted of karaagge, onigiri, fried onigiri in ponzu sauce, and soba noodles in peanut sauce (apologies if I've forgotten anything). Photos of the feast exist, perhaps the chef might deign to post them for your edification one day. The feast was accompanied by a dessert wine is only worthy of mention because of it's name, "O" . There were jokes about giving people a big glass of "O", and whether when one got tired of "O", you moved on to "P".
Sunday, I actually posted about the gardening I was doing, but I didn't mention that when pulling honeysuckle vine from places where it wasn't supposed to be, it slipped off my glove and I got a couple of nasty red burns on my wrist. For the next few days, whenever I was in a short sleeved shirt, it looked like I'd been cutting my wrists. Today there is merely a faded "Z" shape.
Tuesdaywyldcard & I flew up to Auckland to see NiN. It was fun, and I don't regret doing it at all, especially since Trent said he wasn't likely to be back to New Zealand again, but it felt a little flat, perhaps because of the very small number of people there. The Vector Arena is not a large venue, and it was certainly not full. One suspects that they barely broke even on the concert, if that which might explain the lack of encore.
One thing I found amusing is that while I have no idea who the support act was, I knew their sound guy, James G. He was lucky, being flown up, and put up, and getting into the concert for free, and no doubt also being paid for it, but it's great to see that he's getting enough of a name for himself in the industry that they'd do that for him. It's good to be surrounded by such a lot of varied talent.
I missed out on meeting up with bothamphigori & lamprey, and ferrouswheel, but did run into a number of other unexpected peeps, including one couple I think was from Dunedin.
As to the show itself, to me the first two tracks were nothing special, not being that familiar with NiN's more recent stuff, and I'd question the mix, which turned it all into a wall of indistinguishable sound to someone who did not know the songs. I found it didn't really get started for me until the third track, Discipline, which is a favourite, for reasons which will be obvious to those who know me well. :) From then on it rocked, with Trent switching between walls of sound and quiet ethereal airs. Hurt was especially good. I know some people were disappointed at the reduced lighting set, but I think it worked well enough for what was quite a small concert really.
Got back to work just after 11am the next day, after only just making our flight, even though we were less than ten minutes from the airport, largely due to elderly tourists.
Thursday was curry night, is everybody happy?
seraphs_folly two weeks ago. This is partially because I often write from work, and I've actually been quite busy recently, developing a prototype for the Police, and consulting for a couple of banking industry modernizations. But it's a Friday afternoon and I have a slight lull over afternoon coffee, so a quick update.The visit with
seraphs_folly was lovely, going to some wonderful and expensive breakfasts, eating far too much, wading in the sea with my love and her dog, and having numerous odd things happen, that made me think of a term familiar to role-players - 'game bleed-through", where things that occur in game somehow inexplicably end up in the real world, except it wasn't a game that was bleeding thru. Some of the examples I can't talk about in public, but one was that on the way back from Sumner I saw a sign for "Thai Food" something which is quite common, and though that maybe one might use the Thai for food or that even "Thai cuisine" might serve to distinguish one from the many signs saying "Thai food." I invented "Thai Kai" which might be an interesting Maori-Thai fusion restaurant.
seraphs_folly suggested that one could use "Thai Po", as it would be both a great little pun , and she thought that "po" meant a type of food somewhere in Asia as well. Then, that evening as we drove into town looking for food, we saw a new restaurant, labelled "Thai Pho", a Vietnamese-Thai fusion. seraphs_folly swears she hadn't seen the restaurant before, and I can confirm it certainly wasn't there the last time I was in that bit of Christchurch a few weeks earlier. Things happened that were a surprise, as well as enjoyably painful, and there some photos made, of which lucky people have seen at least one, my love posing with her new drum. Overall it was a lovely weekend and it was a shame I had to come back, but being picked up at the airport by
jarratt_gray (& evie_fae, who'd come to keep him company) was a ice way to ease back into being home. They picked me up because I'd been lending them my car as theirs was out of action, and I saw a lot of the Piwakawaka couple over that week, with jarratt_gray dropping me at the train station and picking me up, so that he could use the car during the day. This was all a cunning plan to get jarratt_gray cooking, and it worked well, with him cooking up a lovely Japanese feast for evie_fae and I last Saturday evening. It consisted of karaagge, onigiri, fried onigiri in ponzu sauce, and soba noodles in peanut sauce (apologies if I've forgotten anything). Photos of the feast exist, perhaps the chef might deign to post them for your edification one day. The feast was accompanied by a dessert wine is only worthy of mention because of it's name, "O" . There were jokes about giving people a big glass of "O", and whether when one got tired of "O", you moved on to "P".
Sunday, I actually posted about the gardening I was doing, but I didn't mention that when pulling honeysuckle vine from places where it wasn't supposed to be, it slipped off my glove and I got a couple of nasty red burns on my wrist. For the next few days, whenever I was in a short sleeved shirt, it looked like I'd been cutting my wrists. Today there is merely a faded "Z" shape.
Tuesday
wyldcard & I flew up to Auckland to see NiN. It was fun, and I don't regret doing it at all, especially since Trent said he wasn't likely to be back to New Zealand again, but it felt a little flat, perhaps because of the very small number of people there. The Vector Arena is not a large venue, and it was certainly not full. One suspects that they barely broke even on the concert, if that which might explain the lack of encore.One thing I found amusing is that while I have no idea who the support act was, I knew their sound guy, James G. He was lucky, being flown up, and put up, and getting into the concert for free, and no doubt also being paid for it, but it's great to see that he's getting enough of a name for himself in the industry that they'd do that for him. It's good to be surrounded by such a lot of varied talent.
I missed out on meeting up with both
amphigori & lamprey, and ferrouswheel, but did run into a number of other unexpected peeps, including one couple I think was from Dunedin.As to the show itself, to me the first two tracks were nothing special, not being that familiar with NiN's more recent stuff, and I'd question the mix, which turned it all into a wall of indistinguishable sound to someone who did not know the songs. I found it didn't really get started for me until the third track, Discipline, which is a favourite, for reasons which will be obvious to those who know me well. :) From then on it rocked, with Trent switching between walls of sound and quiet ethereal airs. Hurt was especially good. I know some people were disappointed at the reduced lighting set, but I think it worked well enough for what was quite a small concert really.
Got back to work just after 11am the next day, after only just making our flight, even though we were less than ten minutes from the airport, largely due to elderly tourists.
Thursday was curry night, is everybody happy?
