WRITTEN ON January 11th, 2010 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN travelling
Tags: bangkok, thailand, travelling
On our way to Lisbon, we had 24 hours in Bangkok. It wasn’t by choice but ended up being a great experience. What I kept from it was the kindness of the people, who always tried their best to help and communicate with us, even if most times we couldn’t understand each other. The city’s landscape… well, it’s not exactly a reflex of the paradise that the word Thailand brings to mind, naturally. Those paradise views are somewhere else in the country, by the beaches and away from the noise and pollution of the big city.
It is really great to leave somewhere feeling like you’ve made the most of it. We only had 24 hours in Bangkok but we definitely made the most out of every minute there. And we did it “by any means” - trains, boats, motorbikes… both in the jungle (yep!) and through the chaotic traffic in the city. Stopovers are so much more fun when you get to actually leave the airport and go out exploring.
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WRITTEN ON December 31st, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN life
Tags: 2010, new year
The year is just about to finish here in Portugal while, in New Zealand, my home on the other side of the world, people are already waking up to their first day in the new decade. I’ve been having an absolutely fantastic time catching up with friends and family, despite the disgusting weather. I guess to me, Christmas and New Years only really make sense with this kind of weather anyway.
I have a gazillion blog posts to catch up on, in this little virtual journal of mine. For example, I’ll be returning soon with photos not only of our time here in Portugal but also of our amazing 24 hours in Bangkok. I’m committing to it right now - blogging more often is one of my resolutions for the new year. Resolution number 1 is to remember the resolutions throughout 2010. My track record isn’t that brilliant but you can hold me to that. Now that a blank year is unfolding in front of us, and I have 365 days to make everything happen. And boy do I want to make lots of stuff happen!
Anyway, 2009. I am not going to complain about this year. I missed my family and friends terribly, every day. But I also made new friends, friends that I know will be a part of my life for a very long time. I’m also in a job that I enjoy, so I’m not going to complain about that department either. I spent an amazing 14 days in Beijing, I bungee jumped off the Auckland Harbour Bridge (holy mother of freakiness, I still can’t believe I didn’t die), I went skiing for the first time, I completed my first ever NaNoWriMo challenge… So really, 2009 was good to me. Still, 2010 will have to be even better. The only way is up.
My list of resolutions includes little things and big things. In the great scheme of things, they are all almost equally important (since they all end up contributing to make it a special year).
Blogging more, editing my NaNoWriMo novel, do the Tongariro Crossing, learn to ride that god damn bike and go strawberry picking are only some of the things on this things-to-do-in-2010 list. There’s a lot more and hopefully, in a year’s time, I’ll be writing a super positive blog post about how I achieved everything I wanted to achieve in 2010 (hey! I might! Have some faith!).
Anyway, the champagne bottles are chilled. Bring on 2010!
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WRITTEN ON December 15th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland
picnics, barbecues, sun, strawberries, smiles, ice cream, fish and chips on the beach, blue skies.
next week, christmas! the sequence still feels weird to me.
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WRITTEN ON December 14th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN shoes
Tags: manolo blahnik, shoes
A company had them flown in to New Zealand from Barneys in New York. US$865 of Manolo Blahnik goodness. They placed them on a billboard in Auckland, free for the first person to grab them. The billboard said size 8. THAT’S MY SIZE! It was as if we were meant to be.
No, I didn’t get them off the billboard. A guy did and, since he couldn’t find anyone who could fit them, he put them on Trade Me. My lovely Kiwi decided that they would be the perfect Christmas present for me (which is also code for “I made sure I pointed out a good few hundred times how much I wanted them”). He won the auction. A pair of brand new Manolo Blahnik shoes for about 240 euros. Mine, all mine. I WAS IN HEAVEN! But then we went and picked them up.
The size on the billboard was wrong. The shoes were too small. After considering chopping up half of my feet, we managed to sell them for the same money C. had paid for them. I had them for about three days and I’m embarrassed to count the number of times I opened the box just to look at them for a little bit. A pair of little handmade golden pieces of heaven.
The next day, heartbroken, I went and bought another pair of shoes to add to my collection, hoping to somehow make up for the loss. In vain. I’d have to buy about fifty new pairs to make up for that loss.
Anyway, this is the story of how I was given the coolest Christmas present a shoe-addict can ask for and how I had to let it go. Yes, I considered keeping them just so I could look at them every day. But apparently that would have been stupid.
Anyway, goodbye my pretties. I hope you’re happy in someone else’s feet and they treat you with care.
Love,
The person that could almost fit you.
P.s.: Who am I kidding? You’re tiny. I wasn’t even close to fitting you! Stupid giant feet.
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WRITTEN ON December 7th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland
Tags: auckland, chris knox, concert, liam finn, neil finn, pearl jam
The last month was a month of absolute insanity, with work and nanowrimo taking up pretty much all of my time awake. Still, a girl’s gotta have some distractions so, even if the cultural life was way slower than what it should have been, there was still time to go to a couple of really good gigs.
First, there was Dave Dobbyn, the cool kiwi guy I talked about a wee while ago. He filled the Powerstation, in Auckland, with people of all ages. Except that there was more of an older age crowd than a younger one so we felt a bit out of place, at times, amongst all the sequins and ties. I guess that’s when you know that you’re getting old: when, after a day at work, you dress up for a concert like this instead of dressing down. Anyway, I digress. I don’t know if liking Dave Dobbyn’s music is cool or not but the fact is that I like it. A lot. And he totally made my night when he sang Slice of Heaven!
A few days later, my countdown finally reached zero and we headed to Mount Smart to see Pearl Jam (seeing them live again was one of the things on my long to do list and now that I can tick that off I actually think I might just leave it there, since I can’t wait to see them for a third time anyway!). If seeing my favourite band of all times play live wasn’t good enough, the opening acts just made the night so much more amazing. Especially Liam Finn, whom I discovered that I love. What an amazing artist. If you haven’t heard him yet, don’t waste any more time. He is incredibly talented and I will definitely keep my eyes peeled for the announcement of his future gigs.
So anyway, after Liam Finn came the always great Ben Harper with the Relentless 7 and even though I wasn’t as fascinated by them as I was by Liam Finn, it was still a great show. That meant that the crowd was well and truly warmed up for Pearl Jam when they came on stage. I can’t begin to explain you how happy I was to be singing along to their songs with them again, three years after seeing them live in Lisbon. Too many moments of that night stayed with me but there are two that I suspect will stay in my memory for a little longer: first, the crowd together singing the first half of Better Man and then Eddie Vedder, joined on stage by Liam Finn and Neil Finn (one of his “uncle Neils” as he referred to him, the other one being uncle Neil Young), to sing “Not Given Lightly” as a tribute to Chris Knox.
Chris Knox, an amazing kiwi singer/songwriter with a huge collection of major hits and great songs in his CV, suffered a stroke this year. As a result, he now can’t even talk. Artists all over the world got together, each choosing one of Chris Knox’s song to interpret and made a beautiful album called “Stroke”. All the proceeds from the album go towards his treatments. It was the only CD I got in November and it’s been playing almost non-stop at home. “Not Given Lightly” is only just my favourite Chris Knox song so I guess you can imagine how great it was to hear it being sung by the Finns and my dear Eddie.
Fast forward to December, last Friday to be exact. November madness has just ended and it’s now been replaced by the annual Christmas madness. Still, along we went to the beautiful Civic in Auckland to the Fly My Pretties gig. I had seen it on C4 a few days before. Their new album, “Story”, is Cool with capital c. They created this really cute story that is animated on the screen above them and Dick Weir sits in the corner as the narrator, telling us the story in between their songs. Apparently, and this is another piece of Kiwi culture I learnt on Friday, Dick Weir has a long career behind him on the radio and is a famous storyteller. Storyteller is one of those things, a bit like writing, I guess… We all think it’s easy to do until we see it done either really well or really badly and then realise that a lot goes into it. Weir did it amazingly well and it made me enjoy the bits of the concert without music as much as I enjoyed the music.
So there you go. My bank account isn’t looking too flash after all these musical incursions (but then again, it never does). I’m trying not to think about the fact that Rufus Wainwright is performing in Auckland in February and Lady Gaga is bring the Monster Ball tour here in March. I better start playing lotto.
P.s.: I heart youtube and youtubers who upload images of concerts I go to. That is all.
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WRITTEN ON December 6th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland
Tags: facts, new zealand
from here.
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WRITTEN ON November 15th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland, life
Tags: nanowrimo, reading, writing
Shameful! Yes, that’s right. I’m telling myself off. It’s shameful that I haven’t even stopped by to clean the spiderwebs of this place, or popped in to say hi since the end of October.
But I have excuses. Like a gazillion of them. In no particular order:
Nanowrimo started on the 1st of November and, like I had mentioned before, I decided to take on the challenge this year. So on top of all the writing that goes on every day, I added an extra 1667 words per day (at least) for a whole 30 days. As I’m writing this, I’m still in the run, with about 26,000 words of my Nanowrimo novel written - which is quite an accomplishment, if you consider all the other stuff I’ve got going on. However, the last few days have really given the word ‘exhaustion’ a whole new meaning and, sometimes, the simple thought of opening up the word document to add a few paragraphs to the text after work make me want to close my eyes and sleep for about 23 years.
I’ve also still managed to squeeze in a few running sessions in the past couple of weeks, something I continue to be quite proud of. I may have chocolate bars or crisps afterwards but hey, I’d have them anyway so I guess it’s good that I eat them *and* I run. There must be some good in that.
November was also the month when I had planned to read zero books and use all that time I would normally spend reading on my Nanowrimo novel. However, everyone familiar with Nick Hornby’s work should know that, when given the chance to get their hands on his new novel, one would be stupid to wait. So Juliet, Naked is gone and, even if it’s not my favourite of his books, it’s still a great story. I thought I’d get into a state of post-Nick Hornby’s novel depression, waiting impatiently for his next book to come out, but my friend S. was also kind enough to lend me Alice Sebolt’s memoir, Lucky, and I started reading it last week on the bus. The result: I missed my bus stop and went all the way to where the route finishes and was still reading when the bus driver asked me where I wanted to get off at and I took my eyes off the book to find an empty bus. Yes, it’s that good. Sebolt’s The Lovely Bones was my favourite book this year so far but I reckon Lucky will steal away that title.
Anyway, since my last post there was also a halloween party that I very much enjoyed and there was also Guy Fawkes that I didn’t enjoy at all. I don’t get the point of the celebration and I don’t get why people would be throwing fireworks of their backyards for hours (and for days, since they did it on Guy Fawkes day and during the weekend). I spent Guy Fawkes with a massive headache that the fireworks only made worse so that could explain my bitterness about it. Oh and there was also the Melbourne Cup, an event that gets Kiwis strangely excited. I don’t really get the enthusiasm about dressing up all fancy for a horse race that lasts for about, erm, maybe two minutes.
I’ve had a few days of being really annoyed with New Zealand lately - mostly due to politics (apparently it’s ok for a member of government to let out racist remarks and insult the majority of its people) and other assorted matters that are subjects to whole other blog posts. Anyway, it’s strawberries season again and even though I can hear the rain outside as I type this, I’ll hold onto the thought that Yes, I did go out for lunch last Thursday wearing only short-sleeves so summer must really be about the corner, even if, right now, you really, really can’t tell.
Right, I’ve just written over 600 words here. I hope I can get at least double of that written for nanowrimo tonight. Oh boy.
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WRITTEN ON October 27th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland
Tags: kiwi, new zealand, travelling
Kiwis seem to love giving titles (whether they’re national or international) to their towns, cities and regions. The usual “Welcome to…” sign is followed by the title that the place conquered to itself (and sometimes even includes a big sculpture of whatever they excel at - like a big carrot, in Ohakune for example). Makes me giggle every time.
Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about:
fiordland - sightseeing and walking capital of the world
turangi - trout fishing capital of the world
ohakune - carrot growing capital of New Zealand
te puke - kiwi capital of the world
queenstown - world adventure capital
gore - brown trout capital of the world
napier - art deco architecture capital of the world
te kuiti - sheep shearing capital of the world
taihape - gumboot throwing capital of the world
taupo - sky-diving capital of the world
kaikoura - whale-watching capital of New Zealand
I think that in Kiwi English, “capital of the world” or “capital of New Zealand” have pretty much the same meaning as “yeah, we have/do a bit of that here”. Anyway, it’s funny how places and communities try to create their own identities around such different and singular things.
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WRITTEN ON October 18th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN bucklame, kiwiland, music
Tags: concerts, music, samoa tsunami
Tonight, starting at 7pm at Auckland’s Vector Arena: Neil Finn & Tim Finn, Dave Dobbyn, Bic Runga, Savage, Scribe, Hollie Smith, Elemeno P, Nesian Mystik, Jordan Luck Band, J.Williams, Che-Fu & Kratez, Open Souls, Kirsten Morrell, Sweet & Irie, DJ Sirvere, Aaradhna, PNC, Devolo, Mareko, King Kapisi, Feelstyle, Adeaze, Cydel, Ardijah and Lapi Mariner make up the list of artists performing in the ‘I Love the Islands’ concert. All the funds from this massive benefit gig go straight to the victims of the tsunami in Samoa.
It’ll be an evening full of good music (I mean, come on, look at that line-up!) and also some strong emotions - artists like Scribe and Savage will be performing in memory of the relatives and friends they lost in the tsunami.
Funny how the proximity theory really does work. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t feel so much for the tsunami victims if I was still living in Portugal. Somehow, your geographic position in relation to things does have a strong link to how you react to them. It goes almost hand to hand with your emotional link to things (I can be far away from my country but, in that case, emotion is stronger than geography and distance will never affect my reaction to events there). Anyway, enough of that. T minus 6 hours to the concert - w00t!
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WRITTEN ON October 18th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN bucklame, kiwiland, photography
Tags: beach, fish, photography
