Quiet times

Recently I’ve been out. Every night. And every day.

I love Wellington in the Summer. During January there was Gardens Magic every night – free concert in the Botanic Gardens. In February this scales down to free concerts in Frank Kitts Park. Oh and free movies outdoors at the Gardens. And Cuba Carnival. And cricket. And rugby.* (see here for Carnival pictures)

So yeah, I make the most of living in town. And having my friends live near me. And cafes. And restuarants. And brunches. And lunches and dinners. And pot lucks.

But tonight I am staying in. I cooked, for the first time in um, weeks? It was good too, lamb stir fry with couscous mmmm. With a nectarine for dessert.

Which makes a change from yesterday where I had an oversized muffin for brunch (with a latte) and then chips, and lollies, and cake and pikelets for afternoon tea dinner.**
MMmmm good food makes me feel good. I just need to work out a way to get organised enough to have it all day, not just once every two weeks!

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*But wasn’t carnival fun? 150,000 people, 5 stages, the Ukulele orchestra, Batucada, and Brazilian music until the wee hours of the morning. So much fun, SUCH good crowd (way less drunken idiots than 7s), and FREE. I <3 free things.

**SO when you invite people for a ‘pot luck’ at 3pm, they bring snack food. Even if they end up staying until 8/9pm and just have pikelets for dinner. Well, with jam and cream of course!

Snapshot of me

Snapshot of a 26.5 year old Wellingtonion  (female):

• I like sleep. When I get it. Last night I was out at a friend’s house watching girly movies and having a ‘spa night’. Tonight I also have plans that will keep me late.
• I go to the markets every Sunday for food. The food is sooo yummy looking and fresh and CHEAP. I spend on average $30 over 2 weeks*. I buy bread, eggs, and all my fruit and vege there. Oh and often a danish if I have only just rolled out of bed to get there.
• I <3 my gumboots and wear them when it’s raining to stop my feet getting wet. I do wonder if I’ve turned into a hippie Aro dweller** when I wander through Courtenay Pl wearing them, but still hum the gumboot song in my head and splash in puddles anyway
• I hate my job, the sitting still ness of it all irritates me and I dream of starring in a musical.
• Unfortunately I can’t really sing
• Or dance due to my bung ankle
• I broke up with the boy I’d been ‘seeing’ on the weekend. It was difficult not because we’d were deeply involved*** but because he’s in my group of friends **** and I was worried that I’d hurt him, and get in trouble with them. It’s still weird, cos I can’t really discuss it with them, but hey, I’m better off.
• I walk to work and don’t own a car
• I have *three* snapper cards(#). With varying amounts of $$ on them. How much, I don’t know##.
• Despite what Poneke says, I don’t mind so much about Trolley buses. I would just settle for the numer 3 bus being on TIME for once.
• I don’t visit my parents enough. They live in Karori, and due to the buses always being 10 mins late, or just not coming at all (8:55 from Karori Mall I’m looking at you!) it’s almost 45 mins to get up there each way. So I don’t.
• I have Satay Kingdom for lunch. And am about to have it for tea too. Mmm Cuba, two meals in one $8 package of goodness.
• I like to go out with my friends and party. However, these days, town on a Saturday night bewilders me. Why do those girls wear such tiny dresses when it’s so cold###? Why do I feel so old?
• Although I buy food at the market, I rarely eat at home.
• I spend all my money on food. And eating out. And drinking. But mostly on eating.
• I don’t drink much (alcohol) due to health issues.I don’t have a problem with this, but others seem to. One of my friends always cheers when I drink####.
• I think it’s sad people can’t have a good time without drinking.
• I love the sun, and am sad this Summer it seems to be on and off.
• On the other hand, Wellington ROCKS in Summer, I have been so busy going to concerts in the Gardens, One Love, Concerts in Frank Kitts, and this weekend is Cuba Carnival!

So.. that’s my life these days.

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*$20 on a big week, buying eggs and bread too, $10 every other week when I’m just topping up the big week

** Despite living in Mt Vic and having a corporate job

***We’d only been seeing each other 3 weeks!

*****ahh WellyVillage. As one girl commented to me recently, it’s great when you’re on the good side of the small circle, but crap when you’re on the downside of the curve.

# My friend left for England and left me his and his wife’s snapper cards . Where the third one came from I don’t know

## They DID have $18, $5 and $5 on them respectively. But that was a while ago and I don’t know which is which

### And more weirdly, where do they keep their money/ keys? They never seem to have bags, just tiny dresses and impossibly high heels.

#### Which I find VERY strange, as me ‘drinking’ usually equates to half a glass or less of wine.

Life

Life… is all too short sometimes.

I just found this article on Stuff.co.nz this afternoon. I was reading merrily along until I realised that the 25 – year old woman in that story. I know her. Or knew her, at school. At high school. And a few of my friends are (were) still good friends with her.

And now I see facebook statuses appearing out of the blue with condolences. I talked to a woman I hadn’t talked to in – oh – 10 years, to tell her the news, because I saw her online and I knew she’s in London and wouldn’t have heard.

As far as I know, she’s the first of our class to pass away. And I feel odd. Fragile, sad, and still a bit disconnected because we weren’t really friends. My thoughts are with her family and friends. Some of who are my friends too.

And I have my first funeral for someone who’s NOT a family member to attend.

Shit.

Christmas Parties

Number of Ginger beers consumed today: 4

Grams of sugar in each: approx 40g

Cans of diet coke consumed: 2

Sugar= ZERO

Caffiene: too much

Amount of sugar I have had today: 4 x 40g, plus a milo at morning tea plus an ice cream at afternoon tea plus chocolate for dinner= about 50/ 60 teaspoons worth

Approx number of kjs: 10 billion

Amount of hyper I am on a work night: VERY.

ok, crash time. Night y’all

All good parties..

NEED  a chocolate fountain. This one made the party at a bash I went to last month. Melt chocolate, let flow, add skewers of fruit, marshmallow – or just stick your finger under it! Bliss.

More ‘Art’ in Welly

This is found at Viva Mexico in Left Bank. I don’t know if it’s a mexican restaurant tradition to have pictures of skeletons, but it reminded me of one where we used to hang out in Toronto, good old Sneaky Dee’s:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifindoubt/2154351992/

Things that make me smile

If you can’t see because of the small size (excuse cell phone pictures), the text reads,

“Harry the baker says: A pie and L&P is a WELL ROUNDED MEAL coz they’re both, well… round”

Young Inventors

So, discussion at the office on Thursday was all about this kid, Ryan, who was on Close Up on Wednesday night. Apparently he invented a machine which takes garbage from your kitchen sink to the garden for compost! Awesome. Although someone mentioned it uses gravity, so it helps to have your kitchen on the 3rd floor like Ryan appears to!

He won $10,000 worth of intellectual property lawyer’s fees from a NZ patent attorney firm as part of tv program ‘Let’s get inventin’” which takes kid’s inventive ideas and develops them and then at the end discusses whether it would qualify for patent protection. The winner got money towards filing at patent. And trust me, they’d need it. Last time I investigated patent attorney fees, they were generally about $10K to get a granted NZ patent, and I heard one company say they generally budgeted $250,000 to get patent protection in NZ, Australia, the UK, US, South Africa, and the EU. So most of the normal ones an internationally selling NZ company would be interested in.

As always, generally a patent is a business investment decision. That’s why although I love programs such as Let’s get inventin’ for the interest they give kids in science and inventing, I also find frustrating, because they present “getting a patent” as the end product. But really, what is Ryan going to DO with his patent is more what interests me. Hopefully an interested company will be able to buy or license it and this innovative idea can actually be brought to market. Rather than the fact that he has a patent doing the opposite – stopping it ever being developed.

Oh, and all that media coverage of this guy being the youngest inventor to get a NZ patent? Completely made up. If they ever bothered to check, they’d find that the NZ Intellectual Property office doesn’t collect inventor ages, just their nationalities.

Link to close up’s article on Ryan
Let’s Get Inventin’ Website is here
A younger inventor – a 5 year old whose patent was also granted this year (in the UK)
Link to the Intellectual Property Office of NZ where you can find Ryan’s patent when it’s published on the 28th November

Sickness

So I spent the last 10 days in bed with a kidney infection. Literally in bed, couldn’t even get up to eat. It was AWESOME.

In the meantime, there was an election. Ha. That night I was throwing up. Apparently according to my lovely English friend this means it wasn’t a kidney, just the National government causing me to be sick.

Places I love: The Cambridge

You know it’s a good bar when you roll in at 9:30 in your hoodie and the oldest jeans(the only ones left clean on laundry day) because you want to see the rugby and it’s just down the road, an despite feeling horrendously under-dressed still get hit on by overly drunk 12 year olds (ok maybe they were 20ish) and then get bought drinks by a guy named Les. I guess with Les the 60 year old and the local 12 year olds, I guess the average age is 35? Much better. haha

But good night all around. I think I love the Cambridge just for the mere fact that when the rugby is on, the place is wall to wall with guys. Young, buff, HOT guys. Despite the average age being young, the eye candy count is insanely high (due to (a) density – there’s about 15 makes to each female, and (b) a lot of them are rugby players, so have muscles, big muscles), and that’s even after you discount the guys on the telly.

So – all in all a good night. The ABs won, I got to spend 3 hours checking out buff rugby types, hang with my flattie and dance to an eclectic range of 70s/80s Kiwi music mixed with some head banging rock. Fun!