Monthly Archives: August 2006

Runstop

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On my way to work I stopped off at my post office box at the now hallowed Newton post office. After clearing out the advertising, I decided to explore the building a bit more. I climbed up the stairs to the second level, the home of the Artspace gallery and the National Film Archive’s Auckland space.

The NFA had an exhibition called Control/Alt/Delete, a collection of old computers and clips of old TV commercials and news items about the rise of personal computers in the 1980s. It was really, really interesting. I think it closes in a couple of days, but if you can make it along, you should.

As I was wandering amongst it all, I saw a Commodore 64 in 64C form. Its screen emitted an alluring blue glow, which slowly drew me in.

I knew what I had to do. I typed:

10 PRINT "ROBYN IS COOL"
20 GOTO 10
30 END

Then:

RUN

And soon the screen was filled with a scrolling wonderment of ROBYN IS COOL.

Now, the exhibit’s been running for a few months, so surely I’m not the only person to have done this. But in the remote chance that a harried curator has googled “how to stop robyn is cool on old computer”, it’s simply a matter of pressing the RUN STOP key.

Back

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It turns out that all the snow I’d seen in the central North Island was actually, like, the result of a major snowfall, not just normal winter conditions. It looks like my trip back north was coincidentally timed in between two closures of Desert Road.

So I’m back in old Mt Eden. In my absence, my landlord managed to evict the noisy couple in the flat next door, so there’ll be no more booming TV or full-on cooking at 2am.

I’ve spent the weekend mostly sitting on the couch, watching DVDs. I’ve discovered the magical world of audio description, sort of like spoken subtitles for blind viewers so they don’t miss out in visual action. It sounds potentially lame, but the audio description track for “Kinky Boots” was poetry. Read by a lady with a sultry English accent, it succinctly summed up the important visual action with language that matched the playfulness of the film. In fact, it was more interesting than the film itself.

I can also report that the subtitles for “Sione’s Wedding” were disappointing. They claimed to be for deaf and hearing-impaired viewers, but they weren’t, as there was no music or sound effects subtitled, and both those had an important role to play in the humour and feeling of the film. Plus the subtitles themselves were poorly punctuated. It is good to see a New Zealand DVD with subtitles, but the standard should be higher.

Anyway, like The Monkey wrote in a recent entry, “It’s good to go away, but it’s also good to come home again.”

Chill

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Yesterday I had to get out of my car park, so I went for a drive around Wellington. I love how major routes in the inner suburbs consist of winding, hilly street. I managed to find my way along these winding, hilly streets to the Chapel of Futuna in Karori. It’s magnificent.

So then I headed back up north. I used to be able to do Auckland to Wellington in a day, but in these post-9/11 days, uh, it’s nice to have a break along the way.

Just north of Foxton (no longer New Zealand’s Foxtown, but all their signs seem to be shaped like the local water tower, which ain’t no Hawera water tower), I saw a snow peaked mountain range. I was trying to figure out what it was until I realised it wasn’t a mountain range – it was just some hills.

As I drove on, the snow-covered landscape increased, until I was driving through one of those winter wonderland things. My previous experiences with snow are: Ruapehu once in the ’80s, and Palm Springs on Christmas Day in ’93 (true!). So to drive through landscape entirely covered with snow was really cool.

So I stopped off in Taupo. It’s bloody cold. -4 degrees last night, but fortunately the motel was geared up for chilliness. I’m rather looking forward to getting back to rain old Auckland.

Capitalness

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This morning I went to the Museum of Wellington City and Sea. Because Te Papa is so awesome, Wellington’s city museum has to pick a theme and stick with it, and the theme is yo ho ho, the sea (and the city).

There was a chronological history of 20th century Wellington (and plenty of historically significant building pr0n for me to salivate and/or weep over); Wellington’s nautical history, including the Wahine disaster; and a look at ye olde Wellington, including Maori legends read by Joanna Paul.

But the trouble was, there was a school group there too. No matter where I went, the school group followed. I was quietly viewing the Wahine exhibit when, “Now, I want you to look at things like the table with the hole in the middle, and think about why the hole might be there.” (Answer: it was for the ashtray.)

I tried getting as far away from the kids as I could, but no matter where I went, they followed. No, children. Run away, little ones!

I had a look in the Film Archive. There was a display of that guy who make all those films, but that was a bit boring. The only other thing to watch was a 1994 edition of Sale of the Century, which looked like the first episode after it switched to TV3. At first I thought maybe it was a selection of TV from that era, but no. It just an episode of Sale of the Century on loop. And I watched it all.

Then I went to the City Gallery and discovered a curious thing. There was an exhibit of the works of Guy Ngan. He’d done a lot of metal decorative things for civic buildings in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, including the blue stuff atop the Bledisloe building in Auckland, which I have always admired from afar.

But the centrepiece of the exhibit was a giant aluminium wall sculpture (is that the right word) he had made for the Newton Post Office in 1973 (NZ Post had been renovating the building and didn’t want it so they donated it to the Auckland Museum). Now, the Newton PO is where I have my post office box. Its fairly ordinary. The only redeeming feature are the hand-drawn posters that feature delightfully sexist buxom ladies. But it warms the cockles of my heart to think that at one stage some wall inside the PO would have been covered with this massive artwork.

Later I met up with Max who made some nice spaghetti and meatballs and even nicer steamed pudding (yes!), which is perfect for a chilly Wellington winter night. We watched selections from his awesome collections of DVDs, and I can’t think of a better way to spend my last night in the capital.

Tomorrow it’s time to head back up north.

Straight outta Lambton

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One is in Wellington now!

I drove here via the Manawatu Gorge (which is windy, twisty, perilous, but thankfully brief), and remembered to turn off at the right place in Woodville.

I stopped off at Masterton and visited the museum/art gallery, which was celebrating the Wairarapa Embroiderer’s Guild’s diamond jubilee. A large hall was filled with all manner of embroidered crap crafts, including the “bag challenge”, in which the guild members were challenged to make a bag with embroidery. My favourite piece was an embroidered scene showing a bride looking in the mirror and seeing herself as a little girl reflected back. I would have taken a photo, but I suspect the guild ladies knew I was up to no good.

I passed through Carterton and Eketahuna. My great-great grandfather (or something like that) came from Carterton. As for Eketahuna, well, it had a really, really big sign with the town name, which appears to be its quirky town feature. (Stratford = Shakespeare; Dannevirke = Vikings!; Eketahuna = has a name).

Then I stopped off at Greytown, which is apparently where Wellingtonians go for weekend getaways. I visited the Shoc chocolaterie, which I highly recommend. Located in a small historic building, the smell of warm chocolate gently greeted me. I bought enough choccie delights to last me a while.

Next I had to contend with the Rimutaka Ranges. It was raining and the road was twisting. Two Mercedes overtook me at points along the way. I listened to the only audible radio station’s broadcast of the Maori Queen’s funeral.

Finally I reached the Hutt Valley and I detoured to Upper Hutt because, um, well, I wanted to see what it looked like. Having seen it, I was trying to get back on SH2, when I found myself going down a road by a school. It was home time and the street was chocker with parents’ cars. Then it started to hail. This will be my lasting memory of Upper Hutt.

Lower Hutt was slightly nicer. My main purpose there was to check out the civic buildings, which are build in a fine post-war modern style. They looked good, even in the rain.

So finally I made it to Wellington. It turns out the best time to come here is the weekend, because hotels have lots of cheap rates. Well, I know that now.