Robyn’s Secret Passage

Last night I went to Dylan and Melanie’s stag do/hen night, which for convenience’s sake we shall call Melyn’s hag do.

We started off at the Pearl Garden Chinese restaurant in Newmarket, and had many plates of many delicious foods. I think my favourite was the cashew chicken, but then I’m a Pakeha, so I would.

Unlike stereotypical stag dos and hens’ nights, there were no plastics boobs, blow-up sheep, nylon bridal veils or penis necklaces. No, the hag do was far more civilised than that. We had 10 pin bowling.

We went up to the bowling alley atop the car park on Khyber Pass. From the outside, the bowling alley stop the car park is somewhat of an architectural monstrosity, but on the inside it’s got everything you need for a good night out.

I played a couple of a games, got a couple of strikes (see, all that Wii bowling has payed off), but also managed to suck. I shocked the lads with my left-handed bowling. OMG. I’m left-handed.

After that we taxied up to Forde’s bar on Anzac Ave. I’ve always been curious about Forde’s. It’s on the top floor of the old Station Hotel, offering panoramic views of Foodtown, the stadium and some apartment buildings. But, due to a quirk in downtown Auckland’s coastal geography, it’s also on the ground floor, so there were no stairs to climb.

Forde’s is an awesome bar. If I was going to be an alcoholic and I need a regular, this would be it. Mr Forde, the proprietor, is everything you want in a pubman.

We all played a bit of “I have never”, with the unsurprising conclusion being that we are all awful people.

Afterwards the party was reduced to me, Melanie, Dylan, Morgan and this guy called Glen. We all wandered down to Showgirls, and this is where things got really exciting.

There was a large group of girls standing outside Showgirls. Now, having spent a year catching the 11.40 bus across the road from Showgirls, I know that usually the only people who stand around outside it are the sort of men who are regular at Showgirls, and strippers on fag breaks. So it was obvious that something was up.

And there he was - Lukas Rossi of television’s “Rockstar: Supernova” fame. Dylan took some pics. OMG!

Lukas is really short and I could totally beat him up. He was surrounded by heaps of excited girls who all seemed to want to have sexual relations with him. Why? He’s short. He’s not hot. It can’t just be that he was on the telly and he was in a band.

Knowing that nothing could really top that, we had hot chocolate and then called it a night. And a rad night it was.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably often wondered what your face would like painted on a poppadom, which is then cooked and puffed up, distorting your likeness into a 3D landscape.

Rad, yes? This is part of Blow, which is part of AK07. I went along because my cousin Sue is, along with Tracey Collins, the designer and curator of the project.

The genre they work in is basically set design, but this is taken to more arty extremes, working with space.

Blow it’s based around a number of large, blown-up globs. Then a number of designers have designed their own thing with each one. Some had DVDs playing inside, some had stuff attached, and one had a fellow wearing a pair of bacon goggles, painting portraits on poppadoms.

I guess the main reason I went along was to support my cousin, but once I got there and started experiencing it, I was really drawn into it. I had so much fun exploring it. There was a lot to see, hear, feel smell and taste. It was engaging and challenging and totally drew me in, and I like that with art.

Plus, I got to eat my face.

It’s on display at the BNZ Foyer of the Aotea Centre from 12 to 24 March. Go and see it and get the poppadom guy to paint you!

On Friday after work, I wandered up to Albert Park, and was just in time for the opening of the lantern festival.

I stood around with a group of people looking at a stack of double-happies rigged to go. In the distance someone was making a speech about diversity. Then a series of bangs echoed around the park, and the double-happies exploded. People took photos of them, but, well, you can’t really photograph loud bangs. Visually it was a giant cloud of smoke.

The lights came on, so I wandered around and took photos. My amateur advice for taking photos of decorative lanterns at night boils down to these four points:

1. Deactive your flash. Your camera may be jonesing to flash, but remember, you’re taking a photo of a light, so you don’t need to bring any more to the party.
2. Get up close to the lantern. Don’t zoom in from afar, physically walk as close as you can get. That’ll help use all the light from the lantern and make nice bright, colourful photo.
3. Don’t get in the mode of documentarian. Often small features of the lanterns are more interesting than taking a full-length photo.
4. If you’re getting blurring, go with it. There’s sure to be a Flickr group that is hot for Chinese lanterns with a bit of artful motion blur.

As I was walking around, I heard a middle-aged woman talking to her husband. They were passing a line of Chinese-clothing-shaped lanterns that were strung along as if on a clothes line. “Clothes line - a bit of a Kiwi touch there,” she commented. Yes, because they don’t have clothes lines in China.

There was a stand called No Chinatown, where visitors were invited to fill in a survey about whether Auckland needed a Chinatown. It could have easily been run by the council or a community group, but it was actually an art project. OMG - edgy. It seemed like they were taking the piss out of the idea that for Auckland to be a world-class city, it needed a Chinatown. Hey, forget a Chinatown - bring back the Hobson Street opium dens!

There was a stand giving out free books on Buddhism. I saw a group of 40-something woman all snap up one called “Diet and Health”, which attempts to entice punters to the world of vegetarians with such anecdotes as, “When I first started on a vegetarian diet, I had blisters on my chin. They contained a very toxic liquid waste causing sores whenever it came into contact with the skin.” Toxic waste?! What, was she eating veggies from the Love Canal farmer’s market?

But most importantly, the pork buns were good, in a food stall kind of way. And that is as good a way as any to see in the year of the fire pig.