How’d my dance card get so full?

Posted on June 9, 2008 by Robyn

Oh, hi. I’m living in Wellington now. I’m rather enjoying it.

I was planning on writing something earlier, but I got all sensitive artist about where I was going to write. I realised Virginia Woolf was right about needing a room of one’s own to write. And it took a while to get the interwebs connected.

I flew down on a rainy Auckland afternoon. Now the awful rainy weather has been seared in my memory as “Auckland”, alternating with a blissful, tropical summary image that somehow has palm trees and white sand around Queen Street.

For the first three weeks I stayed with Jo and Stephen, who were kind and lovely and let me use their spare room, which is really all one needs. I shall give a naive 1990s R&B/pop-album-note-style shout to them: “Yo, peace! Thanks for the spare room. Say no 2 drugz!”

Then I found a flat, centrally located, and have managed to figure out where the nearest awesome coffee place is (Schoc, 11 Tory Street).

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting the move and settling in to be like, but it’s turned out to be surprisingly easier than it seems it should. It hasn’t been without a few hassles or emo interludes, but it’s gone rather well for the whole ‘moving to another city and starting a new job’ thing.

Oh, but I know what you’re thinking. “Robyn, tell us, wot r some of the differences between Auckland and Wellington that you have noticed so far plz?”

All right, here you go:

Weather
I never had to pay attention to the weather in Auckland. It was usually grey and overcast, sometime a bit more sunny, other times a bit more rainy. But in Wellington, I’ve started reading the weather report. I know now what a southerly feels like. I’ve also had the unusual experience of coming indoors after some extremely windy weather and discovering that the wind appeared to have opened a wormhole to 1987 and brought back my hairstyle from when I was 12 years old.

Public Transport
I used buses quite a bit in Auckland, and I noticed that most of my fellow bus-goers were students or people in lower socio-economic groups. In other words, they were taking the bus because it was cheap. Whereas in Wellington, I see business people taking buses and trains to work. They look like they could easily afford to drive to work but choose not to.

Trains
I’m living in Wellington but working in the Hutt Valley. The quickest way to work is the train. Trains are still a novelty for me – it’s all a bit Thomas the Tank Engine, wahey, toot-toot, etc. I’m lucky that I’m travelling against the rush hour so I can enjoy the luxury of near empty carriages. When the full trains pull into the station in the morning, I don’t envy the sardine-like commuters.

Foods
It boils down to this: more Malaysian satay, fewer Chinese and Middle Eastern. More Japanese restaurants, but hardly any takeaway sushi places. And cafes are more likely to have affogato on their espresso menu, which is just fine with me. Also, I highly recommend the Kiallas Greek cafe in Newtown – especially their pancakes.

48Hours Film Competition
I sadly couldn’t take part this year with Fractured Radius, my old team in Auckland (not that they needed me: they just went ahead and make a totally brilliant serious film – serious! – that’s scored them a place in the Auckland finals!), so I volunteered to help out with Wellington. This involved handing out ping-pong balls on kick-off night, marking off completed films on the Sunday night, and helping with the judging process. As always, hard work but tons of fun.

The main difference between Auckland and Wellington 48Hours films is that the landscape seems to play a greater part in Wellington films. It’s harder to pretend that Lambton Quay is downtown Chicago, or that Lower Hutt is Central Park. Auckland is dirty streets, Wellington is hills and flats and harbour and sharp shadows.

By the way, the Wellington final is on Wednesday at the Embassy theatre. You should come. It’s going to be good.

Closeness – Things
Everything is close in Wellington. I like that I can walk places and go to things without having to work out some sort of elaborate transport plan. If it’s not a little walk away, it’s a pleasant stroll away.

Closeness – People
I’ve lost count, but it seems that about half my workmates know someone who I also know. I’ve already had the experience of walking down the street and running into people I know. This might seem ordinary, but it barely happened to me in Auckland, and only seemed to happened frequently to hugely social people.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to figure out how to unpack three rooms worth of stuff into one room without it looking like the abode of a crazy Trade Me lady.

Packing

Posted on March 30, 2008 by Robyn

I got a new job. It’s still in the fast-paced world of television, but whereas my old job was the feel-good public service side of telly, the new job is more commercial – a different kind of feel-good. And while it’s about the telly, I’m going back to my roots, as the job is all about the interwebs.

So that’s all new and exciting, but what’s even more new and exciting is that the new job is located deep in the Hutt Valley, meaning I’m going to have to move to Wellington in a few weeks.

Fortunately I like Wellington and its fine citizens, so I’m excited about the move. But my knowledge of the city is nowhere near as great as my knowledge of Auckland (or Hamilton!). I don’t know what kind of reputation different suburbs have, what sorts of areas I should live in.

But that’s a way off. At the moment I’m in the process of packing. I’ve been living at my current flat for over six years now (six years!), the longest I’ve lived in a flat, so it’s been a bit of an archaeological expedition as I’ve gone through all the stuff in my spare room.

At first glance, it looked a bit like the work of some crazy lady who buys things off TradeMe but just biffs the unopened boxes in the room. But even though there was a chaotic mess, I knew where everything was cos, like, it was all organically arranged, man.

But still, I managed to find a few things that I didn’t realise I had:

A sticker reading “UTBNB: Up The Bum No Babies”. (I assume you can stick it anywhere you like.)
A teach-yourself book on Irish Gaelic.
A vast collection of postcards. I knew I had quite a few, but I didn’t realise how many until I gathered them all together.
A badge from the ’80s saying “Telecom – I ♥ my customers”. Yeah, they had to get badges made as a reminder.
Too many bags. I would not consider myself a bag-loving’ gal, but yet there they were – too many bags. How did this happen?

I suspect I’ve been throwing out more than I’ve been packing. It’s easy to pack obvious things like books, CDs, DVDs, but then I’ll find and old notebook or a folder full of interesting bits of paper and I’ll want to keep it, but wonder, as it’s been in a drawer, untouched for the last six years, do I really need to keep it?

This is why nuns are content and crazy TradeMe ladies aren’t.

A weekend in Wellington

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Robyn

It’s a fact that while Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, Wellington is New Zealand’s coolest. It’s something to do with the geography – the compact city centre – and that it’s the capital city. Somehow this all adds up to a being lovely place to live.

So when I heard rumours of a Wellington shindig encompassing the Annual Wellingtonista Awards and the Public Address Christmas do, I quickly booked some flights to have a long weekend in the capital.

Thursday

When the day came, I almost missed my flight after the airport bus didn’t show up, but thankfully the flight was delayed due to bad weather in Wellington. Yay for bad weather in Wellington!

As soon as I arrived at my hotel (top floor, corner, wall-to-ceiling views – hey, cool) I got ready and headed down Cuba Street to Mighty Mighty, where the bar was full of cool Wellington people.

First on the line-up was “It Doesn’t Give My Opponents Much Time Either” – a quiz about the politics and culture of the Muldoon years. While the proper teams answered on stage, I showed off my awesomeness to my tablemates by knowing that the 1480 Kroozers were skateboarders.

Next the Annual Wellingtonista Awards were presented, honouring the best of Wellington. (During my Wellington weekend, I got to experience a few of the winners and nominees, and I’m confident that the best things did win.)And then – yee-yah – Blam Blam Blam played. I reckon it was even better than their gig at the King’s Arms back in September. Even their less known songs got a good audience reaction, and there was much jumping around. “Don’t fight it Martha it’s bigger than both of us” was a full-on emotional experience, while “There is no depression in New Zealand” took on an extra special dimension being played in the nation’s capital.

Over the evening I met lots of cool people I’d only previously known online, as well as a few nervous fanboys who were lovely to meet.

Eventually Joanna, the wonderful hostess, rounded up the remainders and we headed off to the Hawthorn Lounge, a superb cocktail bar disguised as a gentlemanlady’s club. Um, I can’t remember what we drank, other than that it was good.

Finally for the evening a late-night food mission, but this is where Wellington lets itself down. There was a kebab shop on Courtenay Place. They would sell us inadequate felafels, but they didn’t want us to eat there, so we had to resort to trickery to get a table. They ended up booting us out. Man, all I wanted was a kebab.

Friday

I decided to take it (relatively) easy on Friday. I went to Te Papa and saw the Toi Te Papa exhibition of the history of New Zealand art. I’m glad they’re taking their responsibility as the national gallery seriously now. It seemed like the one part of Te Papa that wasn’t all geared up to be fun and educational 4 kidz. It’s just a whole lot of good paintings.

I went for a walk along the waterfront (it was windy) and came across the new Meridian building, as recommended by Tom.

Later I went along to the Thistle Hall, which was having a fund-raising event, selling a number of artworks for $100 each. I found a watercolour that tickled my fancy so I bought it. (But now I feel like I need something… darker to balance things out. Hm.)

After an unpleasant experience being crammed into the hotel lift with a bunch of office workers dressed in 1920s gangster costumes, I came across Tom and Kowhai going to the Madame Fancy Pants VIP evening. MFP is a shop that sells clothing and accessories, and I bought a cool badge that says “Reading is sexy”, which, as you know, is true because you are reading this and you are sexy.

We finished the evening by having a polite, well-behaved drink at Superfino. I had a poached-pear punch, which was just right for an early summer night. Are there even bars like this in Auckland?

Saturday

I met up with Mike. I’ve known him now for 11 years. Crikey! We walked around and he showed me where Wellington’s finest graffiti and sticker art could be found. We wandered up Aro Street, then all the way down to the waterfront, where we had fried crap from Viggo Mortensen’s favourite fish and chip shop.

We were meeting Mike’s friend Shannon in Civic Square, which was also the setting for a climate change festival, so we were entertained by a hippy choir singing those sorts of songs that only hippies sing (the kind that involves self-congratulatory rhythmic clapping).

When Shannon showed up we wandered off, pausing only to put a Green Party sticker on a campervan (lolz!!! irony!!!!), then having a coffee at Fidel’s. That seems like a lot of walking, but I think it’s much easier to walk around central Wellington because it’s so flat. You can’t go far in central Auckland without hitting a steep, demanding hill.

Then I met up with Jo and Tom. We had a drink at Floriditas (srsly, Wgtn is all about the booze), then dinner at a Thai restaurant and coffee and Ernesto’s. Jo went off to see the Gossip (which, from all accounts, was brilliant), and Tom and I were joined by Stephen, and we had more good cocktails at the Hawthorn Lounge.

Sunday

I had a few hours to spare before my flight, so I visited the Wellington City Gallery, which had a Bill Hammond exhibition – his epic paintings of unusual animals – and a couple of montage films by Tracey Moffatt. I only saw one – “Love” – a montage of clips from romantic films showing the different ways women are treated in films. It’s really unnerving to hear a succession of leading men shouting “Whore!” (Hollywood is still male-centric.)

Finally I left Wellington, a hot and sunny day, and flew back to Auckland, which was being all grey and rainy and moody.

I figured out why Wellington is so good – it’s not just the geography, it’s the people.

Wellington

Posted on December 9, 2007 by Robyn

I just spent a fun, action-packed long weekend in Wellington. I’m rather sleep deprived, so words will have to wait for later, but until then here are some photos.

Wellington stuff:

Wellington graffiti:

Chill

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Robyn

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.

Straight outta Lambton

Posted on August 22, 2006 by Robyn

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.

Robyn, 31, Sagittarius

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Robyn

I was planning on another day in Palmy yesterday, but just after I wrote my last LJ entry, I logged into MSN and Regan Idolblog messaged me with the news that not only was he in Wellington, but he had tickets to the Sunday taping of the NZ Idol performance show. OMG OMG OMG.

So I hopped in my car and hooned down to Wellington, and – as if by magic – the rainy grey skies turned into brilliant blue skies and golden sunshine along the Kapiti Coast. When I arrived in the capital, I was reminded of how happy Wellington makes me. It’s just such a cool city.

I wandered around town for a bit before heading over to the St James. I have to admit that part of my decision to go to the Idol taping was because it was in the St James. I’d never been there before and I wanted to check it out. It is indeed a nice old theatre, although I’m not too sure about the barn-like new foyer that’s been build on next to the old theatre.

I haven’t had the opportunity to see any of the current Idol series and I don’t know who anyone is, but I did learn the following: there is this one guy called Ben and he is quite cute, but he is also a really good singer and if you say he isn’t you are just jealous.

There were many Ben fans sitting near me. They screamed a lot. My ears started to hurt. He’s probably a shoo-in for the top 10.

Then I drove back to my motel in Palmy, discovering along the way that since having Lasik, my night vision is quite shit and I probably shouldn’t drive at night.

Even though I wasn’t planning to go to Wellington, now that I’ve been there I think I’m going to have to go back and make that the last stop on my tour de North Island.

Robyn Gallagher

Adventures in words and web

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