dancin in the park

X-air's not exactly my scene. I can see foolhardy young men risking life and limb, doing stunts on dirt bikes and caning themselves from mid-air anytime I want really - we call that "post-Christmas-lunch activities" in our family.

But I will hunt down breakdancers whereever they may be, so off Leanne and I went on Sunday, avoiding the oh-so-empowering bikini comp by the lagoon and the assault of coporate sponsors at every turn.

b-girl styles holla!!

Thanks to Body Rock the week before, we were familiar with plenty of the talent and were continued to be impressed by the crews at Frank Kitts Park that afternoon. The final was between Fresh Socks (its an awesome name, you know it) and the Original Step Kingz - not to be confused with all those subsequent, derivative Step Kingz, thank you very much.

Fresh Socks crew, Trans-Tasman deliciousness that they are.

Original Step Kingz: Kurv, Stretch and, um, the other guy.

Stretch was the guy who won overall at Body Rock and twas no surprise his crew was tight. I loved it when rather than just one of them stepping out, all three would bust out some move at the same time and overwhelm the other side.

Not to say that Fresh Socks didn't have a fair bit of style. Rush was the judge of Body Rock, and him & Melbz had come over from Australia for the events. (I'm just throwing the 'z's in willynilly here, these hip hip kids don't seem to have much respect for the humble 's').



As well as high quality 3 on 3 breaking, there was lots of other action to gaze upon all day. The kids that make up the entourage are just amazing. So much talent, so much stamina, so much damn attitude. You should have seen the way this little un, Kid Swerve, son of the MC/organiser of the event, rolled. He had a shoulder brush-off to be revered.



And for those of you (all of you) who just don't give a shite, I have annotated the token cute blondie. During the under-ages battle, she mightly took the mat, but didn't actually get around to demonstrating any ill moves. Still claimed her Moro bar tho, so I respect her for that.

We also received a few Moro bars during the course of the event, so I guess the corporate sponsors aren't all bad. Though by 'received' I do of course mean 'was flung at close range by extremely fit young gentlemen'. Tweet, the MC, kept saying "Aah yeah, sorry if you get one in the eye, yo!".

But other that slightly sunburnt legs and lingering grief that I will never ever look that cool on the dancefloor, there were no injuries on my part as a result of attending X-Air.


-insert Craig David lyrics here-

Gogo girls

Bandwagon? Yes please!

I'm now on Ringo thanks to Evelyn. My sole friend there, I might add. So if you are lurking about, feel free to shimmy up close.

Ev was here for the long weekend, with other lovely AK girlies in tow - and although their sole purpose seemed to be stocking up on photos for this Ringo thingo, we also managed to fit in some high class shenannigans too.

Jane, Ev & Sarah. Our city's guests for the wknd.

Jane was our pout tutor. I was the troubled student.

Lingering memory of the night:
Jane behind the lens going "Two and three and BLOW!"

At Mighty Mighty, with a bit of product placement.

What's a good night out without a bit of impulse tattooing?!

Photos of Myself I Was Sent In The Last 24 Hours:

Oh and then the next day...

...I helped sellotape four reams of A4 paper together. Cause that's how I roll.

Reunion Recap. (With exclusive photos!)

In 2003, there was a couple of guys I was studying with who had an idea for some kind of campus-based social club thing. Where we'd have, like parties and stuff. 'Cause our Screen & Media department at uni was getting on real well, the staff and students hung out a lot, the TV station was up n running and we were all having a good time.

(Plus, studying very hard and doing extremely well on our essays and producing short films that were relevant to the cirriculum, obvs).

After hearing them talk about it for a while, I realised that the underlying source of motivation was that our Student Union was supposed to give all formal organisations that signed up with them a lump o cash. Once this news spread, it wasn't long before we had all the paperwork needed and were putting that first cheque towards our inaugural Networking Night. There were a couple typos here n there, but basically that's how the Waikato S&M Social Club was born and how I became Club Treasure.

In the first semester we went from a dozen members to over a hundred. Our mailing list was really successful, as people used to it talk about projects, source gear, get advice and track down flatmates. We also had great events like music video competitions, film screenings, the end-of-year awards nights and - let's not forget - some awesome piss ups. I staged a coup and bumped myself up to President, sourcing sponsorship from DB and Red Bull, and we came up with the blue n yellow badges which signified membership.

And last weekend was all about remembering those good times. A core group of us assembled at Sam Brown's house (out at the manor) and general consensus was 'thank goodness we're all such film geeks and took so many pics over the years... because the rest of my memories are foggy...'.



There were a few key members missing, obviously. Those who have moved overseas, those who couldn't make it that weekend, those who have come to the conclusion we are unbearable wanks needing to pull our heads outta our collective arses. It highlighted the relationships which have stayed strong and those which have changed in the years since we graduated.

A lot of the friendships have grown closer in the last year or so, thanks to so many of them being based in Auckland now and working in the film industry. I'm literally the only one from my group of uni friends in Wellington. *sniffs pitifully* But it means I get to keep track of everyone and can just slot right in there with their social circle when I head up north.

Example: photo of me with Trelease, Mella, Chelsea & Marama. (Ahem - that's me on the far right, random stranger who stumbles across blog and are unsatisfied enough with life to continue reading this far into drivel).



Trelly & Marama I flatted with in my last year in La Tronica, but Mella and Chelsea, I didn't know quite as well. I was fortunate enough to have caught up with Mella a few times in recent years, especially considering she has had an amazing time raising her family, including her second child being born four months premature. (I know - OMG ). But now they're all in Bucklame and I get to hear the goss and see the pics on Tanya's Flickr and its all happy families.

It was the first big catch-up since Sam Barnes' funeral and it kinda felt nice to be all together and to be doing something a bit more normal. He would have so enjoyed the night though, waxing philosophical about the passing of time and other crap. We also talked about the fact that certain couples had had to come only one or the other, due to parental responsibilities, and that in five years time, that situation would only be worse. Would our next reunion require a creche? Quelle horreur!

Fortunately, there were plenty of other shenannigans to distract me from such thoughts. Such as, I got banned from throwing things. I was like "This is unprecedented!!" but then Sam Brown was whaa-ing about some doormat they'd never recovered and of which I had no recollection. I only got sent to the corner once for violation of this "ban", but Marama said I wasn't allowed to take my drink, so really I think things got a bit of a hand and I don't mean for my biffing of whatever it was that probably preferred being in mid-air anyway.

The manor house did not let us down in relation to mod cons and I spent a lot of the night mystified by these crazy electric ice cubes. For this photo I was trying to get them to the 'flashing' setting, while Rebecca was trying to explain this was redundant for a photo, but yeah - whatevs:



Sam took the next logical step and put them up his shirt.



Just in case you missed that the first time, here's McGeady's footage:



And no night on the piss is complete without two underqualified drunk bitches trying to set the kitchen on fire.
Cue... Bel & Trelly!!



(She is sooo gonna give me the punnies for that call).

You can go here to see "my" photos on Flickr by which I mean the ones off Rebecca Trelease's camera, heh hee! Cheers for those doll.

And of course for the full experience, you can check out Tanya's Flickr ones as well if you didn't already find those through her Backfired.net blog, which is apparently undergoing an overhaul at present, ooohh!

We went into town eventually, as it was the last night at Sohl bar and they had six bands lined up. It was packed there, people literally spilling all the way across the footpath - I've never seen a bar like that in Hamilton. Us girlies traipsed around the other clubs for a while, dancing up a storm, before we experienced the wrath that is Mella changing her mind and scuttled back.

It was sort of weird being out in Hamilton (for the first time in three years) and realising that I knew no one. The turn over is so fast in a uni town - even if I did know a first year student back then, chances are they'd be gone now. And you're not really given an incentive to stay in the Waikato, at least not the media types that I got to know while I was there. Unless you're tied to academia, or boring enough to compromise to life there, you move on pretty quick.

I just realised that sentence should have been 'It was sort of weird being out in Hamilton' FULLSTOP bahahah!

On a final note, I was at the Embassy today, buying movie tickets and the guy behind the counter goes "are you from Hamilton?".
I was all WTF? and he pointed to my handbag. It has an S&M Club badge on it (as well as a Sparkle Motion one, a Shaky Hands one and a Feelings Are Boring Kissing Is Awesome one).
Turns out he's a Waikato grad too, and was a member of the Club in about 2005 - long after I'd left the Tron. So that was warm fuzzies. And then he booked me into the sweet leather seats, so that made me happy too.

goodbye Petunia!

Lou's travels have ended which means she's back in town and wants her lappy returned to her! So it is a fond farewell to "Petunia" the lovely wee iBook that I have cared for while she has been traversing. I will be very sad to say goodbye to the little bundle of Mac-ing fun, speshly as I have gotten quite used to the ease of having broadband literally in my bed. And the fact that both my PCs have crapped out and are scattered in pieces around my bedroom. I've started to think of them as installation art.

But I saw my therapist this afternoon so am coming to grips with the whole debacle and the process of readjustment. Also: buying new shoes helped too!



(Please note this photo was taken in a mystery location and not in the aforementioned bedroom containing computer scrap installation art and other piles of crap everywhere).

I should now really be burning off all the files that have accumulated over the last few months so that Lou has some space left on this puppy and can't perve through all my stuff (BECAUSE PRIVACY IS OBVIOUSLY SUCH AN ISSUE FOR ME). But instead I keep getting distracted and reminiscing and so forth...

Like, remember that time I was a freaky vampire child-lady and went around luring people into bed and looking like all I vanted to do vas suck thier blooodddd...



Ha ha ha, good times, great value!

These pics crack me up too - they're from when Pete had just moved into his apartment and it was all polished wood floors, bare walls, minimal furniture. I said I felt like I was in a photo shoot it was so stark and stylish, and was doing the whole thing from Absolutely Fabulous when Patsy gets 'Hello magazine' in and keeps going "Welcome...to my gracious kitchen...". (You know! You know! Come on... am i the ONLY one who has, like, every episode of that WHOLE show memorised?!)



However, Pete's adding of a large carving knife to the shot makes it a bit more 'Hitchcock movie' than 'Hello magazine'!!



That was a very good night. Ebony and I had gone to a WCC launch of the 'Summer City' thing at the City Gallery (well, technically I had SNUCK IN but whoo! how naughty, sneaking into the opening drinks of a council-funded public festival). The highlight of the night, and by highlight I mean EXTREMELY TRAUMATISING OCCURANCE, was Kerry Prendergast's attendance. Of course it was expected she would be there, she was doing the key note speech thingy, so maybe it wasn't so much her attendance - as her appearance.

Because our honourable mayor was wearing a skin tight pale pink boob tube. Why on earth would any grown woman do this you may well ask? All the better to show off the body paint with, of course! She was covered in the stuff. All over her neck, arms, shoulders, back... and front bits. Admittedly, it was a really beautiful job - obviously done by a talented professional and with real skill. And apparently it was in theme with the Summer Festival. But all the same... EWW.

As you can imagine, we got pretty smashed with the free drinks and the needing to cope with never knowing if you were going to turn around and brush against the half-naked mayor of our city (whom pretty much everyone resents, FYI out-of-towners, as her husband is a property developer who scores suspiciously good deals on urban planning). And then we went to Pete's place and terrorized him and Max who had been trying to have a quiet glass o wine and watch a DVD. Fools. That'll teach them to answer the door. When the buzzer is ringing incessantly on account of being held down non-stop cause that is soooo funny!!

But that brings me to my next pic - which will have to be the last I think! Its getting bloody late and as a semi-hysterical text from Samuel J just reminded me, M Ward is in da house! woot!



That is Max, with a big chunk of Santa Claus beardy fluff stuck to his eyebrow with my slobber. A result of us trying to entertain ourselves during the extremely pants Twinset opening act before the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra's Christmas show.

I was so tired that night and Twinset were so pants and I wound up leaving early - after they (WIUO) played 'Ring My Bell' actually. So, not early early, but before the actual end of the show. But I was happy and had had my fill and it was the right ending for me, you know? I just had that feeling. When you realise the night has reached your personal zenith, regardless of what everyone else's timeline is. Happened to me at the final Trinity Roots concert. They'd played a truly beautiful version of one of my favourite (if I had to pick) of their songs and I was near bawling at them saying their farewells onstage and knew I wanted to walk out with their music flowing around me, rather than in the swarm of people. Its a kind of instinctual thing, about personal satisfaction and connection... Maybe you think I'm crazy and not getting my ticket's worth, maybe you've had that buzz too.

Okay well now I've bloody rambled on so maybe ONE MORE piccie heehee!



Mars & Bel: "Ooh yeah! We are so cool! Heehee!"
Tanya: "Shut up. No you are not. If you were, your hair would remain beautiful in all weather conditions, like mine. Fools."

legless at Christmas

So I hope you all had a very happy Christmas and are looking forward to New Year's Eve with all the usual overanticipatory hype.

What did you get for Christmas? From me, you probably got jack shit. I totally screwed it this year. I ordered a bunch of stuff online, from a New Zealand website, and realised after I'd entered my credit card details, that it was actually being delivered from the UK.

It could've still made it in time, but then the confirmation didn't come for another four days. And then two or three days after that came the email apologising for delays due to the Christmas rush and so forth. And since I'd supplied my work as the delivery address, and we don't open again til the second week of January...

Or possibly you got nothing from me because I don't actual like you that much. Muahahaha!

JOKES JOKES :D because I do OF COURSE love you dearly, here is a wee treat, something that made me very happy - pics of the pony! woot!

















My other main news is that the gammy foot situation progressed downhill steadily and now uphill slowly. As you can see from those photos, on Christmas Eve I was still rockin the mismatched bandage combo and in fact while in Wangas I wound up going back to A&E twice and not JUST because its one of the more entertaining activities for that wee city.

Getting literally pumped full of drugs was pretty sweet, tho of course the first nurse totally screwed up the IV. My arm was a mess after she was finished playing pincushion with me and of course it bruised up good n proper as well. Then she had the audacity to tell me that I had "tiny veins". Oh really? Well I think you are fucking incompetent, lady.

But then less then 24 hours later I'm defending her at Christmas lunch, being the leftie liberal wank that I am, when Dad is retelling all to the family and mentions her Asian ethnicity in terms of "let's say she wasn't a New Zealander har ha" which of course set me off in true family-Christmas-political-discussion style.

Of course I have some awesome pics of my arms with needles hanging out but I forget that not everyone else is as down with that shit as me so will refrain from posting them online. Sigh.

Finally got some crutches, after Mr Wellington A&E Doctor was a hold out on that, too busy being all "So where do you work? Oh wow, that must be great! Cool! Yeah I love the theatre! Wow! Cool!" and I'm like "Dude, now is NOT THE TIME to hit on me. If you're not gonna let me have crutches I want at least, like, an x-ray or something".

Unfortch the prob is I'm pretty useless on the crutches. Haven't ever used them before in my life and am having to be shown proper instructional techniques by more experienced practitioners such as Simon.
Have only dropped on damaged foot once so far tho.


Footnote: I typed up this entry on the 29th but our interweb connection was having ISSUES so couldn't upload the lovely photos. Hence the lack of entries over the break, hence irate comments from Trelease and the like. I'm now resurrecting the draft here in the first week of January and backdating like a mofo. Skabooche.

fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns

Christmas is great, because it gives business organisations an excuse to ignore whatever spiritual connotations are behind the season and instead just be nice and debaucherous here at the end of the year.

For our work do, it was decided we'd go out to a luxury farm (OXYMORON) and do some some fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns before sitting down for a huge boozy lunch.

The office manager said I'd get an extra pressie if I came dressed up, so I scrambled together an outfit resembling the Ghost of Christmas Past - appropriate as, of course, our workplace is a nearly 100 year old theatre which has several ghosts.

In fact, at the moment we are without a Technical Manager (head of the backstage crew) and so the roster just has "Yuri" on 24/7 - who is the resident ghost and known for playing tricks, particularly with electrical things, as he worked in that department. The most recent 'sighting' was Monday night...!

Anyway, turns out the prize was more for 'most gullible' than for my actual awesome costume and I didn't get any extras goodies - boohoo!

But as we were playing that standard office Christmas party game where you're numbered off and people can pinch presents off each other, wouldn't have made much difference. I was second to go and therefore got shafted - anyone else who wanted to was able to literally take whatever I had outta my hands! Truly in the spirit of Christmas.


We quickly got onto the activities as we were only allowed one drink before arming ourselves and most people were keen to have more. Isn't it funny how this time of year makes everyone want to drink like a fish? I guess we're all just feeling so ready for a break and to relax.

As you can see from the pics, I had a go at the axe throwing first. The most terrifying thing wasn't so much that I might hit myself in the arse swinging it back over my head, but that the guy supervising looked about twelve years old. Seriously, it was like, are you qualified for this? Can I see ID? Can you lift this tomahawk with those spindly arms my child?

Got a pic here of one of the techie guys kindly removing the axes from the target for me. As you can see, it turns out I have quite an eye for this thing.

Also please note, its a case of Steal Her Style here with Neill choosing to rock the sleeveless hoodie outfit I was wearing - though he went with the conventional black rather than sparkly silver like mine.

All of the guys that work backstage are referred to as being on or from "the dark side" and when you occasionally seeing them wearing blue jeans instead of black, commenting on it will get you a gruff reply in keeping with their well maintained tough guy demeanour.

Next up was the target shooting - it was a 22 rifle if I remember rightly, though I'm sure some boffin will take one look at the pic and correct me. Twas my first time ever holding a gun I think and I made the mistake of going after Ciara, who's Irish and been in their equivalent of the territorials and pretty much owned.

I do quite like that the shawl and sunglasses give me a bit of a 'British hieress on safari' look tho, very fab.

The damn gun kept jamming which was quite annoying and made me wonder how entirely effective the whole shooting thing must be in a warfare type situation...?! But at least it gave me something to blame for hardly ever hitting the target. Tiny wee thing that it was.

[PS: don't forget you should be able to click on the photos to see larger versions]

So all in all was a rather fun day and I got a HILARIOUS joke in my cracker so am quite pleased overall. Of course, for last year's Christmas do, at my old work, we got to have a private screening of Brokeback Mountain two months before public release - and EVERYONE was dressed up as cowboys, gay or otherwise, and I seem to recall being quite slaughtered on frozen margaritas by the end of the night.

But hey - this year, I got to find out what a luxury farm is like. And apparently it means they have artwork on the walls, but they fasten it just by screwing it on straight through the front. Awesome.

good sat PM, great sun AM

Our party went awesome, thanks for asking.

It was at quite a manageable size up until about 10pm, when all the people in the world arrived within about 17 seconds of each other and the roof nearly came off.

The only problem with having such a great party with so many lovely people, is you never wind up getting to see any of them. You flit about trying to keep track of it all and never quite get enough quality time with anyone in particular.

There was a touch of the Venn diagram thing happening, on account of the crazy disparate groups of friends and gorgeous guests, but I figure we're old enough now to hold our own when it comes to these things. That's the point of a party, right?

We have a mortifying amount of recycling to put out tomorrow, which is always a good sign - and though I did have Ribena left over this morning, the Absolut Vanilla was completely gone. Very mysterious.

So, in summary:

Miss Bel, circa 3.30am. Further info, see here

Miss Bel, circa 10.30am. Further info, see here

aloha!

going going gone

It feels like this winter was nothing but farewell parties. I didn't make it to Sam's goodbye drinks on the weekend, but fact of the matter is, I just don't know if I have it in me anymore. Speshly when the end result of all these departures is not simply a depleted social circle, but an inbox full of envy-inducing images too:

Lou in NYC, in the non-square Times Square.

Steph in London, where they have a bridge, apparently.

Felix travelling through Budapest...

...and also travelling back through time.

Lou (Richardson) with a wedding cake in Instanbul.

Pauly in Indonesia, a brief moment on dry land.

There are links to most of those people's blogs in the side bar.

Pauly's is shite in that he doesn't update it now, but is quite a good record of back when he was travelling through Indo & Portugal.

Louise of Lou's Travels has a much more entertaining blog and a real eye-opener. WARNING: bound to give you itchy feet.

The other Lou is Ms 'reduced to banality', a regular visitor here at Tuesday's Child. If her blog isn't already in your Favourites, then I don't know what's wrong with you.

Like Lou, Steph is also in London, balancing out academic study with a bit of baking on the side ;)

Felix doesn't have a blog as far as I know (and I do read pretty much every blog on the internet, just as Cam will tell you). But his group emails have redefined the term:

Craziest news... we went down to the danube to watch the st stevens day fireworks the other night with evey single person in Budapest it seemed and just before they began an enourmous bank of storm clouds gathered above and god and budapest fought for the most iompressive light show - it was incredible. then god got pissed with showy colours and sent down an incredible storm/hurricane! the wind was soo intense it ripped tents into the air and sent chairs tables branches and glass flying! It was pretty exciting, but we were glad to have a restaurant to hide in when it got too crazy! The debris the next day was unreal and apparently 4 people died (photos/video soon!)

So what have I been up to? Oh you know, just the usual... just hanging out, lots of time for me and my thoughts... enjoying the peace and quiet: