Office Glenn

Post-Japan Okonomiyaki #1

2009-06-17T01:41:00.000-07:00

Frabjous day. New pictures from Japan and Singapore in April/May. The links above, ordered any-which-way, are Kamakura, Tokyo, Singapore, Yokohama, Takao-san, and Hakone.

After I came back, I decided I liked okonomiyaki enough that I'd try to make one at home if I could find enough of the ingredients. Basically, I needed bonito flakes and Japanese BBQ sauce, and both were easy enough to find. Two things I couldn't find were Aonori and pickled ginger. But no matter. We're flexible. This is the recipe I used as my base, but I'm not one to follow directions so I improvised in parts. This is Osaka style, versus Hiroshima style seen in my Tokyo pictures.

Okonomiyaki #1

This was an edible failure. A bit thick and soggy, and a bit burnt. Attempt #2 (no pictures) used less batter and a lower heat, resulting in more enjoyable dish, but still not up to my expectations. More practice is needed. The next attempt will be Hiroshima style if I can find some good yaki-soba noodles.

Easter Update

2009-04-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

Three new ablums from

the land of the long white cloud.

Summer is over.

Queenstown and the Tramp

2008-11-19T01:06:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I flew down to Queenstown for a few nights and did my first real New Zealand tramp (hike). It's only fitting that my expensive Gore-Tex hiking boots are sitting somewhere in a closet in Canada while I get blisters in my cheap running shoes, but that's my own fault. There's probably too many pictures of mountains in this set, but you have to do something while huffing and puffing at the edge of a cliff, trying not to drink the last of your water.

That is a crude MS Paint sketch of the route I took since Google Maps doesn't have NZ tramping tracks in their directions yet (Google Earth, however...).

Red Rocks Reserve

2008-11-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

From Red Rocks Reserve

Don't get your hopes up. There's only one lazy seal to be seen. Dogs were the only ones barking. Seals are boring anyway.

This is like the sequel to the previous set of pictures. Those were Lyall Bay and Island Bay, walking. Now I have a sweet new road bike that nearly gets me killed between cars, narrow roads, and dodgy pieces of gravel creeping under my too-thin tires. Now I know why bikers are an anal bunch. It takes a certain type of person to tolerate these conditions, but it's still a chicken vs. egg question. Maybe they were anal to begin with and the biking gave them a well-deserved outlet. Anyway, no spills yet. I'll start my "X days without a hospital visit" counter, and you can join the local blood-pool. Let me know what the bookies are saying. Here's my path in google maps for the new trip. I started walking at the end of this.

This Red Rocks place is a bit of a reserve for seals, and all the signs seemed to say no vehicles and no fishing, so it's only expected that there were a bunch of people fishing and driving trucks down the road. I'm sure I misunderstood. But it was definitely not a place for a dude to take his bike with 1" wide tires. So I hoofed it for 45 minutes each way. Not sure what I expected to see, but I'm pretty sure I saw it. The pictures are accurate. Not much more than that. A nice place for a walk, but I wouldn't be selling tickets. Maybe that's why I didn't even hear about it until a few months ago.

I should have bought a mountain bike.

Mid-winter Vitamin D

2008-08-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

Cold and usually wet these days in the NZ capital, but the nice weekends are a blessing. Mid-winter (think February, northies.) and we have to put up with 10C days. Oh, the humanity! As with anywhere in the winter, lack of quality daylight hours is a problem, so it's nice to go out and tempt skin cancer once in a while. These bays are only 15 minutes away by bus, or a couple of hours walking, but there's not much out there. One coffee shop, and a little aquarium. Still, you can cozy up to a rock and zazen while the waves crash around you. Or read a book; I'm not your mother.

日本のビールバー (Japan Beer Bar)

2008-08-12T02:59:00.000-07:00

Instead of describing the winter in Wellington, I'm going to step into public-service mode and try to describe for English speakers where to go in Tokyo for a good pint. And not just any good pint, but a hand-picked selection of 20 or so craft beers that change on a weekly (daily?) frequency. They also have Izakaya-style food if you're feeling a little peckish.

If not for a friend in Tokyo, I never would have found this place. Doing a search for good beer pubs in Tokyo is a bit of a painful task. Firstly, there's not many. Secondly, the address system is a two-dimensional code that may make sense to locals--thankfully we have google satellite maps these days. Thirdly, most places don't have English websites, if they have a website at all. The only place that consistently appeared when I tried to find the beer bar (in retrospect) was one called Popeye's, and that was mentioned on english blogs. I've yet to go there.

The place I went to (Ushitora) never appeared at all. Until I narrowed the search down to the Shimokitazawa region. And even then it wasn't high in the search results. But then a website I did find (google translation). It seems to be the official page, even though it looks like a blog. My link takes you to the entry for when I was last there: July 3. The list is their ビールメニウ(beer menu) for that day. Not necessarily an informative list for most, but I'll explain the first one there: ストーンアロガントバスタードエール（アメリカ）. This says: "sutoun arogantou basutaado eeru (amerika)", which is actually Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale (America). Same day, they also had one from Rogue in Portland. As you can (maybe) see from the list, and the others if you look at the site, they have a healthy selection of quality micros. If you can get the guy behind the counter to understand your request (bee-tah ay-rew!), you won't be disappointed. For a reminder, here's the pictures from the first time I went: 1, 2.

The only thing left to do is explain how you might find it. This is the hard part, but this map (or this one) is a good start. But first, you need to find the shimokitazawa station. Either from Shinjuku or Shibuya will get you there -- the gray line west of the respective stations here. Once at the station, leave from the south exit. You will reach a T when you leave the station gates, south is left. Once down the stairs, take the first left outside down the narrow street that runs parallel to the station/tracks. Take the first right. There should be a grocery store immdiately to your left on this road. Take the first left after this store down the narrow road. Straight ahead about 100m is a building, short and wide (2 floors maybe?) and there's outside entrances on both levels. Go up one level using the staircase on the right. Then about three or so doors down to the left will be your beer bar. Easy huh?

kanpai.

Update: This site has since been brought to my attention: Beer in Tokyo.

Japan 2.01

2008-07-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

A video of the Scott and Makiko wedding is now available on Michael John Grist's site. He did the good camera work and the editing.

http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/2008/07/scott-and-makikos-wedding-niigata/#more-315

Since I have no pictures of the ceremony itself, this should give you a better taste for what a Japanese wedding is like.

Japan 2.0

2008-07-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

Four albums for your voyeuristic pleasure. Just got back from a two week jaunt to the land of the rising sun. Now I know the reason they've given it that mystical name. Some douchebag decided to set the clocks about 2 hours faster than anywhere else. This means the sun rises at about 4:30 in the morning and sets at 6:30/7pm. I love Tokyo's evening neon allure as much as anyone else, but 4:30? Leaving a bar in daylight is painful at 30... And with rice-paper curtains in the hotel, I'd wake up at 5am thinking it was 9. Especially since the daylight hours in Wellington right now are about 8 to 5.

The sad part is that I got used to it. Stupid Wellington winter darkness.

Having bought a JR Pass before I left, I was able to take as many trains as I liked for a week. So I abused it and traveled to a bunch of places outside Tokyo. Definitely worth the money if you go there and want to see the country. Plenty of spectacular mountains everywhere, of which I have very few pictures because the bullet trains are, surprisingly, quite fast. And there's lots of tunnels.

Thanks to Scott and Makiko for putting together a nice party at the hot spring hotel. The food was very good, despite what I can only assume will be reactions of horror from most.

StrategyBlocks.com

2008-06-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm reading an interesting book right now called Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman, who argues that television is corrupting our culture and serves no useful purpose other than as a bookshelf or to light a dark room when your lamp has busted. And entertainment. But that's not the point. His point is that television as form of communication causes serious issues to lose their poignancy and become entertainment themselves. The very existence of news scheduled on a nightly basis turns those events into trivia, and reduce the level of intellectual discourse in society. As a product of the television generation, I'm still not finished reading, and I often get distracted. So while I could explain my four month absence from posting updates by arguing that more frequent updates would distill and devalue my otherwise quality diatribes, cynics are likely more correct in assuming a formula of ADHD, alcohol, and online games (not even good ones--FB poker of all things).

The point of this update, however, is not to berate myself for not entertaining the invisible monkey peering through the curtains of the internet into my life. The point is to show that invisible monkey, all invisible monkeys, the release of a new product I've worked on for the last year: StrategyBlocks.

(There's nothing wrong with astroturfing on your own blog. There's nothing wrong with anything.)

Now, before you get all excited and ask me how you can buy this awesome new strategic management software service: I'm not the salesman, but I can pass your requests on to the men in suits who make the money decisions. That being said, you can have a little play in our sandbox (http://app.strategyblocks.com, username: guest, password: guest) to get a feel for what the service does. The guest account can't do very much except view the current demo strategy plan, but if you like what you see, you can request a 30-day trial where you can create your own strategic plan from scratch. Bugs, suggestions, enhancement requests: all good. Send them if you have them.

For the geeks: RubyOnRails, JavaScript (with heavy Dojo), and ActionScript 3 (in FlashDevelop--a damned fine tool).

And on that note, I leave for a vacation in Japan in a few days (a public announcement for all thieves in the area), so immediate requests and praise will fall on temporarily deaf ears. You can look forward to, as I'm sure you will, new pictures of Japan. Now with more weddings!.

For entertainment purposes only, here is another album I never mentioned. From one of my many travels in NZ during the summer.

Good to Drink

2008-02-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

Have you googled your name yet? If you haven't, go do it. You never know what you might find. Don't roll your eyes and tell me you have better things to do. You're reading this, so you got bored of reading about Obama and Britney and how the world is too gassy. I googled my name today through the Friendster website and found out I share a name with The Midnight Fellator. Notoriety like that can't be bought. I'd still rather say I'm CEO of Shoppers.

The real question is why I was doing a google search through Friendster, especially since I don't really know what the site does, though it probably has something to do with friends. Since I'm mixed up into the Facebook and LinkedIn rubbish, I don't see the point, and that's not the point of this. Google Analytics drove me to it. See, the great thing about having a webpage is that you can add a little bit of hidden google-tracking so you can see who's been visiting, when, and from which area of the world. This way I know that most visitors use RSS readers because I get a traffic spike immediately after posting something new. But I can also see how people arrived. For instance, what keywords they used to find me on google:

bus from rotorua to wellington
glenn august
going to rotorua from wellington
how far is wellington from christchurch
pictures of bluff oysters

That's crazy interesting I know, but the reason I was at Friendster was that it keeps cropping up in the list of referring sites. Most of them are from direct links or google, but occasionally other sites show up. That's how I discovered that Friendster referrals are just more google search hits and that someday I might be confused with the Midnight Fellator. With any luck, this post will cause my blog to appear in search results for said notorious act, and I'm counting on my faithful readers to make those two magic words appear on my analytics dashboard.

Incidentally, Tokyo pictures have been posted for a while. The picture at the top of this post will take you there. In case you didn't know, I was in Tokyo for five days before Christmas on the way back to visit my parents in New Brunswick. You can't beat sushi for breakfast at the fish market.

Movember 2007 -- The Worsening

2007-11-20T22:59:00.000-08:00

(Update(13/12/07): Pictures have been removed in anticipation of new blog entries. No need to subject you the horror. The horror.)

(Update(1/12/07): Ok. I lied. Here's the last one. It's gone now. Goto 10. )
(Update(23/11/07): Last picture. That's as bad as it's going to get.)

For those out of the loop, we're a little more than one week from the end of Movember and I'm an official "Mo Bro". Fortunately, my co-workers participating aren't much better, and the office has been quite generous with donations--probably out of sympathy.

Since I've raised enough money to get a free ticket to the Mo party (at the bowling alley of all places) I'm not going to put any pressure on you to donate, but if you got a laugh from my pictures and want to support prostate cancer research, you can go to http://www.movember.com/nz/donate. My registration number is 121470. (You have the power.)

Oh. And if you want to blackmail me with these pictures in the future, make sure you copy them before December 1st. They may or may not disappear as quickly as my crude ginger Selleck.

Mount Victoria 2.0

2007-09-19T02:01:00.000-07:00

I was going to write an insightful entry about "Web 2.0", comparing it to a Dodge Neon with a spoiler and racing stripes, but it seemed a little too geeky for the pictures-of-Wellington crowd so I'll let Joel and Dilbert summarize it for you. I didn't have and answer and neither do these guys. There are some interesting possibilities, but I don't look forward to pretending XML is a programming language.

Besides complaining about geeky things, I also feel the need to keep fresh pictures coming from the land of sheep and kiwifruit. So a few weeks a ago I climbed Mount Victoria for the second time. Tremendously exciting I know, but these give you a good aerial view of the core Wellington suburbs. For more Wellington scenery, see if you can find a movie called Eagle vs Shark. It's not great, and borrows heavily from the misfit style of Napoleon Dynamite, but it is amusing and was filmed in the Wellington area.

A Nice Day In Wellington...

2007-08-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

My reader(s?) in the northern hemisphere might forget this at the end of August, but there's a time of the year when the sun isn't still up at 9:30pm, where you wake up in the dark and go home from work in the dark, where you just want to get home, open the bottle of scotch and watch some T.V., because the self-perpetuating coffee-cycle has left you an empty shell with no motivation to do anything else. Though it could be just me trying to find excuses for why I haven't posted anything for over a month. You Northies tell me in February how it feels--I'll be on the beach.

There's always an upside to every dark weeknight, and this time I found the malt-lining: Coaster Single Malt. I'm no Michael Jackson (not that one, this one), so I won't comment on the subtleties of peat and chocolate and iodine, but it is worth the money. And the place I bought it is becoming my new favorite store despite their markups. They have Troi Pistole, and others from Unibrou. Ce n'est pas la Fin du Monde. La bière est bonne. They have a whole wall of beers from the British Isles I've never seen. They have good taste, for a wine store.

Life here isn't all about the drinking though. Sometimes you have to step outside of your little one-room furnished apartment and get some valuable vitamin D. But the catch-22 is that you need a sunny day on a weekend, and for most of July and August the weeks have either been too wet or too hungover for proper photo-taking, so it wasn't until last weekend that we finally saw the infamous "nice day in Wellington". You see, there's a saying that you can't beat a nice day in Wellington, but they're a rare thing to catch on film. Otago university in Dunedin had some ads around here claiming that you can't beat any day there, but I was down there for exactly a day, and it's nothing to riot over. (Someone poke me if that link dies).

There isn't too much in this album. Just me walking on my regular path to work. So if you're desperate enough to be stalking me, I've nicely mapped out my route. After I pass by the office, there's just some samples of the night-life district and the museum district. Lots of good stuff there at ground level, but not really much to look at. But this is a pretty accurate picture of the main sections in "downtown" Wellington. One of these days, when I decide to walk out to Island Bay and Lyall Bay again, maybe I'll take the camera.

Into the West

2007-07-08T02:55:00.000-07:00

As with all long journeys through the New Zealand south island, this one ends with the protagonist going into the west". That song was written for elves and a young filmmaker who died of cancer, but lets not quibble over semantics. I was going to the west coast, and driving nearly two hours on the wrong road through Mt. Aspiring park wasn't going to deter me. Check out the fork at Wanaka to see my bad decision. The dirt road made me slightly anxious about the path, but meeting other tourists on the road intending to find Haast was encouraging. We couldn't both be wrong, right? As many Americans have already learned, the majority decision doesn't mean the right decision.

And speaking of bad decisions, I just got back from seeing alien seizure robots at the embassy theatre and if the review-score on imdb (8.1/10) is any indication, the majority is wrong. After two hours of watching a movie filmed by a cameraman with Parkinson's, the Jar-Jar Binks gremlin robot, and a plot-hole looking for a story, it's time to sit back and remember what life was like before it was destroyed by bad robot movies. That world was full of nature. Mountains, rivers, glaciers, and irony rocks (pardon the horrible pun...you'll see).

That was the world of my last set of pictures. Two days of driving up the west coast from Queenstown to Wanaka, Makarora to Haast to Franz-Joseph Glacier, and through Arthur's pass towards Christchurch. In the end, even though I had to chase wild parrots away from my car so they wouldn't eat the antenna while I was taking pictures, and didn't get to see much of the famous lump of mountain ice, and it bloody well rained most of the time, this was the world without Michael Bay, and lo, it was good.

Now that my pilgrimage is finished, I'm need to find something at least as interesting as vacation pictures to post on here. Food? Sheep? Rants about Jesus and George Bush? Lolsheep?. You tell me. I'm lazy and probably won't do it anyway.

Water water everywhere, but who cares?

2007-06-30T01:33:00.000-07:00

Since this weekend in Wellington has been rained-out, it's time for appropriate photos from Milford Sound. All the guides said it rained more than 300 days of the year, but Wikipedia claim 182. Either way, nobody disputes the claim that it's one of the wettest places on Earth. After my trip, everyone on the tour bus smelled like a wet dog as we watched The Fastest Indian on a tiny TV. As I said before, he comes from Invercargill.

I'm keeping this entry short and let the pictures speak for themselves. It was more dramatic in person. And if anyone wants to come visit, I'll gladly use that as an excuse to see it again.

They say in February and March you might actually see clear skies there.

Yellow in Queenstown

2007-06-25T03:30:00.000-07:00

The great thing about procrastination is that sometimes decisions make themselves while you sit around twiddling your thumbs. That happened to me in Queenstown.

The first thing--absolute first thing--anyone should do when they get off the plane is walk over to the bungy shop and book the earliest jump on the Nevis Highwire (unless you're really keen and you book your jump online); that is, if they have any self-respect. Why would anyone go to Queenstown, if not to experience The Adventure Capital of the World firsthand?

The history of this place is really quite simple. Back in the early days of the town, everyone miserable about being stuck in a damp hole of place, middle of nowhere on an island in the middle of nowhere, decided it would be funny to name the town after the Queen. "A town fit for a Queen" they all laughed, sucked back their three-x whiskey, and resumed panning for gold in the sub-zero glacial rivers, cursing under their breath. Eventually though, the name stuck, and the joke was lost under the ever increasing cacophony of pick-axes and shrill old prospectors.

But like any boomtown, eventually all the juice was squeezed out and nothing was left but a used-up husk of a town. Some people stayed, but only those who couldn't afford to leave, or those didn't have the sense to get out. The mood of the town became increasingly depressed, and the tipping point was reached: people of all demographics (sane prospectors, insane prospectors, etc...) began tossing themselves off the ever-convenient cliffs to end their miserable suffering. As with any large population in an experiment, there are a few outliers in the data set, i.e., some that failed to perform as expected. The ones that merely hurt themselves realized that there was an adrenaline rush near that expected end, and frequent exposure to this new drug made living there almost bearable.

So to this day, people who are unfortunate enough to live in Queenstown, or even visit it for a few days, rather than endure yet another mountainous vista, attempt to throw themselves as close to death as possible, without going over. They've got short bungees, tall ones, sky swings, tandem-gliding, tandem-parachuting, mountain luge, rafting, etc,... All to distract you from what must, apparently, be the most dismal town in the world.

So this is why I'm a yellow failure. I went to Queenstown and didn't risk my life. The only full day I had there was spent looking at mountains. Maybe I saw something in them that the old prospectors didn't see. Maybe I procrastinated too long and the Nevis was fully booked. Maybe it was raining and I couldn't hire a fishing boat. Who knows. I saved myself $250 and took a drive to Glenorchy instead.

Bluff Oysters and Monkey Island

2007-06-20T01:09:00.000-07:00

There's a scar in my hand that says I like my oysters, so I was keen to have a run down to a small town south of Invercargill--home of The World's Fastest Indian (imdb)--called Bluff, which just had its oyster festival. I'll eat pretty much anything for breakfast, and raw sea-phlegm on the half-shell is no exception. Honestly, I had already made breakfast in my excellent apartment suite in the Tower Lodge Motel, but it was time for elevensies after taking a few pictures of the Bluff area. As I was the only person in the restaurant, I was having a chinwag with the proprietor about Oysters, comparing her Bluffs to my Malpeques and Caraquets, when she said something that turned my stomach just a little bit. Especially since I'd already slurped down my last of the half-dozen. She said they're delivered pre-shucked. If I could raise just one eyebrow, I would have. Then, freely, she said, "These were delivered yesterday". Another lurch in the stomach. She said that New Zealand law requires her to buy them that way, and that she's not allowed to open them herself. That was it. No more restaurant oysters in N.Z. for me. Unless their slimy little heart was beating 10-minutes ago, I'm not touching them. Taste-wise, they weren't bad, but a little dry (not swimming in seawater) and the flavour had a sharp bite. Like an old cheddar in oyster form.

Next objective after Bluff (pretty much skipping Invercargill entirely), was the south-west coast up to Te Anau--the gateway to Fiordland and Queenstown. The geological turning point of that drive was at Monkey Island. From Christchurch to there is just nice hills and ocean. At Monkey Island, the mountains begin. There were no monkeys, there was no island, and nothing explaining the place. No matter. It has a cool name. After Monkey Island, there's nothing but hundreds of pictures of mountains. Not that many in this block of photos, but after this there's nothing but snow-capped peaks, fiords, glaciers, and other boring stuff. Be warned.

Albatross Nuggets

2007-06-14T01:56:00.000-07:00

And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners' hollo!
---Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

No pictures of Dunedin. No pictures of Invercargill. Got into both late and left both early in the morning. The only exploring I did was looking for hotel rooms and food. Dunedin is supposed to have some of the oldest architecture from the Scottish immigrants and the gold-rush(and NZ's only castle), but my priorities were clear: go to see some birds.

To set the record straight, I don't care much for birds. I've taken a few pictures because they're different than Canadian birds, and there's not much other wildlife around here. Even the deer are domesticated. But NZ was almost exclusively a bird country until the Europeans arrived, save a few bats and lizards. However, I went out of my way to see some Albatrosses this time, just because The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is so damned good. How uncomfortable would he have been with one of those beasts around his neck? Well, I still don't know, but now I have a better idea. I learned about them from the guide, but only saw a few babies sitting in the grass through a window in an observation room. I'll give you the distilled story.

Adults spend most of their time at sea, mostly gliding prevailing winds, sometimes landing on the water. The only time they come to land is to have sex and feed babies, and neither happens that often, and only on days with lots of wind. The day I arrived was calm, so no adults feeding the babies. The reason this location is special is that it's the only Albatross colony on mainland in the world, if you consider NZ mainland. This location also happens to be one of 3 (or 4) major defensive locations from the late 1800s in New Zealand against the Russians, and where disappearing-guns where used. Pictures within.

After the disappointment with the Albatrosses, I continued my southward journey to Invercargill and made a quick stop at Nugget Point along the way. Nothing special except for 20 minutes of dirt road (each way), steep cliffs and rocks, and the failed promise of seeing some yellow-eye penguins walking on the beach. To give them credit, I buggered off at 3:30 because I needed to get to Invercargill before it got too late. They're supposed to come out of the water in the two hours before dusk.

There are no other pictures of the scenic southern coast drive except for a lookout point, but most of it was comparable (if not nicer) than Cape Breton. There wasn't enough time to make detours and see some of the natural attractions. Really it should have been a two-day drive from Dunedin to Invercargill, even though it's only a few hundred kilometers.

Next stop: Invercargill to Queenstown. Mountain country.

Express Post: Sheep and Boulders

2007-06-11T01:49:00.001-07:00

Quick on the heels of my verbose complaints about Christchurch, it's time for a concise entry about sheep and Alps and boulders driving from Christchurch to Dunedin. And water.

One thing I forgot to mention about Christchurch, the one thing that could have been the tipping point in city-choice, was the tap-water. They have the best tap-water in the world (besides personal wells, etc.., of course). No chlorine. No fluoride. A great place to protect your precious bodily fluids (YouTube).

There are no pictures of Dunedin in this set because I arrived at dusk and had to find a hotel. I stayed at The Leviathan, which was rough around the edges, but had a strange charm. Whatever. They were downtown and had free parking and the price was right.

So there you have it. Sheep and Alps and boulders. And water. That's all you get until Dunedin to Invercargill.

Christchurch in a Nutshell

2007-06-09T01:06:00.000-07:00

Time for another installment. This means that I'm finally settled into my new furnished apartment in Wellington, and starting to get bored enough to wait for my 128kbps internet connection to upload 41 pictures of a town that wasn't exciting enough to take 41 pictures of. Some of the terms that people might use to describe the city would be things like "charming" and "quaint" and "relaxing". To be fair, it's not a bad place to visit, and the weather was perfect. The main problem with the city is that there's no geographic obstacle to sprawl. The results in a downtown where few buildings exceed 3 levels and it's too far to walk anywhere. Living in Christchurch means owning a car or sitting a bus all day.

Back in Canada, I had thought that this would be the place to live. Mountains and ocean. But after visiting Sumner, Lyttleton, New Brighton, Antarctic Centre, all on long bus rides through urban sprawl, my mind quickly changed. I needed to live in a place that had some dramatic topography and dense downtown like Wellington.

New Brighton is the beach suburb sporting a brand new pier & library complex. While libraries have obvious benefits to the community, the effect of the pier is a bit more dubious. As far as I can tell, the pier's sole benefit is for fishing and tourism. Though, as my knowledge of piers is less than extensive, a quick check seems to imply there should be boat-docking of some sort. No such luck, but there is, however, fish-gutting stations.

Sumner is a small sea-side town in the suburb hills to the south. This could be a nice place to live, with a cozy beach and some nice houses, except for the disturbing sign next to the beach. There were people swimming there. Children too. Brave.

Lyttleton wasn't worth mentioning. So I only stayed for 10 minutes. Jumped on the next bus back to town. Wasn't sure what I was looking for anyway.

The Antarctic Centre was supposed to be the coolest attraction in the area. Christchurch is the home-base for most, if not all, antarctic researchers. There was a room where they simulated a year living in Antarctica in, say, early 1900's or something, which was a couple of vehicles and lighting effects. The next room was the windchill room where you put protective jackets on and walk around in the snow. There was the windchill machine, an ice-slide, a couple of tents, and, when I was there, about 50 screaming teenage girls from a girls-school class trip. The whole point of that room was to simulate a storm: the lights go out, wind starts blowing, and people scream about how cold it is. Now, this might have been an attraction (Snow?!) for some people, but I was justifiably less-than-impressed. A nice day in Ottawa in February was colder than the wind-chill there. I came to NZ to avoid that. The last thing to do in this place was see some little penguins, which were about as impressive as penguins get.

That's it for CHCH. The next update will see me behind the wheel of an old Nissan on the way to Dunedin.

Wellington To Christchurch

2007-06-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

The trip from Wellington to Christchurch had to include some scenery or I'd be letting my bored readers down, so I took the ferry and the train. The first step, the ferry, left at 8-ish in the morning and was only lightly packed. Fortunately some real travelers knew the score and were busily into their beers at around 10am in the bar. I was on a mission to take as many pictures as possible, so no beer for me. I had to brave the near-zero winds through the Cook Straight to take a few sloppy photos for my silent fans. Well, the link is up there, but it's pretty much hills. Many different kinds of hills next to the ocean. I mean, what more can you say about hills? You tell me.

The next leg of the journey was about 1 1/2 hours from when the ferry arrived, so I had that much time to enjoy the limited benefits of Picton. About the most interesting thing you can do there this time of year is rent a car and drive away. Because it's the gateway to the South Island, many people pick up cars here and begin their trip. Sure, you can do all the typical harbour-town stuff like boating, fishing, etc..., but you can do that anywhere in NZ. Instead of standing around for an hour like a sucker, I decided to get lunch. My choices were pub, or train-station Subway. I went for the pub and had a Guinness and one of the best seafood chowders I've ever had. In Canada (or U.S.) when you order a chowder (the creamy kind) you get a couple of clams and a bag of potatoes in your bowl. Here, they were extreme. There wasn't any vegetables. All fish. Salmon, white fish, clam, shrimp, etc... Brilliant.

Good mood in hand, I prepared myself for a 6 hour train ride to Christchurch. Initially I was disappointed when I got to the train. Not only would I have to play the seat-mate lottery beside me, but the chairs were oriented table-fashion, so that there were four seats: two facing two across a table. Dammit. Now I was going to have to stare at strangers for six hours. Fortunately, the only logical thing to do is make conversation, and six hours fly right by. So much so, I didn't take many pictures. Nobody was beside me, and there was a 50-ish couple from Christchurch sitting across from me and we chatted pretty much the entire way, except for a couple of brief stints out to the observation car where I took the pictures. The first half of the ride was quite scenic, but once we went inland to the Canterbury plains, there wasn't much to look at except flat farmland. Regardless, the train is worth taking. My only regret on that part is not stopping in Kaikoura, but it's not far from Wellington. Maybe a good trip for a long weekend.

SobeRing Thought

2007-05-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

In my previous Wellington post, I didn't really talk about the Lord of the Rings tour, mainly because it wasn't all that interesting from a LotRs perspective. However, it was worth hearing how nicely Peter Jackson treated the people he inconvenienced during the long filming periods. I showed you the Chocolate Fish Cafe and said it was near Peter Jackson's house, but I didn't tell you one of the reasons why it's somewhat famous, despite its painted chairs and good food (yes, the food is decent). Since the actors were going to be staying in New Zealand for a long time, Peter Jackson wanted to give them a nicer place to live than having to put up with a trailer for a few years. So he approached the owners of some houses on that strip of coast and offered them an all-expenses-paid vacation (for, say, 6 months at a time) in exchange for letting someone like Viggo Mortensen live there. This meant that many of the cast would frequent the cafe down the road. Of course, the cafe doesn't make a big deal out of it (no actor photos, no "famous" publicity, etc...), which also helped. Just a nice simple local place.

Another nice thing PJ did for the cast was brew a beer specifically for actors to drink while shooting bar scenes in the movie. He didn't want them to have to drink ginger-ale, or tea, or root beer. He wanted them to feel like they were drinking real beer (though it doesn't taste quite like real beer). So he approached a brewery and asked them to produce a non-alcoholic (1%) beer for the cast.

In my previous entry, I also mentioned the boutique theaters that are popular in Wellington. Well, since the movies were filmed entirely in NZ, Peter Jackson wanted to hold the world-wide premiers in Wellington, but New Line resisted until Return of the King when it was demanded that Wellington hold it. The theatre of choice was The Embassy Theatre, which was rejected by New Line until it was restored to its full 1924 glory (check out the panorama). Each seat in the place has a little plaque with the name of the person who sat there on opening night. I'm told that Orlando Bloom's keeps getting stolen. This is another place where you can take coffee and beer and cake (and popcorn if you really need to, unlike the Petone one which is popcorn-free).

Wellington and Lord of the Rings

2007-05-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

Wellington is perpetually cloudy and windy, except for those days where you wear warm clothes, then the sun comes out and and the wind stops and you're walking up a 35 degree incline looking for something interesting to do besides drink coffee and take pictures of the harbour. Still, the city grows on you after you spend a few days there. There's just not much touristy stuff to do without a car in that city. I did break down and went on a Lord of the Rings day-tour. As far as LotR goes, it was light on scenes. All the good ones are down in the Southern Alps near Queenstown, but it was a fun day driving around Wellington and vicinity to see a few parks and suburbs. There's a few geeky shots in the album.

I rarely go to movies in Canada, but I was hankering to see Hot Fuzz and found it playing in a suburb called Petone, so I used that as an excuse to see a small part of the Lower Hutt valley. Turns out, it was one of many boutique theatres in the Wellington area. There were only three rows of seats, all love-seat style, large armrests, and you can take coffee, beer, cake, etc... from the cafe into the show. Call me crazy, but I'd pay more to see a movie in a place like this than any of the sticky-floor sardine-cans I've been to in Canada. And the screen wasn't small like the TVs in the World Exchange Plaza. Here's the somewhat-official site: Light House Petone. Oh, and go see Hot Fuzz. It's worth the money.

I hadn't decided when I left the city, but I certainly decided when I got to Christchurch: Wellington will be home. Tomorrow I'm flying back there to look for an apartment and a job. In between, I'll try to post the pictures from the last two weeks of my travels.

From Rotorua to Wellington

2007-05-20T00:20:00.000-07:00

When I left Rotorua, I had the choice of taking a bus or flying. The bus was $90 and the flight was $110. The bus was going to take 8 hours while the flight was about 1.5. After almost booking the flight, I changed my mind and decided that the scenery of New Zealand had to be seen on the ground. The train goes from Auckland to Wellington, but not through Rotorua and the connections between bus and train just didn't work out.

Almost all the people in the bus were tourists and the driver acted like tour guide narrating interesting tidbits, but he only stopped a few times to let us take pictures. Some of the best scenes were too close to get a picture of from my slow camera, so there's very little record. Too bad for you. You have to visit here to see it.

For a mediocre taste, I've posted a small album.

Rotorua & Geysers

2007-05-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

On my way between Auckland and Wellington, I decided to spend a couple nights in a lake town called Rotorua. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the town was fairly mediocre. Just a lake with a bunch of hotels on the main strip. I arrived in the afternoon, and would leave early in the morning on the second day, so I only really had one full day there. Given that I had no car, and I was staying a half-hour walk away from the core, I chose to see the attractions near the hotel. This was either golf or Whakarewarewa. My choice is obvious from the photos.

Auckland: Flesh and Fruity

2007-05-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

So I've been out of Auckland since May 6--after making the horrible decision to leave on a 7:30 bus Sunday morning, after discovering a brilliant microbrewery & hotel the night before within stumbling distance of my room. From what I could tell, the room rates were comparably cheap. Their website says $99, but their pub says $89.

Leaving Auckland wasn't the horrible decision. That was spot on. As far as cities goes, it probably has nicer weather than anything in Canada, but it just didn't seem that interesting (keeping in mind my high expectations of New Zealand). The first order of business for me was to get a cell phone, bank account, IRD number (think SIN). With shopping around for good deals on the first two, and just exploring, I didn't take many pictures of Auckland in the early days.

Not until I went on my hike to Kelly Tarltons did I even really carry a camera. I had already wasted a few days doing business and figured some touristy stuff needed to be done, so I picked the one thing that all the guidebooks suggested. Long story short, go to the Sydney Aquarium instead. I got the impression that this was impressive to Aucklanders in the 80s, but it now feels a bit second-rate. The founder, Kelly Tarlton, was an avid diver in the Auckland area and his dream was to bring the undersea world to common people like me (and you). The combined exhibit includes three different sections: aquarium, penguins, and arctic explorer history. Don't get excited about the penguins. My camera ran out of battery power before I got there. All in all, there's not much to look at, but do you really have anything better to do?

The next set of pictures is from a short tour I took on an island called Waiheke (Why-hee-kee). The ferry from Auckland is used by residents, commuters, and tourists, but tourists can throw in an extra $20 for a narrated bus ride. The island has a good climate for Mediterranean-type plants, so there's some good wines and olive oils (so I'm told), and a vacant property starts at $1 Million/acre. I never did learn how they afford the place, but the island is also infested with hippies (artists, writers, etc...).

After the return ferry trip, I made my way to the Auckland SkyTower. One guidebook said that there's a premium for housing in Auckland which doesn'thave a view of it. Sounds about right. I was in the CN Tower in Toronto for the first time a couple years ago, and this wasn't much different except it was less crowded (off-season) and the view was different. Both have glass floors, both have tourists, and both probably cost too much for what you get. However, they did have one thing the CN Tower doesn't. SkyJump. You throw on a full body suit, get strapped in, and they throw you off the tower. The difference from real bungee jumping is that you don't spring back; it's just a fast, controlled descent. It would have been fun for a laugh, but I have better things to do with $195. Maybe I'll do a real bungee in Queenstown where it originated. Wait and see.

Last Days in Sydney

2007-05-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

My last days in Sydney were in April, but I'm just getting around to organizing the photos and posting them. Internet is expensive and hourly in New Zealand, so I've been looking for a good chance to upload them. I'm going to a place in Wellington tomorrow which may have free internet, so I'll see if that works out. (Would you believe the Team America puppet-sex scene is on TV right now? Dang. The clean one.)

The first set, in chronological order, comes from Canberra and not Sydney. Canberra is the Ottawa of Australia. Both in housing the government offices, and in being as dry as a mouthful of soup crackers. There's a nice shopping & cafe area, and some nice modern government buildings near the water, and the national gallery has a good collection from famous and/or Australian artists. I did go to my first "Big W", which is the name of Walmart down here, and then saw 300. Besides that, dry. Here's the photos I took walking over the lake to the government side.

The next set is small, but it had to be done. Once in a while, out of the blue, there is a revolution in fusion cuisine. Two seemingly polar convenience foods are combined into a Frankenstein greater than the sum of its parts. Hasn't everyone once said, why doesn't my pizza have a pastry crust and ketchup on it? Well, now the wait is over. Domino's has stepped up to the plate and delivered, with gusto. And you know what? It was pretty good. (Hand-held meat-pies are a popular convenience food in Oz. I haven't even had a normal one yet.)

The final Sydney set of photos were taken during a walk from Manly Harbour to a place called "The Spit". The walk was supposed to take about 4 hours, but Scott and I did it in less than 3, even with all these crappy pictures. Most of the time we were in a national park area that's trying to preserve some native plants (and prevent coastline development). It was a pretty good hike for a park that's still in the main city area.

More to come soon from Auckland and Rotorua.

Sydney Photos and Booze

2007-04-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

I was in Sydney last year so I'm foregoing all the touristy things and just walking around the city, sans camera. But for the sake of keeping this blog on life-support, I was able to snap some pictures from inside a downtown skyscraper.

After all the walking though, one needs refreshments, so I've tried to sample the local fermentation. The Barking Duck was like hoegaarden but spicier. The rum is plain, but I'm not much of a rum drinker, hence the little bottle.

That's just a couple of the more interesting ones, though James Squire deserves a mention too. I'm still on the lookout for the mythical Tasmanian single malt, but I haven't had any luck from the local bottle shops. According to the interwebs, there are more than one, but they're not commonly stocked.

Sydney On Singapore

2007-04-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Sydney in the morning on the 18th on Singapore airlines, which, if it's the best economy airline in the world, there's not much hope for economy passengers. Still better than Air Canada and similar, but nothing worth sitting on for an extra 8 hours to go all the way over to Seoul and Singapore--skip the extra hike to Asia unless you want to stay a few nights in Singapore like a couple of Kelowna guys on the flight. The flight had personal video with about 30 or so on-demand movies, single-episode TV shows (recent stuff like The Office, Extras, Scrubs), cheesy little games, and some news feeds. Air Canada has caught up and added similar to some of their airplanes, but my 5-hour flight from Montreal to Vancouver wasn't so lucky, so it's still hit-and-miss. Besides seat-back tv, there were three choices for each meal, and they had:

Similar to Guinness Extra Stout--not the Guinness that requires the two-minute pour.

But...stout and seat-back video is no relief from a sardined 747 from Singapore to Sydney for 8 hours when there's a Jackie-Chan who leaps over you to get to the aisle. Seriously. Just up and jumped the armrests.

Spring in New Brunswick

2007-04-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

No updates in a long time. Too much time has been spent enjoying the spring weather in dial-up country on the east coast. Forgetting one's power cables in Ottawa doesn't help either when trying to use free wireless internet in Fredericton. Despite the weather though, it was nice to relax after having a U-Haul break down on me 40km outside of Quebec city, causing a good 4-hour delay on an already slow trip that started at 5am. I should have had faith in the available information beforehand.

I start my journey to land of snakes and spiders on the 14th, and then in sheep territory on the 3oth.

(11-04-2007): Fixed the picture. That's spring in NB.

Google Earth Pictures

2007-02-27T16:53:00.000-08:00

Tired of waiting for Glenn to leave? Why isn't he already in New Zealand taking pictures anyway?

Well, now you can see tourist pictures of anywhere in the world. Downloads of Google Earth these days include a feature from panoramio.com. I never saw it until I downloaded an updated version.

Pretty much wherever you are in the world, you'll see either little blue&white target icons, or thumbnail pictures. Here's an example of what I found looking at Milford Sound in south New Zealand.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/291176

"Office Glenn" is dead.

2007-02-26T16:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5lqwD_eL8E

As of March 2, 2007, this Office Glenn is no more.

I'll try to keep this space updated with news and photos from New Zealand.

(I do not endorse Molson products, just their commercials)