Back in Ōtautahi

Ronan and I are back in Ōtautahi Christchurch after 5 days in Melbourne and 3 days in Sydney. Our Australia trip was exponentially awesome and we plan to write a few blog posts detailing this over the next few days/weeks!

\Unfortunately I got unwell (sore throat/asthma/aches/cough/temperature) in Sydney and was still overheating on the plane back home so my ears hurt a lot as we came in for landing. They still hadn't popped back to normal by the time I went to bed several hours after returning home so I wondered vaguely if I would ever regain normal hearing or instead remain locked within an underwater audio world.

luckily i did not remain a merman and my ears popped overnight

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my bedroom hadn't been obviously tampered with considering that Jocelyn and Sophie had borrowed my bed for several nights while I was away and I was expecting some sort of trolling from my friends/flatmates (Ronan wasn't quite so lucky however as Woodham and Damien rolled his socks together in mismatched pairs and turned all of his jackets inside out in his wardrobe). In saying this, I have only been back for a day so far so some insidious trick may be biding its time to reveal itself.

this was the biggest change i could notice in my room....i guess i'll be dancing now 

In our lounge there was a much more brilliant/terrifying surprise however:

bringing new meaning to the contemporary "deadline"

Two Saturdays ago myself, Scott, Matt and Tom did a six hour rogaine (think orienteering over hilly farmland) and Matt drove us there and back. Because of this, we all owe Matt $10 in petrol money. I had thought that I had already given Matt my contribution, but it seems that both Scott and I hadn't which led to him creating this threatening chart. Matt practically lives at our flat so had been adding a bullet for each day we default on our payments (each tiny bullet has a tiny piece of blu-tack on the back). As a result of this chart Scott and I now plan to deliberately withhold our payments until after the deadline so that we can experience whatever hell Matt has in store for our insolence. It is going to be great!

Yesterday was my first day back in Christchurch and unfortunately was not very productive because I had two loads of washing to do but stupidly tried to do them as one which broke the washing machine and took hours to fix. I also had to post a letter and spent ages skating around the post boxes around the neighbourhood only to find that they had recently been cleared for the day.

did get a sweet sunset though!

As a last resort I biked to the postshop on Riccarton Road, only to find that it had been gone since June the 19th in preparation for a shift of premises. So I biked back home and posted the letter at the post box 50m from our house (to be cleared tomorrow...) Semi-Success!

There was also a new restaurant open on Riccarton Road which was nice to see...It seems that some buildings are gradually pushing their way through the bureaucratic mess of crumbled city choked in red tape (For a fairly extensive personal write up on the aftermath of the February 2011 earthquake that hit Canterbury, see here)

some movement

Scott and Woodham had been painting since I'd been away as well which is great; our lounge table now has a tablecloth (sheet) to make it look ultra fancy and has a pretty legitimate looking painting setup now as well. 

Woodham finished this awesome political piece yesterday

The traffic light is a recent Woodham addition as well

Scott also did several cool paintings as well, but they're in his room which he will surely reveal on the blog soon enough.

While I was away the spag junx lounge acquired two new chairs and finally a couch too! Before I left for Australia Rosa's brilliant mother contacted me saying that her friend was giving away a couch for free so Woodham picked it up and got two chairs as well. All three items are comfy and have square arms ideal for extra seating/drink balancing, though we may attempt to spraypaint them to add some colour. 

josh demonstrates how easy it is to moe in one of our new chairs whilst damo blisses out on the couch and i sit in the old chair so it still feels appreciated

Last night Josh, Ronan and Damien went to a Ladyhawke gig at uni and came back triumphant. They had jumped a fence after the gig, met Ladyhawke herself, had a good chat and got photos with her. Ronan celebrated by putting on his newly purchased poncho and allowing Scott to persuade him into new and exciting food combinations.

Scott claimed to have a breakthrough in sandwich invention: cream cheese and apricot chutney. Ronan was initially hesitant but quickly ordered a second serving. 

Here is a Ladyhawke song in case you haven't heard her yet (NZ indie pop):

Josh and I both proudly rocked secondhand Swanndris and are planning to start a club/gang based on this concept

We also met Confused Skier Scott last night

Will see you soon with most likely some Australia photos! 

NJOY

NJOY

NJOY

Melbourne in so far...

Hello friends and family, I have decided to do a quick update on our trip to Melbourne to confirm that i have made it here alive. We have only been here two days and it feels like we've already done so much, it's all pretty overwhelming, but in an great way. We have already taken 358 photos... (unfortunately it takes ages to upload these photos to the blog so have just selected a handful)


First off, the city is BIG. Fun wiki fact: The population of melbs is 4,137,432 (The whole of NZ is 4,430,400).

Upon arrival it was incredibly foggy  and it appeared that a lot of the sky scrapers were in the clouds.

This appeared to be a popular place for tourists to take photos... So we did.

The city looks awesome at night.

We have managed to jam-pack some culture into our short trip already including the state art gallery and library. I thoroughly enjoyed the library:

Outside the Victoria library.

The reading room - very cool!

On the 4th floor they had a museum-like exhibition called Mirror of the World: Books & Ideas (Mum you would love this). Upon arrival of the 6th floor you are greeted by Bill Shakespeare:

"All The Worlds A Stage"

The consumption of food has already in so far played a large role in our activities. I have decided I will do a Melbourne food blog on my arrival back to NZ dedicated to my good friend Nick "I love food" Baldwin (I intend to do a burger a day with a detailed review).  Here is a teaser of our first home made dinner here:

That's right - Skippy the Kangaroo in burger format (Tastes great!)

I was stoked when Rosa informed us that the consumption of the national icon of Australia and can be readily purchased at all local supermarkets. Kangaroo meat is great for many reasons including:

1) It's healthy! It has the heart foundation tick.
2) Is high in protein and low in fat.
3) Apparently by law it is illegal to farm roo's (?) so it is all free range/wild by default.
4) It tastes good - essentially a gamey beef (but not like venison, it's hard to describe).


For breakfast I shall be partaking in a fry up of eggs and "Kanga Bangas" - I can't wait.

There's so much things we want to share but must keep it short! We're off to see some nature today so will be heading out of the city and into the wilderness. It will be interesting to see how the landscapes compare to NZ.

Much Love,


Ronan

IT TASTES GREAT FOR DAMIEN

Kia ora friends

Ronan and I have been in the Australian city of Melbourne for two days so far and it has been jam-packed and excellent. Here is a taste tester of our trip, specifically written with our moosey friend Damo in mind. We will write a full write up once we get back, so for now we will just tease you with a juicy carrot sized NJOY blog post.

Upon our arrival we bussed into town and had a quick exploration of the city. Melbourne is well-known for its street art so we were stoked to come across an alleyway filled with street art and tagging.

REGAN, STOKED

The laneway had a ridiculous amount of cool art and graffiti:

 We then noticed a reference to Aotearoa New Zealand on the wall. It was a stencil of Tama Iti, a renowned activist and generally great person!

Kia ora e Tama

Seeing this piece of street art instantly connected us to our home land (whenua) and we nearly cried with njoyment....Thank you to whoever had the excellent idea of putting Tama up on the wall.

The picture of Tama Iti made us wonder whether there would be any other New Zealand related works on the wall, but unfortunately there was nothing else in that alleyway. We walked down another that was connected to it however and spotted this iconic image:

East Side Dogs?

 When we saw the above tag we wondered whether it could have been the work of the East Side Dogs, which is a youth gang that was founded in Wairoa, New Zealand. Wairoa is a small town in the North Island of New Zealand that our good friend Damien was born and raised in. It has a population of around 5000 people, a lovely river (awa) and unfortunately quite a few gangs, resulting in a lot of graffiti bearing the acronym "ESD". Damien recently went on a week long trip to his hometown and showed us many photos of these tags. He also informed us that the East Side Dogs originally called themselves the Red Side Dogs but changed their name to ESD because people called them "Really Small Dicks" based on their original graffiti acronym (RSD). East Side Dogs is certainly more inscrutable to derisive nicknames.

When we saw the ESD tag in Melbourne we were hopeful that it was the work of an East Side Dog, repping New Zealand to all of the dogs living abroad, but we thought it would be a lot more likely to just be some local tagger that used the same acronym. However, a bit more searching revealed this tag close by:

BOOM

This is surely concrete proof that someone from Wairoa had tagged in Melbourne, so the ESD tag could be 100% legit East Side Dogs! My theory is that Damien is secretly an East Side Dog and was sent on a mission to Melbourne to spread the word. He tagged "ESD" and "WAIROA 4 LYF" and then returned back to Wairoa with glorious hi-res pictures of his work. He was then rewarded with pineapple lumps and gangsta rap CDs. PLEASE CONFIRM IF TRUE DAMO!!

MORE BLOGS TO COME ERRYBODY