The view from my desk.

I've been working at the Ministry of Economic Development for the past two weeks. It's been pretty sweet. I work in the mail room and basically just pick up and drop off mail round to all the people all over the building. Everyone's really nice to me. They all tell me how much they totally loved my Mum (she used to work at MED) and it warms my heart.

Today, we had a lovely Christmas brunch. I drank a lot of champagne, but fortunately I managed to keep my composure which is no small achievement for me. Then I found out I could work there more after New Years. Then I got to leave early. It was hot and I was well fed and well drinked. All these factors contributed to me falling asleep on the train home listening to Bachelorette and it was good.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Strawberry.

I was going to post a blog about the job I've been doing for the past couple of weeks, but then another idea came up. At the moment I'm working at the Ministry of Economic Development, doing the mail run around the building. The Ministry of Economic Development has a Chief Executive. The Chief Executive has an Executive Assistant. Today, the Executive Assistant had some strawberries. The strawberries had a mutant. Below is a picture of a regular-sized strawberry and the mutant strawberry.
The EA (Jo is her name) said I could eat the mutant if I wanted to. But I just couldn't bring myself to eat it because I knew that if I ate it, it wouldn't exist anymore. So I said I'd just take a picture of it for my blog and she found that amusing.

Thanks to my sister Joanne for thinking of the name for this blog entry.

The (lack of) B-52s.

So a couple of weekends ago now, a friend, Chloe, rang me up to ask me if I'd like to go see the B-52s play that night on a wine estate, just outside of Martinborough. She and her two brothers, and a friend, had all bought tickets (approx. $100 each, I believe), but another friend of hers (a reporter) was going to be there covering the concert for the Wairarapa Times-Age. He was getting in for free and had a "plus 1" which I could get into the concert on. And then she said that the Proclaimers were going to be playing at the concert too. So, of course, I accepted the offer! Fun road trip + cool people + aging pop bands? sure!

Cut to a few hours later, and five of us were crammed into four car-seats during the hour-and-a-bit-ish drive to our motel at Lake Ferry (not far from Martinborough). There was much excitement in the car about the concert and we listened to some classic B-52s shit on the stereo, while debating whether we would "walk 10,000 miles just to be the man who fell down at your door", or whether we wouldn't.

We checked into our accom, where we met the reporter friend, and all six of us crammed into his five-seater car and headed off to the concert in the highest of spirits. It was 6:45pm, and the support act would be on by now. It was a beautiful clear and sunny day. Perfect for a big outdoor concert!!

Well, when we got to the estate and parked up it seemed like there wasn't really that many people hanging around the entrance to the property. Strange, but maybe there's more parking down the drive, we thought. As we wandered down the drive, towards the stage, we passed a few cars coming the other way. The people in the cars looked confusedly at us and we looked confusedly at them. What was going on??

Finally we rounded the final corner, and by this time, it seemed fairly obvious that there was no concert, and that there would be no B-52s that night. What we were hoping to see was the opening act on stage, mid-set, with a huge and happy crowd talking and laughing and celebrating all around in anticipation of the upcoming bands. What we actually saw when we rounded that final corner was this:
In case you've never seen this before, let me explain it to you. It's a picture of no one gathered around a stage where the B-52s, the Proclaimers and the other support band are all not playing. And if you squint your eyes you'll be able to make out a few people on stage, busy dismantling the stage.

After a bit of asking around (there were all the crew and support etc still milling around by the food tent), we found out that the show had been canceled due to high winds. High Winds?? It was still and sunny and warm!! But apparently there were high winds about an hour earlier when the bands were due to start, so they canned the whole thing and sent everyone home. The only entertainment still going was a drunken old dude playing drunken old Deep Purple covers on the red, strat-type guitar on his lap (to which he'd applied liberal amounts of flange and chorus).

We also found out that anyone who had paid for a ticket could get a full refund from the place they'd bought it from.

After thinking about the situation of the B52s and the Proclaimers canceling because of wind, I did some fairly simple mathematics, and proved the following:

The B-52s + The Proclaimers = NOT VERY FUCKING ROCK'N'ROLL

After eating some free cold hamburgers, we left. Fairly dejected, and fairly sober now. We decided that the best course of action was to try and get at least a partial refund on our accom. expenses, and high-tail it back to Wellington and get plastered in the safety of the city. Unfortunately, When we got back to our accom. the owners were nowhere to be found, so we cut our losses, and we buggered off.

The above is an accurate account of the time I went to see the B-52s and the Proclaimers. Lame-o. Sweet road-trip though.

Arrow.

Any day now...

Any day now I am expecting a call to say that my eldest sister, Carolyn (pictured on the right) has had her new baby girl. The due date is December the 8th (today!). Carolyn lives in Helensville (just north of Auckland) with her husband, Damon, and their son, Luca (in the middle of the photo drinking hot chocolate).

Below is a wee bonus photo. It's Marco with an emo wig on. Like, totally no one understands him.

Berneth? Kenadette?

I'm trying to work out one of those names like Bradgelina for my sister Bernadette and her fiancé Kenneth. Ken is from Ballyshannon, which is an amazing wee town in County Donegal, which is in the northwest of the Republic of Ireland. Ken met Bernie while he was living in New Zealand quite a number of years ago now. Shortly after, he moved back to Ireland. Shortly after, Bernie moved to Ireland, and they've been nerds about each-other ever since. They came back to New Zealand about a year ago and bought a house with a sweet as view of Wellington. They're getting married in March and I'm starting to wonder what I'm gonna wear to the wedding. Ken's whole family are coming over. I'm really excited because he has a really big raucous family and so do we. It's gonna be quite the occasion. Here are Bernie and Ken on the front porch of their new house.

Marco and Luca are cousins.

Marco (Left - 6 months old) and Luca (Right - nearly 3 years old) are cousins. They are also both my nephews. Marco lives in Wellington and Luca lives in Auckland so they don't see one another very often. They love each other, but they are still a bit unsure of each other. Luca is a sweet wee man and tries his hardest to be friends with Marco. Marco is still too young to really understand much, so all he can do is examine and analyse Luca. This makes Luca unsure, but he smiles anyway.


When Marco is lying on the floor I can't help but lying down next to him so I can tickle him, or kiss him on his chubby cheeks. Marco usually cycles through a whole collection of facial expressions, including: smiling, frowning, shocked, confused, annoyed etc. He's wearing his Pac-Man top. It has a matching bib too, but he's not wearing that.

The cute little Italian girl in this picture is Cecilia Martelli (my mother). It was probably taken around 1953-54, when she would have been about maybe two or three years of age. She passed away peacefully yesterday at our family home. I am currently putting together a photo-montage-thing for her funeral. I found some pretty awesome photos of her. I really like this one. She is standing outside the family house (on the farm), wearing a little dress that my Nanna Margherita (her mother) would have made for her. Nanna was as seamstress and made most of the family's clothes. "There wasn't a lot of money around in them days", Nanna said to me recently.

This picture of my Mum and her four younger siblings was probably taken around 1959. All clothes would have been tailored by my Nanna. I showed this picture to my Uncle Peter (pictured far right) recently. He laughed, and said something like "God, look at us! We look like refugees!"