A sunny autumn Sunday. We joined our friends Kate and Andrew for a walk in Belmont Park, situated in the hills between Upper Hutt and Porirua. What started out as a relaxing stroll through lush farmland turned into a nightmare! We’ll probably never set foot in those cursed hills again, but fortunately, we lived to tell the tale. See for yourself.
We went to see Kiwi splatter flick Black Sheep yesterday. We didn’t expect much after reading some bad reviews, but it was worth it. It had some very funny moments and the gory splatter effects were good - we especially liked the crunching, breaking, tearing, ripping and splattering sound effects.
The plot, if you can call it that, is ridiculous, but that doesn’t matter one bit of course. It boils down to “radioactive mutant zombie sheep tear everyone apart and a group of unlikely heroes save the day”.
Unfortunately, it was just an “ok” movie. Since it’s a kiwi splatter movie, everyone compares it to Peter Jackson’s early work, the extremely humorous low budget splatter classics Bad Taste and Braindead. We recognized elements of Braindead and the hilarious Troma production Class of Nuke’em High. We’re not sure if Jonathan King is a big Troma fan, but several characters in Black Sheep seemed to have walked right out of Nuke’em High.
While Black Sheep’s effects and photography are much better, it’s just not as funny and original as Braindead or Class of Nuke’em High. Anyway, if you like over-the-top zombie attacks with blood and guts flying all over the place, you’ll like Black Sheep and you should probably go see it, even if there are better films in the genre.
Strong southerlies such as the ones we had last week usually bring nice waves to our coast, once the wind dies out, but the water is freezing and it won’t get better now that winter is approaching.
We’re used to surfing in conditions harsher than you’ll find in Wellington, but my wetsuit is old (got it second hand two years ago) and it’s falling apart. That’s why I bought a new suit today, an Xcel Inifity 4/3mm. Whoa I didn’t know surfing could be so warm! I just love this suit, it fits really well, it’s light and stretchy and it lets almost no water through. Isn’t it weird that Hawaiian company Xcel makes such good winter suits?!
Strong southerlies hit Wellington yesterday. Rain, twelve degrees, strong winds and massive waves! (Click images for larger version).
Wave breaker in Lyall Bay, near the end of the airport runway:
Another view of the breaker:
The island of Taputeranga in Island Bay, as seen from Houghton Bay during sunset:
The inevitable end of summer is approaching. Easter weekend has been nice and sunny so far, but it’s getting chillier. We’ve started using our gas heater to boost our living room temperature in the morning. We went for a walk in Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, for the first time during daylight. There were lots of mushrooms like the one shown here, living off pine trees. And there were birds! We saw Tui, Fantail, Saddleback, Bellbird, Kaka, Hihi and this inquisitive Robin:
Last week, I was in Dunedin for a research visit. The researcher that I was visiting at Otago university has been working on a dialogue system for learners of Māori. We discussed research and I presented my work at a weekly seminar of the Computer Science department. Apart from working, I took the opportunity to explore Dunedin. Dunedin is in the far South of New Zealand and the surrounding area resembles Schotland. The city is beautifully located at the end of Otago harbour, a sea inlet of around 20 km which has been formed by a volcanic eruption. Kate and Dan, the friends I was staying with, just moved into a house which sits on a hill overlooking the harbour. Their view *almost* beats ours.
Stretching over the southern side of the harbour is Otago peninsula with lush green countryside against dramatic coastal cliffs, and deserted beaches. The peninsula is the only place on the mainland which has a Royal Albatross colony. There are also colonies of very rare Hooker sealions and even rarer Yellow-eyed penguins. The only way to access the colonies is across private land. So we booked ourselves a tour with a renowned ecotour operator. The albatross colony had nests with two month old albatross chicks. The guide told us that there was only a very small chance to see an albotross flying. But luckily, one came gliding over. What a magnificent birds!
Walking through dense fog, we continued our tour to a seal colony on the other side of the peninsula. Two to five month old puppies were playing in shallow pools on the rocks or scrambling up and down the rocks. Over the hills on another beach, we were just in time to see yellow-eyed penguins coming home from a day of fishing. Just 10 metres from us - and from the 15 sealions that were sleeping on the beach - the penguins climbed ashore and wobbled their way up into the hills where the sheep were grazing.
It was a great trip, workwise as well as for pleasure. I will definitely stay in contact with the research group and look forward to contribute to their dialogue system: “He aha? He hoiho tērā!” (= “What is that? That is yellow-eyed penguin!”).
See the other photos.
The people over at The Wellingtonista have compiled a list of urban legends in Wellington:
it got us thinking: “what deep dark secrets is Wellington hiding? Or not hiding? And how many of these secrets are real? Or not real?”
Then we went back to drinking.
So, if you want to know why people honk while driving through the Hataitai tunnel or if Elijah Wood really did pee in the Bucket Fountain, read their list.
Hi, we're Will and Gert. In September 2006, we moved from Utrecht, the Netherlands to Wellington, New Zealand, exactly 18,558 kilometers away, as the crow flies.
We arrived on 9 September 2006, 12:20pm
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