Tag: New Zealand

  • sex shop ucuz satan yer

    sex shop ucuz satan yer

  • Circulation

    Last weekend I went with my friends Rachel, Angela, and Miriam for Circulation, a big ol’ circus festival down in freezing cold yet oddly sunny Dunedin. I have been super extra busy for the past…well, for the past forever, I guess, and since I haven’t been doing circus for months I just forgot about it…

  • Affiliation

    For me my nationality is a pretty random identity or affiliation, not something I’m proud or not proud of. I didn’t have anything to do with it: my parents chose for me to become an American citizen when I was two–my naturalization paper is typed in wonky typewriter and lists my height as ‘2 FEET…

  • All About Me

    About ten years ago everyone was getting married and I was so jealous. I was going to like five weddings a summer and everyone was all loved up and full of their plans: to have dinner parties, to buy a house, to have children, to do all those things that I thought meant you were…

  • Christchurch Earthquake

    Christchurch had another earthquake today—for you non-Kiwis, they had what was supposed to be the Big One, in September, and they’ve juuust started rebuilding. We heard about it at work and watched some of the footage, before anyone knew what was going on in terms of deaths or injuries, and it was already pretty brutal—Christchurch…

  • See What I Can See

    It’s a gorgeous Christmas Day in Wellington: sun is shining, birds singing, all of that. My bag is packed, my house is clean, and all there is left to do is skype my various family members on the other side of the world, put on my travel outfit, and get on the first of three…

  • Atomic

    I was in the mood to go out on Saturday night. I’ve been very busy socially lately but it’s hasn’t been the going out kind of social, if that makes sense; like I go to a lot of dinners and shows and house parties and things like that—sometimes even events–and I have people over to…

  • She Knows

    This time last week my friend Calin and her (and now my as well) awesome friend Susan were staying with me here in my little flat, as part of a stop on this awesome Antipodean horse-riding tour they were on together. Wellington put on quite a show for them, being all sunny and lovely and…

  • Long Light Days

    How I–snap! click! pop!—went, with what feels like no transition whatsoever, from staying home every night, not even going to yoga, to double-booking every weekend and having to schedule nights off from social stuff, is anyone’s guess, but all of a sudden all my conversations are about how I can make it to this one…

  • Soft Grey

    It’s cool and rainy and a little grey right now as I write this, but spring grey, soft grey; not the intractable closed-down iron of the winter that’s finally dripped and dragged to an end. Earlier it was short-sleeves-and-sandals weather, and I didn’t even need a hoodie as I got the season’s first cheap red…

  • Tonga: Doing A Lot Of Nothing and Getting Home

    Whale swimming was probably the big huge major thing we did on the trip, the thing we talked a lot about and thought a lot about. We laughed a little, later, when we realized how actually active we’d been on our beach holiday, suiting up and getting on boats right after breakfast, when mainly we’d…

  • This, Here, Now

    Yesterday I didn’t have yoga after work and I also didn’t have any food in the house. A quick perusal of the produce section at New World indicated that broccoli was expensive but that asparagus was (kind of) cheap because we’re finally getting into spring, and then in a flash I recalled that I had…

  • Just A Nice Weekend

    Friday night I walked home after work and waited anxiously for my new stove to be delivered. All the appliances in this flat are hilarious for their own various reasons, but the stove was not funny at all because a) all its various temperature markings had been worn away so you just sort of had…

  • We’re Not Talking About It

    We put Theresa on the plane to Melbourne yesterday—two carloads of friends. She’s doing a working holiday visa there for a year, after two years in Wellington, and I don’t think any of her friends have completely absorbed that she’s gone yet; we joked about getting tickets to Auckland and continuing the party up there…

  • Turning Out To Be A Big Deal

    The stove doesn’t work—I’ve tried out all the burners and they get sort of lukewarm for a while, enough to almost boil water for pasta, but then they just shut off randomly. One of the windows sticks. There’s a washer from 1982 but no dryer. The bedroom closet door draaaaags across the carpet. The curtains…

  • Wait Till You Get All Your Stuff In

    The good thing about having a very immediate-yet-mostly-dealable crisis is that it focuses all your nervous energy into a very specific direction: Do This Thing, Now. Make It Happen. Make It Work. The night sweats and the upset stomach and the inability to concentrate all of a sudden have a reason and a purpose: I…

  • Crying In August

    I did so much crying in August. I did lots of different of kinds: the kind where you can’t get out of bed and have to remember to drink water at hourly intervals to replenish your vital fluids; the kind where you start sobbing at work; the kind where you weep silently on the bus…

  • Boxes Of Books

    When I was in Seattle in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2008, I got rid of something like three hundred books which my buddies at the Blue House in Ballard had been storing for me in three identical IKEA bookcases (I had another one upstairs in the cloud room, also full to bursting) along with…

  • Four Year Anniversary

    It’s four years exactly today since I first came to Wellington, coming from Napier on the Intercity Bus, waiting to meet Deirdre at the station with my big green backpack. That was so long ago. For my one-year anniversary in 2007 I was in Australia, not even paying attention, and for my two year I…

  • There Is No Requirement To Still Your Mind

    The yoga teacher seems to want to touch the American a lot in class tonight. She doesn’t correct or realign her, she just lays her hands on lightly, gently, softly: spread-out fingers in down dog, shoulders in Warrior II, the small of the back in child’s pose. She can tell, thinks the American, lowering down…

  • Sunday Night

    You told yourself you were going to scale back from social stuff this weekend but you’ve been out every night all the same. Brunch and lunch and coffees and dinners, lots of friends, lots of talking. Lots of texting and running around. You are home only to sleep and to throw your clothes in the…

  • My Imaginary Boyfriend

    Saturday morning, Chiara and her flatties lay around the lounge discussing their respective Friday nights they wait for a load of firewood to arrive, which they will have to lug up four flights of muddy slippery steps if they want to stay even slightly warm for the next eighteen months of Wellington’s winter. Outside, it…

  • Squeeze

    Things go quick or they don’t go at all, these days. I’m never at home anymore, there’s never enough time to do anything like grocery shopping or laundry or reading or writing blog posts or anything, because either I’ve got dinner with one friend or dinner with another friend or easy-ish yoga or really hard…

  • Pompeii To Paris

    I met the beautiful and talented Leimomi last year at the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ball, which she brilliantly organized and at which I discovered a predilection for wearing top hats and frock coats. We became Facebook friends, as you do, and saw each other at parties and whatnot, always very enjoyably; we may…

  • St. Swithin’s Day

    Thinking back now I suppose you were just stating your views What was it all for For the weather or the battle of Agincourt And the times that we all hoped would last Like a train they have gone by so fast And though we stood together at the edge of the platform We were…

  • Winter’s Here

    I am sitting our lounge in front of the fire; the flatties have mentioned something about it’s being ‘too warm’ in here but I have had—wearing yoga pants, two long-sleeved shirts, a pink fur-lined hoodie, and pink fur-lined slipper boots—to disabuse them of the notion that there can ever be such a thing as ‘too…

  • Back From The Weekend

    Towel-dry your hair and put on a singlet, thick socks, a shirt and two jumpers, shivering in your unheated room. Wrap your neck in your biggest scarf and pull your hat down over your ears, pull on your new mittens and be late for the bus, head down into the rain. Look at the different…

  • Pancakes

    At yum cha on a rainy Saturday afternoon… CHIARA:…yeah, so—sorry, can I have one of those sticky rice things?—we have this rule in the house, now. You know how we’re all lonely spinsters, all three of us? Well, we decided that if anyone ever brings someone home, she has to cook pancakes the next morning…

  • In The Middle

    She missed the twilight while she was at the store, wandering around the aisles sort of dazed, trying to remember if they are out of milk at the house, if she needs more ravioli or feta cheese. The winter’s held off the last couple of weeks—she’s been trying to spin out wearing her cute new…

  • Pendulum

    The last big Italian lunch I went to was for my own birthday; so I was really looking forward to the one this afternoon. May has been surprisingly still and calm and warm and every morning when I’ve hopped out the door and run down the 38923892 stairs to the street I’ve looked out the…

  • Popular

    Yesterday I had the day off because I was at a hui in Te Kuiti all weekend; one of my flatmates and I took the opportunity to stack this winter’s firewood and then we went to see my friend Tom speak at Pecha Kucha. Tomorrow night I am meeting Giulia for coffee and then going…

  • Easter Easter Kayak Kayak

    I’d been talking with Theresa, kind of randomly, about taking a trip together somewhere for Easter weekend this year, without coming to much of a decision. I wanted to go to the top of the South Island, maybe to Shambhala again or something, but tickets to Takaka were sort of expensive and they close for…

  • 35 = Great

    My birthday weekend was so good that I had one of the several cakes people made for me for breakfast today just because I felt like it. I’m sort of sniffly and snuffly and had to skip yoga tonight so I could come straight home and make soup for dinner, but I am still basking…

  • Sick In Bed

    Sick in bed for a day and a half, in a way I haven’t been since the Bush Administration. Tired and sore and achey and shaky, sweating through the sheets, sweating through my purple octopus shirt, dazed and dehydrated, staring at nothing. The last time I was this sick I was in my mother’s house…

  • Carrying Me

    The bay heaves and surges, flexes its muscles but never breaks into waves; the clouds filter the evening’s light whitely, greyly, into the fading hills. I look out the window at the smudged harbour, tired from yoga, tired from my week. Looking forward to dinner and bickies and bed. Mist gauzes over the open mouth…

  • Switching Up

    Right after we all got back from Christmas and New Year’s my very lovely flattie gave us some simultaneously awesome and awful news: she was moving out. Awesome: she’s moving in with her fantastic boyfriend! Awful: she’s leaving us! I had a couple days to wrap my mind around that, thinking about the hassle of…

  • Sevens Weekend 2010

    Yesterday was pretty exciting because not only was it Waitangi Day and good old Sevens, it was also like the one day of summer that we have in Wellington per year, and when I say that I mean that that’s what they were actually saying on the news, like, “Summer to fall on weekend this…

  • Watching And Listening

    Thursday night I went to see Neko Case at the good old San Francisco Bath House, scene of many fun times over the past couple of years. It’s a pretty small place but I’ve seen some very good shows there–Kristen Hersh in 2007 springs to mind, for example, plus lots of local stuff. I was…

  • Summer Concert

    You have been going to the summer garden concerts since you first arrived in this city: as you walk down from the cable car along the path to the soundshell you think about the night you first thought you might like to stay for longer than a year. So many memories, now, as you search…

  • This Year’s Summer

    It’s been pretty awful weather since I got back from Golden Bay, as in it’s currently 54 degrees (Fahrenheit, that’s 12 for everyone else) outside, in the middle of what’s supposed to be summer, and it’s raining sideways and the wind is whipping the tree branches against my window in such a manner that suggests…

  • New Year’s In Golden Bay

    I had only about twelve hours in Wellington between the Coromandel and going down to Golden Bay, where I hadn’t been since the tail end of my South Island trip in 2008. I was very keen to return to my beloved Shambhala because…well because my last New Year’s Eve was not that great, to be…

  • Natale A Coromandel

    I just got home from my summer holidays last night and it’s been a bit of a shock to be back in Welly, to say the least. Today it’s been all awful and stormy and sideways-rainy and I couldn’t sleep and I had to do a bunch of washing and food-getting and every time I’ve…

  • Time To Go

    Last night we all went to the Wellington International Ukulele show at San Francisco Bathhouse and got home ever so slightly late for a Sunday night, after much singing along to “Africa” and “Sweet Child O’Mine” (works surprisingly well as a happy cheery folky song) and everyone’s favorite “Heartache”. This morning when I got into…

  • The Realization Of Desire

    I leave in a couple of days for my summer holidays (and of course it’s still winter weather in Wellington, of course it is) and have been busy with many parties and much wrapping-things-up with work and much trying to see everyone before I leave for the usual lunches and coffees and dinners. I’ve been…

  • Rotorua Road Trip

    I was couching it all in super generous terms—my friend Eric from the States is in Wellington for a couple of months, and I was all like, “Girl, your experience of the North Island should not be limited to Cuba Street!”—but really I was feeling a bit restless and wanting to get out of town.…

  • Trying To Dissolve

    There are six or seven things I’ve been thinking about lately and meaning to write about here (Pride and Prejudice, my heterosexual life partners, the end of crappy ol’ 2009, how my hair lady gave me this weird winged mullet with which I am having a hard time coming to terms) but there’s no time,…

  • Art’s Hopeful Sickroom

    Friday evening I was invited to aperitivo, like after-work drinks for Italians, at the studio of someone I know through my friend Giulia and also from Facebook. I wasn’t quite sure what this was all about, exactly: what kind of studio was it? Who would be there? What sort of a snack situation were we…

  • Home Alone On Sunday Evening

    The sun’s going down now, slowly, softly, and part of me thinks I should go downstairs and chop some kindling and make a springtime fire, but really what I’ll probably do is shiver slightly as the clouds rush overhead and drink another cup of tea in my yoga pants and oversize Auahi Kore shirt I…

  • Thursday Night In Spring

    Of course in the Northern Hemisphere Guy Fawkes Day would be cold and dark and autumnal: brief glares on a freezing November evening, actual bonfires, something warming in a hip flask perhaps. In your city, it’s cold and dark too, when you finally decide that oh fine, it’s just once a year, and suit up…

  • Not Quite Spring, Not Quite Saturday

    You thought, somehow, that when you got back to Wellington it would be warm, like spring, or spring-like in nature, and that you would be able to wear some of your adorable new mass-produced American clothes. You have been able to, actually, now that you think about it you’ve been wearing those clothes all week:…

  • The First Holiday

    I’m pretty well over my jet lag, now, thanks for asking, and I have very much enjoyed my long Labour Weekend back in Wellington, after only 24 hours in transit from Miami the other day. I’ve clicked right into being here, after the initial weirdness and when people have asked me how it was being…

  • Short Duration

    I meant to go for a beach walk today but the tide was too high and the sand was trashy with sargassum and the wind was too windy. I spent the rest of the day shopping with my mom, eating Sir Pizza, petting the cats and packing for my flight back to New Zealand tomorrow.…

  • As Long As I Stay

    My sister’s wedding was a lot of fun. Her friend made the wedding cake (with an alleged thirty-two pounds of frosting), his brother did all the food, I wore my pinkest and fluffiest dress with my matching pink flip-flops, and we took a walk to the beach as the sun went down, dodging jellyfish as…

  • Antipodean Quotidian

    I guess we were talking about it at work, somehow, during afternoon tea at 3:30 on a Friday when there hasn’t been much on except, like, writing email and reading policy papers and wandering around the office, counting the hours. One of us had some popcorn and I had some biscuits and someone else had…

  • All The Goodbyes That Await You

    The days are going by and it’s light in the mornings now when you yawn and stumble to the bus stop, and according to the tuis outside your window it’s starting to be spring, and the long strange dull winter is almost over now, even if it isn’t quite sundress and jandal time. Time stops…

  • Another Good Wellington Weekend

    I really dithered around about what to wear Friday night; I haven’t been out dancing in ages and it was cold and rainy and I don’t have any good shoes, and all things considered the short blue dress and the knee-high boots with tights was a mistake. It was a moderately cute outfit—in fact when…

  • Matiu/Somes Island

    We’re at an intriguing meteorological stage, right now in Wellington: it’s still sort of officially winter in that it can be cold at night and one wants at least two blankets on the bed, but the birds have been singing and the flowers have been blooming and everyone is waking up a little bit from…

  • Day By Day

    Monday I made some lentil soup with carrots, onions, a whole thing of tomato paste and some leftover frozen corn when I got home from work. I would have liked to put in some celery but celery was SEVEN DOLLARS at Moore Wilson and I was too tired and cold to go over to New…

  • Sleeping In

    Wake up, finally, because the morning light—well, the mid morning light— got in through the curtains. At first you thought your phone was going off on your bedside table but really it was the birds outside in the trees, singing, singing, making you believe the long cold wet winter is almost over and that one…

  • Hospitality

    I had some girls from my work over for dinner last night, which was a pretty big deal for me on several levels: Monday night after a long and hectic weekend wherein no laundry was done whatsoever; not sure what to cook; people that I’m still getting to know and whom I will have to…

  • Various Fun Reasons

    Whoo, girl, I really should be in bed right now, snuggled up to my hot water bottle(s) but I always feel a little funny when I leave a super emo post up for more than a couple of days, you know, like it all gets a bit dire with all the big questions and vague…

  • Returned To Sender

    I can’t help wondering: what happens to the love, the kind that never gets to the people it was so earnestly meant for? Sometimes there’s a reason and sometimes there isn’t: they weren’t paying attention or they didn’t understand what would be required, or they just plain weren’t interested, they just plain didn’t want it,…

  • Sunny Weekend

    I don’t know about you, but I had a really nice weekend. It was full of pretty people and cute dresses and an interesting documentary and journal-writing at Fidel’s and lazy pajama-based mornings and a hubristic party and good talks and yummy hot chocolates and delightful cupcakes and a walk on the beach at Lyall…

  • Hibernating

    Two pairs of socks, in the mornings; a singlet top, merino jersey, fuzzy-collar zip-up sweater and a coat. Scarf and a very cute hat that always gets me compliments, and sometimes the orange chenille gloves I think I got at the Greenlake PCC nine billion years ago. Tights and boots. Three duvets on the bed…

  • Relaxating

    Well, it was Alice’s birthday, and as you know when it’s your birthday you get to do whatever you want, and what she wanted was for her and me to go down to Hanmer Springs in the South Island and go to the spa there for a weekend. I am a good and true and…

  • Skills

    Community transmission of contagious disease being what it is, I’ve been back working on Operation Swine this last week and a half, and I am so totally OVER IT, man Most people at work have been on this thing for like eight weeks now and everyone’s tired and everyone’s tense and everyone has the little…

  • Operation Swine

    Yesterday at work I was innocently lingering over my lunch when a new co-worker of mine motioned me over. “Um, what are you doing right now?” she asked. “Uh…totally important work,is what I’m doing,” I fake eye-rolled at her, finishing off the last of my third cup of tea. She’s new, this co-worker, but she…

  • Nights

    Nights I dreamed so hard I tore the sheets off the bed. Nights I looked at the clock and waited for the dinner to be over. Nights I spent online shopping for the perfect pair of knee-high boots. Nights I spent listening to the Disintegration album and writing made-up Sassy magazine interviews with my future…

  • Expertise

    I ought to be getting ready to run down the road and get on a bus to go to a little party in town; instead I am sitting on my couch with a terrible headache and a queasy tummy, miserably sipping Lady Grey tea and trying to enjoy the last smidge of sunset before I…

  • The American Thing, Again

    Last night I got an email from New Zealand Immigration saying that they’ve done the first stage of my residency application and needed some extra information about my job to continue on. This was pretty exciting because a) the information they wanted was really easy to get and I had it in the mail this…

  • Body And Mind

    Even though I started my new job last week, this past one was the first full-forty-hour week I’ve worked since

  • Anything Other Than Temporary

    I’m pretty glad I didn’t update last night after moving my stuff (which at this point in time consists of two stuffed-to-the-brim bags that barely made it into checked luggage and some very pretty bedding I got at the half-off sale at Briscoe’s last week) from my dear friend Alice’s house in Mt. Victoria to…

  • Anti-Climactic

    Today I woke up late because I was up talking with Alice until three in the morning, drank some tea, had lunch at the Italian cafĂŠ with my friend Julie, submitted my New Zealand residency application, went to Farmer’s for moisturizer, and stopped at New World to pick up ginger nuts on the way back…

  • Supposed To Be Packing

    I’m supposed to be packing but I had to make dinner and I had to ride the bike to the Quiet Gardens to take pictures of ibis and sandhill cranes, I had to drink tea, I had to read a book I borrowed from my sister. I’m supposed to be packing but I got a…

  • Not The Same But Similar

    “It’s not going to be the same,” my sweet friend Giulia wrote to me today in chat, “but it will be similar.” Ten days before I leave Miami, sixteen days before I get on the plane to Auckland, and you’d think I’d be consumed by details, you’d think I’d be all about my lists and…

  • Its Own Level Of Tiredness

    I took the bike over to the Quiet Gardens today, just to get out of the house for a while, and brought my book and my paper journal with me. I amused myself for a while counting the iguanas (ten) and monitor lizards (three) and sandhill cranes (three) and egrets (three or four) and ibis…

  • A Few More Weeks To Go

    This time next month, with all due consideration of time changes and the International Date Line, I’ll have just got into Wellington from San Francisco. I’ll have a couple of weeks before I start work–a couple of weeks to hug all my friends and to see if I recall how to get around the city,…

  • Contingency

    The last week or so, I guess, after I had to resubmit the visa, I was just starting to allow the concept of not going back to Wellington to lick at the edges of my brain, quickly and cautiously, nervously. After yet another paperwork-related mistake last Wednesday that involved panicked calls to the New Zealand…