Second Lake

Those are some of the photos I took at Rotorua or Second Lake as it's translated into English. I've got a tonne of photos from a certain movie set but I'm not allowed to show you those as I signed a big legal thing saying that I wouldn't. If you really want, I'll take pictures of the things I bought there so you can see those. They are pretty.

After the movie set I went to Te Puia for a tour and a Maori cultural evening. I saw geysers, the haka and a poi dance and I ate a hungi. The next day I did the duck tour and went to the Polynesian Spa which is apparently one of the top ten spas in the world.

Between my panic attack and sitting reading the Wikileaks book, I'm fairly sure I weirded out the other passengers on my flights.

In other news, I'll be back on the radio on Wednesday, 9-11pm Kiwi time. You can listen here if you fancy. I'm unofficially calling my show The Mixtape. The theme for next Wednesday is bands I've seen live. It could be an interesting mix!

I've also applied for my classes for next year. We'll see what I end up on. I also need to fill in my dissertation proposal form. I roughly know what I want to do, I just need to get round to filling in the form.

Finally got round to booking my bus tour for Easter. I can't confirm a seat on the exact date I want until nearer the time but theoretically I'll be leaving at some godawful time on the morning of April 15th and we'll take the interislander and arrive in Picton around lunchtime. I'm flying back from Queenstown on May 1st. It was a choice between paying more money and being very scared on a turboprop or staying on the coach and going through Christchurch. I decided that I feel more uneasy about earthquakes than I do about flying on iffy planes. But then again, I've been on more flights than I've experienced earthquakes. I slept through another one the other night.

I'm going to Reading over the August Bank Holiday and to Lincoln in September. I'm not sure when I'm going back to Norwich. I expect someone will invite me to something up there at some point. Hopefully we can figure out a promising date for my do at The Bicycle Shop that Lauren has offered to organise. Hopefully people will turn up. Lauren has promised to nag Kav, Christina and Tom to come. I may suggest that someone brings a Scrabble board. If nothing else, unless there's something major going on, Inigo will be there.

Diiiiiiiiiiiiirty

OMFG! Lush UK now has a whole new range of Dirty products!

For those of you with no idea what I'm on about, Dirty was a range that was sold by the Lush sister shop Be Never to Busy to Be Beautiful until everything turned to custard at the end of 2008.

Lush NZ doesn't have them yet. I know this because I was in Lush today.

It's my birthday next month. Just sayin'

Here is a picture of me on top of Mount Victoria and one of Wellington harbour.

I don't know why it's put the photos like that!

Herrow :3

It is I. I fail at updating this, it seems. I guess between eating pineapple lumps, trying to book gigs (nearly got one!) and pissing myself laughing at Uncyclopedia, there's no time for blogging!

Not a vast amount has happened in Kiwiland since I last wrote anything. Michelle and I went out for dinner to La Casa Pasta on Monday because neither of us fancied dinner at Vic. House. It cost just over $20 or about £10 as we call it.

On Wednesday we went to see HIStory which is a Michael Jackson tribute show. The tickets were free and the guy was pretty good. Before that I'd gone to an earthquake meeting for international students. It was taken by an Irish woman. She thought I was Irish. Weird accent is weird. Before that I went to my first tutorial/seminar. It was weird and awkward because some gobshite started effing and jeffing at the tutor and I was the only person who seemed to know anything about American politics in the 1890s. And before that I went out for lunch at Molly Malone's with my buddy Steffi and her boyfriend Chris.

At some point I'm going to make a spreadsheet of numbers to be rung if it all turns to custard in Wellington. I'll send that over to the parental unit and hope that they don't lose it. I've decided that I'm heading to Kelburn Park if things go wrong because it's A) Near me B) An open space C) High up and D) Near a civil defence centre.

In other news, Fuji have decided to send me a new camera. They sent one that takes AA batteries but the nice man in the camera shop decided I wouldn't like that so he's sending it back and asking for a lithium battery instead. He reckons I'll end up with a slightly better camera than before. Win? I certainly hope so as next week I'm going to Rotorua! I'm going to visit Hobbiton and a Maori centre on the Friday. Not sure about Saturday but there's a good chance I'll take the gondola up and then luge back down :)

In other other news, I've applied to write for the student newspaper but they fail and haven't gotten back to me. I do, however, have a training session with VBC tomorrow. It's from 2-3pm NZDT, which is 1-2am Friday on GMT and 5-6pm Thursday on PST. Any other timezone, you can work it out yourself.

In further news, I think I've figured out what I'm going to do over Easter. I shall book it in the morrow. It involves Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney. Yay!

Oh, and for those of you who haven't heard, I'm heading to Lincoln in September for Weekend at the Asylum, a steampunk event run by the Victorian Steampunk Society (just Google this.) I may well be an airship pirate.

Oh! And Michelle has invited me to a waffles, booze and stuff night on Saturday. I shall bring my unopened Kiwi cider, see what it's like.

British things :D

So, Friday was the 6 month anniversary of me leaving the country. Doesn't really feel like it lol.

In other news, yesterday I went to town with Tracy, Lucy and Michelle and we went to the 'big' New World (supermarket.) I had been forewarned that this branch had lots of British imports. They weren't kidding.

I ended up with the following items:

A mug

A box of Twinings

A pack of Galaxy

3 bags of Scampi Fries

A bottle of Irn Bru

A bottle of Coke

A bottle of cider

As they were imports they were way more expensive than normal but tbh I was just really excited to see British stuff. They also had Walkers crisps and Marmite crisps but they didn't have the special RND crisps. I have requested that we don't go back there unless I get an urgent need for Irn Bru or something lol.

Also, we had hash browns at brunch today. This made me very happy.

I felt another quake the other night and I've not felt two. This site will keep you informed, just look for stuff that says Wellington/Hutt/Petone.

Lack of sleeeeeeeeeeeep...

Yesterday I had my first earthquake (it was ok, it was over before I realised what was happening) and my first fire alarm. It was at 5:30am. I was not impressed. Michelle was even less impressed as she had a 9am class!

That's all for now, I think!

Fran Roberts, music PR intern

'tis true. I'm going to be booking shows for this lady here. I'll crack on with that this evening. It's written on my table o' time under LATE.

LATE = anything after 7. I figured if I'm meant to be dealing with people in the UK, it'd probably help if I did it at a reasonable time for them.

Er, wish me luck. I really don't want to screw this up...