Short message

On the trip through the Northlands. Has been great so far, and we will do a ship trip today. Big hello from Reinhard to the world, too :-)

Hell yeah!

After an HCI lecture full of students presentations (and Reinhard listening), and after visiting all outdoor shops in town failing to get leather-free hiking boots, and after fetching Primoz (Reinhards colleague from Wanganui) from the bus station, we went to a place called Hell Pizza.
It's a funny pizza place. Probably not too different from Domino's or Pizza Hut, but
1) they have their very own style (pretty dark)
2) they have a vegan pizza on their menu!!!

You can guess that I had to try that one :-)
It was good, a bit too hot for my taste though, and not too many vegetables on it. Have to remember that you can put avocado and refried beans on a pizza..

I will be away for the following week. It is Easter break, and we will be travelling the north of North Island.

Current mood: good but VERY tired

Muffin says: Good morning!

Yes, the morning started just great today: Lauren was baking muffins, and she tried my Egg Replacer powder for them. And so I had vegan muffins for breakfast!

They were very delicious, and the other flatmates did not even notice the difference to the last muffins with egg in them. Should have taken a picture..

Weekend achievements

• Got up at 6 on Saturday (after the party the previous day!)
• Went to Auckland
• Attended the Subway demo
• Watched Ice Age 2 in the cinema
• Went to bed at 8:30
• Slept for at least 12 hours
• Bought vegan shoes
• Ate a vegan sandwitch & a big chocolate Easter egg (Lauren helped a bit)
• Made it back home to Hamilton

Friday night castle

Last friday was the night of quite a few concerts in town. Big thanks to Sam for telling me about it :-)
And so we (Alex, Justin, Sam and me) made our way into town to see what was going on. We went to this place called The Castle. I haven't had a concert like this before. There were 3 "stages" (in two of them the bands were on the same level as the crowd), and after one band had finished on the first stage, another band started on the other stage. All that was basically happening in the same room. Interesting.

Was a good evening. The music was cool, but did not completely fascinate me - maybe I am just not enough into punk (yet?).

Vegan Vittles

Yesterday, after choir, I spent the rest of the evening and bits of the night to create a simple webpage. Alice had asked me for help, and as she has given me a place to stay in Auckland, it was clear that I wanted to help. I thought that I could do this in about an hour time anyways. I needed more time. Had to take and edit the picture(s), and I am not an experienced XHTML/CSS programmer at all.

Anyways. There it is, the work of a few hours:
www.veganvittles.co.nz

Feel free to comment :-)

Shoes for 2000 NZ$

Did you ever spend 2000 dollars for shoes? No?
I did. And I did not even know that I did.

I went to the SAFE store on Sunday to buy some shoes. There is not much to select from - at least if you are female with 40/41 European shoe size-, but I still found shoes that I liked. Which is very exciting, because it is my first pair of shoes that are explicitely vegan: no humans or other animals have been abused for my new shoes!

I was paying with the credit card and did not even look at the receipt. The lady in the shop had told me the price before anyways (198$). But then, on Monday, Amanda from SAFE contacted me that there was something wrong with my payment. I had paid more than 2200 dollars!!

Guess who is glad that Amanda had a closer look :-)

Stationary mobile

THIS, my dear friends, is an image from the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships that are taking place in Finland every year. And this is probably the best thing I could do with my mobile.

I mean, I am ok with the fact that my mobile does not recognize all the keys when I am typing too fast. I am also fine when the display has some blackouts now and then. But now I have to charge it for 2 days before I can switch it on and look for new TXT messages. I am not even talking about unplugging it or taking it with me!

Pretty annoying, I have to say.

Batteries are not available in stores any more. My mobile seems to be too old (Siemens ME45). And I am too lazy to look at TradeMe or something.

Whatever.

Balloons over Waikato

It's balloon time!
I went to university short before 8am today, and I counted 12 balloons up there in the sky. They were not directly above my head, so I guess that there were even more than a dozen. The big show, the NightGlow, will be going on on Saturday. Basically all people from the area will come and get together around the lake. Streets will be closed, and extra bus transport is arranged.

I hope that Alex will take some fantastic pictures of it. Because I decided not to go there. I will go to Auckland again to finally buy a second pair of shoes (hopefully, because my current pair is starting go become smelly, and I cannot even wash them without having something else to wear in the meantime), organize a few things and attend a demo. Had this idea to involve the kids by making chalk drawings on the floor. This will not be possible due to Auckland City regulations, and so it will be drawings on paper instead. Still I have to see how my idea works out.. And anyways, helping to make this world a better place is more important than glowing balloons, right?

Kiwi english for non-kiwis

Important: if you mean kiwi fruits, don't say kiwi.
Not vegan any more ;-)

Those crazy kiwis

After the Mexican fiesta I was ready for siesta.
But first (is there always a but?) I wanted to sort and upload the pictures of the day. It was already after midnight when somebody was knocking at my window. Already in pyjamas, I opend the blinds and found a drunk guy outside.
He turned out to be my neighbour, and he invited me to come over to join their party (I have my window closest to their place, so I could not overhear that there was a party going on..).

I was not really convinced to join their party, but I was still curious enough to get to know the people living next door. So I got dressed again and went there.

The good part:

• getting to know people
• chatting with the not completely wasted ones
• a little bit of dancing

The not that good part:

• guys asking nasty questions
• drunk guys touching
• drunk guys showing their asses in about 1 meter distance

Half an hour party was enough for me..
And I still had to finish the pictures ;-)

Glowworm: no ass, no mouth?

Weekend trip!
We had to work on our plan not to stay home all weekends. So we (Alex, Justin, Lauren and me plus Nadja and Daniel from Germany) went to see the Waitomo caves yesterday.

It was just about an hour drive there, which was very nice. I took some pictures with the SLR, just before the battery was empty. Should have charged it I guess. Fortunately, I had the small Sony camera with me.

Well, anyways. We finally arrived there and decided to go for the glowworm guided tour right away. We got a family ticket (don't ask me why ;-)) and went with Kaka Ahaka, our guide (name invented. too hard to remember his real name).

I really enjoyed the tour. It reminded me of being a tourist guide myself (on the Hohenwerfen Fortress). But this guide did a better job than I did back then, he even sang a Maori song in the cave cathedral. And I laughed my ass off when he was telling us the story about the life stages of a glowworm. He said that the larvas don't have asses, which leaves just two options:

• explode
• burning out their excrements and glow
  

Most of them go for the second option I guess..
And then, when they finally manage to be fully developed flies, guess what: They don't have a mouth! Which leaves them only one option:

• be dead in 3 days

The tour ended with a boat trip through the glowworm cave, which looks like an indoor starry sky. I like starry skies though ;-)

Back in the sun we were ready to walk around the area. There are really nice hiking trails, and we explored at least some of them (see pictures). After an hour or so we passed a car park, and 4 of us decided to go back and get something to eat. Alex and me wanted to see more and went on walking. And I think it was worth it. I liked walking, I liked the nature, the jungle feeling, the natural tunnels and caves, the river.

In the evening we had Mexican fiesta, which was basically us eating heaps of food. AWESOME!!

True love: a photo series

starring Lauren & Nashi (aka Paradise)