Thursday, September 29, 2005

Mapua

Thursday and Friday last week I made a flying visit to Mapua, near Nelson, to catch up with my work assisting the clean-up of the former Fruitgrower's Chemical Company site.

Mapua is a lovely-enough place, but unfortunately it's somewhat overrun by hippies, Germans, patchouli oil, and abominable art. Actually, there's nothing much to distinguish it from the rest of the Greater Nelson and Tasman region, aside possibly from the 30-year legacy of the chemical-dump and it's associated health hazards. There's also a proper "naturalist" colony somewhere about.

But I fear I am being somewhat petty; the sun was shining, as it is wont to do, and the birds were singing, and you could hardly hear the Environmental Decontamination Ltd. plant rumbling away barely 100 metres away as it did it's thing; it's thing being to treat truckloads of contaminated material using a world-beating NZ-invented nil-environmental-impact treatment method of blasting the soil with ball bearings and glass marbles until all of the nasty chemical compounds break down. At the right we have my view of the treatment plant, taken from the stylish temporary-office-in-a-container on the site.

At some point on the Friday afternoon, somewhat overwhelmed by the glorious weather and the spectacular scenery, I went and stood on the front balcony of the world-reknowned Smokehouse restaurant, and shot for you, dear readers, this panorama:



It's a truly magnificent vista, as we sweep around from the view of the island directly opposite The Smokehouse, across the beautiful Waimea estuary, and fetching-up on the shore-frontage of what has been shown to be one of the most contaminated sites in all of New Zealand.

The coffee at The Smokehouse is truly some of the most awful I have ever tasted, but it's not the coffee they are known for. They are famous for their smoked fish of various sorts; all, presumably, caught right there in the estuary, and all, presumably, [sarcasm] relatively-free of the Aldrin, Lindane, Dieldrin, DDT, and other highly toxic dioxin pesticides which have been leaching into the water for at least the last 30 years. [/sarcasm]

On the Thursday night I got unfeasibly drunk with my brother, sister, and some of their friends - it turned into one of those "stay up all night and drink everything in the house" nights - and spent an uncomfortable couple of hours face down on the couch fighting a losing battle with the urge to expel the highly-acidic toxic-feeling liquids in my stomach. Eventually I gave up. Not really any kind of remediation, but a definite and successful decontamination, at the very least.

Bling of a Saturday night

While not even remotely in the league of the $1600 bottle of Hennessey cognac I spotted coming through duty-free recently, my $90 bottle of Herradura on Saturday night was by far the single-most expensive alcoholic beverage I've ever bought.

And, like the Islay single-malts it occupies this kinda price-bracket with, it's utterly delicious, and worth every cent. And in this writer's humble opinion, the nicest tequila around.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Storm-water my bitch up

So I get back from a couple of days in Nelson to this sight, across the road from my house:



and the sudden horrible realisation that my life is going to get considerably louder in the next few months (see second paragraph).

UPDATE: What I'd quite like to know, though, is how the goddamnhell they managed to get a resource consent which allowed them to start work at 6.30 in the morning.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Coming-up on Drinks-After-Work...

We examine the differences (and similarities) between a 1951 Martini made without gin, and a Dirty Bastard Bloody Mary made with horseradish sauce.

In the soon-to-be-bigger-and-better MP3-blogger section of our show, we will present no-fi electro (Coin, TV On the Radio), quite possibly the funniest album title ever (TV On The Radio's OK Calculator), greatest pop moments in Norwegian black metal (Emperor's Anthemn to the Welkin at Dusk), my new favourite band (Animal Collective), possibly even better than all this, brand-new-unreleased-and-quite-feasibly-never-to-be-so tracks from your gracious host; and many, many, more.

Also: local bar reviews (in the section entitled If Wellington Never Had Another Like This We'd Never Miss 'Er, Truly); smarmy-twat 'travel' writing (in the 101 Reasons Why No-one In Their Right Mind Would Live Here section); Blog-reviews (in the Sad, Miguided Also-Rans section); and the Definitive Compendium of Obituaries of Bob Moog (starting with the Economist one, probably).

EDIT: How much like Dr. Strangelove does Robert Moog look? Uncanny... kinda...

Obligatory post-election post

It was a good night, there at J's, watching the election-sport on the box. Drinks and pasta and friends of friends and shouting witticisms at the telly. That sort of thing. The only thing that would have made it sweeter was if one or more of the following had been banished from NZ politics forever:
Winston Peters (I guess you could call 16 hours in bed on Sunday with the mother-of-all-hangovers a "tangi", if you really wanted to)

Peter Dunne (I guess you could call being a snide petulant twat after the results came in "showing a bit of personality", if you really wanted to)

Rodney Hide (I guess you could call spending 5 weeks bullying the poor people of the Epsom electorate "time well-spent electioneering", if you wanted to)

Don Brash (I guess you could call not conceeding on election-night "a victory of sorts", if you wanted to)
But it was as if the Nation of New Zillud, like some sort of collective Powdered Toast Man, cried "cling tenaciously to my buttocks!" And by 'eck, they all did. And all lived to collect another MP's salary.

But I fucking swear, if Winston Peters somehow pulls another 1996 trick and ends up forming a government with the National Party after keeping the country on hold for 3 months, I'm going to steal a light-plane, fill it full of explosives, and fly the bastard into Parliament myself.

PS. The irony is, Mr "yawn yawn" Styles, that if your fucking product was as half as good a tool as it was sold to be, I'd have enough time to post three times a day. Print that out and stick it on your white-board of shame, you seedy Churton-park-poon-chasing prick.

Friday, September 09, 2005

I'm back. I'm bad. He's black and I'm mad.

Yep.. back. To be honest, not particularly thrilled about being so. Not that the internet appears to bear any proof of me ever having been away (apart from on this discussion forum).

I'm a little sleepy and I feel like I left my head in Sydney at the bottom of a bottle of Smirnoff Blue. I'm truly sorry for the lack of blogging. Oh, and get fucked Styles.

How's your day going? Mine is going:
Oh, am I awake? Must be time for a bloody mary and to go to the pub. Do I have to move any gear anywhere today? No? Good. Oh crap. I have to put on clean clothes and go to work. What's this strange feeling I am experiencing... why, I think it's hunger. How strange to be feeling hungry before 11 at night. Whatever can be going on. Ewww.. people I have to talk to about work stuff. Even worse, I have to make some sense. Can I go to the pub now? What about now? etc.

I've brought back some photos, and I'm pretty sure I didn't bring back any communicable diseases. Stay tuned.