I like weather

Especially when it is as pretty as this:
The warm and still conditions on Saturday allowed a beautiful isolated cumulonimbus-with-anvil convection shower to form south of Wellington. Out of curiosity I had a look on the Wellington rain radar (link) to see if it showed up, and it turned out to be over the Inland Kaikoura's over 100 kilometres away.

Scientists have cooler toys

Listening to: Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen

How to make Ice Cream the quick and easy way:

First, gather your ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, vanilla etc):

Measure and add the ingredients to a suitably sized container, and mix until uniform.

Then dispense your Liquid Nitrogen:

Carefully add the nitrogen to the mix. Avoid splashing:

Mix until uniform:

Then serve!:

Should take about five minutes or so.

Tastes better when made in the prescence of a sweet/lolly cannon:

Spitfires and Auckland

Listening to: The new Dave Dobbyn compilation, and the new Shapeshifter album

A post in two parts

Part 1: Spitfire
Some of you may recall back in January I posted about a newly restored Second World War Spitfire that had suffered a landing accident (link here, below my account of overdosing on cold medication). Well they picked it up, sent it up to specialists in Auckland to be repaired, and it started flying again about ten days ago. So you can imagine how disappointing it must be for anyone interested or involved to see it looking like this today:

Picture copyright Stuff.co.nz

Another landing accident, and back to the workshop. I'm not even going to begin to speculate as to why, but this is just unfortunate whichever way you look at it. Buggar.

Part two: Non Pearl Jam related bits of Auckland
Or alternatively, 'How many pics can I put in a single post before blogspot tells me 'No!'". I've linked the relevant landmarks if you want more info

Around the concert we did some tiki-touring around Auckland on Friday and Saturday.

Auckland central city from One Tree Hill (yes U2 fans, that One Tree Hill). I think this is the only time I can recall that I have been on One Tree Hill on a completely clear day after numerous visits. Its an informal tradition for me that whenever I go to Auckland I got there:

One Tree Hill lies under one of the approach paths for Auckland International Airport, and while there I got my first real life glimpse of a 'Largest Airliner in the World tm' A380. Big beastie to be sure...
The summit of One Tree Hill was at least as windy as Wellington, as attested by travelling crew Kate, Iona, Reidun and Carly in this shot. Feel free to ask for a hi res version from me if you want to use this for Facebook profiles guys :)

A One Tree Hill tradition apparently is to spell out messages in the volcanic rocks lying around. Reidun aptly termed it 'Organic Grafitti':

Obelisk dedicated to the Maori People atop One Tree Hill. Which used to have one tree, until it was attacked by a Maori rights activist with a chainsaw a wee while ago:

The new-to-me atrium development at the Auckland Museum. I liked the juxtaposition of curves and straight and old and new:

The kids section of the museum had live versions of Nemo and Dory (shown about life size). We spent more time in this section than unaccompanied by children adults really should, but it was pretty cool.

They had geckos to. We waited ages for this one to nail the fly on it's head, but it was too patient for us. Our bloodlust was satisfied by another gecko/fly stalk and spring kill anyway, so we moved on.

They had inscrutable frogs too:

More interesting than the frogs though (and a lot bigger) were the dinosaurs, which will never be uncool:

The Museum also has a Spitfire, which even though it's a late war Merlin engined low-back Mark XVIe (one of my least favourite looking Spitfire marks), is still a Spitfire, and thus will never be without aura.

In addition to the Spitfire, the museum also possesses the ultimate Mitsubishi boy-racer vehicle, an A6M3 Zero, recovered by NZ forces in the Pacific near the end of the Second World War.

When in Auckland, there is a certain tendency to photograph the icons, like the Sky Tower (from the Domain in front of the museum):

The Bean Rock lighthouse. I always thought this would be an awesome place to live as a child:

The fountain in Mission Bay. Also somewhere I try and get to every time I am up there. Its a nice locale. Chasing up a pretty reliable sighting of Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper took us out there on a whim, as did our desire/need for good coffee. We aren't stalkers really, but we needed something to do after lunch:

After missing Eddie and Ben (although the member of our party who saw them got very close indeed, they almost ran over her kayak in their outrigger canoe. Unfortunately the rest of us weren't in on the Kayaking option) we headed to the Michael Savage Memorial at Bastion Point as the weather began to close in. Made for some moody shots.

A moody and broody Rangitoto from Bastion Point, with Bean Rock in the foreground. I like Rangitoto, to me it is more of an Auckland icon than the Skytower. I don't feel like I've been to Auckland until I have seen Rangitoto. I like its symetrical cones, and how new it looks (which geologically it is. It was formed less than 1000 years ago, and its last eruptions 600 odd years ago feature in local iwi memory). I also like that the island is a plain reminder of the fact that Auckland is built on a dormant volcanic field, meaning that the potential exists for the city to simply blow up one day:

The memorial is a popular wedding photo spot. Three parties turned up while we were there. Hopes of a wedding rumble were unfortunately not met.

One Tree Hill in a spot of sunshine photographed from Mount Eden. Like almost all the peaks in the Auckland urban area, both are extinct volcanic cones, part of the already mentioned Auckland Volcanic Field.

Looking across the Mount Eden crater toward the city. Navigating from Bastion Point to Mount Eden with Kate ('these roads don't have names on the map so I am ignoring them') navigating, me ('is Mount Eden actually in the suburb of Mount Eden?') driving, and Reidun succinctly interjecting from the back seat ('you know the big blue signs saying 'Mount Eden' might be worth following') was one of the comic highlights of the trip. I wanted to climb down to the bottom of the crater, but there was a sign saying it was tapu, so I didn't.

View of not quite native bush from Iona's verandah. Kate's friend Iona was the hostess with the mostest. She gave us a comfortable place to stay, cooked us dinner one night, took us to and from the concert, and even lent us her car while she was at work on Saturday. Plus she was fun to hang out with, and her and her brother's movie collection is paralyzing to behold. Legend.

Flying home on Sunday, Mount Ruapehu from 31,000 feet. I framed the winglet because I thought it made a nice composition. Kate and I agreed at lengt about the essential wrongness and absurdity and miraculous nature of strapping yourself into an aluminium, steel and fibreglass tube, to travel at over 800 kilometres per hour over 10 kilometres above the ground, and how it has become so normal as to be taken for granted.

Mounts Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe with their summer coats on (as opposed to their winter ones here).

Kate had the window seat and my camera and took an average of a photo per minute on our way south. She got some cool shots. This is one of the Makara wind turbines through a gap in the clouds.

Intrepidly, Kate kept shooting right up until touchdown at Wellington. I like this shot of the surfers at Lyall Bay.

Rock Music is good for babies

Listening to: Lost Dogs - Pearl Jam, plus a couple of old CD singles, Jeremy and Go.
Drinking: A nice cleanskin South East Australian merlot

Rock music is either good for babies, or conducive to making them, if the number of pregnant women I saw at the Pearl Jam concert on Friday is anything to go by.
Charlotte has already been to a Shihad gig and it didn't do her any harm (although she was admittedly in utero at the time):

Anyway, this post isn't about babies or baby making (fun as that is), this post is about the Pearl Jam concert I attended in Auckland a few nights ago.

If you aren't a Pearl Jam fan, you should probably skip this post, since I drop the too-cool-for-school act on this one and go all fanboy on your arses.

They wouldn't let me take my camera in, so instead of pictures of the actual gig, I can only give you a shot of happy punters leaving the stadium:

There are only so many ways I can say 'awesome', so I'll repeat what I have already said to some, and just say the gig was made of it.

Every music fan has an artist or band they have grown up with and old together. Pearl Jam is that band for me. I got into this band in my mid teens, half my lifetime ago. I bought 'Ten' on cassette way back in April 1993 (about 18months after it was released) with the first pay packet from my first 'proper' after school supermarket job, after hearing a lot of good buzz from schoolmates, and hearing it played in a music store. Funny to think it was the only Pearl Jam album then. Nine albums later I am still a fan, have all the albums, a lot of singles, a few live editions and all the compilations and liking them all in their own way. Its been 11 long years since Pearl Jam played in New Zealand (and I saw them live for the first time on that tour); when these dates were announced back in August getting a ticket was a no-brainer.

So after months of anticipation NotKate and I along with a couple of her flatmates flew up to Auckland on Thursday night for our Pearl Jam roadie (although technically speaking, since we flew, there wasn't much of a 'road' element to things, unless our tiki-touring around Auckland lookout spots on Saturday counts). After a pre match barbecue and drinks we arrived at Mt Smart Stadium as the afternoon turned to evening on a fine early summer day, stopping to check out the merch on the way in. The selection of souvenir T-shirts was above average, and there were several I could have taken home. In the end I grabbed only one and a pretty cool tour poster to go with it, which had beer spilled over it mere seconds after I bought it. Luckly the damage was minor and of the character adding variety rather than the complete waste kind.

Not letting the tragedy that was the only beer available being Lion Red, we found a nice spot on the grass to hang out in the sun before things kicked off in the form of Liam Finn. Once the music started the girls deserted me to seek their spot in the forward GA section, leaving me to make my long and lonely ascent to my seat in the upper tier of one of the grandstands. On the way I stopped for drinks and something that was optimistically called fish and chips for tea.

I missed most of Liam Finn's set. Just not that into him. I missed slightly less of Ben Harper and the Relentless 7's set, but I have seen him live before. A highlight was Eddie Vedder joining Harper mid set for a cover duet of 'Under Pressure' that for my money was better than seeing one of the original artists (David Bowie) perform the song a few years ago.

I should probably introduce at this point Mark and Nathan, the relentlessy entertaining young oil engineerng apprentices from Taranaki who had driven up that day in their van and were now sat beside me in the stand. They reminded me of well, me a long long time ago and made the evening much more interesting.

Having used the support acts to make sure I was fed, watered and toileted (not wanting to miss any of the main), I was well ready and anticipated when Pearl Jam took the stage right on sunset, and played for the next two and a half hours.

And it was brilliant, epic, awesome, amazing, enthralling, and a whole bunch of other superlatives. The crowd was right into it from the start, singing opener 'Daughter' along with Eddie. From my perspective I could see most of the crowd, and watching and hearing 30,000 people sing along was pretty cool, and a phenomenon that would be repeated again and again. It was awesome.

From 'Daughter' they went straight into 'Severed hand', and from there into a personal favourite 'Corduroy' and I just about floated out of my seat it sounded so good, and I was there and one of my favourite bands was right in front of playing one of my favourite songs and totally owning the place.

I've often said there is nothing quite like seeing your favourite songs performed live by the people that created them, and I'll freely admit I was getting a bit emotional by the middle of the set, in a good way. I may even have gotten misty eyed a few times, both for the exhiliration of being there, and at the reminders and evocations of good and bad times and people gone by (some of them long gone now indeed) elicited by the music. 1993 was a long time ago. I liked how Eddie dedicated 'Faithfull' to the local fans for turning up after an eleven year absence, and promised it wouldn't be so long before they return.

The vibe around the whole stadium felt good, and the crowd seemed pretty well behaved, apart from a troublesome group in the moshpit who Eddie called out twice ("Maintain!") in an amusing for the rest of us series of admonitions and requests to play nice. Twice the crowd was asked to move back between songs, and watching arond 15,000 people simultaneously take three steps back was neat. Also neat was the father behind me who brought his two pre teen children along to experience what proper quality rock and roll looks and sounds like (through earplugs).

For a bunch of guys now in their mid to late forties, Eddie, Mike, Jeff, Stone and Matt's stage presence is no less intense, dynamic and commanding than they were when I last saw them. They have a deserved reputation as one of the best live acts in the world, and they lived up to it on Friday. To be that intense at the end of a tour, and maintain it for more than two hours on stage was very impressive.

Also impressive was the setlist, with tracks from all but one album (nothing from 2003's 'Riot Act' was played), b-sides, covers, and rarely heard live tracks (full setlist here (link) ). Sure there were songs I would have liked to have heard ( a few more tracks of 'Vs', maybe 'Inside Job', 'You Are' or 'I am mine'), but thats far outweighed by the epic set that was delivered. One of the things I like about this band is that the quality of the recorded output they have delivered over the years is so high that they can pick and choose almost anything from their back catalogue to play and it will stand up, and in fact they do vary the setlist quite a lot. 'Alive' and 'Jeremy' weren't played in Auckland for example, but were played in Christchurch two nights later. In fact the Christchurch setlist (link here) is pretty much half different to the Auckland one, including yet more rarities and non-album tracks.

A few highlights:

- Eddie asking the crowd to step back for the second time, then simply saying "Here's Mike McCready", who then launched 'Even Flow'. Cue massive 30,000 strong sing along. Epic.
- Playing 'Black', then Eddie retrieving a "'Please play 'Black'" banner from the front of the crowd and draping it across the pickups.
-Noting there are still a few cigarette lighters being help up along with all the cellphones.
-Being old school enough to know all but one or two of the 28 song setlist.
-The funked up solo intro to what became an epic and sprawling verision of 'Porch', one of my favourite songs off 'Ten' and one I hadn't heard live before.
-Ben Harper playing slide guitar on 'Red Mosquito'
-The band starting to play 'Go', then seamlessly moving into 'Why Go' instead.
-Seeing them play longtime live cover 'Keep on Rockin' in the Free World'.
-Noting that the newer material is just as good as the older stuff live.
-Eddie Vedder still having the same amazing vocal range and power after all this time.
-Seeing one of my favourite songs from the 1998 concert ('Do the Evolution') performed again.
-Feeling the stand wobble as people jumped up and down
-The cover of Chris Knox's 'Not Given Lightly' with the Finns at the end.
-Closing with 'Yellow Ledbetter'. Expected and tradional, but none the worse for it. The last verse and bars of that song are particularly evocative of a certain time for me.

I could go on.

Nothing much else to say, except for a long time fan, this show was just made of awesome, and am still on a buzz four days later. Worth waiting eleven years for, and easily in my top five or even top three gigs of all time (now I just need to figure out what the other contenders are, plenty of choice there...) . That good, and damn glad I got to see it.

*For a slightly less rabid review, read here (link), and here (link).

Claim

3VAG4ZMY9BVY

Flying away

Dreamt last night I was flying to L.A. tomorrow, and planning accordingly.

I'm actually flying to Auckland tomorrow, which isn't quite as exotic.

I will be going to a Pearl Jam concert while I am up there though.

Which more than compensates in the short term for Auckland not quite being L.A.

Why I hate Masterchef Australia

Listening to: Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Noted from my limited viewing forays into Masterchef Australia (mainly centred around Friday night fish and chips with the family at my parents place).

It's not the wholly artificial time and presentation constraints.

It's not the needlessly antagonistic selection and elimination process.

It's not the pretentious and preening prima donna judges.

It's not the implicit hypocrisy of telling a contestant how rubbish they are, then eliminating them, only to tell them how great they are as they leave the building.

It's the shocking hygiene.

I might not be a chef, but I am trained in microbiology, and worked as an industrial microbiological technician for 8 years, with a main emphasis on not contaminating things with greeblies you don't want, plus a bit of microbial food testing for good measure. Bad microbial hygiene practice I've seen so far includes:

-We never see anyone washing their hands, even if it is implied.

-A contestant mixing wet ingredients in a bowl with her hands while wearing rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. Jewellery like this was expressly banned in the fermentation plant I worked at because of a high contamination risk, never mind the potential for rings or stones to end up in the food. You can't clean or sanitise jewellery by washing your hands, plus the bits of your hands underneath the jewellery won't get washed anyway. If you want clean hands the rings have to come off or you wear a glove you can sanitise.

-A contestant with her hair tied in long unsecured plaits thrown forward over her shoulders, at a perfect height to graze the workbench as she leaned over her dishes. Excellent way to pick up a staph infection, or just hair in your food.

-A contestant serving and presenting food with a fresh open wound on one of his fingers. Enough said.

I don't care if it is normal practice in professional kitchens. To see this stuff (and for the supposed expert judges (as shown/edited) to not even appear to notice let alone call anyone on it) is just gross.

Progress

Listening to: Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen

We went to a small bookfair raising funds for a local school yesterday, and I came away with a few old National Geographics to add to my yellow bordered collection of memorable issues.


In the December 1985 issue (Spine index : Titanic, The Vatican City/Its Treasures, Nicuragua, Daniel Boone, plus a 'The Making of America' map of the Ohio Valley) I came across this ad for Lufthansa:


So the flag carrier of Germany (actually only West Germany at the time. I think something called Interflug carted the easterners around from memory) is 'The World's most German Airline'. As opposed to who, Air France? Wow, who knew?


Also catching my eye was an ad for the latest in portable CD player technology, smaller than a CD case and weighing in at only 520 grams (lighter than 5 CD cases. Again, who knew?)
Somehow, (don't ask how or why, these things are unknowable) I still have my first ever walkman, from 1989. Weighing in a positively svelte 260 grams (without batteries, tape, or headphones), it was good for four or five hours listening (depending on how often you used fast forward or rewind), with the comedy bonus of hearing your favourite songs have their vocalists replaced by Leonard Cohen as the batteries wore down and the tape slowed, before eventually grinding to a halt altogether. Depending on the song length you could get up to twenty or so tracks on to a 90 minute (two sided) tape. This walkman had a direction reverser so you could change sides of the tape without having to pull the tape out of the machine and manually turn it over. Very advanced.My first discman from 2004 (I went for a long time without portable music after my last walkman died in the 90's). Weighs about 200 grams without CD or headphones, lasts for for or five hours again, but convieniently beeps through the headphones to warn of imminent battery failure before cutting out as the juice is exhausted. Actual playing time is slightly less than a cassette player, CD's being limited to 80 minutes (meaning amongst other things, that the cassette tape version of 'The Very Best of Supertramp' has more tracks on it than the CD version).
My first and current Mp3 player which I got at the end of last year (I'm a late technology adopter). Weighs 52 grams without headphones, and with added parafilm customisation to protect the display screen. Good for 16+ hours on a single charge, currently storing 776 songs and counting (I haven't filled it yet).
I think I might hang on to these to show Charlotte how things worked in the old days. Every kid should know how to re-spool a cassette tape after your player has munched it. Once upon a time it was an essential skill.....