You So Tall

Man Cooking: Rilettes

2012-01-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

I thought for the next iteration of man cooking I would choose something much less challenging, as brawn nearly broke me. Hence, rilettes.

The recipe which Brendan and I followed was an adaptation of Anthony Bourdain’s recipe (I know I know, I have difficulty following recipes), and goes something like this:
Remove skin from a large bit of pork belly.
Chop pork belly into inch cubes
Put the pork belly and a rabbit into a low oven, with a bit of liquid in the bottom of the dishes. My butcher was kind enough to joint my rabbit for me, which makes the subsequent stripping of meat easier.
The display on my oven has worn off so my temperatures are approximate, but mine was on about 80 degrees with the fan on.
Roast for at least five hours. I did it for six, because that is how I roll.
Go for a walk around the neighbourhood, but pop home to flip the meat intermittently.
Remove meat from oven.
Reserve liquid from dishes, and separate (AND KEEP!) the fat from the cooking liquid.
Allow meat to cool until you can handle it and shred a little. Be aware that the meat fibres will soften when stored, so err on the side of shredding roughly. Using two forks works quite well. Make sure the mixture is moist enough, adding a tiny amount of cooking liquid as required. We added a bit much, and ended up squeezing liquid out.
Pack into sterile storage containers, leaving a centimetre of headroom in the top of the containers, and refrigerate.
Once meat is cold (after half of an hour or so), heat up fat, and top up containers with warmed fat to cover. The reason you chill the meat before adding the fat is so that the fat remains on top of the meat to form a seal, and doesn’t permeate through the meat.
Allow the flavours to meld for at least three days before eating. This is the hardest part of the recipe.
If the meat is sealed properly it will keep in the fridge for a couple of months.

To serve, just scoop out and serve with toast. I like toasted brown bread, as that provides a nice contrast in texture. You could add sliced gherkin / capers / chutney if you wanted to get fancy, but to be honest why bother.

Overall impressions: 8/10, very favourable. It tastes really good, it is really easy to make, and it is easy to clean up afterward.

There is no way my rilettes is lasting two months in the fridge. We made more than we could fit into a dozen sealed containers, so I had a few unsealed containers as well. I scoffed these over the New Year period (with other people, what do you take me for?), and they were delicious. I shouldn’t eat any of the sealed containers just yet, because after the pig head incident I want to show Marie that man cooking can taste good.

What I might do differently next time:

Rather than roast for six hours, simmer for the same time period. There are recipes out there for both cooking techniques, and the roasting didn’t seem to add much.

Rather than adding rabbit to the pork belly, add a different meat for the following reasons: a) the rabbit was more expensive (£11) than the pork belly (£8), and b) the rabbit meat was quite fiddly to strip from the bones. Pheasant might be one option – the meat has a good flavour to it, the meat comes off the bone easily and they can be quite cheap – ie £2.50 per bird in high season in London, less in Scotland. If I were to add pheasant I wouldn’t cook for the full six hours with the pork belly, I would probably take this out after a couple of hours. Other game birds are more pricey once you look at how much meat they yield.

Next time I will definitely buy additional fat (we didn’t), rather than relying on the renderings from the pork belly. Most of the recipes suggest 200gm of pork fat to seal, and our belly gave out nowhere near that. I had to adulterate the renderings with some chicken fat and duck fat I had to hand. Not that this fat from multiple animals really matters, all you want is a sealing agent (you don’t need to eat this), and pork fat is infinitely cheaper than duck fat.

Flying without baggage

2012-01-11T14:17:00.000-08:00

M is in the States for work at the moment, and I am flying over to meet her in New York for three nights. Yes, as I said in my previous post, my life is pretty sweet right now.

I could easily get away with packing only my passport and my wallet. Bear with me while I explain: I know M has bought me a number of undergarments in NZ which are superior to those at a similar price point in the UK. Gold top socks, looking at you.
New York is going to be pretty cold (ie below freezing), so I will just be wearing the same outer casing of coat / scarf / gloves / jeans / boots all the time.
The only garments which I need to pack are three tee shirts. For the comedic value of flying without any baggage (ie no checked in bags + no carry on bags) I would be willing to purchase three tee shirts from a department store once I hit New York.
For toiletries, I can use Marie's moisturiser and deodorant for three days.

I am not sure if this would trump our mate Glen's backpacking around South America for nine months with carry on baggage only, that is < seven kilos. Clue: he weighed every item he took, including shaving products.
But, it would definitely come close.

And yet, I think I will take a hold all, just to avoid the attention of the airport security staff. I like to think I am reasonably open minded toward new experiences, but antagonising non-medical personnel who can legally fondle my prostate is skating on thin ice.

Travelling to New York today sir?
Yes.
How many bags to check in?
Zero.
Carry on bags.
Nada.
Any baggage at all?
Zip.
Please step this way, sir.

Christmas dinner

2011-12-25T09:24:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas wherever you may be, and in whichever time zone you might be.

This year is the first year we have had Christmas dinner in London, and my plan of hibernating until the New Year is coming along nicely. I think I went a little bit overboard with provisioning, I am a bad impulse shopper with food. Marie flies out tomorrow to head back to NZ for a week, and yesterday I could barely close the door of my fridge. "Oh my god, supermarkets are going to be closed for a whole day, I'd better purchase three kinds of cream so every eventuality is covered!" That kind of thing.
My only problem right now is working out how to consume all the delicious food in my house before I head back to work on January 4th, which means my life is pretty sweet.

People over here favour turkey for Christmas dinner, but I can't really see the point of turkey.
If you want to push the boat out on a celebration meal, why not goose? Turkey tends to be around 10 quid a kilo, where goose is around 12 quid so the differential is small. Yes a turkey will yield more food than a goose of equal weight, as quite a lot of the goose will render off as fat, but geese are easier to cook - just stick in the oven and it will baste itself.
If you don't want the strong flavour of goose, why not get a premium chicken? We went for a poulet de bresse, a chicken so snobby it comes with an AOC classification.

To start, 'crayfish' on avocado toast while the chicken was roasting. The dressing was a ketchup base, with horseradish, lime juice, tabasco, and worcestershire sauce. Super easy, super tasty. Next time I might fancy it up by trimming the toast and cutting into triangles.
The crayfish was good. I don't know exactly what kind of animal it came from, it definitely tasted like lobster but was the size of shrimp. Anyway, much easier to deal with than full size crayfish, and not so much mess to clean up afterward.

Onto the chicken. The clip on the cavity in the photo below is apparently proof that this is from the AOC approved area, in the same way that only sparkling wine from around Reims can be sold as champagne.

More importantly, what does this bad boy taste like? I favour leg over breast, and the amazing thing about this leg meat was the multiple and distinct granularities and tastes of the different muscles. I stole some of Marie's breast meat, and that was the most tender chicken I have ever had. She described it as buttery, which is the best description I can think of. The roasting technique was my standard lemon + thyme stuffed inside, with thyme rubbed into the outside, so any differences were definitely due to the chicken rather than my cooking.
Sides included potatoes roasted in duck fat (why have I never cooked with duck fat before?) and brussel sprouts par boiled then fried with bacon. Bacon really does make everything better, including brussel sprouts.

There was a cheese course in there somewhere, and Marie made a pav as well. Mmm delicious.

Banana and Ginger Bread: 7/10

2011-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

My team at work decided to have a week of baking, and mark each other's creations a la Come Dine with Me. My team is four guys and one girl, so this was not expected.

I haven't baked for years, and the only thing I could think of is Marie's banana bread which she calls idiot proof. Hypothesis, meet test.

I even carefully measured out ingredients using a scale, because apparently you need to do that with baking. The recipe is something like this, I halved the quantities below to do one loaf:
Mix half a pound of butter and half a pound of sugar. I was frightened by the volume of butter and sugar here, I had no idea banana bread had such a calorific starting point.
Beat in two eggs.
Sieve the following in: 3 cups flour, 3 tsp baking powder. At this point I added two tablespoons of ground ginger, my first departure from Marie's recipe.
Dissolve 2 tsp of baking soda in a little milk, and add.
Add 5-6 near rotting bananas. At this point I added a dash of vanilla extract, my second departure from Marie's recipe.
Line tin(s) with baking paper, and pour in.
Bake in a moderate oven (I used 180 fan) until an inserted knife comes out clean. This took about an hour or so for me.

The cake tasted good, and the ginger gave it a nice little kick on the end of the palate. My colleagues seemed to approve. So why only 7/10?
I think baking really does demand accuracy of ingredient measures and sticking to the recipe (at least for a novice baker). Two skills which don't really feature highly in my cooking, I have more of a "what would happen if I added this ingredient?" approach. Which sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.
Even though I tried to measure ingredients, I suspect my measuring was off by up to 20%. Electronic scales would be easier to read. And, I couldn't help adding bits and pieces (ginger) I had read on the interweb somewhere.

Maybe if there was some way to bake bread that incorporated meat. Pancakes with bacon and banana and maple syrup work, so maybe banana bread could be adulterated with bacon.

Things which make me cry with laughter

2011-11-30T13:14:00.000-08:00

Exhibit 1:
Charlie Brooker. Namely,
This Charlie Brooker column on Man vs Food. Now I love Man vs Food, and I am planning a pilgrimage to some of his temples, but I think I love Charlie Brooker more. I wish I could be this witty.

Exhibit 2:
Marie. More specifically, Marie trying to order her phone around. She got a phone with voice recognition software. Only problem, the software can't handle NZ accents at all. You are meant to be able to say "Text Simon" and dictate a text message to be sent to Simon.
It can't understand her, and thinks she is asking it to purchase tickets to Simon or somesuch. Well I laughed, anyway.

And because I spend most of my time thinking about food, check out my cottage pie. Not that you can see anything apart from potato, but this is still a work in progress.
I started by sweating leek and onion, added chili, beef mince, mushrooms, garlic and carrot in that order, and then dropped in a bit of tomato and some stock**. Mash on top is king edwards adulterated with much butter and parmesan.
I think the tomato lightened the liquids a bit too much, and this pie needs a bit of weight in the gravy. Maybe next time I might try slowly simmered beef shin, which would give it a bit of grunt.

**One giant step in quality assurance would be properly labelling my stocks when I freeze them - this might lead to more consistent cooking. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the blocks at the back might be pheasant rather than chicken.

Man Cooking: Brawn

2011-10-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Warning: the following text contains graphic images and representations of gastronomic carnage, and may not be suitable for vegetarians or fussy eaters.

Last weekend Brendan and I attempted to make brawn. For those of you unfamiliar with a nose to tail type diet, Brawn is similar to terrine and consists of meat suspended in jelly.
And, the part which nearly broke me, the meat is from a pig’s head.

We broadly followed the Fergus Henderson recipe. To summarise:
Simmer the pig’s head with vegetables, a couple of trotters (a great source of gelatin for the jelly), root vegetables and whatever seasoning or herbs you can find for over two hours. We ended up simmering for about four hours in some chicken stock I had made the day before, and some recipes advocate even longer in the pot. We didn’t faff around with brining beforehand. Firstly, I don’t have that much patience, and secondly, I didn’t have three kilos of salt.

Remove head and trotters from pot. Discard any other solids.
Once head and trotters are cool enough to handle, remove all meat and meat like substances (to paraphrase Fergus Henderson - the snout is neither fat nor meat nor cartilage, and yet is tasty) from the head and trotters.

After four hours simmering we could separate the meat with forks. Set meat and meat like substances aside. Bear in mind that for optimal taste sensations there needs to be a small amount of fat included here – this dish will never appear on any calorie controlled menus….
Reduce liquid down, and then cool.

To construct the brawn:
1) Line a dish with cling film, leaving plenty hanging over the sides
2) Add a layer of meat and meat like substances
3) Add a small amount of liquid to cover meat completely
Repeat (2) and (3) until dish is full
Whack brawn on counter top a couple of times, to displace any air bubbles.
Wrap overhanging cling film over top of brawn

Set a weight on top, and refrigerate until firm. I left mine for a week, but the gelatin in the liquid should only need overnight to solidify.

Serve as small slices, on brown toast, with large amounts of salt and pepper. The refrigeration dulls the seasoning, so it needs quite a bit to perk up.

How does it taste?
Really good, unless you spend too long thinking about where exactly it came from.
The meat had a good strong flavour, even though it had been simmered for a while.
After a week in a fridge the jelly was in no mood to crumble, and was very firm.

So what are the down sides, and why did this dish nearly break me?

It started when I was shaving the head prior to cooking - did I mention you have to shave your ingredients, and clean out the ear wax before you cook this bad boy? Before you ask, no I didn’t use Marie’s razor, I used mine. Anyway, I was shaving the eye lashes off when my shaving motion partially opened the pig’s eye. As though it was looking at me, silently reproaching me for my intrusion in the name of gluttony. And yes, I know it couldn’t see me, and yes I know we used to raise pigs when I was little, and yes I know I should harden up, but I still felt a small flutter in my stomach.

It got worse when we removed the meat and meat like substances from the pig head. When I was putting the head into the pot I could fly away to my happy place, and the head meat was still firmly attached to the skull. After four hours simmering the head meat separated from the skull, such that all I had to do was hold up the head meat and the skull fell away. A little gross, especially as the sole part of the head which refused to disconnect from the skull was behind the eyeball which had caused me discomfort earlier.

On a minor point, my kitchen was unprepared for brawn production.

For starters, the pig head I purchased was enormous. I have what I consider to be a gargantuan stock pot, but the pig head filled it up and left no room for the trotters, which I had to decant to a second pot. And, both these pots were overflowing which meant I couldn’t simmer them properly, and had to keep close watch on them. So, already this recipe has exceeded my kitchen’s capacity. And no, I can’t justify purchasing a bigger stock pot, my current pot already looks ridiculously large in our flat.
Second, I broke my tongs and spatula trying to manhandle the head – not only was it bulky, it also weighed in at around four kilos.

Finally, the smell produced from boiling pork, while not unpleasant, is not necessarily nice a la the aroma from roasting / grilling pork or bacon. Mmm bacon.

For five quid it is an extremely cheap day’s entertainment – We started at 930, and with lunch and pub breaks we didn’t finish until 4. However, I think if I was to ever do this again I would start with only half a pig’s head. Or find a smaller pig.

Also, I think I can safely add this to the list of foods I am only allowed to play with in an empty and well aired house.
Now the list reads: mutton pies, muttonbirds, and pig heads. Fair enough, methinks.

Where have all the misbehaving rockstars gone?

2011-10-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Marie picked up some prints a couple of years back, at an art gallery opposite her work which was closing down. Nothing pricey, just lowish print runs of some pretty pictures including this image from a series called Operation Magic Kingdom. We promptly stuck them on the walls, and I never thought to investigate who these prints were by.

It turns out they are by James Cauty, who in previous incantations was a member of the KLF, and a member of the Orb. Damn these multitalented people. Cue my favourite KLF song:

Which brings me on to a comparison with the music stars of today.

When James Cauty was in the KLF they burnt one million pounds in cash, and enthusiastically filmed themselves doing as some kind of expensive performance art. You could argue this enthusiasm was misplaced, given that Cauty publicly regretted setting fire to a million quid about ten years after the event, but rock stars have to engage in excessive behaviours, that is the rules.
(And yes, I am aware of the contradiction in dictating rules of rockstar misbehaviour which involve breaking social norms and rules.)

Where are the comparative excesses and/or ideologically driven impulses of today’s music stars? All the modern music I come into contact with feels commercially sanitised, and rock star excesses seem to be toned down and/or eliminated.

Exhibit 1: Iggy Pop - back in the 1970s he was pioneering stage diving and rolling around on stage in broken glass, and now he shills car insurance. I mean, really?
Yes his level of pharmaceutical consumption circa 1970s was completely unsustainable long term, but Keith Richards is still alive and falling out of coconut trees so at least some of the old guard have managed to avoid descending into wholesale consumerism.

Or have I become so jaded and cynical that nothing rock stars do is shocking or new? Is my nostalgia for rockstar misbehaviour misplaced?

Today was a good day

2011-09-29T09:29:00.001-07:00

Sometimes weather is something to be endured, where you have a good time in spite of the torrential rainstorm.
Today is not one of those days. When London pulls out late twenties + blazing sunshine, at the end of September, it is wondrous to behold. I used to think I was not too affected by the weather, but when it is sunny the entire mood of the neighbourhood changes.

Of course, there might have been other circumstances kicking in to make me feel so good today. Foremost would be M getting back from a work trip to the States this morning. Following that:

Taking the afternoon off work, with nothing in the way of commitments to impede a lazy afternoon of bothering M. With my public sector leave allocation I am definitely doing this more often.
Double espresso. x2
Bagel with stilton and homemade chutney
Reading a great book in the park
Listening to a soundtrack of church bells, a call to prayer, children playing (nice in an open area, not in a confined space), sirens - it is Hackney - and a xylophone somewhere being hit at random.

All of the above are nice, but when it is 28 degrees and blazing sun it is awesome.

I think part of the reason today is so freaking awesome is that last Monday I got soaked (meh) on the way to CIMA study (meh).
To represent this algebraically, meh x meh = meh squared.
I was sitting in class in damp denim, listening to the tutor explain Maslow's pyramid of needs and theories of marketing segmentation, and I couldn't stop thinking of the following Bill Hicks clip:

I think I would have an easier time with my CIMA if I didn't have thirty three years of prejudice colouring my absorption of information. There is no point in trying to write an exam answer telling the marker that all the theories of marketing are complete bollocks.
Rather, the path of least resistance to get the coveted pass mark is simply to regurgitate the marketing theories we have had paraded before us, like Joseph Smith's golden tablets.

Thus, out of impotent and ultimately pointless anger (Monday night) comes serenity (Thursday afternoon). Today was a good day.

Assymetrical information

2011-04-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

Last night in a Pimlico backstreet I found some of the most egregious wine pricing I have seen for a while.

Cloudy Bay Sav, for 26 pounds, at the bottom of a very short pub wine list.

This retails for around 19 in UK supermarkets, so the pub is only taking a markup of around a third. A quick look on the interweb shows other places flogging this for between 40 and 65 - the lower bound of this range is about what I would hope to find.

The pub in question wins quite a few CAMRA awards on account of its beer selection (they stock the idiosyncratic Berliner weisse, which I have never seen before outside Berlin!), and when I looked around I couldn't see anyone drinking wine. Decisions decisions - do I exploit their wine underpricing, or stick with the delicious weissenbock on tap. Mmm weissenbock.

Will Ferrell can do no wrong (almost)

2011-04-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Sure, Land of the Lost was absolutely terrible, but when he starred and wrote the production above I think he deserves one free pass.

Today is a great day

2011-04-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

I found out my bike thief’s sentence: three months custodial, suspended for twelve months. How do you like them apples? And, I didn’t even have to go to court as a witness because he pled guilty just before the trial. Booyaa!

In other not so empowering news, people more loquacious than I have investigated the latest UK budget and found that the OBR forecasts of growth are predicated on an increase in household debt. From False Economy:

Household debt is set to rise from £1,560bn in 2010 (160% of household income) to £2,126bn in 2015 (175% of income) – an increase of 36.3%. By 2015 UK households will have amassed over two trillion pounds worth of debt.

The household debt-to-income ratio (the best measure of how manageable the debt burden is) fell from 2007 until 2010. It is now forecast to start rising again. Osborne described pre-crisis household debt-to-income ratios as unsustainable – and yet the ratio is forecast to hit a new all-time high in 2015.

To put this another way, compare and contrast:
a) In February 2010 George Osborne described pre crisis household debt levels as unsustainable; and
b) In March 2011 George Osborne delivered a budget with growth forecasts built on household debt increasing to unsustainable levels.

Do the Tories think no-one will notice, or that no-one gives a shit? Either they consider the UK electorate simpletons or lazy, either of which could have led to them gaining power in the first place, so I guess they have a point.

2012 Olympics - what to buy?

2011-02-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

For those in London or likely to be in London in 2012, I have had a look through the timetable for the Olympics and as usual there is more that I want to go to than I have the financial resources to fund. Points to bear in mind:
1) All prices listed below are for the second most expensive price band available, unless specifically mentioned otherwise
2) All prices mentioned are per ticket

I am potentially interested in going into the ballot for the following events:

Basketball: £65 for daytime mens’ preliminary sessions (lasting four hours), £75 for evening mens’ preliminary sessions. The preliminary session covers two games, so you have four chances of seeing a top team. Womens’ are £50 for daytime preliminary sessions.
Not that WNBA players aren’t a) freakishly talented, and b) hot, but I reckon the gender differential is worth £15.
Quarterfinals jump to £85 for two mens’ games, so I reckon daytime mens’ preliminaries are the way forward. But quarterfinals does mean you will see four of the top eight teams (ie no minnows), so this is a really close choice.

Gymnastics: £95 for qualifying rounds (two hours), or the third most expensive tickets for qualifying rounds are £65. One gender per session.
Finals are £295, or £185 for third most expensive tickets.
Is anyone interested in chaperoning Marie to a mens’ qualifying round?

Maybe some of either:
a) Handball: £40 for preliminary sessions (three hours). Covers two games. £50 to see one quarterfinal, or
b) Volleyball: £55 for preliminary sessions (three hours). Covers two games. £65 to see two quarterfinals.

Weightlifting: £45 for preliminary sessions (four hours). Covers one lighter mens’ and one lighter womens’ weight class.
Or, if you just want to see one monster class (ie men weighing >105 kg) that is £45 for a two hour preliminary session.
£95 for one weight class final.

Opening and closing ceremonies: the lowest priced tickets for both are £20.12 – the next cheapest tickets are £150, and the most expensive ticket is £2,012 and £1,500 for the opening and closing ceremonies respectively.
The £20 tickets will get way over subscribed, but I think it is worth entering the ballot. There is a limit of four tickets per ceremony per application.

Ruled out on cost, at this point in time

Athletics: £95 for qualifying session (around three hours), £295 for cheaper medal sessions. Medal session for 100m mens’ final is £420 for second most expensive tickets, £725 for top tickets.

Beach volleyball: £65 for preliminaries lasting four hours – two mens’ + two womens’ matches. Yes I am a lech, but the view will be better on my TV.

Boxing: £75 for early sessions – 2.5 hours, however many fights that covers. Just a touch too expensive to be considered.

Track Cycling: £95 for qualifying sessions (only 90 minutes!), and £225 for medal sessions.
Diving: £95 for qualifying (only an hour!), £125 and up for medal sessions.
If the qualifying rounds for either of these were just a bit longer I might be interested, but a price north of a quid a minute is a bit steep.

Swimming: £95 for qualifying sessions (three hours), £295 for medal sessions.

One thing to be aware of here is that if you apply for four tickets to each of two events and are successful in the ballot, you have to purchase all eight tickets you applied for. You can sell the tickets back to the organisers a few months down the track, but an application for tickets is treated as a binding contract.

Irish terminal decline, two different ways

2011-02-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

First, a Vanity Fair piece by the brilliant Michael Lewis, plotting the nose diving Irish economy after the popping of their housing bubble. Heavy on the leprechaun references, but worth a read.
It contains the following brilliant description of the the Irish finance minister:

"[The finance minister] proceeds to make the collapse of the Irish economy as uninteresting as possible. This awkward social responsibility—normalizing a freak show—is now a meaningful part of the job of being Ireland’s finance minister. At just the moment the crazy uncle leapt from the cellar, the drunken aunt lurched through the front door and, in front of the entire family and many important guests, they carved each other to bits with hunting knives. Daddy must now reassure eyewitnesses that they didn’t see what they think they saw."

Second, the New York Times has a description of the crisis of faith facing the Catholic church in Ireland. The article does a good job describing the historical strength of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the depravity of the sex abuse scandals rocking the Irish Church.

"In proportion to its population, Ireland easily ranks as the country with the most reported cases of sex abuse within the church. It is second only to the United States in the total number of cases, despite a population approximately one-hundredth that of the U.S. The two reports published in 2009... fill five volumes and run more than 2,500 pages."

The New York Times link is quite graphic (words only!)- don't click unless you have a strong stomach.
I was horrified by Deliver us from Evil a few years back, a documentary worth seeking out about a serial paedophile priest who was at large in California in the 1970s. In some ways the NYT article is worse - sure the corruption and cover up in the US went quite a long way up the food chain, but the Irish corruption goes right to the top of the Catholic Church, including the current Pope whilst in his previous role leading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
I honestly don't see how an organisation which has participated in such wide deceit of the Irish population can possibly claim any moral authority or indeed legitimacy. At least they are not Scientologists...

Music which always makes me smile

2011-02-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

Embedding is disabled, so you have to click on the completely safe for work link below, but please do:
Dice by Finley Quaye always makes me smile. I don't know why, it just does. Bonus points if you can identify the awesome backing singer without reference to the interweb - I could.
That's right, I may wreak ungodly havoc on Anthony Bourdain recipes (never triple the volume of wine in a beef bourguignon just because you want to recycle the bottle), but at least I can identify backing singers on chill out compilations. Mmm beef bourguignon. Did I mention I have a casserole dish? Nom nom nom.

That is all for today. I have many things of import floating around my head, but none of them are developed enough to share right now.

Rabbit with chocolate and tomato - 6/10

2011-01-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

When we were back in NZ Dad served up his homegrown rabbit for dinner, and it was delicious.

I haven't cooked rabbit before, and as we returned to the UK with our trusty casserole I thought this would be worth a crack. I found a recipe for chocolate and tomato rabbit - apparently the original recipe was an Incan delicacy, with chihuahuas bred especially for eating. Probably tastier than the dog I had in Vietnam, but back to the rabbit recipe:

Brown rabbit and an onion
Cook for half an hour with a tin of tomatoes, a glass of white wine, some stock, and a stale bread roll broken into chunks. It was in the recipe, honest...
Add some garlic, 25g bitter chocolate, some almonds, a bit of parsley, and cook for another couple of hours.

Overall mark for the recipe: 6/10. Good, but no wow factor and it could be better. I couldn't really taste the chocolate, and also, after 3 hours (I cooked it a bit longer, and the rabbit was still very firm) the ingredients which weren't rabbit kind of lost their definition.
I think next time I will cook the rabbit for an hour and a half with just the liquids, remove meat from the bones, and cook the removed meat with the other ingredients for an hour. Wild rabbit really does need a long time at a low heat - at least the one I bought did - but it is quite tasty if you go to that effort. And relatively inexpensive - one rabbit was 4.50, and it easily yielded enough meat for three servings.
Maybe next time I will try rabbit pie. Mmm pie, everything is better in a pie.

Merry Christmas, now get off my lawn

2010-12-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of blasts from the past, specifically the start of my gig going years. TISM were absolutely mad, and the HLAH cover of I'm on Fire rocks.
The Cash version is also worthy, but I can't find a video of that one.

One of these is mindblowingly fantastic

2010-12-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

And one of these is fantastically mindblowing. Take your pick which is which.

Tom Jones

2010-11-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

We went to Tom Jones on Monday. The man has a new gospel album out, and he is even better live than on the album. The venue was Union Chapel, which happens to be both intimate (seating about 700) and down the road from our house. Bonus.

He still has all his top notes, and he is 70. I had no idea that he can go low as well - he can sing about as deep as I can, which means he has at least three octaves of pure power. Truly phenomenal. The video above doesn't quite capture his presence, he owns the stage.

If you were to be extremely vocally retentive you could observe that his tone is a touch huskier than in his younger years. But the counter argument is that he is enough of a legend that the change in tone makes him even better - Johnny Cash's American Recordings series is something similar.

As an example of how enduring he is: he introduced one song by talking about performing it with Elvis after hours in Elvis's hotel room, when they were both doing Vegas back in the 60s and 70s. Elvis!

An additional bonus of the evening was Lauren Pritchard, one of the introductory acts.

She also does a nice cover of Waterfalls by TLC.

Remi Galliard, part two

2010-11-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Following up his 2009 video compilation, check out the latest Remi Galliard vid below:

B Movie of the week

2010-11-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Hitcher, 2007 remake. Usually remakes are not as good as the originals, and in this case the original has Rutger Hauer so major kudos there, but this version still has some genuine jump / horror moments.

I just watched Sean Bean - the title villain - take out a rural police force complete with helicopter, to a soundtrack of Nine Inch Nails' Closer. O for Awesome. And thanks to the magic of youtube** , you can too.

Sean Bean has a wonderfully varied filmography. For all of his appearances in masterpieces - the Lord of the Rings, he also features in a hell of a lot of guilty pleasures - Death Race 2, Equilibrium, Silent Hill, and Ronin. The Hitcher definitely falls into the latter category, and it is awesome.

**Warning - the link contains strong language.

UK Employment Analysis

2010-10-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

So, in line with the Calculated Risk analysis from my previous post, the graph below shows recovery from the last three UK employment recessions, with the current employment recession shown in red. Click on the graph for an easier to read version. A couple of points:

1) I couldn't get hold of UK employment data by quarter prior to 1978, and

2) This employment recession doesn't factor in the impact of the UK public sector job cuts, just the drop in private sector employment from 2008 to date. The public sector hasn't been cut as yet, but the evil lizard Tories will be announcing their comprehensive spending review tomorrow which will set out the full extend of the upcoming public sector job losses.

PWC stated last week that half a million public sector jobs could be cut, with an equal number of private sector jobs in related industries going as well. Joy...

US post recession employment

2010-10-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

The graph below is taken from Calculated Risk, and shows US employment loss (and subsequent recovery) for all recessions from WW2 onward.
The red line is the movement in US employment from 2007 to date. I haven't been able to find analysis like this for the UK or NZ employment markets, but it is a pretty damning picture of the current US employment market.

Mongolian Throat Singing

2010-10-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

The singing kicks off about a minute in, and the first of his epic low notes is at 1:40.
I want to be able to make this noise. I am not sure where I would make it, and who would enjoy listening, but I want.

Economic Lunacy at the Tory Party Conference

2010-10-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

The Tories announced means testing of child benefits at their party conference the other day. This child benefit is about £1,700 per year for a couple of kids, and is a universal benefit. And given that this universal benefit is a major lever in getting the middle class to support the concept of a welfare state in the UK, the Tories figure that if they can remove this benefit they will reduce support for the welfare state.
At a high level this is quite a coherent strategy.**

However: the means testing announced by the Tories is complete and immediate loss of benefit for anyone earning over around £45k per year. So if you have a single income family unit earning £50k they lose £1,700, but if you have a two income family unit where the primary earner earns £40k and the secondary part time earner earns £20k for a combined family income of £60k, the family retains the £1,700 child benefit in its entirety.
There is no mention of tapering, big economic fail. An example of tapering would be a loss of child benefit equal to the amount earned over £45k, so at £45k you would lose zero child benefit, at £46k you would lose £1,000 of child benefit, and at £46,700 you would lose the child benefit in its entirety. My example of tapering is abrupt, but would avoid the current situation where someone earning £44,900 retains £1,700 of child benefit, and someone earning £45,100 retains £0 of child benefit (so is actually worse off).
When pressed on why the government isn’t means testing the entire family unit for the allowance, the Tories said that would be ‘too hard to implement, and would require major overhaul of the tax code’.
Boo fucking hoo. You want to implement a cut on the welfare state more drastic than anything enacted by Thatcher, that is the prerogative of being the ruling party (or at least the dominant partner in the ruling coalition). But you can’t get out of doing your homework to make the policy equitable by saying that is too hard. Go back to school and learn how to do numbers.
Oh, and the policy looks like it is disproportionately severe on widowed parents. Whoops.

When the general public duly erupted in the oh so predictable backlash (“when I said cut welfare, I meant cut welfare for other people”), the Tories responded by announcing a tax break for married couples / civil union partners.
This is social engineering in favour of smug marrieds / smug civil unioniseds, so raised my hackles a little. (I could pontificate about how your marital status shouldn’t be used as a proxy for tax policy, but that is verging on a philosophical debate rather than a factual debate. If you disagree with me I am not going to change your mind, ergo discussion is pointless)
But don’t worry about people going out and getting married for the tax break, because this tax break is…… wait for it…… £150 per year, offsetting 9% of the child benefit cut.

And there are murmurings of RPI + 3% average fare increases on the railways. Fare increases for the past few years have been set at RPI + 1%, and the Lib Dems campaigned on RPI -1% (ie fare cut in real terms). A couple of major problems here:
This is an indirect tax on rail commuters, who are reasonably likely to have just been affected by the removal of the child benefit as above, and
Depending on where the commuter is travelling this fare increase may go straight into the pocket of the private sector franchise operator, so the government doesn’t receive the full benefit of this tax. Economic lunacy.

I don’t mind parties making shit up when they are in opposition. All the opposition party has to do, and is required to do in order to regain power (assuming that the populace become disenchanted with the ruling party over time), is remind people that they exist and they are different to the governing party. The Tories could announce a policy of zero income tax and flat 30% consumption tax when they were in opposition and I wouldn’t be particularly bothered, just so long as they replace this with a less socially reprehensible policy when they seize power.
Announce fringe policies when in opposition, tack to the centre when assuming power. Everyone does it, nothing to see here.

To announce inequitable and makeshift policies like the three above when you are in power (well, announce two policies and release one rumour)? That is intellectual laziness.
To preside over the release of three intellectually lazy ideas in as many days? That is just plain sloppy.

I mean, the Tory politicos will have a squad of economists who should have called bullshit on this.
Or do the top dogs get together at their party conference, engage in unseemly behaviour and think up some wild ideas whilst under the influence of grade A pharmaceuticals, call said hallucinogenic ideas policy, and announce policy without running policy past any tax wonks?

**Note I said coherent, not desirable or compassionate. Thus methinks the overall coherent strategy was thought up long ago, back when the Tories were drooling in anticipation of single party rule. Suckers.

Busking how it should be

2010-10-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, busking outside Embankment tube with Balicky Bon. Holy shit these guys are awesome. I have seen them in concert a couple of times, nice to see them staying in touch with their (busking) roots.
One tell of an awesome live performer is whether they can recreate their studio sound whilst live, and for bonus points while acoustic. Here is the album version of Balicky Bon , and it sounds pretty similar to my ear....

Man crush part drei

2010-09-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

So, I finally found a reasonable quality live recording of Thing Well Made, and there is even a hi def option (in youtube, possibly not in the embedded file below). Shake and bake baby, shake and bake.

And for someone a little less musical but who always makes me smile:

Newbie cycling in London

2010-08-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

I bought a bike a couple of months back, and have been cycling from canonbury to victoria - about half an hour each way, with a slight incline down in the morning. The route I follow sweeps past Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall and the pelican pond in St James Park, so there is always something nice to look at.
Plus, there is a coffee cart en route with arguably the best coffee in London, which breaks up the morning commute nicely.

Thus far I have achieved the following milestones:
Had my bike stolen from within the communal area of our apartment block 36 hours after purchasing,
Had Marie find it on gumtree,
Popped round to check it was mine, called the cops and got the guy arrested, and got my bike back,
Had a minor crash trying to jump a deceptively high curb, injuring only my pride,
Yelled at numerous pedestrians for stepping out in front of my road,
Worked out exactly how long an emergency stop takes to avoid hitting said pedestrians, and
Worked out the hierarchy of London rush hour traffic. Bigger = right of way, but buses are polite.

It is surprisingly easy to commute in the summer, and interacting with traffic is not actually as bad as it looks from the pavement. The real test will be whether I can continue biking in winter, when it is dark both to and from work. Marie has started biking as well, which is nice.

I have a perfectly functional Trek hybrid, which does exactly what it says on the tin. By North London standards this is not a particularly fashionable bike, as it has multiple gears and multiple brakes. Since starting cycling I have started coveting various bikes of a more fashionable persuasion, but I can't really justify having two bikes. Yet.

Perfect Day

2010-07-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Lunch in sunny London Fields, watching the local denizens on parade.
A sublime gruyere, and a brie with enviable viscosity. No cutlery, so finger licking good.
Then home to watch the penultimate leg of the Tour de France.

My weekend

2010-07-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

One of the best musical experiences of my life, I am such a bogan. Skip to the last 30 seconds for some serious pyrotechnical action.

They didn't play Engel or Amerika, but they did play Du Reichst So Gut (my favourite) and Du Hast.

Still buzzing days later.

Florence

2010-03-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

Brief thoughts:
1) Michaelangelo's David is really really impressive. Alone this was worth the trip.
2) Italians really know how to cook steak, up there with the French. I never realised this before. Unlike the British, they aren't paranoid about Mad Cow so my roast beef at the central market was marinated in oil and rosemary and then lightly seared around the edges.
3) Fillet ala florentine is a kilo hunk of beef, minimum. I was yelled at for chewing the bone - photo to come shortly. Apparently I was only meant to pose with the bone, not actually gnaw on it.
3) You can get a martini with 42 Below vodka in Florence. It was everything a martini should be - ice cold and lethal, extremely large, and from New Zealand. When I got excited about the origin of the vodka, the bartender poured shots for me, him, the other bartender, and one of the regulars at the bar.
4) Coffee in Italy is consistently good, no matter where you get it. However, we didn't quite stumble over anywhere at the level of Dose or Flat Cap. Mind you, it took Marie and I a while to find excellent coffee in London, so accidentally finding it in a weekend in Florence was always going to be unlikely.

Big hair in slow motion

2010-02-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

Just because...

How big will my pension be?

2010-02-18T03:33:00.000-08:00

The following extremely simple table is taken from Library of Economics and Liberty, and shows the projected aging of the US population out to 2030 in the context of the US healthcare debate. Numbers are in millions.

Data drawn from US Census bureau, which happens to store international data as well.

My first thought was “impressive dataset, I do like data”. My second thought was “how does New Zealand compare, extrapolated out to 2040, and how will this affect my pension”?

This projected rise in >64 population from 552k in 2010 to 1.1m in 2040 is an increase of over 105%. This level of retiree growth in itself is not necessarily a concern, as New Zealand is incredibly sparsely populated and might be able to handle a doubled population. However this 105% growth in retirees is not matched by a rise in working age population – the 20-64 population only rises by 13% over the same period.

To put it another way: in 2010 there are 23 retirees (age >64) for each 100 workers (age 20-64). By 2040, this ratio has near-doubled to 43 retirees for each 100 workers.

Either
a) taxes on a relatively dwindling number of workers must increase to maintain pensions at historic levels, or
b) pensions must be slashed. The first of these is less politically workable, so slashing of pensions it is.
As at 2010 the NZ state pension for a married couple (my personal circumstances in 2040 all going to plan, logic holds for individual pensions) is NZD360 per week after tax in 2010 dollars.
If we assume the ratios above of 23/100 retirees/workers in 2010 sliding to 43/100 in 2040 prove accurate, and that tax rates on workers are held constant, and that any other factors are held constant, then in 2040 the state pension for a married couple must fall to NZD190 per week after tax in 2010 dollars (360 x 23/43).

Why 2040? I will be 62, so theoretically nearing retirement age. Welcome to the jungle…

Caveats of the above:
Yes I know 65 is potentially low as a retirement age, due to rising life expectancy. However projected (male and female combined) life expectancy only rises from 80.5 years in 2010 to 83.0 years in 2040, so this impact here is minor. Interestingly female life expectancy growth continues to outpace male life expectancy growth, so by 2040 females’ life expectancy of 85.7 years will be 5 years higher than males. Bring on the panthers.
Yes I know 20-64 is an arbitrary span for workers, due to university students etc not entering the labour force until their mid-twenties.

Housing unaffordability and intergenerational transfer of wealth

2010-02-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

Rather than me trying to paraphrase him, just go read Bernard Hickey's great NZ Herald column about the unaffordability of housing for generations X/Y.

Then after that, read David Slack's Public Address column on the same topic.

Brutal. Absolutely brutal.
Two years of living in the UK has turned me round to capital gains tax and/or some kind of land tax- I was previously agnostic, but now I reckon tax them till they bleed. Carefully targeted to minimise impact on pensioners, farmers, etc...
Throw in some kind of stamp duty (in the UK properties under 250k are exempt) and you might start to see some moderation.

I can't stop watching

2010-01-11T10:31:00.001-08:00

I think I have some kind of affliction, because I can't stop watching the clip below:

And in other news, this is a retrospective Praise Be on National Youth Choir through the years. My hair was quite terrible in 1998...

Evolution of a moustache

2009-12-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

Last month I grew a moustache. It was fundraising, honest, but more importantly it allowed me to establish exactly how long I take to grow a moustache, as opposed to just bumfluff.
Answer: 20 days, with real Tom Selleck properties kicking in around day 25.

While it was important for me to establish this duration, I don't think I will be entering Movember again any time soon. Pictorial history in reverse below. And yes there was trimming, otherwise the facial hair looks bad.

Day 30, on day release. Probably my pick of the pictures.

Day 30, intellectual look.

Day 25. The horror, the horror. Oh so itchy.

Day 20. This was about the point at which I became alarmed at how comfortable I was with said facial hair.

Day 15. Serious lateral coverage emerging here, in great need of trimming down to size.

Day 10. No real effort exerted yet. Given that my current winter shaving frequency is Sundays, this is equivalent to me forgetting to shave once.

Fore rib of beef - this steak is all man, all the time

2009-08-10T12:41:00.001-07:00

Last night I cooked a beef fore rib. The best way to describe this hunk of manliness: a 900 gram mutant steak, with a bone in it for extra caveman points. It is the first steak I have carved, rather than cutting....
Before photo, with beverage can for perspective:

And after photo. This monster is so big that I had to give it five mins each side in the pan, before baking for another quarter of an hour. And after that it was still medium rare all the way through.

Served with anchovy & parsley butter, frites, & green salad. Next time (oh yes, there will definitely be a next time) I think I will rest the steak longer - the hunt for the perfect steak continues.

Migration to and from New Zealand

2009-07-31T14:27:00.000-07:00

A while back I read something on Kiwiblog talking about the reduction in New Zealanders moving overseas.

So what exactly are the drivers underlying New Zealand’s migration?

New Zealanders leaving and returning

I produced graph (1) below from Statistics New Zealand Infoshare data, which shows permanent or long term migration to and from New Zealand, for New Zealand citizens, by quarter for the period 1980 to date.
I have used blue to indicate arrivals into NZ, green to indicate departures from NZ (shown as a negative figure), and brown to indicate net migration of New Zealanders.

One thing which jumps out of this graph is that migration into New Zealand by New Zealand citizens (ie the return of the diaspora) has remained constant for the past thirty years, fluctuating seasonally between 5,000 and 10,000 migrants per quarter.
Thus New Zealanders’ net migration is driven entirely by emigration from New Zealand. I can see three waves of migration in the past thirty years in graph (1), illustrated by my black arrows:
a) 1983-89 post Muldoon , ‘can the last to leave NZ turn the lights out’,
b) 1991-2001, and
c) 2003-2008.
I don’t know enough economic history to posit reasons behind the latter two waves, but it looks like the third wave of migration has abated and the net position is heading back toward zero net migration.
Interestingly, net migration has not stayed positive for more than one quarter at a time at any point since 1980. Thus, over the past thirty years New Zealanders have consistently left New Zealand (as a net position), the only variable has been how many have left in any given quarter.

So is New Zealand’s migration driven by New Zealanders leaving? In a word: partially.

Foreign citizens moving to New Zealand and subsequently emigrating

Graph (2) below shows permanent or long term migration to and from New Zealand, for non-New Zealand citizens (foreign citizens), by quarter for the period 1980 to date.

Here, the number of foreign citizens leaving New Zealand has remained constant, roughly, with 5,000 to 6,000 departures per quarter over the last five years. A example of this behaviour would be migrating to New Zealand and then migrating to Australia four years down the track, due to Australia’s tougher entry requirements from the original country.
The variance in net migration is driven by foreign citizens arriving in New Zealand, with two distinct waves:
a) 1991-1996, and
b) 1999-2002.

Thus we have two strong and highly fluctuating drivers on net migration: New Zealanders leaving the country, and foreign citizens. Which of these is stronger? Graph (3) shows these two migration flows, and their net effect (in brown)

The net effect here (brown line) is highly variable over the past thirty years, and over the last five years this net effect has been roughly equal to zero.

To get back to the original point:

Yes, there has been a marked slowdown in New Zealanders migrating overseas in the past few months. However, this has been cancelled out by an opposing slowdown in foreign citizens migrating to New Zealand.
So, the net migration effect (brown line in graph 3) is roughly equal to zero.

As an example of how this might impact 'ordinary' New Zealanders: If you are looking for a driver behind NZ house prices remaining high, migration is not it. Less New Zealanders are leaving NZ, so this could theoretically increase demand for housing stock. However less foreign citizens are entering NZ, so this would theoretically decrease demand for housing stock.
Net effect on housing due to migration= zero.

Take my breath away....

2009-07-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

No reason...

Things which make me smile

2009-07-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

1) Coming home to hot pizza and cold wine on the table, and Team America on the box.

2) Seeing the following on my walk to work yesterday:
a) A homeless man doing quite a good robot dance in Trafalgar Square.
b) A man carrying what I can only describe as a mannequin head, where the mannequin is a gorilla. The gorilla mannequin head was adorned with heart shaped sunglasses. The man was stroking the head as he walked along.
c) An elderly couple walking arm in arm, dressed smartly, smiling. When I saw them I immediately wanted to be that guy. Not right now, in 40 years I mean.

US recession and US/UK average hours worked - wonk wonk

2009-07-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

To continue on from the previous post about the UK economy, I thought I would see if the US economy was doing any better. Short non-wonky answer: no.

The official US unemployment rate rose last period to 9.5%. This is the highest official employment rate since 1983. You think that is bad? This ignores both underemployed people (ie people employed part time who want to work full time) and job seekers who have become so discouraged that they have given up looking for work. So exactly how deep and long is this recession? Calculated Risk have produced the following easy to read graph which I have copied to illustrate my next two points.

Depth of employment recession

The current US employment recession (red line) is the second deepest since WW2 in terms of recession from prior peak employment, with employment around 4.7% less than December 2007.

The only recession which went deeper was 1948 (navy blue line), and that recession rebounded back to prior peak employment in 22 months, so four months on from this point in time. I don’t know enough post WW2 US economic history to comment as to why the 1948 recession rebounded so quickly, but some kind of post war stimulus seems to be the answer here – maybe the Korean War and the start of the Cold War arms race.

If you look at the trajectory of the red line, there is no way this current recession is going to return to prior peak employment in the next four months, instead it will probably overtake the 1948 recession to become the deepest post WW2 recession.

Length of employment recession

The second thing which strikes me about this graph is the length of time which recent recessions have taken to return to prior peak employment. The 1990 recession (black line) took 30 months to return to prior peak employment, and the 2001 recession (brown line, popping of dot com bubble) took 46 months or just under four years to return to prior peak employment.

Economists describe this lag as a jobless recovery. The recovery is driven by productivity improvement or technological advancement rather than increases in number employed, which is basically the worst possible outcome for anyone remaining unemployed. GDP recovers and becomes positive again, so prices & rents begin to increase again, but the employment market still lags behind its prior peak employment.

Again, if you look at the trajectory of the red line, this current employment recession shows no signs of bottoming out any time soon, let alone returning to December 2007 levels. This current recession could outlast the 2001 in terms of length to become the longest post WW2 recession, but at this stage (18 months on from prior peak employment)

So how do you pick when an economy has bottomed out, and unemployment is about to abate?
One potential indicator is average hours worked. If companies want to increase their output at te end of a recession, their first response won't be to hire new staff in case the recession keeps going. Rather, the company will increase the hours worked by their existing staff.
So what is happening with US/UK average hours worked? Well, both the UK and UK governmental statistics bureaux have nice data mining interfaces, and the respective graphs for average hours worked over the period 1999 to date are as follows:

The US average hours worked isn't moving upward at all, so no pleasure here.

The UK average hours worked has curved up slightly, but it is only a movement from 36.6 hours in the three months finishing March 09 to 36.9 hours in the three months finishing May 09. I would call this statistical noise.

End of wonk.

Whoever said 'trust your gut instinct' didn't have my abdomen

2009-06-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Aargh, why is my gut instinct wrong in so many ways.

In a previous post, I had argued that
a) the dip in London employment caused by the current recession would be over by end of next year, and
b) the employment recovery in London would be driven by development from the Olympics and miscellaneous infrastructure works such as Crossrail.
Do you want to guess how my arguments stacked up against professional forecasters? That’s right, zero from two.

As part of my trains role I get access to forecasting data from Oxford Economics UK. I thought I would slice and dice this data to test my statements above.
Central London Employment for the period 2005-2018 according to OEF can be graphed below. (I haven’t quite worked out how to present graphs properly in Blogger, so excuse presentation formatting and double click on graph if too small.)

Peak employment occurred in the second quarter of 2008, and the trough of the recession will occur in the second quarter of 2011.
So my first argument, that the employment drop will bottom out by the end of 2010, is in error. Result.
One other thing to note is that employment will not return to peak 2008 levels until 2016, a lag of nearly eight years.

My second argument was that employment recovery in London will be driven by infrastructure development. If my argument is true, then we would see a surge in transport employment over the period 2008-2012, or possibly construction employment.
The graph below shows Central London Employment for selected industries, for the period 2004 to 2018. Both construction (dark green) and transport & communications (light green) are essentially static over the selected period. Thus my second argument is wrong too.
Business services (brown) rebounds to its 2008 peak by 2014, while financial services (blue) does not recover to its 2008 peak until after 2018. One of the only sectors which is recession proof is Health and education (orange), which is not too surprising.

Moral of the story: If you want to enter the financial services sector at any point in the next ten years, forget it and work in health or education instead.

So what drives the recovery? Business services.
If you look closely at this graph, you will see that I had to put Business Services on a secondary axis (y axis to 900k instead of 400k) to make the picture meaningful. Sure, London has other sectors, but Business Services provides 40% of Central London Employment so other sectors are far less important.

Now all I have to do is find a forecast of equivalent quality for New Zealand / Wellington to chew on.

Amaaaazing skills

2009-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Enjoy. I could try and explain how I came across the video above, but it gets a bit convoluted and involves a graffiti website I stumbled across while reading up on the new Hitachi 395 domestic high speed trains running out of St Pancras.

Someone in the bowels of the BBC has a sense of sarcasm

2009-06-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Just watching The Apprentice (BBC version). Don't judge me. Too much.

Anyway, one of the contestants just got introduced, with the gentle background theme music being Prodigy. Specifically, the intro to Smack My Bitch Up before the vocals kick in, so only 2% of the audience would have gotten the reference.

Ahahaha, this is up there with the time that TV3 used Shihad's Wait and See (below) as their theme song for one of their election night specials. Except better by a factor of infinity.

PS I should mention that the Prodigy music video is extremely Not Safe For Work, so don't go looking for it.

Man crush part two

2009-06-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

I started a new job in Victoria yesterday, so an hour's walk from the NE side of central London to the SW side. This means I walk through Covent Garden at 8am as all the traders rouse themselves, good times.

Today Miracle Sun came on my phones as I was wandering along, and it just felt right.
I am not erudite enough to fully explain why, go read epicurean deal maker if you need to read something written by people who write smart, this Don McGlashan song just worked for me.
I have previously revealed my man crush so this is just more of the same.
Even so, I challenge you to listen to this and tell me I should prefer Dave Dobbyn.....

Adjusted NZ unemployment up to 5.0%

2009-05-07T02:32:00.000-07:00

Image taken from Stats NZ Household Labour Force Survey March 2009

The bold line in the graph above shows New Zealand's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate. The big thing here is that unemployment has increased to 5.0% at March 09, up from 3.8% a year earlier.

This creates a strong incentive for Marie and I to stay in the UK for the new wee while, as the NZ recession is likely to outlast the UK recession. I can't provide a robust analysis backing this up, but a combination of Olympics regeneration efforts plus multi billion pound infrastructure investment means that the London economy should rebound reasonably soon (ie within the next year or so). Just so long as you don't work in banking, that industry might take a little longer. Plus I have an offer for a bells and whistles civil service perm job, go trains.

A secondary incentive for us to remain is the NZ housing market. I don't think the housing market bubble is anywhere near finished, but this stage I can't offer hard data, just conjecture and anecdotes.
It seems like the Wellington housing market is being artificially propped up by expatriates who have returned in the last year from overseas with mortgage deposits.
This influx of solvent buyers willing to purchase at current market prices has propped up house sale prices.
However the numbers of expatriates is not unlimited, so soon there will be a reduced number of buyers returning from overseas.
Thus the Wellington housing market will soon face a fall in buyer demand, so prices will soften.

Someone with more knowledge states that the propping up of NZ house prices from returning expatriates is a myth, with migration flows strongest from India, the Phillipines and South Africa. He forecasts an increase in unemployment to 8% and a dramatic fall in house prices.

So there you have it. A pessimistic summary of the 300 words above is that there are no jobs and a housing implosion waiting to happen in New Zealand. An alternate viewpoint is that we should wait out the NZ recession from the far side of the world, and engage in some cultural tourism while we are here.
On that note, we are off to Jersey this weekend to watch Eurovision in the only gay bar on the island, preceded by a live appearance by Nikki French - one of Britain's all time worst Eurovision entries. Good times.

WTF: Overheard doctors

2009-04-02T07:04:00.001-07:00

Last night in the UCH A&E department

Doctor 1, talking about a recent patient: He is the one who came in with the dog bite.
Doctor 2: At least dog bites are clean.
Doctor 1: Cleaner than humans.
Me, minding my own business in the corner: [Brain implodes]

Humour from people funnier than me: text messages I have received

2009-03-31T01:29:00.000-07:00

Someone pointed me in the direction of overheard everywhere.

For some reason I immediately thought of the random musings I have been sent by text message over the years. Sometimes someone sends me a text message which is so amusing that I keep it in my cellphone for future reference. The oldest message I kept in my phone simply said "Am about to have sex", which I kept for four years. The message was sent at 743am. The only reason I don't still have it is that I lost my phone. From my current archives, in no particular order:

'Cheers dude. Ive just had a disasterous trip to the shop. Im not leaving this party until I can.' Received 2pm.
'Im back and dying on the couch'. Received two hours later.

'I just had the best tube announcement: if you want to stop between tower hill and gloucester road... This tube will take you!' Received 730pm, I think this was after a Waitangi Day circle line pub crawl.

'Got so Pissed last night i can't feel my face! What time are you arriving?' Received 1pm. I had arrived.

'Um. Sure. New bathroom. Nice' In response to me asking if I could visit for a weekend.

'I still have my sweet heart though as our tolerance and drive thin our trousers grow bigger as does our love. Some cats can do relations big nuts is still boffing sharon from milan.' I sent this to myself for some reason.

'If anyone knows where the petrol cap button is on a Merc A Series or [is] near a web connect[ion], please can u ring me and tell me where it is!'

Bad Cover versions of Great Songs : I

2009-02-25T06:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I hear a cover version of a song, I wonder 'why did they do that?'
This might be because the cover is a completely faithful replica of the original, which doesn't add to my musical body of knowledge, or because the cover version omitted my favourite part of the original song - such as backing vocals or orchestration.

Then there are those cover versions which take everything that is holy about a great song and deconsecrate it, before throwing the remnants in a toilet and taking a giant poo to show who's the boss. After eating corn for lunch.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Novospace covering beds are burning. This German techno outfit made a multi album career out of covers of successful 1980s songs, including this one.

What is so abominable about this cover version, I hear you ask?
a) The original is a great Aussie rock song, which has been bastardised into a Eurodance single which sounds just like every other Eurodance single. Now don't get me wrong, I like my cheesy techno, but why does it have to be based on music I like, thus debasing my enjoyment of the original?
b) The original was written in protest at the Australian government's treatment of the Aborigines. Midnight Oil performed this song at the 2000 Olympics, dressed all in black with Sorry written across their backs. The cover is sung by people who don't appear to understand what they are singing.

I wouldn't be angry if they covered a crap original song. But why take a great song and strip it of everything meaningful? Original below:

One Nation under CCTV addendum

2009-02-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

As an addendum to my earlier post on surveillance, I have belatedly noticed a much better written post at Public Address on the same topic. I knew there was a reason I was reluctant to register my Oyster card.

PS there is a pub up the road from our place where the landlord is in a spot of bother for refusing to install CCTV in his pub. And, I see that there are more cameras around Kings Cross than I thought, 642 to be precise...

PPS I was surprised by how many London landmarks I recognised in the following Pet Shop Boys video, does this mean I am going native:

Don McGlashan is a demigod

2009-02-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

Don McGlashan is the greatest pop artist in New Zealand. A big call, but I think I can back up my hyperbole.

I will not let you down, off his album Warm Hand. For some reason this song in particular always has an effect on me, which is independent of its sterling use in movie soundtracks.

We went to see him a few weeks back, and it was mesmerising. I have seen him before a few times, but this time was way more intimate - just 50 people in a tiny Soho basement dive and him alone on stage. He played all my favourites (while you sleep, envy of angels, thing well made), and the nice thing about these three not being pop anthems was that no one sang along. Pet peeve averted...

his stage presence is incredible. It was just him on stage with a guitar and euphonium, and he was able to recreate songs like envy of angels with just a couple of loop pedals. His voice is in astonishing condition - he is 49 and still has all his high notes in chest voice. The clip below gives an idea of what I am talking about, it shows his musicality (and charismatic humour, which never goes amiss):

So that is his stage presence and general level of musicianship. Next, songwriting. Most of the music on the radio I can transcribe in my head, I-IV-V etc. Not to talk myself up, the majority of pop music chord patterns are not that complex. Not so Don McGlashan, his chords are sexy. (Which means I have outed myself as a complete music nerd, but you knew that already).

Finally, lyrics. From the opening of Thing well made:

She's wearing her don't talk to me face as she makes the kids' lunches
I oblige and quietly close the back door as I leave
I drive into town before the fog lifts
I sell sporting goods - I've got a shop not far from Cathedral Square
I like to open up early so fellas can come in on their way to work
And daydream around the rods and reels
while their breakfast's still warm inside them
Why don't you take a look.
I'm proud of my shop.
Almost everything's from overseas - you won't find a better selection

So there we have it, the holy trinity of stage presence/musicianship, songwriting, and lyrics. I accept that there may be other New Zealand pop artists who do one of these crafts as well as Don McGlashan. But no one else has all three.

Plus,for those who like men, I am told by reliable and multiple sources that Don McGlashan is one of the few examples of a hot male ginger, and that he has become hotter with age. We are not talking Jonas Brothers underage pretty boy looks, this is craggy/weathered man hotness. Apparently.If you're into it.

The perils of a Moroccon keyboard layout

2008-12-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

Or not corrected: The perils of q ?oroccon keyboqrd lqyout;

I hqve encountered centrql europeqn keyboqrd lqyouts before; zhere the z qnd y keys qre trqnsposed fro, the trqditionql zestern lqyout; This hqs ,eqnt thqt qny e,qils; zhile grossly ,ispelt; qre still co,prehensible

Hozever the ,oroccon keyboqrd lqyout is co,pletely foreign: The keys qre set out qs follozsM; zhich renders typing just qbout inc,prehensibleM

azertyuiop; insteqd of qwertyuiop
qsdfghjklm; insteqd of asdfghjkl:
wxcvbn,; insteqd of zxcvbnm,.

Bqsicqlly; the lqyout is sufficiently different thqt I zould hqve to resort to one finger typing in order to co,unnicqte effectively:

So I guess I zill be spending the rest of ,y ti,e here sitting on the beqch; trying to qlleviqte ,y sickly zhite co,plexion: Qnd eqting tqgine for christ,qs dinner: Zoe is ,e:

The more things change, the more they stay the same

2008-12-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Back in the day I used to sing in Wellington Youth Choir and then NZ Secondary Students' Choir. Every so often when I was singing in these choirs, we would get a piece of music with the stamp 'National Youth Choir - authorised copy when in colour'. Sometimes the stamp was in colour, sometimes it wasn't. Every time I got one of these copies I would imagine that it had previously been handled by some singing deity, and I had to slavishly follow any written directions even if they were in another part.

Then I joined National Youth Choir, and discovered that the singing deities were in fact human. Very human.

I joined a choir in London a few months back, and one of the pieces we received for our upcoming Christmas concert is embossed with the stamp 'Harry Christopher - The Sixteen'.

Serious deja vu.

Frustration is:

2008-11-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Trying to follow US presidential results with an internet connection which suddenly develops an aversion to US based websites. Like the ones reporting US presidential results.

Luckily BBC has streaming coverage, so I don't have to wait for results more than my artificially shortened attention span can handle. However I do have to sit through the presenters trying to explain the US electoral college system to BBC viewers - bear in mind that I have yet to find a British person who understands MMP, so complex voting systems are not easily understood here.

The next question is whether TVNZ will be offering streaming of the NZ elections this weekend, I hope so. If not I may phone home. Frequently.

Homesickness at unexpected moments

2008-09-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

I realised the other day that it has been over a year since I left NZ.

In that time I have had a few pangs of homesickness, but they have not come when I was expecting them. Which I guess is the point. When my cousin got married, it wasn’t not being at the wedding which triggered pangs of homesickness, it was hearing stories afterward about (mundane to non-family) shenanigans.

Shapeshifter played a concert a few months back. We got in just as they were starting up, and my first thought was “Yeah, this could be a pretty good concert. Lots of bright lights – check. Amped crowd – check. Thick NZ accents everywhere – check.” That turned out to be a slight understatement…

Their second song was New Day Come (audio above), and the moment it started all I could think of was my old walk to work, from Newtown all the way down Cuba St and then along the waterfront. On a crisp winter morning the sun would be nicely framed in the hills beyond the Hutt, rising on a slowly wakening city. Why did this song trigger such a strong reaction in me? I don’t know, but when the bass kicked in I was riding a wave of pure emotion – part musical ecstasy, part homesickness, a very potent mix.

It is not that I am having a crap time, far from it. Also, there are a number of travel and work opportunities possible in London which are simply not possible in NZ. But, and this is a 100% guaranteed but, I don't think I could live here permanently.
To put it another way: I am sure I will move back to Wellington in x years time. Currently x is undetermined.

U can't touch my low budget recording

2008-06-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

Just because...

My latest toy is a pair of headphones replacing my trusty old pair, which were slowly sinking into obsolescence. This has both good and bad consequences.

On the plus side, I can now hear minor details in recordings which have been engineered to include these, such as bluegrass or dense electronica.
On the minus side, I can now hear minor details in recordings which were were not engineered to include these. A prime example of this is MC Hammer. I had previously enjoyed U can't touch this in ignorance of the chorus vocals. I can't be entirely sure, but the backing vocals in the chorus cut off so sharply that it is either:
a) played on a synthesiser set to 'vocal'- I kid you not, or
b) the vocals have been artificially clipped in the post recording process, which would only be done if the singers couldn't come off in unison.
I am leaning toward explanation (a), which is seriously budget. The interesting (to me, anyway) thing is that Pray has much better production values, and that is off the same album.

Serves me right for listening to early 1990s cheese I guess.

Bilbao & San Sebastian

2008-06-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, side profile.

Marie and I took advantage of a recent bank holiday weekend to go to Spain. I really enjoyed the Tudor Consort trip to Tolosa a few years back, and wanted to show Marie this Basque area of Spain, so we went to Bilbao & San Sebastian with a mate Rachael.

I have decided that I am an essentially lazy planner, and am reluctant to do too much more forward planning than is necessary for a short holiday.
Flights - check.
Visas needed - not applicable.
Accommodation - check.
Flick through first few pages of guidebook to work out things which we absolutely have to do - check. The number one thing in all of Spain according to our guidebook was the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and number 22 was tapas in San Sebastian, so that was never going to be hard to cover.
Everything else - it will work out along the way.
This attitude is pretty much all you need for Spain. I was a little worried beforehand about the frequency of buses between Bilbao and San Sebastian, but they went on the hour even on Sundays so no need to worry there.

The Guggenheim in Bilbao was amazing, even before I went inside. My photos don't really do it justice, as the curves of the building are unlike anything I have seen before.
The contents were all modern art, with the permanent stuff being large scale installed pieces and the featured exhibition was on surrealism. It was nice, I liked it.

Apart from the Guggenheim, the other focus of our trip was the food. As you would expect, the tapas was great. The general idea of nightlife in Spain doesn't revolve around getting drunk (unlike NZ/UK), rather it is about socialising with friends/family, eating a little bit and as an afterthought having a few drinks.
On our first evening out I couldn't work out what was different about the vibe. I eventually realised that:
the groups of young men wandering around weren't as drunk as I was used to navigating, there was no hostility emanating from them, there were both elderly and infants out enjoying themselves in the crowd until quite late in the evening, and that guy crouched in the doorway over there? In London he would have been going for a pee, in Bilbao he was merely crouching over to hear his cellphone better.
A couple of things which slow down the speed of intoxication: you have something to eat with every drink, and the measures of wine are slightly smaller so you don't get drunk as fast.
Our first night in Bilbao we wandered around the old quarter eating tapas until we ended up in a seedy little dive chatting to some random guy who was propping up the bar. I didn't realise until I went to settle the tab that he had been surreptitiously paying for our drinks, it was one of those situations where instead of fully comprehending why you just pay the reduced bill, smile, and leave.

From Bilbao we went to the coast, to San Sebastian, which apparently has some of the best tapas in Spain. The pic below is at a dockside seafood restaurant, where we had a very tasty paella and some roast sardines. I never realised that sardines could taste better than they do from a tin, these ones were about four times the size and four times as tasty. Mmm seafood.

Lastly, I also found an advertisement for German beer which is a little more camp than I was expecting...

One Nation under CCTV

2008-05-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

'One Nation Under CCTV', just off Oxford Street, picture lifted from Google Images. Note the camera on the right, and the barbed wire fence in the foreground. Quite impressive.

I came across the Banksy above when I out at lunch a couple of weeks back. Like any good bit of art, it made me think.
I am not this blog's expert on CCTV, given that Marie did a research project on it during her Honours year, so I can't expound on whether cctv is actually effective as a crime prevention or crime detection tool with anything to back my statements up. And if there is one thing you don't want to do, it is to contradict a crim geek in their area of expertise. What I can say is that Britain is the most heavily surveilled country in the world, and my personal experience is that there are cameras everywhere.

After admiring the Banksy for a while, I wondered exactly how many CCTV cameras capture my image; more specifically, how many cameras do I walk under on my daily walk to work.

The next morning I reached 17 cameras as a first count, which is quite high for an 18 minute walk. Nearly one a minute, that is pretty heavy surveillance I thought. But wait, it gets worse...

Once I began actively looking for them, I started to see cameras everywhere I looked. There are a couple of major reasons for this:
1) My walk to work is past Kings Cross, which as a major train station and past terrorism target is one of the most heavily surveilled public areas I have ever seen, and
2) I walk along the north eastern fringe of the London congestion zone, so there are cameras everywhere looking for congestion fee dodgers.
This meant that my number of cameras just kept going up, to the point where my initial tally of 17 appeared woefully inadequate. My revised tally is 48, comprising 27 in the first four minutes of my walk past kings cross) and the remainder down Euston.

That is one camera every 23 seconds. Unbelievable.

What happens to this camera footage? Does anyone look at it? Should I take more care in my appearance when I pop out for the paper in the morning?

Bordeaux

2008-04-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago Marie and I went to Bordeaux for three nights, and it was great. Richard and Rachel organised everything, which was very nice. All we had to do was turn up to the airport- I like this style of holiday a lot.
We stayed in the converted watermill above, which had a bunch of little crannies to curl up in when the open plan kitchen/dining floor was temporarily unappealing, and there were kayaks to paddle up the river. Not that I am a good paddler.

The main focus of our trip was wine, and this photo shows part of the regional wine tasting we had on one of our evenings. Hehe.
And after tasting a whole bunch of Bordeaux wines, it would be impolite not to ship at least a few back to the UK. Thus, after spending our last six months in NZ consuming the end of our wine cellar we now have a new wine cellar, even if it is still single digits for now.

On our first evening we went to a local restaurant to celebrate Richard's 30th. I quite like the idea of significant birthdays occuring in foreign countries, it makes the birthday dinner so much more exciting. The menu was entirely in French, and one of the starters was cote de something. This was initially translated as 'foot of animal', and I was hooked without any further information. It turned out to be from a pig, so a pig trotter. However it was not presented in its entirety, rather the meat was shaved off so no chewing of hooves. It was the best starter I have ever had.
This was followed by a entrecote steak, which is a cut of meat I haven't encountered before with a bordelaise sauce. Best steak I have ever eaten.
The one thing which 'let down' the meal as a whole was the dessert- a cheeseboard. Not that the cheese was bad, it was great. It just didn't reach the same heights as the first two courses.

I worked out where I left my car, and I even think I got a little bit of sun, which was quite foreign given that it snowed in London the previous weekend...

a tourist in windsor

2008-03-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

Further to Simon's post below, my contribution is as follows...
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the location of Windsor in relation to London the number of low flying aircraft (on their way to Heathrow) as you are touring the grounds and seeing the ancient sites may come as a surprise.

Apparently one (allegedly) American tourist once voiced his surprise to a castle tour guide asking "why did they build the castle in the flight path of Heathrow?"

that is all

Paris- all about the food

2008-03-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

Obligatory photo in front of famous landmark, in which subjects are actually partially obscuring said landmark.

Marie took me to Paris a few weekends back. It was for my birthday, very nice.

Executive summary: I like Paris. A lot.

Our weekend got off to a slightly rushed start. However I am pleased to confirm that we can wake up 40 minutes before our Eurostar pulls out of St Pancras Station, and still make the train. And we hadn't packed, and were slightly hungover. Ahhhhh fun times. The Eurostar train was nice and shiny, and it went really fast. A couple of weeks beforehand I had been for a run north of our place under a shiny new rail bridge which was severely over engineered in comparison with the rickety bridges back home. And yes, the over engineered bridge was for the Eurostar trains so they can go 180 mph. Maybe not through inner London, but still impressive...

We went to Hidden Kitchen, and it was very good. Menu as follows:
Spicy carrot soup with sweet pea linguini
Fava beans with green goddess dressing and arzak egg- probably the highlight for me
Smoked trout with buttermilk greens and roasted beets
Sauteed mackerel with sunchoke puree, blood orange and green onion salad
Cleanser
Crispy carnitas with taco salad, shallot creme fraiche and caramelized onions
White salad with brioche croutons
Turkish coffee semi freddo with cinnamon doughnuts
Petits fours

After gorging ourselves there, we went on a bike ride the next day to even up our calorific footprint. Which I then abused with a quite nice dinner that evening, where Marie ordered a blue cheese salad so strong she had to swap for my foie gras.
The next morning I managed to get through an entire series of transactions at the patisserie without reverting to English. The fact that my french is pretty much limited to yes meant that I bought a lot of sweet treats. Dialogue as follows:

"Stream of uncomprehended french"
"Oui"
Mystery pastry item goes in bag
"Longer stream of uncomprehended french"
"Oui"
Mystery chocolate item goes in bag
Et cetera

I did have the best intentions to go to a bunch of museums, and see cultural things like Rodin's thinker. But Paris museums apparently all close on Mondays - my designated day of culture this trip- so I had to eat steak instead. Woe is me. And yes, this trip ended up being mostly about food.

I like this photo. That is all.

And, I saw a fantastic mullet couple outside the Louvre and tried to go in for a mullet touch. It was not to be.

Windsor

2008-02-19T11:50:00.001-08:00

Windsor Castle at dusk, sun setting over the barracks for the Queen's personal guard (all SAS, naturally).

One of the things I had forgotten before moving to the UK was the number of years history underlying the UK, compared to < 200 years of European settlement in New Zealand. We went up to Windsor to see Madden for the weekend, and of course there are numerous examples of things just casually lying around which are very very old. For example, in the middle of the chapel nave (chapel first built in 1392) there is a simple plaque to mark the point where Henry VIII (died 1547) and Charles I (beheaded 1649) are buried. This tomb is not in any demarcated area- you walk over it to enter the choir stalls. I wonder if that was deliberate....

One of the other pieces of history which impressed me was the Order of the Garter. This is limited to 24 members (Knights) at any given time, has been personally selected by the sovereign since the 14th century, and vacancies only arise when existing Knights die. So a fairly exclusive club. Sir Edmund Hillary was a member, only the second New Zealand member ever after Keith Holyoake.

More below:

Word on the street is that there is an upcoming memorial service to be held at Windsor later this year, at which point Sir Ed's garter flag will be presented to his family. Until that time, there is a wreath on his seat in the chapel (each Knight has a designated seat, I guess to avoid seating issues).

Aside from the chapel interior, the rest of Windsor is also impressive. We went for a wander along the Long Walk, and after walking for about 9 miles round trip Madden thought we covered around 10% of the Windsor Park. From the elevated section of the Park you get a great view of the castle and chapel, which also covers Heathrow, Wembley, Eton and Slough. Apparently on a clear day you can see the Gherkin in central London, but there was a fairly thick layer of smog when we were up there so no long distance views for us. At least that is the explanation I am running with for my photo quality...
One of the English things I am starting to enjoy is the predilection for large green areas open to the public. And yes, one of the reasons I am starting to enjoy going for a walk in a park is that there are very few green areas within walking distance of our house.

Scottish Signage

2008-01-04T16:16:00.000-08:00

Goochickant, aka vaguely ridiculous meals I have enjoyed

2007-12-26T10:14:00.000-08:00

For Christmas Marie and I drove up to Edinburgh, in the hope of our first Christmas away from New Zealand being a white one. Sadly this did not eventuate, so we consoled ourselves by attacking a goochickant. That is, a deboned goose stuffed with a deboned chicken stuffed with a deboned pheasant. Who dreams this kind of roast up, I want to know. As per the photo, you serve this by slicing vertically through the roast to yield a serving of layered poultry.

Overall verdict: strongly positive.
Pros: very tasty, and I somehow managed to cook the innermost pheasant without drying out the outermost goose.
Cons: It is not the kind of thing you want to eat every day, as the sheer size is vaguely ridiculous. Especially for three people, haha. More thoughts and the cooking techniques below the fold.

The roast prior to cooking, just to give you some idea of how big this was. Also, these birds have been mostly deboned so it is 5kg of pure meat. Mmmm bird flu.

We roasted the megabird covered in foil for a total of five hours (followed by resting of 20 mins), with basting every hour. The liquid I used for basting was the poultry fat which came off the bird, so I was basting with pure fat. At least goose fat is the good type of fat (is the good one hydrogenated or unhydrogenated? I forget). Temperature of roasting: 180 for the first hour, 150 after that.
I used the Nigel Slater technique for vegetables of putting the roast on an oven rack and the vegetables underneath, so the fat from the roast dripped onto the vegetables (potatoes, kumara, garlic, onions, parsnips, carrots). As there was a lot of fat coming off the roast the vegetables started to caramelise due to the combination of low heat, much fat, and long cooking time.
In fact, every time I basted I took more liquid from the vegetable tray than I replaced, so by the end of the roast I had a pint glass full of excess meat juices. And this was after I used some of the excess meat juices for the gravy, which was adulterated by 300 grams of cranberries which Brendan had procured from somewhere and red wine. Purple gravy is good.

The goochickant was served with the aforementioned vegetables and gravy, and also some brussel sprouts to put some green on our plates.
We didn't manage to polish the entire roast off on Christmas day. We got about halfway through, so the menu for the next few days is goochickant sandwhiches, goochickant salad, goochickant insert method of eating cold meat here.

I had previously heard that three bird roasts sometimes dried out the outer bird. I think the way we avoided this fate here was a combination of a)covering the bird, b) cooking at a low temperature for a long period, and c) frequent basting. I have had goose once before, and it was a little tough. In the goochickant the goose was nice and tender, so crisis averted here.

While I enjoyed this roast immensely, I don't think I would have it again next year in the same iteration. Part of this is the novelty value of a three bird roast, which is now gone. Also, I think I would like to make my own version next time. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame has a recipe for a ten bird roast. For this he doesn't stuff nine whole birds into the tenth one, rather he takes the breasts from the nine smallest birds and puts them into the largest bird. Rather than ten birds, I could strip the meat off a couple of smaller birds, and put them into a goose. Britons like their birds, you can procure everything from partridges to pheasants at the numerous farmers' markets, so getting hold of exotic poultry is not really an issue.

London calling (Simon)

2007-12-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't written here for a wee while. This is not because I have been cowed into a socially disengaged coma by the sheer size of London. Although it is enormous.
Rather, London has been great thus far, and I am trying to take it all in. Because we are going to be here for the medium term I am trying to re-establish a routine, and so far it is working out mighty fine. More below the fold.

In terms of the obvious (flat and job), our arrival was helped immensely by our friends Katherine and Daniel -well mostly Katherine- finding a fantastic two bedroom apartment for the four of us to share. The move in date was a week after our arrival in London, and it is within three minutes walk of Kings Cross St Pancras tube/train station. There is an alcove off the lounge which is ideal for friends to doss in, so if you are coming over to London for a visit (say from your house just outside Greytown) you should look us up.
In terms of our immediate surrounds, there are a number of takeaways, bars and a supermarket within a couple of minutes walk.

I found a job fairly quickly working for an IT recruitment company (where I don't have to wear a suit or tie), and Marie has just started as a conference researcher for a publishing company. I am on a four month contract at the moment and Marie has a permanent role, so from here on in we should be pretty sweet. Both Marie and I are able to walk to work in 20 minutes, so we don't have to endure the indignity of rush hour Tube trips.

For a month on the ground I think that is pretty good going. The only tourist attraction we have done thus far is the London Eye, on the grounds that we will have time to see the rest of them next year. I have signed up for the waiting list to climb up inside Big Ben, hopefully we can do that in the new year...

One thing I have noticed about London is the anonymity. I have been walking most places for a month, and I have seen one person I knew. I think this is one of the things which makes NZ appealing- yes in NZ I saw people I knew when I was hungover in the supermarket looking for orange juice, but this is reassuring in hindsight. I don't know why.

A large advantage of living beside Kings Cross is that there are direct trains to Paris in just over two hours, not to mention the rest of continental Europe and all of the United Kingdom. I have already made a booking for a Parisian restaurant the weekend of my birthday, so that is something to look forward to in February. You can get on a sleeper train in the evening and wake up in Venice, so that will be a nice weekend at some point next year. We were going to get the fast train up to Edinburgh for Christmas, but the train tickets were twice as expensive as either flying or hiring a car. Why is it that the most environmentally friendly mode of transport is the most expensive?

To sum up, life is pretty sweet. The only minor downside I can think of is that it gets dark at about 5pm, but that just gives me an excuse to buy a new heavy coat with my first paycheck. And a scarf and some gloves.

Angkor Wat

2007-11-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Angkor Wat is magnificent. Rather than try to write about it, I thought I would do a series of captioned pictures instead.

The Bayou has about seventy large Buddha heads carved into the side of a series of outcrops. It is quite funky.

Buddha Buddha Buddha Marie Buddha Buddha

This is Ta Phrom, which is where some of the scenes from Tomb Raider were filmed. For those of you who have no interest in Tomb Raider, the main appeal of this temple is the trees which are growing over the temple. In some places the trees are actually holding the temple together.

Marie captured this spectacular fashion crime at Ta Prem.

And finally, a series of doorways which I thought made for a pretty photo at one of the final temples we visited.

Phnom Penh

2007-11-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

As you can probably tell by the frequency of Marie's posts, Marie has been using the wifi in our room in Bangkok to write blog posts. I used this time to watch the Bourne Ultimatum & Ultraviolet. Bourne Ultimatum is a good movie, if you like that kind of thing, and Ultraviolet is pure B grade ridiculousness. Anyway, I think the last post I had written was up to our arrival in Cambodia, in the capital Phnom Penh. Our time in Cambodia was severely abbreviated from the original plan due to us spending more time in Vietnam than anticipated. Thus we only had 3 nights in Phnom Penh and 4 nights in Siem Reap, which is truncated in comparison to our 4 weeks in Vietnam.

Point of preceding paragraph: Despite only spending 3 nights in Phnom Penh, I really liked this city and would consider moving here if I could find a job to keep me (and my betrothed) in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. At this point a job as an research economist with a particular focus on Cambodian economic development (and resultant need to spend a lot of time in Cambodia) is looking really attractive.

The most surprising thing about my receptivity toward Phnom Penh was that we spent one of our two full days here going to the Killing Fields and the S-21 museum at the site of the main detention centre. If anything should turn me off a place it would be these two locations. For more detail please see below the fold. Warning: disturbing content to follow.

The Killing Fields just south of Phnom Penh was the main execution site for the Pol Pot regime, where an estimated 20,000 people were killed and buried in a series of mass graves during the senseless purges of the 1970s. People were rounded up and killed for infractions as minor as wearing glasses or previously holding any kind of highly skilled job, on the grounds that such people were not the correct calibre of people to carry out the revolution and accompanying reversion to an agrarian society. Our guide explained that anyone identified as a doctor, lawyer or other 'intellectual' was rounded up and killed. The killers first used bullets to execute their victims, but then realised that bullets were too expensive so resorted to methods such as:
a) tying a group of people together, pushing them into water and then shooting one so the others were pulled down and drowned;
b) in the case of young children or babies, swinging the children against a tree until dead or throwing them up into the air and catching them on bayonets; or
c) using a length of palm frond as a machete, from a species of palm tree which has a series of sharp thorns along the frond.
As we walked along the paths between the mass graves we stepped over clothing and bones which had been exposed by the elements. And I am not talking about isolated fragments, these were strewn everywhere. The overall effect was completely and utterly shocking, and yet at the same time it was a very tranquil space. No photos to be posted.
After the Killing Fields we went to the S-21 museum, which is on the site of the regime's former head interrogation centre and prison. As a macabre touch, this site was a school before its conversion. The most moving exhibit here was a series of rooms, which simply showed the photos taken of the people bought here for interrogation before being sent on to the Killing Fields. The easiest western equivalent I can think of here is of a booking photo which is taken when someone is arrested. There was room after room of photos, with the total number of photos probably upward of three thousand. The thing which really affected me was when I started to look into the victims' eyes. Only a few of the victims showed any fear- the most common expression was a sense almost of resignation at their fate. As with the Killing Fields, I can't understand why this slaughter occurred.
As you can guess, the combination of these two memorials was a complete emotional wipeout. Despite this I think these sites are a must see.

The next day we went on a Khmer cooking course to cheer ourselves up. If you have been keeping score, you will realise that this makes cooking courses in all four countries on our trip. If Napoleon said that an army marches on a full stomach, my paraphrase would be that I like to travel on a full stomach. The highlight of the Khmer course for me was making Fish Amok. This is a mild fish curry, steamed rather than fried, which is steamed within a banana leaf shell. Khmer food in general is not particularly spicy, as the Khmer cooking heritage predates the introduction of the chili by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Another interesting recipe was sausage with pork and chicken mince, wrapped up within a banana flower prior to deep frying.

After a full day of cooking and eating neither of us were particularly hungry, so we went to a rooftop bar looking out over the river for a relaxing drink & people-watch. This is the scene for the photo at the top of the post (when blogger behaves itself). From our perch we saw six people travelling on one scooter!
I should explain that from Hanoi onward Marie and I have been trying to spot as many people as possible on a scooter. Three was common in Vietnam, and four was rare. She saw five in Ho Chi Minh city, and I saw four on a bicycle in the Mekong Delta. Cambodia blew Vietnam out of the water for scooter passenger density. In Cambodia four was common, and five was rare.
Also, the variety of cargo which is transported by scooter has to be seen to be believed. We have seen people with large fridges strapped to the back of their scooters, and a passenger holding a full size door upright between the driver and himself.

My new 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Convert

2007-11-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

As we are coming to the end of the holiday and thus the end of our money supply I must admit to being increasingly worried about the cost of things, like meals and accommodation. I have to remind myself not to get annoyed and how stupid it is because meals are still costing far less than at home. However today I made some slightly alarming conversions regarding our recent accommodation and our soon to be new flat in London...

Our lovely friends Katherine and Daniel have done all the hard work for us and found what looks like a fantastic flat, very centrally located - I am not sure how to pay you back guys but perhaps we'll just have to cook every night (actually that might be a punishment). I should note that they are also taking a gamble living with us - Matt managed five years, I am not quite sure how.

But back to the conversions, first, we have just stayed 5 nights at Treehouse on Ko Chang - there will be a separate posting on this. OK so there was no phone, let alone internet, and no TV or even a fan in the room and the showers are literally a tub of water and a bucket BUT it was all clean and one could easily while away the days on the beach without too much effort. Turns out that I could while away 4 months there (without any kind of long stay discount) for the cost of one week rent at our new place!!

Second, I am writing this from a great hotel that we stumbled upon
Citichic it ticked all my check boxes for the last two days in Bangkok aircon, cable, huge plasma screen, wifi, bath, hot shower (surprisingly uncommon), nice sheets and duvet (very rare - the nice that is) roof top pool, gym, lift (again surprisingly uncommon), central, quiet and helpful staff. I commented that I could easily live here - well for the price we negotiated compared to our new place I could, a week here is the same as a week of rent - of course I would have to find a job here that allowed me to!!!

If this sounds a little like I am grumbling, it shouldn't, it only serves to remind me how lucky I am to be able to travel around SEA living and travelling comfortably and how lucky I am to be able to live in a great place in London - bring it on I say - its just that until I get my first pay cheque I will obey the new 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Convert and perhaps an 11.1: Thou Shalt Not Compare the Prices in London to SEA or in fact anywhere else in the world.

Clever Monkey

2007-11-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here is proof that our Simian relations are closer to us than we think.

The monkey got more hoops in than Simon and could so more push-ups and sit ups than both of us.

He was also better at climbing trees and pulling down coconuts - as I have never tried this I am not sure if he is better than me - I suspect he is.

Proof of so tall and big big status...

2007-11-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

Here it is if you don't believe us...
Photos were taken in the old quarter of Vietnam.
You so tall

Big Big

Paradise at a cheap price...

2007-11-01T19:40:00.000-07:00

During our trip Simon and I have been lamenting the rise of big resorts and the disappearance of small affordable (for people on a budget like us) hideaways. Two of our best finds have been on the beautiful island of Pho Quoc in Vietnam and in the soon to be completely destroyed by resorts island of Ko Chang in Thailand.
Pho Quoc
Simon and I flew to Pho Quoc with just over a week left on our Vietnam visas. I could have easily been deported for overstaying - The island was great and very cheap, but most importantly it was a world away from the busy streets of the rest of Vietnam and the constant attempts to extract money from you.
Initially we stayed at the Thousand Island resort, mainly because it was on the beach we wanted to stay on and they offered to take us there for free. Despite the great pool and concrete sculptures the place wasn't really for us....

We walked along the beach and found the only two simple bunglows amongst a sea (no pun intended) of large scale resorts. For the princely sum of $7US we stayed here:
And we pretty much spend the whole time doing this:
I made great dent in my stack of books and walked away decidedly more freckled than before. Simon, meanwhile, having already read all of his books, was left considering learning German - as there seemed to be no books in English anywhere.
I am not sure why people stay at the resorts - ok I do know why - the pools, the aircon, the nice sheets, the great (though expensive) food the lack of strange insects in the room etc but we were on the same beach and swam in the same sea and if we really wanted the pool we could buy a beer at one of the resorts and enjoy it as much as we liked.
Ko Chang
Three years ago I stayed on Lonely Beach on Ko Chang an island in Thailand. It was still mostly backpackers but the resorts had begun to creep in. Spared the Tsunami in December 2004 Ko Chang has undergone a dramatic transformation. I took this photo then:
This has been replaced by this at Siam Beach Resort I am sure it is lovely but to me it looks like a concrete jungle.
We quickly abandonded the not so Lonely Beach and headed for Long Beach and the Treehouse a newly established bungalow type place. It was very remote, sitting in the back of a 4WD ute which was only just managing the tricky combination of rocky roads, steep hills and tight bends we were wondering if it was all going to be worth it. What we found at the end was the most genuinely relaxing place that we have found on the entire trip.

With no phone, let alone internet and power only between 6pm and 1am it is a great place to just get away from it all. Adapting to the "showers" was difficult, I found that washing your hair using only a bucket from a tub of water hard but who needs to wash hair in a shower when there is sea and who can complain when the open air (but not open!) showers are amongst the trees and the sun is pouring in on you. Lying in a hammock looking out to deserted water I wanted to spend much longer here

and for 150Bt ($5US)I could have - but the d-date of 4 November and our flight to London is calling...

The tale of a boy and a motorbike...

2007-10-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a boy called Simon, well isn't really a boy - more of a man given that he is nearing his 30th birthday...

Simon decided one morning that the time had come for him to learn how to ride a scooter (motorbike) you see he had never driven one before and he thought that the conditions on a remote Vietnamese island would be ideal - it had everything - narrow rocky uneven roads and large tooting trucks ready to push you into a ditch.
Simon had a wise girlfriend and she cautioned him against it, but the idea of speeding along the roads with the wind in his hair was too much.
The bike was duely presented to Simon, a shiney new black number with red racing stripes down the side - that will make it go faster Simon thought!
So he got on the bike, asked the man "how do you start it?". After learning this crucial lesson and noting where the breaks were he bunny hopped up the rocky drive out of site of the wise girlfriend and straight into a ditch and a tree covered in barbed wire.

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh City & Zero Degrees of Separation in Chau Doc

2007-10-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

In one of my earlier posts I talked about how the Hanoi was incredibly busy. Well, Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as I will call it because it is less characters to type) is like Hanoi on drugs. They have tourist police whose main duties appear to be helping foreigners cross the road, on account of the insane traffic. I actually preferred Hanoi to Saigon, and I can't quite put my finger on the reason. It may be because Saigon is so big that it is just another crowded polluted megacity. Hmmm sounds like London.....

The Reunification Palace in Saigon was the seat of the South Vietnamese government up until they collapsed in 1975. If you ever see a photo of the final helicopters evacuating the Americans out of Saigon, it is evacuating from the roof of this place. The palace has been kept in the same state as when it was overrun by the North Vietnamese. I found out that the head of the South Vietnamese government liked to collect animals. The photo at the top is an attempt on my part to capture a row of animal heads. Also, please note the stuffed leopard on the left.

After the somewhat dry Reunification Palace, we then went to the War Remnants Museum. To give you an idea of the ideological position of this museum: it used to be called the Museum of American War Crimes up until a few years ago. This museum had an extensive collection of planes, tanks and bombs from both sides of the US-Vietnam war.
It had an exhibition on photo journalists from around the world who died covering the conflict, including the last photos which they took. This was quite moving. There was also a section on the effects of Agent Orange and other defoliants, including a couple of deformed babies in formaldehyde, which was nearly unviewable.

Next we left for Phu Quoc, an island off the south east coast of Vietnam which is due south of Cambodia. Note that the Q is pronounced W, not K. I will let Marie tell the story of my accident there, all I will say is that my scooter riding ability is much less than I thought it was. Also, the Vietnamese like to wrap their trees in barbed wire.

Examples of why New Zealand is too interconected below the fold:

After spending an idyllic week sitting in hammocks, we came up through the Mekong delta into Cambodia with an overnight stop in a little border town called Chau Doc. We were about to go out foraging for dinner when we bumped into our old flatmate Paul, who we had lived with at 127 Hanson Street, in the hotel foyer. We hadn't been in contact with him for about six months, we didn't know he was travelling in Asia, he didn't know we were travelling in Asia.

New Zealand is a village.

This is the worst example we have come across. Other examples of NZ interconnectedness we have encountered on our travels as follows:
1) In Luang Prabang we met an expat New Zealander in the guesthouse lobby. After talking to him for a while, we found out that his last name is Rayner, which is Marie's mum's maiden name, and that he & Marie's parents both went to the large (2000+) Rayner family reunion a couple of years back. Plus, we worked out that his sister's ex-husband taught me piano.
2) I was on the beach in Nha Trang, and I wanted to buy half a pineapple. The old lady only sold whole pineapples, and there was a guy standing next to me who also only wanted a half. We agreed to split one. Chris turned out to be from Wellington originally, and he was returning to Australia from the UK with his Aussie girlfriend. We saw them again in Saigon, and again in Phu Quoc. We got chatting, and couldn't initially establish a connection. Then we realised that his oldest brother was friends with Dan Kalderimis, who we are going to be flatting with in London. Also, we had met Chris's oldest brother at Dan's wedding a couple of years back, and Dan's father was Chris's doctor.

Trains, trains, trains

2007-10-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

We caught a train from Nha Trang to Ho Chi Minh city. But not just any train, this was the recently inaugaurated 5 Star Express. This train was nearly brand new, having started in Decenber 2006 which is very new for train rolling stock. Marie pointed out that the carriages may have been refurbished rather than new rolling stock, but I am not quite enough of a trainspotter to be able to pick the difference. They might just have been dirty...
My trainspotter contribution is that the Vietnamese break up their ballast (the rocks under the railway sleepers and track) by hand with picks, whereas in western countries this is done by machine. Also, the train was motoring along - faster than long distance trains in NZ- so either the Vietnamese track network is in exceptional shape, or they do not have the same level of safety controls (and the resultant speed restrictions) as in NZ. For my sake, I hope it was the former.

I counted 25 passengers spread throughout the eight carriages (with varying prices and standards of seating), and 24 visible service staff. Marie commented that for the staff it was like her summer job working on the NZ interislander ferry: very few passengers, so you can sit around or sleep for most of the time.

We were in the lowest level of seating, which was still very comfortable and double decker. There were another couple of levels of nicer seating, and the flashest seats were sold by the compartment, where you pay 2.4 million dong for a compartment which seats up to four people in very plush comfort. That sounds like a lot of moolah, but it is equivalent to USD 150. I reckon if you were travelling in a quartet and making your trip in a higher level of comfort than our current trip, then USD 150 for four people for a eight hour train ride is not too bad.
I managed to get the following photos of the the lower grade seating, but by the time I went back to the compartment area they realised that riff raff were able to enter so they had locked the door.

To give you an idea of the entertainment options on this train: there was a dining car, and a separate 'multi purpose' carriage. I saw mention of a massage train in some of the promotional material, but I couldn't find this particular carriage. The multipurpose carriage operated as a disco from Fridays through Sundays, and played movies the rest of the week. Disco on a train!

When we went into the dining car the six staff promptly got up from where they had been sitting, and tried to look like they were doing something- it only takes one person to pour our beers (into plastic cups, haha) and a second person to fetch a rather tasty grilled mackeral, so this is the definition of 'make work'.

Nha Trang

2007-10-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

After Hoi An the original plan was to head south to Ho Chi Minh City. Then we realised that the Hoi An- Ho Chi Minh bus trip was 22 hours, so we stopped off in Nha Trang, a beach resort type town about halfway down, for a couple of nights. Which turned into four nights.

The prime attraction at Nha Trang is the beach, which is the focal point of the tourist area. We spent three days lazing on the beach, without needing to leave it for any of our daily needs. At one particular seaside bar you can rent a lounger under a thatch umbrella, with the only condition being that you don't consume food or drink from any other sellers on the bar's section of beach. Did I mention that this bar has a pool, in case you get tired of swimming in salt water? And it also brewed its own beer, five different varieties?

For lunch, we walked up the beach to where old ladies were grilling crayfish over hot coals, purchased a large crayfish (or a selection of smaller crays, crabs, whelks and scallops if we wanted a bit of variety), ate it sitting on the beach, and then wandered back to our lounger. I tell you, Nha Trang was a real drag...

As an aside, please note the glorious mullet on the right, captured in Nha Trang.

The other attraction of Nha Trang was the nightlife. In Hanoi the city closed down around 1030-1130pm, whereas we could stay out to the early hours in Nha Trang without too much effort. Marie managed to beat me two- nil at pool, which I attribute to me being 'tired and emotional'.

On our last full day we went out to the local mud baths, and spent a few hours impersonating hippopotami. Pictures of us cooling our blood, and wallowing in glorious mud as follows:

Hue & Hoi An

2007-10-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

One of the difficult things about a blog with two contributors is trying to work out a free flowing thread of discourse. For example: if Marie talks about Hoi An does that mean that any thoughts I have on Hoi An are redundant, and vice versa? I think I will just stick to commenting about things on our trip which interest me- hopefully this will not make for too much repetition between Marie's and my posts.

Anyway: my last post was about Hanoi. From there we caught a twelve hour night train to Hue. We were planning to go to Halong Bay, which everyone says is beautiful, but unfortunately tropical storm Frances came through and sank a bunch of boats the day before we were due to go out. Rather than wait for the storm to clear, we decided to head down to Hue.

For me, there was one primary reason to go to Hue: the Demilitarised Zone just to the north, which marked the boundary for a number of years between the Vietnamese Communist forces in the North and US affiliated forces in the south. The picture in the top left of this post is from inside the Vinh Moc tunnels. These tunnels were just north of the Demilitarised Zone, and were used by communist forces to assist in the resupply of nearby artillery placements. The artillery placements happened to be on an offshore island within range of the US emplacements, so any time they were running low on supplies the villagers from the Vinh Moc area would resupply them. By rowboat.
Now you don't have to be Donald McNamara to realise that this resupply depot would be extremely vulnerable to US air strike. Thus the Vietnamese got around this problem by building a tunnel complex large enough to sleep 200 people, with the depth underground ranging from 12 metres to 25 metres. There was a maternity ward down there, with I think 12 babies delivered underground.
The tunnels themselves were small but not to the point of claustrophobia. The average height within the tunnel complex is anywhere between 1.6 and 1.9 metres, so I couldn't stand up at any point underground. It is definitely worth a look if you are in Central Vietnam.

The other thing I found of particular interest in Hue was within the old Imperial City. I think the Imperial City was very impressive until the French and then the US took turns bombing it, so there is not too much left standing now. However, there is an area where you can put on the vestments of Imperial Emperors or Empresses. Very touristy, but dress ups is fun. Pictures of our dressup fun and my thoughts on Hoi An below the fold:

I think Marie covered the highlights of Hoi An quite comprehensively- made to measure tailoring and food. One point I would like to add is that I think Hoi An has a lot going for it. We spent 4 nights there, and the only reason we moved on to Nha Trang was that it rained constantly. Not that the rain was bad as it was 25 degrees and not windy, it was just wet. We were never bored in Hoi An, but there were a couple of things we didn't get to do because of the weather.
For example, on our first night there we wandered down to the waterfront, where some enterprising soul had put out a bunch of paddle boats for tourists to make fools of themselves in. Not just any kind of paddle boat mind you, these were in the shape of swans. Now I am not sure how your brain is wired, but when I see swan paddle boats, I can think of only one thing: swan boat racing in the cool evening air, washed down with a bia hoi or two. I am not sure whether the optimal timing of this racing would be before or after dinner- really there is no downside, this is swan boat racing we are talking about here. Unfortunately this was not meant to be as there were no dry evenings, so this will have to wait until next time along with a trip to Halong Bay.

More about eating

2007-10-02T23:17:00.001-07:00

Enjoyment at eating establishments is a common theme of our travels and blog posts. With the torrential rain and flooded streets of the last 3 days Hoi An has proved no exception.
On our first night here we went to something of a Hoi An institution, Cafe de Amis. Along the river near the market this place only serves a set menu (about 6 courses)for 40,000 VND (about $5US), with a choice of meat, seafood or a vegetarian menu. The menu changes every night and is whatever the chef/owner Mr Kim decides to cook that night. Apparently if the menu is the same you eat for free. Mr Kim is more front of house these days I think, he was very attentive to all the guests, explaining the dishes and showing us his book with recommendations from visitors - including for us all the ones from New Zealanders. He even greeted and farewelled us with Kia Ora and Hare Ra.
The three of us (we were with an Australian girl K) ordered three different menus and all were delicious in thier own way - the only problem was the number and size meant that getting through all of them was near impossible (and made my clothes fitting the next morning a little difficult).
Our other major discovery was a wonderful place called Cafe 43. I noticed it is in the newest addition of Lonely Planet, but unlike many of the other places they recommend it has not suffered what Simon and I have termed the "Lonely Planet kiss of death" where sufferers are afflicted with very poor service and/or have turned into something akin to a family restaurant (Cobb&Co/Valentines for NZers). We went there three times and I honestly don't think it will change - the food is fantastic and the family are generous, inviting and very humble. Our second visit was for a cooking class, where they took us behind the scenes and taught just Simon and I to cook up dishes we chose from the menu - awesome I now know the secret to their delicious steamed fish in banana leaf!! If you go there make sure to talk to their daughter, she can write English very well but doesn't get to practice her English and is too shy to ask. We found out so many more interesting things about Vietnam from her.

Blogger in Vietnam

2007-10-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

We have concluded that blogs are blocked in Vietnam, as we have been unable to access our site or any of the other blogs we regularly read. But all of you at home say you can. However, we can access the blogger website and add posts. This means that if there are problems with the posts we can't see them. Hopefully Cambodia will be ok...

Hitting the shops Hoi An style

2007-10-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

So we made our way from Hue to Hoi An - I love Hoi An but my credit card and baggage allowance do not!
Hoi An is a small town best known for its tailoring. Apparently there are about 200 tailor shops and just about everyone you talk to has some kind of "relative" that is a tailor who there are very keen to recommend. This makes knowing who is good and what price is a fair price an absolute mine field. Everywhere you go you hear other travellers talking about the bargins they got, I have just overheard a Brtish girl saying she got 6 suits for 100pounds...

I am writing this post as I count the cost of what Simon and I have purchased. Not the costs of the clothes themseleves but the costs of shipping them. Simon is behind me doing the organisation keeping the Vietnamese staff busy taping up boxes and recording what is going in. Most hotels and many of the better tailors offer a shipping service (the organisation not the cost as a free service).

We gave a test shirt to a couple of tailors and at one that I thought was slightly better I got a dress made from a picture and pants copied. In the end my intuition was right and we went with B'Lan. Lan is wonderful, she didn't do a hard-sell and was professional to the end. On day one we spend 4 hours choosing clothes from pictures (or our own heads), choosing fabrics and getting measured.

When we came back the following evening all of the clothes were completed, no matter how complicated, and only a few of the clothes we ordered needed alterations, and they were so small that we were unable to see why changes needed to be made. But she insisted and the product was better as a result. She even called her brother the tailor (her actual brother, not just a "relative") and got him to come down to the shop to talk about the finer points of making the underarm area of Simon's suit jacket sit slightly better.

She also took on a role as my defacto mother, noticing that I have a cold and was a little tired and insisting that I drink some hot lemon and honey for "medicine" and wanted me to take lemons away with me.

In total we are sending about 20kg of stuff. This includes clothing, detailed below, very cheap DVDs (cheapest/best in all of asia) and various nicknacks.
Lesson for the future: come to Asia with lighter bags and spend less.

Simon
1 x 3 peice suit (and a pair of extra trousers) in highgrade cashmere and wool
3 x trousers
1 x fine velvet jacket
6 x work shirts
5 x ties
3x casual shirts

Marie
1 x suit (and a pair of extra trousers) in highgrade cashmere and wool
7 x shirts
3 x trousers
1 x waistcoat (to go with trousers)
1 x wool dress
1 x wool jacket
1 x cord jacket
3 x 70% silk pashminas

hmmmm I think that is all, there may very well be more. All of this was less than $1000, I am trying to forget how much, it will make enjoying the rest of the trip and not worrying about money easier. For perspective, I have to remember that the last suit Simon bought at home cost more than all of this and was not in such good fabric.

For those of you in the UK, please remind me that I am swearing that I do not need to buy any clothes for 6 months at least.

For those who come after me I would recommend talking to other people about who they have gone to and think about the following:
- does the shop tout for business (ie yell at you as you walk past "please come in and buy something) despite the official ban on touts...
- do the people in the shop know anything about clothes or are they just sales people?
- are they doing a hard sell or trying to up-sell you?
- are they honest about what will look good or not - a half hour in a tailor shop does wonders for your self esteem - "oh you so beautiful" "it look so pretty - very beautiful"

Hanoi

2007-09-29T16:54:00.000-07:00

My first imprint of Hanoi - the major city in the North of Vietnam- is that it was splendidly chaotic and busy. After spending about 4 days there I see no reason to change my initial impression. We didn't cover too much in our four days- a few museums, Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, getting lost walking around the Old Quarter, and spending most evenings sitting on the street at a bia hoi establishment, but I enjoyed this place a lot.

One of the things which struck me about Hanoi was how much happens in the street. The street is not just a method of walking from A to B, it is also somewhere to eat, to drink, to sell and to buy. You might say 'Simon that is a foolish statement, those things happen in the street back in NZ as well', but in Hanoi's Old Quarter these things are happening in every street. The picture at the top of this post is me attempting to gain nutrients from a chicken foot in a roadside restaurant. When I say roadside, I mean chair on kerb and feet in road. The pictures on the right show a couple of crowd shots to show what level of frenetic activity I am talking about. If you look very closely you might see a couple of things sticking out in these two pictures.

My favourite roadside innovation is the bia hoi - fresh beer- establishments which are dotted through the Old Quarter area. Someone will set up camp on the kerb with a keg of draught beer and a bunch of plastic chairs. You take a chair, park it either on the kerb or in the street near the kerb, and order beer by the glass, at 2000 dong (Yes the Vietnamese currency is the dong, bahahaha) per glass. As the exchange rate is about 12000 dong to the NZD, each glass costs 15c. If you wanted to get pedantic then you could argue that the beer isn't very strong- maybe 3% alcohol- but this is for the best as we were dehydrated most of the time so full strength beer would not have been optimal. There is one particular junction in the Old Quarter where 3 of the four corners of the intersection have bia hoi dispensers. And the best part is that the entertainment is laid on for you in the form of the passing foot & motor traffic. Neither Marie nor I have yet seen 5 people on a scooter, but we kept seeing 4 people.

We were going to head out to Halong Bay for a 2 day cruise, but unfortunately a tropical storm came through right when we were planning on going out in the boat so no Halong Bay this time.

Pictures of more highbrow endeavours as follows:

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum was a must see. In the mausoleum itself there were three guards scattered around the walkway, and another four ringed around his coffin. Quite a lot of security, considering the guy is already dead. In addition to the mausoleum itself, you could also see his house, his cars (Uncle Ho drove a Morris), and a museum dedicated to the struggle for independence. Several writers have pointed out that if Uncle Ho actually spent much time at his house the US military would have bombed it heavier than Afghanistan, so I am not sure how much time he spent there. Having said that, it is a pretty house.

The museum had a ground floor setting out the struggle for independence which I could understand, and a second floor which went through the struggle for independence via abstract art. On the second floor I gave up trying to fully comprehend and just went along for the sensory ride. I have done a bit of reading regarding the photo on the right, and as far as I can tell: the Ford Edsel crashing through the wall was one of Detroit's greatest ever motoring failures. In this context the car represents the failure of the US military to conquer the Vietnamese people. I think. This whole modern art gets a bit confusing for me sometimes.

The 'Hanoi Hilton' is a museum on the site of a former prison which is most known in the west for being the site of imprisonment of US pilots during the US-Vietnam war, with its inmates including John McCain. The (arguably questionable) picture on the left is my impersonation of a desolate inmate.

For assorted pagoda/ Uncle Ho pictures please see below.

Luang Prabang- Vang Vieng- Vientianne

2007-09-24T02:50:00.000-07:00

We spent a total of four nights in Luang Prabang, enjoying the laid back atmosphere. I really liked this place- the population is only about 26,000, so it is really peaceful. The photo on the left is a pretty sunset over the Mekong. Everyone likes sunsets. I am not sure if I could live in Luang Prabang, but I could definitely stay there for up to a month. Unfortunately we only have 9 weeks total time on this trip, so maybe next time...

After Luang Prabang we popped into Vang Vieng for a couple of days to experience floating down a river in an inner tube between makeshift bars. I have heard stories about how Vang Vieng was a complete den of iniquity, and how the town had been totally corrupted by Western capitalist running dogs and was the scourge of Asia. Maybe I am a totally corrupted Western capitalist running dog, but I didn't really find as much offensive tourist-centric development as at Khao San Road, for example. Yes the Friends bars were kind of odd- there are a number of bars with lounger seats and big screen TVs playing Friends episodes continuously- but the town closed down at about 1030pm each night.
The tubing in Vang Vieng was quite fun. Actually, it should have been quite fun. I think both Marie and I would have had more fun if I didn't drink as much as I did, but that is my fault for starting on buckets of whiskey based cocktails at midday.

The original plan after that was to then move down to southern Laos and maybe do a little bit of trekking. Then we started hearing about Hanoi, and our plans changed.

Once we got to Vientianne, we cycled round a couple of monuments and then decided to catch a plane to Hanoi. If you look closely in the photo of our rides, you will notice that my blue model is called Fairy and Marie's pink model is called Crocodile. No, I didn't find too much else to do in Vientianne :)
Please see pictures below of assorted monuments, stupas and silly self portraits from Vientianne. Interesting thing about the monument below which looks like an exotic version of the Arc de Triomphe (picture to come when I manage to resize some more photos): The US government donated a few loads of cement in 1969 to lengthen the Vientianne runway. I think this was before the US started bombing Laos as part of its war against Vietnam. Anyway, the Laos government decided not to upgrade the airport, and instead they built a monument to the Laos revolutionaries who lost their lives liberating Laos from the French. Thus the locals call this monument the vertical runway.

Exquisite food I have eaten- Laos edition

2007-09-18T04:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago Marie and I had an absolutely equisite meal in Luang Prabang, at a place called 3 Nagas.

If you want pictures, please see this person's experience there. Marie and I shared a tasting menu, and we both left the restaurant completely full. The menu was all Laos traditional fare served in a high end manner, and a couple of highlights for me were the jaew bong (a paste with chili and bufalo skin), spicy pork sausages (similar to black pudding) and the coconut custard with caramelised ginger. The total bill for a shared tasting menu and a few wines was USD 35. I was floored by the quality of the food.

The restaurant was recommended to us by another couple who were on our Laos cooking class the day before. Yes this is a theme, Thai cooking class in Thailand, Laos cooking class in Laos etc.
Definition of globalisation: Two New Zealanders, migrating to the UK, meet an Argentinian and an Austrian, who are migrating to Singapore, and the meeting occurs in Laos.

Anyway; the cooking class was good, and again included a visit to the local market. The Laos cooking class was conducted a little differently. The main difference was that the instructor would make three dishes in front of us for us to taste, and then we would pick two which we would then make ourselves. Thus there is a bit of choice entering the class. Second, no ingredients were preprepared, so we had to chop everything ourselves. Also, Marie and I shared a workstation so we had to work as a team. Marie did most of the prep work, and I did most of the frying. I think that the Laos method set us up a lot better for recreating the dishes at home. However the flipside is that if you didn't know your way around a kitchen there would be a greater opportunity to make the dish inedible.

Another big plus for the Laos operation was that they had beers in the fridge, so we could enjoy our creations with Beer Laos. Very nice.
There is one particular fried eggplant recipe which was very tasty. Also, we made laap salad which was the tasty dish Cousin Aidan had made for us a couple of months back.

you know you are on holiday when

2007-09-17T23:40:00.000-07:00

well, you start doing things that you wouldn't at home. So far we have noticed the following.
1. Makeup and any attempt at haircare is on hiatus
2. Singlets, short shorts/skirts and fisherman pants are OK to wear
3. You read more than one book in a day
4. Beer becomes a default drink because you can't drink water from the tap
5. You loose track of time, what the date is, what day of the week it is and then what month it is
6. You forget what country you are in
7. You start talking to other tourists who you would never talk to at home
8. You greet these same people like old friends when you run in to them at the next town
9. The definition of a "clean" tshirt changes and you begin to use the sniff test
10. You begin to stop recognising yourself in photos

the price of pampering

2007-09-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

One of the things I was really looking forward to on this trip was some good old-fashioned pampering - facials, massages and man/pedicures; something that I can only afford as a luxury back at home in New Zealand and I guess will be next to never in my soon to be new home. So I have been making the most of it here.
Bangkok
The first full day we were in Bangkok I took Simon to Shewa spa just around the corner from our guesthouse. Friendly and professional and with a good enough grasp of English I placed my self in their hands for a few hours. My leg wax produced the highlight of the day with not one, not two, but THREE girls doing a very good and comparatively painless job. Simon and I both had facials and man/pedicures - it was really funny to see two girls working on Simon's feet and their tut tuts at his unmaintained feet as they reached for more and more industrial looking tools to tackle 29 years worth of wear. The facial is a real steal at only 250B (about $10), the only scam in sight being the attempt to upsell you to a hot mask which would cost an extra 300B; we both went with out. For a very thorough man/pedicure it was only 300B.
Chang Mai
After the sleeper train trip from Bangkok it was time for massages. Dotted all over the cities we have been thus far are opportunities for "genuine" thai or kumu (laos) massages. So in Chang Mai I opted for a slightly more medicinal and well set up place, this came with an increased cost 500B for 1.5 hours rather than 300B. This turned out to be not that relaxing and rather more medicinal with an ancient looking Thai woman really putting me through may paces and making me wish that I wasn't just another farang with tight shoulders. The herbal hot packs were a definate relaxant though and afterwards all I could do was stagger back to the guesthouse to lie by the pool for the rest of the afternoon.
After two hours walking around the Sunday market we treated ourselves to 30 min foot massages for 69B. On my feet unused to wearing jandals all day this was heaven and a bargain!
Luang Prabang
Here Simon indulged in a two hour traditional massage with the slight Laos girl climbing all over him while I went for a full body scrub with massage. Then we both had facials. Coming in at about $10, including my man/pedicure I felt well relaxed by the end of it and it is definitely the most satisfying way to stay out of the sun from 12-2.
More to come....

hot ginger...

2007-09-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

So it is nice and hot here, not even too hot for me to enjoy it and it is bearable without aircon unbelivably... Despite what everyone days about New Zealand's (lack of) ozone layer I am getting just as accidentally burnt here as I did in New Zealand. First came the incident at the Grand Palace which resulted in some great forearm and round neck sunburn due to the dress standards required to enter the palace grounds. The rest I am feeling from my time on the Mekong the first day I got burnt on my left shoulder (depute sunscreen) so naturally today I sat on the other side of to boat and am feeling it there...awesome. Marie - mental note cover up!

Chang Mai to Luang Prabang, down the Mekong

2007-09-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

After Chang Mai we had three consecutive travel days, so a good chance to catch up on reading and drinking.
From Chang Mai we caught a 6 hour minibus to Chiang Khong on the Thai-Lao border, and then had a rickety 6 minute ferry across the Mekong river to Huay Xai (also spelt Huay Sai sometimes).

Then from Huay Xai we caught a slowboat down to Luang Prabang, which was split into 6 hours on the first day, an overnight at Pakbeng, and then another 7 hours to Luang Prabang.

Along the way we got to see a cross section of rural life, including a boat full of monks and a multitude of hamlets scattered along the riverside.

Further thoughts as follows:
Huay Xai
The first problem I encountered in Huay Xai was trying to work out what the local currency was worth. One important tip for anyone travelling to Laos is to remember that the currency is non-convertible, so you should probably change your kip (the Laos currency) into foreign currency before you leave. Also, there might not be currency changing options on the border Our friend Emma was caught out by this, so very kindly gave Marie and I some Laos currency. As I was initially unsure what the Laos currency was worth, I referred to Emma's gift as 33 mystery notes. Thus our accomodation in Huay Xai was three mystery notes, and dinner and beers overlooking the mekong was four mystery notes.

Pak Beng
Pak Beng is a village whose economy is based soley around the fact that it is around halfway from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, and thus is a logical overnight stop. I went for a bit of an explore, and the only commercial activities I found were a) guesthouses and b) restaurants, all with full English menus. All the information I had previously read said Pak Beng was a complete hole, not to parade expensive cameras/jewellery and to beware of offered drugs.
I didn't think the town was too bad. We got a clean spacious room for 50000 kip (5 USD) and a good night's sleep, so no dramas there. I think your experience of Pak Beng would probably depend on how much you paid- some other people on the boat paid 3 USD for rooms for four people, and they had all sorts of creepy crawlies...

My one gripe with Pak Beng was that they overcharged me for whiskey. In Houy Xai I paid 8000 kip (less than a dollar) for a 750 ml bottle of Lao Lao whiskey, and it was perfectly drinkable. In Pak Beng I paid 20000 kip (2 dollars) for a bottle of whiskey, and it tasted worse than the first bottle.

things they don't tell you in the guidebooks

2007-09-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

So in the guidebooks for SEA there is quite a discussion about the prevalence of squat toilets and the general lack of "western" toliets or if there is a "western" toilet you still have to use the bucket of water beside it it to make it flush. Thus - this is what I was prepared for and remember from my last trip. But there is one thing they don't mention... and that is the shower situation in Laos, now I hadn't expected hot showers for less than $5US a night but in a perfectly nice room with a perfectly nice bathroom I was surprised to see that the "shower" if that is what they can be called, is essentially just a tap removable shower head by the toilet (no I am not refering to the other thing that you use to spray out the toilet). The best example we have found is in Pak Beng which is described by most of the guidebooks as the complete hell-hole stopover on the 2 day cruise down the Mekong from Thailand (Chang Dong - border town) to Laos (Huay Xia (border town), Pak Beng, Luang Prabang).

We stayed in the newest and possibly second flashest place in town, which still only cost $7US for a private, clean room with bathroom (perspective others on the boat payed only $2for their rooms). The bathroom was very large but the layout meant that your only option was to sit on the toilet and have your (cold) shower. A demonstration photo will be posted soon. As for squat toilets, I have only encountered one in 10 days and that was at a local market somewhere in rural nothern Thailand between Chang Mai and Chang Dong it was exceptionally clean, unlike the expected horrible "western" toilet on the two day slow boat down the Mekong or the average "western" toliet on the sleeper train from Bangkok to Chang Mai.

Chang Mai, part deux

2007-09-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Have been out of easy access to internet for a while, so have a bit of a backlog to update. I think the last time I posted we were about to go to some muay thai last Friday evening, or thai kickboxing for those who are not down with the kids.

The first thing which struck me about the kickboxers was how small they were. When I had a look at the lineup I realised that the lowest weight division was up to 26kg. Mind you, those 26kg 9 year olds could still probably beat me in a fight, and the 42kg 12 year olds could definitely kick my ass. Their ability to withstand pain (ie repeated kicks to the shins) was quite amazing.

The day after the kickboxing we had a lazy day by the pool. The original plan was to hire scooters and go look at elephants, but that was quickly discarded in favour of working on our respective tans. In the evening we went to watch the All Blacks thrash some poor unfortunate minnow, and then we went to the night market.
I must be changing in appearance, because people couldn't pick where I was from. First, when we were watching the rugby someone asked if I was italian. In his defence, I was wearing a blue and white tshirt so this was understandable. Second, when we were at the night market one of the vendors asked me where in Japan I was from. That was just odd. Finally, I was holding a shoe at one of the stalls in the night market , wondering if it came in size canoe. A westerner comes up to me, and asks me how much for some of the shoes at the stall. I have only been out of my country of origin for a week, do distinguising characteristics really rub off that quickly?

I previously mentioned a plan to hire scooters. On the way to the night market we hopped in a tuk tuk, where there was an advertisement on the back of the driver's seat for a day long tour of the elephant park, monkey farm, snake farm etc. After a bit of bartering the tuk tuk driver made us an offer for driving us around which was cheaper than the cost of hiring scooters ourselves, so we decided to pay them $8 to drive us around for four hours.
The next day we were chauffeured to:
The Orchid Farm and Butterfly Farm. Pretty low key, but kind of cool.

The Monkey Farm. This was for monkeys where poachers had shot the mothers and left the babies to die. These monkeys were trained to pick coconuts, on the grounds that they were better than humans and also safer. At least for the humans who would otherwise be picking coconuts. There was one tame monkey, which was well behaved enough to sit on people's laps. It sat on Marie's lap, and I duly took a photo.

When it sat on my lap it decided that it wanted to roll over and have its belly scratched, and then climb up and sit on my head, and then perch on my outstretched arm.

Marie said that it was recognising its own kind. My retort was that in that case her children would be half monkey... Then they had a monkey show. They asked me to try and shoot a ball into a basket, I got 1 out of 3 which wasn't a complete disaster. Then a monkey came out and shot 4 out of 5, I was suitably humbled. There were also monkeys doing pressups, riding tricycles etc.

Snake Farm: We saw some pythons and cobras along with assorted other snakes here. There was also one cage with a mongoose in it, was this dinner for the snakes? They had a snake show where you could hold a python, which was pretty cool.

It was heavier than I thought it would be, and it felt like an expensive handbag. While I was holding the python and posing for the camera one of the snake trainers reached down and pinched the back of my leg. Naturally I jumped a mile, haha. Then later on the two trainers bought out a holding pen, and talked up a great buildup about a 'jumping snake', and started poking around inside the holding pen. Then one of them reached inside, hooked a length of thick rope and threw it across to me. Again, I jumped a mile. There must be something about my face which says 'I will be a good sport'.
That evening we wandered down to the old town area of chang mai. Every sunday this turns into a giant market- we took 3 hours to cover about two thirds of it. Admitedly that did include a half hour foot massage, and assorted street vendor treats. My life is so hard.

The next day Marie and I went on a thai cooking course, which was really enjoyable. All the publicity tells you not to eat breakfast that day, and there is a reason for that :)

We made a dish, then ate it, then made another dish, then ate it, then made another dish, then ate that. Then we went to the market, and our guide explained all the different fruits and herbs. I picked up some durian. Then we went back to the cooking school, and made some more dishes and ate them. I had durian instead of mango with the sweet sticky rice for dessert, and it was really nice. I think the problem with the durian I have had previously was that it was overripe. If you can catch the durian before that point it is really creamy and rich, without the rotten smell around it. Marie thought it tasted soapy...

Chang Mai

2007-09-06T21:41:00.001-07:00

We caught the sleeper train up to Chang Mai last night. The sleeper beds were surprisingly comfortable. The following picture shows Marie surreptitiously drinking thai rum and pepsi, in an effort to make the train ride easier.

The only downside was the full court press from the tuk tuk drivers as we came off the train. I thought Bangkok touting was aggressive, but obviously I need to harden up. On the plus side: after the 30+ degrees that was Bangkok, Chang Mai seems waaay more bearable due to its altitude, say 20-25 degrees. Which means we don't need aircon, and can therefore get a fan room at a place with a pool for the same price as our aircon room sans pool in Bangkok.

There is Muay Thai on tonight so might try to go to that. The fights go from 830 to midnight, with the bigger (by thai standards) boys being on toward the end. Then it is a couple of days lazing around (might hire a scooter for a day to get out of the town), with a full day 10 meal cooking course on Monday- no breakfast that day!

(More than ) One night in Bangkok

2007-09-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

We have only been in bangkok for a couple of days, and already I have had what I would call two moments.

The first of these was on our second night. Scene as follows:
Sitting down for dinner in a rooftop restaurant looking out over Bangkok, lit by candles on the tables and fairy lights snaking around the balustrade.
Being the only farangs in the joint, which always bodes well for the quality of food.
As the waiter bought out a couple of large beers, the music changed to Frank Bennett singing Black Hole Sun. It was phenomenal. The music then morphed into some Fun Loving Criminals from their lounge album, and then an assortment of other lounge classics a la Frank Bennett. As Marie said, it was like they looked at my Sunday morning wakeup music to see what genres I liked and switched a few of the songs around.
And then the food came out. Best Thai I have ever had- as at today :).
Marie had fried rice and mackerel, which was very tasty. We shared a hot and sour fish soup with meatballs which was good too. But the highlight for me was my Thai spicy beef salad, where all the flavours seemed to bond with each other perfectly. I really hope we get to make this salad at the cooking course in Chang Mai in a couple of days. This dinner (and the fact that its quality was wholly unexpected) is why I left a perfectly nice lifestyle.

The second moment occurred yesterday afternoon, after a day jousting with touts & tuk tuk drivers. Marie and I were wandering back to our guesthouse after going to see the Reclining Buddha and the Grand Palace. We wandered past a queue of Thais, who were jostling in front of an unassuming storefront. We looked at each other, and thought that if that many locals were queuing then whatever is coming out of that store must be good. So I went back and took my place in the queue, and eventually discovered that the storefront was a bakery doing an very swift trade. Among the type of breads on sale was a loaf which had sausages set into the top. Through a combination of gesticulation and pigeon English I asked the guy in the queue behind me the Thai for 'sausage bread'. He thought I was hilarious, but I eventually honed my pronunciation to the stage where he didn't laugh. When I finally got to the front of the queue I found out that the serving woman spoke English, haha. And yes, the sausage bread tasted great.

Other thoughts on Bangkok below the fold.
I think I like Bangkok, but it is definitely a culture shock. For one, Bangkok is quite smelly. When the durian vendor went past me I didn't smell the rotting flesh odour of the durian, the general city smell masked that. Rather, the durian smelt fragrant, which was quite odd.
If you manage to get to a market which is outside the tourist ebb and flow, you won't get hassled by touts and you will see things outside your comfort zone. We dropped some baggage (laptops, booze, heavy clothes) into storage on the other side of town, and went to the adjacent produce market. I saw rows upon rows of meat from every kind of animal you can think of.

At one stall there were live chickens in a cage under the counter, dead uncooked chickens on the counter, and cooked chicken skewers to one side for immediate consumption. The array of herbs is also quite phenomenal. We took a couple of photos of the meat and herbs, but got told off by the local police so couldn't get any pictures of the live chickens.
Khao San Road is carnie central. It is quite fun sitting on the kerb and trying to guess where people are originally from, and for how long they have been backpacking.

Tuk tuk rides are fun.
Tuk tuk drivers are shifty ripoff merchants.
And finally, a rude place name for my sister in law:

Off on the overnight train to Chang Mai tonight.

Simon's thoughts from Auckland Airport

2007-09-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Posting from Auckland Airport, thriving destination that it is.
I think the moment that this whole indefinite stay overseas thang kicked in was when I was filling out my NZ Customs departure card. Every single previous time I have filled in one of these cards, for the question 'how long will you be away from New Zealand' I have put in x number of days, where 7 < x < 41.
This time I ticked the box labeled 'permanently', which seemed kind of final to me. Why can't they have a box marked 'unknown, anywhere between 6 months and 6 years'? This would have fit my mood much better.
In other news, my mullet is developing nicely.

Also, assorted family shots from the airport and our outing to the Paraparaumu RSA as follows:

Finally, Marie and I have exit row seats for the Auckland- Bangkok flight, after the check in woman took pity on me. I am quite excited at the upcoming lack of circulation problems.

Crap that you dodn't know you had

2007-09-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

I thought when we moved from Hanson St that I had rid myself of all the junk that you collect and sorted it into - storage, ship, sallies and self-carry (ok I can't think of a word beginning with s that means to lug around on my back through SEA). Turns out I haven't there are still 5 more boxes and I mean large ones and a bed all to go to the Sallies - lucky them...

For the last time

2007-08-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

It feels kind of scary to be doing everything for the last time.
Last day of work a couple of days ago, last haircut a week ago, last trip out of Wellington yesterday. Marie raised an interesting point yesterday: I have no firm idea when I will see everyone again.
In some ways it would be easier if I was just going on the bog standard working holiday visa, because I would know I would be back in two years time. As it is, I have no idea when I will see people again- it could be 6 months (when they come and visit, hint hint), it could be 6 years.
What do you call my combination of happiness and sadness- is bittersweet the right word here? I do numbers, not words...

Wellington Film Festival

2007-08-06T01:09:00.000-07:00

The Wellington iteration of the International Film Festival has wrapped up, and that will be the last time I sit in the Paramount/Embassy for a while.

It is always a bit of a lottery picking movies from among the 200+ on offer. I managed to make it to all ten movies on my shortlist which I thought was impressively nerdy, but Dan went to about a dozen so he wins. I tried to do a little bit of research rather than picking essentially at random, but I still ended up picking in one case based on the picture in the festival brochure.

Movies which I would strongly recommend, Very very good, 8-9/10
Black Book. This is Paul Verhoeven at his finest, very powerful.
Deliver Us from Evil. MAJOR caveat: this documentary is about a pedophile priest, and contains interviews with the priest, his victims, and the church hierarchy. Harrowing, but very moving.

Movies which I would recommend, Very good, 7-8/10
Day Watch- Russian vampire hallucinogenic goodness
I have never forgotten you. Simon Weisenthal biopic, surprisingly uplifting.
Severance. This is just plain funny. The promotional blurb promised a mix of Shaun of the Dead and Hostel, which sums it up about right

Movies which I enjoyed, and I would recommend them if they came up in conversation, but I would not recommend unsolicited, 6-7/10
Cocaine Cowboys, Eagle vs Shark, Exiled, I Served the King of England, Jesus Camp, Rescue Dawn, Them

And before you think I am some kind of movie snob, the last movie I saw before the festival was Blades of Glory and I thought that was very very funny. Not as funny as Anchorman, but still very funny.

Cantankerous curmudgeons I have read

2007-07-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

M & I had dinner and drinks a while back with a mate who works in arts publishing. He works quite closely with the editor of the Capital Times, and somehow our conversation got on to the serial letter writers who inhabit the 'your say' columns in the weekly newspapers. If you have every picked up a Capital Times or similar publication I am sure you know the names of the most grievous offenders- H Westfold from Haitaitai, RO Hare from Lower Hutt, and Ronald R Smythe from Mount Cook.

Someone came up with the idea of giving these three misanthropes regular newspaper space in the form of a rotating opinion column. Unfortunately (if only for sheer humour value) this never seems to have taken root.

To generalise about their polemical output: H Westfold produces the most letters, RO Hare spends his time rebutting H Westfold's latest missive, and Ronald R Smythe seems to react to whatever miscellany offends his ultra-conservative tendencies. My favourite is Ronald R Smythe. He is consistently hilarious, whereas the other two are sometime tedious at times.

For example, he sent in a pearler of a letter a couple of months back which generated a few responses, and I quote in full:
Recently, I was having a conversation over a glass or two of sherry with an acquaintance of mine who resides in the southern side of Wellington’s Mt Cook suburb. He was distraught over the changes proposed for the electoral map, which would see him move out of Wellington Central and into Rongotai.
Whilst I could assure him there would be no loss in the market value of his residence resulting from the move, I could not say the same for his state of mind. No longer would he have the opportunity to help elect a sensible, conservative parliamentarian to represent him – he would be flung into a ludicrously safe working-class Labour seat. To add salt to the wounds, Rongotai is represented by a woman!
Electorates should be set for life, allowing middle-class citizens to choose to live among like-minded people, and ensure representation by economically sound people – preferably men. I feel genuine remorse for my good friend, seeing his opportunity for electoral peace of mind taken so cruelly away.

There are a couple of issues in the letter above. The first is that the man drinks sherry. The second is factual accuracy. As one politically aware respondent pointed out, this letter is riddled with factual errors. Personally, this only adds to Ronald R Smythe's appeal.

In fact, bring on the fan club. I would much rather support someone who is not 100% factually correct but who makes me laugh, than some pedant who gets their facts right but bores me.

I Heart Ronald? Bring back the Smythe? The possibilities are endless.

Can you spare $50 a week?

2007-07-18T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today I had coffee with a friend who had a couple of weeks in Samoa recently. We both agreed that Samoa in June was infinitely preferable weather wise to New Zealand in June. She was quite taken by the idea of buying property there, or a least a patch of land near a beach (in x years time, where 5 < x< 20). I thought this would be a little binding, and my preference would be to go there for frequent extended holidays.

This got me thinking: how much would it cost to go on holiday to Samoa, every June, for the entirety of June?

Cost of holiday: $50 p/day budget all inclusive once there => $700 for two weeks => $1400 four weeks. I reckon you could probably stretch your money further if you tried, but $1500 p/month is definitely quite doable if you are staying in a Manase / Taufua / Fao Fao level beachside fale.
$1000 flights return.
Thus for a total spend of $2500 you could spend next June in its entirety in a beachside fale, drinking copious amounts of Vailima and cocktails. When (If) that gets a little tiresome you could volunteer at the local school or similar.

How much per week? If you are away for four weeks, you will need to save for 48 weeks to fund this. Thus, $2500 /48 = $50 approximately.
So, if you can afford to put away around $50 a week for the rest of the year, you can take the entirety of June as a holiday and spend it on a beach in Samoa.

Annual Leave: Another factor here is leave from your employment. Presumably this would take a little bit of negotiation, but if you managed to negotiate for a higher than usual annual leave entitlement- say six weeks- then you will be in the great position on holiday of having your income in New Zealand being higher than the day to day expenses you are incurring in Samoa. IF you could somehow negotiate eight weeks leave (which would probably entail taking a pay cut) you could extend your holiday to two months, but that is a pipe dream for me at the moment.
If neither of those are options you can always take leave without pay, which is not totally bad.

If you get bored of Samoa one year you could go somewhere else for a month- say Vietnam or similar- and then go back to Samoa the following year.

Can you spare $50 a week?

Things I have learnt while packing up my life

2007-07-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

One of the more tedious parts of preparing for a trip overseas of indefinite length is dividing my material possessions into one of three categories:
a) Take with me (clothes mainly- only a backpack on holiday, plus a couple of boxes of work clothes sent in advance)
b) Store at parents' residences (nice furniture, exotic glassware, miscellaneous household goods)
c) Sell or give to Salvation Army (everything else)

For me, CDs and DVDs fall into b) as I would feel embarrassed to give some of my movies to the Salvation Army.

Thus I have discovered that the attrition rate for CDs within my care is around 3.7%, as I have 15 CD cases with no CDs within. With DVDs my attrition rate is much better, as I have only 1 DVD case with no DVD within. Unfortunately, it is one of my favourites. Why couldn't the DVD leprechauns take one of the crappier movies in my collection?

Last mention of Facebook I promise

2007-07-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

One thing which has surprised me about Facebook is the whole confirm/reject friend conundrum.
I mean, I like to think that there are parts of me which are able to act in a socially acceptable manner. So what is the socially acceptable response when someone asks to be my friend, but I have never interacted with them in any kind of meaningful manner?
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against this particular person. I try not to have anything against anyone. Except John Cena.
But I have never exchanged small talk beyond monosyllables of greeting, never gone out for a beer with them, never met up to go to a movie, never emailed or texted them, never talked smack with them at a party, never misbehaved at the back of a rehearsal with them.
What is the correct response? I don't want to reject them, does this mean I confirm as a default option? Why can't there be a third option, and what would that third option be called? All I wanted was an easy way to stay in touch with my peeps when I am overseas...

Edit: okay, Russ's facebook analysis is much funnier.

Facebook

2007-07-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

We've both signed up for facebook so if anyone reading this is our friend and wants to see more regular photos once we are actually on the road find us there. Facebook is a strange thing, kind of like a popularity competition - how many friends do you have? You are given the option of accepting or rejecting friends - rejecting people who think that they are your friend - that is aweful! Please, friends don't reject me... Was interested to see that there are already photos of me on it, just goes to show how little control you have over these things! Anyways photos will go up there too.

Notice

2007-07-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

Simon and Marie have now both given notice at work. A little premature with 8 weeks still to departure date but, I guess that they may start to become suspicious with all the hits on travel websites etc. Giving notice is astrang thing, usually you can't wait to do it, having got to the point where you hate your job, hopefully have another one and can't wait to leave. Not this time - like jobs, don't have another one, and don't know what leaving holds...
8 more weeks til departure date and counting...

1/2 Marathon

2007-07-01T00:04:00.001-07:00

Yay, congratulations Simon for completing the 1/2 marathon last weekend. Despite strong Wellington winds he kept running the whole way and finished in under two hours. Not bad for someone who started running only 3 months ago!!