Mundi

What a beautiful day today in Christchurch. The Breeze Lazy Sundays had lined up Mundi, a "world-jazz" band. Awesome. That's what I'd call them. It was a kind of Paul Winter meets Jethro Tull feeling on the lawn. Mellow yet invigorating; jauntingly earthy.

Several hundred people lined the shaded area of the Archery Lawn in Hagley Park's Botanical Gardens. Chilly bins, deck chairs, wine coolers and tanned bodies slowly filled the grassy amphitheatre as Mundi warmed up and tested sound.




I knew as soon as I saw the banjo I was sold.There's not enough banjo music in New Zealand. If I'da had twenty bucks I'd have bought the CD (Mundi's latest album, In the Blink of an Eye) just on the back of the banjo. Founding member Tyson Smith (right) also plays guitar.

Front woman (and also founding member) and brilliant flautist Tamara Smith charmed the audience with some haunting tunes, her funky cool glasses, and did I mention some brilliant flute mastery? Having studied classical music, according to NZ Music Teachers Online, a love of world music, jazz, rock, and blues brought her to Christchurch Polytech Jazz School where she received a Bachelor in Musical Arts and a Diploma in Teaching and Learning from the College of Education.



Mundi captured the Lazy Sunday crowd in an hour and a half set, accompanied by guest singer Roslen Langton, and dancer extraordinaire Emily Napolitano.

Some of Mundi, and many other bands will be performing at The Drum Festival at the Little River Campground on January 28-29. Check out the LRC website for more details.

Technology

Things should me made as simple as possible, but not any simpler 

                                 - Albert Einstein

I'm not the stupidest guy around. I used to feel like I was, but nowadays I feel I can hold my own on a lot of topics, but I am hardly an "expert" on anything.

Especially when it comes to technology. Technology vexes me. Greatly.

It's the 21st Century. I've already given up on the promises made last century by those "in the know" that by now we'd have flying cars, light-speed travel, and transporter machines. Now my hopes and requirements are much simpler. For now I'd just like to have a toaster that doesn't burn crumpets.

It seems to me, though, in my simplicity, that "technology" is not all that it's cracked up to be. The oft used example is that if fridges ran like computers consumers would be up in arms about the inefficiency. But, of course, it's not just limited to computers.

Coffee 2 go

It's commonly known that I am not a coffee connoisseur. I'm an instant coffee guy. And I mean that. A few years ago (quite a few) when friends and I frequented a certain Muffin Break (in the old Northlands Mall), I talked the proprietor into keeping a bag of instant coffee in the bottom cupboard just for me. So every day he'd make me an instant coffee, charge me four dollars and laugh all the way to the bank.

I still drink instant coffee, and the cheaper the better. I like the Home Brand and Budget brews. Why pay ten bucks for a bag of Nescafe when the cheaper stuff for two ninety nine a bag, sometimes as low as one sixty nine, taste just the same?

When I go to Coffee Culture I wish I could get a decent cup of instant coffee. Not perked either. That stuff's just nasty.

Sunrise

Sumner Sunrise

"For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you."
         - Krzysztof Kieslowski



I think I'm a sunrise person. It appeals to me (more than sunset). Is it simply the colours, or is it something more ethereal, in all senses of the word? The freshness of the air; the promise of an entirely new day, an opportunity to start again regardless of what happened yesterday; the feeling that no matter what, today just might be the day when existing ceases, and living begins.

I took this in 1982. It's probably one of my favourite photos. It was sunrise in Mount Maunganui and looking at it now - 30 years later (OMG!) - I can remember it like it was yesterday. For some reason every second of this moment is burned into my memory. I don't remember what happened an hour before it or an hour after it. But I keenly remember that twenty seconds when I placed Christine, pushed the shutter button and sprinted the twenty meters, in cowboy boots, to her waiting arms.

Dance the Night Away

I'm frequently nostalgic. Usually it's about a girl. Every now and then I get a bit obsessed about things from my past, and, as if to satisfy a tiny wee voice inside me, I hit the google machine and look for evidence that I did actually exist "back then". Sometimes my memory tricks me. Sometimes - quite frequently actually - I think did that really happen? So it feels good to see some old photographs, or faded letters, or (in these modern times) to see proof-positive on the Internet that my memory does indeed serve me well (most of the time).

So it was the other night when I got to thinking about my old dancing teacher, Irene Oliver. I remember Irene was well over a hundred years old when she was teaching in the 70s. Well, she seemed to be well over a hundred (I was a teenager so anybody over 30 seemed ancient), but in reality she must have been in her 60s or even 70s. And I've often wondered over the years if she has died, and when. But equally it wouldn't surprise me if she were still alive and is actually now well over a hundred. She lived for two things, as I remember. Dancing, and caring for her elderly mother. Probably in that order. But it goes to show that longevity is in Irene's genes.

"How can this be?"

The platform from which to launch any argument about the St. Matthew-in-the-City church billboard must surely be the Scriptures. Of course, being Catholics, many of the protesters may never have actually read a Bible.

According to Scripture, Mary was surprised by the news she was with child. "Excuse me, Gabriel? I'm what?"

So how far fetched is it to imagine she would take a pregnancy test just to get it clear in her mind and think O.M.G. It's true! (using whatever techniques they used in BC times to test for pregnancy. Now that bears some interesting speculation).

Bah humbug!

Bah humbug!

I'm a lot Grinch. I'm a little Ebenezer Scrooge.


I know a lot of people just simply hate Christmas. I'm one of them. I know a lot of people tolerate Christmas because it's forced upon us, it's expected, and it's almost impossible to escape. I'm one of them, too.


And I know a lot of people HATE people like me. Whether they actually love Christmas, or just can't admit that they secretly hate it and don't like being reminded of that, a part of the expectation is that we put on a happy face, crank up the Royal Guardsmen, and gird our loins as we muscle our way through The Warehouse checking our list twice and crossing off names as we buy trinkets made by poor little Chinese children who probably don't even know what Christmas is! I wonder, though (if they do do Christmas) do those little Chinese children wake up on Christmas day, open their presents and go "Hey! I made that!"?

The Political Machine

Believe it or not, I try to stay away from politics. I have an opinion, but mostly I have no idea. I have no idea about the machinations of Parliament, about the nuances of economies, about the cut and thrust of an election campaign, about the deals that may or may not go on behind closed doors.

Mostly I know how it is to live day to day with the price of everyday goods going up while wages increase at a vastly disproportionate rate (if at all). I know that three years ago we paid 99c for a loaf of Couplands bread and now, for what appears to be the same loaf of bread, we're paying $2.49. I know that at the same store we used to get two 2 litre bottles of milk for $4, and now it is $6.60. Cheese was $9 a kilo and went to nearly $15, but when obviously too many people couldn't afford it and stopped buying as much of it the price dropped again to $9. Now it's about $12. There was an uproar when petrol climbed towards $2 a litre and it dropped quickly; only to ever so quietly sneak up again so that now it's well over $2 and nobody is batting an eyelid. Two years ago we could get Josh a pair of shoes for twenty bucks. Now it's closer to thirty (and it's not just because his feet are bigger).

Shrine

It's interesting that at the end of Christchurch's newest shopping mall, the modified containers the whole world is talking about - well, arguing about - there is a fence, a kind of wall. It separates the new from the old. 

This side of the fence is new and  frivolous. Shoppers go about their business, happy to be able to shop in the CBD again. Just why the malls are inadequate I don't know, but for a certain set, shopping in the CBD seems to be more real, more honest.

On the other side of the fence is the old and somber, the dead and dying, the former Christchurch, characterised poignantly by the slow, but very visible (and loud, as one German tourist pointed out), deconstruction of the Hotel Grand Chancellor.

While shoppers, lunching workers and tourists happily go about their business in the containers slash boutiques and on the mall, many if not all (at some point) stand at the fence and look respectfully into the old Christchurch and take a moment.

It's kind of shrine like. I'd like to know what's in the minds of the worshippers. It's our own Wailing Wall. It's a stark reminder that, while the new and exciting slowly evolves behind us, there still exists the old world, the Christchurch that used to be, and that there is an impenetrable wall, physically and emotionally, between the two.

I've heard many people say that they grew up in Christchurch and down town represents for them their childhood. It's where they hung out as teenagers, it's where their parents (pre-mall) dragged them to buy shoes or to have family lunches.

I guess I might feel the same about Rotorua, even though with all due respect it wouldn't bother me if the entire city of Rotorua got swallowed by the volcano it's supposed to be sitting on. But that's another story. Good or (mostly) bad, I have memories of the city in which I grew up. I can still remember the streets and the shops, and if I dig deep enough I can probably recall the smells (not only the rotten-egg-sulphur smell) and the sounds unique to that city and my childhood. I remember the BNZ where my dad sometimes took me, and the Railway Station where he worked had very distinctive smells. Like the smell of jam sandwiches in a leather school bag, it's a smell that stays with you for a lifetime.

I guess it's the same for people who grew up in Christchurch. To see many of the buildings in the CBD crumbling must be touching something deep inside them.

Anyway, I think this Wailing Wall will attract more people, and many, like me, for whatever morbid or macabre reason will return to it many times and take a moment. Especially as the Grand Chancellor comes down floor by floor over the next twelve months or so.

Coffee Zone

If you're like a friend of mine, thinking "that wasn't there last week", you'd be right. It wasn't.

Coffee Zone is another example of the innovative, quirky establishment rising like a phoenix out of the liquifaction in Christchurch. From shipping container dairies or shopping malls and personalised portaloos, to pre-fabricated  dance clubs and school classes, I thought I'd seen it all. Until yesterday.

I was driving through Sydenham and there it was. Like a wooden shack out the back of a swamp, Coffee Zone, al fresco cappuccino, seemed to have been banged together overnight and plonked on the nearest available empty lot. Of course, there are plenty of them in down town Sydenham.

Opposite the National Bank, on the old Eco Frame and Mirror space, Coffee Zone is...is really cool. It's been there a little over a week and it's open Monday to Friday, 730am til 330pm. You can text an order (0221409861) or call (03 3775725). Bex brews a good coffee and it's service with a smile.

And Lego.

I'm not sure what the Lego means. It's interwoven in the structure, but I'm pretty sure it meets earthquake code. It was inspired, says Bex the Barista, by something similar overseas, but whatever, it's funky.

Bex the Barista

COFFEE ZONE

See you there.