Run to your house, undo the chains… I woke up wanting you

The exhibition opens tomorrow and I’m excited, despite being in the opposite hemisphere! These three photos makes up one of my collective pieces that I’m showing and is called Accomplice (accompanying text below). The lines in the sides of the frames are from the inaccuracies of using double exposure, but I like the authentic affect it has, so I’ve kept them as is.

All taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3
“Our family cat has been everyone’s best friend and worst enemy. The best feet heater and the worst alarm clock. The best food recycling system and the worst mess. Much like me.“

Dedicated to my sister Liv, as Flakeypoo (that’s not his real name, but I call him all sorts of endearing things, I promise, it sounds better than it reads!) is actually her cat, but he’s become my most dependable friend and heater as of late. The boyfriend ought to pay him with chin tickles and treats for filling in on his job! He’s exactly what I want sleeping on my duvet – and sometimes under, as it’s getting colder now – to keep my feet warm, or to cuddle whilst trying to fall asleep to his soothing purrs. Honestly, I wouldn’t know what I’d do without our cat. Even though he wakes me up for a feed at 5am, which is unfortunately often barely an hour or two after I’ve managed to fall asleep, I still love him unconditionally. I thought it was funny the other night when the boy was over and Flakes was niggling at my feet, my response was, “I feed you, I sleep with you, I’m good to you, what more do you want from me?!” Irony.

What I want more of though, is time. I want to stop thinking about and basing my days on the time I don’t have to do things, time I don’t have to spend with people, time I don’t have to be alone and just mull over ideas and be a little creative.

In 21 days (or less, I don’t know the precise day my last assessment is), I will have completed half of my Bachelor of Music degree. It’s very exciting yet daunting at the same time, because then I will have to find some kind of temporary answer to the age old question of “what on earth are you going to do with that?!” Disheartening, yes, a little… maybe a lot. I found out this week that a friend of mine who’s a couple of years above me at jazz school currently doing her Honours course has just been accepted into Le Cordon Bleu. And yes, that’s the incredibly famous culinary school in Paris that was in the movie Julie & Julia. The main reason that this news struck a chord with me (oh haha lame pun, I swear I wrote it and then realised afterwards!) is because she also happens to be an asian female bass player, and we’ve known each other since college so often end up discussing the whole “upbringing vs futures” type thing.

I have a couple of non-jazz post-grad options that’s been swirling in my head since last year, but a lot can happen in a year and a half, so I’m excited yet anxious to see what happens in the next half of my degree, and what I’ll end up doing. I feel the northern hemisphere calling, and I honestly can’t wait to travel again in general. The thing is, I hate the idea of telling people what I might like to do in future, so I almost never tell… I hate the possibility of changing my mind completely, or flunking out of a path once desired.

All the jazzy musical intricacies aside, one of, if not the greatest challenge I have to face on a daily basis is to not panic. It’s the one skill that I keep being let down by, and have to work on constantly. I panic, then I blank, and everything I knew and practised just completely disappears. The upside to this improvisation-related panic is that I don’t get concerned about being put on the spot with difficult/awkward questions or situations. Admittedly, I’ve always been one of those “good on the spot” people (at least, until jazz school), but I’ve been waaay calmer and think a lot faster, deeper and creatively these days, because, heck, at least in normal situations, I don’t have to give a musical response!

So I’ve got to put this question out there – what did you study (or what are you studying), is it relevant to your job/career path now, and are things panning out how you had planned or did you kind of just wing it and waited to see what doors would open?

Something nice to round the evening off with – a playlist I threw together last night to doze to:

Also, this is possibly my last entry as a teenager. I turn 20 on Monday but I’m completely swamped this weekend, and will also be spending around 13 hours of my birthday at university. Yikes. And some very relevant words:

“The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.” – Chuck Palahniuk

Baby says, if ever you see skin as fair, Or eyes as deep and as black as mine, I know you’re lying

One assessment down. Eight to go. I think. Maybe I left something out when I counted…

I thought I’d post a photo from one of the longest and happiest days of my life (San Francisco, November 9th 2010), seeing as I’m trying to be optimistic about everything at the moment.

In the next month I will become so sleep deprived, stressed out and high strung that ferry rides will be my bedtime and my fingers will bleed. Welcome to assessment month hell at jazz school – a.k.a. the last month of semester. My face will start breaking out in pimples, emulating aethestically what will be the chaos of my life. Generally, I never ever get pimples, except when I am SUPER stressed out. I don’t mean to brag (I count myself lucky and thank my mother’s genes, to be honest), but I have such nice skin that one pimple is a cataclysmic event, let alone during assessment time when I get up to three. This is too much gross detail, but with me, pimples generally never form or “ripen”, as some people like to call it. They just stay under the surface and hurt like a bitch.

Basically, life is extremely stressful at the moment, and I really really need to step it up and average out my general performance standards at a higher level. It’s so ironic in many ways that I’ve stopped caring about my grades since I got to university. I used to be the sort of person that will get B’s for not trying, and A’s for pretending to give a shit, or the classes that I enjoy, and that was perfectly fine with me. More than fine, it was bloody swell. I always felt like I always got at least 10% more than I deserved, considering I had never done any actual “studying” in my life, to be perfectly honest. But jazz school is a completely different ball game. It’s not academic in any such way, so none of this being “naturally bright” business bullshit comes into play. To a large extent, it is down to commitment, and time spent, but really, it’s about a whole lot of heart.

I finally received my feedback for the jazz combo recital from the end of last term, and the identical raw mark from both assessors on the panel that night had no bearing on my feelings at all. However, I was thoroughly pleased with the fact that their comments precisely reflected my thoughts on how I played that night. The things they thought I did well, and the things they pointed out that needs improvement were all in agreement with how I felt, so that’s really the biggest thing for me. I no longer care about the ABC’s and care mostly about my growth not just as a musician, but as a person. I mean, for gods sake I got something below a B for the first time in my life when I got to university! Nerves, freezing up and mind blanking have been some of my top enemies, and it all comes down to confidence, so I’m trying to work on that.

It’s funny thinking back on all the employers I’ve spoken to in the past who have said that they would happily employ a music graduate for a non music-related job. I remember most distinctly a barrister I had met, with whom I was discussing how I had gone about the most painful decision of my life – choosing jazz school over law school. After chatting for a good half hour, he told me that he thought I would have made an excellent lawyer had I chosen to pursue it; but also that he can see why I didn’t, and the fact that I hold the possibilities of so much more. And I think it’s this obsession with there is something more, there’s got to be more to life, there’s got to be more to me, more to be discovered, more to be devoured, more to be enjoyed, more to be read, seen, photographed, written, learnt, heard, felt, touched, loved – MORE! that ultimately drives me in the supposedly “unconventional” and “creative” realms that I enjoy so much to delve in. I don’t think it’s enough for me to simply aim for a decent paying job, end up with a nice husband, bright children and then repeat the cycle. No. Yes, I want all that, but I also want so much MORE. Having said that, it is terribly hard for me to let go of the “black-clad powerhouse woman of a lawyer with a disposable income, too little time and the world at her fingertips”-type image that I’d spent a large majority of the past decade aiming for. But also having said that, at the same time, I also harboured dreams of being a performer. I still haven’t figured out quite yet the precise sort of perfomer I’d like to be, but I think that there is merit in all forms. And in a larger, more abstract sense of the word, I also don’t think that you have to be physically doing something like playing music, dancing or acting to be “performing” – I like to think that there are such things as literary performances, which is the accumulation of those dashing, inspired moments transcribed into text on paper, rather than in the form of something you sit down to watch or listen to… which ultimately is what a musical/theatrical/dance performace also is: an “accumulation of those dashing, inspired moments”, except executed in a single setting, so to speak.

Anyway, before I ran off on a tangent, the point I was leading to about employers was the list of “qualities” that music graduates supposedly have, or will have achieved. These include all sorts of cheesy, typical-sounding adjectives which you can think of. And I admit, I’d always thought it a little over-repeated for the sake of encouraging young people to pursue a wide range of Bachelor degrees other than the “normal”, “conventional” or “money making” ones that usually come to mind; but funnily enough, these days I think I’m really starting to “get it”. I’m suffering such a bad case of low motivation and general difficulty with “getting on with it”, and I think that’s because in many ways, this music degree is actually indirectly designed to make me a better person – and that is what I’m struggling with. It’s not the actual coursework that I’m struggling with as such (although yes, it’s intense, and yes it’s difficult), but what it takes to do well in this course. You have to be so internally motivated, fight through intellectual, creative, physical and personal barriers just to get through your workload, let alone get good at it. It’s much easier for me to curl up in bed with a text book to cram for a test with, than it is for me to want to stand for hours on end and play until my blistering fingertips really can’t handle anymore bass playing. You have to want to and then make yourself go the extra mile all the time. Also, seeing as I’m self-professed not very obsessed with jazz – yes, I love it, but sometimes I just can’t conjure up the mental capacity for it, even to listen to it – it’s doubly hard for me to want to sit back, and spend hours listening to jazz recordings. By that, I don’t mean put it on and chill out, but I mean to sit there and fully pay attention to it. Over and over. Listening to all the different parts. Not just the chords, but the chord voicings, then the voicings over the particular note choices in the bass line, and the voicings used by another chordal instrument, what the soloist is playing, how they’re playing, their rhythm, time, placement, note choices, chords they outline, chords they imply, time they imply, feel, the groove of the swing… Oh by now my head just wants to burst!

My so-last-minute-I-should-get-shot transcription assessment went well today. Transcribed 64 bars of Hank Mobley’s solo on Someday My Prince Will Come and had to perform to the recording. Apparently my written transcription was pretty accurate, which surprised me. It was so hard to write out something when he plays so darn behind the beat.

Here’s a super lovely track by an amazingly sweet and talent vocalise, Rosa Passos with the legendary Ron Carter:

Pieces of what… doesn’t matter anymore

Yesterday I got home after a treacherous commute from uni – slip-jogging downhill in the city in rain, with a heavy bag, heavy bass, semi exposed music folders, very full ferry, awkward seating – to the glorious sight of some parcels. My Asos package and some items from the BookDepository. I’m still waiting on 4(?) more books and a dress/convertible skirt thing to arrive:

OCD, Definition 1:

What I really want to write about is “obsessive compulsive documentation”, as per inspired by Marta’s blog. But first I have to get something off my chest: I used to be quite OCD as a child. I still am a little bit now, but it’s nothing compared to what I used to be. I’m sure lots of people out there will have done some of the things I used to do, but can you tell me – how bad did it feel when you didn’t stick to those “rules” which your brain somehow constructed and told you to adhere to?

I used to, and often still do now, but in a more oppressed manner:

– have to take three steps per slab of concrete
– count everything obsessively, out loud, in my head, all the time – especially when running and swimming (which is why I gave up the latter, counting up to the 5000 region is painful whilst swimming km after km in a lap pool)
– have to touch something a certain amount of times
– have to experience the same thing on both sides of my body (I still do this, my friends find it funny, but I really don’t – especially when they trigger it intentionally, it sets me off like a house on fire. e.g., if someone slaps one arm, I will have to ask them to slap me on the other arm, at the same angle, with the same strength; or if someone steps on my foot or something stupid like that.  Actually, I’d appreciate if everyone who reads this blog that knows me in real life would please fucking stop laughing about it and triggering it, it’s anguish in my head to try and fight the urge to punch my own arm, for example.
– in addition to the above, I like to touch things with both hands. I line people’s phones up when it’s on a table. I like to stack my ipod and phone together because they’re about the same size, and I hate feeling a phone vibrate in one hand but not the other.
– most especially in homeware-type stores, I have have have to backtrack my way out of a store, as if I had a spider web-like things trailing me and I have to “untangle” my way out, so that this “thread” doesn’t loop around a shelf or rack in a store. It used to make my mum wonder why I kept walking in circles back and back around aisles.
– worst of all, I have a counting system and this is the most frustrating and made-fun-of thing ever. As mentioned above, I count. A lot. Moreover, I do this weird thing where I count three to 3, then three more to 6, then three more to 9, then two to 11, two more to 13, then three to 16 and then seven to 23. When I was younger, this systematic pattern only existed up to the number 9, but then at some point it grew to 11, 13, 16… and it did stop at 21 for a while, but somehow ended up at 23 instead. Weird, I know. And that probably made no sense to anyone else but me anyway. But the worst thing is, people make a joke out of it and I just can’t stand it! At its worst, you can tell my mind’s distracted from say, if I’m reading a book, I’ll end up reading really fucking slowly (I’m generally a fast reader otherwise) because I’ll have to look at all the punctuation on the page a certain amount of times… the page number a certain amount of times. And if it’s a number than I deem as “not good” or that I don’t like (such as 2, 4, 8), my mind psyches itself out and I have to “fix” it by looking at “good” numbers certain amount of times.

Not to mention, these are just my main things that I “have to” comply/count to. There are all sorts of random things that I obsess over as well, but don’t kick in that often, or are more easily overridden by my logic and common sense. For example, I have really, really messy (what people like to call “artsy”) handwriting – it’s mostly because I write really fast and big, and that’s just how it ends up. But those silly people that have attempted to copy my handwriting (fuck knows why), or, those even worse ones that try to criticise my handwriting beyond a necessary point, don’t realise that there’s a whole other reason which I let it become and stay so messy. To put it simply, once I make a conscious effort to make my writing neat, I end up obsessing over making it perfect. If I’m writing down music and my “neat writing” thing kicks in, then every little thing that pours over one line must immediately be erased. Or if my clefs don’t fit in the lines perfectly. Or if I haven’t divided each bar to roughly the same size.

It’s the most unbearable thing ever. Just now, I’ve scratched the back of my neck twice, on both sides, with both hands, because I can’t talk about this without succumbing to the “NEED”. I haven’t told my therapist any of this yet, though. Simply because we’re always dealing with something else and I forget about this until I get back into my car and something sets it off.

OCD, Definition 2:

Now, the other, less annoying type of “OCD” is “obsessive compulsive documentation”. To be honest, this goes beyond the desire to blog or to write in my notebook. For me, I like to keep a documentation of my mere existence and how I think/feel about things. I’ve learned so much simply by reading back in old poetry/lyric notebooks, old diaries, old blog posts, and looking through either digital photos or physical photo albums. I can’t remember how that quote goes, but I truly do believe that everything we’ve ever seen, everyone we’ve ever met and everything we’ve ever done has had its part in creating who we are today. I guess the whole “documentation” thing began the minute I was born, because my mum is a professional photographer. She’d done the big studio thing in Tokyo, did reporting for major newspapers and magazines in Taipei, and later opened up her own studio specialising in children’s photography – so my sister and I were constantly her subject of her films. She also used to do work for a parenting magazine, so whenever we so much as cried, out came the camera, snap snap, the dough rolled in. Obviously, being photographed whilst being told off or upset in general was really quite traumatising, and caused us to cry even more – but as I’ve grown up, I kind of appreciate having these things to look back on. When I was six, I asked my mum to buy me a navy and white checkered hardback diary. It came in a matching box with a lock on it, and it was to be my best friend during our immigration to New Zealand. The last time I read back through it, it occurred to me how I had started writing all in Chinese, and then in the middle was a bit of Chinglish, and eventually the Chinese got filtered out to remain only in the phrases where there’s a lexicon gap.

Then, at age 12 I discovered blogging and it changed my life. As you can see, I’ve been doing it ever since.

What I enjoy about documentation is that there’s evidence outside of myself that an experience or thought had occurred. Our memories aren’t reliable, and more often than not gets gray and blurry around the edges. Sometimes you see a view so amazing or had such a good time that you think “I’m going to remember this forever” – but really, you don’t. Some people enjoy just keeping such memories within, to themselves, but I just can’t. On top of this, such documentation often becomes a source of inspiration for me later on, when I am feeling more creative. Reading old poetry/blog/diary entries of my own have often resulted in extended verses, a new reflective blog post, and once even a painting – so see, for me it’s not just about “did that, *photograph it*, file it”, even if it appears to be to onlookers.

As for less meaning for documentation like taking crappy party photos versus taking decent film ones with a bit more effort, both are important to me. Whilst I may not (unlike most people my age) splash all my party/drunk/whatever photos all over facebook, it’s still nice for me to know that someday when I’m older and these days are over, I will have something left of it to look back on. Heck, I don’t even party that much or often anymore, so even looking back on photos from a year ago evokes nostalgia and makes me feel old already!

Point is, I like documenting. And even though I believe that, at the core we never change that much and essentially remain the same at heart, I still like to be reminded of who I used to be at any particular given point. It’s like those amazing lyrics or songs that I write in the shower, that I feel are so worthy of being worked on and properly written out, which I then forget the minute the water goes off – so too do the amazing memories and experiences that we have, if we don’t record them in some way. Plus, it’s always fun to see things from a new perspective, or think my god, I was that retarded at that age?! and then feel like a better person a few years on, isn’t it?

 

Left: welcome to the neglected corner of my room, where I tend to stash the biggest, heftiest items (refer to multiple basses and hockey gear), which then gets in the way of me trying to reach my wardrobe.
Right: my wardrobe door, on which I stuck a pile of those whacky film photos taken in Japan (my heart melts!) and Taiwan.

Traces of last night.
Left: Chocolaaate + acrylics I used to paint my bedside table last night.
Right: The remains of the beer and cupcakes which the boy and I indulged in along with Boston Legal last night.

I’ve been meaning to post this ever since Christmas. She may not enjoy my documenting ways which entails (undisclosed) unflattering photos of us, but my special lady friend sure gave me an adorabubble Christmas present which she made herself! It graces a prime spot on my wall, of course.

 

ofthesky.org/log

So we hold it close, When we feel the most – Like a love that we could not leave behind

Three photos I took in LACMA a couple of months ago. I don’t know what it is with my obsession – and often OCD – about numbers; especially the number 3.

I have such a great love of art galleries, art museums… and as I mentioned here, I’m often more preoccupied with the space itself, rather than what’s in it. I took those photos in a section of the art museum where the minimalism just got too much and I was far more interested in the floorboards and white walls, than the large canvases featuring large blocks of colours that were on said walls. I know, I know – it sounds terrible – but whilst I’m into countless forms of art, there are just some things I find more fascinating than this “minimalistic” theme in this wing of things.

“Those who are trying to find love will end up with hatred, frustration and insanity. Those who are trying to find wealth will end up totally neurotic, psychotic and totally crab. Because if you are trying to find something, you have basically, intentionally, intuitively, and individually accepted that you do not have it.” – Yogi Bhajan

I read this quote just before, and it’s completely gripped me in the sense that I find it so true. Or at least, the latter part of it. Such a bittersweet declaration that most of us would not think of viewing things this way. Or perhaps, more correctly, we wouldn’t want to.

The good news with me posting this blog entry is that, hurray, I’m still alive and haven’t suffered from any major nerve damages from my wisdom teeth removal surgery on Thursday. The bad news is that all those worries I had about general anesthesia should have been the least of my worries. Shortly after surgery (sometime after 8am), I woke at around 9.15am and the first thing that gripped me was how sore my throat was, from whatever pipes they had shoved down it to help me breathe and suck out saliva, etc. The next thing that I felt was the fact that I couldn’t feel most of the bottom half of my face. All of this so far is pretty standard, thus far, and I was relieved when my surgeon said I should be able to feel in a few hours, and that I would be able to eat rather normally by that evening – fantastic news, really, as I was starving by that point.

However, my paranoia and problems began when I started asking my sister, my friends and friends of friends who had had their wisdom teeth removed as well, to see how long it was before they regained feeling in their mouths. My sister merely said “a few hours”, and the worst I’d heard was “12 hours”, so I was thinking surely, by midnight at the latest, I would be able to feel and move my mouth. I spent much of the day mooching and lounging around, reading, watching TV, falling asleep in the boy’s arms whilst watching TV – that sort of thing – and making a general dick of myself by not being able to talk properly because I couldn’t feel my tongue and my jaw was locked up pretty tightly.

By the midnight, 1am mark, everyone had gone to sleep, and I asked my mother to wake me up in the morning to see whether or not I could feel or not, or if I should ring my surgeon up (apparently she had nightmares about this, oops). I was starting to freak out that I wasn’t even feeling any tingling in my face, you know, signs that the local anesthesia was wearing off – and my bottom lip was cold! I even started having thoughts as to whether I’d rather I had a paralysed leg or a paralysed bottom jaw… my imagination pretty much took off and ran far, far away into the realms of worst case scenarios. After failing to sleep in bed, I ended up on the couch, channel surfing and trying desperately to fall asleep. I ended up making myself a “cup-a-soup”, which I had to keep sticking my finger in, to make sure it wasn’t too hot and that I don’t burn my mouth – because obviously, I couldn’t feel a thing. Luckily, the hot soup seemed to help bring some further tingling and feeling into my tongue, except that it didn’t affect anything else. The last time I glanced at the clock was 3am and my imagination was driving me insane.

The next thing I knew, I woke to my cat prodding my face at 5am. And I thought my face! I can feel! I’ve never been so happy to be woken up at such an hour by my cat before, and the rush of adrenalin resulted in me not being able to sleep for the rest of the day.

Anyway, the point is – yes, I can feel everything now, thankfully, although unfortunately, these painkillers aren’t doing anywhere near enough to help sedate this constant pain I have, even when I’m not moving my mouth. I succeeded in my endeavour to devour an amazing burger from Burger Wisconsin today, but I had to cut it up into tiny pieces with a knife and fork in order to eat it. In the meantime, I keep checking on these stitches of mine, wishing and hoping that they would quickly dissolve and my wounds will heal so that my favourite pastimes (it seems to be) of talking and eating wouldn’t be so painful!

I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s new King of Limbs – does anyone have any thoughts on it yet? It’s on its second play right now, and I’m rather undecided. I guess it will be typical for it to grow on me (as I expect it to), but thus far only one track has really stood out to me.

We parked too close to the water and watched the Seven Swans, Who cares? Who’s right, we mis-gambled pros and cons

Between the 6th and 10th of February, I single-handedly drove more than 1700km on our road trip, circumnavigating much of the North Island.

There was too much drama in merely resizing the 69 photos I picked out for this post, let alone if I were to recount the trip in descriptive detail. We drove from Auckland to Gisborne, then from Gisborne to Wellington – where we saw Sufjan Stevens at the Opera House – and then back to Auckland, continuing further north up to the Whangaparaoa peninsula where we camped for our final night. We sang-along, played I-spy (with my English Rose/Asian eyes), played 20 questions, pulled over at random beaches and lakes, fed ourselves too much, complained about the heat, laughed, cried, fought, read, waited, and waited, and most of all, watched in awe as Sufjan Stevens put on the greatest show I’ve ever been to thus far in my life. I don’t think any concert this year will top his show. I was gutted that he didn’t play my favourite song of his (“To Be Alone With You”) in Wellington, but had played it in Auckland, especially after we drove such a long way – but I’m certain that the Welly gig trumped that of Auckland’s, the night prior. Plus, he played more songs in Wellington than in Auckland. I was afraid that the house was going to come down, after such a raucous demand for an encore, but all was worth the while when he resumed onstage. I feel a bit smugly apologetic to the inexperienced concert-goers who left before the house lights came on, before the encore, before the show was over!

I have to admit, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos at the show, so everything below from the concert are actually contraband – although I did nicely obey and cease to photograph after personally being told off. The one major downside to that is, moments after having been told off, the most picture-perfect moment presented itself, and made me want to cry. I wanted to cry because of how amazing he was, how amazing the show had been, and how I was distraught I couldn’t photographically record the single moment in which all of this was epitomised. When Sufjan got back onstage for his encore and sat at the piano on the very destroyed stage that was covered in props, scattered confetti and leftover balloons, the angle at which he sat, the angle at which the piano was placed in relation to the angle my seat was at… the precise lighting and the way it was cast onto him… everything about that moment was about the most photogenic thing I had ever seen. And in all of irony, in my bag by my feet was my forbidden camera. Furthermore, in my car that was parked a $12 taxi-ride away in Newtown, sat my longer lens. Nonetheless, I felt myself hold that breath longer than any other during the show. I still can’t decide if, when I want to cry thinking about the Sufjan Stevens concert, it’s because of the sheer amazement and awe he brought upon me onstage that night, or because of the missed photo opportunity, or because he didn’t play my favourite song. Maybe it was all three. But maybe the combination of all these things all contributed to making the evening even more bittersweet.

Anyway, here are some photos from the roadtrip. The first beach pictured is a place I would love to revisit:

The random beach we stopped at on our way to Gisborne. First heat attack of the day, once we left the comforts of air con that was courtesy of mum’s Toyota!

Sunset at the beach in Gisborne.

We parked too closed to the water and watched the Seven Swans. Somewhere between Gisborne and Wellington.

Got a bit scared it might come looking for food, so promptly shut the car door after this was taken.

Monsoon Poon in Wellington for dinner.

Good old Wellywood.

Some sculpture thing taking place near the waterfront.

Self.

There was a set of nice poetry in the City Gallery that I enjoyed the most.

I always seem more preoccupied with the way a gallery looks rather than what’s in half of it…

Iconic.

Art work outside Te Papa.

View from inside Te Papa.

The restaurant we returned to on the second night, since we couldn’t get a seat previously.

Amazing dinner. That garlic butter on the steak, on the hash brown with the coleslaw, oh my godddddd.

Sufjan Stevens had an 11-piece band, with screens that were brought down or risen off the stage, depending on the projection display for each song. They were also all wearing florescent gaffer tape!

Balloons were released at the end, before the encore.

I never even knew that we had some kind of Army Museum.

Sunset at Shakespear Regional Park.

The morning after.

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