One of the upsides of Mount Maunganui’s transformation from bach-y getway into a kind of little Auckland complete with property price obsession is that there’s now a fine array of eateries – a far cry from what used to be there.

Anyway, just quickly, if you havn’t been to Astrolabe lately, a restaurant / bar that was one of the first to arrive on the scene and has been there ever since, go again. I had the Grilled Chicken Breast on Tomato Risotto, which was just fantastic. I never get chicken when I’m out ‘cos I have it at home so much, but this thing was so tender it fell apart from just looking at it. The Bruchetta to start was magic also, and my girl’s Eye Fillet was also the business. We also tried The Back Porch in the midway shops for breakfast on Sunday, which was very nice also.

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I’m not really sure what Chartered Trips is going to be yet – at the moment it’s just a place where I can write some stuff, show some photos, and keep the ol’ brain active. Right now, I’m trying to keep up a post every week day – we’ll see how long that lasts. I have some cartoons I’ve drawn for my pub quiz team I may share also, stay tuned.

If you haven’t already, you might like to check out Sport Review NZ, a ‘sport’ blog, but more a vehicle for my rugby cartoons. As you know if you live here in NZ, rugby is a deadly, deadly serious game. I thik there’s some milage in poking some fun at the (very) sacred cows our national game offers us. Check it out.

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triathalon 070106 001
Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

I’m almost never up early. So when I did, I got it on film.

So it tipped down last night in Auckland. Nothing unusual there, but for cycle commuters, it’s game on, in the shit hour.

When it’s sunny, and the pavement is dry, biking home is great fun. You’ve got the sun on your back, and you’re ripping in and out of the traffic like no-ones’ business, youc an go faster than the cars, and you’re happy they’re jealous of you zipping through the rush hour traffic. Tires are singing, you can stop in a jiffy, the visibility is clear, it’s all a bit of a game, really.

Then it rains and it’s a totally different story. Everyone forgets how to drive, they can’t see as well (especially those pesky cyclists), everyone’s in a bad mood and it becomes vital to be FIRST to the light, and don’t want to stop for the red ones. They’re angry at everyone else in the road, and want to BE HOME NOW.

You’ve waited at work ’til half six to avoid the worst of it, but it’s now that little bit darker. You forgot to bring your jacket and are sopping wet. Your glasses have rain all over them and your lack of mudgards means shit is flicking up in your eyes. Your brakes aren’t quite as good in the wet (although modern V-brakes are a fuck of a lot better than the old 10-speed ones), and you’re thinking ‘is that little red light on the back going to be enough to stop someone ramming into the back of me’?

Now the game is to get home in one piece.

My highlights from the Oscars before I got tired and went to bed.

– John Stewart is a really funny guy, even though some of the early political jokes didn’t go down too well with tinsel town’s finest. Still his Bjork and Scientology jokes made me laugh a lot.
– Ben Stiller killed in the green suit with his freaky amateur drama student schtick.
– Jack Nicholson wangled the seat next to Kiera Knightly. He’s still got it.
– Nice to see the Wilson bothers giving the award for best short live action movie, and describing how it all started for them with Bottle Rocket, a fine, fine film.
– Will Ferrell is the funniest guy alive, and you know why? Because he plays it absolutely straight.
– Nice to hear Howard Berger who won Best Makeup reference Where the Wild Things Are, obviously the best kids book ever, and soon to be a Spike Jonze film apparently.
– And it was funny to see a shot of the NZ coastline in the King Kong ‘nomination’ montage for Art Direction. Not a lot of actual art direction there, presumably.
– And while we’re on the topic, it makes me really proud to see all those NZers winning multiple oscars (Weta’s Richard Taylor’s up to five now), but TV3’s Belinda Henley was stretching it a tad to say “New Zealand’s REIGN at the Oscars continues. A handful of technical awards is hardly a reign.

– I loved the montages of Film Noir, Biographical, and ‘Social Conscience’ films. I know it’s rilly hip to be all cynical and that, but can I just say (quietly) aren’t The Movies magic?

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I liked this on <a href=”http://www.gapingvoid.com/“>thegapingvoid, one of the blogs I read. Replace ‘New York’ with ‘Auckland’ and you’re instantly around a BBQ with men in Hallenstiens shirts on talking house prices, bubbles, patio paving, and which Bunnings Warehouse is the best.
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An ongoing series in which the blogger shares his budget orientated music and / or movie purchases, revealing both something of his refined taste and unwillingness to shell out any decent cash for it.

What Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
Eh? It’s Jaws, man, the one you think of when you’re swimming and you step on something funny, see a fish, hear someone cry out, in fact pretty much anything that happens in the water, you think of Jaws. This one comes with a 50 minute ‘making of’ doco. Plus, it’s Spielburg, and for all the cute kids and aliens that followed this one, the guy knows how to make you shit yourself.
Best bit “We’re going to need a bigger boat”.
Damage $10
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I attended the Auckland City Bike to Work breakfast this morning – it was well organised, and I got a free yummy breakfast of Vogel’s Scroggin Muesli, which was totally excellent.

It was very strange seeing all the cycle commuters there. It seems to me that it takes a certain (utterly mad) type of individual to cycle through Auckland’s rush hour traffic. And that type of person doesn’t play well with others – there were loads of people there (like me. ahem) on their own, avoiding eye contact with their fellow cyclists, talking to no-one. But themselves. It was like a convention for high school science teachers.

Fair play, though. Cycle commuting, when you take out the random car doors opening, drivers on the phone, or worse, TEXTING, Auckland’s driving rain, road filth flicking up in your eyes and all over your clothes, the heat, the stifling humidity, your utter invisibilty to cars… Yes, when you take all that out, cycle commuting is great fun. You get to notice and appreciate all kinds of details about Auckland you’d never see. You get to actually look forward to your commute home. You get to arrive at work clear headed and ready to go (ish).

And funny stuff happens. I somehow provoked a driver in their 50’s (this happened to me a couple of weeks ago) to give me the finger when I got in the way of their reckless right turn before the oncoming traffic. I gave them the thumbs up.

Sometimes life is sweet.
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Now you can go here and mess with Chartered Trips. Or anyone else.

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