nzguero

Dear Gold Lounge

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:46:22 GMT

Today I paid a visit to you after a long period of time. I discovered that you had increased your prices, which was not so bad, but then I noticed that your coverted free popcorn and drinks was gone, to be replaced by a more expensive, but arguably better menu. Also just before I went in to see my movie I was told that my chair was broken I could just take a seat on either side.

Am I missing something? More expensive for less? That said I did get the gold lounge to myself, so if your intend was reduce patron numbers I guess you suceeded.

Yours in troubled times,
Buying tickets downstairs.

Travel

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:52:25 GMT

Just so you know, I have now locked in and paid for the following travel;

Wellington -> Auckland
Auckland -> Sapporo
6 days
Sapporo -> Tokyo (by train)
3 days
Tokyo -> New York
1 night
New York -> Asuncion
Asuncion -> Ceritto (by private guide)
10 days
Ceritto -> Asuncion (by private guide)
Asuncion -> New York
6 days
New York -> Tokyo
Tokyo -> Seoul
7 days
Seoul -> Tokyo
3 days + NIN nails
Tokyo -> Auckland
Auckland -> Wellington

My life does not suck.

Watchmen

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:23:51 GMT

Saw it.

Liked it.

Need more time to digest it.

Oh did I meantion

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:23:05 GMT

The hotel has a library?

Well it does.

What luck!

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:35:30 GMT

Yesterday on the spure of the moment I decided to head out of Wellington for the Seven's in (what turned out was) a vain attempt at avoiding the madness. So far I have managed to;

* Get an awesome rental car.
* Have a passenger at least to Palmerston North
* Decide to go to Napier.
* Find a hotel in the middle of Hawkes Bay Harvest (a wine festival or something).
* Get an awesome Supriour Spa room in said hotel.
* End up in what must be the only hotel in Napier that has free wireless Internet.

Gosh, I am lucky, or am my standards low?

Sorry must go that sounds like my giant spa bath calling.

P.S. Said awesome hotel is County Hotel

Adventure

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 06:41:52 GMT

Gosh, one of these would be awesome. Adventure. Although from the warnings it sounds potentially a little too adventurous. There will have to be some practicing I think.

Working ethic

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:41:30 GMT

The way to work over holidays

I read good book.

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:15:52 GMT

Soon I Will Be Invincible.

Rather good, a tale of the human side of Super Heroes and Villains.

Wedding weekend

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:05:09 GMT

Congratulations to Sam and Amy for pulling off a wonderful wedding yesterday at such a fantastic location. As always seems unfair to me that the bride and groom have to do all the organising and work, but then if someone else did it, it might not be exactly as they wanted. Also I am sure there will be dancing and revalry on record that will come back to haunt us for years to come. Is it a sign of age to enjoy weddings and speeches?

Had quiet brunch at Epic. Plan to read in the sun and do shopping for the rest of the day.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Testing

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:47:27 GMT

This is a test

NEW SHINY

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:52:36 GMT

I am posting from my first MacBook Pro!

I played a game

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:58:38 GMT

So I borrowed the work PS3 last night to try it out, summary, if I had paid for it I would have been disappointed.

Pros:
The game (only had one, GT5 prologue) looked pretty and was quite fun.
Wireless controllers are good.

Cons:
The media player sucks, long live XBMC.
You can't click through animated menus, you have to wait for them to finish.

The main problem is that with a console I want to be able to just plug it in and play with it. You can not do this. First turn on you have to create an account, then you have to wait an hour for the firmware upgrade, then you have to sign up a Playstation Network account then you throw in a game and wait half an hour for it to "install" the game, then you finally start the game and wait half an hour for the game to update. Then you can finally play a game. But of course with GT5 you have to buy a car and even in arcade mode you can't just drive any car you have to buy it first. So if you can't test drive a car how do you know if it is any good? argh. So, disappointed overall.

worries

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:15:16 GMT

After having dinner with a friend from Korea, apparently I should have been more worried about the beef riots of South Korea. Apparently all the riot police I have seen around here are not for show!

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:06:14 GMT

Hi folks,

Just an update to say I am still alive. Thailand was ok, as expected I saw nothing to do with riots :(. Bangkok and Phuket were bearable, but too stressful for a holiday, PhiPhi on the other hand was awesome, hanging at the beach, snokeling, scuba diving and daily massages. It was rather nice.

Seoul is okay, I have caught up with some friends I meet on NZ from here and that was great, the guest house I was staying at had too many negatives so I moved to a hotel in town which is good now the air con works. There is crap loads of free wifi everywhere so my phone has been getting a work out. Tomorrow I am off to Gwangju to sample the local foods, which I am told are awesome. That is all for now.

What country what I going to again?

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:30:13 GMT

Oh there

Oh well I am sure it will be fine, the Norwegians don't seem to think it is that bad.

Better to die having fun, than hiding the the shadows.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:46:29 GMT

Next weekend I and headed overseas for my yearly holiday. After I had my trip to Europe a few years ago I promised myself to ensure I went to at least one new country a year. I have been doing pretty good on that so far.

One week in Thailand.
One week in South Korea.
One week in Japan.

So in this trip I will be adding South Korea and Thailand to the list of places I have been.

I am not sure why but for some reason I feel a little ashamed about going via Japan again, it makes me feel like I am a Nippon Nerd. I am learning Japanese and in this trip it will be the third time I have been there in two years and for some reason that makes me feel like a fan boy. I also feel bad that I should be going to different countries, these trips are supposed to be about adventure and seeing new places, not settling into new patterns. Don't get me wrong, it feels awesome to be going and I am excited, but it just whenever I talk to people about and mention that I am going to Japan I feel that little tang in my heart that says, "don't think less of me because I am going to Japan again".

But anyway, this is my current excitement :)
(The travel)

Attention-catching

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 03:31:14 GMT

harvest17 I had not forgotten, I just am not obsessed by 7 songs. I could only manage 4. By the way, Yoko Kanno is pretty awesome, I used to have the soundtrack he did for Cowboy Beebop but I lost it.

1. Strange Apparition - Beck (The Information)
Discordant Piano for the win!

2. House of Cards - Radiohead (In Rainbows)
The new video for this is totally geek-tastic. I mean LIDAR lasers, Google, processing power and Radiohead!

3. Modern Guilt - Beck (Modern Guilt)
New shiny-ness.

4. Crickets - Alien Ant Farm (Up in the Attic)
Lost love is totally in right now.

But to supplement my list of songs I have my new supply of night time reading. I had to go a whole week without something to read, but now I should be set for a month or two.

The Conan Chronicles - Robert E. Howard
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Simulacra - Philip K. Dick
Long Way Round - Ewan McGregor & Charley Boorman
Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk

Shiny

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:51:46 GMT

I have new apple shiny

Time to change my Tax Code

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:16:24 GMT

After months of promising myself, I have finally paid off my remaining student loan!

So that is a reasonably large chunk of change that I retain from my pay that I will no longer be using to pay off the degree I didn't get.

I went and saw the new Indianna Jones last night

Sun, 25 May 2008 04:10:46 GMT

For the love of a God.

Sun, 04 May 2008 05:19:59 GMT

I am done with the cold southerly whipping up through the country like door left open in middle of a blizzard in the arctic.

Also thanks to all those who I had dinner with last week. I believe a good time was had by all.

Weekends.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:40:52 GMT

Some times you go through a patch of really boring weekends. The last two weekends have not been like that.

Last weekend I went to Hawkes Bay in a rented car, and through a series of tragedies I ended up going alone instead of with foreigners. But I had an awesome time catching up with some old friends in Havlock North and then going to a party in... well I am not too sure where it was, but it was near Palmerston North. On Sunday I caught up with my Mother and a couple of other people.

Then this was just as good. On the Friday evening I went to the 10 anniversary Paradise Net drinks and had too much of a good time. Saturday morning Beagl invited me, and I said yes, not really knowing what it was but planning to look it up when I was a little less hungover. It ended up being a trip to Makara beach with a fire and sausages and fireworks and singing and general relaxing awesome-ness. But alas I lost my handy dandy pocket knife in the dark on the beach somewhere. I miss that knife, if only for the look I would get from visitors when I opened the mail. That night I vowed to have a sleep-in this morning, which I tried to do, and made it until 9:30. Then this evening I watched Gone Baby Gone and while the writing seemed a bit un-inspired the rest of it was quite good. But as we were standing in line for the tickets talking about how I booked them online, and how I had forgotten the confirmation code, my friend said "Gee, I hope you remembered your wallet" and I laughed, checked my back pocket and stopped laughing. It was rather embarrassing getting to the front of the line and not having any money :( But my friend coughed up and I brought a well budgeted dinner from Burger Fuel with change in my pocket in exchange. Yay for Burger Fuel being open again!

Back now

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:34:59 GMT

Opps i did mean to have posted by now.

Since the last time I posted.

I took a bullet train to the south of Taipei. Which was great, but the lake we were promised turned out to be pretty much devoid or actual water. The difference in temperature was huge, it was 15 degrees in Taipei, but down south, only 400kms away it was 28 degrees. After that we came back and went to the Shilin Markets, ate, drank and was merry. Oh and I won a clock with my ace shooting skills (that I didn't know I had).

Saw the rest of the conference, it was interesting and informative.

On the last night they took us to a very fancy massive (freezing cold) hall on the top of a mountain. They laid out the finest Raro and some drink called 58, they had members of the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra play for us, children dancing for us and the best in Taiwanese Cuisine. It turns out that the bottles of 58, which tasted and hit you like rocket fuel turned out to be very expensive, made from a special grain found only in one part of Taiwan and they only us the core of grain. The giant hall is famous and quite fantastic if a little cold, it might have had a great view if we were there during the day and if there was no pollution. The Cuisine I think is an acquired taste...

We then flew to Tokyo and stayed there for a couple of nights. On the first night we caught up with some people we meet from the conference. We went and had Japanese food and a drink or two at some great little Japanese restaurant after which we headed out for a rousing round at a Karaoke bar.
That morning we retreated to a capsule hotel for a sleep, of course we could not find the one that Jonny stayed at orignally so we ended up at a place called "Big Lemon" on Kabukecho. The next day we meet up with Yuko and ran around looking at various places, though we had one surprise, we were sitting in Yoyogi park just about to leave when this guy rocks up and sets up an easel, then a speaker, then some sound making device, then spray paints, then pastels, then some paint. This all took some time, maybe 15 minutes, by which point he had a huge crowd around him. He then starts mixing live music, dancing and painting. It was all pretty awesome and at the end of each painting/song/dance he would give away the painting to someone in the audience. Turns out he is a of a celebrity in that area, a guy called Akria Yukinko, he has been doing for at least 2 years (not my pics) (video) pretty awesome to just see it.

Later on the in evening we caught up with another friend Chihiro and we had dinner at a Ramen place, but we were too shattered for anything else by that point so we just had an early night. The next day was spent mostly checking out Akihabara, trying to find a place in Shibuya that was closed when we got there :( and getting to the airport.

Also it appears that 2 gig is not enough and I have run out of space for hosting photos on LJ, so I am looking for somewhere else to host my images, but I am not looking forward to re-uploading and re-tagging all my photos.

Pollution

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:38:15 GMT

I just got back from a walk around the block, from the window it looked like a foggy day. In reality it was heavy pollution. It is so thick that I can barely see Taipei 101 which is about 20-30 minutes walk away (, have a quick think about have far you can see when you are outside). I went to take a drink after getting back inside and ended up dry reaching into the sink from all the crap in my throat and now my lips are burning a little.

If the rest of the world gets this polluted, I will definitely buy a face mask.

In Taipei

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:09:32 GMT

Learning your BGP's at the moment, it is pretty interesting, but I have done bits of this already in the ipv6 workshop I did last year in Wellington. But this has more depth that the ipv6 one did.

Well the trip to the US of A is over. I didn't dislike it as much as I expected, I really enjoyed the driving, I was boring driving in straight lines all the time till I realised there were other ways to have fun on straight roads with fast cars ;)

I didn't really think Vegas was all that, all the Casinos are too big for me, I like to be able to walk around and see everything, but you can't really do that there, you kinda have to stay in a Casino and just look at that. There really isn't anything in between.

So now I am in Taipei, there are crap loads of scooters. I have not really made a descision around what I like and don't like. It is like Japan in that some stuff is expensive (coffee from the resturant in the hotel is NZ$6) and other stuff is cheap (great dinner in a nice resturant NZ$12). It is not too dirty, but it isn't clean by any stretch of the imagination.

Photos;
American Roadtrip
Taipei So Far