Kauri Forest

Here are some shots of the magnificent Kauri trees. These trees grow wider than any other tree on earth and are only found in New Zealand. However, your more likely to enjoy a relaxing hot tub made from Kauri wood in Japan then see one growing in the wild. How many times can you spot Wicket?

Watch this Movie. It's made in NZ and it's very good. And it's Jemaine.

Other things Pertaining to New Zealand

I saw this three weeks ago in the context of Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask" and, honestly, I have thought about everyday since. Impressive comedy.

Animal Farm

Here we are in Auckland meeting farm animals. Kathy and Larry own a petting zoo called "Old McDonald's Farm" (I know, I thought that would have been copyright protected by now too, but apparently not). They let us stay with them last time we came to New Zealand and it was fun to catch up with them and play on their farm.

Tech Talk with Travis

Hello little kiddies and welcome to tech talk with me your host Travis. Today we are going to talk about neo-liberalism and the wide spread damage it has done to the non-billionaires of the world. Particularly we will look at its negative effect on the average citizen in New Zealand. New Zealand is a socialist democracy so people here generally get a good deal, universal healthcare, secure employment, state supplied euphoric happiness, stuff like this. However this country seems to have missed the whole freedom of information act memo. Uncharacteristically of most other industries in New Zealand the Internet seems to be tightly strangled by private market forces (perhaps private is redundant, like saying violet war forces, ahem, anyway). All Internet traffic is sold in megabytes. Quite simply more money equals more megabytes per month of downloading and uploading. As you know in American it’s an on or off service. You call Comcast, they turn on the tap and suddenly the entire World Wide Web could be brought down to your computer, Comcast could give a shit less how much you use the internet as long as you pay up every month. Additionally compounding the problem in New Zealand (and perhaps there is a conservation necessity I am unaware of here) the country runs on DSL (phone lines) and satellites, no cable wires or fiber optics in the infrastructure yet. So they partition the speeds 80 (download)/20 (upload) on the total bandwidth of the puny little line. All this adds up making it at times impossible to upload stuff onto the blog. For the last two days I have tried to upload a measly 9mb vid to the blog to no avail. So here, for once it appears that America on this one issue is freer. Hooray America you're all totally free and shit! I knew things would be better with you Obama!

Sand Boarding

Here is a belated look at more of our trip from the North Island. At the very tip of the North Island, the lush jungle of the sub tropical climate gives way to a Tatooine-esq landscape of rolling dry sandy hills. Ocean, desert, and jungle all converge on this site. Such beauty demands that we immediately rent something to start fucking it all up!


P.S. The track is from a New Zealand band called Split Enz.

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We found a home! After an arduous search across town, in which we looked at several dirty and depressing rooms in shared houses, Travis and I broke down and popped for our own furnished one bedroom. We really scored with the location and the 1920s building (though we were heavily warned against older buildings which lack insulation--a must for normal people in this snowy city). But my dedication to pretty things prevailed. Anyway, we have a fire place and two electric heaters. Plus, there is a mini second bedroom with which you will comfortably stay in when you come to visit. Hopefully, we can get a virtual tour posted sometime soon. Also, we have a ton of footage from the North Island and the northern part of the South Island (including a two-day sea kayaking trip) that needs to be compiled. Perhaps I will lock Travis in the closet with nothing but a single sock, his editing equipment, and three rice-crackers and see what that does to the vlog turnover rate.