happy medium

Had a really chilled christmas day. Spent most of it out on the balcony sipping on L&P and Vodka and reading up on ideas for the New Zealand tour. Cooked a mean thai laksa curry today, and had a great meal yesterday too, not your typical chritmas food though!

Pumpkin and Tofu Laksa (plenty of chilli,lemon grass,turmeric kaffir lime leaves and cream of coconut)

Cous cous, tempa, olives and paprika tomatoes topped with red pepper, walnuts, mint tzatziki and fresh coriander

and a great salad of cucumber, celery, mushrooms, red pepper, artichokes, orange, bagel crisps, topped with lime juice, mint yoghut, brazil nuts and of course coriander.

Bo!

New cheerleader show, filming for the open titles we’re making…

Really needed this! Took full advantage of a hot summer’s day and headed with Matt down to a beach. This time to Maraetai, which is along the East coast from downtown. I remember visiting there in my first month in New Zealand (should be at the start of happymedium), and how good it would have been to have a swim.

Took about 45 minutes to drive out there, half the journey is in suburbia, with housing estates and huge malls, then suddenly the sprawl stops dead and your into another world of countryside and winding roads. Here’s the view on googlemaps:

As you can see the beach is stunning, and the water perfect for swimming:

Stopped at a typical Dairy (Newsagents) on the way home for icecream. Great day.

Here’s my latest piece for C4 Music Channel. Should make sense of those earlier hoody photos…

Also, here’s the Christmas promo for C4. All this lot are presenters on the station. Gerrard, our editor extraordinaire at bunker, wrote and directed it, while I added some Christmas lights to the excisting C4 House promos:

Only 6 weeks until pops comes out here, and the tour of NZ. Cannot wait.

This weekend headed down to Point Chevalier just West of the Harbour Bridge on the southern shore of the Waitemata Harbour. Still meaning to put all these places (and photos) into Google Earth for you to check out, might be a good project after the tour. This is what makes Auckland such a great place, the city centre might be pretty non-discript, but 10mins drive and you have a superb beach, next to a city of a million people, on sunday in the sunshine, without another soul on it. Of course there’s the busier beaches like over in Mission Bay, but the point is you can pretty much have any type of beach you want – rugged, big surf, quiet, or golden sand, still water and a great atompshere all within a short drive, even walk. Aucklanders are definitely spoilt, but growing up slap bang in the middle of England, makes you appreciate it a bit more…

Sadly no photos of Chevalier, no juice left in the camera. If the weathers good will head out a bit further this weekend. Other than that, I’m now on myspace, yep I sold out.

Will get latest motion graphics stuff up this week.

Finally, more of the sun i’ve been expecting. Return of those blue skies. Met with up Luke who very kindly showed me around Victoria Market and Newmarket.

Victoria Market i guess is a mini Camden town market, although probably not as bohemian, and more geared up for tourists. Still, nice to walk around a more older element of Auckland.