Posts by Gabor Toth
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And this is nowhere nere as bad as what I saw on my last trip to Asia...
I know of certain parts of Wellington which don't look that much different (Mt Victoria for instance). Though Wellingtonians are fortunate to have the Telstra Clear cable network, combine it with overhead power and phone cabling and parts of the city are starting to look like the urban streets of developing economies in Asia.
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there's a little-known korean cheap and cheerful on manners street that serves MOUNTAINS of chilli pork for $10. i kept thinking, sooner or later we're going to hit the noodles supporting all this meat. nope, pork all the way to the sizzling hot-plate.
Do tell - this sounds fantastic. Got an address?
then there's "porno noodles" upstairs in the oaks centre.
Do you mean the one by pigeon park? If you do, that takes me back, young fella. In 1983, the restaurant upstairs there was one of the smarter places in town.
"Jumbos" wasn't it? They had a big fibreglass elephant out the front - very classy.
At the time The Oaks opened, it was regarded as being an excellent piece of architectural design. Even David Kernohan liked it (__Wellington's New Buildings__, VUW Press, 1989). I recently uncovered a set of photographs I had taken of its interior for a first-year university assignment back in 1986. It did look very sophisticated with its clean white lines and masses of potted vines and ferns in the central atrium tumbling down from the upper level. Now the place is a falling-apart rusting hulk that looks like it could do with a bulldozer through it. -
Now, the etymological dynamics of the verb “to groove” are more complex than might be assumed at first glance....
Which segways nicely to Pete and Dud and one of their greatest skits of all time.
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I thought it was great - and I could see you visibly starting to relax during the half-hour.
A couple of minor issues - the guys on the mixing desk need to watch the audio levels as there was a big difference between what was being said in the studio and the inserted clips & stings which were much louder. A frantic grab of the remote control in our household occurred during the first break to avoid waking up my baby daughter who was sleeping nearby. Also that angled shot which occasionally appeared where we see both you and the guests looks a bit awkward (Russell talking into space and the guests not quite sure where to look).
The highlight of the evening for me actually came after Media 7 had finished when the charming young lass reading the 10pm news launched into her broadcast without first attaching her lapel mic. Then a shadowy figure appeared in the background ready to leap into action during the first inserted video clip. I actually found it quite heart-warming and hope no one got a bollocking for it - it added a nice human touch. -
"but saving $5 by knicking rosemary out of the public gardens in central wellington really adds up over a year.
Indeed! It is the only place to find fresh growing tarragon in the city."
Wellingtonians are getting free food , so the rumours are trueThere is also the broadleaf parsley that grows like crazy in the Wellington Town Belt. Once when picking a dainty bunch from a favourite patch of mine in Mt Victoria, I came across the (slightly embarrassed) Lebanese owner of my favourite kebab shop carrying huge fistfuls of the stuff.
Some wit in the WCC Parks & Garden's department has taken to planting the boarders of traffic island flower beds with fancy lettuces (and very attractive they are too...) -
making cows-millk cheese is easy.
making it *well* is another matter.
Making it economic is another thing again.
Unless you know a dairy farmer or have a house cow / goat, it is difficult to make home-made cheese economically from supermarket-purchased milk. It depends on the type of cheese you intend to make, but a kilo of a firmer-type cheese (say cheddar) can easily take 10 litres of milk to produce. -
Back in early 1995 I had just begun my Political Science honours year at V.U.W.
A friend had discovered the university's Computer Science department had just decided to offer "free" dial-up internet access to Post Grads. The Comp Sci folk didn't exactly publicise this fact though most students and staff within the humanities faculties had no idea what this internet-thing was anyway. I took out a loan to buy my first PC and signed up. Other than activating your account and giving you a phone number, the IT staff offered no support and would'nt answer any questions as to how exactly one was supposed to make the thing work so apart from a bit of advice from friends, you were on your own. For a few weeks I zoomed around the early WWW using Lynx with my PC essentially acting as a dumb-terminal for large computer at Varsity. It may not have been pretty, but damn it was fast. Then a friend told me about this new (free!!) software which had just come out called “Netscape”. I can still remember the exact moment when after a patient download using on my top-of-the-line $500 14.4k modem, Netscape fired up for the first-time. It was one of those personal "what hath God wrought?" moments. I could hardy sleep that night from the sheer excitement of what I had witnessed - on my own computer. I sometimes wonder whether I will ever experience another moment like that in my lifetime. -
A slice of paradise for a song? More like a small fortune.
Agreed.
I have recently been checking out property prices in those parts of the United States that I know reasonably well from previous visits (a diaspora from Hungary on both sides of my family after the 1956 revolution has resulted in me having cuzzie-bros scattered all-over the US).
Now sure - if you want to live in Manhattan or want a 90210 zip-code you are going to be paying big-bucks. But their are dozens of excellent and highly liveable cities in the US with high standards of living, low-crime rates, symphony orchestras, art galleries, clubs, and live-music venues. Look around and you can find fantastic solid-as big houses in these places with large sections, mature trees, central heating & air-conditioning, 2.5 bathrooms yadda yadda - houses that wouldn’t look out of place in Remuera selling for less than what you would pay for a 1970s 3-bedroom Lockwood in Johnsonville on an in-filled section.
(though for some reason, American houses tend to have hideous light-fittings...) -
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't this what the govt's digital strategy all about? Hasn't $24 Mln been set aside for digitising and isn't the National Library meant to be driving this?
Yup - and we should be hearing more about this next week at the National Digital Forum in Wellington - brilliantly timed to clash with the Digital Future Summit being held in Auckland at the same time...
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Scattered throughout this blog are a few photos I’ve taken around town (Island Bay and Oriental Bay) on my new (old) Rolleiflex TLR.
Anyone who uses a Rollie TLR gets my vote (sort of like walking in the footsteps of Ans Westra.). Very Wellington...