The goodness of my city. *kisses Auckland*

Morgan Avery

It doesn’t rain, but it pours.

So, since we last spoke… Everything has happened.

  • I have work coming out of my ears.
  • I’ve moved house.
  • Had a car crash.
  • Got new toys.
  • And mostly been really really happy.
  • Oh, also had lots of delicious dinners on K Rd.

Auckland is being very kind to me.

Let me start at the beginning… Work. For quite a long time my business was just quietly ticking along, keeping me alive, but not doing much more than that, then suddenly, some time in June, everything just exploded, I got a heap of new clients, I’m working on loads of new sites, and I got an extremely lurative contracting position. So, financially everything is very happy right now.

Next, the car crash, driving with my gorgeous love, Hot Red… Leaving the St Luke’s car park, some guy changes lanes, right into the front of my car, I slammed on the brakes, but still caved his door right. Quite funny, really, the guy jumps out of his car and he’s like "I’m sorry I’m sorry, my fault!" and I said "Uh, yuh!"… Anyway, to cut a short story really short, his door was fucked, and my car didn’t have a single (new) scratch on it. Perfect. One key thing to note – you should probably never drive right away after being in a crash, the chemicals roaring around through my body were quite mood elevating, and as someone who always carries his emotions on the surface I became even more vociferous than usual… Very high indeed.

Then, I bought a new IBM Thinkpad… This goes along with the money thing, I guess. More money, more toys. It’s the way it works, I think.

Possibly the biggest thing to happen though was moving house, talk about a nightmare, anyone who visited the townhouse we were in will know that we had many might steep tight stairs… Manouevering fridges & bookcases was full of fun. Gotta tell you though, three smart strong boys make even tough jobs only moderately tricky. Definitely a lot more talking before moving things, but then right first time every time, including extremely dodgey cantilevering of large heavy items of furniture out of second story windows.

Oh, in the new house we have grass. A garden, with trees and roses. We have a fireplace. And lots of rooms. And real walls (not concrete blocks). It’s a lot colder in real houses than in big concrete erections, I must say. Oh, the wireless works much better in the new place, the wooden walls are like glass compared to the poured concrete and steel plates in the old place.

We haven’t had a flat warming, and I don’t think we will in the conventional sense, but we did have a lovely dinner with a few friends of ours, HoTTT+ Red made a bunch of wonderful curries, and munched on them, and some fresh roti & poppadoms… She even made Raita, super clever girl! YES!!!

That’s all I have for now.

The Matrix : Reloaded

Morgan Avery

Just back from The Matrix Reloaded.

Good stuff. Very very good.

There are a number of elements in the story which will no doubt be compared to Star Wars Episode 2, anyone who says The Matrix is the poorer of the two is grossly mistaken — still entitled to his opinion, as even people that are wrong can share. Thing is, I don’t know anyone who would actually say that, I’m wasting my breath. (do you think that’s air you’re breathing?)

The cave rave love scene… Felt strange, didn’t expect anything quite like that. But it did fit. Thse people have their own culture, they live with one another, they have things they do. One of them is dance in slow motion, frequently jumping up in the air.

In some ways it feels similar (vaguely) to the ‘rolling around in the meadows after riding appalling unrealistic alien cow things’ Episode 2 love scene.

I believe seeing the Animatrix beforehand gives a big advantage, you can see certain things, I feel, which might not tied together so cohesively…

I did think, though, (select paragraph to view slight spoilers) that ‘Beyond’ dealt with the Matrix’s explaination for ghosts and grouls and such much better than ‘the twins’ and the vampire guys in Reloaded.

I also felt that the Wachowskis made some scenes very long, some people may say overlong, I think they were just making a point. The Burly Brawl, which everyone knows is coming, is an excellent example. I thought ‘man, this is cool, and it’s *still* going’, much the same way I felt the first time I saw ‘Heat’, the running through the streets shooting at cops sequence felt almost like a little story in itself it was so long, but…

… I liked it all, it was saying ‘these guys are doing this thing, and this is all of it’. Anyway, Heat is not Reloaded.

Some people have said that Reloaded breaks some of the rules it set in the first movie, I don’t see that. Nothing that happens in the Matrix is real, anyway, the rules *can* change.

One thing that might not make a lot of sense to people is (select for spoilers) the fact that rogue or obsolete programs aren’t deleted, this doesn’t make sense, obviously if you have a program that doesn’t work right, you get rid of it, you might just uninstall it, or you might even reformat and reinstall your OS, well, these programs aren’t like Photoshop, these programs are self-aware, The Second Renaissance parts 1 & 2 go into detail about the fact that the machines value their own existance, the whole war between man & machine is started when one robot doesn’t want to be disabled and rebels against it’s masters. Anyway, the point is this: deletion isn’t deletion, deletion is murder.

I believe that once we seen Revolutions, we will come to realise that each of the Matrix movies come together to form one big movie. Each part must be seen in context with the others before understanding of the whole can be achieved.

The Matrix : re-Voltron-ated.

The Animatrix

Morgan Avery

Right, so they’re hyping the ass off The Matrix Reloaded, I hope it’s worth it, sometimes they do this, and it fucks up what could have otherwise been a good movie, if the marketing causes your subconcious to expect a life changing even, well, practically nothing can meet the expectations.

Anyway, I’d already seen the first 3 web released The Animatrix movies, and of course The Final Flight of the Osiris, but last night hot-young-thing® pointed out that all of The Animatrix was showing down at Metro, so we wandered down later on, had a curry and went in.

It was pretty cool, lots of great animation, and some lame animation, I don’t have a favourite, but if I did ‘Beyond’ might be it, the bit with the kids jumping around and spinning and stuff, pretty cool.

There’s an Aeon Flux’y one as well ‘ Matriculated’, which, as well as the spindly legs you’d expect, has far more vibrant colours than any of the others, more dry humping as well.

‘Program’ is still the lamest, if they’d just rethought that stupid white hair, FFS.

‘Osiris’ still has the hottest virtual ass. By far. Jue is Super-Hottt.

‘Second Renaissance’ parts 1 & 2 gave a hell of a lot of background on the whole thing, previously I thought the robots were the bad guys, now I realise they just didn’t want to be wiped out. Gives a different feeling about the whole thing.

I’m looking forward to Reloaded later this week even more than before. It’ll be great even if it isn’t.

My weird sleeping brain.

Morgan Avery

Ever have a dream that you had a mouth full of numbers, making it real hard to pickup your girlfriend (who, for the sake of the dream, doesn’t know who you are).

Eventually I got to spit them all out, and there were a lot of them, they were in places I didn’t know my mouth had. Coming out in goopey clumps reminiscent of a particularly delicious desert I had at Java Room in Parnell a few years ago (good work ruining that relationship, Dylan, btw).

Also went eel shooting, with jetskis and dinghys. And some dead kid bobbing in the shallows.

The numbers are still the bit that really stuck in my head though.

Expert timing.

Morgan Avery

For the last few years I’ve been pretty keen on my martial arts (Seido Karate), but you know what?.. It’s pretty hard to say if it’s worth it.

  • You get treated pretty bad by some of the people who are senior to you.
  • You have to shout lame bullshit words in Japanese that even the Japanese wouldn’t bother shouting so much. This japophile samurai spirit stuff is garbage, the Japanese were barabric torturing bastards, so let’s not idealise them too much, but instead take the parts of their culture which were good, and blend them with the same from our own.
  • You have to pretend to respect people who’ve been doing it longer than you, even though they’re stupid violent shits.
  • Press-ups.
  • Getting kicked in the head, thrown on the ground, whacked with sticks, etc.

Anyway, I’m taking a bit of a break at the moment, to see if I really do enjoy it enough to keep it up. If I decide I miss it, I’ll get back in to it, if I don’t, well… I’ll just have the memories (of being sweaty, sore & broken, mostly).

The thing is, when it’s good, it’s awesome, lot’s of the people are great, wonderful friendly people. But there’s just a hint of bullshit.

It also makes you into a stealth mode fit guy (by which I mean, you wouldn’t know it to look at me that I could do a hundred pushups then fight 5 guys).

Whatever happens, I will, in the next little while, be putting a new section into my site, all about Seido. It’s something I didn’t want to talk about while I was still doing it, but now that it might be a ‘used to do’ thing, it’s much easier.

He has big ears, so perhaps it matters.

Morgan Avery

Is it good or bad that it just ocurred to me that George might not share my taste in music, just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he isn’t allowed an opinion.

So, should I turn it down, just in case her doesn’t like it?

Nope, it’s SuperGroove, it’s not legal to turn it down.

My Restaurants Thing.

Morgan Avery

As amazing as it might seem, I think I’ve finally fixed the bug with the Restaurants thing.

It turns out that if you liked to use correct punctuation it scorned you. Now it shouldn’t care quite so much. *fingers crossed*

Please do put your entries into it, once we reach a critical mass of reviews and rants I’ll be able to change the presentation so that it’s almost useful for people.

Oh, I’m no longer interested in hearing about McDonald’s Blenheim, and I especially don’t want to hear any more about ShitStainMike®.

Dhan. Bodrum.

Morgan Avery

Right, Thursday night we went out for a nice Japanese dinner at Dhan in Mt Eden Village… Lovely place, great service… But the food… I’ve always known Japanese food to be clean and refreshing, but it seems their chef has doscovered cheese & fat. There was a lot of both.

Weird meal too:

  • Wontons full of cheese (yum, but only a couple, or your head will start to feel clogged).
  • Grilled eggplant covered with melted cheese (delicious, very oily).
  • Japanese dumplings (delicious).
  • Beef stewed in beer with quail eggs (very sweet, quail eggs are weird).
  • Crumbed & grilled things on a stick:
    • Lotus root (very boring).
    • Prawns (yummo).
    • Eggplant (boring).
    • Fish.
  • Teryaki chicken, which is as you’d expect – yum.

Maybe we just ordered the wrong set of dishes, but it really had a general feeling of being extremely greasy and felt like it was clogging up my arteries.

Like I said, though, the service was great, very friendly and attentive, without being annoying and intrusive, and the decor was wonderful, with each table given privacy by hanging screens.

Then, on Friday, we went out for Hot’s birthday dinner, accompanied by Dale, James, Dan (wearing his special occasion GIANT SHOES™), Dylan +1, Cola & Callum. Expected to make an appearance were: Karl & Louise.

We arrived at Bodrum to be shown to our excellent (and huge) round corner table, surrounded by cushions, and raised above the rest of the tables, took a few bottles of wine (cheap shiraz; cheap bubbles; very good bubbles) & corkage was free (as it should be, the dirty money grubbing bastards that expect a couple of dollars from each person at the table, even if they haven’t been drinking, are lucky they haven’t been introduced to my shovel).

Set menu, so not much thinking, other than the drinks list that no one took too much notice of, just a couple of beers here and there and a mix or two.

Starters came out:

  • Big bowls full of numerous delicious dips.
  • Plates covered with hot pita.
  • Plates piled with cubed potatoes under a delicious sauce.

We all tucked in to that for a remarkably long time… There really was a lot to go around.

A LONG time later, and without really any attention from the waitress, we finally managed to get our mains out, which consisted:

  • Bowls of rice.
  • Truly excellent felafels drowned in delicious sauce.
  • Big bowls full of sauced beef.
  • Slightly smaller bowls full of equally saucy chicken.
  • Some sort of horrible salad (had capsicum in, you see).
  • Oh, we also got bowls of penne pasta and sauce, which felt a bit out of place to me, and no one really seemed to pay too much attention to it, besides nicking all the feta off the top.

The waitresses seemed more interested in groping their boyfriends than providing anything like good service, so that’s what they did — when they weren’t standing next to the counter looking extremely bored – after all, if they weren’t seeing to our needs, they weren’t doing anything, so they weren’t doing anything. – even failed to bring me a decanter of water when I asked.

So, to um it all up, which you probably would have prefered anyway:

  • Food: good (and plentiful (really)).
  • Decor: nice.
  • Service: shite.

We didn’t stay for coffee (which was included in our set menu).

If you combined the service from Dhan with the food from Bodrum, you’d be on to a winner. Though it would be odd having friendly Japanese people running a Middle-Eastern-Type-Place™.

Village of the damned. (Not the movie.)

Morgan Avery

I set my alarm and got up early so that Hotgirl could have breakfast in bed (poached eggs on toast, and some nice Dilmah tea); then got a call from her dad (Steve) in the UK, it makes her very happy to talk to her dad, but very sad that he’s so far away. So it’s been a very good day so far for the birthday girl.

She dropped me off halfway down Symonds St on her way to work and I mosied down to the Sky City Metro to see if I could pick up some tickets for the first showing of ‘The Matrix : Reloaded’ in a couple of weeks, a couple of people were there waiting outside the locked gates, including an old workmate, so we chatted, and that was nice. Had to wait a while, and as we waited the number of people grew and grew, I was 5th when I arrived.

Anyway, we waited, and eventually about 20 minutes after they were supposed to have opened (with me, all the while, worrying about all the internet sales, and hoping it didn’t sell out while I waited), the gates went up and a big group of people wandered in (very rudely, I thought, many of them going around us, and we’d clearly been there longer than anyone).

Regardless of the rudies, though, I actually ended up being the first to buy any tickets, and got a nice big discount over the internet sales to boot.

Walked up Queen St thinking about breakfast and such, and on the way to the post office to see if any of my clients had been generous enough to pay me for services rendered (3 of them had) I decided that Sushi probably wasn’t a bad idea, and the nice Japanese girl even rolled some up nice and fresh for me, with exactly what I wanted in it (teryaki chicken & double avocado and *no* capsicum), however I did make the mistake of getting a steaming hot cup of miso soup, it’s not good in the morning.

Anyway, get home and have a look at the tickets to try to work out how good the seating was (very) and discovered, to my dismay, that those fucking BASTARDS had given me *NINE* tickets. Of course, as my receipt clearly shows, they had charged me for *TEN*.

As annoying as this was a quick phonecall to the cinema complex has some form of apology wending it’s way to my mailbox, but no ticket for that showing, it’s now long since sold out, of course.

Excellent Service: St Pierres Sushi of Japan (actually of Karangahape Rd, but who am I to quibble, it was delicious).

TERRIBLE Service: Village on Queen.