Hubris.co.nz

Last week was totally exhausting. Actually, the week before that was exhausting as well. But I can say quite definitely that it also contained one of my top career highlights so far, so that’s pretty awesome, right? Should we mix it up and go topically, or go chronologically like usual-ish? I guess if we go chronologically, I will remember more about my time in Sydney, so let’s start there, shall we? And if you don’t like that, then perhaps you could leave me a comment to register your discontent. Rad.

Sydney and FullCodePress

So, as you will no doubt recall, I tried out for Full Code Press, and didn’t make the team, so the lovely Tash suggested that I come along anyway as volunteer. It meant a flight at some ridiculous time in the morning, but also my first Koru Club experience in 15 years or so. I love Air NZ’s newish inscreen entertainment screens, especially since a flight to Sydney involves stupidly long amounts of time on the tarmac. I got to meet all the Code Blacks people that I hadn’t already met, and it made me chuckle how we all had webstock satchels.

My hotel wouldn’t let me check in early, so I went and had a walk around Darling Harbour, having breakfast, reading the (tabloidy) paper, drinking average coffee and enjoying it being t shirt weather. I went back up to the hotel and they still didn’t have a room ready, so I sat sulking in the lobby for a bit before I rode the monorail and went and got a very nice pedicure inside the mall. And then, finally, I could check in. This was my room:

The bedroom looked out into the super huge giant atrium, and the living room had these awesome nighttime views:

I like views of the city at night. I also like getting to finally have naps, and wake up and have Kate B be there, and I like going swimming with her, and then drinking wine with her and looking through her portfolio. I like that her web work is pretty much the opposite of mine, it being all advertising, all flash, whereas I am all advocating for accessibility, in theory if not quite so much in practice.

Anyways, so Kate and I sorted out our hair and jumped in a taxi to go and meet up with her friend Rob and The Mayor of Newtown, at a pub called Cooper’s that was not dissimilar to the Southern Cross with its outdoor terrace. There we compared handwriting, broke glasses and spent a very long time trying to decide where to have dinner. The Mayor’s initial suggestion of a place across the seat was vetoed by Kate on account of the bad lighting, and my criteria was that it needed to have wine. Eventually we set off for a different Vietnamese place, but it was closed, so we went to find a different one. King Street is almost exactly like K’Road, in terms of architecture and people and shops and eateries. We found a Vietnamese restaurant that may have been called Viet Maison, which had a Tiki-Bar although I didn’t see that initially, and OH MY GOD, we ate the most fantastic food – soft shell crab with garlic butter, salt & pepper eggplant, crispy pork hot pot, duck pancakes, lemongrass tofu, coconut rice, oh my god oh my god oh my god. It was so fresh and amazing. I want to eat there every day. Can’t we swap half Wellington’s Malaysian restaurants for some more Vietnamese places? Please? Kate broke another glass, and so we went to another bar called Zanzibar. The Mayor bumped into a friend of his who was in a band and owned his own tiki shack. I’d had enough wine that I was struggling to not imply that the friend was in INXS. It was 1am before I knew it. It was very much fun.

The next day was FULLCODEPRESS so I found my way down to the Conference Centre, and then into the Exhibition Centre, which is the largest building I have ever seen. It’s like, a kilometre long, at least. The FCP stuff was taking place in the middle of all the shiny technology exhibits, so it looked like this:

I hung around for a bit while they were just getting started, and was given access to the official FCP blog, and then I went and met my cousin Jacinta for lunch. She took me to a really lovely Thai place past Chinatown, and I shamed myself by being unable to finish my chili and basil tofu because it was too hot. Laaaaamer.

Another swim and a nap later, I was ready for the FCP lock-in. My role was to blog and twitter about it using the #fcp09, to talk to the nice judges, and to try and sniff out mysterious smells in the media room. It was lots of fun. I also enjoyed making Clint from Rainbow Youth dance for me. Okay, so I wasn’t really helping anyone very much at all, except in my capacity as entertainer. I still felt good about being involved. But not so good that when 2am rolled around and people started sleeping that I didn’t feel stupid for being there when I had a nice hotel across and up the road waiting for me, so I found a security guard to let me out and had a heart-pounding but brightly lit walk back.

I had wanted to get back to FCP by 11am in time for the finish, but that zopiclone, she is a hard task mistress, and it was not to be. Instead I went and ate barramundi in the sunshine. That was lovely – trying to find the FCP annoucements was not so much fun. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix when he needs to get a piece of paper signed. Not a single “information” desk in all of the kilometres of building actually had the information. In fact, a couple of them gave me unformation, and sent me miles off in the wrong direction. Luckily I eventually found some of the judges, but not before I had discovered a conference called “What causes happiness?” (apparently, cupcakes for afternoon tea causes happiness) which would be a nice counterpoint to the conference I’d see the next day at the Powerhouse Museum called “Depression in older people”. Anyways. I got there just in time to hear the judging, which was really really interesting to find out what makes a site good, according to the experts. And The CodeBlacks won! Hurray us! And hurray charity, as I wrote about in my work blog. Etc. So really what I should write about now was the cat-herding required to get everyone to the Pump House for drinks, and then off to the Spanish area for dinner, but everywhere was full so we ended up in a really old Greek restaurant where the lamb was tasty but I suspect that the vegetables had been cooking probably since it opened in the olden days. People appeared to be flagging so I taxied back to my hotel, but they actually stayed up drinking until 2am. Good for them!

The next day was a nice sleep in, a leisurely checkout, then freshly squeezed juice to treat my swineflu/airconditioning flu, and i set off to the Powerhouse Museum. More walking. I was determined to get there because I’ve always been impressed with Seb Chan’s work, and I really enjoyed it, although the ghost figures it used were spooky, and there were a lot of school children loitering about. Who are they to enjoy the culture? Pah! I was hungry and their cafe was uninspiring so I walked down to the madness that is Paddy’s Market, purchased a light shade and two Chinese cigarette posters (in case we ever start an opium den in the tiki shack), and kept looking because I didn’t feel like foodcourt Asian. In fact, I walked all the way back to Darling Harbour and made my way down all the cafes, looking for a plate of fish’n chips that would be under $30. In the end, I came to a place with an adequate bbq, and beers that I guzzled down, but because I had so much time left and I didn’t want to walk anymore, i plonked my fat ass down at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe to eat a degustation plate by myself. Mmmmm. I left with a sea of brown floating around in my eyes, it was so intense. Back to my hotel to collect my bags and be collected by the shuttle driver, and into Sydney Airport. I made my way directly to the MAC counter as soon as I spotted it, where with the lady’s help I purchased a Russian Red red lipstick, but she lacked a matching liner and advised me to look at other brands. I also bought a compact of colours from their special collection that no doubt I did not need but I dearly wanted. I pulled up a seat at the bar, and strangely enough, the other NZers found me there. I watched In Bruges on the plane, and thoroughly enjoyed it, along with the pie I got. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting home to my own bed.

Cupcakes and Mini Webstock

Now I’m not sure if you remember, but after Webstock earlier this year, I made cupcakes for Tash and Ben and Mike and Deb to say thank you so much for their hard work. Well, it turned out that they liked them so much that they hired me to make 100 cupcakes for their third birthday party. Here’s a photo of how some of that looked:

Because I am slightly insane, i decided to make six flavours – vanilla w chocolate frosting, mocha, lemon & cream cheese, mixed berry & white chocolate, gluten-free chocolate and almond, and vegan pina colada. I ended up pretty much drowning in batter and my stomach hurts just thinking about the leftover icing in the fridge!

The Webstock Mini night made it all worthwhile though. It was a lovely chance to get really dressed up, hang out with my besties, try to corrupt Alan, and heckle people drunkenly via Twitter. Even if i did end up drink at the Malt House – at least they had signs up saying they were renovating the male bathrooms and were hopefully removing their incredibly misogynistic urinals.

#GOVIS09 and twicking up

That was the Tuesday. On the Wednesday I was at work until after 11pm, duvet and all, struggling to sumarise 18 months of work into one 34 minute slide presentation. According to the Twitter feedback, I did quite well (scroll down) – or here or ,here – the problems of multiple identities! Once I managed to get some proper cafenet access and had a chance to read all that, well, I was just completely blown away and may have had a little cry. I definitely had a hugely swollen head and cut’n paste the praise into an email I sent to my whole family. It was just so amazingly nice to be acknowledged for the work I do – even though, or especially because there’s like 40 days left of me working there. It’s a tiny bit of a “oh, are you sure you’re doing the right thing, SSC?” and also a “I know that I am smart and talented and can be employable”. There were drinks, and I met a stalker who brought me wine then there was dinner at Roxy. It was tasty and entertaining, even if I had to talk to Australians for ages. Oh god the pain of it all!

The next day at the conference, I felt much much more secure and safe and smug, and more people wanted to talk to me. I even started calling myself a ‘social media expert’ but you must believe that I was saying it as if I was saying “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” Nat’s closing speech was of course my favourite of them all since I missed Matt’s but his was very highly regarded too. It was fun. I learnt things.

And then there were drinks. And more drinks. And a lot of fish on sticks, and hot roast beef sandwiches, and homemade pistachio ice cream, and more drinks, And then I ended up going to Hummingbird for the Tweet Up, and then I went to China Delight for dinner with the Toms and some new friends, and then we went to Hummingbird for a drink or two more. Alisa left my old work to manage the bar there so it was nice to catch up with her.

My weekend and the future

There has been a lot of sleeping and trying to stay warm. There has been feasts at Siem Reap. There’s been a lot of twitter time. There’s been a lot of duveting. That’s really about it. Tomorrow I go for an eye example, since glasses are still subsidised at work. Then on Tuesday I’m going to EAP to plan for the future. After that, well, who knows? I could use some quiet times but I’m not seeing a whole lot of that happening any time soon. I am more confident about being hireable based on GOVIS though. Career highlights are nice.

Sleeping and so forth

It is odd to have bedded two people in such a short space of time, (although my record is still 3 in two weeks in 2003) because of the contrast between the old and the new. It’s also redonkulous that I’ve bitched and moaned about wanting to be able to actually have sleepovers, but when it comes down to it, I had to leave a warm bed and go out into the cold cold night because of how I am physically incapable of sleeping without taking zopiclone. Doing a line-by-line comparison would be amusing for me but also totally totally inappropriate, so I will just leave the public exposure of private things to the contrast between my necklaces clacking together as my head moved back and forth, and the moment of having a lover gently unclasp my necklace, which seems to be even more of an intimate act.

The Pretty Pretty Pretty party was awesome. I do need to figure out a better way to manage clothing swaps in the future though so that everyone has a fair chance to get good things. I met some lovely lovely girls though as the house was crowded with new people. Shout outs to my homies!

The day we got our official letters at work about how we’re losing our jobs, we were given a speech that tried to compare it to Napolean’s retreat from Moscow, like that was a good thing, because hey, 22,000 people survived that. 380,000 people died, but…

I dropped a frying pan on my toe before. It’s really sore. I’m hiding out in bed, consequently.

Kat & Kane are coming down next week, hurrah! Heather came down the other weekend and it was fabulous.

It keeps me a little bit entertained watching my automatic knee-jerk reactions in which I actively seek out validation from a number of sources if I’m feeling let down or neglected by one. There has been a lot of feeling like I don’t get any attention lately. That’s a consequence of no longer sleeping with someone of course, but it’s taking a long time to get over. Mostly I miss the friendship though.

I tried out for Full Code Press but didn’t make the team. I was a sad panda but the divine Tash suggested that I come along as a volunteer instead, so I’m going to Sydney on May 11-14.

I had other things to say, but I can’t remember what they were. I say a lot of things on Twitter these days. I also don’t say a lot of things. Oh you know what I mean.

My dreams are still far too vivid and encapturing. I feel like I’m smoking opium or something, or at least what I imagine it might be like.

I’m trying to do a good deed a day but in typing that out I realise that I haven’t done any good deeds today.

And finally, after years of looking, I bought some new sunglasses yesterday. This means my old ones which I bought on May 1, 1999, can be retired after almost ten years of hard work. I don’t want to say goodbye, but they’re so scratched and beaten up that it really is time. So here, let me present a digital tribute of my old sunglasses all around the world from as long as I’ve had a flickr account:

In Fiji in 2005

At Hyperion Wines in Matakana when we went up for the BDO in 2008

In Samoa in 2008

Reflected in Canberra in 2008

Outside the Tiki Shack in 2008

And I spent aaaaaaaages looking for older photos, but couldn’t find any of my sunglasses, but I did reupload all these terrible quality images from my old journal for your pleasure.

1. As expected, Webstock blew my fucking mind. I cried on Day One when Ze Frank spoke and then I cried on Day Two when Tash wrapped it up. I had many free coffees, and tubs of ice cream. I ate friands until they came out of my ears, sort of and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the catering too. I had a thousand glasses of champagne. I met a million people, I told half a million of them that I loved them, and I learned so many awesome things. Yes, I am talking here about the food and not the knowledge, because there were so many things that I will be talking about in the weeks to come that I think it’s okay to take a little bit of time to talk about coriander chicken noodles, and the blue-cheese filo cups at the Embassy, yes?

2. At the afterparty at the Embassy, we played Crowd Bingo. I won the most challenges I think, but I was still somewhat surprised when Kowhai jumped on my back. I made Alan listen to a thousand long stories about how everything is connected and revolves around me (the guy who won my dinosaur is I think the younger brother of the first guy that I ever said “I love you” to, albeit in a Tori Amos & Cindy Sherman-quoting email sent on Valentine’s Day in 1998. The younger brother didn’t like me at all based on IRC, because I laughed “ha ha ha” and he thought that made me really sarcastic. There were more of these types of story. Some of them involved diabetes. I’m surprised Alan put up with it all. Hadyn tried to take credit for my Crowd Bingos so I punched him. He twittered that I’d found Jim. People with iPhones all have herpes. Perhaps the greatest achievement in the bingo was Kowhai getting Ze to sign a card for Miss Fur, but we will come to that later, probably.

3. I told pretty much everyone that I loved them, although I’d already been twittering that all day. I told Matt Jones that I was going to marry him instead of Tom Coates. Sarah and I had it all worked out between us. We’re going to wear kaftans and and play majong. It’ll be brilliant. I made people hold my glass so I could hug people with two arms. I must in particular throw out mad love for Jeff who I hung out with for much of the night, and also for anyone who didn’t run in terror from me despite the booze and the enthusiasm I had flowing out of me like river about to burst its banks. I suspect also that my cleavage was more than terrifying, because it was a new dress (Yup! Sweaty and gross and it got worse at Vintage).

4. Vintage was hot and sweaty, but I found myself a seat and taught people how to play Front/Back. It’s a bit similar to Marry/Fuck/Kill, but simpler – you name two people, and someone has to decide which person they’d have fuck them in the ass and who they’d go down on. The first time Lisa and I played, it was Mike Patton vs Eddie Vedder. I decided I wanted Eddie to make sweet tender love to my heini, and Mike Patton to fuck my mouth as dirtily as possible. It’s a beautiful game. The funnest part was on Saturday when I asked Dylan “Good Tom/Bad Tom?” and he was too embarrassed to answer. I met some very amusing boys from Auckland and they indulged me in playing for a long time, talked to me about Marcus Lush and Newsnight and just generally kept me entertained, until they had to leave. I managed to find other friends though.

5. Me and a lady friend and two guys found ourselves with nowhere to drink after Vintage closed, so we went to Mermaids strip club. The guys paid for our entrance fee, bought us drinks and gave us laminated mermaid dollars to tuck in the thongs of the dancers. Yeah that was me, smashing the patriarchy. I talked to one of the dancers for a while, as it appeared to be her job. She didn’t take her top off and looked down on the dancers who do. I thought that was a bit weird. I couldn’t stop looking at things through a feminist window. The white bits on my dress glowed and I felt like it was 1997 and I was at a rave. She had a really nice ass, even if I’m not an ass girl, but I really wanted to see the redhaired stripper come out again. I had been drinking for 12 hours. I woke up the next afternoon and all the lights in my room were on.

6. Somehow I managed to make it out to the Cuba Street Carnivale, three colours of eyeshadow on and plastic flowers woven into my hair, It was so lovely to see Dylan again, and I love the people cheering for the wind blowing the bunting around. I don’t like Olmecha Supreme so we went and had cocktails at SFBH because sitting down is nice,and then went and watched the parade from Marion Street. It was pretty average, but there were some scantily clad ladies to oggle, which is always nice, because obviously I haven’t done enough of that lately. And then when we were waiting at the bus stop for a taxi, a guy ran past with a bagguette tucked under his arm so we were all “ahurhur hur hur” like a Frenchie.

7. Yesterday I had brunch ostentainably by myself, but Hadyn happened by, and then I saw Dylan too, and then I went and hung out with Lisa for a bit, who was still VERY VERY EXCITED that she got to meet Ze Frank at the carnival, and then there was an attempt at a nap but I was so excited that I’d get to nap that I couldn’t sleep.

8. Today I couldn’t face work, but I did three loads of washing, tidied the house, cleaned the bathroom, made cupcakes and delivered them to the lovely Mike & Deb and Tash & Ben to thank them for the awesomeness that is Webstock. The cupcakes are in boxes decorated in glitter goop that’s all smeary and dreadful but I’m hoping that they’ll thin it’s Outsider Art.

9. I am so excited about all the knowledge in my head, and I hope that it means that this year is going to be awesome. I fell from grace so hard in 2008, in so many ways. I hope I can regain some of that long lost grace. That is all.

10. Oh hai! If I met you, and you liked me, please let me a comment and we can like, hang out or something.