Stephen Witherden’s Website :: Photos

A few weeks ago, at the end of October, I took a nice long trip down the length of the North Island from Auckland to Palmerston North to go to my Boss Llanwyn’s Halloween party. On the way down, I spent some time with my friends Chris and Charles.

Now, Chris and Charles have a special place in my heart: they’re the first gay couple I’ve ever known, they got married (civil union, whatever) during the time I’ve known them and they’re living in what can be described as relatively domestic bliss in Taupo. In many ways, they give me hope. It’s always a great pleasure to spend time with these guys. This time was especially fun because Charles and I indulged in the Huka falls jet ride.

Now, the Huka falls jet is much like New Zealand’s infamous shotover jet. You’re in a jet boat, hydroplaning in a very narrow bit of water. I have to admit, it kind of reminds me of a video game, but far more fun and realistic. I highly recommend it, though you’re likely to get wet

In order to celebrate Sarah’s imminent PhD graduation and International Speak like a Pirate Day, a bunch of us got dressed up as pirates and had a bit of a party at our place.

Not much to say except that we all had a great time. More pics are available by clicking the link: International Talk like a Pirate Day pics.

Friday 18th September was Loud Shirt Day. To contribute, I bought a cheap white shirt from the Warehouse along with some fabric paint from Spotlight. I then spent about 4 hours on Thursday night making my own tribute to Loud Shirt Day.

You can see a time lapse video of how I made the shirt by clicking on the link: Loud Shirt Day time lapse.

This past Saturday Daniel (we call him “Step” for reasons I don’t really understand) along with Sebastian were celebrating their simultaneous birthdays. Step wanted a formal cocktail evening, all dressed up with a proper bar, finger food and a cocktail menu of his own devising. I’d like to think it was somewhat my influence because he knows how much I like to mix cocktails.

We were all under strict instructions to dress up and I was asked to man the bar. I was a little apprehensive at the possibility that I might bump into Spaz, since we haven’t spoken in some time. That said, I was excited about the prospect of bartending.

I arrived early, at around 3pm to help make the cocktail food. They’d built a bar for me! When I say “built a bar” one of the guys (an engineer) had literally constructed a free-standing bar out of spare wood, rustic, but sturdy and functional. They had even bought all new glassware. There may not have been more than one and a half teaspoons in the whole place, but they had more than enough martini glasses for a formal function.

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I know, I know, I haven’t written anything. I could use the excuse that “I’m busy” but it doesn’t seem to be a very satisfying one. I hope to write more soon. In the meantime, avid reader, I have been playing with time lapse photography from my balcony. Behold, this is what I see every evening, if I look through the sliding doors towards the harbour:

Ports of Auckland Sunset

I’m always on the lookout for a new cocktail recipe. New tastes come up in the most unlikely contexts. For example, after choir on Monday evenings I usually go to a bar called “The Grange” in Ponsonby for a drink with the other choir members. This bar has a drink I’m really fond of called a “Coco Spice”. It involves Chilli infused Vodka and Creme de Cacao.

I have to admit that after trying Chilly Vodka, I have become kind of obsessed with this idea of infusing alcohol with all sorts of interesting flavours. This picture shows three of my recent experiments (from left to right): Vanilla Vodka, Fruit Whiskey and Cinnamon Vodka.

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“You should come to the Beca Ball” Sam insisted in that demanding, almost pleading way he has about him. I rolled my eyes. “It will be fun, and you can have us over for drinks beforehand”.

“Oh, all right.” I conceded reluctantly. “I suppose I could convince a guy to dress up in drag…”

“Or you could invite Theresa, I’m sure she’d love to come”.

Thus began many weeks’ worth of cajoling before Sam could convince me not only to buy tickets to my work ball, but to ask Theresa (a mutual friend) to come along as my “date” and to have everyone over to my place for drinks beforehand.

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Wow, I haven’t written anything in quite some time. Isn’t it always the way that when life is most interesting you don’t have time to reflect!

Anyway, last week I had a fantastic little holiday to the South Island for a week. This is the first time I spent more than a few hours in the South Island, so I made the most of it!

I plan on writing a whole lot of words about it, but for now, I am just excited to get my pictures out. Here is a link to the collection of pictures for my Southland Holiday.

I’ll post detail later. In the meantime, I have a number of panoramic photos I am rather proud of: (more…)

I was keeping it under my hat for a while, but now that it’s official I’m pleased to report that one of my photos is being used for a stamp!

Details of the stamp issue are available here: Auckland Harbour Bridge 50th Anniversary stamp issue. Mine is the $1.00 stamp. I didn’t get paid for it, but the idea that in 100 years time someone will still be collecting these stamps, maybe even the first day cover with my name on it, well, you can’t put a price on that.

It started at a bar in downtown Auckland called Traffic. I looked at a glass bottle of dark orange murky substance behind the bar. “What’s that” I enquired with inebriated exuberance “Skittles Vodka” the barman announced proudly “special recipe”.

Making Skittles Vodka, as the name would suggest, involves dissolving skittles in Vodka. I tried sorting the Skittles into their colours.

The hard thing is knowing what ratio of different kinds of skittles to use. My current theory is 4 bags worth of one colour to 500ml of Vodka.

Method: dump the Skittles into the Vodka and leave it overnight. As the Skittles dissolve, give the bottle a vigorous shake, dislodging the melting skittles at the bottom. After about 2 days, the skittles will be dissolved and you’ll see white stuff suspended in the Vodka, so you’ll need to strain it. What seems to work best is filtering it through a clean tea towel (coffee filters are too fine).

In the end, you have very colourful sweet Vodka which tastes like something between paint thinners and cough syrup

Sarah & I have long been fans of Top Gear. Well, to be honest, Sarah likes Top Gear and go with the flow. The TV show involves a bunch of middle-aged men behaving like a bunch of kids, playing with fast cars, burning lots of petrol. On Friday the 13th of February, a group of us went to see Top Gear Live.

Ever since my break up with Sebastian and moving into the new apartment I’ve been experiencing a profound sense of listlessness. In Afrikaans, we would use the term “is nie lus nie”. There’s no direct translation but it speaks of a general lack of desire. It’s a nasty sense of boredom. Not that there’s nothing to do, just that you don’t feel like doing anything. It’s the first rung on the ladder to depression and I’m not about to let that happen. 

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Just a quick post to draw your attention to some photos I took while travelling around the North Island of New Zealand.

One trip was to Northland, where I went as far as Whangarei. The second trip involves a sojurn as far South as I have ever been in a car: to Palmerston North.

Both trips rewarded me with exquisite scenery, something I will have to do more of in future. Please click the images for more images of the trips.

In America, the U-turn is a common, accepted manuver. It’s so common in fact that they have signs expressly encouraging you to do u-turn and lanes specifically designed for that purpose.

We New Zealanders find this an hilarious thing because in our country, the U-turn is right up there with peeing in someone else’s tea (or your own tea for that matter). You just don’t do it. It’s just not acceptable behaviour on the roads. To the extent that there are signs saying precisely the opposite: “no u-turn”, even when a u-turn is precisely the most logical course of action. Say, for example, you’ve gone over the harbour bridge by mistake, which happens more frequently than we’d like to admit.

Well, New Zealand has launched into the 21st century with what I believe to be the first (for our country) U-turn traffic light. Feast your eyes! Yes, it’s true, that sign on the right is actually a “U-turn” traffic light, in New Zealand (East Tamaki, to be precise). Below are images of the sign in action:

This is a brief update, I know, but I wanted to get something down. Last weekend I visited my family in Hamilton (a most enjoyable experience, I hope to write something about it later). On the way back up from Hamilton to Auckland (about an hour and a half’s drive), I stopped at a little place called Mercer.

Now, Mercer is a sleepy little farming community town known (presumably) for its cheese. One doesn’t normally stop in Mercer for any reason unless, perhaps, one is decidedly short on petrol. I stopped there at an Irish pub and had some food before continuing my journey on to Auckland.

I have to confess, for the first time in a while I felt uncomfortably out of place, as though I was participating in a clash of stereotypes. I felt like a gay city boy turning up in his left-handed hybrid car, trying to sit inconspicuously in a country-man’s bar, replete with tractors, Khaki shorts, long socks, beer and tweed. 

As a part of my sojourn south of the Bombay hills, I spent a few moments taking pictures of the Mercer countryside. One of the things that caught my eye (and, in fact, the reason I stopped in the first place) was this rather striking situation: a farm house just off the road was completely surrounded by water. I guess all our prayers for rain paid off. More pictures of Mercer are available.
 

You may recall from some of my earlier posts that I have been doing some work for the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF). Along with looking super cool on your resume, this means I get to work with some very interesting people on some very interesting work. A part of this work was a so-called “team building” exercise I participated in last Friday. It started as a normal team briefing which required security clearance and everything (all very cloak & dagger).

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As an analyst I derive a great deal of enjoyment from analysing the things that happen around me in terms of models and generalisations. One phenomenon I see happening all around me at the moment has been given the name “Gentrification”. It’s a controversial topic in some circles.

Urban sprawl describes the way a city grows, usually from the commercial centre (CBD) outwards and into the more rural areas. A teacher once explained to me using the term “urban creep”. A term they must have made up because I can find little information about it on the web.

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My friend James is in the territorials (New Zealand’s volunteer army) and has been away in the Solomon Islands for a while, doing good peace keeping work there. Out of the blue on Friday, I got a text message from him asking me to go see a movie. The movie was a little lacklustre (10,000 BC, don’t watch it), but the company was excellent: I met up with both James and V (Viren), friends from uni that I haven’t seen in ages. After the movie, they invited me to go with them for a “tramp” up Rangitoto Island.

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I’m tired of being unable to garden. All my childhood, I used to read magazines like “Home & Garden”, or take out books from the library on the proper way to prune citrus. I love gardening and I love plants. Sadly, though, for the last 6 or 7 years of my life I have been living in a flat/apartment well above ground level, where there is no possibility of having a garden of any sort. Well, this morning, I said “bollocks” to that. I have money, I have the time and the inclination and so I am jolly well going to have a garden!

I went to King’s Plant Barn and bought about $200 worth of supplies, then carried them up in about 6 trips from my car park to my apartment. I was so excited I started planting before I had half of the materials upstairs. The first thing I planted is a dwarf mandarin. It’s an ordinary mandarin tree grafted onto dwarf stock. This means it grows happily in a little 40cm pot to around 1 metre tall but produces normally-sized fruit. At its base are little rosemary and thyme plants. The idea being that they will give a nice interesting contrast in size, colour, texture and aroma from the plump round mandarins.

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Shortly before I left Texas I had one last swan-song, something that would be quite difficult for me to do in New Zealand. Shoot a gun, many guns in fact. I drove up to the local shooting range in my rental car, opened the shop door and stepped into a foreign world. At first glance, it looked just like a “mom & pop” bait shop: the sort of place you would visit if you were about to go for a little stint of fishing off the New Zealand coast. Except, instead of bait & tackle, there was ammunition, instead of fishing rods, there were semi-automatic rifles. Disembodied animal heads nailed to the walls made up the traditional Texas décor. The door closed behind me and I turned to find (to my great bemusement) a target made up of Osama Bin Laden with a semi-automatic rifle in his hands. I certainly was in Texas.

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