Stephen's Den

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.

Continue reading Gentrification

ACC, it sounds like some sort of city council, doesn’t it? Truth be told it’s a community of faith. An organisation of gay Christians dedicated to serving the needs of gay Christians in New Zealand, whatever those needs may be.

For me, the need was quite great back in 2005 or so. I was in a “questioning” phase in my life. It’s interesting that both gays and Christians use this term “questioning” to refer to a time in one’s life when you’re questioning the assumptions you’ve lived under so far. It’s a phase where you step outside your comfort zone and take a risk (some call it a leap of faith) in order to grow as a person.

Continue reading Auckland Community Church

It was almost a month ago today, February 14^th in fact, Valentine’s day. My father was up in Auckland for the day and I was treating him to a meal at a nice Italian restaurant. We sat there sipping our drinks, crammed in amongst all the star-struck couples exchanging meaningful glances over their glasses. Well, there’s no time like the present…

Continue reading Rest in Peace, Big Man

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.

Continue reading Rangitoto – Lunch on top of Auckland

This actually happened a fortnight ago, but things have been rather busy lately so I have only been able to relate this story now.

To those of my readers with delicate sensibilities, I apologise in advance for the subject matter. To cut to the chase, this weekend was pretty gay. I always knew it was going to be quite busy for me, but it became unexpectedly so. Just so you know, there’s nothing that I would consider rude or sexual in this post, but you might see the word “gay” a lot. I have changed names to protect the mortally embarrassed.

Continue reading Boys’ night out

Soon I am going to write a post about what I did in my weekend, along with some pretty photos, but another story has to be told first.

They are currently doing some renovating outside the place I work and as a consequence have recently poured some new cement down. I walked past it this afternoon and breathed in the heavy, earthy smell and started to remember.

They say that smells are indelibly linked to memory. It certainly seems that a certain smell can conjure up a whole raft of memories that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. For me, the smell of freshly poured cement rang a bell in my head, which pealed loudly with the name “Des the Bricklayer”.

Continue reading Des the Bricklayer

A few weeks before the end of the year in 2007, my friend & colleague Richard turned to me and asked “would you be willing to take an order of a cake?” It had been so long since anyone had requested this that I didn’t know what he meant at first. He meant, of course, that he wanted me to make him a cake. Not just any cake, though, a birthday cake for his son Hari’s 4th birthday. Now, a child’s birthday cake is quite a special thing. In my mind, it’s far more difficult to make a cake for a child, because for children it has to be interesting. Adults will put up with any old thing.

The theme for the party would be the movie “cars” since that was Hari’s favourite movie. I bought a 3D cake tin in the shape of a car and set about making sponge cake prototypes. I endured flop after depressing flop. Every cake I tried went soggy in the middle. I realised it was because of the shape of the tin. After reading about it online, I finally swallowed my pride and bought some cake mix. As if by some dark cake voodoo, my cake mysteriously rose in the previously impossible-to-rise cake tin. I don’t know what they put in it, but it’s not natural, that’s for sure.

Continue reading Lightning McQueen Birthday Cake

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.

Continue reading Garden in the sky

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.

Continue reading Target Practice

Well, you all know by now that I fell in love quite some time ago: to hybrid car technology, of course. In particular, I fell in love with a specific model: the Toyota Prius. I loved how small it was, I loved the way it could run (briefly) without any petrol at all and I loved the possibilities it promised for the future.

I diligently saved up a whole year to buy mine, so when I unexpectedly found myself in Texas I saw no reason why I shouldn’t continue my plan and just buy one there, so I did. This worked brilliantly and I have been more than overjoyed with the outcome. In every way, this car has exceeded my expectations. Still, all good things must come to an end, so about a month before I was due to leave the country I started trying to sell my car.

Continue reading Exercise in Frustration