Wednesday, 31 October 2007

Halloween Partay

So in the weekend there was a Halloween party. Costume was the only thing that was mandatory to bring :D Being the creative genius that I am, I decided to make a very distinctive Cookie Monster costume. Well I was going to be a kiwi (the bird not the fruit!), but the requirements to pull that off were are lot harder, hence the saviour that was the Cookie Monster find at Walmart.

Walmart was the place of purchase for this kids costume which I modified. Needless to say with the facepaint and costume on, people at the party did not recognise me at first.
The place of partay was well decorated with Halloween themed objects, like spider webs, spooky stuff, and pumpkins. The other participants at the party were well dressed, and the hosts were very generous with the refreshments available. All in all I give this party a five star rating. If you did not manage to make it, well then that's just too bad.

Monday, 15 October 2007

Tarantula!

So this morning, in the carpark at work I happened to almost run over a tarantula! It just happened to be crossing and luckily I had enough skill to avoid killing it.

The tarantula was probably the size of my palm and was leisurely crossing the road. I thought it was quite ironic that it was strolling down the same walkway that people take when they go for walks around the site hehe.

Had someone been there that knew about them, I would have been tempted to pick it up and give it a stroke :)

Giant Pumpkin

On Saturday I went to Half Moon Bay for the annual pumpkin festival. Half Moon Bay is situated on the west coast, and the in between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. For about 10km it was bumper to bumper traffic to get into it. So it wasn't such a good idea to go in the afternoon..

Anyway my goal for this excursion was to get a photo with a giant pumpkin. Every year they hold a pumpkin weigh off, for the right to the title of largest pumpkin. This year's pumpkin was like 1500lbs, so about 680kgs. Unfortunately due to the traffic caused late arrival I didn't get see anything else pumpkiny, like pumpkin carving, or a pie eating contest. Also the amount of arts and crafts reminded me of the Martinborough wine festival. So there was some interesting photography, sculptures, etc.

Tuesday, 9 October 2007

Building in the Sand

So on Saturday I went up to Ocean beach in San Francisco to build some art in the sand. Well Ms H.'s sister asked if we could help out for an event with construction, architectural, etc companies in helping make a creation in the sand with a local school.
So after thinking the San Franciscan weather might be pretty bad, I was pleasantly relieved to find that it turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining, hardly any wind above a slight breeze. So it was an excellent autumn day to be spending time at the beach building.

I didn't realise that the process of making sand creations involved sooo much water and stomping. Basically, to make a structure that wouldn't crumble easily, you had to pile on sand, dowse it with water, and stomp on it to make it compact. The providing enough water was a hard task, however my group was big enough to form a chain down to the water where we just passed buckets up and down for at least half an hour..
I was getting a bit bored until I was able to take on a piece of the project and make a keyboard, as before there wasn't much room to do any creative work.

On the horizon through for the duration of the day, a whole American navy fleet was coming into San Francsico. So I got to see destroyers, transports and the like, but I missed the aircraft carrier (if there was one). Overhead the Blue Angels were spinning and diving and roaring past. Apparently they put on a good show, however most of their flight was obscured by a large hill, as they were doing it over the city, rather than Ocean beach, so I can't comment.
In the end I was pleased enough with my work and enjoyed the day, even though my neck maybe took in a bit too much sun. Just completely randomly, I had a conversation with one guy who said he had a good time in Rotorua in a local pub with all the locals, who were trying to hook him up with some Maori women.. hehe..

Friday, 5 October 2007

Carter's Commercial

So to the people from NZ, if you manage to see a Carter's Building advertisement with a guy playing a tune with his hands, then I can tell you I have met that guy. He just happens to work with me. He was saying "Yea, they saw a video of what I can do posted on google video. So they emailed me to see if I wanted to do a commercial for them... They paid me in NZ dollars too.."

Hehe, funny how small the world can be at times.. Oh he was also interested in knowing how the ad was going, whether people liked it or not. So email me/comment here if you have anything to say about it :)