Entries Tagged 'Out and about' ↓

Being a loyal Coffee Supreme fan girl I put on my (apparently pristine) Supreme t-shirt and headed down to the revamped Woodward Street retail store this morning to bask in its newness on opening day … hoping they’d let me in the door seeing as my loyalty has somewhat wandered elsewhere in the Supreme family of late with my blatant adoration of Customs Brew Bar and Ralph’s Brazilian beans! However, I had been going to the Woodward Street store for years and always enjoy a catch-up with the guys there so wanted to go see what all the fuss was about.

It’s a fantastic transformation! The store was teeny tiny before and other than removing 2 layers of false and mezzanine ceilings to give them room upwards, the store is no bigger but it’s totally different and very very cool. Here’s a photo from Supreme’s blog of the ‘old store’ (more here)

And here’s what it looked like when I went down this morning

It’s now a really cosy garage/workshop space with shelves of coffee stuff (some proudly displaying the new Woodward logo) and interesting little details like an ‘exhibition space’ in the brick wall – currently on display is a little Vespa model (am wondering what orange thing I can take down from my collection to display ‘on loan’!)

While still mainly doing retail and mail order beans, there’s plenty of room for a handful of people to stand around and chat and the guys will even make you a mug of coffee (in a much-loved old brown mug that you’d easily believe came from a workshop bench) from their Clover, on the house, so you can try different coffees and learn about the tasting experience.

A true coffee haven! When I got back to the office I could still smell coffee – delicious!

These photos were taken by We Do Photography & Design as official photographers on the night, and it’s with their kind permission that I show them here. For the full gallery, please visit the WeDo Rocktober site.

The stage & crowd (spot me there right up the front … stage left)

The drummer concentrating hard

Exhausted in the green room during the break

The crowd really getting into it

Me enjoying it in my own way!

Took some video footage of one of the songs on my camera at Rocktober on Friday night – had to chop the video in half to get it up to Flickr but here you go – rather a lot of footage of The Mister, but hey, that’s what I was there for! (if you want to see them a bit bigger – go to Flickr: Part 1 http://is.gd/fHRTB Part 2 http://is.gd/fHS0n)

I’m hoarse! Had a night jumping and screaming in my ear muffs, swooning at the drummer in Golden Axes making their debut performance at Rocktober last night! Wow – not my kind of thing but a great night. The Mister is SO talented – so amazing to see him in action behind the drums – hard to believe he hasn’t played for 15 years!!

Rocktober started out with me digging out some 80’s rocker photos from my university days to get into the spirit of it.

Then I wore Dean’s original Iron Maiden t-shirt to work all day, trying to pull off an 80’s my-boyfriend’s-in-the-band kind of look – I remember when Dean wore this shirt all the time!

Then it was time – The Mister was up on stage

and people were screaming and waving at the band!

God it was awfully loud, but I was somewhat protected in Father’s lawn-mowing ear muffs and it was great seeing the crowd really get into it – there were loads of people from work there including some that had left their kids at home and brought their partners out. I was really proud 🙂

There’s no doubt Wellington has had a lot of rain this year, not that we were here for the start of winter! However, before we get fully into spring, we’re being treated to some gorgeous blue, albeit freezing, days. Hard to imagine that the rest of the country is having rain and wind that’s causing huge power outages in the north and so much snow roofs are collapsing in the south – for once Wellington is some kind of oasis instead of that narrow part of the weather funnel dealing with every kind of weather trying to escape through the gap between the north and south islands.

So there have been loads of photos posted on Twitter the last couple of days showing how blue and beautiful Wellington can be. I joined in. My photo from yesterday was this:

And today I went out with The Mister and friend to watch them play catch:

The psychology and pleasure of catch is somewhat unknown to me but it seemed that it boiled down to who could throw hardest. I was allowed to throw to Simon, sure it kind of plopped in front of him due to the distance between him and The Mister being so vast, but they said I didn’t throw that bad for a girl!

Everywhere you go around central Wellington at the moment there are diggers and cones and holes and muddy patches – guess we’re sprucing up the town for the rugby world cup next year? Obviously there’s a lot of activity around Manners Street for the new bus route but I’ve notice work elsewhere as well. God I just hope they’re not putting more slippery cobbles everywhere – black asphalt may be ugly but so wonderfully practical.

Last night we went to the second Ignite Wellington event – the first being the night before we left Wellington for New York back in March.

The aim of the evening is to get people enthusiastic about Wellington and about possibilities – people get up on stage and speak for exactly 5 minutes to exactly 20 slides. No matter their profession, their talk can be about that or some experience they’ve had or some random interest they have.

Last night’s event was great, and I rate it better than the first. People spoke about everything from starting their own company to selling real estate on the moon to outdoor graffiti knitting to wallpaper to game design. You can see the full list of speakers on the Ignite Wellington website plus a video of each talk.

In the talk about graffiti knitting there was a slide of the tree cozies and you can see the one I knitted!

I wrote down one thing from each speech – not necessarily something that sums up the presentation, but just something I liked or remembered.

• Tell your kids that Santa’s not real before it’s too late.
• Wellington has a leisure culture.
• Wellington has some ugly public spaces.
• Luck is an important factor between success and failure.
• Do something to stimulate your grey matter.
• I never want to finish the boat or I’ll have to find another expensive dream.
• I skate through life on a thin veneer of knowledge.
• If you’ve got a round logo then we’re working with you.
• Wallpaper is for every day, it’s not saved for best like the good dinner set.
• I’ve made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.
• Intellectual property is not just an idea, it has to have a place in the real world.
• Moon, Mars and Venus are the most popular locations for extra-terrestrial real estate.
• Our lives are lived in boxes and we experiment and play to learn the limits.

The next Ignite Wellington will be in another 6 months or so, open to anyone to speak or attend so go along for some thought provoking stuff.

After doing the rounds of our CEO and other top management who live out of Wellington, through local staff who have kids and can’t drop plans at the last minute, we were called upon to represent Xero at the NZ Internet Industry Awards held at Parliament again this year.

Last year we got all dollied up and Xero won the Best Business Application award and The Mister gave a speech and we were photographed and crowded around and felt rather glamourous (previous posts: Awards at Parliament and Who are they?)

This year Xero didn’t enter the awards but as winners of one last year we had to present the award to this year’s winners in that category. The Mister didn’t have to make a speech, just stand on the spot and in manner of lady handing out the Oscar trophies, pass a certificate to each nominee as they came up on stage, then the award to the winner.

It’s always nice representing Xero and getting out there where people know the company because they’re investors or customers and to receive many compliments for the product and company overall. It’s incredible how many people know about it now and how amazing they all think it is to work there. Working hard inside the company, we often lose sight of that, so it was a good evening out. And the bite-sized pavlovas and lemon meringue pies served as Petit Fours were amazing!

Here’s a blurry photo from my phone.

And the official one of us from the NZ Internet Industry Awards website.

Have finally got back to Nikau since coming back from New York. With it not being open on a Sunday it’s slightly more inconvenient for us to go, having so much to jam in on a Saturday. However, we called in for Saturday breakfast this weekend.

We we welcomed back with hugs like old friends and it was great to see familiar faces there and a few new hair styles. We were out of view of Kelda (boss chef) but somehow she got wind we were there and came out to say hi and welcome us back – we felt Very Important.

Didn’t have a date scone (gasp!) as it was breakfast time, so had my old fav toast and peanut butter – something I hardly have at Nikau with us never usually being there for breakfast. Their homemade milk toast is really good – I only need one slice as it’s delicious and thick and you can actually taste milk in the crust.

My coffee was delivered in my special cup (even after all these months!) – good texture and well made although I have decided I really don’t like the flavour of Supreme’s Fair Trade Organic beans – it has a very distinctive ‘green’ taste, quite acidic, but I have no choice until they switch beans which I don’t think they’ll do being an organic cafe. It was great to be back and next visit will have to be for a date scone.

I’m thrilled to see Nikau is blogging again too – well done guys!!

Nikau Gallery Cafe, City Gallery, Civic Square, Wellington @nikaucafe

Being back in Wellington is turning out to be OK – we’re being careful not to play the comparison game.

So far we’ve seen nothing too different, so it feels as though nothing has changed so it feels like we’ve only been away a couple of weeks. That’s a bit sad if you think about it, kind of reduces our trip of a lifetime to nothing, but for now it’s working. And it’s surprisingly enveloping being surrounded by orange again.

Some things we’ve noticed or done around Wellington since being back:

• First coffee was at Customs Brew Bar
• Moore Wilson’s was just the same

• The guys at Fuel remembered our order after 4 months (Jessie was still there)
• The Telecom angle-sided building on Willis Street is coming along.

• There’s some large stadium being built by the Kilbirne/Miramar/airport round-about.
• Dinner at Capitol was fantastic. The pumpkin and sage risotto probably the best risotto I’ve had there. The restaurant was so quiet when we arrived (about 6.30) and we worried things weren’t going too well for them but within half an hour it was full and bustling as normal.

• I baked! Made some orange cupcakes … and realised just how much orange we have in our kitchen!

• Been out for pub-ish lunches twice as people want to welcome us back to work. Which was nice despite lunching at places with rather large pub-ish meals (however managed to get a plate of veg rustled up at the first place, and pate at the second – had to leave half of both but at least I ate something!).

• Back in my same room at work but different desk. The Mister is back in his same spot. Mine’s OK for now, a little public on the edge and I haven’t got myself set up with keyboard, monitor etc and I have a new person to look at.

• Trying to think about whether we want to start up the same routines or not, seems we have a reputation for routine which makes us seem boring I guess, but we did give in to Hell’s Pizza last night (god it was good) and Gotham on Saturday morning, main reason being to catch up with our Short Dark Friend.
• Our tan lines are still visible for now in the brief moments of time when long sleeves or socks are off. The Mister has been rather upset that everyone says I look tanned but he doesn’t – his watch and jandal lines are impressive.
• Am making superb coffee again! The first one was a bit gritty but after that, glorious smooth milk and lovely rich taste. And I was very chuffed when someone I don’t know very well saw a photo of coffees I’d made and thought the photo was taken at a cafe!