Emerging from underground 
New Zealand music icons The Bats and The Clean both release new albums this year and in "anticipation of this sudden surge in Antipodean creativity, [arts and culture site Flavorwire] rang up the Bats singer/songwriter and the Clean bassist Robert Scott to talk Flying Nun, fallen stars, and what it's like to juggle two seminal underground acts." "It's really strange, isn't it?" Scott said of the double whammy. "It's actually sort of difficult, because we've been trying to arrange tours for both bands." Scott's logistical nightmare is music lovers' unequivocal gain: both stand-out pop albums, The Bats' The Guilty Office and The Clean's Mister Pop each subtly update the lo-fi psychedelic sound that defined the country's late-'80s era. It's unusual to be in one band for more than 20 years — but two? How does Scott manage that? "We've taken long breaks with both bands — breaks to have kids, breaks to do other things," he said. "I think being apart once in a while keeps us together." 
(30 June 2009)

Lover of words passes 
Respected literary scholar and Professor Terry Sturm, who played a leading role in placing New Zealand literature at the centre of the academic curriculum and was awarded a CBE in recognition of his services to literature, has passed away aged 67. Sturm began his distinguished career at The University of Auckland. He undertook postgraduate work at Cambridge University and at the University of Leeds. He then lectured in English Literature at the University of Sydney 1967–1980, when he left to take a professorial chair at The University of Auckland, an institution he stayed with for 25 years. He edited various standard literary reference works including The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English (1990, 1998), the drama section of The Oxford History of Australian Literature and the New Zealand section of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-colonial Literatures in English (1994). "Terry Sturm made a major contribution to the study of New Zealand and Australian literature and his scholarship was rightly recognised nationally and internationally. As an academic, Terry was top of his field; he was also deeply valued as a colleague and friend," said Professor John Morrow, Dean of the Faculty of Arts. 
(24 June 2009)

Back for more 
Rugby great Jonah Lomu, 34, is to join French third division side Marseille Vitrolles. And Lomu hopes that, together with fellow new boys Alain Hyardet, Isitolo Maka, Julian Vulakoro and David Gerard, he can help turn Marseille into a force to be reckoned with. "Marseille is the second city in France," Lomu said. "It should have a great rugby club. Now the club is giving itself means to fulfil their ambitions." Out of the game for over a year, Lomu said he is looking forward to passing on his knowledge of the game to the club's young players. Many believed that Lomu, who has 63 caps for New Zealand, had retired in 2007, but he claims that thought never crossed his mind. "Everyone thought that I had stopped my career, but it was a mistake. "I always feel the need to play and only I will decide when it will be the end." 
(28 June 2009)

Abstract-minded 
New Zealand-inspired prints by American artist and solarplate expert Dan Welden feature in an exhibition at Adelphi University, Garden City, with some of the paintings evoking those of Colin McCahon. Both artists use abstraction to infuse representations of the landscape with a spiritual element. Thirty works by the Sag Harbor painter and printmaker include his visions of the meadows and forests of New Zealand. Welden has previously held print workshops at Kerikeri's Wharepuku Print Studio. 
(26 June 2009)

Being a sport 
When interacting with New Zealanders "bone up" on the intricacies of how rugby and cricket are played, expect the dialogue to be frank yet friendly, and don't broach topics like religion, the nuclear arms issue or the salary of your New Zealand counterparts advises Los Angeles-based examiner.com. Other tips include: not pulling rank with business colleagues, leaving work at work rather than bringing it to the dinner table and being punctual — "no matter how minor the function." 
(23 June 2009)

Western scenes 
The West Coast's Bruce Bay is "windswept, isolated and utterly beautiful" where travellers "have left their mark on the beachfront with small cairns of smooth rocks carefully balanced on boulders which line the shore," writes the Bryon Shire News reporter Lee Mylne. "There are hundreds of them, and it feels like a place where wishes are made … It's just one of the unexpected discoveries that make exploring this coastline such a delight. This stunningly scenic drive hugs the coast for almost 450km between Westport to the north and Haast to the south." 
(21 June 2009)

Near perfect north 
The Bay of Islands "is not only South Pacific-beautiful, it has been an important crucible for New Zealand's human history". That history begins with arrival from the north in sea canoes of the fierce, and fiercely proud, Maori people about a thousand years ago. New Zealand, devoid of people for eons, was gradually settled, basically north to south, over the succeeding centuries. Today Russell, Paihia, Waitangi and this bay of many islands — "a place of rolling green hills, sheep grazing above the crystal blue waters," Jeff Lawson, an expedition leader for Utah-based Fun for Less Tours notes, is "a place where you truly feel 'down under,' far from the troubles of the world — a place the New Zealanders refer to as a "Godzone" because so many of them are people of faith, believing their homeland is God's best work, and you live closer to God by living in New Zealand. 
(20 June 2009)

Cooper the Wallaby 
Tokoroa-born Quade Cooper, who recently played his first Test as a Wallaby, knows rugby's brutal side says Greg Growden of the Brisbane Times, and growing up in the North Island timber town, it was inevitable the national game would grab him early. He was just four when he played his first game. "It was bare feet back in those days with the Tokoroa Pirates, with our games starting about 7am," Cooper said. "It was just a case of chasing the ball, and if I got it, running round and round in circles. I was first a bit nervous about playing because I didn't know anyone. So my mum would tell me, as an incentive, that she'd give me some bubble gum after the game. That turned the tide. I kept playing after that. Bubble gum was a big lure." Of his choice to play for the Australians: "It was a massive call to stay with Australia because every New Zealand kid's dream is to play for the All Blacks. Becoming a Wallaby rather than an All Black is certainly a decision I've never regretted." 
(17 June 2009)

Positive thinking 
All Whites coach Ricki Herbert is confident the All Whites will earn their first ever point in a FIFA Confederations Cup this month in South Africa. "I think we have to believe it's a real possibility," Herbert said. Though the Oceania champions, who are the tallest team in the Confederations Cup tournament, conceded 5-0 to European champions Spain on June 14 in Rustenburg, North West Province, Herbert remains confident. "Iraq gives us a feel for Asian opposition, South Africa a taste of intimidating home support and the match against Spain will be a lesson in intensity and a huge step-up in quality. It's an exciting proposition but one that should gives us plenty of experience to take into two massive games for the sport in New Zealand," Herbert says. This is the squad's third appearance at the global competition.
(13 June 2009)

Decade of purity 
The 100 per cent pure New Zealand campaign is celebrating a decade in business and a decade promoting the "essence" of this country. Well, if New Zealanders can do it then why not the Australians, asks The Age. Australia is still talking about it while others such as New Zealand, South Korea, India, South Africa and Wales are forging ahead in the nation-brand stakes. The head of New Zealand's tourism industry association, Tim Cossar, a passionate believer in the Pure branding, says government is interested in taking it "to the next level" and to get "better alignment" between all of those sectors that are marketing New Zealand products and services abroad. The beauty of "Pure" lies in the fact that it never attempted to describe everything, but rather it just tried to capture the essence of New Zealand. The 100 per cent logo could be hitched to a landscape, place, emotion or feeling. This week, Steinlager Pure, replaced Castlemaine XXXX as brewer Lion Nathan's main export to British pubs. To borrow the memorable line from Castlemaine's ads, Australians most definitely would give a XXXX for a brand as recognisable as their smaller neighbour's. 
(11 June 2009)

Gene predictions 
University of Auckland researchers have developed the world's first test to measure the risk for individual smokers and ex-smokers of developing lung cancer with a simple mouth swab, trade named Respiragene. The test combines results of DNA analysis with other risk factors such as age, diseases such as bronchitis and emphysema and family lung cancer history, said University of Auckland associate professor Robert Young. "All smokers face an increased risk of developing lung cancer, among a host of other serious health problems, but for some individuals the risk is much greater than for others," Young said. "With this test, doctors will be able to identify those at greatest risk while there is still time to help." The test, developed by a company spun off from the University of Auckland called Synergenz Bioscience, is expected to be available worldwide before the end of the year. 
(9 June 2009)

King of the Derby 
New Zealand jockey Larry Cassidy rode New Plymouth trainer John Wheeler's Court Ruler to victory in the $500,000 Queensland Derby at Eagle Farm. Wheeler won his first Derby with his champion Rough Habit in 1990 and said he was always confident Court Ruler could win the classic. "It's always nice to win group 1s but it's especially nice to win another one at Eagle Farm," Wheeler said. "I galloped him between races at Doomben on Wednesday and he worked really well and I thought from then on he would be very hard to beat. He's a tough horse, he ran fourth in the New Zealand Derby and he will get better with age." 
(7 June 2009)

Serene spar 
"If New Zealand were a boxer, it would be a contender for best pound-for-pound puncher on the planet," according to canada.com. The North American news site describes "New Zealand [as] one of those countries that packs an enormous amount into a relatively small package. It's unpretentious, despite its wonderful portfolio of natural treasures that range from the semi-tropical tip of North Island to the British-like climes at the foot of South Island. The most challenging part of deciding to visit New Zealand is its isolation on a map, but if you make the long plane trip, you'll find it is a huge bargain. It's easy to overuse words like stunning and beautiful when talking of New Zealand, but the sheer variety of scenery packed into such a small space — by Canadian standards — makes that a forgivable sin. I can't wait to take in South Island on my next visit and be even more amazed." 
(2 June 2009)

With breath for peace 
Richard Nunns, an authority on Maori traditional instruments or taonga puoro, performed the Gillian Whitehead-composed "Hineputehue" at Luther College, Minnesota with the New Zealand String Quartet last month. Dunedin-based Whitehead wrote "Hineputehue" — the woman of the gourd, the Maori Goddess of Peace — on commission for the 2002 Wellington International Festival. The piece played with nearly a dozen traditional instruments, was performed in addition to Mendelssohn and Schubert. In 2008, Nunns was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Victoria University. Gillian Karawe Whitehead is one of the most acclaimed composers in Australasia.
(27 May 2009)

Awards for inspiration 
New Zealand retailer Michael Hill was one of 50 finalists in the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year awards held in Monte Carlo. Last year in New Zealand, judging panel chairman David Johnson said Hill had the attributes and achievements that defined entrepreneurship. "The wealth, the public company, the family ethic, he is the kind of person every entrepreneur would want to become." As of the end of 2008 the company had 234 stores across New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US. For the six months to December it produced $227 million in sales. 
(1 June 2009)

Sir Walker inspires 
John Walker received a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday honours for a career which has seen him compete internationally for almost two decades, winning numerous accolades and medals. During that time, Walker, 57, set three World records, was an Olympic and Commonwealth Games champion and the first athlete to run 100 sub-four minute miles on 17 February 1985. In the course of a long career Walker has provided inspiration to many young New Zealanders and has been an exceptional ambassador for New Zealand particularly while overseas. Last year Walker, a fourth term Manukau City Councillor, founded 'Find your Field of Dreams Foundation' a charitable trust aimed at encouraging the young people of Manukau to pursue a more active lifestyle through sport and physical recreation that would lead to a fitter, healthier and more caring community.
(2 June 2009)

Close call in Madrid 
Christchurch triathlete Andrea Hewitt, 27, crossed the finish line first at the 2009 Dextro Energy Triathlon — ITU World Championship Series in Madrid, Spain, a photo finish ahead of Sweden's Lisa Norden. Hewitt rallied in the final few metres to clinch victory with a last ditch effort reminiscent of compatriot Bevan Docherty's victory in Tongyeong at the opening Dextro Energy Triathlon fixture. The top two waited momentarily for final confirmation of the result by the ITU technical officials after analysis of the photo finish imagery. "I've never been in a photo finish before," said Hewitt. "We ran together for the whole run, pacing off each other. The Kiwis have had a great start to the season and we're just going to keep going for the rest of the season like this." Hewitt won bronze at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
(1 June 2009)

Hot in the Isles 
Ladyhawke played to a packed audience, including The O.C. A-lister Mischa Barton, in the John Peel Tent at this year's Glastonbury Festival on June 28. "Pip Brown and her band played a charged set in front of an audience that spilled outside the tent as festival-goers struggled to get a glimpse of the band," NME reported. "Playing a set based around her debut album, Brown and co had the audience screaming along to the likes of 'Magic', 'Back Of The Van' and 'Dusk Till Dawn'. However it was the impressive closing couplet of singles 'Paris Is Burning' and 'My Delirium' that triggered the loudest singalong from the large crowd." Ladyhawke, 30, has announced she will perform a one-off charity gig for one fan and their friends on August 26 in an as-yet unannounced London venue. The singer will perform for a fan and their chosen guestlist in aid of SunSmart's 'Skindividual' initiative, which aims to encourage young people to protect their skin from too much UV. The entrant who garners the largest guestlist for the show will win entry to the gig with their friends. 
(28 June 2009)

Harvest hoppers 
Blenheim's Montana Brancott Winery hosts Canadian Lindsay Forsey to work "the vintage" between March and May, one of 120 seasonal employees hired from around the world. "I scored the lab position with a bit of help from a New Zealander I met at a New Zealand wine event in Toronto," Forsey explains. "I'll earn $15 an hour plus time-and-a-half for overtime, of which there is plenty. At the beginning of the vintage, processing field samples is a priority. Every afternoon, I wait with my co-worker, Natalie Gudsell, a Blenheim local, for one of the viticulturalists to zip up in a pickup truck to the back door of the lab. On some days, we receive more than 150 samples, bulging bags of grapes, each of which we record and weigh. Then we take the grapes out to a small hand-operated crusher to press out the juice. Toward the end of the season, I learn how to do fining trials — adjustments to the colour, smell and clarity of wine, using substances like copper sulphate, fish and milk. Once you've worked one vintage, you'll have experience that can take you to wineries around the world." 
(29 May 2009)

Together for more 
Unite is New Zealand's newest union representing young service sector employees in the fast-food industry, call centres, hotels and the postal service. The Unite union's barnstorming approach has organised thousands of them, led strikes at McDonald's and Starbucks, won significant raises for fast-food workers, and helped spearhead a successful effort by New Zealand's unions to boost the national minimum wage. Thousands of young workers have gained union representation for the first time with the union, many of them Maori and Pacific islanders. The union called on companies to "Supersize My Pay," riffing on the food chains' own sales pitches. The union purchased a bus, decorated it, attached loudspeakers, and travelled from one worksite to the next, making organising and bargaining campaigns very public. Crucial to the union's success has been the appeal of its three key principles — a higher minimum wage, abolition of cheap labour "youth rates," and guaranteed minimum hours of work. 
(May 2009)

Bully for them 
Wellington writers and directors, Sticky Pictures' Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland's short film Six Dollar Fifty Man was awarded a special distinction at the Cannes Film Festival. The pair's 2007 short film Run was also awarded the distinction. "It's a huge honour to twice receive the special distinction in the short film competition, particularly as Cannes is the world's most important film festival," New Zealand Film Commission short film manager Juliette Veber said. Six Dollar Fifty Man is about Andy, a gutsy, anti-social eight-year-old boy who has to stand up to school bullies and a scary primary school headmaster so he can keep his closest friend and face his biggest fear. Albiston set up Sticky Pictures in 2000 with his partner, lawyer Amelia Bardsley. The company's feature film, Shopping is currently in production. 
(25 May 2009)

Tot takes a punt 
Stanmore Bay three-year-old Pipi Quinlan purchased a full-size excavating digger on auction site TradeMe for $20,000 while the rest of his family slept. "The first I knew of it was when I came down and opened up the computer," Pipi's mother, Sarah, told the Rodney Times. "I saw an email from TradeMe saying I had won an auction and another from the seller saying something like 'I think you'll love this digger'." She added that she had made auction bids on several toy sets and assumed she had bought a toy digger. "It wasn't until I went back and reread the emails that I saw $20,000 - and got the shock of my life." TradeMe reimbursed the seller's costs for the auction and the Kobelco digger was relisted. The computer is now kept out of Pipi's reach. 
(22 May 2009)

Perfect pinot 
Martinborough is home to Kusuda Wines, a vineyard owned by Japanese former diplomat Hiroyuki Kusuda and opened in 2001. Kusuda came to New Zealand to work as an assistant to his friend Kai Schubert, who had been studying winemaking a few years ahead of him at Germany's Geisenheim. This led him to the tiny town of Martinborough, which has become a gourmet mecca for North Islanders in spite of a population of not much more than 1,000. Bob Campbell, a wine writer and Master of Wine, sent Financial Times writer Jancis Robinson a report of Kusuda's 2009 harvest. "Kusuda invited me to compare the taste of a grape with a tiny scar against a perfect berry. I could detect no difference and suggested he make wine from the reject berries and compare it with the mother wine. He explained, 'Even if there is only 5 per cent difference, it is enough.'" Here, clearly, is Japanese perfectionism as applied to one of the world's most pragmatic wine industries. And the resulting wines are truly exceptional. 
(23 May 2009)

What a German thinks 
A new book on New Zealand by German journalist Ingo Petz Kiwi Paradise takes the author to Palmerston North and the Caitlins, tells the story of a game of ping-pong with poet Sam Hunt and recounts an interview with mountaineering royalty Ed Hillary. Kiwi Paradise is an amusing account of a travelling German struggling to understand the complexities of the New Zealand psyche. "I mean, I liked New Zealanders, but it wasn't always easy to understand their mysterious mentality, one that shifted somewhere between non-commitment, friendliness and indifference." Kiwi Paradise is published only in German by Droemer Knaur. 
(19 May 2009)

Heavenly pop hits 
Morr Music, an independent record label based in Berlin, Germany, has recently released "a double-disc salute to New Zealand's ever-influential '80s indie pop scene". The album, entitled Not Given Lightly – A Tribute To the Giant Golden Book Of New Zealand's Alternative Music Scene, "aims to capture the spirit of the subject, which in this case is the jangled-up, DIY pop of Flying Nun stalwarts such as the Chills, the Bats, the Clean and of course, Chris "Tall Dwarfs" Knox." Reviewer Brock Thiessen said this of the album: "Not Given Lightly is a must hear for anyone who's ever been swept up by New Zealand's heavenly pop hits." This is not the first time Morr Music has recorded tribute albums. In 2000 it released "Putting the Morr back into Morrissey" and in 2002 it released "Blue Skied An' Clear" — a homage to the British band Slowdive. 
(28 May 2009)

First in Columbia 
Professional triathlete Aucklander Terenzo Bozzone, 24, has won the 26th annual Columbia Triathlon. In a stirring fight to the finish, Bozzone overtook Andrew Yoder of Columbia, Pennsylvania near the halfway point of the 10km race around Centennial Lake to win the rainy day race. "Andy Yoder passed me on the bike ride like I was standing," Bozzone said. "I found my legs midway through the run and was able to pass him." Bozzone finished second in this year's New Zealand Ironman. In 2008 Bozzone won the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater, Florida setting a new course record of 3:40:10. 
(17 May 2009)

Needing fiction like water 
Brian Boyd, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Auckland, defends fiction in his new book On the Origin of Stories, which offers an overview and defense of Darwinian literary criticism, though Boyd prefers the term "evocriticism". Why do human beings spend so much time telling each other invented stories, untruths that everybody involved knows to be untrue? The ability to use stories to communicate accurate information about the real world has some obvious usefulness in this department, but what possible need could be served by made-up yarns about impossible things like talking animals and flying carpets? Boyd's explanation, heavily ballasted with citations from studies and treatises on neuroscience, cognitive theory and evolutionary biology, boils down to two general points. First, fiction — like all art — is a form of play, the enjoyable means by which we practice and hone certain abilities likely to come in handy in more serious situations. Second, when we create and share stories with each other, we build and reinforce the cooperative bonds within groups of people (families, tribes, towns, nations), making those groups more cohesive and in time allowing human beings to lord it over the rest of creation. In the second half of the book, Boyd applies his idea of "evocriticism" to two exemplary works: the Odyssey and Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who. 
(18 May 2009)

Island fortunes 
Fifty-four-year-old Aucklander Graeme Hart is the wealthiest man in Australasia with an estimated net worth of $4.7 billion. For the first time since Forbes Asia started keeping track of global fortunes, a New Zealander is richer this year than any Australian. Hart bests Australian media heir James Packer, by $1.6 billion. Hart, a former tow-truck driver who has amassed a packaging powerhouse in recent years, was worth $700 million less than a year ago, but that's still plenty to top all of his wealthy Australian neighbors. Right behind Hart are billionaire brothers Christopher and Richard Chandler, who used the proceeds from selling their parents' small North Island retailing business to invest in Hong Kong real estate. The pair went on to found Singapore investment firm Sovereign Global and now head up their own companies, both focused on emerging markets and socially responsible investing. 
(14 May 2009)

Don't look down 
The seven kilometre route to Treble Cone can be unnerving for American travellers accustomed to ample four-lane roads leading to their favourite resort. The gravel road winding up from Wanaka to the ski-field has changed little since its inception. "Unsealed" roads? Yep, still working on the concept of "guard rail", but a new daily shuttle service is a welcome step for those searching out the best skiing that can be found during the summer. Meanwhile, further north at Mt Hutt, one of New Zealand's premiere spots is primed for June's season opening with more than six feet of new snow falling on the mountain in early May. "I've been working at Mt Hutt for eight years and I've never witnessed falls like this so early in the season," said Mt Hutt ski area manager Dave Wilson. 
(11 May 2009)

Sauvignon's secret scent 
New Zealand's world-renowned sauvignon blanc is made up of a combination of aromas including sweet, sweaty passionfruit, asparagus, and cat's pee according to a six-year study conducted by wine scientists. The tests were carried out by an expert sensory panel trained to distinguish between sixteen flavours, including canned and fresh asparagus, stone fruit, apple and snowpeas. The Wairarapa was found to be the top spot for cat's pee influences in the white wine. Plant & Food science research leader Dr Roger Harker said wine connoisseurs routinely describe wine using the terms such as cat's pee and capsicum and now the market place was also catching on. Cooper's Creek winery had already caught on, calling its sauvignon blanc Cat's Phee on a Gooseberry Bush. Wine science lecturer at Lincoln University Sue Blackmore said the flavours were only found in moderation. "We're talking about parts per billion, very tiny amounts to make the wine more complex and interesting," Blackmore said. 
(11 May 2009)

To Osaka and Kintetsu 
Crusaders fullback Blenheim-born Leon MacDonald has signed a two-year deal with the Kintetsu Liners Club in Japan. The 31-year-old said he had signed a deal with Kintetsu and will join the Osaka-based club in June once he completes his Super 14 commitments with Canterbury Crusaders. MacDonald played 56 tests for the All Blacks between 2000 and 2008 and 118 matches for the Crusaders. "Leon has performed at the very highest level and has done fantastically well for the All Blacks, Crusaders and Canterbury," New Zealand coach Graham Henry said. "He has had to overcome major obstacles with injury and has returned to play some exceptional rugby." In the 2004 season, MacDonald played for Yamaha Jubilo in Japan. 
(7 May 2009)

Bumper season nears 
Queenstown is looking at its best ever season this year with record online bookings, cheap airfares and a weak New Zealand dollar promising a booming 2009. NZSki Ltd CEO James Coddington suggested that "the winter of 2009 could be the best ever." "I've recently returned from a 10-day trip to Australia and feel buoyed about what I saw and heard," Coddington said. "There's phenomenal noise about holidaying in New Zealand at the moment due to Tourism New Zealand's extended advertising campaign." Of the 1.1 million Australians that actively ski or snowboard, only 60,000 to 80,000 of them visit New Zealand's slopes each year. Coddington said he hoped to increase that number to 100,000 this season. 
(4 May 2009)

Hartley's gets wings 
New Zealander Brendon Hartley, 19, has been granted his motor racing super-licence and will join Red Bull as a reserve driver, the Formula One team said. The former Palmerston North Boys' High School student, who is now based in the UK, won the Formula Renault 2.0 World Series for 2007. Hartley will join Red Bull as the reserve driver ahead of next week's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. He will understudy German Sebastien Vettel and Australian Mark Webber, and will take the wheel if either fall ill or get injured leading into the race. "This is a great achievement for Brendon as he is the first New Zealand driver in over three decades to have achieved F1 driver status," said Motorsport NZ president Steven Kennedy. Hartley most recently raced in Belgium in the second round of the World Series by Renault championship at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Since the Formula One championship began in 1950 only eight New Zealand drivers have competed, most recently Mike Thackwell in 1984. 
(1 May 2009)

Couplets at the Globe 
Hokianga-born actor Rawiri Paratene, well-known for his role as Koro Apirana in Niki Caro's Whale Rider, is Friar Lawrence in a London Shakespeare's Globe presentation of Romeo and Juliet, the first New Zealander to act in a major production at the iconic theatre. Paratene returns to the Globe after taking part in our International Actors Fellowship in 2007. Of his role as the Friar, Paratene explains: "I'm consciously trying to lighten my posture and the frame of mind of the character, which feeds into the fact that the Friar is incredible positive. If I'm a Franciscan friar, my first duty is to do good for the community, and what is ailing in this community is the rancour between the two households." Romeo and Juliet runs through 23 August. 
(27 April 2009)

Painted loneliness 
Christchurch-born painter Euan Macleod has won the 2009 Gallipoli Art Prize, a prize valued at $20,000 for Smoke/Pinklandscape/Shovel which portrays the muddy trenches of World War I. Competition judge John McDonald said: "This year, as in previous years, many artists chose to depict soldiers and scenes of battle. But Macleod's work succeeds by suggestion and understatement. The shovel leaning against a wall of earth is a lonely, solitary symbol of the drudgery that accompanies the bloodshed and sorrow of war." Macleod, who won the Archibald Prize in 1999, the Sulman Prize in 2001 and the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 2006, said he had always been intrigued by war sites. "I guess my work has always been about the figure in the landscape, in this case the shovel, and the loneliness of battles: not always physical battles, but life's battles," he said. Born in 1956, Macleod completed a Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting) at Canterbury University in 1979. He moved to Sydney in 1981. 
(23 April 2009)

Embassy glamour 
New Zealand High Commissioner Rupert Holborow hosted a World of Wearable Art show for this year's Indian contestants at his residence at Chanakyapuri. Blurring the boundaries between art and fashion, of the 10 sculptural garments unveiled by 12 designers three will be chosen for the 10-day WOW show to be held in Wellington in September. Holborow said of the entries, "It's just like taking art off the wall and putting it on the body." The piece-de-resistance came in the end when a model, her head encased in a giant mobile charger, swaggered towards the audience in an outfit crafted out of 3000 charger pins scoured from Chandni Chowk. "The idea was to show the urban youth's preoccupation with mobile phones," said Rishab Rhode, one of the designers. WOW is in its 20th year.
(22 April 2009)

Kakapo comeback 
The Kakapo, a flightless, nocturnal, critically threatened New Zealand parrot that was long thought extinct, has staged a tiny comeback. Scientists are hailing the arrival of 34 kakapo chicks this year, propelling the total to 125. Ever since 18 kakapos were rediscovered in the fiord lands of southern New Zealand in 1973, scientists have made a dedicated effort to revive the population for going on forty years. So many chicks were born this year that there wasn't enough of the ripe rimu fruit that composes the majority of the kakapo diet to go around, and 21 of the chicks are now being hand-reared in the nearby city of Invercargill. "They'll need a lot of support for a long time yet," says Mr. Merton, the original discoverer of the kakapo in the 70s, "but they are on the way." 
(15 April 2009)

Purple potato on the gravy train
Plant and Food Research, New Zealand's sole potato breeder, has developed a new purple skinned potato as one of 16 new cultivars bred by the company. Purple Heart, as the potato is called, is smooth and large with a relatively high yield, which manager Ivan Lawrie believes will have strong appeal. "We think it will have a niche in the gourmet restaurant trade and among the health conscious." The new potato has a distinctive speckled purple flesh inside, and Plant and Food Research is claiming that it may have added health benefits, including antioxidants like anthocyanin, typically found in blueberries, beetroot, red cabbage, and purple grapes and believed to have cancer fighting properties. 
(11 April 2009)

Surprises from the Bay 
Craggy Range winemaker Rod Easthope was up at London's Penthouse Suite of New Zealand House promoting Gimblett Gravels varietals and astonishing the attending 30 or so UK Masters of Wine, sommeliers, wine buyers and journalists with wines "up there with the best to be found in Bordeaux." "We're confident that we're making good wine," Easthope says. "But we're young and curious and need to know where we stand. What better way of benchmarking our wines than a taste-off?" Some of Britain's finest tasters were there, including Jancis Robinson, Michael Schuster and Oz Clarke, trying to deferentiate between New Zealand and French wine. The incomparable but ever-modest Robinson is stumped. "It isn't obvious to me at all which is which," Robinson says. "I have tried to guess and have no doubt made a fool of myself." In the top six, are the 2006 Sacred Hill "Helmsman" at fourth and the 2006 Newton Forrest "Cornerstone" — "at just £15 a bottle for heaven's sake" — at sixth. "I knew exciting things were happening in Hawke's Bay, but had no idea how exciting," murmurs buyer Alun Griffiths of Berrys. "I need to get some on our list fast." 
(14 April 2009)

Ratting out the weasels 
Stoats, which were first introduced to New Zealand in the 19th century to combat the spread of the rabbit, have decimated the kiwi population reducing little spotted kiwi and Rowi or Okarito brown kiwi numbers to 1200 and 300 respectively. Recent surveys by the Department of Conservation found that kiwi populations are shrinking by 6 per cent a year. Unfortunately, stoats are very hard to catch. "The animals are so abundant and resilient that trapping has been abandoned as a control measure," reports The Australian. Instead, New Zealanders are resorting to breeding programs to protect kiwi. "Rowi are literally being brought back from the brink of extinction," Department of Conservation regional director James Livingstone said. 
(16 April 2009)

Moa meals uncovered 
University of Otago postgraduate Jamie Wood collects moa dung, or coprolites, which he finds on tip-offs from hunters who report findings of moa bones. Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide, who specialises in ancient DNA and who co-wrote a paper on documenting the discovery of 1500 samples of moa faeces for the December issue of the Quaternary Science Review, performed DNA typing for Woods. "Jim Wood will meander around the outback of New Zealand looking for rocky areas with overhangs and scoop out the sheep poo and go through the dirt and very often come across coprolites," Cooper says. "The main thing is the extent of the poo. Pretty much everywhere we have looked for it, we have found it." As for the coprolite record in Australia, Cooper says: "Our leading hypothesis at the moment is that the termites have got it all." Cooper is eager to use Wood's proven sleuthing abilities to mount a more systematic search of likely sites in Australia. 
(15 April 2009)

Study with leisure 
A recent New Zealand Education Fair held in New Delhi attracted hundreds of Indian students eager to discover the merits of study in this country, many surprised to see New Zealand was more than just a tourism destination. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NTZE) and Education New Zealand organised the education fair in the capital hoping to woo Indian students with its niche set of courses and "study — leisure environment". The fair drew a lot of interest in niche courses like viticulture (wine tasting), hospitality management, plant science and horticulture, food technology and sports management. NZTE officials said that in the year 2005 there were 2000 Indian students in New Zealand. The numbers have increased to 6000 students as of March 2009. 
(5 April 2009)

Sports refugee dies 
Wanganui-born journalist Jock Veitch who as a student at Wanganui Collegiate was regarded as a slacker and told there was nothing wrong with him that a game of rugger or cricket couldn't fix, has died in France, aged 81. As a youth, writing skills provided his ticket out of the country. Leaving school, he became a cadet journalist at the Wellington Star and prospered spiritually, if not financially. In 1954, he left for Australia to save money to "go home" to England, as all good New Zealanders did. Moving to The Sun-Herald and The Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1950s, he found that Fairfax had six classical music writers and no popular music writers so he filled the breach and was soon writing about films, too. Then he was interviewing, and often befriending, the likes of Eartha Kitt, Rock Hudson, Shirley Bassey, Eddie Fisher, Phil Silvers and Normie Rowe and touring with the Beatles. In 1977, when on holiday in New York, he was offered a job on The Star, a competitor to the National Enquirer. In the early 1990s, he visited an old New Zealand friend, David Barwick, in the south-west of France, where Barwick's wife, Margaret, showed him a house for sale in the village of St Caprais. This time, nudging 70, Veitch pulled the plug on New York and everything familiar to him. Jock Veitch is survived by three daughters, five grandchildren and his Australian partner Bronwen Mason.
(11 April 2009)

To save the Queen or not 
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark, 59, who has given her valedictory speech to the House after 27 years as an MP, said the country's institutions had "evolved a long way from our colonial heritage". "Many of our forebears came to this land to escape the class-bound nature of Britain, where their place in the economic and social order was largely prescribed by birth," Clark said. "I deeply detest social distinction and snobbery, and in that lies my strong aversion to titular honours. To me they relate to another era, from which our nation has largely, but obviously still not completely, freed itself." Opinion polls have shown a majority of people, particularly the elderly, favour retaining the monarchy, but the number has declined in recent years to only slightly above 50 per cent. Clark takes up a post as head of the United Nations Development Programme in New York. 
(8 April 2009)

Particles in motion 
Fonterra's latest foray into "smart" water "Whole", is advertised in a continuous 650-frame shot leaping and transforming from brains to bridges to bananas and was created as a joint project by Auckland-based animation studio Department of Motion Graphics and North American fluid and particle fx experts Fusion CI Studios for creative agency, Sugar. "From the moment we first laid eyes on the storyboard, we knew this was going to be one of the most challenging projects we had ever undertaken at DMG," said creative director Linds Redding. "If we had grasped at the time, just how challenging — we might well have thought twice about saying 'yes' with such unseemly haste. From the outset, we realised we were going to need some specialist help and we were lucky enough to fall into league with the brilliant Mark Stasiuk of Fusion CI Studios in Santa Monica, California." 
(28 March 2009)

Pass the wallaby 
The increasingly ubiquitous wallaby may be the newest presence on the New Zealand dinner table, as municipalities around the country are being encouraged to consider different strategies to control their booming populations. The Australian marsupials arrived in New Zealand in 1874, and have flourished free from the predators and less hospitable habitats of their native land. Poison is currently being used to control populations, but the growing numbers are requiring on an increasingly creative response. A café in the self proclaimed wallaby capital of New Zealand, Waimate, does good trade in wallaby pies, and the councilors approved of the culinary options. The region's biosecurity manager Graham Sullivan said increasing the culinary market was a realistic option for the country. "Wallaby is quite nice to eat, just like kangaroo, so if a cottage industry was up for harvesting them for the table then fantastic, " he said. "It would just take somebody with the initiative and the dosh to set it up." 
(1 April 2009)

Universal access 
High-speed broadband Internet access is coming to over three quarters of the country over the next decade, in a 3 billion dollar project jointly funded by the private and public sectors. "This model aims to provide government investment on favorable terms, while minimising government involvement in commercial operations which we believe the private sector is better positioned to direct," said Communications and Technology Minister Stephen Joyce. Today broadband penetration is low in New Zealand and speeds are generally slow, while access in rural areas — important in the agriculture-dominated economy — is poor. The aim is to provide 100-megabit/second speed to 25 towns, cities and rural areas. "This is a game changing initiative by the government," said Rosalie Nelson, telecommunications research manager at IDC Research. "It effectively leads to the commoditisation of access. It changes the competitive landscape."
(30 March 2009)

Writing from abroad 
New Zealand-born, Bryan Gould's latest column for The Guardian Newspaper identifies governments as the only organisations in a position to take the necessary long-term approach needed to stimulate the global economy and counter the recession. "Only governments have the capability and the duty to act in the wider interest ... and to act consciously to defy market logic by spending when others can and will not." Gould, who regularly writes for The Guardian on political and economic issues, was a New Zealand Rhode Scholar who studied law at Oxford and went on to have a career in the British Labour Party. He was Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University for ten years and is currently a director of TVNV. 
(30 March 2009)

Stormy outlook ahead 
New Zealand's economy contracted in the fourth quarter at its fastest pace in 16 years as the global turmoil worsened a domestic slump, putting interest rate cuts back on the agenda. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) is now torn between pressure to lower interest rates to revive growth and the need to keep the return on New Zealand's currency attractive enough to lure foreign investment. "It may yet force the RBNZ's hand to do more, either on the rate front, or in signalling the potential for rates to remain at low levels for an extended period," said ANZ-National economist Philip Borkin. Only Iceland, which imploded under the weight of the global financial crisis last year, had more net external debt as a percentage of GDP among the OECD group of rich nations. New Zealand's trade partners such as Japan, South Korea, the United States, Britain and Taiwan had all suffered contractions between 1.5% and 8.4% in the fourth quarter. 
(27 March 2009)

Win on Lake Rotorua 
Chairman of Blind Sailing New Zealand Dick Lancaster won a silver medal in a 25-foot yacht at the 2009 World Championships held on Lake Rotorua in March. Lancaster told CNN that sailing for the blind and visually-impaired is growing around the world. There is also hope that the sport may get its own category at the Paralympics. "This year's event was as big as it has ever been. We had ten countries represented and most countries sent three teams," Lancaster said. "We sail with a four man crew. There is a blind person at the helm and another blind person on the mainsheet. There is also a sighted tactician, who's not allowed to touch anything, and a fourth sighted crew member. The most challenging thing for me has been the last few years when I have gone from B2 to B1 (blind). You have to rely on your feel a lot more now," he said. New Zealand won the overall team trophy at the event. 
(27 March 2009)

Electric rules 
"In New Zealand, an idea has been floated to convert up to 60 per cent of the country's automobile fleet to electric vehicles, which would be e charged with wind power," writes daily trade publication Environmental Leader. "If about 2.5 million of New Zealand's 4 million vehicles were electric, they could run off 3,000 MW of wind generation, which is roughly three times the amount of wind power capacity already in place or under construction in New Zealand, according to the New Zealand Herald. Mitsubishi and Meridian are partnering to bring an electric vehicle to New Zealand. New Zealander Ed Kjaer has been director of the Electric Transportation Division at Southern California Edison (SCE) since 1999. Kjaer's company now operates America's largest private fleet of pure battery electric vehicles. In mid-March, Kjaer showed President Barack Obama around his workplace where President Obama announced a grant of US$2.4 billion to stimulate the electric vehicle industry in the US. Prior to joining SCE, Kjaer participated in marketing and advertising for Mazda Motor of America and on the launch of Acura Automobiles for American Honda Motor Company. 
(25 March 2009)

A bright future 
New Zealand was breaking its own records for renewable energy production in the final quarter of 2008, creating 74 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Boosted by full lakes, new geothermal plants, and more wind power, renewable energy produced another 18 percent of the country's energy needs from one quarter to the next. Hydro-electric power continues to dominate the energy landscape, producing 59 percent of the total output, and with lake levels 12 percent above average thanks to heavy rains on both islands, energy prices continue to be abnormally low, even dropping down to a 1 cent/unit on the South Island last week. Wind power is another light on the horizon, with expected growth of 50 percent over the course of the next year. 
(23 March 2009)

One fine fishing boat 
New Zealand naval architect and multi-hull specialist Roger Hill has designed the Montebello, a luxury 12.5m planing power catamaran for a group of Gold Coast businessmen who — headed by industry identity Gary Zamparutti — have formed Montebello Yachts. Modern Boating's Kevan Wolfe takes the cruiser for a test drive. "On the day, the sea was like a millpond off Surfers. I didn't get to try the boat in the usual swell we get off the coast, however, Hill has a reputation for producing sea-kindly hulls and this boat is a true blue-water catamaran. I had no doubts it would perform well in a seaway. In the smooth stuff the boat was very light on the helm and tracked straight without any input from the driver. The silent exhaust system also makes the boat very quiet underway. The Montebello had the feel of a fine piece of machinery." Hill has been drawing boats for 32 years in New Zealand as well as in Annapolis in the USA with Bruce Farr and in Lymington in the UK with Rob Humphries. 
(18 March 2009)

Victorian mod-cons 
Greytown in the Wairarapa — population 2001 and New Zealand's first planned town — is definitely worth a visit writes the WA Today's Kate Duthie, a town not unlike Berry, on the NSW South Coast. "In recent years, Greytown has undergone a transformation, making it a lively destination in its own right," says Duthie, who books in for a few nights above the Main Street Deli at Apartment 88. "With interesting shops selling things you actually want to buy — furniture, homewares, gifts and clothes ... Unashamedly Victorian in character, Greytown has become modern. There's plenty to do around here. For surfers and beach lovers, the coast is 30 minutes away; there are also forest walking trails, golf courses, formal gardens and the Waiohine Gorge to visit as well as the wine trail through Martinborough." The first Arbor Day celebration in New Zealand was held in Greytown on 3 July 1890. 
(8 March 2009)

Natasha likes it 
Natasha Bedingfield, 27, the UK singer who has sold over ten million records, is currently back in New Zealand — the birthplace of her parents — finding inspiration for her next album, which she is working on with producer Brian Kennedy who created Disturbia for Rihanna. Bedingfield spent 2008 on tour promoting her latest album, Pocketful of Sunshine. With three Top 10 Billboard chart singles from that record, Bedingfield says the thrill starts before the record is even released. "When you are in the studio and you are writing songs ... You might like something, but do other people like it? It is the best compliment when other people hear something you wrote, and they take it as a personal song. When someone comes up to me and goes, 'This is our song, or my song', that is very special." Bedingfield's brother singer/songwriter Daniel, is also working on an album this year. 
(6 March 2009)

Spare time for fine wine 
"I imagined this is how it was in Napa in the thirties — an intimate winemaking community that the world hadn't yet discovered," writes Chang-Rae Lee as he tours through Central Otago. Lee takes his circuitous route across the country as an opportunity to get a taste of the land. "You can learn something about a place from its serendipitous matrix of geography and climate and soils, the particular expressions of viticulture being as telling of locale as any fields of wild resident flora. Wine people refer to this as gout de terroir, the idea that you can taste something of a patch of land in the glass..." The results seem to satisfy, and in an area where the "very landscape promotes patience, encouraging you to open your eyes and let it all be, " "the truest savor of the land can become a part of you as well."
(1 March 2009)

Home sweet home 
"The time has come to learn from Down Under," where homes have sustainable features "light years ahead of the curve," are "modestly scaled and unpretentious, employ an original aesthetic language, and without fail, offer designs that [are] contextually relevant." Examples seem to roll off the tongue. The Queenstown home of architecture duo Bronwen Kerr and Pete Ritchie is a design triumph, "relaxed but still rigorous, with a breezy unorthodoxy all its own. It seems to derive strength from its robust surroundings without attempting to outdo them." The Norrish House in Tauranga boasts a maze of doors that seamlessly connect inside and out, and the Harwood Smith House in Quaeanbeyan is a perfect example of doing "less on paper and more on construction sites." The Westmere House in Auckland, meanwhile, is a "fusion of modernist forms with origami-like geometries." Using solar heated hot water, recycled rainwater for the toilets and laundry, and passive solar and ventilation, it "represents and ethos of sustainability that even traditionally minded neighbours can get behind."
(March 2009)

Unbroken ties 
An exhibition — called Passchendaele: the Belgians Have Not Forgotten — commemorating New Zealand lives lost on Flanders soil opens in Wellington on March 6 in the Hall of Memories at Wellington's National War Memorial. The exhibition has been developed by the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 and aims to bring the devastating battles for the Western Front, where losses far outweighed those at Gallipoli, back into the national conscience. In four hours on one day alone, October 12, 1917, New Zealand forces suffered 2700 casualties, including 845 fatalities, trying to capture the Bellevue Heights on the outskirts of Passchendaele. They were slaughtered and had to be withdrawn. It took two days to clear the battlefield of bodies. Passchendaele Museum Curator, Franky Bostyn says the people of Flanders and, more widely, the people of Belgium have never forgotten the New Zealand sacrifice. "In 1917 your country left an important part of its history here in Flanders, not only the events, but also the men, the men are all here, a part of our land," Bostyn says. After Wellington, the exhibition will tour Christchurch, Dunedin, Featherston, Waiouru and Auckland. 
(13 February 2009)

Dodgy and deadly 
Over three weeks, Wellington artists Christian Pearce and Greg Broadmore created exhibition '99DS' with digital images created entirely on Nintendo's DS handheld game console, which were on display through February in Wellington's Civic Square. Using a homebrew painting application called 'Colors', which is also now available on the iPhone, Pearce and Broadmore created two lots of 99 images entitled '99 Dodgy Falls', made up entirely of nude women slipping on banana peels, and '99 Killer Sleds', an assortment of hot-rods that never were. From the exhibition site the work is explained: "On display as animated reels on looped playback, 99DS aims to show a fun and frivolous way art can be created on the digital media available to us today, free of symbolism, metaphor and manure." Pearce and Broadmore are both conceptual designers and illustrators for Weta Workshop. 
(22 February 2009)

Changing face 
New Zealand-based foundry JY&A Fonts, established by Jack Yan in 1987, has announced a new, classically inspired typeface family, JY Alia created to complement previous his 1994-5 release, JY AEtna. Yan, who is also the publisher of Wellington-based fashion magazine Lucire said: "The problem with JY AEtna, as I saw it, was that it wasn't robust enough for text usage." He sees JY Alia, which is stronger but still approachable as a design, as a rival for other workhorse typeface families such as Adobe Garamond or Monotype Bembo. JY&A Fonts was the first to branch into digital type in its country, and has spent the last several years working on private commissions. 
(16 February 2009)

Brain dead dolls 
Wellington's Weta Workshop will create practical and creature effects for American director Kristoffer Aaron Morgan's independent horror film, The Home. "The Home is going to be an amazing film that we are thrilled to be part of," Weta director Richard Taylor said. "We've enjoyed a fantastic career creating films for a number of directors, and now it's time to make Aaron and [screenwriter] Eric [Vespe]'s film come to life." First Showing writes: "Seriously, when was the last time you saw vacant-eyed dolls gnawing on an old woman? The artwork obviously depicts one of the nightmares preying upon the elderly residents at the nursing home wherein the story takes place." Weta co-founder, Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, is delighted with Weta's participation on the film. "The project is exciting to us," Jackson said. "It's the type of film we really like; it's the type of film we used to make when we were younger. The gang down here are very enthusiastic about being involved in another wonderful little horror movie." Weta Workshop is a 65,000 square foot facility in Wellington suburb, Miramar and is best-known for work done on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. 
(9 February 2009)

Distractions of youth 
Otago University intelligence researcher professor James Flynn is the author of a study published online by the journal Economics and Human Biology which looks at how British teenagers' cognitive skills have changed over a 28-year period. Tests carried out in 1980 and again in 2008 show that the IQ score of an average 14-year-old dropped by more than two points over the period. Flynn believes the abnormal drop in British teenage IQ could be due to youth culture having "stagnated" or even dumbed down. The trend marks an abrupt reversal of the so-called "Flynn effect" which has seen IQ scores rise year on year, among all age groups, in most industrialised countries throughout the past century. After the ages of nine and ten Flynn says: "Children become more autonomous and they gravitate to peer groups that set the cognitive environment. What we know is that youth culture is more visually orientated around computer games than they are in terms of reading and holding conversations." Originally from Chicago, Flynn arrived in New Zealand in 1963. 
(7 February 2009)

Shaking off the shackles 
Waitangi Day is also World Nude Day, a day which originated in New Zealand and which this year promoted itself with the slogan "Nude not Lewd" and a US$10,000 "in gold" online prize for the best public nudity video. An editorial on Associated Content ruminates on the event: "I'm still not entirely sure what goes on in New Zealand, but I can tell you that for at least one day out of the year whatever is going on in New Zealand is happening in the nude. In fact, the need to 'drop trou' as the old saying goes is apparently so great, that World Nude Day is now celebrated all over the world." From the official site the story behind the day is explained: "Hidden away in the ass-end of the world (just as we like it) we New Zealanders have been hiding a secret. Like kids before Christmas we wait for the day, counting down the sleeps ... and when she comes, ohhh when she comes we embrace her with liberated souls, in the only way we know how. Nude!" 
(6 February 2009)

Tomcat temptations 
Auckland chocolatier Hanna Frederick, a former food scientist, has injected a male aphrodisiac into her chocolate treats for Valentine's Day. Frederick, who made headlines by feeding beer-flavoured chocolate to brewers and deer antler chocolate to meat industry heads at business conventions last year, hopes to capitalise on the commercial day of romance with chocolates fortified with Tongkat Ali, a potent herb from Southeast Asia which is claimed to stimulate testosterone production in men. "We are not trying to create a substitute for Viagra," Hungarian-born Frederick said. "This is just a bit of passionate fun." Frederick and her husband Howard own Mámor Chocolate Ltd., which was established in 2003. 
(5 February 2009)

Privy to beauty 
The Northland town of Kawakawa is home to the remarkable public toilet created by Viennese-born artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who is profiled in the Jakarta Globe. The work is a gift from Hundertwasser, who was an architect as well as a painter, to his adopted home. He bought a farm in nearby Kaurinui in 1974 and it is where he felt at home. He was buried there in 2000 in a grave under a tulip tree that is inaccessible to visitors. He didn't discard his aversion to the limelight in Kawakawa, which he called "the end of the world." When his toilet was dedicated on December 10, 1999, he slipped into town incognito. And he left it to his neighbour Noma Shephard to spread his message: "It is only a toilet but it should show that even small things can bring beauty into our lives."
(5 February 2009)

Gains from history 
A Maori welcome onto a marae for visitors, a walking tour with Footprints Waipoua and the All Black performance of the haka are all examples of Maori reclaiming their heritage and promoting their culture through tourism, according to an article in The Vancouver Sun. "New Zealand was what I signed up for when I booked my ticket. I expected a sort of Australia-lite with dashes of Mordor, Rivendell and Hobbiton thrown in. What I experienced was a nation giddily celebrating its uniqueness," writes Grant Stoddard. "It's a jubilee that's born out of an overdue embrace of the rich culture of the Maori — the archipelago's first settlers. The 19th and 20th centuries saw a marginalisation of the Maori people and a suppression of their culture. So much so that Maoris are learning about their heritage, language and traditions only slightly ahead of visitors like me." 
(3 February 2009)

Looking at both sides 
New Zealand's health sector is giving a few lessons to its British Columbia counterpart, which sent delegates out in November 2008 to learn about the country's co-payment system, drug policy and its emphasis on primary care. There are some areas where innovations from New Zealand, or co-operating with the country, would likely be welcome to British Columbians. Drug policy, for example, is one area where New Zealand and B.C. are working closely together, said the assistant deputy minister in charge of Pharmacare Bob Nakagawa. The most controversial idea the B.C. team brought back is co-payment, where a patient pays a fee every time they see their doctor or have any contact with the health system. It's not something the panellists were talking seriously about implementing here, but it is something they were talking about. 
(29 January 2009)

Speed demon's dream  
Wellington entrepreneur Richard Nowland is the man behind the only jet-powered car ever designed and built in New Zealand. Nowland purchased a Rolls-Royce Avon 206 turbojet engine and intends to transform it into New Zealand's first purpose-built land-speed record car. Aiming to blitz the record at home (347kmh) and in Australia (801kmh), the carbon-kevlar- over-steel-space-frame project is entitled Jetblack. Its name picks up on the propulsion of the vehicle and also its symbolisation of how New Zealand can compete with the best the world has to offer. Nowland, the project manager and probable driver, hopes Jetblack will be seen as a metaphor and an inspiration for Kiwi capabilities. "I want to involve as many New Zealanders as possible, especially our future generation of engineers and innovators, and I will be approaching schools and universities to invite them to participate in the project," he said. "The whole thing with the project isn't just to have something to go fast, it is about promoting New Zealand engineering and technology." Jetblack is on track for testing to begin early in 2010. 
(26 January 2009)

Musher says hike 
Christchurch dog sledder Curt Perano made the list of top mushers for the John Beargrease 150-mile mid-distance sled dog race from Minnesota towns Duluth to Tofte. Perano and his wife, Fleur, began dog sledding with a pair of Alaskan Malamutes in Christchurch eight years ago before taking up coaching with American dog-sledding master Jamie Nelson — a four-time Beargrease marathon winner. With only a few four- to 12-mile races in New Zealand on his resume, Curt's first distance race, the White Oak Sled Dog Classic two weeks ago in Deer River, went better than anticipated. With 10 Alaskan Huskies, he finished seventh out of 19 teams after covering 130 miles. "That was more than I had done in any training event," Perano said. "A lot of the dogs are young, and, with my experience, where I finished was a bonus." 
(24 January 2009)

Into the bazaar 
New Zealand Herald columnist and travel writer Jill Worrall is interviewed by Iranian freelance journalist Kourosh Ziabari for The Moderate Voice, a widely-read independent political news blog, on the topic: 'Iran — the most misunderstood country'. Including a central discussion on whether the news media stereotypes, Worrall recalls a trip she took to Iran in November 2008 as a tour group leader of 29 New Zealanders and about their pre-conceptions of the country. "Even among the well informed members of the party and the well travelled," Worrall explains, "there was so much surprise as they travelled the country and realised just how different it was to what they'd been led to believe." Worrall has co-written several books with her husband, including Landscapes of New Zealand and Coastlines of New Zealand. She intends to write a book on her observations of Iran. 
(19 January 2009)

Pre-human New Zealand
Paleontology researchers from the University of Adelaide, University of Otago, and the NZDEC have begun to paint a picture of ancient life on the New Zealand islands by investigating the feces of the giant extinct moa bird. Some 1500 specimens of ancient feces, some multiple thousands of years old, have been found all over southern New Zealand, preserved beneath the floors of caves and rock shelters. The team of researchers has analyzed the samples' (which are called coprolites) seeds, leaves, and DNA, gaining great insight into this forgotten world. It turns out that the Giant moa, which was up to 900 pounds and 10 feet tall, grazed primarily on tiny plants under a foot tall, dispelling previous thoughts of the birds as shrub and tree browsers. "New Zealand offers a unique chance to reconstruct how a 'megafaunal ecosystem' functioned," according to Professor Alan Cooper, Director of the Australian center for Ancient DNA. "You can't do this elsewhere in the world because the giant species became extinct too long ago, so you don't get such a diverse record of species and habitats." The findings of the study have been published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
(13 January 2009)

Unlimited potential 
After the multi-blockbuster book The Learning Revolution, Gordon Dryden returns with his latest book Unlimited: The New Learning Revolution and The Seven Keys to Unlock It. The new book, according to Dryden — whose rich and varied work life has covered professions in journalism, radio and television, business, advertising, politics and publishing — is basically "a manifesto program to change the way the world learns — but based on seven keys to unlock the future." Those seven keys, he says are "precisely what Barack Obama has done to revolutionize politics in America." Unlimited was co-authored by American educationalist Jeannette Vos, with whom he wrote his last book The Learning Revolution — which sold 10.2 million copies in China and has been translated into 20 languages. You can read the first 34 pages of Unlimited: The New Learning Revolution and The Seven Keys to Unlock at no cost on the web www.thelearningweb.net. Dryden's earlier book, The Learning Revolution is available freely online.
(January 2009)

Altered stories 
"New Zealand remains a comfortably social democratic society, less dynamic but also less brash or polarised than Australia," writes Guardian political blogger Michael White in a posting which looks at the reintegration of Chinese culture in the Pacific Rim, beginning in the former gold-mining settlement of Arrowtown. "All around the Pacific Rim established states ... are trying to create a coherent narrative that does not marginalise the Chinese dimension — or squeeze it into stone huts down by the river. [In New Zealand] they discriminate no longer. So the narrative has had to change and has been marked, in the modern fashion, by historic apologies for past wrongs and inclusive archaeology such as the informative display boards at Arrowtown. After all, Asian tourism is also crucial to the Kiwi economy. Chinese tourists were there the wet morning we visited." 
(16 January 2009)

Creative king of Berlin 
Paul Snowden — a New Zealand creative director and designer based in Berlin — has just completed the visual identity and overall design for the 59th Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale. The Berlinale is the world's largest public film festival with around 400,000 visitors and goes from February 5&ndash15. According to his website, Snowden's design work covers "an extensive area of operation, concentrating specifically on youth culture and communication, seeing design as a way of life which must be true, vivid and real." Paul's dedication and devotion to music forms the basis of his work, having designed and produced album artwork for several artists including Boysnoize, Kid 606, and The Whitest Boy Alive. He is also creative director for Bang Bang Berlin , a "quarterly fanzine dedicated to the people who make [Berlin] the turbulent affair it is for all residents and guests."
(January 2009)

Effervescent bargains 
New Zealand sparkling wines Cloudy Bay Pelorus and Lindauer were top sellers over the Christmas period in the UK according to the chief executive of Britain's biggest wine warehouse chain Majestic Wine — Steve Lewis. New Zealand wine sales over the ten-week period had risen by 29 per cent, helped by strong demand for sauvignon blanc in the £5 to £7 range. New Zealand Winegrowers chief executive Philip Gregan said New Zealand wines were continuing to trade strongly in Britain despite the recession. "That is part of the market that is very much focused on quality wine and where we can be profitable, given our costs of production and the long distance to the market," Gregan said. 
(9 January 2009)

Phase Five
The Phase Five Program, led by NZ On Air's Mike McClung and Brendan Smyth, is exposing international audiences to up and coming New Zealand bands. The Program pairs a Phase Five NZ Music Sampler with the American CMJ New Music Report four times a year to build exposure for New Zealand artists, and provide insight into the New Zealand music community. The pairing has worked well so far, as four New Zealand bands have showcased two sold out parties at New York's The Delancey Lounge as part of CMJ's Music Marathon, one of the largest annual American music festivals. This year the showcase was hosted by Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby, and featured The Ruby Suns, the Naked and Famous, Bang Bang Eche, and Cut Off Your Hands. Phase Five has seen two Kiwi acts pick up US management as result of their involvement with American College radio, as well as continued acclaim for bands like Liam Finn, The Brunettes, The Mint Chicks, Chris Knox, Coco Solid, Collapsing Cities, Die! Die! Die!, Pitch Black, and Battle Circus. At home on the islands, Smyth, McClung and NZ On Air make sure local bands get their fair share of air time by funding albums by bands with good airplay prospects, funding almost 200 music videos a year, maintaining a new artist discovery program that funds debut radio singles, funding New Zealand music shows for radio, and producing the Kiwi Hit Disc, which samples new New Zealand music to every radio station in the country, every month. All told, the program spends more than $5.5 million a year on promoting New Zealand Music.

(January 2009)

Helli vacation
Jean-Michel Jefferson heads Ahipara Luxury Travel, offering personalized helicopter tours of New Zealand, custom-fitted to a '"clients' interests, tastes, and aspirations." The tours typically start at the Cavalli Island Retreat and Spa, in the Bay of Islands. After a couple days "enjoying treatments in the spa, cruising on the property's 72-foot motor yacht, and playing golf at the nearby Kauri Cliffs resort," the luxury treatment really begins. The operation certainly walks the walk here, arranging private trips on America's Cup Yachts with America's Cup sailors, waka invasions of beaches, Maori spiritual healing sessions, or even mock ambushes by Maori warriors along a deserted bush track. More generic offerings include heli-hiking on the South Island accompanied by personal guide Lydia Bradey (the first women to summit Everest without oxygen), or a tour with Grant Taylor's exclusive new vineyard, courtesy of Grant Taylor, founder of Gibbston Valley Wines outside of Queenstown. Jefferson's tours live up to their $100,000 price tag, with clients walking away all smiles. "We use the beauty in New Zealand to de-stress our clients and most people tell us it was their best trip ever," he says.
(January 2009)

Making space with light 
New Zealand-born architect David Hovey discusses the designs of his 30-year-old Chicago-based business Optima Inc., which he says are influenced by an appreciation of the outdoors. A trace of an accent reveals his roots. "I grew up by the beach and surrounded by lush vegetation," Hovey recalls. It's no accident, he says, that Optima favours sites with views of water or green spaces. His own glass house in Winnetka overlooks Lake Michigan in one direction and a wooded ravine in the other. Optima's current projects are a long way from Hovey's first one, which was a set of six townhouses in Hyde Park. But he hasn't deviated from the clean, contemporary designs he favors. His buildings, he says, tend to include "interiors that are open and luxurious, with as few walls as possible and as many windows as possible." Hovey is a graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He worked for Modernist architects Arthur Takeuchi and Helmut Jahn before founding Optima. In 2005, luxury lifestyle magazine Robb Report named Hovey the world's foremost architect. 
(9 January 2009)

Zoë the turncoat 
Auckland stuntwoman and actress Zoë Bell, 30, stars in American web action series Angel of Death alongside fellow New Zealander, Lucy Lawless. Bell plays a mafia assassin who suffers a catastrophic head wound and subsequently decides to kill the people who once ordered her to kill others. "Besides the elation I feel about having a project I wrote actually being filmed, which is huge for any writer, I'm just as thrilled about having Zoë Bell signed on to star in Angel of Death," said Angel of Death creator/writer Ed Brubaker. Bell began her career leaping from a car in soap Shortland Street before going on to star in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films. She and Monica Staggs (Daryl Hannah's double) won Best Overall Stunt and Best Fight for their fight in Budd's trailer in Kill Bill 2. In 2007 she was cast in the lead role in Tarantino's Death Proof. Angel of Death will premiere in 2009 on www.crackle.com/angelofdeath.
(23 December 2008)

Seven and rising 
Auckland model Zippora Seven, 17, who has been lauded as the fashion industry's new Kate Moss, is the new face of Swedish clothing label H&M's spring/summer 2009 campaign. A topless shoot of the teenager at 16 in Russh Australia caused controversy in May 2008, but the images, considered "beautiful" by Seven, have done nothing to dash her rise to stardom. Just 167.5cm tall — at least five centimetres shorter than the usual minimum for a modelling career — Seven has shoots for French, Italian and Australian Vogue in her portfolio. She finds the comparisons with Kate Moss flattering but hopes to carve out her own identity. "I just try to be me. I don't try to be anybody else," she said. Seven has also worked on Stella McCartney's See By Chloe campaign. She represents 62 Models in New Zealand, Viva in Paris and Priscilla's Model Management in Australia. 
(January 2009)

Bush's Pacific monument 
Large areas in the Pacific near New Zealand territory have been designated as American national monuments by outgoing U.S. President George Bush. The areas include the Mariana Trench and northern Mariana Islands, a chain of remote islands in the Central Pacific and American Samoa's Rose Atoll, near New Zealand's Tokelau Islands. A New York Times editorial explains: "Try this on a globe sometime, or Google Earth: Looking head-on at the planet, spin it until Hawaii is a little north and east of centre. What you'll see — besides the barest fringes of America and Asia up there, New Guinea and New Zealand down there, and lots of island dots — is all blue. This is the vast stage on which President Bush is trying to salvage his environmental legacy ... An environmental trophy was lying on the ground, and Mr Bush, with just days left in his presidency, simply picked it up." "The monuments will prohibit resource destruction or extraction, waste dumping and commercial fishing," Bush said. The White House claims the places are among the last pristine marine areas left on Earth. 
(6 January 2009)

Return of the boy
Singer-songwriter Tim Finn and Melbourne playwright Matt Cameron are collaborating on a play with songs — not a musical — called Poor Boy with Australian actor Guy Pearce in the lead role of Danny. The play premieres on January 28 as the inaugural production at the Melbourne Theatre Company's new complex and is also part of Sydney Theatre Company's program this year. Finn brought to the collaboration old Split Enz favourites reworked, some relatively obscure songs and even one from his new album, 'The Conversation'. It's been more than 25 years since some of the songs in Poor Boy were last performed live, Finn says. "Walking Through the Ruins and Ghost Girl are two Split Enz songs that are not well known but are highly theatrical and it's brought them totally back to life for me." Poor Boy plays Melbourne from January 28 through March 8 and then moves to the Sydney Theatre from July 6 until August 1. 
(5 January 2009)

Southern secrets 
Stewart Island, "a little-known gem", and the "wonderful, windswept" Caitlins Coast are the best of the South Island according to the Belfast Telegraph's Kathy Marks. "Despite a daily diet of jaw-dropping scenery up to this point," Marks writes, "I was instantly besotted with both. The Caitlins feels distinctly off the beaten track. Unsealed roads lead to tall cliffs, deserted beaches and bays frequented by dolphins, sea lions, fur and elephant seals, and endangered yellow-eyed penguins ... Across the Strait on Stewart Island a plaque outside Oban states: 'I must go over to New Zealand someday' — Stewart Islander. After a few days in this extraordinary place, a visitor may well share those same sentiments." 
(2 January 2009)

42 x 42 
Director Niki Caro is one of 42 creatives signing up for the 42Below vodka-instigated ONEDREAMRUSH campaign, which will see each individual create a 42 second film based on a dream they've had. Caro joins David Lynch, Mike Figgis, Sean Lennon, actor James Franco, indie songstress Chan Marshall of Cat Power and comic book author Grant Morrison. If the tripped-out ONEDREAMRUSH home page, trailer and early films are any indication of what's in store from the rest of this collaboration, we're in for a mind-bending 1,764 seconds. Caro is currently completing her latest project, The Vintner's Luck, based on the novel by Wellington author Elizabeth Knox. 
(16 June 2009)

Redhead hopes she has 
New Zealand native Rachel Paget, 37, is competing in the American reality television show She's Got the Look hoping for a win and a photo spread in Self magazine, a contract with Wilhelmina, and $100,000. She's Got the Look is a modelling show for women over the age of 35. In her TV Land profile Paget describes herself as "fun, silly, sometimes moody — and a great dancer." Although she's been told she's beautiful, the profile continues, she never really considered modelling as a career choice until recently, after being prodded by friends. Paget works in film and TV production in Australia.
(28 June 2009)

Moral repatriation 
More than a dozen mummified Maori heads could be returned to New Zealand once a French bill is approved by the Senate in Paris. "The Maori heads that are still dispersed in European and US museums have a history that reminds us of the worst hours of colonialism," read the summary of the draft bill. France's culture ministry blocked the return of a Maori chief's head from a museum in Rouen to Te Papa in 2008 saying the move could mean that France would have to return mummies to Egypt. The culture ministry has said, however, that it favours the current proposal. "During the colonisation of New Zealand, Europeans became interested in these tattooed human heads, a Maori tradition, and private collectors began a real hunt for heads that became the object of a barbaric trade," the bill said. Returning the heads is "an expression of respect that we owe to the beliefs of a population that has been calling for the return of these heads in order to bury them in a dignified way that is respectful of Maori traditions", one senator said.
(28 June 2009)

Two men and a bear 
Teddy, a short film directed by New Zealanders Christopher Banks and produced by Andy Jalfon, screened at the recent San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. The 13 minute film is about the romance and regret of a young man who travels from London to New Zealand to visit his ex-lover and is a refreshing, honestly told story. Banks thinks people can relate to the film's dealing with the emptiness "we can sometimes feel when we are away from home or our loved ones." And people seem to be connecting with the film Jalfon points out, as it just won the Audience Award for Best Short Film at New Zealand's Out Takes Festival. Banks also says that they are working hard at finding US distribution for the film. Teddy was filmed in Helensville and Kaukapakapa, in the Rodney district, over two days in late November 2008. Banks wrote and directed the 2005 digital feature Quiet Night In. 
(23 June 2009)

iDYLLIC
The New Zealand designed iPAD is an eco-friendly prefabricated building and one of "six of the best in the world" according to the Independent on Sunday. After producing the pioneering Bachkit in 2000, the sleek prefab that swept away the hand-me-down look of the traditional New Zealand holiday home, architect André Hodgskin's latest "kitset" house is the smaller but equally smart iPAD. Like the Bachkit, the minimalist iPAD comes with foldaway fittings and single modules can be added together to form L-shaped or linear buildings around enough decking for the largest of barbecues. Already they're venturing from their native shores; one is on its way to a Fijian beach in a 40ft shipping container. As Rod Gibson, the New Zealand-based designer of the Habode, puts it, prefabrication treats housing as motor manufacturing: systematised and broken down into efficient processes. And everything can be delivered to the site in one shipment, minimising the number of journeys made by construction workers. Gibson's Habode can be assembled in three days. "There are many beautiful places that are still uncommercialised," argues Gibson, and the modern, low-impact prefab, which leaves little evidence of its presence and demands little of its surroundings, could be one way to enjoy such natural places. 
(21 June 2009)

Point of pride 
The All Whites have secured their first ever point at a FIFA tournament in the South African Confederations Cup. Though goalless for all three matches played, the New Zealand team — dressed in black for their final game — held on for a 0–0 draw against Iraq. "I think tonight's another milestone for the country," coach Ricki Herbert said. "The team, I thought, were magnificent. We've never come to a tournament and gained a point and we've never come to a tournament and dominated a game." Goalkeeper Glen Moss, who saved one shot with his head late in the match, was also happy with the point. "It's a pretty proud moment, to be honest," Moss said. "We really wanted to play with a bit of pride tonight and show everyone that we can play in this competition and we should be here." New Zealand qualified for the tournament as champions of Oceania, a region it is expected to dominate since the defection of Australia to the Asian confederation. 
(20 June 2009)

Love bites 
"Anna Paquin is about to catapult into a rare form of superstardom, the kind in which a television actress becomes an A-list fixture (á la Sarah Jessica Parker)", writes Cristina Greevan Cuomo for the swanky publication HAMPTONS. Paquin, 26 — who received her acting apprenticeship in The Piano at the age of 10 — is now the star of HBO's True Blood, a "dangerous, sexy, otherworldly…grown-up version of a fairytale" created by Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame. Her role as Sookie Stackhouse earned her a Golden Globe this year and is the perfect qualifier for all of her hard work since The Piano. "The Golden Globe feels pretty damn good because I'm an adult, and it's the first major recognition I've had for my work as a non-child," says Paquin. True Blood has also been good for her personal life; she fell in love with her costar, Stephan Moyer (who plays the vampire Bill) during filming, and the couple now live together. 
(May/June 2009)

Beats the Trail 
"The Queen Charlotte Track is to the Appalachian Trail what the Ritz-Carlton is to a homeless shelter," writes Angus Phillips for The Washington Post. Polar opposites. Phillips and a friend wanted to see the countryside, with its towering ferns and its clear subtropical bays, and, being of a certain age, they wanted to go in style. "Most New Zealand tracks are bridle trails from the days before the 1950s when folks got around mostly on foot or horseback. It's soft ground and mellow walking. Even better, on the QC you don't have to carry a big pack. Our destination lay four hours up the track: the No Road Inn, accessible only by water or foot. Owner Garry Ashton greeted us with ice-cold beers. The rooms were huge. The bathrooms had footed tubs with views of the water, the bedrooms overlooked the bay. Soft terry robes and flat-screen TVs beckoned. Ashton led us out to a steaming hot tub made from an old wine barrel and warned that dinner was in half an hour. The Marlborough Sounds area was mostly sheep stations until 1979, we learned, when Montana produced the first bottles of sauvignon blanc. The wine was superb; the world came running. Thirty years later along we came, walking in the finest way, with full stomachs, no heavy packs on our backs, soft beds and crisp sheets waiting. It sure beats the Appalachian Trail." 
(31 May 2009)

Whiteware deal 
Fisher & Paykel has signed a US$50 million deal with Chinese appliance maker Haier, which will see the Qingdao-based manufacturer take a 20 per cent stake in the New Zealand company. Haier has signed a cooperation agreement covering areas such as sales, manufacturing and joint business development, to transform itself from a producer best known for low prices into a supplier of higher, premium-priced technology. Haier is the world's fourth largest home appliance manufacturer and employs more than 50,000 globally. Fisher & Paykel is based in East Tamaki. Fisher & Paykel Industries Ltd was founded in 1934 by Sir Woolf Fisher and Maurice Paykel. 
(26 May 2009)

Identity theft 
A Fiordland kea made off with a Scottish tourist's passport when the man's tour bus driver opened the luggage compartment of the vehicle. The passport has not been recovered and, given the 4,600 square mile size of Fiordland's alpine national park, it was feared unlikely to be. "Being Scottish, I've got a sense of humour, so I did take it with humour, but obviously there is a side of me that is still raging," he told the Southland Times. "My passport is somewhere out there in Fiordland. The kea is probably using it for fraudulent claims or something." Known as "the clown of the mountains", the native green parrots have an irresistible interest in anything new or shiny. Experiments have shown they are capable of solving logic puzzles, such as pushing objects in a certain order to obtain food, and they work as a team to achieve a common objective. 
(29 May 2009)

Mailbox manoeuvres
Palmerston North City Council has removed the number 13 from its street addresses, jumping from 11 to 15 so triskaidekaphobics, or those who fear the number 13, will still buy homes at that number. The council has now admitted the age-old policy is a little odd and says residents at number 15 can apply to have their numbers adapted if they really want. "But we don't expect great numbers will do that," council policy analyst Todd Taiepa told The Dominion Post.
(26 May 2009)

Cannes call to arms 
From this year's Cannes Film Festival, director Jane Campion urged her female counterparts — which number only 6 per cent — to "put on their coats of armour" and take on the "old boys' network" of the film industry. The 55-year-old, who won the Palme D'Or for The Piano in 1993, was at the festival for the premiere of her new film, Bright Star. "I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world," Campion said. "Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story." Becoming a film-maker means developing a thick skin, she added. "My suspicion is that women aren't used to that. 
(20 May 2009)

Safe haven for seals 
Kaikoura is the first place in New Zealand, and the second in the world, to be Green Globe benchmarked, an international benchmarking and certification program developed for the travel industry in 1992. Kaikoura was eco-conscious before it became fashionable. In 1997, its council was the first in the country to employ an environment officer. In 1998, it became the second Zero Waste district in New Zealand, aiming for zero waste to landfill by 2015. So there's no kerbside rubbish collection in the town but there is a free weekly recycling pick-up, which includes kitchen scraps composted using council-supplied Bokashi buckets and a recycling depot that even processes electrical goods and wood. What set Kaikoura on this eco-path in the first place, however, was its unique location and the town's chief drawcard — its marine life. Not only is it flanked by the rugged Seaward Kaikoura mountain range but there is a deep underwater canyon less than one kilometre offshore, where plankton-rich water attracts marine creatures great and small from tiny krill to blue whales. (23 May 2009)

Eruption earns Bafta 
Visual effects producer Marie Jones, formerly of Invercargill, has won a Bafta for her special effects work on BBC1's sci-fi drama Doctor Who in an episode called Fires of Pompeii, as part of London production company The Mill. She told Invercargill community newspaper The Eye during a visit home in December that The Mill team was "incredibly passionate" about its work for the series. "People care about it because it's Doctor Who. It's this kind of cultural phenomenon." Jones previously worked for Wellington animation company Oktober. 
(21 May 2009)

Not much on television 
Birth rates in New Zealand are the highest since 1991 with the average number per woman at 2.2 births. In the 12 months to March 31 this year, 64,160 babies were born Statistics New Zealand reported. Despite that, it remained about half the peak of 4.3 births per woman reached in 1961. New Zealand women on average now have children about five years later than their counterparts 40 years ago, with the median age of 30, compared with 25 in 1969. Auckland psychologist Sara Chatwin, a mother of four, said the statistics could be referred to as "Baby Boomers Mark II". "A year of lacklustre performances by our national sports teams could have seen people turn to child-rearing to focus on something positive", she added. 
(19 May 2009)

I heart NZ 
Three senior writers from The New Yorker have been posting rave reviews about New Zealand in blogs on the magazine's website. Chief political commentator Hendrik Hertzberg, along with colleagues Judith Thurman, Rhonda Sherman, and James Surowiecki, were in the country for the recent Auckland Writers and Readers Festival and found themselves "in a Hobbity paradise". "I did see the first of the three Peter Jackson movies and although my attention wandered during the interminable battle scenes, I was transfixed by the landscape," wrote Hertzberg. He goes on to say that our snow-covered Southern peaks "look as if Zeus, or more likely some Celtic god, would be tempted to reach down with a giant spoon and have a taste". The New Yorker business writer James Surowiecki blogged about the comparative health of our banking system compared with the United States, "it feels like what New Zealand is going through is something closer to a traditional recession ... one that doesn't have the added dimension of a banking system in crisis". Hertzberg concludes his blog from Queenstown with, "In short, [Middle-earth is] the sort of place, tame, but with a touch of unthreatening wildness, that any Baggins would be reluctant to leave. "I certainly will be." 
(23 May 2009)

No bones about it 
Wellington-born actor Karl Urban, 36, is Dr Leonard "Bones" McCoy in director J.J Abrams' Star Trek and for Urban, "the elephant in the room was to embody DeForest Kelley's character without falling victim to mere impression," writes the San Francisco Examiner's Rich Bunnell. "The challenge for me was to really identify the spirit and essence of what Kelley's McCoy was," Urban says. "He had the most appalling bedside manner, but to me he had a heart of gold — he was never afraid to speak his mind, no matter the consequences." Luckily for Urban — previously worshiped by an entirely different cult for his role as Eomer in the Lord of the Rings films — Abrams also perpetuated an environment on the set in which the cast and crew didn't feel burdened with the need to live up to four decades of Star Trek history. "Often the challenge was to stop laughing before the cameras started rolling." 
(2 May 2009)

Weekend reflections 
Grace Cleave, the protagonist of Janet Frame's 1963 novel Towards Another Summer, is critiqued by columnist and author David Gates in The New York Times' Sunday Book Review. "Except for David Copperfield, few novels have endured a child's viewpoint more convincingly and affectionately," writes Gates. "Towards Another Summer looks back to Virginia Woolf in its focus on the tortuous internal positionings beneath the surface of apparently casual conversation… And it looks ahead to Mary Gaitskill's sense of a vivid inner ferocity." Towards Another Summer reflects an actual weekend Frame endured in the north of England with Guardian journalist Geoffrey Morrhouse, his wife and their two children. "Like every writer worth remembering, Frame exploits — or creates on the page, to be absolutely puristic about it — her peculiar sensibility, her private window into the universal." Although written in 1963, Towards Another Summer was not released until 2007, three years after Frame's death. 
(17 May 2009)

Rotten rants on butter 
Former Sex Pistol John Lydon is reminding British dairy consumers that "Anchor's From New Zealand!" preferring UK-produced Country Life butter. Lydon is stirring up trouble with his straplines in an advertisement that attacks the rival butter brand Anchor for being foreign. Country Life's parent company, Dairy Crest, said that it was launching the new campaign after conducting research that showed that 39 per cent of Anchor butter consumers "mistakenly believe" that it is British, rather than from New Zealand. 
(14 May 2009)

Dunedin's sound 
"There's something about the antipodes that irritates Britain," reckons Chills' frontman Martin Phillipps, on the phone from Dunedin to the Guardian's Martin Aston. Phillipps tries to explain why New Zealand's 1980s music scene, one of the most fertile and imaginative in the world, was all but ignored in Britain. This week's London shows by NZ folk-pop institution the Bats — their first UK trip in 15 years — wasn't heralded by a single press notice, let alone a fanfare. Yet it's a different story in the US. American alt.rock website Pitchfork is awash with references to New Zealand's vintage exponents of tenacious, yearning, lo-fi-fuzzy guitar-pop, and the debt owed to them by US musicians. When anyone writes about New Zealand music, they mean Flying Nun records. In its prime, Flying Nun's embrace of all post-punk's manifestations — exquisite psych-pop, cantankerous quasi-goth, warped folk, experimental synth warfare — meant it was New Zealand's Rough Trade, Factory, Postcard and Mute rolled into one. If geographical isolation was the salvation of New Zealand music, it also limited the bands' opportunities. "Flying Nun was the sound of people not being careful, because it really didn't matter," says Bored Games and Straitjacket Fits frontman Shayne Carter. But there are signs of a resurgence. The Bats reformed in 2004, and their new album, The Guilty Office, is about to be released in the UK. The Clean's new record, Mr Pop, arrives this summer. As for the Chills, they still exist and are recording their first new album in 13 years back in Dunedin.
 (15 May 2009)

Adieu to a comedienne 
Opera singer Heather Begg, a mezzo-soprano who last month was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, has died in New South Wales, aged 76. Begg was the first person to have her honour redesignated by the Queen of England since New Zealand moved this year to reinstate knighthoods and damehoods. Born in Nelson in 1932, Begg won the 1955 Sydney Sun Aria contest before moving to London to study at the National School of Opera. British critic Hugh Canning called her the "mistress of comedy" for her roles in operas such as La Fille du Regiment, Patience, Fra Diavolo and Le Nozze di Figaro. She also shone in passionate dramatic roles such as Carmen and Princess Marina Mnishek in Boris Godunov. For a decade Begg was the principal resident mezzo-soprano at Covent Garden. She made a final cameo appearance on the stage in 2006, playing the part of the Grandmother in Janacek's Jenufa. Former singer and chorusmaster, James Christiansen, whose wife, the soprano Marilyn Richardson sang with Begg in the 1986 production of the opera Voss, says Begg was a "wonderfully funny woman with a creamy rich voice". 
(15 May 2009)

Bloody snappy shades 
In Karen Walker's 2009 eyewear range lookbook "celebrate the sun", models bare vampire-fangs and pose with sunglasses named "Helter Skelter," "Voodoo" and "Jonestown". Shot by American photographer Derek Kettela, known for his clean and elegant style of photography, the images of the fang-filled figures mirrored by the exposed image's matching negative make for a keepsake-worthy publication. The eyewear itself is anything but eerie; with innovative nods to the past the feeling is fresh and lively, if not even a bit silly — perfect for summertime fun. Walker lives in New Zealand with her husband Mikhail, her daughter Valentina and their dog and two cats. There are three Karen Walker flagship stores in New Zealand and one flagship store in Taipei. 
(11 May 2009)

Illuminating the Canal 
Artists Francis Upritchard and Judy Millar's installation spaces at this year's La Biennale di Venezia "reflect Birnbaum's theme of Making Worlds with intense microcosms, one in an intimate former residence, the other in a place of worship," describes art site e-flux. "Upritchard installs a series of tableaux in three second floor rooms that look out over the Grand Canal of an exquisite Venetian palazzo. She uses the palazzo's ornate mirrors to backlight and reflect table-height scenes of figures, illuminated by her hand-made lamps. While Millar creates a site specific installation for Venice's only circular church, La Maddalena that pushes viewers up close to her visceral, gestural canvases; it's an immersive experience. The exhibitions will be launched on June 3 starting with an early morning procession through the streets of Venice to both venues led by a Maori kaumatua who will give the traditional New Zealand blessing of inauguration to the exhibitions." The Biennale runs through November 22.

Top: 'Richard', 2008, Modelling material, paint — Francis Upritchard. Above: 'Untitled', 2009, Acrylic and oil on canvas 160x108cm — Judy Millar.
(6 May 2009)

Gold 'neath the Swingbridge 
The Buller River, New Zealand's longest river at 170km, is proving popular with gold panners from around the globe. "Before you get to the area where gold flakes are found you have to cross the swingbridge across the deep chasm — the longest in New Zealand at 110m long and 17m high," explains Geena Paul for Commodity Online. "The land on the other side of the bridge is like an open-air museum of gold prospecting in New Zealand … With a lot of stories flooding the internet on gold digging in Buller River, more and more people are now rushing to this spot in search of the yellow metal." Payable gold was first found in the Buller River in 1859. The Buller Gorge Swingbridge offers activities including goldpanning, Cometline ride, guided walks and jetboat rides.
(4 May 2009)

Urban trampers 
Kate Sylvester's great-outdoors inspired Take a Hike collection took to the runway at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week with models parading shorts, gaiters and anorak-style dresses. Sylvester told Grazia about the inspiration behind the collection: "Take a Hike is inspired by the glamorous, intrepid female explorers who refuse to believe that a love of nature needs to compromise one's love of fashion by exploring Africa dressed in couture and the landscape sculpture of Christo." Models wore nylon backpacks and spray-painted Doc Martens with spats as they tramped down the runway to Evan Dando's 'I'm Not The Outdoors Type'. The stand out look of Sylvester's show was the flirty ecru tutu with legwarmers worn by Czech model Janka Zachnikova. The Australian called the collection "bright and breezy." 
(29 April 2009)

An amazing bike ride
Christchurch-born adventure TV host and producer Phil Keoghan has just completed another 'Amazing Race', this time a 3,500 mile coast-to-coast bike ride across the United States to raise funds for Multiple Sclerosis research. He managed to raise over US$400,000 in his "Ride Across America" which kicked off March 28 in Los Angeles and finished in New York on May 8, taking him through 39 cities over those 45 days. The trip also marked the official launch into the US of Keoghan's co-branded meal replacement bar, produced in partnership with Christchurch company Cookie Time. Keoghan promoted the NOW (his No Opportunity Wasted brand) One Square Meal bar throughout his bike trip, which also served to publicise the next season of the hugely popular TV show Amazing Race. Keoghan says the trip tested him in ways he didn't imagine. "It was the toughest physical and mental challenge of my life, no doubt about it," Keoghan said. "It was everything I thought it would be and so much more." 
(8 May 2009)

Transformed in Sydney
Auckland-based artist Lisa Reihana will consider "what it means to transform the self into another persona", at an upcoming exhibition entitled Double Take on at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from May 7 through July 19. Reihana's digital photographs present friends and family posing as ancestral Maori spirit figures. Since 2006, Reihana has had major solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Italy and been included in numerous international group exhibitions. 'Digital marae 2007', is conceived as a both a double and a transformation of the ancestral meeting house. Her life-size digital prints depict friends and family dressed as contemporary male deities (atua) that appear in Maori creation stories. "The new photographs in the latest incarnation [of 'Digital Marae'] bring atua, male, and takatapui or cross-gendered figures to the installation, whereas the previous images were all of female forms," Reihana says. Reihana was a 2008 Walter's Prize finalist. She studied film and video at Elam School of Fine Art. 
(26 April 2009)

To Henley Royal 
New Zealand Rowing has confirmed that after the Munich World Cup in June, the entire team will move to England to train at Dorney Lake for Britain's summer Henley Royal Regatta. The trip, between the second and third World Cup regattas, is part of a plan to boost success at the London Olympics in 2012. New Zealand rivals Britain as one of the highest-performing nations in rowing, and similarly aims to do especially well in the post-Olympic regattas, having won four straight world titles at the 2005 championships. New Zealand's star, Mahé Drysdale, won the Diamond single skulls in 2006, but was then beaten in a tight race by British rival Alan Campbell in 2007, and wants revenge. "The idea is familiarity," said the team's press officer Richard Gee. "When they rock up to the Olympics, we will know the course as well as anyone." Drysdale is a three-time World Champion single skuller. He won the 2006 supreme Halberg award and a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 
(22 April 2009)

Height of fashion 
Kate Sylvester is approaching this year's Australian Fashion Week with bold and colourful designs based on the lives of adventures called, Take a Hike. Last year's collection Royally Screwed caused a stir angering ANZACS with military style sashes in a way that is supposed to be reserved for war heroes. "It was a completely unexpected response but I think that when the dust settled people realised that actually it was a beautiful show. The great thing about fashion though is it's always on to the new and so I'm just really looking forward to being on the runway again," Sylvester says. Proving that talent will always outlast controversy, Sylvester came back with Winter '09's Black Swans that is graceful, understated and wry in all the ways we've come to expect from her. "Black Swan is dark, beautiful and quite romantic. Inspired by black swans and black roses, it also has a very strong ballet theme. I'm a sucker for a tutu," she says.
(April/May 2009)

Eskimo furore 
The humble Eskimo lolly will remain on New Zealand shelves though lambasted by a Canadian visitor who claimed the confectionary's shape and name was a racist slur against the Inuit. Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons, 21, an Inuit from Canada's Nunavut Territory, told the Taranaki Daily News the word Eskimo, used by confectionery manufacturer Cadbury/Pascall was unacceptable because it had negative racial connotations. In a statement Pascall/Cadbury said Eskimos were "an iconic New Zealand lolly". The company produced almost 19 million individual Eskimos last year, which made it "one of our most sought after". Canterbury University's Dr Nicole Gombay, who studies Inuit politics and culture, says she was shocked to see the Cadbury/Pascall lolly for sale when she arrived in New Zealand three years ago. Dr Gombay said while the sweet's image — a small snowsuited figure — was "a normal representation" of Inuit culture, it was no longer relevant. "It would be like putting an African in mud hut with a grass skirt and a bone in his head." 
(21 April 2009)

Up in the trees 
New Zealand directory company Yellow has built a Tree House Restaurant using only resources listed in its books. The restaurant, described by Lucy Gauntlett of the Los Angeles Times as "a graceful pod that glows about 30 feet above the ground," was built by Tracey Collins of Auckland, who blogged about the experience at www.yellowtreehouse.co.nz. Designer Peter Eising used two dead redwood trees found in the surrounding forest to build the restaurant, complimenting them with sustainably grown pine and poplar. Eising said he was inspired by forms found in nature, and designed the restaurant to resemble a chrysalis, holding an emerging butterfly. The restaurant served 2,000 people before closing in February. Owners of the land that hosts the restaurant are considering opening the tree house to the public for ceremonial use.
(20 April 2009)

Hokitika's wild side 
The population quadrupled this autumn in Hokitika, as food enthusiasts from around the world flocked to get a taste of the 20th Wildfoods Festival, serving up a host of obscure, adventurous, and downright daring culinary experiments. "Some of this exotic fare included whole species I had never imagined could be edible, much less considered gourmet," writes Meg Adams. "Booths advertised ostrich pies and sandwiches, snails, and even worm sushi. Among the most daring purchases were huhu grubs: barbecued, marinated, pickled, or even raw. One huhu grub booth had a large stack of deadwood outside of its stall. To the delight — and disgust — of onlookers, two men took hatchets to the rotting tree trunks and harvested huhu grubs right then and there." Other highlights included ice cream draped in freshly sliced honeycomb, coffee liqueur made with unpasteurised cows milk, venison kebabs, barbecued cow's udder, and even deep-fried sheep gonads. "For a country where the most adventurous local food used to be the ever-present spread Marmite ... New Zealand is certainly producing some interesting food these days." 
(9 April 2009)

Professionally talking 
The Flight of the Conchords are touring the United States donning "unwieldy" robot costumes and "playfully insulting" their enthusiastic heckling audiences. At New York City's Radio City Music Hall by the end of Too Many D---s on the Dance Floor, Bret McKenzie had managed to knock over and destroy a toy piano. Looking fairly embarrassed, he and Jemaine Clement climbed out of their robot suits while a roadie brought out a replacement. "We spared no expense on tiny pianos," Clement explained. The comics spent the rest of the night cracking jokes about McKenzie's mishap, intermittently tossing detached keys from the broken instrument into the crowd. And after a performance at Boston's Agganis Arena, reviewer Jed Gottlieb wrote: "It's because their songs — and their quirky, genuine delivery — [that Flight of the Conchords] are so much funnier than other music comedians." 
(16 April 2009)

Truly popular 
Creator of the 1999 New Zealand reality show Popstars Jonathan Dowling, 46, has changed the face of television sparking spinoff TV formats, such as The X Factor, American Idol and Britain's Got Talent. Though it had echoes of vintage talent shows such as Opportunity Knocks, that original nine-week run of Popstars in New Zealand did something truly new: a two-man panel whittled down 500 contestants to just five. In the process, the creation of a new pop sensation — an all-girl band called TrueBliss — was caught on camera. "The series was a wild ride, but we always had the feeling that it was a TV first," says Dowling. "Something new — and something big." Nowadays Dowling says wryly: "I am at the end of quite a long food chain, but there's been some food." His time is now spent trying to think of another idea that could have the impact in the second decade of the century that Popstars had in the Noughties. He mentions an idea that he is actively discussing with networks in New Zealand. This time around, Dowling says he intends to talk directly to the major broadcasters around the world. If lightning does strike a second time, then he plans to be in the driving seat. 
(16 April 2009)

On Slick for a first 
Teenage jockey Samantha Collett — who in only three years has won more than 100 races — rode Sir Slick in the $AU2 million Emirates Doncaster Mile at Royal Randwick, the "biggest race" she's ever ridden in and the first time three women jockeys have contested an Australian Group One race, including another New Zealander, Samantha Spratt, 21. Collett, 19, doesn't complete her apprenticeship, with leading trainer Mark Walker, until May 2010, but has established herself as one of New Zealand's most outstanding jockeys. Sir Slick, trained by Graham Nicholson, is New Zealand racing's warhorse. The six-time Group One winner has been in full training since August, competing in 17 races during this period. Collett is the daughter of top riders Jim Collett and Trudy Thornton. 
(15 April 2009)

Morrison's future roles 
The best example and a "notable exception" of a "Native … living in the future quite comfortably, particularly in sci-fi movies" would be Temuera Morrison, writes Peterborough Examiner columnist and award-winning Ojibwa author Drew Hayden Taylor, this in a modern world where only a "few aboriginal footprints wandering across the lunar landscape are, for the most part, moccasins worn by white astronauts." Rotorua-born Morrison, 48, made his sci-fi debut in the Pamela Anderson Lee film Barb Wire, as her ex-husband, but is perhaps best known for his role as Jango Fett in the second instalment of the Star Wars trilogy. "I first became aware of [Maori cast in futuristic films] when I saw Pete Smith played the last living Maori (with two or three white people) in the cult film The Quiet Earth back in 1985. Then there was Cliff Curtis fighting an extra-terrestrial machine thing with just a Maori club (and a few guns) in the Jamie Lee Curtis movie Virus. He also made an appearance in a cool horror film called Deep Rising, where he fought a sea monster alongside Cherokee actor Wes Studi." Morrison recently starred in the made for television film, The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake as Don Sandovate. 
(7 April 2009)

Educating through dance 
Atamira Dance Collective's production 'Ngai Tahu 32' has made its Australian debut, performing in Tasmania's premier arts festival — Ten Days on the Island 2009 — and is reviewed by Kylie Eastley, writing for Australian Stage Online: "This work engages the imagination and our own personal reflections of culture and history. Undulating between trauma and bliss, it effectively includes all elements of stage design and a collection of dance genres from ballroom to the Maori haka." 'Ngai Tahu 32' is choreographed by Maori artist Louise Potiki Bryant, who performs along with a cast of eight dancers. Established in 2000, Atamira Dance Collective has a strong focus on exploring and retelling traditional New Zealand stories and legends. 
(4 April 2009)

With glass and steel 
David Hovey, the New Zealand-born, award-winning architect who owns Optima Inc. in Arizona says his dream home would be a contemporary home built of steel and glass built near the ocean in New Zealand where he could enjoy the crashing of the waves and lots of trees. Currently building two condominiums in the Chicago area, Hovey, 64, is also doing the design work on a 55-story condominium building he is planning for the city, one block east of Michigan Avenue near the Tribune Tower. "We have a niche in the Chicago market," Hovey said. "We provide high-quality multifamily units with outstanding amenities. We try to give our buyer's a sense of place. We want them to buy into a whole community so we offer fitness centers, indoor pools, huge party rooms, small grocery stores and even dry cleaners." Hovey has won awards for his ability to integrate a building's design with its environment and was even the keynote speaker for an event at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West facility in Arizona. He formed Optima in the Chicago area in 1977 and expanded to Arizona in 2000.
(21 March 2009)

Painting Piha 
Tauranga-raised Lancôme artistic director Aaron De Mey, who featured in the October edition of Mindfood magazine and whose past clients include Winona Ryder, Keira Knightly and Kate Moss, has released his debut colour collection based on the iron sand beaches of Piha. The collection includes a limited-edition sparkling dark lip gloss and nail lacquer. De Mey credits the diversity of the fledgling local industry as an ideal foundation for the years he spent overseas: "Working on music videos, editorial shoots with people such as former Prime Minister Helen Clark for the cover of NZ Style, and fashion editorials for magazines such as Pavement was invaluable. Those diverse experiences in make-up prepared me for the competitive fashion industries in New York and Paris." De Mey sees his new role at Lancôme as building upon the existing class and strength of the already formidable brand. "I want to push the teams [and] implement new techniques and ways to apply make-up," he says. "I hope to excite everybody at Lancôme and everybody who loves the brand." De Mey moved to New York in 1997, where he first worked on renowned makeup artist François Nars' make-up team for the New York Fashion Week shows. 
(April 2009)

High time for cricket 
Two teams consisting of 30 New Zealanders, Australians and Britons will play a Twenty20 cricket match at the foot of Mount Everest in Gorak Shep, which is at an altitude of 5165 metres on April 21 — the highest altitude the game has ever been played. Players and the 20 support staff will trek to the Everest region for nine days and spend a day acclimatising in Gorak Shep before the match. "We have been training hard to be physically hard to play at the altitude," said the New Zealand captain of Team Hillary Glen Lowis. The proceeds will go to The Himalayan Trust UK, which is involved in running schools and hospitals in the Everest region in Nepal and The Lord's Taverners which helps young people, particularly those with disabilities enjoy sports in England. 
(11 April 2009)

Flattery gets you places
"Undoubtedly when God created the world He made two Edens. New Zealand is the second one," writes Betty McCoy for Alabama newspaper The Gadsden Times, describing the country as "a pristine landscape drenched in indescribable beauty." McCoy discovers the haka and explores the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch, "the closest thing to visiting" the continent. "Time marched on and it became time to fly to Aucklund [sic] … One hundred beautiful beaches are within one hour's drive and more than 70,000 boats are owned by residents. Aah, what a way to live!"
(5 April 2009)

Potential pro 
Christchurch student James Meredith, 19, is a freshman at Boise State University and since joining the university's tennis team in January, Meredith has been called "unbelievable" and "one of the best talents" the squad has had. Coach Greg Patton called Meredith's future "blazing" and said a professional coach watched Meredith hit and compared him to pro Andy Murray. Meredith, who plays No. 3 singles behind seniors Clancy Shields and Kean Feeder and No. 1 doubles with Feeder, is 14-5 in singles and 13-7 in doubles. Meredith is ranked 71st nationally in singles and 50th with Feeder in doubles. "I drive him crazy and he drives me crazy," Patton said. "It's a match made in heaven. James just has this flow about him — there is no turbulence on his flight." Meredith was Canterbury's 2008 Player of the Year. 
(4 April 2009)

Fish over sea 
Eighty-four goldfish flew over the Tasman Sea on March 21 as part of the New Zealand-wide One Day Sculpture series of temporary public art works, this conceived by Italian artist Paola Pivi entitled 'I Wish I Am Fish', which was commissioned by Auckland Art Gallery curator Natasha Conland. Conland says: "There is an imaginative generosity to the work which belies the extravagance of the gesture. It was an eerily liberating project and perhaps one befitting its location staged on an island nation." New Zealand's first nationwide series of temporary public artworks, One Day Sculpture involves New Zealand and international artists in producing a work to occur during a 24-hour period. 
(4 April 2009)

Vying for the ultimate 
Radio host and television personality Clarke Gayford is one of 16 finalists for the 'Best Job in the World' organised by Tourism Queensland. Queensland Tourism Minister Peter Lawlor on Friday telephoned 15 finalists across the globe to tell them to start packing for their journey to Hamilton Island in May for the final selection. In his video entry, Gisborne-born Gayford said his media experience was an advantage, and promoted himself on environment issues. He said the Great Barrier Reef was subject to a multitude of environmental threats, including tourists in dodgy swimwear. The campaign offers a unique island caretaker role on a $A150, 000 contract for six months beginning on July 1. The successful candidate will be based on Hamilton Island and will spend their time exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef and reporting back on their experiences. 
(3 April 2009)

Musiq makers win 
R&B group Nesian Mystik have won the "Best Kiwi" category at the Australian MTV Awards on March 27. The four other New Zealand acts nominated were: Ladyhawke, Cut Off Your Hands, P-Money and Goodnight Nurse. Comic Rhys Darby was a presenter at the ceremony. Nesian Mystik formed in 1999 in the music room of Auckland's Western Springs College. The group released their third album in 2008, entitled Elevator Musiq. 
(29 March 2009)

Wine's a winner
Marlborough, on New Zealand's South Island, "doesn't offer much to the nine or ten people on the planet who still smoke, but for cognoscenti of quality sauvignon blanc, it may well outrank King Bordeaux and Queen Loire." Over the past thirty years Marlborough has turned itself into one of the premier wine regions in the world, its charge led by Sauvignon Blancs. Sauvignon Blanc "loves sun but not much heat, and requires a long growing season with cool nights to sprout its astral un-kiwi-like wings; cool nights are key to preserving malic acid, which adds counterpoint and complexity to fruit sugars. Herbaceous notes, which may remain masked when the grape is grown in depleted vineyards, bubble to surface in young, nitrogen-rich soils." Marlborough has all of the above, and its Sauvignon Blancs have become "nearly always identifiable in blind tastings - it's a combination of electrifying citrus (inevitably grapefruit and often nectarine), and a subtle but unmistakable flintiness." In Marlborough's new life as a wine paradise, "household names, wineries like Hunters Wines, Cloudy Bay Vineyards, Saint Clair Estate Winery and Grove Mill have come of age cutting edges, not corners… taking the yawn out of sauvignon." 
(5 April 2009)

Advocating radical change 
A "ground-breaking" report has been developed by the United Kingdom's Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), an expert watchdog group chaired by Jonathan Porritt, the son of New Zealand Olympian and 11th Governor General Arthur Porritt. Entitled 'Prosperity without Growth?', the report strongly critiques the relentless pursuit of economic growth and demands "a radical shift to a fairer, more sustainable society", offering a 12 step plan to make this transition. The SDC is the leading advisory group on sustainable development to the Westminster and Holyrood governments, providing counsel to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. Porritt has chaired this group since July 2000 and is a renowned writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development issues. 
(29 March 2009)

Cold comparisons 
Ladyhawke, who this month made her New York debut at the Bowery Ballroom and Studio B, said in an interview with The Village Voice, that New Zealand "is like being in Iceland, or something. [It's] basically at the bottom of the world, right next to Antarctica." "We were basically exposed to our own music scene, which has always been really amazing. I think that's why we tend to describe ourselves as isolated. It's a bit of a culture shock when we leave New Zealand for the first time." Ladyhawke, aka Pip Brown, has most recently been getting attention for the club banger Paris is Burning and it's even rumoured that Christina Aguilera is currently reworking her infectious single My Delirium. In February this year she toured with British group the Ting Tings. Ladyhawke has also announced a UK headlining tour in May 2009. 
(24 March 2009)

Rugby's return 
Rugby Sevens might be only seven years off when it comes to the Olympics, thanks to an effort to reinstate the sport spearheaded by the Oceania National Olympic Committee. During a recent committee meeting in Queenstown, Ex-Fiji Captain Waisale Serevie told members at the ONOC general assembly that the inclusion of Rugby Sevens in the 2016 Olympics would increase the chances for small countries to win medals. "Small nations such as Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Kenya, Argentina and New Zealand would be in with a chance," he said, earning nods and smiles of approval from the members of the Pacific island nations. Rugby was last played in the Olympics in 1924 in Paris, and is one of seven sports looking to join the program in 2016. (31 March 2009)

Dark past revisited 
New Zealand-born Zak Feaunati, a former Samoan international rugby player, has been selected to play All Black legend Jonah Lomu in the upcoming film The Human Factor. The film includes the Springboks' victory over the All Blacks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup in its retelling of "how Nelson Mandela used rugby to unite South Africa". Directed by Hollywood luminary Clint Eastwood, the movie also stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Feaunati, now a teacher in England, told the BBC of his casting in London: "I had to talk about myself for the casting director, and then she asked me to do the haka. I might have scared one or two of the ladies, but I guess it did the trick." 

(30 March 2009)

Ladyhawke's in Vogue 
Pip Brown aka Ladyhawke, the former-Wellingtonian and undisputed queen of the synthpop revival, is profiled in the April issue of Teen Vogue, as one of "five musical acts who will be in heavy rotate this spring". "Although Ladyhawke's self-titled album adds a dose of originality to the electro-pop scene, the New Zealand native claims that nostalgia — particularly the grunge era — is her secret ingredient." Pip says that big influences on her songwriting are nineties bands like Nirvana and movies which when not on the road she watches five a week, "then injects the emotion she draws from the content back into her tunes." 
(April 2009)

In praise of the league 
New Zealand Warriors former coach Graeme Lowe says that he has never seen "rugby league healthier or as many people captivated by it, and he is warning rugby union officials to get their heads out of the sand. "The [league] World Cup win was a great result for the game here, especially considering the high expectations on the All Blacks in the past few rugby World Cups, which haven't been met. Even the most ardent rugby union supporter would find it hard to argue, as a spectacle, rugby hasn't offered up much in the Super 14 this year," Lowe says. "The real groundswell here is not necessarily coming from league people, it's coming from the rugby union public who are asking why their game can't be the exciting, unpredictable spectacle they're seeing in the NRL every week." 
(29 March 2009)

Switched off for change 
New Zealand was one of the first countries to switch of its power for this year's Earth Hour event aimed at highlighting environmental problems caused by excessive use of energy. Forty-four New Zealand cities, towns and districts took part in the event, when people were encouraged to power down from 8:30 at night to show support for action on climate change. Power consumption in New Zealand dropped 3.5 per cent during Earth Hour, national grid operator TransPower said. The 600 residents on the remote Chatham Islands, 800 kilometres east of the mainland, kicked off the event by switching off their diesel generators. In Antarctica, New Zealand's 26-member winter team at Scott Base, where temperatures are close to -30 degrees Celsius, shut down to minimum safety lighting and switching off all unnecessary appliances and computers. Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) chief executive Mike Underhill said that by plunging cities and towns into darkness, Earth Hour illustrated the power of collective action to reduce energy use and carbon emissions. 
(28 March 2009)

Hot competition 
Blenheim-based company Carbonscape — one of only five companies to make the shortlist in the Financial Times global Climate Change Challenge — makes charcoal from biomass for the sequestration of carbon using industrial microwaves. According to Carbonscape's webpage "Each industrial-scale unit converts 40–50 per cent of wood debris into charcoal; one tonne of carbon dioxide can be fixed as charcoal per day. By converting carbon in organic material to charcoal, it can be then put into the ground where it does the most good." The New Republic writes, that "it's possible to create charcoal by heating the biomass in conventional ovens, but using microwaves improves the efficiency of the process, allowing up to 50 percent of the starting biomass to be converted to charcoal." Carbsonscape director Vicki Buck says all of New Zealand needs to get behind the company with their votes to be in with a chance of winning. "If we manage to bring home the prize for New Zealand it will cap off a fast-paced year for Carbonscape," Buck says. Climate Change Challenge winner will be announced in April. 
(26 March 2009)

Sirens call from Russell 
Luxury 70-acre retreat Eagles Nest, located on the Tapeka tip of the Russell peninsula, is one of Paradizo's "emerging hotspots", which writes that "the team behind Eagles Nest works around the clock making sure that every detail — every meal, every wine, every yacht, every massage — of every day is exactly as you want it." "Stay in one of six extravagant private villas abundant with modern amenities and comforts that flood with sunshine splashing through expansive windows and glass walls. And the view, what a view. Each private villa has incredible views of New Zealand's Bay of Islands: secluded beaches, white sailboats cruising in the gentle breeze, dolphins dancing over the surf and a crisp horizon of baby blue." Tatler includes Eagles Nest as one of its 101 Best Hotels and writes of the award-winning resort: "When the Royal Shakespeare Company stayed here, they spontaneously broke into song; a celebrated architect cried; a travel agent from Dubai was worried that some of his clients might never leave. This is back-to-nature fantasy with rock 'n' roll on its mind." 
(25 March 2009)

Copywronged righted 
New Zealand's Creative Freedom Foundation, opponents of an amendment to the country's copyright law, Section 92a, have secured victory with the scrapping of the plan which would have required Internet service providers to implement a system for shutting off the connections of repeat copyright infringers. Online rights advocates CFF had seized on a few rather glaring omissions in the measure: There was no explicit definition of "infringer," nor was there a requirement that infringement be legally proved. To freedom fighters, this meant that even an accusation of infringement could count as a strike against someone, and that because ISPs are not in the business of investigating the merits of alleged violations, it would be easier for them to yank connections than to adjudicate every complaint. Loud protests of this "guilt by accusation" law echoed around the Web in February, spawning Facebook groups, a "blackout" protest and even a pretty good "copywrong" song. But now the demonstrators have what they wanted. 
(23 March 2009)

The racing reverend rests
Legendary racing announcer Darren Tyquin died in a car crash in Christchurch recently, at 41. Tyquin had been calling races since he was fifteen, when he began covering greyhound and harness meetings for a local Victorian radio station. A devout Christian minister, he quickly attained an on-air identity, winning the Pater Award for best new talent in 1983, and eventually gaining notoriety as the "racing reverend." Mr. Tyquin had been living in New Zealand since 1999. 
(19 March 2009)

Gimblett at the Guggenheim 
New York/Auckland artist Max Gimblett features in the latest issue of Art World, in an article by collaborator John Yau about the influence of Asia on the artist's work. Gimblett, who has long had a preoccupation with Asian art and thinking, is part of a "groundbreaking exhibition" at New York's Guggenheim Museum, in a show entitled, 'The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989'. The exhibition is curated by Alexandra Munroe, Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim. 'The Third Mind' traces how the material culture, artistic legacies, and philosophical systems of Asia — collectively admired as 'the East' — were known reconstructed, and transformed by American art and cultural forces. Gimblett's painting 'Lion' 1985 / 90" — quatrefoil / metallic pigments and acrylic polymer on canvas — features in the exhibition. Four limited edition prints by Gimblett; 'Bushido', 'Guggenheim Enso', 'One Stroke Bone' and 'Water is Never Clumsy' are available for purchase from the Guggenheim store. The exhibition runs until April 19. Photograph of Max Gimblett by Marty Cooper, 2008, featuring 'Scallop Shell Skull' from the Gimblett series 'Spirit Box' (1986-2009).  
(February / March 2009)

Clark first choice for UN role
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has been tipped to head the United Nations Development Programme, according to an unnamed UN official. If confirmed in this posting, Clark will be responsible for the administration of projects in 166 countries and become the third most powerful official in the UN’s hierarchy. With an annual budget of US$5 billion, the Programme’s activities are targeted to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which address such global issues as poverty, education, health and environmental sustainability. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who reportedly nominated Clark for the post, is expected to officially announce her appointment today.
(25 March 2009)

Prophetic words 
Thirty years ago, founder of Montana wines Frank Yukich planted the first commercial vineyard of the modern era in Marlborough introducing the world to the delights of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. A commemorative sculpture has now been unveiled in Blenheim at the iconic Brancott Estate Vineyard celebrate 30 vintages, on it written the words: "Wines from here will become world famous." Within ten years of its first vintage, Brancott Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc won the prestigious 'Marquis de Goulaine trophy for Best Sauvignon Blanc' at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London. Additional prestigious accolades followed, including an 'Intervin International Award for Wine Achievement' in 1991 and the 'White Winemaker of the Year Award' at the London International Wine Competition, earned by chief winemaker Jeff Clarke in 1999. Montana is now part of the multinational corporation Pernod Ricard. 
(18 March 2009)

Long distance teamwork 
Tintin collaborators Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are in touch across the world via a video-conferencing setup for the first installment of the film, using a custom-made iChat-type system by which Jackson can see everything on the set in real time and simultaneously talk with Spielberg. Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is scheduled to hit theaters in 2011. The plan is for Jackson to take on the directorial reins for the next film. Effects house WETA will re-create much of the look of Hergé’s original graphic novels. Of course, both are still multitasking away. Jackson is finishing the Christmas 2009 film The Lovely Bones, which he adapted from the novel, directed and produced for Spielberg's DreamWorks. He's also writing and executive producing the new Hobbit films to be directed by Guillermo del Toro. 
(22 March 2009)

Where there is snow 
Mt Hutt has acquired three state-of-the-art snow-making snow groomers and new snowmaking compressors to help produce more snow and improve trails for the 2009 season, scheduled to open June 14. Ski area manager Dave Wilson says the new groomers are New Zealand's most modern and extensive grooming fleet. "This investment gives us the capability to significantly improve skiing and riding conditions for visitors to Mt Hutt," Wilson says. The high country resort has also invested in a cutting edge ski rental system designed by Head, which will deliver better skis faster for those renting equipment. "The new system will improve the flow through our rental services allowing for a quick and personalised set up — customers won't even have to take their boots off to get their skis fitted." Mt Hutt is 2086m above sea level at the foot of the Southern Alps. 
(17 March 2009)

Tackling genres 
New Zealand band Cut Off Your Hands is interviewed by American indie music publication Sentimentalist Magazine before the four-piece played the United States' largest music festival, Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009. Their debut album You & I is described in the article as "an amazing variety of sounds, from punk to 50's doo-wop." COYH singer Nick Johnston says the record is a melting point of influences. "From Buzzcocks-esque speed pop, and Smithsy guitar lines, to Roy Orbison ballads," Johnston says. In terms of "conquering" the United States he says: "It is nice to be kept busy, and that's the main thing on our mind in terms of coming to the States/UK etc. You can only tour for a week in NZ, then you run out of towns/cities ... I never expected my music to get me through Europe, Iceland, Japan ... in that regard, it's fun." 
(17 March 2009)

Sensitive subject 
Gisborne-born adventurer Graeme Dingle has said British author Jeffrey Archer is "dreaming" after Archer claimed that George Mallory, not Edmund Hillary, was the first to reach the summit of Everest. Archer's new book Paths of Glory, is a fictionalised account of the life of George Mallory, who died on Everest in 1924, 29 years before Hillary climbed the world's tallest peak with Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Dingle said Archer was reflecting wounded English pride at having been beaten by a colonial: "The English were desperate to get to the top, and they didn't get there, even in 1953. I think the English are pretty sensitive about it." 
(15 March 2009)

Across the waves 
Auckland-born Sara Seruvatu, 28, hosts a mid-morning lifestyle show on Fiji's Legend FM station and says radio has enabled her to meet and greet people from all walks of life. In an interview with the Fiji Times, Seruvatu said through radio, she is a friend to everyone. "It helps a great deal to have knowledge in music but you also must have a passion for this sort of job and not go for it just for fame," she said. "Most importantly, you have to be yourself." Targeting housewives at home and sharing tips on health and lifestyles, Seruvatu says her show enables her listeners to relate to issues presented. Seravatu moved to Fiji in 1996. 
(15 March 2009)

Wing on a current 
Queenstown BASE jumper and cameraman Chuck Berry, 42, famed for the longest unassisted 'wingsuit' flight, has leapt off the top of Terror Peak in Milford Stand once again with wings "turning a nine-second freefall into a 35-second freefall". Together with Americans Miles Daisher and Shane McConkey, the trio was delivered by helicopter to the top of the Peak. "I love turning a dream into a reality," Berry says. "It's all the talking that has got us here and now the talking is over and it's time for the doing. And the doing is the best part." Berry has completed over 45,000 skydives and pioneered the sport of BASE jumping. He is an aircraft engineer by trade. 
(11 March 2009)

Down but not out 
Sir Bob Charles and US amateur champion Danny Lee, 18, were amongst the line-up at the New Zealand Open, with Charles, "believed to be the oldest golfer to make the cut on any of the world's non-senior tours." "Charles, who turned 73 on March 14, indicated on Wednesday that it would likely be his final New Zealand Open should he miss the cut. No matter what happens, he will take another record with him. He surpassed the great Gary Player's record as the oldest to play in a Nationwide Tour event at 72 years, 11 months and 28 days," writes the official website of PGA Australia. Though both Charles and Lee were unsuccessful at Arrowtown's The Hills, sports commentator Peter Williams praised the tournament and the course, saying: "There was a certain rawness about the property during the first tournament 16 months ago but the trees and grass have matured quite markedly. After where the tournament was at only three years ago, the bar for the Open has now been set very high." New Zealanders did sweep the top three places at last week's New Zealand PGA, led by winner Steve Alker, with Josh Geary and David Smail sharing second place. 
(10 March 2009)

Link rethink 
A Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences study has found that alcohol abuse may increase the risk of depression, instead of the other way around as was previously thought. This new study included 1,055 people born in 1977 who were assessed for alcohol abuse and depression at ages 17 to 18, 20 to 21, and 24 to 25. At all ages, alcohol abuse or dependence was associated with a 1.9 times increased risk of major depression, said David Ferguson and colleagues at the School. "The underlying mechanisms that give rise to such an association are unclear; however, it has been proposed that this link may arise from genetic processes in which the use of alcohol acts to trigger genetic markers that increase the risk of major depression," researchers wrote. The study was published in the March issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. 
(3 March 2009)

Not quite the end 
When Tim Finn and Split Enz supported Skyhooks and AC/DC at Sydney's Festival Hall in 1975, they were booed at by teenager Magda Szubanski. "Years later, Magda admitted that she was booing us — mainly so she wouldn't betray her Sharpie mates," Finn says. "But she was secretly loving us. That's a very Split Enz story: people who loved us but didn't want to show it." These days, Finn's fans are much less abashed in their enthusiasm. On Wednesday, he performed to a sold-out crowd at the Northcote Social Club, playing Split Enz and Crowded House classics and a few songs from his latest album, The Conversation. Finn wrote the music for the Matt Cameron play Poor Boy, now showing at the Melbourne Theatre Company, and will finish the rock musical January that he began co-writing with Australian poet Dorothy Porter. Split Enz will perform at the Sound Relief bushfire benefit concert at the MCG on March 14.
(27 February 2009)

Girls don't cry 
Stuntwoman Zoë Bell, 30, often found it easier to "brawl than bawl" when filming online series Angel of Death, in which she plays assassin Eve. Bell had to display both action and acting chops. "I had to get over that fear of showing emotion," said Bell. "Doing the butt-kicking stuff was no problem. But crying? That's scary!" Bell has doubled for Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2) and Sharon Stone (Catwoman). She next appears as a roller-derby player in Whip It, starring Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore and returns to stunt work for Quentin Tarentino in his upcoming film Inglorious Bastards. "I don't want to be put in any box," she said. "I want to do everything." Lucy Lawless stars alongside Bell in Angel of Death as next-door-neighbour, Vera. 
(2 March 2009)

A personal charm 
Hermann Seifried was laughed at when he arrived on the South Island 40 years ago, looking to make wine. Today, he is the proud owner of an outstanding winery, and the father of an industry so successful it has become synonymous with the country itself. Seifried is just one example of New Zealand's most underrated asset, writes the New Zealand Herald's travel editor, Jim Eagles. Beyond the vistas and the vino attracting droves of visitors to the country, there are "the people who host all those unique lodges, personalised jet boat rides, walks in the wilderness, [and] great little restaurants serving Kiwi cuisine," creating the backbone of New Zealand's particular appeal. This innovative, adventurous spirit of New Zealand entrepreneurs is one of the country's great strengths in a time of looming global economic contraction. John Wilson, for example, built himself a boat 30 years ago so he could explore Abel Tasman Park. He has gone on to head a company that escorts thousands of tourists a year to see the park's golden bays and tranquil forests. "Theirs are the sort of businesses the government needs to encourage if our economy is to prosper," says Eagles. More than anything, "the chance to meet and talk to such delightful personalities is a big part of what makes this such a great country to explore."
(3 March 2009)

The news with an accent  
Working as a presenter for BBC World news, Taranaki native Lucy Hockings says her New Zealand accent "is a good reflection of the newsroom, which is very international." When she became a presenter for BBC World news, the situation was a little different, with the BBC still in the mode of demanding a specific voice. "[It] was a huge problem and I was sent to the Royal Academy of Drama for speech lessons," reminisces Hockings. A change in management and Hockings' accent issue is now seen as an asset, and she has recently been the voice of BBC for world-changing events such as the Boxing Day Tsunami, the death of Pop John Paul II, and the capture of Saddam Hussein, reporting to almost 178 million viewers. "Never did I dream I would be living this life," Ms. Hockings said, "I feel incredibly blessed".
(3 March 2009)

Broadened horizons 
Twenty-four per cent of New Zealanders with tertiary education live abroad, the highest rate in the OECD, according to research conducted by the University of Waikato management school. The study, led by the University's Professor John Gibson and Dr David McKenzie of the World Bank, focused on people who were among the best high school students over the 1976 to 2004 period. It found those who stayed in New Zealand, or returned to work here, gave up almost $2000 a week on average in income. Dr McKenzie said those who studied sciences or foreign languages at secondary school were more likely to go overseas. "Their return is linked to whether they have family still in New Zealand, and their preference for New Zealand lifestyle factors," he said. "Top students who get a PhD and marry a foreign citizen are much less likely to return to New Zealand." 
(26 February 2009)

Gray's marvellous mutants 
New Zealand comic book writer and editor of the Marvel Collectors' Edition line of magazines Scott Gray is interviewed by Comic Book Resources about "his take on the second generation of X-Men, the villains he'll be pulling in and the fan favorite artist who joins him on the series, 'Uncanny X-Men: First Class', which is out in June. Gray says he grew up in New Zealand in the 1970s "when absolutely every Marvel title was available." Gray told CBR: "I've been living in England since the early '90s, working in the comics industry in a number of guises I wrote the 'Doctor Who' comic strip for eight or nine years, and have edited a line of Marvel reprint titles for Panini Comics UK. I even got to resurrect 'The Mighty World of Marvel!' Writing an X-Men comic is literally a childhood dream come true for me. EVERYTHING about this is exciting — heck, I can't wait to see the staples!" Gray has also worked with fellow New Zealander and London-based comic book writer Roger Langridge to produce 'Fin Fang Four'. 
(28 February 2009)

Hands play San-Fran
Auckland-formed indie band Cut Off Your Hands are touring the United States promoting their 2008 debut album You and I. "Pause a minute while taking in the dreamy, vigorous Brit-pop of Cut Off Your Hands' new album, You and I, to consider two things. One: The band aren't British. Two: They started out as a punk band," writes Doug Wallen for Orange County Weekly. "The latter may explain the manic spirit of their songs and live shows. 'That's where we were coming from originally,' frontman Nick Johnston says, citing At the Drive-In and xbxrx as early influences. 'The aim of the band wasn't necessarily to create something brand-new or frighteningly original, which is obvious when you hear the songs, [but] more to capture the type of energy we were really interested in ... that raw punk energy.'" On February 27 the band played a sold-out show with American bands Ra Ra Riot and Telekinesi at Detroit Bar in San-Francisco. 
(25 February 2009)

Alveridge animated 
The rights to Queenstown artist Ivan Clarke's Lonely Dog picture book — "a series of paintings featuring a lonesome-looking pooch" and his friends in the mythical world of Alveridge — has been bought by Warner Brothers. Clarke's Lonely Dog paintings caught the attention of Weta's Richard Taylor, who helped Clarke create a mythology for the characters and produced 95 editions of an oversized art book, The Almalogue, featuring the lonesome canine, priced for about $6,000 each. Clarke was unwilling to discuss figures but said the sale of the rights would allow him to buy a new set of paintbrushes. "I've always said this project ... and character and story ... will never go away, and we're seeing that more and more with the calibre of interest it's attracted along the way. So, at some point, you start genuinely believing in it," Clarke said. Clarke is renowned for his New Zealand 'Grande Scale' landscape painting.
(25 February 2009)

Claiming the treasure 
Auckland Maori performing arts group Te Waka Huia has claimed the national title and the Donald McIntyre Trophy for the fourth time at the biennial Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Championships in Tauranga. Thirty-six teams combined dance, drama, storytelling, poetry, movement, coordination and song into a 25-minute performance perfecting every discipline including whakaeke (a choreographed entry), moteatea (traditional chant), poi, waiata-a-ringa (action song), haka and whakawatea (exit). Te Waka Huia was established in 1981. Festival chairman Selwyn Parata said Te Waka Huia epitomised the high calibre skill, expertise and discipline demanded of world-class kapa haka. "Te Waka Huia, Whangara mai Tawhiti [second place] and Te Kapa Haka o Te Whanau a Apanui [third place] are exemplars of our indigenous innovation — which all New Zealanders can share and celebrate." The first national festival was held in 1972 at Rotowhio, Rotorua. 
(18 February 2009)

Bald and branded 
Air New Zealand's recent "billboard cranium" marketing stunt has been applauded by American Peter Shankman, author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work for their "Tom Sawyer handing out paintbrushes" approach. Terry Gardner, 50, a legal secretary in California, was among 30 people who shaved their heads for an advertising campaign by the airline, which hired people to display a temporary henna tattoo saying: "Need A Change? Head Down to New Zealand. www.airnewzealand.com." For shaving their noggins and displaying the ad copy for two weeks in November 2008, they received either a round-trip ticket to New Zealand (worth about $1,200) or $777 in cash (an allusion to the Boeing 777, a model in the airline's fleet). Gardner, whose hair has grown to crewcut length since she shaved it for the airline promotion, said some people at the time asked whether the tattoo on her head was permanent. "I said, 'Are you kidding?' I might be crazy, but I'm not nuts." 
(17 February 2009)

Karen Walker cracks 
"We love the beauty that comes out of catastrophe, and the brittle nature of things," said designer Karen Walker of her new show. "Cracked," as the show was themed, had beginnings in the designer's decade-deep archive, from which she unearthed a favorite print of a broken strand of pearls. The gone-to-pieces motif was tempered with strong and simple silhouettes and charming graphics, including the resurrected pearls and a colorful new shattered-china-plate print. "It was a strong collection with loads of sellable yet quirky separates. And, frankly, is there a better time for fashion that celebrates the beauty that can blossom after things fall apart?"
(14 February 2009)

Writings of here and there 
Author Kapka Kassabova moved to New Zealand from Bulgaria in 1992 at the age of 17 "having suffered the full experience of 'Socialism with a Human Face' that was the notional premise behind the Bulgarian government: a family of four living in two rooms in a modern yet decaying block, in a street with, as Kassabova says, no name." In her latest book, Street Without a Name, which is reviewed in the Guardian, she reports of a trip back to Bulgaria after living in New Zealand and Scotland, where she now resides. "It is a beautifully structured book: its closing pages take you back to the beginning, by which time you will know and feel for Bulgaria much more deeply than you did when you started. The country, you will learn, seems to have turned up remarkable women regularly during its history; it strikes me that, in her quiet way, Kapka Kassabova, 36, could be one of them." Kassabova's first novel Reconnaissance (1999) was short-listed for the fiction section of the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and won the Best First Book award in the South East Asia and South Pacific section of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize. 
(14 February 2009)

Whiti te ra 
The 'Ka Mate' haka has been officially designated the intellectual property of Ngati Toa in a compensation agreement signed in Wellington. Ngati Toa was compensated for its decades of use by the All Blacks, and wider grievances dating more than 150 years, with a multi-million dollar settlement. The dance and its words were composed by a notoriously aggressive Maori chief, Te Rauparaha (1768-1849), who headed the tribe and controlled the lower North Island and northern part of the South Island until British colonisers arrived in 1840. The first compensation deal to include intellectual property, it does not give the tribe the right to veto use of the haka or allow it to claim royalties for its performance. In 2006, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade formally complained about a television commercial for Italian car company Fiat featuring black-clothed women imitating a haka, dubbing it culturally insensitive and inappropriate. 
(10 February 2009)

Setting things straight 
New Zealand ambassador to Indonesia Phillip Gibson recently addressed the Jakarta public at 'New Zealand Week', which included a series of events aimed at increasing Indonesian public awareness about New Zealand, sponsored by the New Zealand Embassy, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Pacivis University of Indonesia. Rhiannon Horrell, a student from New Zealand doing an internship in Jakarta, said the event was a good idea because Indonesians and New Zealanders knew very little about one another. "There are a lot of misconceptions, I think," Horrell said. "A lot of Indonesian students wonder about the treatment of Muslims in New Zealand." New Zealand Embassy second secretary for political affairs, James Waite, said the purpose of the event was to raise the county's profile among Indonesian students.
(10 February 2009)

All aboard with Coutts 
BMW Oracle's Wellington-born helmsman Russell Coutts is "matching wits and tacks with Luna Rossa helmsman Peter Holmberg" in the 10-team Pacific Series on the Waitemata Harbour, with 18th man, journalist Christopher Clarey onboard taking notes amidst "soggy, barely controlled chaos." "During the five-minute prestart ... for four minutes, it looks like Luna Rossa is going to get paid. But after taking on heaps of water and nearly washing onboard observer Carla Holgate off the transom, Coutts times it beautifully and snatches the advantage. 'That was game over unless we made a mistake or broke something,' Coutts would say. Not even a container ship that passes through the course on the final leg can change the flow of this race. BMW Oracle wins comfortably by 58 seconds." As a skipper, Coutts has won the America's Cup three times.
(9 February 2009)

East mends West 
Victoria University professor of philosophy Kolkata-born Jayshankar Lal Shaw says philosophy helps individuals with a "global perspective and a clear notion on how to alleviate pain from the world", especially during times of unrest. Shaw says with pitched battles being fought in certain pockets, an understanding of the basic question of life and existence and a critical examination of facts is of utmost importance. Known to the world for solving the 'West woes using Indian philosophy', the professor has more than 100 international publications and several books to his credit and has formed many societies — Society of Comparative Philosophy Calcutta, Dum Dum Samskriti Samsad, Society for Global Philosophy and Culture, Calcutta, including the Vedanta Society of Wellington and Bharat Samaj, Wellington. "Philosophy makes one do things in a better way. It tells you how to assess the merits and demerits of a phenomenon." 
(8 February 2009)

On-screen explosion 
Wellington director Taika Waititi's film The Volcano, a follow-up to his 2007 feature Eagle vs Shark, will be distributed by Australian company Transmission Films. The Volcano is inspired by Waititi's Oscar-nominated short film Two Cars One Night and goes into production in March. It focuses on how 11-year-old Darcy must reconcile his memories and fantasies with reality after his father returns home after seven years, then find his own potential. "Having long admired Taika's work we are thrilled to have secured what will undoubtedly be an extraordinary new film from one of New Zealand's youngest and brightest voices. To be handling The Volcano in its home territory is an absolute honour," said Richard Payten and Andrew Mackie of Transmission Films. Volcano producers are actor Cliff Curtis and Ainsley Gardiner. Transmission Films will also distribute Tracker, a New Zealand/UK film set at the turn of the century and to star Ray Winstone and Temuera Morrison. 
(2 February 2009)

On a virtual garden stroll 
West Melton gardener Mary, "aka 'Moosey'", is mentioned in The Seattle Times in an article recommending her  virtual garden tour. The publication writes: "A woman whose children call her 'Moosey' has created an easy-to-follow Web site that helps move you through her New Zealand country garden. It also contains helpful sections about flower shows, containers, flower bulbs and more." "Travel is a great way to top off an education, especially for gardeners, who can pick up landscape and planting ideas and advice by seeing others' gardens. But they don't have to leave home to do it. Virtual garden tours on the computer show actual gardens through video or still images, music, narration and text. About the only thing missing is the scent of the flowers as they scroll by." Moosey's Country Garden site was originally launched in 1999. 
(6 February 2009)

Southeast Asian discoveries
Auckland-based gold exploration company Zedex Minerals Ltd. looks set to begin a drilling programme in Vietnam at the end of February with a potential find of as much as 5 million ounces according to a company executive. "Finding anything above 2 million ounces is harder and harder these days, so that would be a very sizable deposit," managing director Paul Seton said. The initial drilling program may cost about $2 million and Zedex was "well down the path" of raising the funds, Seton said. "Funding is a big problem for everyone at the moment, but gold is going to be on a general upward trend," he said. "Money is going to be coming into gold." The company also focuses on silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, and tungsten deposits, in Vietnam, Malaysia and Australia. 
(3 February 2009)

Is it or isn't it 
University of Canterbury professor of philosophy Denis Dutton's latest book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution — which supposes that art appreciation stems first from evolutionary adaptions made during the Pleistocene — is reviewed in The New York Times by fellow author Anthony Gottlieb. "Some psychologists look to the Pleistocene epoch [for the origins of art], which began about 1.6 million years ago, when — in the course of some 80,000 generations of surviving and mating — our ancestors may have evolved the instincts that led eventually to the works of Bach, Rembrandt and Proust. 'Darwinian aesthetics' is what Denis Dutton, the author of The Art Instinct, calls this idea, and he thinks its time has come." In the early 1990s Dutton founded the lobby group The New Zealand Friends of Public Broadcasting in response to proposals to devolve New Zealand's two non-commercial public radio stations. 
(29 January 2009)

In the Manner of a Woman
Having spent the year taking the art world by storm, New Zealand resident and south-pacific artist Shigejuki Kihara is one of artasiapacific's "five artists for 2009". Kihara, a Japanese Samoan made a name for herself in New Zealand first as a fashion design student at Massey University, as a recipient for the Creative New Zealand Emerging Pacific Artist award, and then as an artist in residence at the contemporary art space Physics Room in Christchurch. A Fa'a fafine (the Samoan term for third gender), Kihara's most famous works are the sepia-tint photographs of her Fa'a fafine: In a Manner of a Woman (2004-2005), photos that explore the implications of gender, sexuality, exploitation, and colonialism. Kihara's self-portraits feature her dressed as an indigenous Pacific Islander, some as a naked woman, and another with her penis exposed. Her work has been exhibited at the Kohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, New Zealand, at a show she co-curated at the Plimsoll Gallery in Australia, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during the course of the year. "Kihara's works bring Pacific island culture to the West, but Kihara also demands that viewers look at her — with her body and face as a synecdoche for Samoan culture at large — on her own terms," says the almanac. 2009 will bring Kihara back to Auckland with exhibits at the Tauranga Art Gallery and the Toi Rerehiko Moving Image Center in Auckland.
(January 2009)

Investing in New Zealand 
A number of New Zealand companies are seeking alliances with the Silicon Valley's tech investors and entrepreneurs in an effort to grow and extend their reach into world markets. "Everyone realises the best thinking around technology and the smartest capital exists in the Valley," said Brad Jones, North American team leader for Investment New Zealand, the country's national investment promotion strategy, who matches high-growth New Zealand businesses to international investors. Since 2008, U.S. venture firms have invested about $20 million in New Zealand companies. "I think with our efforts, we're gaining enough critical mass where you're going to be seeing a lot more of us here," said Calvin Cheong, investment manager for Investment New Zealand. 
(5 June 2009)

By hook or by Hudson
Christchurch car enthusiasts Tony and Lynnette Mallard are touring the United States in a 1934 Hudson making their way toward the Detroit suburb of Pontiac and the 100th anniversary celebration of the Hudson Motor Company in mid-July. Tony Mallard purchased his Hudson for $20 in 1962 and had the vehicle operational by 1968 when he and Lynette married. Their return journey will include a swing up into Canada, then back down to Montana to see Glacier National Park before their journey home on August 22. Driving a 1934 Hudson over 4,000 miles provides an opportunity for the couple to get a clear picture of what America is really like. Tony remarked, "Your national media gives the rest of the world a very negative view — we see and hear all of the bad. But we're finding it very different. We've been made to feel so welcome everywhere and we are so impressed with the way we've been treated in every place we've visited."
(30 June 2009)

Bloody messy 
Anna Paquin, 26, has slept through her first interview with Time Out New York having for two weeks been shooting back-to-back episodes of HBO's True Blood. "I don't party. I'm not that cool," Paquin says. The New Zealand import has managed to lie low, avoiding that telltale trail of scandal and paparazzi. As telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, Paquin discusses blood and says the cuter the outfit, the more you're about to get really messy in it on set. "There's eye blood, there's mouth blood, there's congealed blood, there's liquid blood, there's old blood, there's crusty old blood," she says. "The old-school shaving foam, like Barbasol, is the only thing that gets it out of your skin." She says the trick to soul-shivering screams, like the one that ended last season when she discovered the dead body is to just scream. "Loud. Have older siblings. I'm the youngest, so you scream loud or no one will come and intervene. My older brother stuffed me inside a cello case once. Zipped it up." 
(14 June 2009)

Accolades for Catton 
Wellington author of The Rehearsal (Victoria University Press, NZ and Granta, UK) Eleanor Catton, 23, has won the UK's Betty Trask Award worth £8,000. Sebastian Faulks presented £60,500 in prize money to twenty-one writers on Thursday, 18th June at a reception held by the UK Society of Authors in London. The Betty Trask Prize and Award started in 1983 from a bequest to the Society of Authors to fund a prize for first novels written by authors under the age of 35 in a traditional or romantic, but not experimental, style. The prize money must be used for foreign travel. The Rehearsal tells the story of a high-school sex scandal and its myriad consequences, and has been hailed by critics and readers alike since its release last year. It has also been nominated in the fiction and best first book of fiction categories of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards to be announced on 27 July in Auckland. Catton signed contracts with two prestigious international publishers last year, with her UK publisher Granta about to release their edition of The Rehearsal in July. She is also due to appear at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and at a number of literary festivals in North America. 
(29 June 2009)

Icy kicks 
Queenstown's annual week-long Winter Festival saw mountain bikers tear down Coronet Peak's slopes, near-naked bird people leap into a freezing Lake Whakatipu and cross-dressing men in heels sprint toward victory in a drag race. These just some of the dozens of events taking place in the world's adventure capital this week as part of the city's festival: a party that combines big-scale events with the sort of quaint community activities more typically associated with small towns. More than 60,000 people attend the festival, most of them young and many of them (the majority of visitors) Australian. The last event added to the programme was determined by popular vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the people voted for the "Undy 500" race: another opportunity for participants to strip off in public in the extreme cold. 
(29 June 2009)

Antipodean reminisce 
New Zealanders flocked to London's Clapham Common to celebrate all things pineapple lump and barbeque over music and sauvignon at the three-day Toast festival. The welcome ceremony was hosted by former All Black Zinzan Brooke and was followed by a polo match against Great Britain and a cultural performance from Ngati Ranana, a Maori cultural group based in London. Dave Dobbyn and singer/songwriter Jason Norris also performed. 
(24 June 2009)

Blacks triumph 
The Junior All Blacks have won the IRB Toshiba World Junior Championship beating England 44-28 in Tokyo, retaining the title won last year in Wales when they thrashed the same team 38-3 in the final. This year, the All Blacks stunned England with three tries in the space of five minutes before the half-hour mark. England coach Mark Mapletoft said: "We were beaten by a better team." The squad is currently coached by Colin Cooper and Ian Foster. 
(22 June 2009)

With gratitude 
Thanks be to New Zealand for giving the UK butter and for the might of Sir Keith Park writes The Financial Times' Miss Moneypenny. "New Zealand's dairy farmers deserve support for coming to the rescue in the second world war. In October 1943, New Zealand introduced butter rationing with an allowance of 8oz per person per week, so that it could supply US troops and the UK instead. There are many platforms on which our butter industry could stand to promote their brands without knocking New Zealand. New Zealand came to the rescue in the Second World War in other ways, too. As regular readers know, this column has been a strong supporter of the campaign to put up a suitable memorial to the New Zealander Sir Keith Park, the senior commander of the Royal Air Force Sector 11 Squadrons (11 Group), who defended London and the south-east of England during the Battle of Britain." Moneypenny concludes: "So, thank you to everyone, all around the world, who has supported the campaign. A very satisfying result. And thank you, New Zealand, for lending us your talent and sending us your butter during the Second World War — and not looking after number one first." 
(20 June 2009)

Commission reviewer 
Director Peter Jackson will lead a review of the New Zealand Film Commission alongside head of screen business at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School David Court. Jackson will examine the 30-year-old legislation setting up the Commission, its constitution, functions, powers and the funding it provided. The NZFC is the country's main feature film production investment, development and marketing agency. It administers the key production funds including the Large Budget Screen Production Grant Scheme, the Screen Production Incentive Fund and the Post Production Fund. It provides financing for local films of about $10 million annually, and has a total budget for 2008–09 of $21.5 million, one-third of which comes from the government and the rest from lotteries and other sources. Jackson said in a statement he was looking forward to making positive and constructive suggestions to ensure the commission remained "effective in what is a rapidly changing international movie climate. David and I intend to consult with many local film-makers, so the review reflects the thoughts and opinions of the writers, producers and directors the Film Commission was created to support".
(18 June 2009)

Winter bar-hopping 
Queenstown's "bar scene can match any city for quantity, variety and quality and the disarming sincerity of this cold town's warm heart is impossible to resist," writes West Australia Today's Amy Cooper on a recent trip to the southern city claiming "the world's ultimate winter party". "The festival is on while I'm visiting but drop in any time of year, the brochure states, and you'll find 'unrivalled warmth and friendliness'. Cooper asks the whereabouts of the local bars and is told there are 120 within walking distance of her hotel. "We seek out the notoriously elusive Subculture, a backstreet basement cocktail bar and nightclub so tricky to locate that locals swear it actually moves. Friends are acquired in Queenstown as effortlessly as drinks and our crew soon fills a petite hideaway called Mini Bar. What's lacking in space (it holds about 20) is compensated for by a hefty menu of 100 international beers. Next day I head reluctantly to the airport, unable to shake the feeling I'm leaving a party too soon. Queenstown's boasts are justified." 
(14 June 2009)

Induction duets 
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performs at this month's Hollywood Bowl's season-opening gala, which will also serve as the soprano's induction into the Bowl's Hall of Fame. Te Kanawa spoke candidly with the Los Angeles Times about reclaiming her voice after a much-publicised personal past. Te Kanawa now appears to be ready for another comeback. Earlier this year, she agreed to return to the Met, albeit in a speaking role in the comic opera La Fille du Régiment (she adds though, "it's not a singing role, but I will sing — that'll shock them"). What's more, she says that she has just decided to sing Der Rosenkavalier one last time next year in Cologne. (Though she adds, "It will be the last time, it really is, I know it is. The last time, yes.") Te Kanawa looks forward to singing at the Hollywood Bowl (two duets with her 1971 Figaro castmate, Frederica von Stade, plus some solo arias) and doesn't feel that being inducted to the Hall of Fame or receiving other lifetime achievement awards means that her career is over. She says without regret that her recitals and teaching are an extension of her career and not an epilogue. She insists that she's not looking for new operatic roles, even as she looks forward to working with composer Jake Heggie at an upcoming master class. Heggie is known for his ability to woo star sopranos by writing roles for them. "I know my own limits of perfection," she says firmly, but later smiles, "you never say never." 
(14 June 2009)

Millar in colour 
Painter Judy Millar explains her international reputation over her local to Art World: "I'm in the curious position that no one really gets what I'm doing, and they never did." In the early 2000s, Millar's relentlessly colourful surfaces woven together by fingers or rags split the New Zealand art world in two. While some critics and curators defended her as one of the country's most important artists, just as many saw her as an archconservative who made things that were a weird throwback to a time when painting mattered more than it does today. And while people at home argued about its merits, overseas dealers and curators started to notice her work. "Working both in Germany and in New Zealand," Millar says, "the position I've been forced to take up is one that is completely independent." At this year's 53rd Venice Biennale Millar has transformed a church interior with a huge digital print of a painting. "I want to block any sense of the entire church from any one point. You'll walk in and be met by this big curved surface, which will force you to walk around it. And as you walk around, the church will unravel itself."
(June/July 2009)

Pests busted 
Orchard worker Don Sullivan and a team of 30 trappers have been awarded the Forest & Bird annual Pestbuster prize for their work in nabbing 530 pests over the last year in four forested areas near Nelson. The team's tally for the year was 234 possums, 204 rats, 69 mice, 14 hedgehogs, 6 stoats and 3 weasels using 325 traps. Sullivan has also spent time and money building 750 traps, some of which he has given to other pest control groups. Sullivan realised the need for pest control when he noticed a decline in birdlife while tramping. As the areas in which he works have been more intensively trapped, he has seen a rise in numbers of bellbirds, tomtits, fantails, kakariki and weka. A kaka was heard recently in Upper Marsden Valley for the first time in 20 years. "We are trying to get the birdlife back so the children can see them," he says. "Rats and possums are the main problem." 
(14 June 2009)

Small but mighty 
The New Zealand Defence Force is reviewed by military publication Jane's which describes the Force as "always attempting to perform on the world stage at a level that belies the size of its defence force." "The past decade has reinforced this trend, with the NZDF involved in an unprecedented number of international peacekeeping missions. Current deployments include Afghanistan, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands. 'New Zealand defence has an unusually high level of complexity for its size. These features put a premium on strategy and planning, and suggest that regular reviews of defence are essential,' says a defence portfolio briefing, which was released under the Official Information Act. Meanwhile, the pending completion of a major capability renewal programme will see the replacement or upgrade of most key platforms across the three services in a significant advance on the NZDF's largely 1960s-era legacy equipment." Currently 886 NZDF personnel are deployed on 14 operations, UN missions and defence exercises in 10 countries around the world. 
(12 June 2009)

Miliaina to skipper 
Fullback Mils Muliaina will captain the All Blacks home tests against France and Italy in June, taking over from an injured Richie McCaw. "Mils is in the leaders group in the All Blacks," New Zealand coach Graham Henry said. "He has done a fantastic job as captain of the Chiefs in the Super 14 and has a great deal of respect ... amongst his peers." The All Blacks' first test of 2009 is against France in Dunedin on June 13. They play the French again a week later in Wellington before a one-off test against Italy in Christchurch on June 27. "France will again be a difficult challenge for the All Blacks," Henry said. "They have picked their strongest squad available and history shows they are often successful against the All Blacks." 
(31 May 2009)

Out on her own 
Annabel Alpers has put New Zealand on the tech-pop map writes Guelph Mercury reviewer Jake O'Connell. Recording as Bachelorette, the Christchurch musician's first album for the American Drag City label is a pop treatise on technology's perpetual intrusion on society. Titled My Electric Family, the record takes aim at an increasingly computer-reliant population. Her method is the catch. As a student of computer-based composition, Bachelorette makes use of traditional instruments but deploys mostly electronic sounds. Like Kraftwerk's Computer World, she uses the very devices she's critiquing. LA Weekly describes Alpers' music as "bright and transcendent as it is detailed and personal." "You'll hear Stereolab in her songs' elegant electro sweeps, Krautrock in the rolling arrangements, a little Americana in the folksy instrumentation, and even some old WHY? in the more collagist moments." In New Zealand, My Electric Family will be released by Alpers' own recently formed label, Particle Tracks.
(28 May 2009)

Pip's poster power 
Royal New Zealand Navy Lieutenant Commander Pip Gibbons was one of four UN peacekeepers featured on a poster to promote the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers on May 29. Lt Cdr Gibbons recently served as an UN Military Observer in Timor Leste. In Timor she lead a UN team that liaised with a range of people including local village chiefs, government ministers, other UN units, non government organisations and local police personnel. "It was great working with defence force personnel from other countries and also being a role model for the local women, especially when they saw me interacting with senior members of their community," Gibbons said. The UN site describes this year's theme: "Female peacekeepers act as role models in the local environment, inspiring, by their very example, women and girls in the often male-dominated societies where they serve. Demonstrating to these women and girls that they can do anything — in the realm of politics, security, law and order, medicine, journalism and beyond — the female blue helmets truly embody the concept, 'Power to Empower.'" 
(26 May 2009)

Holiday reading 
Wellington author and high school teacher Bernard Beckett's novel Genesis is recommended by American bookseller Roxanne J. Coady on the Women On The Web site, which also includes an excerpt from the first chapter of the book. Beckett wrote the young adult novel Genesis while on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations. It won the young-adult fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2007 and the 2007 Esther Glen award. In 2008 the book made publishing history when UK publisher Quercus Books offered the largest advance ever put forward for a young adult novel in New Zealand. Beckett teaches at Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt. 
(23 May 2009)

Bowden fronts up 
Cricket umpire Billy Bowden has backed cricket's review system by which players will be able to refer umpires' decisions to a television official for review. The system will be implemented in all Test matches from October. Bowden told the Sunday Star-Times that the system would have many benefits for cricket, including reducing negative media coverage. "Behavior will change, there is no doubt whatsoever," Bowden said. "The reports that are made on players will change for the better. (Bad behavior) will be cut by half. The majority of the behavior is from an umpiring decision but if that can be corrected out on the field then everyone moves on." Bowden said the review system would lift the rate of correct decisions made by test umpires from about 95 per cent to 99 per cent. The Star-Times interview was Bowden's first in three years after a self-imposed media ban. Of his unique style Bowden told the paper: "Umpires have their own characters and their own personalities. We're not clones. Were not paper cut-outs. It would be a boring place if we were all exactly the same. There's no additives when you see me, no preservatives. It's freshly squeezed. What you see is what you get." 
(24 May 2009)

Censored views 
The work of New Zealand photographer and artist Bruce Connew features on the cover of the latest issue of UK literary magazine Granta (#105, Lost and Found, Spring 2009). Censored 2008 is a photographic artwork that began as a censored copy of National Geographic magazine's May 2008 special pre-Olympic Games issue on China, which Connew discovered plastic sealed in a Zhongshan, China bookstore, around the time of the Sichuan earthquake. Flipping through the magazine at his hotel, Connew stopped on page forty-six, "Two and a bit lines on the left-hand page had been crossed out in heavy black ink. Censored, I deduced &mdash it was not long until the Olympic Games. Everywhere else in the world people were discussing whether the Games would provoke change in the Chinese government, but China is China." Continuing through the magazine, he found that pages were glued together, crossed out, or removed altogether — he then had an epiphany: "Mulling over the layers of art and politics involved, I realised I had unwittingly prepared an artwork of my own, right there in the Louis Hotel. I had three of the spreads photographed to produce a political triptych (Censored 2008), three large pigment prints each twice the size of a National Geographic double-page spread; my personal recontextualisation of these pages."
(May/June 2009)

One for the ladies 
New Plymouth-raised, UK-based magazine editor Suraya Singh, 30, has got Europe talking with the launch of Filament, a self-funded quarterly UK magazine that is squarely aimed at turning women on. Tired of being bombarded with celebrity gossip, diet tips and fashion advice at the newsstand, Singh wanted a classy erotica magazine that women like her would be happy to buy. Men's magazines regularly mix aspirational and intelligent content with high-brow erotica, but women, she felt, were being left out. Which is why she decided to quit her job and set up the magazine herself. Marketed as "the thinking woman's crumpet". Filament's first issue features a semi-naked man in a praying position on its cover.
(29 May 2009)

Park's plinth secured 
Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park will grace the fourth plinth for six months in London's Trafalgar Square, after the Westminster City Council agreed to erecting a statue of the Battle of Britain commander. The statue will then be moved to a permanent position in Waterloo Place. London financier Terry Smith, who campaigned for the statue, told Radio New Zealand: "Couldn't be more delighted frankly, it was against all odds that we would get it," Smith said. The plinth is reserved for an equestrian statue of the Queen on her favourite horse Burmese. Sir Keith Park was born in Thames in 1892. Promoted to Air Chief Marshal on 20 December 1946, Park returned to New Zealand, where he took up a number of civic roles and was elected to the Auckland City Council. He lived in New Zealand until his death on 6 February 1975, aged 82. 
(8 May 2009)

Seattle calling 
Hamilton-born Simon Taylor is rowing for the University of Washington's men's varsity eight, choosing the Seattle University over the likes of Yale, Princeton and Harvard, and America over the 2012 New Zealand Olympic team. Because of his visa status, it would be difficult for him to return to the United States if he comes back to New Zealand to train for the 2012 Olympics. Taylor chose to be a Husky because of the coaches leading the program. "The coaches over here are more of what I'm used to," Taylor said. "The coaches on the East Coast are kind of intense and a little preppy. Here, they are just much more genuine." It was at the Junior World Championships when American coaches first noticed Taylor, including coaches from the University of Washington. The rigor of UW classes came as a surprise to Taylor, who was used to a more laid-back academic atmosphere. "It was stressful, but I was living my dream and having a good time," Taylor said. "But it was definitely a culture shock."
(12 May 2009)

Be seen in Wickstead
Twenty-five-year-old Auckland-born fashion designer Emilia Wickstead's "elegantly demure collection of refined, pretty silk separates is already being seen at some of London's most fashionable locales," writes Julia Neel for British Vogue "as the well-heeled luncheon set catch on to the Central Saint Martins-trained designer's burgeoning must-have status." Baradene College-educated Wickstead "is winning the style set over; the just-for-me, bespoke factor is also hard to resist." "Since Vogue featured Petra Ecclestone wearing one of my dresses, it's been frantic," says Wickstead. "I've had women buy their entire wardrobes from me; from suits to full-length evening gowns and sophisticated day dresses, they buy everything." Wickstead was an intern at Vogue in New York and Armani. Her label, Emilia Wickstead was launched 10 months ago in Chelsea.
(May 2009)

For the whales 
Actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, 19, has joined the Save the Whales Campaign and is urging the New Zealand government to reject Japan's proposal to resume commercial whaling in its waters before a June 22 International Whaling Commission meeting. She said the proposal would effectively lift the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling, "opening the floodgates for this cruel industry to grow". "Many governments believe that this could act as leverage to control Japan's so-called 'scientific' whaling," Castle-Hughes said. "Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, it could not guarantee a reduction in the number of whales killed by Japan, Norway or Iceland." Castle-Hughes next appears in Niki Caro's The Vintner's Luck as the vintner's wife Celeste, which will be released in New Zealand this October. At 11, she was the youngest female ever nominated for a best actress Oscar for her performance in Whale Rider.
(8 May 2008)

Art with love 
Auckland Art Gallery has been gifted 15 major works of art, including Picasso's "Femme à la résille (Woman in a hairnet)," at a total of $115 million, the largest ever donation to an Australasian art museum. Auckland Art Gallery said that it had received the gift from the New York collectors and philanthropists Julian H. Robertson Jr and Josie Robertson, consisting of 12 paintings and 3 works on paper, including portraits by Picasso from 1938 and 1951, a landscape by Gauguin from 1884 and an abstract geometric painting by Mondrian from around 1920. "We have had a lifelong love affair with New Zealand. We love Auckland. And we love these pictures. That's why we were so pleased when we brought these works to New Zealand that New Zealanders seemed to enjoy them as much as we do," the Robertsons said. "Frankly, bringing the pictures was probably the most appreciated thing we have ever done. We are delighted to be able to make this gift." The Robertsons are the owners of Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers golf courses. 
(7 May 2009)

Webby award success
Wellington-based online accounting software provider Xero and Auckland-based mobile advertising agency The Hyperfactory won eight awards at the 13th Annual Webby Awards in New York. The Hyperfactory dominated the mobile advertising category with six awards in total, and second overall in the race for Interactive Agency of Year given to the most successful agency across all Webby categories of interactive advertising, websites, mobile sites, and online film and video. The Hyperfactory won Best Mobile campaign jointly with Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney. It also won People's Choice award in the same category for a Guinness ad. Online accounting software provider Xero won two Webbys for its software and website in the banking/bill paying category. Head of design at Xero Philip Fierlinger said: "Winning two Webbys is overwhelming. Reading all the comments people wrote is really humbling. We had a vision to make accounting sexy and fun, but to actually hear people say those words about Xero is incredibly gratifying." Fierlinger will attend the award ceremony in New York on June 8.
(May 2009)

Pinot popular in US 
New Zealand pinot noirs from all over the country featured at the recent World of Pinot Noir seminar in California, with winemaker Clive Jones of Nautilus Estate representing the Marlborough region. New Zealand has ridden pinot noir's wave of popularity. Ten years ago, pinot noir was the country's fifth most widely planted grape variety; today, it's No. 2, behind only sauvignon blanc. The largest plantings are in the Marlborough region (better known for sauvignon blanc) and Central Otago, both on the South Island, although early plantings of high-quality pinot occurred on the North Island in the mid-1980s, around Martinborough. Many New Zealand pinots command premiums; there are some more affordable options. The 2007 Goldschmidt Vineyards "Boulder Bank" Pinot Noir (Marlborough, $US18) is referred as being racy and fresh, with raspberry and wild thyme notes. 
(5 May 2009)

Surprising fruit 
A feijoa shaped like New Zealand's national bird, the kiwi has been bought by a Christchurch businessman for $1000 who says he will preserve the quirky fruit. Auckland woman Shavon Green found the freak-of-nature feijoa in her backyard. "There were a couple of legitimate, regular feijoas and then there was this little fella that looked just like a kiwi," she said. Her son was going to take the fruit in for show and tell, but then the Green family decided to put it up for auction on the internet. Green is now keeping her eyes peeled for more odd-shaped pieces. "Someone said to me I better check my pear tree — I might find a partridge," she said. 
(5 May 2009)

Marlin mayhem 
Weymouth-raised stunt fisherman Matt Watson — who famously dove from a helicopter onto the back of a cruising marlin in the Pacific Ocean wrestling the giant fish to the surface before finally letting it go — is producing Discovery Channel show Extreme Fisherman. The show will chronicle Watson's unending quest to find new and dangerous ways to catch some of the ocean's most powerful fish. "I've been around fish and fishing my whole life, and having caught so many fish, the thrill started wearing off, so I started thinking of ways to bring back the thrill of catching my first big fish again," Watson explained. These are not methods recommended by safety experts. "Obviously, they've got a bill, which is a sharp, pointy thing on the front of them," Watson said brightly. "Of course, that's sharp, and they've got a lot of weight and power behind them, so you don't have to be a genius to figure out if they're hitting you straight on, it's probably gonna go through you." In February, Watson was interviewed by David Letterman in New York and is a popular attraction on YouTube. 
(12 March 2009)

Icy developments 
Victoria University glaciologist Dr Andrew Mackintosh has released findings of a study which shows that southern hemisphere glaciers evolve quite differently to those in the north. "Don't assume that warming will be uniform over the earth," Mackintosh says. Mackintosh says the advance and retreat of glaciers are a good indication of climate change. But, he says, there has been some concern that studies of glaciers to date have not been representative of global trends. Mackintosh and colleagues plotted the retreat and advance of glaciers in New Zealand over the past 11,500 years and compared it to data gathered from northern hemisphere moraines. He and colleagues found that overall, northern hemisphere glaciers grew until the end of what is known as the Little Ice Age in the 1800s, when they began to retreat. By contrast, southern hemisphere glaciers have on the whole been shrinking throughout the Holocene. 
(1 May 2009)

Something gained 
Defending IndyCar Series champion New Zealander Scott Dixon, 28, has won the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway. "We needed something," Dixon said. "You know, even a sniff of something. Because so far all we've had is a sniff of the tail end of the field." The victory was the 17th of Dixon's career, second only to the 19 won by Sam Hornish Jr., now competing in NASCAR. He also vaulted from 17th to fourth in the points standings. "Every year, I set two major goals," Dixon said. "At the top of the list is to win Indy; second is to win the championship. Indy comes early … you can chase the championship later in the year. So we had to come out fighting. More importantly, going into the 500, it's huge for the team." Dixon next races in the 93rd Indianapolis 500 scheduled to be run on May 24. He was selected 2008 New Zealand Sportsman of the Year at the Halberg Awards held in February 2009. 
(26 April 2009)

War stories recounted 
Bluff-born journalist Peter Arnett was the VIP guest speaker at a recent function to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Caravelle Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who filed more than 3,000 stories on the Vietnam War for the Associated Press between 1962 and 1975, witnessed many significant historical events during this time — often from the rooftop of the iconic hotel. Arnett recalls watching the 1963 coup d'etat against southern leader Ngo Dinh Diem. "During a lull in the shooting I made my way to the Caravelle," he said. "The rumours and the speculation of the months past were coming true before my eyes and I watched it all, with a glass of Johnny Walker Red Label in one hand, a cigarette in the other." The day that Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) fell, Arnett was also at the Caravelle. At the 50th Anniversary he recounted the morning, quoting from his autobiography. "I shaved and showered in cold water and selected a grey proletarian shirt of the new city masters. I headed upstairs to the dining room, doubtful that breakfast would be served. But I was wrong. The waiters were on duty as usual."
(11 May 2009)

Space traveller 
Gisborne-born aeronautic engineer Lester Waugh has been presented with a New Zealand flag which has traveled 216 times around the earth in the space shuttle Discovery. The gift from Nasa was a "rare honour", given to recognise Waugh's work for the organisation involving the placement of scientific instruments on the moon's southern pole. This award is a career highlight for Waugh, who works with both the European Aeronautic and Defence Space Company in Britain and the Johnson Space Centre in the USA. Waugh is currently working on ExoMars Rover, a robot vehicle which will be sent to explore Mars. 
(20 April 2009)

Bony buoyancy 
Peter Jackson's film adaptation of Alice Sebold's best-selling novel The Lovely Bones though "murderous is also optimistic", headlines USA Today. For all the violence and grief of The Lovely Bones, Jackson believes the movie need not be a downer. In fact, he says, the film version of Sebold's novel about teenager Susie Salmon, who watches from heaven as her family collapses after her murder, is downright uplifting. "I found the book to be curiously optimistic," Jackson says by e-mail from New Zealand, where he's finishing the film. "I felt inspired by Susie's struggle to come to terms with her own death. In the face of overwhelming grief, she finds hope." Jackson's interpretation of heaven has been released in the first official image from the film due to be released in New Zealand on Boxing Day. 
(19 April 2009)

Merino magic 
For the fourth year running South Canterbury merino farmers Barrie and Yvonne Payne, owners of Visulea Farm in Maungati, have won the Loro Piana Record Bale Award for the highest price paid for a single bale of super-fine graded wool last year. Italian weaving company Loro Piana paid $2950 per kilogram of 11.8-micron clean merino wool, which would produce enough wool to make about 50 suits. The Payne's bale was recorded as having 11.8 microns, 64mm in length and a strength of 38 nkt (Newtons per kilotex). "It's quite humbling to be judged the best in New Zealand four years in a row," Yvonne Payne said. The couple runs more than 3000 merino sheep on their 177ha farm. The Paynes travelled to Beijing where they received their award. 
(23 April 2009)

Tree gods unite 
A ceremony to form a "sister-tree relationship" between Waipoua Forest's Tane Mahuta and an ancient Japanese cedar tree located on Yakushima Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was held this month at the base of the giant kauri. The project was launched by the New Zealand Tourism Board which hopes that by linking large and ancient trees, a message of forest preservation will spread. Tane Mahuta belongs to the Araucariaceae family of conifers. It is 51 metres tall and has a trunk girth of 13.8 metres. It is believed to be between 1200 and 2500 years old. 
(23 April 2009)

Balance in stone 
Waitakere sculptor John Edgar's 'Ballast' exhibition, which uses stone collected from various historic Scottish quarries, will be on show as part of the Edinburgh Arts Festival from August 5 through November 30 at the National Museum of Scotland. Edgar has made sculptures that are based on the land and the flag; the compass, trig stations and survey markers; and the sculptures reference voyages and journeys, arrivals and departures. 'Ballast' celebrates in stone the strong culture that is common to both countries. "It's been an exciting process since it was proposed in 2005 and as you come down to the wire, the last pieces are the most difficult," said Edgar, whose equipment ranges from intricate detailing tools to a forklift truck. The exhibition is named 'Ballast' after the big stones that were collected at Scottish ports and used to keep the immigrant ships upright on the journey half a world away. 
(21 April 2009)

Hitched 
For those looking to tie the perfect knot, New Zealand is worth the trip halfway across the world, according to Brit Marc Brierly and his fiancée, New Zealander Angie Watson. "Afterwards, everyone said what a brilliant day it had been — nothing like they could have imagined," said Angie. Lyn Rasmussen writes of their special day for Suite101, where friends traveled from across the globe for a celebration they would all remember. They started out with a tour of Blue Lake on The Duck, an amphibious vessel commandeered by Rotorua Duck Tours, giving friends and family a unique fish-eye view of the water. From here the party spent the afternoon sipping champagne on a grassy plateau, only to watch Angie and Marc get married at sunset, on a hill overlooking Lake Rotorua. Younger guests moved from ceremony to reception by taking a luge ride down the mountain, for a romantic night of warmth and revelry. "By the time the reception was underway darkness had fallen in the redwood grove. Fairy lights sparkled in the marquee and a gas brazier kept guests warm while they enjoyed a buffet dinner and danced to the music of a jazz duet." 
(9 April 2009)

Paquin the heroine 
On the back of recent success as Sookie Starkhouse in vampire series True Blood, New Zealand Golden Globe winner Anna Paquin turns her talents to a made for television film taking the lead role in The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler. Irena Sendler, who died last year at 98, was responsible for saving the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II, smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto and delivering them to Polish Catholic families who reared them until they could be reunited with their parents after the war. Would Paquin herself have survived the surrogate anti-Semitism suffered by Sendler when the Nazis accused her of conspiring to con them? "I would love to think that I'd be fantastically brave but," she adds, "it's impossible to guess." 
(16 April 2009)

Bringing back bold 
Artistic director of Lancôme Auckland-born Aaron de Mey, 35, "is one of the new breed of male creative directors shaking up the beauty" who "longs to halt the relentless tide of beige, to put the individuality back into make-up and encourage women to be more daring and experimental," writes the Times Online's Sarah Vine. Wilson really does push boundaries, and is well known for his originality and daring — highly prized qualities in the world of fashion and beauty. His slight, blond presence is to be spotted everywhere, from Vogue shoots to backstage at runway shows, creating standout looks for groundbreaking designers. Prada, McQueen, Givenchy — he's worked with all the greats. And now Lancôme. So far, his work for the cosmetics house has been boldly unapologetic, the antithesis of the no make-up look so popular in recent years. The pigmentation is intense, the textures bold. The lip glosses have a lacquer-like quality, more like paints than make-up, designed to be worn with extreme confidence. "I really wanted to take Lancôme back to its roots, back to Paris. I love those French girls you see in the street who wear a designer dress with an easy shoe — that spirit, that easy, non-precious beauty." 
(18 April 2009)

Ballroom blitz 
Professional ballroom dancers Aucklander Erin Boag, 33, and her partner Briton Anton Du Beke who both starred in the successful UK television talent show Strictly Come Dancing, have just completed a documentary for Sky One, Ballroom High, in which they teach inner-city kids to dance. The Wall Street Journal's Sarah Frater talked to the duo as they prepared for their current show, Cheek to Cheek, which features the pair dancing together to music from a 30-piece orchestra, as well as performances by salsa dancers Chris Marques and Jaclyn Spencer, and singer Richard Shelton. Cheek to Cheek runs at the London Coliseum from April 22-26. Boag spoke of her beginnings in dance: "My parents had been amateur ballroom dancers in New Zealand, and I'd gone to classes as a child. But it was only when I saw a competition in Australia when I was 15 that I knew I wanted to do it." An estimated 13 million viewers tuned into the 2008 Strictly Come Dancing finale. Boag was a former Candy Lane student. 
(16 April 2009)

Parisian hang-ups 
Phillipa 'Pip' Brown, 30, that's Ladyhawke to her fans, is interviewed in Paris, where outside the French capital's "cavernous Nouveau Casino venue, the line of ticketless opportunists snaking into the fading light speaks for her broad appeal." Later on during the show it's clear that at times Ladyhawke still can't comprehend the devotion her music is inspiring in the fans. That shyness dominates the performance as she barely speaks until the crowd gets behind the third song, the disco stomper Dusk Till Dawn. From there onwards the singalongs just get louder and the entire venue is jumping by the time of single Paris is Burning. "I have an obsessive personality, I obsess over things and objects," she explained earlier in the day. But no matter, the queue of Paris teenagers wanting to get merchandise signed by the side of the stage is forming before the last song has even finished — obsession in one form or another is serving Ladyhawke well. 
(8 April 2009)

All that Jazz
The rapid growth of New Zealand's premium new apple variety Jazz has reached another milestone this year with over 1.2 million cartons of apples forecast to be exported in 2009. Revered for its outstanding flavour profile, crunch, transportability and storage characteristics, Jazz has become a favourite for international buyers and consumers, making it New Zealand's fourth largest export apple variety by volume. Jazz continually commands a significant premium size for size over other apples in the market and is becoming increasingly important for both New Zealand and international orchardists in today's environment. In addition, ENZA has now achieved a year round supply of Jazz for major Northern Hemisphere retailers, with New Zealand's growing season being supplemented by licensed growers overseas, which provides an important off season revenue stream for New Zealand's largest pipfruit exporter. 
(16 April 2009)

Pride of place 
According to the third national Quality of Life survey, nine out of ten New Zealanders rate their quality of life as good or better. Wellingtonians thought they had the best quality of life at 94.9 per cent, followed by Dunedin at 94.2 per cent and Christchurch at 93.1 per cent. The 12 participating councils were North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau, Rodney, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Porirua, Hutt City, Christchurch and Dunedin. Researchers for the survey spoke to 500 people in each of the 12 main centers and 2,000 people in the rest of the country. The survey was funded by the councils and the Ministry of Social Development. 
(6 April 2009)

Whisked debate 
Helen Leach, an academic at Otago University, is hoping to settle the origins of the pavlova with recipes found in a 1933 Mothers' Union cookbook and in a 1929 rural magazine, both calling the dessert a pavlova and stipulating the same ingredients and method used by modern cooks. Australians have long believed it was created in 1935 by a chef called Bert Sachse, at Perth's Esplanade Hotel, in honour of the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, pictured, who visited Australia in 1926 and again in 1929. While many New Zealanders resent Australia's habit of appropriating anything or anyone famous to emerge from their country, trans-Tasman rivalries are generally light-hearted. Australian television personality, Rove McManus, raised hackles in New Zealand recently when he described the country as "the cousin at the party with the short trousers". 
(11 April 2009)

Beautiful or else 
"In New Zealand some things are taken very seriously and some are not. Sport is serious. Politics is not. Lifestyle is serious; religion less so," explains Joanna Norris for Abu Dhabi's English-language newspaper The National. "Considered among the most important, however, is the face this little country presents to the world. New Zealand's image abroad is the source of both national pride and collective handwringing. The release of a new edition of any influential guidebook from Lonely Planet to Frommer's sparks a flurry of activity in civic offices and tourist bureaux, with disparaging observations quickly countered by indignant press statements. 'We offer a lifestyle which is pretty relaxed in this part of the world — a lot of people who visit often return to live,' one baffled publicity officer told a local paper, with not a hint of irony, after her town was critiqued. Of the same town, the Lonely Planet authors were a little more succinct. 'Shabby,' it said." 
(11 April 2009)

Return to the overlooked 
Now Sydney-based, New Zealand photographer Rebecca Wiig, 27, has documented the city's RSL clubs for an exhibition of 26 photographs called 'If These Walls Could Talk' held at Darlinghurst's Tap Gallery. She began shooting in the clubs shortly after Anzac Day last year. By February she had visited 106 clubs across the state, though she didn't capture them all. "I was using film, so it was pretty expensive. I selected them on their aesthetic appeal. I love grungy and kitsch stuff," Wiig says. "There are 300 RSLs in NSW alone," Wiig says. "The RSL is one of Australia's national treasures — one that is often overlooked and sadly under threat due to contemporary competition. I thought I should document it … We do have the RSA [the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association], but you'd be lucky to get one RSA club in a city. And they're really only for old diggers, not the younger generations who go to RSLs here." 
(6 April 2009)

In good company 
US Amateur champion Rotorua-raised Danny Lee, 18, joins two other teenagers on the field at the US Masters in Augusta, Georgia prompting golfing great Tiger Woods to comment on the "new bloods" and the game's "exciting times". Lee has been invited to contest the opening two rounds in the company of world No 1 Woods. The youngest winner in PGA European Tour history at the Johnnie Walker Classic, Lee "has shown no fear at all" writes the New York Times. Lee's first event as a professional will be the PGA tour event in New Orleans, beginning on April 23. He beat British Amateur champion Reiner Saxton in the 12th annual Georgia Cup on April 1. 
(4 April 2009)

Dogs sacked 
British supermarket Tesco has ordered its largest suppliers in New Zealand, Silver Fern Farms in Fairton, Canterbury to stop using dogs to herd sheep into the abattoir. Tesco wants the shepherds to wave their arms, beat sticks or wave flags, to move the sheep into the abattoir. The surprise order from Tesco, which comes into force next week, came to light thanks to a letter sent to the Daily Telegraph by an upset reader. Mick Petheram, one of the shepherds, said: "New Zealand sheep are used to dogs, they know dogs. There's more stress in a human herding and manhandling them, waving their arms and beating sticks. Dogs are part of a sheep's life. This is absolute baloney." Tesco stood by its decision. "We don't have a problem with sheep dogs, but we need to make sure they move the sheep in a considerate manner, so they don't stress the sheep out," said a spokesman. 
(3 April 2009)

Island choreography 
Dance troupe Black Grace are in Guam performing a series of workshops in local schools and at the Sheraton Laguna Guam Resort for an audience at a gala dinner. Black Grace was founded in 1995 and is the longest lasting New Zealand Dance Company. Founder, artistic director and chief executive Neil Ieremia said the group's name reflects qualities that he felt were important. Growing up in New Zealand, Ieremia said "black" was slang for courageous and daring. "It's got nothing to do with color," he said. "Growing up in the rough part of town, my friends would refer to each other as being black." Black Grace is also touring New Zealand with 'Gathering Clouds', a work which according to the group's site: "Responds to controversial claims made by economist Greg Clydesdale in which he warns that Polynesians display 'significant and enduring under achievement' — a problem he believes immigration is making worse." 
(31 March 2009)

Next stop: South Island 
The Pangaea Expedition is making a welcome visit to the fjords of the South Island, heading straight over from a brief stop in South Africa. Eight New Zealand explorers will meet the crew of Pangaea in the untouched fjords of the South, on their way to Antarctica. The Pangaea Expedition started on 18 October last year, when Mike Horn set sail from Argentina on the first stage of his epic journey to Antarctica. His route will take him through Australasia, China, Russia, to the North Pole, then across Canada, North America, South America and back to Argentina. Mr. Horn is enthusiastic about his stop in NZ. "I've heard many wonderful things about this country with its culture and traditions so different to those I have ever witnessed before," explained Mike. "Through Young Explorer Programme we will sensitize the youths towards the appreciations of the 'unspoiled naturally beauty' that beholds us in the fiord lands - these words so rarely mentioned in today's world." 
(5 April 2009)

Love, hope and light
Whangarei-born, country music superstar Keith Urban, 41, is interviewed by The New York Times' Alan Light about his latest album, 'Defying Gravity' — his first since his admission to the Betty Ford Center. Urban, who is married to Australian actress Nicole Kidman, is happy with the new album and feels the break served him well, "I wanted to get back to the core of my earlier music," he said. "Simple odes to love, loss, longing — that's the stuff I naturally do, and instead of second-guessing it this time, I just went with it." It seems his fans are also happy with the new album because it went straight to #1 on the U.S. charts as soon as it was released. Urban will be promoting 'Defying Gravity' through a busy arena tour across the U.S. and Canada which starts in May. 
(25 March 2009)

Shocking and pleasing
Palmerston North teenager Levi Sherwood, 17, has shocked the freestyle motocross world (FMX) by winning the first event of the 2009 Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour in Mexico on debut, in front of 43,000 fans. "Winning here is the best day of my life," said Sherwood in an interview after his victory lap. Sherwood met Japan's Eigo Sato in the final where his "smooth skills, incredible flexibility and crazy extension" were too much for the Japanese rider. The second round of the tour begins in Calgary, Canada on May 30. 
(30 March 2009)

Top honours for Bell 
New Zealand dancer Rodney Bell earned an 'Izzie' at the 23rd Isadora Duncan Dance Awards in San Francisco last week, for his part in the Axis Dance Company's ensemble performance 'To Color Me Different'. Touted as "one of the most riveting Bay Area dances of 2008" by the San Francisco Chronicle, 'To Color Me Different' "is not a duet about being disabled [Bell's lower body is paralysed]; it's about the perils of attraction and trust". San Francisco Chronicle reporter Rachel Howard had this to say about the ensemble: "Axis Dance Company members Sonsheree Giles and Rodney Bell toss themselves into a torrent of volatile intimacy. Giles flips herself over Bell's shoulders and across the stage; Bell throws the wheelchair, tightly lashed to his immobile legs, to the floor and rolls upright again, in full command of his essentially three-limbed physicality." Bell was paralysed from the mid-chest down after a motorcycle accident in 1990. He has been a member of Axis since 2007 and also represented New Zealand for 10 years playing wheelchair basketball. 
(25 March 2009)

Designing the future 
British-born, Hawkes Bay-based designer David Trubridge, takes part in a Q&A for the latest issue of Dwell, where he quizzed about number of things like his ideal working environment, what music keeps him thinking about design and where he sees his profession in 20 years, which he puts a caveat on: "Cultures are historically defined by their art, but we've lost that fundamentally human element and replaced it with a consumer binge. Designers are crucial to the future, creating objects that are like nourishing food: lasting, with a sense of identity and sufficiency within them." 
(April 2009)

Auckland calling 
New Zealand could be one of the world's last havens as climate change fundamentally changes the planet according to the scientist and creator of the Gaia theory James Lovelock, and for this reason, on the back of reports of American eco-migrants making their way here, New Zealand is now a preferred location for the British. The country's islands, renowned for their temperate climate, clean environment and low population, have often been put forward by greens as potential "lifeboats" for a world suffering serious warming. Lizzy and Mike Larmer-Cottle have moved their family from London to Albany. Britain's recent climate of summer droughts and warm, wet winters was becoming alarming, said Lizzy. She added: "England was just having more and more flooding — if that continues, half of it is going to be underwater." Statistics NZ, said more than 18,000 British residents moved here last year alone. 
(29 March 2009)

Reserved for the Solomons 
Last year, New Zealand Territorial Forces machine gunner Private Adam Friend, 33, left the Marlborough Museum where he had been putting together an exhibition on the history of grape growing in the region, to begin pre-deployment training for a four-month tour of duty in the Solomon Islands. Friend, who has a PhD in viticulture, is posted as part of the New Zealand Defence Force's contribution to the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, or Ramsi. This is his second deployment. He was in East Timor last year and raves about the part-time soldier's life. "I was never interested in the army when I was younger. I was interested in plants. "But it's the camaraderie in difficult situations that's great. You get put into situations you would never be put in civilian life and you have to work as a team, so there are strong bonds and friendships." Most of the 44 New Zealand soldiers in the Solomon Islands are reservists and the army doesn't shy away from admitting they would struggle without the 1750 reservists. "The Territorial Force is fundamental to the organisational health of the army," Brigadier Dave Gawn says, adding that missions to the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and East Timor would be imperilled without the reservists. 
(26 March 2009)

Golf enhanced 
The "scenic but challenging" Cape Kidnappers course is played by Golf Digest's Max Adler who describes in an online diary that "unlike a lot of courses that encompass improbable geography, Kidnappers is laid out to be a pretty manageable walk." "Lulled into a false sense of security the evening prior with a 71 (+1) at 6,300-yard Rotorua Golf Course, the true state of my game came under spotlight at photogenic Cape Kidnappers. There'd be nothing better than to gaze at these pictures years from now and recall a great round, but not all dreams come true." Cape Kidnappers was designed by American Tom Doak and was completed in 2004. It is currently ranked the 41st best golf course in the world by Golf Magazine. 
(24 March 2009)

Catch him if you can 
Whitianga self-confessed hacker Owen Thor Walker, 19, who was alleged to have been involved with a criminal network which infiltrated more than 1 million computers worldwide, has been hired by TelstaClear as a cyber security consultant. Walker has skills that can help senior executives and customers understand the security threats to their networks, TelstraClear spokesman Chris Mirams told National Radio. Charges against Walker — who used the online name "AKILL" and wrote so-called botnet infiltration programs for the crime network — were dismissed and he was released without a criminal record after paying a fine and forfeiting cash paid by the criminal group for his expertise. Walker has delivered a series of seminars for TelstraClear, advised senior security and management staff at the company and has taken part in an advertising campaign, Mirams said. 
(25 March 2009)

The power of the pedal 
New Zealand is considering building a 3,000 km bike path winding through the country in an attempt to stimulate tourism and maintain an industry central to the country's economy. The project would cost around $28 million dollars, and is one of around twenty options that the government is considering as a part of an economic stimulus. Regional councils would have to agree to the route, which would become one of the longest continuous bike routes in the world, alongside the 6,000 km North Sea Cycle Route in Europe and the 4,000 km la Route Verte, in Canada. 
(25 March 2009)

Reigniting the value of wool
As Chair of Wool Partners International, Theresa Gattung is at the forefront of a campaign to reignite the value of one of New Zealand's oldest export commodities on the world stage. Gattung sees an opportunity "to get back in the driver's seat and position New Zealand wool as premium brand on the world stage. Our wool is widely recognised as the best in the world but we don't do enough to market it and believe it or not, we even sell at much lower prices than our customers are prepared to pay". Gattung is focused on developing opportunities in the US and European markets and believes in "an industry that's worth $1billion in export earnings with the potential to be worth twice that in five years". Central to the challenge is repositioning the New Zealand wool brand as a premium, sustainable choice for international consumers. "We are fortunate to be at a moment in time when green and luxury can go together. This was not always the case, but it is now and wool is the perfect product to bring together the Gucci and the Hippie."
(8 April 2009)

Janet's Grace 
"To whatever extent the intellectual, emotional, and artistic struggles of Janet Frame's protagonist [in Towards Another Summer] mirror those of its author, a wrenching portrait of both emerges, fascinating especially in its exploration of nostalgia as well as in its cross-genre experimentation with the novel as memoir," writes Robert Braile in a Boston Globe review. "Written in 1963, Frame refused to have Towards Another Summer published in her lifetime, considering it too revealing. The author skillfully depicts the psychological intricacies of nostalgia, using various narrative techniques to express the conflict between a desired past and an undesired present at the heart of this emotion. She is so artful in doing so that it lends credence to the autobiographical nature of the novel, especially as Frame also suffered emotional difficulties, also went on a similar weekend trip in the early 1960s, and also was from New Zealand but lived in London. She even physically resembled Grace." 
(10 June 2009)

Rising star 
Christchurch-born singer Boh Runga is the "next singer-songwriter to keep your eyes on" according to music site Top40-charts, which goes on to describe LA-based Runga's latest solo album Right Here as "strongly reflective of her time spent transplanted to a life in Silver Lake." Right Here has a very notable, yet eclectic roster of artists contributing to the album including Serj Tankian (System of a Down) and writing collaborations with Wendy Melvoin (Prince and the Revolution), Kevin Savigar, Rod Stewart's songwriter and Shelly Peiken who wrote 'Bitch' for Meredith Brooks and also 'Genie in a Bottle' for Christina Aguilera. Runga also runs a New Zealand-based jewellery line — her second collaboration with New Zealand Mint called The Messenger Stories — which will be available in the United States this year. 
(25 June 2009)