Blog Archives

Inspiring A City’s Renaissance

Inspiring A City’s Renaissance

Christchurch, “New Zealand’s bravest and most resilient communities … is re-emerging as one of most exciting cities,” according to Lonely Planet author Brett Atkinson. “If you’re heading to the South Island, definitely…

Ship Splits In The Rough

Ship Splits In The Rough

A Maritime New Zealand image of the stricken container ship Rena split in two features in the Seattle Post Intelligencer ‘News of the world in photos’ series. The Greek-owned ship ran aground on Astrolabe Reef off…

Blogging About Bollywood

Blogging About Bollywood

New Zealand-based Vanessa Barnes, who comes from an un-named “small provincial town”, loves Indian film, so she writes about it on her blog ‘Shahrukh is Love’, which includes reviews of over 130 Bollywood…

Carterton’s Hot Air Balloon Tragedy

Carterton’s Hot Air Balloon Tragedy

New Zealand is in mourning following a fiery hot air balloon crash in the Wairarapa that left eleven people dead. The tragedy occurred when the balloon came entangled in power lines, causing the basket…

Justice Reserved For

Justice Reserved For

Justice is the name most often refused by New Zealand registrars in the past ten years, with 49 sets of parents prevented from doing so according to the department for internal affairs. Next on…

Friendliest Place On The Planet

Friendliest Place On The Planet

New Zealand is the world’s friendliest place according to the results of HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey. “New Zealanders as a whole seem like happy people, and that translates into friendly, helpful and kind people,”…

Dreaming Of A Bach Life

Dreaming Of A Bach Life

New Zealanders and Australians could easily develop hospitality schools that would give Lausanne and Cornell a thumping reflects Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé after his “most wonderful eight-day holiday.” “ are good at hosting, selling, serving…

Region Of Potheads

Region Of Potheads

“New Zealand and Australia have a proud history of co-operation, but now it seems the nations have achieved a more dubious honour: the world’s biggest pot-heads,” The Sydney Morning Herald’s Amy Corderoy writes. “Together the countries…

Kawa Kawa Infused

Kawa Kawa Infused

Fine-dining Mokoia Restaurant at Rotorua’s award-winning Wai Ora Spa is reviewed by Australia’s favourite food blogger, Not Quite Nigella for Business Spectator. She begins with rewana, served with whipped garlic butter and a mango and…

Secret Poi Swinging In NY

Secret Poi Swinging In NY

New York fire poi dancers are flouting fire restrictions and meeting stealthily on top of city rooftops to attend secret classes, where students are careful to remove any traces of their activity afterward….

Electrifying In The Tropics

Electrifying In The Tropics

The Naked and Famous play Bangkok’s Moonstar Studio on 17 January and are “set to electrify Thai audiences with alternative pop and rock songs, including Young Blood and Punching in a Dream.” “The quintet…

Real Life Evil On Wheels

Real Life Evil On Wheels

The other half of comedy duo Flight of the Conchords Jemaine Clement’s “delightfully bizarre taste in costumes carries on,” Huffington Post correspondent Jordan Zakarin writes, describing Clement’s latest get-up for his role as the evil Boris…

Kindness Donated By Strangers

Kindness Donated By Strangers

Donors from across the globe have helped fund a New Zealand English teacher’s life-saving liver transplant, which was carried out at Pusan National University Hospital in Yangsan, South Korea. Mick Milne, 47, who has…

Sheffield Gets Real Coffee

Sheffield Gets Real Coffee

New Zealander Jonathan Perry has recently opened a coffee shop, called Tamper Coffee, in Sheffield. At 16, Perry moved to South Yorkshire with dreams of a football career but after five years of…

Auckland’s Movie Coup

Auckland’s Movie Coup

Filming begins in Auckland on Hollywood blockbuster, WWII political-thriller Emperor this month at Henderson’s Auckland Film Studios. Lost heartthrob Matthew Fox, 45, stars. Inspired by true events, Emperor is an epic story of love and understanding set amidst the uncertainties…

Thank You New Zealand

Thank You New Zealand

“Once again I am pleased to thank New Zealand. No country, outside of my native United States, has treated me better than New Zealand. New Zealand has added me to a list of many…

Rugby Rules In North Carolina

Rugby Rules In North Carolina

New Zealander Geoffrey Maw, who lives in North Carolina’s Elizabeth City, is starting a rugby club for high school-age players in Elizabeth City and Pasquotank and Perquimans Counties. Maw — a real estate agent…

Low On Brands, High On Beauty

Low On Brands, High On Beauty

For the first time, New Zealand is included in Monocle’s index of the top 30 soft power nations, coming in at number 17 and introduced as: “Low on brands, high on beauty and in between on…

Startup And Power On

Startup And Power On

New Zealand electricity provider Powershop, a startup company owned by Meridian Energy, the largest electricity generator and retailer in the country, is like eBay for electricity, according to CEO Ari Sargent. Powershop is built…

Excellent Website Banner

Excellent Website Banner

American Tom Peters, writer on business management practices and best-known for In Search of Excellence, is so enamoured with New Zealand, his website features a New Zealand-themed banner. The site announced: “Tom and his wife,…

Toward A Takeaway Solution

Toward A Takeaway Solution

Head of purchasing at pioneer Wellington coffee roaster Cafe L’Affare Zeke Alley says New Zealand is “screaming out for a solution” to the ever-increasing problem of disposing of paper takeaway coffee cups. Cafe L’Affare’s…

Henry Receives Knighthood

Henry Receives Knighthood

Rugby World Cup-winning All Blacks coach Graham Henry, 65, has been awarded a knighthood in New Zealand’s annual New Year Honours List. Henry, a former school teacher, who resigned the All Blacks coaching job…

Motorcycling’s Ultimate Race

Motorcycling’s Ultimate Race

New Zealand’s top motor sports rider Chris Birch, 31, who recently took second place at the 2011 Roof of Africa race, will ride in the 34th running of the Dakar Rally, which begins 1…

Orca vs Shark vs Dog

Orca vs Shark vs Dog

On Boxing Day at Blue Cliffs Beach near Tuatapere, residents witnessed a group of orca whales attacking a shoal of sharks. One shark desperate to escape from the enormous beasts even beached itself on…

Spencer Drives The Thing

Spencer Drives The Thing

The glamorous 48.5m super yacht T6, custom built for New Zealand paper magnate John Spencer, creates a fuss wherever it goes, whether Monaco, the Caribbean or the hazardous North-West Passage in the Arctic. On…

Underworld Holistics

Underworld Holistics

Rotorua’s Tikitere looks so much like a trip to the underworld that when Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw set his eyes on the area he immediately dubbed it “Hellsgate”. “It is said that Shaw,…

Feel And Scale Of Earlier Times

Feel And Scale Of Earlier Times

“ downtown is dominated by 21st century high-rises, but neighbourhoods like Ponsonby retain the feel and scale of earlier times,” Allan Seiden writes for the Hawaii Reporter, “with galleries and boutiques to browse and eateries…

Tracing A Seabird Legacy

Tracing A Seabird Legacy

Dunedin-born author and photographer Neville Peat’s latest book Seabird Genius: The Story of L.E. Richdale, the Royal Albatross, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin, is included in the Guardian’s Christmas ‘Birdbooker Report’. “ the first biography…

Taste For The Finer Things

Taste For The Finer Things

The intestinal transplant New Zealander Matisse Reid, 11, received a year ago at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh came with an unexpected surprise. The fifth-grader (Year 6) developed a sophisticated palate: a taste for…

Time Is Really Money

Time Is Really Money

Kapiti-born screenwriter, producer, and director Andrew Niccol’s latest blockbuster In Time, “a fiendishly clever sci-fi concept,” starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is reviewed in the Cyprus Mail. “The setting’s the thing, a world where time…

Memorable In Margaret

Memorable In Margaret

New Zealand-raised True Blood star Anna Paquin, 29, graced the cover of LA Weekly’s Winter Film Issue, which named Margaret — Paquin plays the lead as teenager Lisa — as the best film of the year. The film was shot…

Cliff-Top Perfection

Cliff-Top Perfection

The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs has been named the No. 1 Lodge in Australia and Pacific Nations on the 2012 Gold List, ‘The World’s Best Places to Stay’ selected by the readers of Condé Nast…

Pecking Good At Math

Pecking Good At Math

Dr Damian Scarf, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Otago, and two colleagues have discovered that pigeons can learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now had been demonstrated only in…

Frighteningly Festive

Frighteningly Festive

Auckland’s Whitcoulls Santa statue, which was built in 1960, is the world’s most unintentionally creepy Christmas ornament according to American humour website Cracked. Before a 2009 makeover, the statue had a sly winking left…

Gourmet Best On Sundays

Gourmet Best On Sundays

Two of the country’s most well known weekend farmers’ markets, Central Otago Farmers’ Market and Auckland’s La Cigale, are represented in a Jaunted article. “On Sundays from 9:00 a.m. — 1:00 p.m. from October-February,…

Optically Pure Blue-Violet Hues

Optically Pure Blue-Violet Hues

Scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) say that Blue Lake in Nelson Lakes National Park might be the clearest freshwater body in the world. The NIWA scientists said the…

Oddball Wins Over Director

Oddball Wins Over Director

The Peter Jackson-produced and Steven Spielberg-directed 3-D performance-capture film The Adventures of Tintin opens in the United States this week just ahead of the film’s New Zealand release. The Adventures of Tintin arrives in the US as…

Boeing Gets A Paint Job

Boeing Gets A Paint Job

The new Air New Zealand Boeing 777-300ER, unveiled at Boeing’s paint hangar facility in Seattle, is the world’s largest commercially operated aircraft to be painted entirely in black. The special paint job took Boeing…

Ridiculously Handsome Nomads

Ridiculously Handsome Nomads

The biggest thing to happen to New Zealand since Peter Jackson’s makeover is Auckland band The Naked and Famous according to Aidin Vaziri writing for the San Francisco Chronicle. “ a…

Leave Your Inhibitions Behind

Leave Your Inhibitions Behind

“Hector’s dolphins may be the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world, but they will seem larger than life when you are swimming nose-to-nose with them in the Pacific Ocean,” Boston Globe correspondent Kari Bodnarchuk writes….

Executive Eye For Detail

Executive Eye For Detail

Auckland-raised executive chef Ryan Arboleda shares some two of his favourite recipes with the Bangkok Post: Slow cooked New Zealand lamb breast with shaved fennel and pureed peas and Tiramisu ‘Verrine’. Philippines-born Arboleda has worked…

Courageous Man To The End

Courageous Man To The End

Nelson-born Jason Richards, V8 Supercar champion “to the last”, has died in Melbourne. He was 35. Peter Kogoy writes Richards’ obituary for The Australian: “His duel at the wheel of the Team BOC Commodore with…

Tales Of Vineyards And Vintners

Tales Of Vineyards And Vintners

Four days are not enough time to fully immerse yourself in the land of the long white cloud, writes Kari Gislason for Adelaide Now. Gislason spends two of her three nights visit at the “outlandishly…

Heirlooms Of Past For Future

Heirlooms Of Past For Future

‘Maori — Their Treasures Have a Soul,’ an exhibition of Maori art and artifacts at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on through 22 January, juxtaposes ancestral heirlooms with contemporary art, architecture, photography, film…

Pupils Staying Strong

Pupils Staying Strong

Students from Fendalton Open-Air School in Christchurch are the first group members — calling themselves Faultline Fiction — of the Guardian site to vividly recount what happened when earthquakes struck their city, changing their…

Hansen Replaces Henry

Hansen Replaces Henry

The New Zealand Rugby Union have appointed 52-year-old former policeman Steve Hansen as their new coach, replacing Graham Henry who stepped down after winning the World Cup. Dunedin-born Hansen was widely tipped to get…

Whimsical Fashion Wanderings

Whimsical Fashion Wanderings

Twenty-two-year-old Christchurch woman Jo and photographer partner Barnaby have begun a fashion blog in which the couple show off vintage finds against “picturesque” New Zealand landscapes. In late 2011 the blog partnered with local…

Magical Early Christmas

Magical Early Christmas

The Black Caps celebrated “an early Christmas” with front-page media praise for a seven-run cricket victory in the second Test over Australia in Hobart. Captain Ross Taylor’s remark that the historic win “was for…

One Legendary Queen

One Legendary Queen

Transgender icon Taumaranui-born Carmen Rupe has died in Sydney, aged 75. Carmen was born into a family of 13 and was known as Trevor Rupe for about the first 20 years of her life….

Foo Fighters Make Earth Move

Foo Fighters Make Earth Move

Auckland GeoNet scientists have said that the recent Foo Fighters concert at Western Springs caused geological vibrations on par with “volcanic tremors”. The vibrations emitted “a strong low signal,” geologists at GeoNet reported. “The…

It’s Better Than Ever

It’s Better Than Ever

The Bay of Plenty region has launched a new tourism campaign in an attempt to erase images of oiled beaches and dead wildlife from the minds of potential visitors, rebranding itself with the slogan…

Festive Season Realities

Festive Season Realities

A billboard outside Auckland’s Anglican St Matthew’s in the City of the Virgin Mary gasping as she examines a pregnancy testing kit has sparked fiery debate. Defending the poster, the vicar, the Rev Glynn…

Resetting The Global Compass

Resetting The Global Compass

New Zealand scientists Tony Hurst and Stewart Bennie will travel to Antarctica on 28 December to reset the global compass. The pair, who work for New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS…

Big Crowds In The Bay

Big Crowds In The Bay

“At the close of 2010, members of Auckland rock combo The Naked and Famous were innocents abroad, wide-eyed New Zealanders who — thanks to sudden international interest in their debut Passive Me, Aggressive You — finally…

Dual-International In Charge

Dual-International In Charge

Allrounder Suzie Bates, 24, has been appointed captain of the White Ferns succeeding Aimee Watkins, who retired in July. “I knew there was a chance of leading this team but there are obviously other…

Funny Man Loves It Live

Funny Man Loves It Live

New Zealand-born comedian Rhys Darby, 37, who played manager Murray in the in Flight of the Conchords series, recently performed five shows at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. Darby says live comedy remains his passion…