Twisted Fate 2!

Now where was I? Yes "Life Intervened".
So I am in New Zealand in Christchurch and what a lovely city. Surrounded by middle earth snow covered mountains and looking like a Cambridge wanna be with its punters on the river Avon (couldn't they come up with a different name). But is beautiful in every sense of the word. I have started my Chef course at the New Zealand School of Food and Wine which you can read about on my other blog Squeezing Grapes where I will attempt to write a daily note of my experiences and hopefully as the cooking develops maybe some recipes and photos as well. THis blog will be for other activities however. I got a chance to write an article about farmers markets in Christchurch for a local magazine called Metropol. I will add a link to the mag once its published and hopefully I will write upcoming articles and advertorials for them, fingers crossed. I have also been approached by a hospitality company to perhaps write restaurant reviews for them so fingers and toes crossed for that. I worked in a factory for a week and a half loading chocolate chips and chocolate buttons into hopper bins for packaging. That was fun and it didn't harm me concerning eating of the product as the cloying smell of chocolate all around you stops you from actually wanting to eat any of it. I also had the privelidge of doing almonds, coconut and potato flakes. That was a pain and the potato dust that circled me like that dirty Peanuts character would have had many a druggie follow me in the hope of some class A drug as the powder that formed all over the place and on the edges of your nostrils looked suspiciously like cocaine. It was mundane work and the crew I worked with took a while to become involuntarily quiet and we all looked so funny in our hair nets and white overalls. But its over now unless I decide to do some additional late night work for Tip Top a bread and icecream factory - depends on whether I want to work minimum wage again for long stretches of boredom together with exhausting repetitive hard work. Well I will have to think about that. I do however want to work in a restaurant or bar somewhere for a while maybe for a couple of nights a week just to give me some extra cash but also the experience in the hospitality industry. Have met a guy on my course who works as a chef for the supa yachts. Now that would be a job and a far cry from minimum wage also.

But speaking fo bars I recently attended an evening in Poplar street where a friend of Lisa's was performing on an open mic evening. Now having never been to an evening like this before I was keen to check it out. We had a nice meal in the bar opposite - the place is full of trendy bars. Then into The Vespa Bar (with actual vespa on wall and parphenalia about vespas all about). The evening was fabulous with the main musician in charge of the evening a cool dude with a love for playing. People would come up - ask if he could accompany them to a particular tune and even if he didn't know it he would give it a go and the result was astonishing. Two other friends - one on base, looking blind or cool not sure as he wore sunglasses all evening. The other on bongos. they would come up on stage either before or part way through someones song and just join in. It was a wild jam session that seemed so natural and all the parts came together for anyone who wanted to get up there.

Previous week we attended a recital for belly dancers. I know sounds bizarre already and it was. The amatuer nature of some of the perfomances let down the overall evening but it was interesting and fun nevertheless. Cool venu called the Loons in an even cooler town called Lyttelton. Juggling seemed an odd combination to the belly dancing but the cabaret nature of the event worked overall. Shame not many people attended. Maybe the overall feel would have been more enjoyable with a bigger crowd.

Then a big crowd for Steve Coogan. Having seen Tim Minchin in Sydney recently we had masterpiece already covered. So Steve had a tall order to cover. He didn't bother. The majority of his performance seemed phoned in and pre-recorded from the 80's. It was overly crude without being funny (not saying you can't be crude and funny - Tim acheived it in spades). But what was Steve doing. Old characters and old humour. Bernard Manning - did not think Steve's humour was of that ilk but then again some comedians tour just for the money and have no new material. Currently he has dropped totally in my estimations.

Hopefully will go and see Danny Bhoy next week. Looks far more promising anyway. Will update you accordingly.

Want to catch Star Trek in the next day or so will let you know how it goes.

Thanks dear reader whoever you maybe.
D