Report from Down Under

It's been a while since my last post! You might be wondering what the hold up has been? Well, nothing in particular really. We have been pretty busy lately. It seems like something is always going on every weekend.

I guess the first place to start is back in May for the 48 Hour Film extravaganza...

Once again, I participated in this crazy event which sets teams off acrossthe city with the goal of producing a short film (5-7 mins) from scratch in just 48 hours. Jenni's Angels was my team, a great bunch of people who are a mix of newbies (like me), film enthusiasts and even a few professionals (and aspiring professionals). The team has actually been together for several years now (I think this is their 4th 48 Hour event).

One thing that I like about Jenni's Angels is that many of them are SF/Fantasy/Gaming fans like myself. Our film from last year was Destination Earth -- click the link to watch it on YouTube. Since genres are chosen randomly from an assortment that includes everything from musical to horror film, once again we got pretty lucky with the assignment: "Super Hero / Fairy Tale". Here's what we came up with:



As you can see, we took a humorous approach to the subject matter. Remember that this is a competition, after all, and laughs get votes (although in this case apparently not because we didn't win anything! Boo!). And, as anyone who has been to a science fiction convention and watched a 'serious' costume skit can attest, doing a super hero story with a serious approach is risky business. I was pleased that our take, tough hardly a laugh riot, is fun to watch and even includes a decent number of cool SFX shots. We had a good team of writers on board, and it never ceases to amaze me how the editing and technical side gets done so well.

Stacey was also involved in 48, but this time it was in an official capacity as a representative of Film Wellington. They assist filmmakers both large and small on everything from location scouting and permits to coordinating city-related services. Her role involved assisting the event organisers and the teams leading up to and all throughout the weekend. This included a couple of phone calls in the middle of the night from teams asking for help. From the moment the starting gun goes off on Friday night until Sunday, it's a mad dash and many teams don't get a wink of sleep. The deadline is taken very seriously, and many teams don't make it. Our film was raced in with just 4 seconds (yes) to spare.

What else to talk about...? Hmmm. Well, I've taken up some new hobbies. Bicycling you already know about from the last post. It's going well, though winter is an extremely trying time to be attempting it. Up until this past week (when weather from hell rolled in and has not left) I was managing to bike to work about 3-4 times a week, which is pretty good IMHO.

We've also started a worm farm! Yes, I know you're asking "why...?" Well, we're not sure ourselves. It seemed like a clever way to get rid of some of our kitchen veggie scraps? Seriously, though, it's just something we wanted to try. The truth is that the benefits of worm culturing are really better utilised in a proper garden (which we don't have) but it's still fun and good practice for the day when we do. We bought the device off of TradeMe, which consists of a three circular trays on legs, with a spout at the bottom. This is for draining off the precious worm juice which apparently plants really like. It's about 2.5 feet in diameter, so takes up very little space on the back patio.

You're probably wondering where you get worms for it? We got our worms from Commonsense Organics, a local organics market. Imagine my horror when I went to pick them up, expecting a little plastic bag of worms, only to discover it was a giant box of dirt with all sorts of creepy crawlies in it! This I had to carry home on the bus. The lady city next to me was not happy...you could see all sorts of little critters crawling out of the box. Well, despite the daggers her eyes were throwing, I managed to get home and put the worms in the trays along with some newspaper and a few carrot shavings to get them started. It can take a while to get the process going, but so far ours seems to be working pretty well. We add scraps to it about once a week, along with some occasional lime. Eventually, I will take some of the worms out and add them to the main compost bin so they can speed that up as well.

Want to start our own worm farm? Check out this page.

In October, I am enrolled to take a sustainable households course through Wellington High School. I am very much looking forward to it. This is subject matter that I'm interested in regardless, but in particular lately have been thinking a lot about. We are slowly starting to think about buying a house here in New Zealand, and would like to incorporate some 'green' technology in it. I would be thrilled to have solar power and gray water reticulation systems. New Zealand homes are notoriously poorly insulated (essentially just wood boxes with no insulation at all), so energy use for heating is also an issue. Lastly, of course, I really want a proper space for a vegetable garden and areas to practice some urban agriculture. And we have more traditional criteria for a home that must be met as well, such as the kitchen size and number of bedrooms, etc. Finding something that meets our expectations and is affordable is going to be really, really hard. I'll keep you posted on that as it develops...

Well, in closing... part of our goal in coming to New Zealand was just to 'try new things'. In that spirit, this is the Feijoa, a wonderful, tart little fruit that I have grown to love. Sadly, it's just now gone out of season here and is starting to become rare in the grocery stores. (Remember what I said before about seasonal produce in NZ? Yep.) It's got a strange flavour that's almost medicinal, tangy and sweet at the same time. I don't think I had ever seen one before coming to NZ, however apparently they are grown in the U.S., so some of you back home might like to seek them out at the local farmer's market. Enjoy!