Kiwiana
This email from Claire pumped a healthy dose of New Zealand back into my blood. If you haven't been to NZ and you plan to go, my advice is to pack with the expectation that you may never want to return home.
In many ways I think New Zealand is the inverse of China. So far, I love them both.
"Saturday afternoon we went for a dive and Amie came and sat in the car round red rocks. I wasn't in for very long but it was so beautiful. The water was so clean and I saw a big stingray and a HUGE school of herring. Its the most magic feeling sitting in the middle of so many fish that aren't scared of you. Then we came home and went out for dinner at Cinta with a whole heap of people. Then we went to ,........FLY MY PRETTIES! Oh Bets, I wish you could have been there, It was everything and more. They sang some oldies and goodies but heaps of new songs, really great new songs. this girl Holly Smith, she stood out. Her voice is a mixture between Alicia Keys and Joss Stone but I would go as far as to say better. She writes amazing music and plays lots of instruments...my new NZ idol. ANyway, so I won't rub it in but it was great, it was the last night of the shows and they all got encored back on very loudly. Guess what they played? SInging in my Soul! It was so so so cool, with the guy with the lithp.And then they got encored back on again, and so the drums guy comes out and starts up this awesome beat, a few minutes later the bass comes out and joins him, and so on until they'll all back on playing this really funky tune which had the entired theatre up dancing (it was a sit down concert). Then they all slowly went back out in reverse order till it was just the bass and the drums and they had this massive jam session that just rocked. Finally, after ages they got really close to each other, looking really intense and found a beat and 'BANG: it was all over. Sigh, really great.
Now, what made the night cathartic is that we thought we were in the process of electing a National government. Amie was receiving texts every few minutes during the concert with the updates. Labour started out 11 points down but slowly slowly crawled back up. 90% of the vote was counted and we get a text 'sorry lv, looks like we've lost it.' Oh god, it was very depressing. Then next thing we here we're up 20,000 votes nationally which meant we'd won. AAAh, and Greens had scraped in with their 5%. So the night ended utterly victoriously, exept for the fact that there are still 218,000 special votes to be counted and the whole thing is soooooo close that those could change everything. We haven't sighed with relief yet but I must say, I felt so proud to be a NZer that night, after that concert. It was funny cause half way through the concert, one of the guys came out and updated us...he was like....Winston Peters is out In Tauranga......everyone erupted in applause. he then told us Labour was neck and neck and we erupted again.....he said 'sorry if you're a national supporter but hell, you're at a fly my pretties concert, what did you expect.' "
In many ways I think New Zealand is the inverse of China. So far, I love them both.
"Saturday afternoon we went for a dive and Amie came and sat in the car round red rocks. I wasn't in for very long but it was so beautiful. The water was so clean and I saw a big stingray and a HUGE school of herring. Its the most magic feeling sitting in the middle of so many fish that aren't scared of you. Then we came home and went out for dinner at Cinta with a whole heap of people. Then we went to ,........FLY MY PRETTIES! Oh Bets, I wish you could have been there, It was everything and more. They sang some oldies and goodies but heaps of new songs, really great new songs. this girl Holly Smith, she stood out. Her voice is a mixture between Alicia Keys and Joss Stone but I would go as far as to say better. She writes amazing music and plays lots of instruments...my new NZ idol. ANyway, so I won't rub it in but it was great, it was the last night of the shows and they all got encored back on very loudly. Guess what they played? SInging in my Soul! It was so so so cool, with the guy with the lithp.And then they got encored back on again, and so the drums guy comes out and starts up this awesome beat, a few minutes later the bass comes out and joins him, and so on until they'll all back on playing this really funky tune which had the entired theatre up dancing (it was a sit down concert). Then they all slowly went back out in reverse order till it was just the bass and the drums and they had this massive jam session that just rocked. Finally, after ages they got really close to each other, looking really intense and found a beat and 'BANG: it was all over. Sigh, really great.
Now, what made the night cathartic is that we thought we were in the process of electing a National government. Amie was receiving texts every few minutes during the concert with the updates. Labour started out 11 points down but slowly slowly crawled back up. 90% of the vote was counted and we get a text 'sorry lv, looks like we've lost it.' Oh god, it was very depressing. Then next thing we here we're up 20,000 votes nationally which meant we'd won. AAAh, and Greens had scraped in with their 5%. So the night ended utterly victoriously, exept for the fact that there are still 218,000 special votes to be counted and the whole thing is soooooo close that those could change everything. We haven't sighed with relief yet but I must say, I felt so proud to be a NZer that night, after that concert. It was funny cause half way through the concert, one of the guys came out and updated us...he was like....Winston Peters is out In Tauranga......everyone erupted in applause. he then told us Labour was neck and neck and we erupted again.....he said 'sorry if you're a national supporter but hell, you're at a fly my pretties concert, what did you expect.' "
posted by B | 6:29 AM
1 Comments:
Too bad Claire doesn't believe in freedom!!
Chris in NZ hopes you're having fun (Claire's friend).
(the right wing one).
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