You would think Chen Kun could relax now. With a string of incredibly successful movies under his belt including The National Anthem, The Knot, Chongqing Hot Pot and Painted Skin and a virtual permanent residency within the Forbes China Celebrity 100, Chen is a household name in his home country. Yet taking it easy isn’t […]
The best in New Zealand; now that’s a lofty height. It’s a special zone with rarified air that only people like Sir Patrick Hogan, Lisa Carrington, Peter Beck, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Peter Jackson and Lydia Ko get to breathe. It’s also an amazing place where the All Blacks, Crusaders and Scott Robertson (and maybe Ian Foster […]
‘Quantitative Easing’; it’s the phrase on every banker’s lips and that gets me worried because we don’t often see eye-to-eye on anything – well, okay, so let’s make that never. But finding out about this apparently momentous financial event that can cure blindness and make the crippled walk again is not easy. Looking online for […]
Technology comes, goes and is quickly forgotten. Yet quality craftsmanship and style are eternal. Nothing illustrates this truism better than the field of luxury watches where meticulous attention to detail in manufacture, backed by uninhibited imagination in design, have turned each model into a unique wearable work of art. In a delicious irony, these elite […]
New Zealand, a natural wonderland of lush, green native bush and crystal-clear clean water. The way the Earth was made and should always remain – without being spoiled by toxic man-made chemicals and pollution. Ukiwi was inspired by this and became determined to develop a range of products that truly reflected our unsullied environment by […]
Being eight-years old is a wonderful time in your life as you are just starting to realise the difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Then, once you find the latter – you put a picture of it up on your wall to inspire you, and to figure out why it is so good. But, […]
Ham and Cheese. Lamb and Mint. Pork and Apple. Some ingredients just go together, well, like salt and vinegar. They just taste like they were made as two halves of a divine pairing and once upon a time some chef with a sense of adventure had discovered these long lost twins and repatriated them in […]
Happy birthday to you! It’s 100 years since Prohibition started in the USA – sorry I’m a little late on the anniversary, the Eighteenth Amendment was actually passed on January 17 1920, but I’ve had a killer hangover… The US Prohibition lasted for 13 years until President Roosevelt signed off the Cullen-Harrison Act that basically […]
It’s time for a short holiday getaway but this time, thanks to COVID, I’m not headed to the airport – but to the Ferry Building at Britomart for a forty minute trip over to Waiheke. Though it is not a foreign destination – Waiheke IS overseas! So it will do nicely. The third most populated […]
Azerbaijan is not a country I have thought of often I must admit. A mysterious nation lurking in the Transcaucasia and boasting cities with alien planet-sounding names like; Zaqatala, Sumqayit and Xanyurdu, Azerbaijan was cloaked in the obscurity of the Soviet Union for most of the 20th century. Then, in the summer of ‘92 it […]
I got tricked. A woman with whom I did a fitness bootcamp once invited me to come along to do some ‘rugby stretches’ at her gym. She neglected to use the noun used by the gym itself to describe the class, in fact typed in bold CAPITALS at the top of the brochure, because she […]
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: No tomatoes. A 20th century joke to explain the 20th century phenomenon of Surrealism – which was the more public-friendly follow-up to Dada, in a similar way to how New Romantics followed on from Punk Rock. As the name suggests, Surrealism was […]
Hi, my name is Cy Sinderson and I am an aerophile. It is a serious affliction as people with my condition cannot handle the rigours of modern life without receiving regular succour in the form of time spent experiencing the delicious bureaucracy of travel at airports. My issues started off as Tripophobia where I feared […]
So Auckland has a water shortage. Again. Hard to believe considering we have an average rainfall of 1,284mm per year, 14 water reservoirs capable of holding over 100 gigalitres (or 100 billion litres of water) plus a pipe spewing the stuff directly from the Waikato River. Sure, there may have been a touch less rain […]
When we go to get our beards trimmed at a mall like Commercial Bay in downtown Auckland, it’s very easy for us to pick up a personalised aftershave, hookah and/or vape while we’re there. And not even spare a single moment to marvel at how the impressive array of herbs, spices and oils we can […]
Berlin is a city that simply doesn’t get enough proper attention from Kiwis on their OEs, as it is usually just tacked on near the end of the average tiki-tour of European destinations. Which is a waste really because, once you’ve done London, Edinburgh, Rome, Gallipoli, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, Barcelona and all the other usual […]
King Richard I of England – or Richard the Lionheart – was around a real long time ago, between the 11th and 12th centuries. His time was pretty different to ours; there were no mobile phones, no internet, just ‘Heraldry’ – a weird system of coloured drawings on flags or shields that told you who […]
Visiting Hiroshima is all about experiencing emotion – and not the contrived stuff places like Disneyland serve up, I’m talking the real deal. I’ve been to Hiroshima twice and had two completely different reactions to it. The first time, I went by myself; it was a bleak, steel grey day and I was overwhelmed with […]
Contrary to what pompous wine snobs might imply – making your own homemade wine is actually really easy. Of course, making a good or great fruit wine is a whole other story, but you’ve got to start somewhere eh? I got into it largely because I have 37 feijoa trees on my section (no, sadly […]
Whilst Zoom has done a great job of subbing in for business meetings with overseas clients and partners, unfortunately it cannot replace our lost recreational travel in this hideous COVID-19-handicapped world. Certainly, all my plans for holidaying abroad have been put on hold for the immediate future. To appease my raging travel urges, in the […]
To say that film and TV actor Dev Patel is on an upward trajectory is an understatement. The star of Slumdog Millionaire, Lion, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and now, The Personal History of David Copperfield, has become the new go-to Everyman. So how has he done it? What is his secret to global […]
The enjoyment of wine is a lifelong journey. As a teenager you start off by sucking down a bladder of Chateau Cardboard from the supermarket bargain bins to get you into party mode. In your early twenties you start taking wine bottles to dinner parties, usually decided by price but sometimes by the number of […]
Now here is a true mix of a cocktail – blending the old with the new. An Old Fashioned, as befitting the name, is a cocktail that even pre-dates the concept of a “cocktail” with mixtures of spirits, sugar and bitters having been around since at least the early 19th century. Manuka honey of course, […]
Ernest Hemingway and President Kennedy’s favourite tipple, the Daiquiri enjoyed great popularity during the early part of the 20th century. The cocktail itself was developed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 largely due to Americans’ increased exposure to the rums of Cuba, until then under Spanish rule. The drink grew in popularity under Roosevelt’s presidency […]
As Clint Eastwood would say; “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend; those that give up when faced with adversity, and those who do not.” Australian Paul de Gelder is definitely one who refuses to give up. Absolutely. 100%. No. Way. Ever! How do we know? Well, not only did he […]
Product design is one of those glamorous jobs that absolutely everybody in design wants to get into. They dream of making a drink bottle that fits perfectly in your hand or an electric jug that boils water and looks so awesome you’d bring people home just to show them your kitchen appliances. I even was […]
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against […]
There are many unusual vocations out there, for example; Lion Tamer, Car Battery Smasher (yes, you do get to use a sledgehammer), Children’s Party Face Painter and Fragrance Chemist. Now, none of the above jobs tempt me much – except perhaps for Battery Smashing after a particularly tedious commute – but one I would seriously […]
“Wanna come do some weight training?” If you’ve been asked this question by a friend or work colleague and have quickly made up some lame excuse to dodge it – don’t feel bad, you’re not alone! Many people hear those very syllables and run directly for the hills. The thing is; weight training isn’t necessarily […]
Throughout history, the fox has been one of the superstars of folklore. You can’t casually pick up a volume of fables without reading of the latest Reynardian outrage – usually relating to the poultry shed and always involving cunning and/or sneakiness. Yet, as a Kiwi, I always had to rely on the illustrations that usually […]
Ask anyone to name the most famous ten buildings in the world and dollars will get you donuts that at least half will name the Sagrada Familia, especially if they are fans of great design. Once complete it will be one of the largest churches in the world at 90m x 45m but it is […]
I doubt anyone will argue this point: those four or so long weeks of Lockdown Level 4 were hard slog for us all. Being stuck inside with no visitation rights for the corner pub, a mate’s house or even the local beach was, shall we say; “not ideal”. Anyway, pacing about angrily like a wild […]
Utter the syllables; “Piña Colada” and, if you’re like me, you will immediately sink back onto your bar stool like it was a deckchair on the sun-drenched balcony of some luxury island resort overlooking the azure waters of a tropical lagoon. Such is the power of pleasant memories, Tom Cruise movies and cheesy-yet-iconic Rupert Holmes […]
A ninjutsu black belt-wearing friend once said, with more than a hint of desperation in his voice, as he assumed a prostrate position on the floor for the umpteenth time, “You know, I can’t wait for push-ups to become obsolete – or at least be regarded as bad for you!” Sorry, dude. No such luck. […]
You can never have too much of a good thing! This is great news as Yamaha have released their 2021 WaveRunner range and it’s available NOW in NZ. What’s more, most of the range is all-new with the GP Series race-inspired models and VX Series recreation models having had major feature and design upgrades. Plus, […]
Okay, so we all know the image by now: a lone dark figure struggling through heavy snow, crystals of cold flecking his mane of hair, beard and fur cape. He is obviously an alien to this environment – a fact starkly highlighted by his darkness against the bleached white background. Yet the man also appears […]
On a steamy frangipani-scented September night in 1979, thousands of excited Samoans packed into Apia Park. They’d come to watch the burly Fanene Peter Maivia clamber into the ring with the equally stolid and peroxide-haired Harley Race. For the next hour, these two massive tree trunk-like wrestlers battered each other into submission in time to […]
Trees. For many of us they are those irritating things that block out the sun, harbour noisy birds and have roots that create havoc with our drainage systems. It seems like only yesterday that our years of badgering lawmakers finally got them to relinquish their authoritarian control of the vegetation in our backyards enough to […]
So, Justin Timberlake has written a book; Hindsight & All the Things I Can’t See In Front of Me. Wow! Yet another celebrity kiss and tell featuring ruminations of a spoiled brat’s cash, girls and party-soaked life. Taking time out to read this epistle is going straight onto my “To Do” list – somewhere between […]
Yamaha’s WaveRunner engineers have been busy, constantly improving what is already a world-renowned championship winning platform. With the GP1800R racecraft, they’re striving for ever greater speed, performance and mobility. The all-new race-ready supercharged 2021 GP1800R SVHO and normally-aspirated GP1800R HO are the results of their endeavours and, after Yamaha’s recent race domination, it’s little wonder […]
Whilst the subject of depression never really goes away, it has certainly bubbled to the surface lately with the recent quick-fire suicides of high-profile people such as TV superchef Anthony Bourdain and world famous designer Kate Spade. What makes depression hard to understand for most of us is that these were successful people who seemed […]
So, a high-powered panel of female leaders featuring Theresa Gattung, Justine Smyth, Tracey Cross, Naomi Ballantyne and Linda Meade were at the M2woman Journey to Excellence forum recently. I think it’s fair to say that the gist of their forum was; “we want moregender equality in the workplace! Now, dammit! Now!” Huh? Is this really […]
