On Sunday The Square + Posse went to a show done by Rhythm Interactive: Actions Speak Louder Than Words and it was BRILLIANT! Each person in the audience got a Bongo drum, and through Mime they got us drumming awesome beats, laughing (seriously, some people were in hysterics!) and it was pretty cool to see everyone get involved.

The main conductor guy was brilliant, really really brilliant. His facial expressions were amazing and his ability to communicate WITHOUT WORDS was just astounding. He had us laughing in our seats, not because he was a clown or anything, but because of his (mock) disappointment when someone missed a beat, or his amusement when someone couldn’t follow instructions, or amazement when someone was overly enthusiastic, or the joy when we finally GOT what he was asking us to do.

And there were so many great moments. The master conductor man split the audience into three, and we were all drumming our different beats, and with the pros in the back doing their thing, it was really amazing to be a part of. And there was one moment when the back up drummers were doing their awesome back up beats, and the audience was going hard and at the end of one run we all stopped at the same time! I’m talking around one hundred and fifty people being completely in sync. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE stopping on the SAME beat – it was really, really amazing.

I have to say that interactive shows are the best, I had a brilliant, brilliant time, and it was totally worth the ticket price. I did wish that there was more drumming – both with the audience, but also to hear the professionals do their thing. It was really amazing to hear them play, I wish we could have heard more.

They are doing a few more shows, so if you’re in Auckland, seriously? Check them out!

[edit] They were on the Good Morning Show the other day, if you wanted a sneak peek. Though just quietly? Way more awesome live, than watching them on the GMS. [/edit]

I’ve been on a bit of a fitness kick over the couple of weeks. I started going for runs (though, lets be honest, I hate running so that didn’t work out so well). I started going to Pilates with Sibling (it’s easier to make yourself go if your accountable to someone else), and then there was still the netball and walks with Quinn. I thought I was doing okay.

That was, until we didn’t have a netball game for three weeks, and then Sibling cancelled pilates in favour of uni work, and it was storm weather so I couldn’t take Quinn out . . .

Needless to say last week I felt a bit like a lump.

(Pilates Toes and my Water Stash)

So this week, I stocked up on water at work, so I’d drink more of it. I started bringing in healthy lunches. And since the weather has been better, there has been lunch-break walks, and a run with The Third Quarter (who is brilliant, and is the kind of person who pushes you to run further and up hills, even though you’re sure your body isn’t going to be able to do it), a netball game and I tried BIKRAM YOGA.

Bikram Yoga is HARD. You run through 26 poses which stretch, and hurt and pull your muscles into really odd positions (and if your me shake like jelly while you try to hold still). And what’s more? You spend the hour and a half session in a 40oC sauna. A room with heaters. That smells like SWEAT. Because while your in there? Your sweat like CRAZY. So much so that you need a towel down on your yoga mat. And it’s pretty weird, trying to hold a pose where you attempt to touch your toes with your forehead and you can see the sweat BEADING on your ankles.

I was completely unprepared. I felt nauseous (apparently normal for beginners) and dizzy (also apparently normal for beginners) and I spent the time between poses chanting “don’t vomit, don’t vomit”.

And then? The class finished. And I walked out into the cold air and I felt BRILLIANT! My muscles felt good, I felt liked I’d actually done some decent exercise, and I was pretty high from sweating that much. I felt a little like jelly, but in a good way. I slept ridiculously well, and this morning? Still slightly sore, but still pretty brilliant, actually.

Apparently, this is because doing yoga in a ridiculously hot sauna affects your blood circulation, and because of it infections, bacteria and toxins are released out through your sweat, making you feel pretty damn awesome.

On the advice of the Yoga Man (think skinny hippy guy covered in tattoos, American accent, who is both able to amuse and push your limits at the same time) I’m going to go back this afternoon. The more often you do it, the easier it is for your body to acclimatise and you’ll get more out of it the next time you go. I’m hoping this means feeling less nacreous and dizzy, because really? That was the only downside.

This week I’m feeling much better about my fitness levels. Let’s hope this trend continues!

I once dated a a boy who taught me to value the OLD things. Things that were broken, or dusty. Old notebooks that things had been split on, and the corners were all dog eared. Old things that had charm. It was quite a shock to Miss Materialistic Me who only liked things if they were new and shiny.

This boy that I dated once said that his dream car would be one of those cars that was old, and it’d break down on the motorway, and it’d kick it and the hubcap would fall off. At the time I was thinking more along the lines of a Porshe, or a Lamborghini. But whatever, each to their own.

Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that The Fourth Quarters car was quite old. It’s an old Ford Laser, like a REALLY old Ford Laser. It didn’t have power steering, or electric windows. The paint on the outside is peeling a little in places, and the radio knobs are broken and it has that old car smell. And one of the seatbelt clip things was missing it’s case (which The Fourth Quarter assures me was temporarily damaged and has since been fixed. Just in case your cop who wants to have words because having no cases on your seatbelt clasps is illegal).

And I totally saw it’s charm. While I was grateful that it didn’t break down on the motorway (one of it’s perks is that it’s actually QUITE reliable) it did remind me of a time when it would have taken a fair amount of bribery to get me in such a car. And I’m glad times change, and that I did discover the charm of old, run down, quirky things.

Just quietly though, I’d still prefer the Lamborghini. :)

Every Saturday at the back Parnell, La Cigale holds a small French Market. I wish I’d known about this earlier, it’s a great bunch of stalls filled with fresh veggies, still warm breads and pastries, stuffed olives and dips and tabbouleh salads, smoked meats, freshly squeezed juice stalls, big stoves of paella and stalls making while-you-wait crepes and waffles.

In short, a ridiculous amount of fantastic food. The Boy and I took Quinn down on the weekend (and the weekend before that . . .) and we had breakfast – two sweet chilli prawn skewers and a whitebait fritter, cooked up right in front of us! Mm, SO GOOD! We also stocked up on this brilliant cherry tomato foccacia, roasted capsicum dip, fruit for the week, chocolate croissants AND white chocolate tarts. The Boy and I also split a chocolate éclair, which was DIVINE! The chocolate on the top was still warm, and it was stuffed with the most delicious chocolate whipped cream I’d ever eaten. Ridiculously sweet, pretty much an orgasm in your mouth.

Walking up and down the little aisles, I was reminded of the fruit and veggie shop my parents used to own in Parnell. It was an open air shop, basically some clever shelves stuffed with every kind of fruit and veggies you can imagine installed on a patio a little off the street, with the coolers and workshops downstairs.

I spent a fair chunk of my childhood scrambling around the back streets of Parnell. Today Parnell is mostly fancy restaurants, and expensive botique stores, but back then I was small (and cute) enough to wrangle baked goods from the fancy upmarket bakeries, lollies from the confectioner down the road, and and milk fluffy’s from cafe owners.

It was a nice reminder of simpler times, I think. But I’m glad that Auckland still has these kind of open-air markets. And that we spent the rest of the weekend eating the goodies we brought back? Totally. Brilliant. :)

Today I handed back the Forgotten Felines site. I closed the Facebook group. And I deleted the twitter account.

I’m sad about this. I’m sad that I gave 9 months to a charity, countless hours, a ridiculous amount of design work and today I had to make the decision that this project wasn’t worth my time or energy.

There are only a few things that will provoke me into leaving a project. And in this case, it was not seeing eye to eye with my client.

The Forgotten Felines co-ordinator, as nice a lady as she was, didn’t want to know about any of the “21st century” technology. She said that it wasn’t where Forgotten Felines “was going”, and they “didn’t want a bar of it”. By 21st century technology, she meant a twitter account, a facebook group, and a paypal account. All technologies that are years old and have been in use by other charities for a long, long time. I thought Forgotten Felines SHOULD go in that direction. Reach new people in new ways. Because in a few years it was those people, the twitter users and facebook people that were going to be adopting our kittens. And if we’re spreading awareness, you can never have too many channels of communication.

In my point of view, If a site I’m the web master of isn’t going to be used as a tool to acheive pretty specific objectives, there is no point. If they aren’t going to take advantage of new technology and tools that are available to them? They are stagnating. In this case, I think it’s simply because the change happened too quickly. The tools were too unfamiliar. Too new.

But the resulting fall out wasn’t worth it. The website could be taken in wonderful new directions, use new tools to bring awareness, widgets to bring in donations, adverts to get kittens adopted. But unfortunately it won’t. Where I saw the potential, the Forgotten Felines co-ordinator saw otherwise.

So, enough.

Still, I’m sad. Because I LIKED this charity. I believed that I was helping a wonderful cause, a group of people that WANTED to help where they could. I liked that we were placing what were once wild cats into homes. And I wanted to do more, raise more funds, reach more people. And I used social networking tools to do that. And I am sad. Because the social networking tools were working: we reached more people and directed them to the site in a week than we did the weeks before.

If you can’t see eye to eye with your client, then it’s not worth it.

So today, I said enough.

- Maria Konopnicka

The Boy and I took Quinn for a walk the other day, and I noticed that all there are flowers in bloom! After many days of grey rain it was most welcome.

It appears that spring is here in August this year.

Just another reason why working here is SO MUCH BETTER than the business end of the dirty fat cow that I used to work for (No love, ICONZ. Not even a little).

Yay for client appreciation :)

Take a super cute pup who would never hurt a fly:

Add a geek like The Boy (who may or may not have recently seen 28 Days Later), some minor photoshopping and you get this:

The things The Boy does never ceases to amaze me :)

Also, it appears the video and sound are wack. CLASSY!

Anyway, I’m trying to be more active in the communities I’m part of. One of those communities is 20sb, which, from what I can tell, seems to be pretty brilliant. And they do these THINGS, like blog swaps and meet ups and interviews, and today I thought I’d take part: I did a video blog.

And okay, sure I decided last minute that I was going to get in on the VBlog action, and after encouraging @abby_cake to do one I thought I’d better just do it.

That was before my mad dash around the city, where I unsuccessfully tried to find a piercist. When I finally got round to do it, I was 15 minutes late back from lunch, had no idea what I wanted to say, so I did what I always do: I thought I’d wing it.

I grabbed the camera out of my bag, put it on the steering wheel and talked shit for a minute or two. So it’s not classy. I don’t dance. There’s no background music. I’m not wearing make up. I didn’t edit it. And I am sitting in my car, while the sunlight makes me frown with it’s wonderous glare.

But hell yes I took part. In all my rush-back-to-work unattractive state. Woo yeah!

I may be a kiwi, and live in New Zealand, but I can’t say I’m a fan or Rugby, or Rugby League. I’m always glad to hear that the All Blacks won, or that the Warriors kicked ass (it’s national pride, see. Although I hear the Warriors had a pretty pathetic season . . .) but overall I couldn’t name more than a handful of players, have no idea who the coaches are, or know anything about the last few games that I didn’t watch.

In saying that, I AM pretty proud that before every game, the All Blacks do The Haka. That they man up, get their cultural pride on and put up a challenge to their opposition. Deva wrote a post the other day about the etiquette around The Haka. I won’t get into it, but she made a really fantastic point about the RESPONSES to The Haka.

In short, you don’t do what Wales did:

Epic fail, Wales. Epic Epic Fail. The AB’s just did the HAKA, they aren’t standing down.

Instead, you man up like Tonga:

Fucking, AWESOME! As Deva said, “That’s how you tell the All Blacks you ain’t singin’, you bringin’.” And I totally agree with her 100%. Hell Fucking Yes. :)