murder burger

so this is embarrassing, but i have another fast food place i want to write about.  and no, it has nothing to do with my job - i've just been obsessing about this one place in town here and i finally tried it and i'll be honest, it was one of the highlights of my week. yeah, i said it.

there are two reasons i've had a fascination with this place which would probably be pretty obvious to anyone who knows me well, but for the sake of not really knowing who's reading this (i mean who knows where my fan base is going...) i'll point them out for you:

1) it's called murder burger - c'mon...
2) the logo is an evil kitten with the wilson effect (á la home improvement in case you need a nudge there)

besides all that, the food is actually pretty amazing.  granted i'm biased towards any place that offers tots in place of fries (which are called "koftas" in NZ), but they have a pretty great selection from a basic burger to a peking duck wrap to healthyish grilled chicken and hummus wraps.

go ahead, be jealous: http://www.murderburger.co.nz/menu/

swarm

did i mention there are a lot of people here for the rugby world cup?  just in case you weren't picking up what i was putting down, this is a picture of the viaduct on friday just before the opening ceremony...

st. heliers

this weekend the weather was perfect corona, chips, and guacamole weather.  you know exactly what kind of weather i'm talking about.  sunny, but with a cool enough breeze that you still need to have a light sweater on.

the bars near the water in town were all charging a cover to get in since there are so many people here for the rugby world cup, so my flatmates and i decided to take a quick drive over to st. heliers to satisfy said beer and chips craving.

they didn't have guacamole, which laura and i complained about on and off for about an hour, but the view was amazing.

the beach at st. heliers

and the beers were large enough to get us into a conversation about pandas, which obviously led to pretending to be pandas.

despite what you may think, laura is not just flexing her biceps.  she's being a panda - much more normal.

juliet and i with great panda form

all in all. a great way to spend our saturday.

that's what it's all about

fortunately for me/unfortunately for my waistline, i've recently discovered hokey pokey. and no, i'm not talking about the dance. i'm talking about a new zealand delicacy.  wikipedia tells you that "hokey pokey" is "solid lumps of sponge toffee" frequently found in ice cream in australia and new zealand, but don't let them fool you. 

first of all, hokey pokey is not what i would call toffee - it's more like honeycomb.  toffee to me is either a sticky or hard substance that tastes most like caramel.  hokey pokey, however, tastes more like the inside of a cadbury crunchie bar, whose package notes that the ingredients include honeycomb and not toffee.

secondly, hokey pokey does come in ice cream, but does not always come in ice cream.  there are many treats here that include hokey pokey as an ingredient: ice cream, drinks, candy bars, biscuits. the list goes on.  

in fact, one of my favorite treats including the legendary hokey pokey goodness are a biscuit known as squiggles. and not just because they sound like one of my nicknames....

cribs

based on popular demand (2/6 people who read this), i've decided to do a quick post with a few pictures of my flat here in auckland. to make it interesting and to make me feel like less of a db for doing this, i'm putting on my mtv cribs voice...

this is the living room, where me and my homies kick it on the weekend. you know play some video games, drink some red bull, shine our diamonds. that sort of thing.

let's head to the kitchen.  clearly we didn't have time to clean up from last nights AMAZING party (aka making dinner/watching tv - just trying to stay in character here, people!).  i'd open the fridge to let you see what's inside, but it's pretty much a mess - perfectly lined up bottles of gatorade and bottles of crystal.

so let's go upstairs! (picturing this as one of those fast paced/frozen screen shot bits when they move from room to room....)

here we have the bathrooms.  yes, plural. not sure how interested you are, so i won't bore you with details, but just felt like they needed to be included - particularly since my last place had a bathroom that was built for people aged 7 and under. UPGRADE!

and this? well, this is where the magic happens. (side note: it took some serious photographic genius to take this photo avoiding most of the piles of clothes that are scattered on the floor of my room. maybe i'm fishing for compliments, but it needed to be said.)

aight, y'all seen my crib, y'all seen my whips, now get the hell on outta here! (why is the theme from "pimp my ride" playing in my head? surely they didn't play that at the end of cribs too?)

p.e.a.c.e.

probably cheesy, but saw this on my way to work and had to take a photo. don't worry, i don't plan on turning this into one of those chick blogs with random photos of shoes and sweet quotes about living your dreams. not frequently anyway...

b.o.t.a.b.

so i know i keep writing in the past tense and most of my posts are about events last week, but let's face it, i'm never going to be the dedicated blog journalist who reports everything i did right after i did it.  i had a pretty busy week last week, in a good way that those of you with the perks of working in advertising can understand.  i went to a show for nz fashion week (re: previous blog post) and also attended the battle of the ad bands.

the battle of the ad bands (or b.o.t.a.b. which is wayyyy more fun to say) is pretty much exactly what is sounds like. each agency in auckland has a band (obviously made up of their employees) who comes and puts on a show at a bar to compete for prizes in different categories including "best band."  

i know what you're thinking - it's just an excuse to get drunk.  partially true, but despite any bias placed on me via vodka sodas, the bands were actually really good.  our band, the chased, was ah-ma-zing. seriously.  they ended their set with a cover of "the walrus" that had the whole crowd singing like they were the beatles.  in the end, we took home best cover (for "the walrus"), best wildcard (song that was selected for the band to learn), and best drummer.  i'm also pretty positive we got bonus points for being the only band with a horn section.

nz fashion week

last week, i had the privilege of going to a fashion show for new zealand fashion week. i was invited to a shoe show that closed the week, which was great considering i'm not well adjusted enough to have even known fashion week was even on this past week.  the venue was down near the viaduct which is an area just off the water here, and is much similar to new york (the only other fashion week i've been to in my life).  there were booths with different make up artists and vendors, a trunk sale of designer clothing, and many ladies dressed in their flashest with a fabulous bag in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.

below are a few stolen photos of some of the featured shoes/potential damage i'll be doing to my credit limit:

rwc fevaaaah

the rugby world cup kicks off this week on friday and it seems the city has really started to pick up.  this is something i've been anticipating for awhile since pretty much every kiwi i spoke to when i moved here told me this was a "really good time to move here" purely based on the fact that the rwc was approaching.  


walking around this past weekend, the streets were a bit more crowded than usual.  part of it might be that the weather is warming up a bit and people are out and about, but based on the number of slrs with enormous lenses being toted around, i'm guessing a lot of the traffic is also from "foreigners" (i use quotes because i could probably get lumped into that category myself).  loads of people from the uk, europe, and asia (and maybe a couple americans) are here and i'm excited to have the opportunity to meet people out from all over the world.


also, i'm a sucker for enormous inflatable paraphernalia, so i'm really into all the decoration that has been going up around the city.  this is just the beginning - you're bound to see more photos like these soon enough:

giant inflatable rugby ball on the viaduct.  just in case no one knows what's happening this week..

 

did i mention i'm dating?

you see your gypsy

last night my flatmates and i went out (obviously). we went to this bar we like called golden dawn, and no, they do not operate as a chinese food place by day.  


anyway, it's a little bar just off one of the main roads here and kind of has a bit of a speakeasy feel.  it's not quite little branch, but there's a small dimly lit indoor area and a large outdoor patio with a band/dj and long wooden tables.  they have nice craft beers and cocktails, and people are generally standing or sitting in groups talking. hopefully that paints an accurate picture for you and your mind didn't trail off into a bunch of drunk people thrashing around when i said the word "dj."


it's a pretty classy establishment.  which is probably why when we met an old gypsy women in the corner who wanted to paint our faces, we felt it necessary to take her up on her offer. you know, so we could blend in....

oh yeah and if you are wondering what the title of this post is all about, it's not very impressively creative or anything but here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTTlVGIeFk