s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Sunday morning was dim sum with some of the kendo people, except that here they call dim sum “yum cha”, or something that sounds like that. This place was pretty good, and could easily have been in the Boston Chinatown somewhere. The little egg tarts were indistinguishable from the ones we had at China Pearl, and just as delicious.

After dim su– I mean yum cha, Chris and Natasha and I drove around the southern coastline, through all the little southern coastline suburbs that I’ve been seeing advertised in the Property section of the Saturday Dominion Post. Places with names that all end in “Bay” — Owhiro Bay, Island Bay (has an island in it, appropriately enough), Houghton Bay, Lyall Bay, Worser Bay (“The Worser the Bay, the Better the Sailing !”) — and other places, too, like Seatoun, Miramar, Roseneath, Kilbirnie. Some of them are proper little villages, with maybe valleys behind them. Others seem like little more than a row of houses backed up against the steep green cliffsides, with maybe a cafe. Backed up against, or else hacked into or somehow bolted to the sides of. I look at some of these steep hills and gullies — not just on the coast here, but in parts of the city as well — and it astonishes me that anyone would actually attempt to hang a house there, or even whole streets full of houses, with their back feet gripping some chipped-out bit of hillside, and their front feet on stilts or brackets looming over nothing, or over the roof of the house below. NeverMIND doing all this in a place known for its regular earthquakes. Madness. But then, this is the country that popularized bungy jumping. We passed a couple of houses that — and I am swearing this absolutely on my honor — had little inclined cable elevators to get you from your garage up to your house. Madness.

I failed to grab my camera as we went out the door, but Chris and I both took some shots with Chris’, so when he gets his PC rebuilt, I’ll maybe post some good ones here.

[And here they are.]
First up is just a nice bit of coastline, followed by a scene a bit farther round the curve, so you can see the hilltop crusted with houses like barnacles. This hill is actually pretty reasonable, in that the houses are mostly on the top and at the bottom, rather than clinging to the sides. Check out the color of the water. Next up is a closer shot of some of the houses — every single one of these houses is unique, and some of them display some pretty nifty architecture. The older ones were just built as little beach houses (which they call baches), but I think they’re probably all lived in year-round anymore. The next is a shot through the haze at Wellington itself. I think that house-studded hill in the front is Mount Victoria. Finally, the sunset from C&N’s place. I mightily resisted the urge to touch up the saturation in Photoshop, so this is right out of the camera (Chris’ camera — Chris took this one).

After the drive was mostly just flobbing back at C&Ns, with the 2002 BBC production of Hound of the Baskervilles in the evening. Australian Richard Roxburgh, who will be Mycroft Holmes in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, was Sherlock in this, with Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter) as Watson, and the ever-delightful, ever-smarmy Richard E. Grant as Stapleton. It was reasonably good, actually — apart from the atrocious special effects on the Hound — although the sound work, editing and lighting, more than the casting or the creative decisions, were really what made it work. And with all the fog and miserable lashing rain you definitely found yourself wondering just what anyone would want to be doing wandering around Dartmoor, Hound or no Hound.