Saturday, May 26, 2007

New Car and Met Peter Jackson!

So this past week was a pretty busy one at work and a lot of cool things happened. My six-month lease on my old nissan ended (zoiks, I've been here for just over six months already!), so I decided I had saved enough money to just purchase a cheap car and not have to worry about monthly payments, since it seems like I will be staying here for a while (because of Avatar - coming out in 2009). So I went to Turner's Auctions and bought a car! It was on a wednesday at lunch time, and thankfully there weren't that many people there so I was able to choose from a wide selection and get a really good deal. Originally, I had gone to check out a Honda Accord, and, while it was nice and all, it ended up being about $1000 more than the car I ended up purchasing. Because this other car was so cheap, and in good condition, with relatively low mileage, I ended up bidding and winning this 1996 Nissan Primera Camino for $4450 New Zealand dollars! There's nothing really wrong with it except for a few minor dings and scratches, it rides smoothly and the best thing is I can probably sell it for close to what I bought it for when I leave New Zealand, since the mileage is low and condition is so well. Funny thing is one of the hubcaps was loose as someone probably scraped the curb with it when trying to parallel park, but I was able to get a new set of hubcaps for $30 at "Super Cheap Auto", and they look pretty nice - I will post some more pics later on.

Second big thing happened on Friday, when I got the opportunity to watch the WWI short film "Crossing the Line", directed by Peter Jackson, using the new digital 4K "RED" cameras as a test for the new product. It was an 11 minute short that had everything from trench warfare and tanks to air-to-air dogfight action, and a bunch of emotion thrown in too! It was really inspirational and just makes you want to make a short yourself, but seeing this short just reminded us all that PJ is pretty damn good at directing. Anyways, it was a cast-and-crew screening at Park Road Post, the editing, film processing, and sound-mixing facility that Weta uses and I was lucky enough to bump into the man himself and told him it was an excellent film! He said thanks and shook my hand! Later that night, I went to a going away party for Todd and met the visual effects producer on Fantastic Four in person (Cindy Ochs) and she said she recognized my name because she saw that my name made the credits list for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Exciting! What a way to wrap up a busy week at work!

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Another and Another (boat dive and pie day)

Video of me doing a scuba dive off of a boat in Porirua on the 28th of April.

We did two boat dives off the coast of Mana Island (sounds like a crazy video game), which is in Porirua. That was pretty sweet, as we saw some awesome underwater terrain (a little underwater canyon) and a bunch of sea life. Head on over to Kevin's album to see what we saw. The other people on our boat were advanced open water divers and caught some massive, I mean, super-massive, crays. As you can see from the pictures. It was pretty awesome and sad at the same time because we wouldn't be able to try what those super crays tasted like. Remember, I'm in the yellow snorkel, blue wetsuit.

We also had our third pie day at Weta on the 18th of May. That was another success and I actually baked two pies this time. A blueberry crumble/streusel pie and the famous key-wi lime pie. Lori made the other two pies - apple and lemon meringue. Nothing beats fresh homemade pies. They were all very tasty and I think a lot of people at Weta are getting addicted to pie day - yay! Here's some pictures of the baking process and the payoff the next day at Pie Day. It was pretty funny because the oven I was using at Mark's place doesn't have any proper labels (just some funky hand-drawn-with-magic-marker hieroglyphs, so it was interesting (well, fun, and by fun, I mean tragic) how I burnt the first two pie-crusts for the key-wi lime (easy enough to rebuild, but a hassle) because the mysterious oven was set to two different types of "broil". Anyways, Mark and I finally figured out the correct setting and the third time was a charm and I was able to make a "tasty as" key-wi lime pie! The second pie was pretty easy (thanks to Lori's pre-made dough!) - I had prepared the crumble top earlier in the day at home during lunch, where I had a quick picnic outside my flat since it was actually quite a nice day! Check it out:

Anyways, I was able to create the topping at home for lunch and it was pretty fun! And I am glad I did it earlier since I was figuring out how to use the oven and rolling the dough that Lori gave me earlier. Also, it was pretty much like magic when I started mixing the blueberry filling with the sugar, lemon juice and corn flour, as it turned into the consistency of pie-filling that we all know and love. So, the blueberry pie pretty much was very successful. It came out pretty great as the oven setting was correct. The only funny thing was that it was a 55 minute bake, so I played some guitar hero II as I waited. Yummy as!