This is half-pie.

This is my ancient Ken Hom wok, which my mother gave me over 20 years ago when I first went flatting. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My wok is my friend. I must master it as I must master my life. My wok, without me, is useless. Without my wok, I am useless. I must cook with my wok delicious stir fries. I must cook faster than the hunger that is causing my children to whine. I will.

My wok and myself know that what counts this evening is not the ingredients we use, the smell of our cooking, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is eating that counts. We will eat.

My wok is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its base and its handle. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my wok clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.

Before Ken, I swear this creed. My wok and myself are the fee of my family. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but full stomachs!

I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately. The Wellington City Library carries a huge range of graphic novels and collections, and it’s been good to catch up with old favourites like Ennis, Moore, and Ellis after a good ten years away from the medium.

But if all I was reading was superhero stuff I’d have to say that I haven’t missed that much. Luckily though, there are unexpected delights out there, away from the increasingly tedious bods in tights.

When I was in the library the other day a new title caught my eye: Phonogram: Rue Britannia. The cover seemed familiar; and yes, it is: a remix of an old Pulp album cover.

The story: it’s brilliant.

So, what if music itself were a thing of magic?

You know this makes sense. We all have songs that do things to us, emotionally and physically, that seem magical (like my first ever listen to Primal Scream’s Loaded)¹. So, if you’re a Phonomancer that’s the magic that you use.

David Kohl is a Phonomancer. Britannia, the goddess that made him, died with Britpop years earlier. David’s current existence centres around himself and misusing his powers to pick up girls in bars, until THE Goddess finds him, curses him (with PMS!), and sends him off to find out what’s happening to dead Britannia, who is apparently being “interfered” with.

The writing is packed with brit-pop-culture references – but hopefully not enough to weigh down the experience for readers not immersed in those times. The black & white artwork is beautiful and spare; not a line out of place but capable of displaying great emotion and humanity. And also lots of hot punk chicks.

Perhaps one of my favourite parts of the story is about Beth, a former(?) obsessive Manics fan part of whom remains trapped in the era holding out for the return of Richey Manic. There’s a lovely sub-plot there about growing up and letting go that is really quite beautiful.

As one who spent a good proportion of my disposable income in the 1990s on obscure and not so obscure British music² this book pushes all my buttons. It’s the best comic book I’ve read in years. But I must remember, as Emily Aster, another phonomancer in David’s coven, says: “Nostalgia is an emotion for people with no future”.

Even so, I’m off to the comics shop tomorrow to see if I can find a copy of Rue Britannia and the followup collection for myself.

And the rest of you: please form a orderly queue behind me.

• Read the first part here.
• And a much better review of the book may be found here.

¹ Hell, for me sometimes even the right chord change can bring on a numinous moment (like that change in Ride’s Moonlight Medicine–one of only two good songs on their album Carnival of Light–that I was trying to explain the goodness of to Bella at the weekend).

² A confession: I also was at Knebworth for those Oasis concerts. Which means I actually do, sadly, feature in this very comic book.

I’m still ripping my CDs and occasionally finding inadequate cover art for them. After the comments to the last lot of album covers I posted I’ve been going back through all the CDs I’ve already done and re-doing them at 320kbps. Just, you know, because that’s so much fun.

As before, the following are roughly 200×200 pixel thumbnail linking to the roughly 1000×1000 original.

Deconstructed: An Acoustic Album —You know how, after the whole family goes to the Warehouse, crap just seems to appear in the car. This is one of those.

Vic Reeves & The Wonder Stuff: Dizzy —Sadly, it took the addition of Vic Reeves to the line-up for the Wonder Stuff to get their first UK Number 1. This is actually a pretty cool song all the same, a cover of some ancient ditty.

We Know Where You Live: Draped —Detect a theme here? We Know Where You Live was a post-breakup splinter of the Wonder Stuff, back in the mid ’90s. Before the Super Furry Animals, it was The Wonder Stuff that was the target of my obsessive completism…

3Ds: Fishtales / Swarthy Songs For Swabs —Perhaps unsurprisingly there seem to be few decent quality pix of these 3Ds covers.

3Ds: Hellzapoppin —Outer Space!

3Ds: The Venus Trail —Spooky!

The Phoenix Foundation: Horse Power —And the covers that are available for this, the first album from these guys, are all of the American reissue… and nowhere near as cool as the original New Zealand version.

Voice Of The Beehive: Monsters And Angels —This band used to be one of my little guilty secrets. Maybe not so much the album this single came from (I’ve since sold it) – I think it got the SAW treatment – but their earlier one I still listen to.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: National Bank Series —This from 2004, a CD picked up while I was working at the National Bank; on it Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty and Piano Concerto No. 1. (They were a lot classier in those days.)

New York Philharmonic/Zubin Mehta; Montserrat Caballé & Peter Wimberger: Excerpts from Der Ring des Nibelungen —Bombastic. But sometimes, oh so good. I first heard this music in Boorman’s Excalibur), and it’s stayed with me ever since.

Therapy: Nowhere (Sabres Of Paradise Remixes) —Punk Metal, as remixed by Weatherall et. al. Another (attempted) completist purchase.

Passion Fish: Soundtrack —Years and years ago we saw this at the Film Festival. Can’t remember much of the film, but the music made an impression. A compilation of Zydeco / Cajun tracks.

Peaches: So This Is Love —Another of those “Warehouse” purchases – it’s a whole lot of covers performed by NZ female artists flogged as a Valentines Day album a few years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it. Though maybe I should.

Suede: So Young —Back when Suede were supposed to be the next Smiths (how old am I to still wish for “the next Smiths”?) I started in collecting all their EPs as they came out.

Suede: Stay Together —And here’s another; but also one of those rare things in modern times: a non-album single. Just like the Smiths, in fact.

Ruia & Ranea: Waiata Of Bob Marley —Thanks to my high school buddy Jeff, I’m left with Bob tunes etched in my head. These are versions in Te Reo, and the only Bob in my collection, currently (this is an unfortunate omission).

William Orbit: Water From A Vine Leaf —An early appearance of Beth Orton; and a very lovely track it is too.

Punks Not Dad: We Are The Dads —The debut album from my other favourite Welsh band, as mentioned a year or so ago, and of course I can’t resist mentioning here the video for their awesome song, In Me Shed.

That might be the last of these though – I’m nearly done with the ripping. Phewf!

In the mail this week, an interesting envelope arrived from my (ex-) bank, the National Bank.

It was thick, and rustled slightly.

“It’s nice to know some things in life are free”?

Intriguing.

But what could the bank be sending me?

Blah blah blah. Just a letter for some new product. The usual sort of thing.

But wait! What’s that behind the letter? There’s something else in here!

Hey, maybe it’s the free thing they talked about on the envelope!

Errr, no.

Just a little bag stuck to a piece of card, helpfully labelled “Air”.

And I feel like I’ve been trolled.

(I leave it up to the reader to decide whether I paid any subsequent attention to the actual content of the letter.)

The sunsets here are insanely great. And the days are not far behind. There’s a simplicity to the autumn; the cool south-easterly transmuted by the mountains behind us into a humid breeze carrying the occasional fat raindrops. Out to sea, under the swing of the sun, it’s raining. We are on the Land’s Edge, here.

The girls have been cracking macadamias; but the bananas have been eaten by earlier visitors and the avocadoes are not quite ready yet. Rosa and Bella are in and out of their togs all day, begging us to take them to the swimming pool.

We haven’t even made it down to the beach. There hasn’t been time. The girls have done their reconnection tour though, first thing. Flying Fox: check! Trampoline: check! Mini-golf: check!

Later:

I walk up the hill behind where we’re staying. There’s a path through the bush to a lookout at the top.

The first time we came here I found a giant stick insect, mottled in shades of green like the fern runners clingling to the trees. I suppose I think I’m just going to find another one.

An opportunistic but welcome pīwakawaka follows me, hawking in my trail.

Further up, I get into a singing contest with a pair of korimako. They win, of course, though not without a certain amount of huffiness on their part at the impertinence of the challenge.

At the top the view is immense, and only a little can be taken in at once.

The sea is occasionally speckled with fishing boats; the island volcano lying coiled and quiet, not even steaming. There is a cool breeze from the endless rumpled hills of bush at my back, and the birds make a constant song. The only discordant notes are, as before, the ever-present buzz of wasps; trucks passing far below, and a dog, its bark snatched by the wind and passed far up into the air.

I can see the road as it winds up and down bushy hills; along flats planted in maize and kiwifruit; around rocky headlands where the pohutukawa lean out over the water with outstretched arms.

There’s more detail that can’t be seen from up here: but on that road is a sign that says “Pig Dog Training School”. Underneath, in a different colour, “Bookbinder”. I know that chickens peck the long acre, apparently unperturbed by the pig dogs.

Later again:

Apparently there was snow on top of Hikurangi last night, explaining the cold night; but yet this morning we are in t-shirts and shorts again, almost tempted to break out the sunscreen despite the lateness of the season. It’s hot, though a cool breeze is stirring the pohutukawas as I watch out for the tiny boat that they’ve gone to lift the crayfish pots with. I don’t like boats.

I’m also keeping an eye on a lovely stick insect, green with a creamy white stripe down both sides, that fell on to Rebecca while we dragged the boat out from under the tree. Though I place it in a pohutukawa tree, where it started tentatively munching a leaf, by the time I come back with the decent camera it was gone.

And we have fish for dinner.

In the last couple of years I’ve cut out most dairy products after developing what seems to be a mild milk intolerance. This was probably something to do with my two, sometimes three daily lattés and flat whites. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Anyway, over time I switched to macchiatos, and finally, tiny espressos.

But, nice though espressos are (and a good espresso is a godlike taste), they sometimes feel a little unsatisfying: there’s only a couple of mouthfuls in them at best. And the other problem with espresso is that it’s just so damn difficult to get right at home.

We have a pretty capable home espresso machine, and a very good home grinder, but there’s so many other variables that are hard to control, such as the amount of beans used; their age; their nature; the size and shape of the grounds; and the strength used to tamp the grinds into the basket; the heat and pressure of the water applied.

Most times I can make a decent job at it, and over time I’ve become better, but truly great espresso is a rarity in our kitchen. Previously, I could cover it up with steamed milk and make a pretty awesome flat white, but now as espresso its shortcomings are horribly exposed.

But what could I do? Enter the Chemex.

But, I hear you splutter, that’s some kind of a filter coffee contraption!

Why yes it is. I’ve gone post-espresso!

The Chemex was invented by a German-American Chemist during the War, and is basically a glass filter funnel welded to the top of your standard chemistry flask. Over the last 12 months or so several of the cafés and around town – Peoples Coffee in Garrett Street the Customs Brew Bar and latterly Memphis Belle, have started offering the Chemex in particular as a way to sample their single origin coffee beans.

I ran across the Chemex at Customs Brew Bar, where my mind was blown by the intense and idiosyncratic taste of their single origin beans from the Sidamo region of Ethiopia. I couldn’t stop raving about it. It was coffee, but full and rich, without any bitterness; the tastes of the beans revealed, and rivalling a glass of wine for interest and complexity.

So in February Rebecca bought me a Chemex as an Anniversary present.

I started making the coffee in the Chemex as a weekend treat; then as I got faster at it the “treat” extended to every weekday morning. I could have a satisfyingly full mug of hot tasty coffee, all attended by a ritual somewhat easier, but even more pleasing, than that of making an espresso.

And every time I look at it I get a little rush of lab nostalgia: my first degree was in chemistry and so the Chemex is like a little link back to an (in truth not very regretfully) abandoned career path.

So, how does it work? First, you take a filter paper. This bit is just like Chemistry 101.

Then you fold it in half:

And then the little extra bit you fold over again:

And then you fold the whole thing in half again:

Now you can open the folded paper into a cone, and place it into the top of the flask. You should have a pocket that’s half one thickness of paper, and the other half three thicknesses; place the three thicknesses on the funnel side:

It’s important to rinse the filter before using it, to get rid of any tastes that might be in the paper. If you use just-boiled water it will also help warm up the flask.

Now it’s time to get the beans ready. As you can see, I usually use 25 grams of coffee:

More chemistry nostalgia here, with all this taring and weighing. I bought the scales on TradeMe so I could be more consistent with weighing the beans for espresso¹. It’s not really necessary to be this super-exact with the Chemex, however—I’m just a geek.

I usually grind them to medium-coarse in the grinder; a bit finer than you might do for a French Press.

Don’t forget to tip the filter wash-water out before putting your grinds in! Now you can pour your water in on top. I usually use about 350ml of just boiled water. But don’t get too carried away with the pouring! Initially, just cover the grinds with water and let them bubble a little bit. This is called the “bloom”:

Apparently it’s some sort of outgassing of nitrogen and other volatiles from the grounds themselves. Whatever causes it, let it subside (15 to 30 seconds) before pouring in any more water.

Once you’ve got all your water through the filter—it usually takes about two or three fills—you can remove the filter with the grinds.

We usually keep our grinds for spreading around the herb garden (we’ve heard the residual caffeine deters snails, though who knows if this is true) and the paper goes into the compost.

Finally – it’s all ready for drinking… black, of course.

And that’s how you do it.

I never believed I’d be drinking filter coffee every day – wasn’t espresso supposed to be the be all and end all of good coffee?² But I guess as always, it’s good to know there’s never One True Way with anything in life. For me, the Chemex is an easier way to get a beautiful cup of coffee in the morning; I still visit my favourite baristas in the afternoons to get an espresso.

And the Chemex brings something new, by allowing a focus on the interesting tastes and characteristics of different coffee-growing regions around the world. If you’re at any of the cafés I’ve mentioned give it a go. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Update: People have asked: “Where do I purchase these wondrous pieces of alchemical equipment?” In Wellington, you can buy them directly from both Peoples Coffee, and from Supreme, cafés. Both the Peoples Online Shop and Supreme’s Online Shop also stock them, if you don’t live in Wellington, and while you’re browsing at Supreme consider one of their small but perfectly formed Hario ceramic burr hand grinders if you are without this other essential piece of coffee-making equipment.

¹ In an auction that advertised how useful the scales might be for measuring small quantities of “herbs”. Hmmmmm.

² Which is probably a Wellington, or possibly Australasian attitude. Most people around the world who make any coffee for themselves other than instant don’t use espresso machines.

Now that I’m cutting down the number of internet venues for my episodes of compulsive self-disclosure I’m spending even more time on Twitter, for better or worse¹.

Twitter is actually really good for some things. One of those is creating a low commitment channel for busy people to keep in touch with each other and their clients. Along these lines, one group that really seems to have taken to Twitter in a big way is the local (New Zealand) wine industry.

I think there’s a few things working to push this along – there’s a couple of social media gurus that have encouraged participation by a few key figures; there’s several handfuls of forward-thinking vintners and owners using the medium to talk to their clients directly… and the general “OMG! I need a Twitter presence!” effect that’s emerged in the last year.

But what’s really nice is when they start talking about what’s happening down on the vineyard; interacting with each other, and with us, the winedrinkers. I’m way more interested in the stories and people behind the wine I drink than being the passive recipient of the branding & marketing of it.

So I found out how one of my favourite Rieslings was getting on this vintage in this tweet from Martinborough winemaking legend Larry McKenna:

LarryMcPinot – Finally rained! delayed our 2nd to last day but meant to be great tom so will be back into the last bit of 777 PN then Escarpment Riesling – 4:15 PM May 1st via web

I replied to Larry with in a fairly inconsequential “Mmmmmm, riesling…” to which he replied:

LarryMcPinot – @dubh yes looking good but decided to leave it for a few more days some sunny days coming and its only 21 brix – 4:47 PM May 2nd via web in reply to dubh

I love this sort of interaction, and I think the winemakers get a lot out of it as well. So over the last few months I’ve been busy creating Twitter lists with all the New Zealand wine people I can find, and so far I have found:

• NZ Wine – 195 wine industry people: the wineries, personalities, shops, and reviewers across New Zealand; and
• NZ Wineries – a subset of the above list containing just the 104 wineries (and some brands) for following the actual winemakers themselves; and
• Central Otago Wineries – 23 wineries from my favourite region, Central Otago.

Follow! And you never know – you may even score yourself a bottle or two of wine along the way.

¹ And yes, Twitter is what kills blogs, 140 characters at a time. Every small thought that could be lovingly crafted with time and thought into a towering edifice of logic; or a scintillating entertainment; or even just a seriously impressive read, simply gets blurted out prematurely and half-made with about as much impact as a fart in a hurricane. But I digress.

With all the building noise about Facebook and their plans to monetise everyone’s information and connections by progressive privacy invasion I finally decided to delete my profile for good. With some regret, I’ve now even deleted the page I set up for Kakarapiti, though in truth Twitter is a better place for a bird anyway.

In doing this though I started to wonder whether each of the other sites I’m signed up for actually deliver worth to me in excess of the information I’m trading away to them. A thought which lead to a wholesale purge:

• blip.fm
• bookarmy.com
• boozemonkey.com.au
• boxee.com
• brizzly.com
• delicious.com
• dopplr.com (I have to say – I love these guys, it’s just I have no use for their service. They’re so classy they sent me a copy of the data I had entered into their system, such as it was. I wish all social networking sites were like this.)
• facebook.com
• friendfeed.com
• goodreads.com
• hunch.com
• last.fm
• orkut.com
• rudder.com
• secondlife.com

And then there was the services I couldn’t figure out how to delete

• bloglines.com
• grabawine.co.nz
• iscrybe.com
• rummble.com

And some I hadn’t visited for so long they died in the interim:

• dreamledger.com
• engagd.com
• gleamd.com
• iyomu.com
• muxtape.com

As well as the inevitable sites I couldn’t get into to delete my account (must have another go at it):

• odeo.com
• pmog.com

You know what? That feels a whole heap better. I think this sort of review is something that might need repeated on a six-monthly basis…

I’m typing this with one hand. (Please, no jokes.) After dinner my left wrist blew up and I think it might be sprained—it has a bag of frozen peas sitting on it now. And I’m wearing my sunglasses inside.

We’d decided to take the bikes and head into the Makara Peak Mountain Bike Park this afternoon. There were a couple routes marked as “Easy”, and while we weren’t sure exactly what that meant we thought we’d have a look.

What we found was pretty cool. Even and easily graded tracks zig-zagging up the side of a hillside of re-generating bush. Birdsong. Friendly other bikers.

The four of us worked our way up the hill on the Koru trail, letting the girls set the (fairly slow) pace. They’d push up most of the slopes, Rosa gamely pushing her way as far as she could with her ungeared bike and Bella getting to grips with her new geared bike. There would be little down slopes from time to time, and both girls would ride down these, gaining confidence as they went. Every so often we’d all pull over and let other, faster riders past.

We stopped to watch some people getting lessons in how to do jumps and handle difficult terrain at the skills area before heading to the highest point on the Koru and crossing over onto the Lazy Fern, another “Easy” rated downhill run to the carpark.

By this time I was a little impatient with trailing along after the girls and volunteered to lead the way; and Bella followed closely behind me.

I rode down the track, not too quickly so as not to leave Bella behind, for some way. But then I opened it up a little, and picked up speed down a nice sloping part of the track with the hill to the left. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the track ahead as I swerved slightly to the right to dodge a branch. Just past the branch though the track narrowed slightly as it came to a part of the hill so steep they’d had to bridge it to get the track across it. I was a little too fast to correct or brake hard without losing it… and so I missed the approach and flew off the side.

Bella screamed out “Dad!” and skidded her bike to a halt up the track and ran down to see if I was ok. I was, mostly. The peak of my helmet had prevented a full face-plant but something hit my cheek, breaking my beloved glasses across the bridge. A sapling had broken my fall without me hitting the rocks too hard; and the bike seemed OK. I was just bleeding and bruised, and seeing the funny side.

I dusted myself off. My right pocket was full of dirt and leaf-mould. And at the bottom was a slug. We waited for Rebecca and Rosa to catch up.

Rebecca helped me get the bike back on the track and we moved on. Somewhat chastened, I let the Rebecca and Bella go ahead while Rosa volunteered to be my “eyes”. I pushed the bike very slowly down the hill behind her.

And so eventually we got home. Rebecca has glued my glasses back together for me temporarily but until the glue cures I’m wearing my prescription sunnies.

Tomorrow, assuming my wrist isn’t completely screwed we’ll be glasses shopping.

Having just received today a very fancy new computer at work, and also having just uploaded all our holiday photos onto the iMac, I’ve been busy cutting new wallpapers to take to work tomorrow.

The sunsets in the Eastern Bay of Plenty are awesome. I made three of my favourites into wallpapers, and I thought I should post them here too.

April 7

April 8

April 9

I have more holiday tales to tell yet.