hotel club sandwich

There's nothing better than room service in a fancy hotel room. There's always a club sandwich in the room service menu of fancy hotel rooms. That's all I ever order. I look forward to hotel club sandwiches like my mother and brother look forward to dining in the lobbies of hotel restaurants.

re-entering the atmosphere

I've spent the evening with this blog, trying to reconnect. I'm like a person in a long-term relationship, trying to rediscover what it feels like to be, once again, in the first pulses of love. A journalist once asked me to describe my blog and I called it "a love letter". Sadly, one day, the letters just stopped. Not because I didn't have anything to say. More like, I didn't really know who to send them to and I wasn't even sure there was anyone reading anymore. 

In September 2008, I started this blog during a rising crest of outfit-of-the-day blogging. We started off taking self-timered photos in thrift shop dresses, against rickety wooden fences, brightly-coloured murals, or wandering idly in fields of flowers. Back then, Rumi posed in Forever 21 mini dresses in front of her garage door. The years ticked by and the wave started crashing towards the shore. One by one, my favourite peers stopped blogging and I felt their absence like friends who one day, just stop talking to you.

There are some of you though who have remained faithful, still posting, still typing, still beaming out into the world. Now, you have pets, children, sometimes both. You're posting about home interiors and travel, not just those cute flats you bought yesterday or how to pack for a summer vacation. Each post I catch up with is a tinder and I am working for a spark.

Today, I realise that I cannot let go of my tiny corner of internet. It's a chronicle of a life - my life. And in a virtual world of unimaginable breadth and depth and size and volume, a tiny little life is nothing but also everything. Though no one might be listening, I can still keep talking and writing and communicating. Then maybe one day, my blog and I will fall in love again.

♥ Location: Lake Rotoiti, Rotorua ♥

the something more

I spent much of this walk around Queen Elizabeth's Park with my head down, in deep conversation with a girl, miles away from her home in Berlin. She spoke with passion about all the things she had left behind; a broken relationship, a city apartment, a promising career in film. Landing in Australia with two back-breakingly heavy suitcases, she eventually wound her way to New Zealand, shedding most everything she'd taken with her and ending up here, in our tiny island country, with one backpack and restless feelings.

dogged pursuits of outdoor activities

I am determined to fall in love with Wellington again. I've chosen to rise above the time when I rode my bike in screaming northerlies around Greta Point and got pushed into a fence by the wind. I have also wilfully ignored the slight numbness in my toes when taking ocean swims in a variety of bays. If you ignore the terrible weather, the unflinchingly hard light (thanks, depleting ozone layer!) and the brutal pollen count, this city is so shabby-chic-nature gorgeous, it hurts.

the amphitheatre neighbourhood

I'm lucky to be able to see my home through fresh eyes; I still have my tourist glasses on. The harsh light; too full of contrasts, making everything look too dark, then too white. There's a hodge podge of buildings along the waterfront, all angular, all different styles, different materials, nothing much to unify the skyline. The space. The big gaps between people on the street. The casual dress, as if everyone's just thrown anything on to buy milk from a corner store. Here, even our bars have outdoor sports, volleyball, tetherball, ping pong. People can't sit still. And the wind. My god, the wind. A friend of ours called it "limiting". Sometimes, I want to scream into it. It's a love/hate thing, this being home. 

a long weekend in the sounds

Four days at this bach brought us close. We laughed until we cried over ridiculous salon games. Our dog went feral, wandering in and out of the house, chasing sticks and piling them up in heaps on the beach. Every night, there was a fire inside and a bonfire outside. Breakfasts were noisy affairs, lunches served out on the beach, and dinners scarfed down at a huge round wooden table.

Christmas Catch-Up

It's been a while! But I never really left. I'm on instagram and twitter a lot.

Let's catch up? And this time, I'm for real. Not like one of those friends you meet on the street and as you walk away, you say to them, "What's your number? We should catch up some time!"

Then you never do. Even when you remember saying it so sincerely at the time.

I hate that. I wouldn't do that to you.

{ We're in Hamilton, Paihia, Kerikeri, Taupo, Hatepe, and along the Desert Road }

an old capital

The hallmark of a big city lies in its ability to make people disappear. It marks itself by big buildings that pierce the sky. It jangles temptation like a set of shiny keys. But this big city, it will pretend to honour your individuality. It will set up shop with window displays that seem to be targeted just for you, and that dress on the rack made as if it was always meant to fit only you. That's how sprawling cities lure you in and keep you.      

{ Pictures taken in Auckland, New Zealand }

Our wedding will be in Kerikeri, down a stretch of rural road, past a house with a huge avocado tree on the front lawn. In the 1930s a Scotsman obsessed with China and its riches of ivory and gold built a house that paid homage to the pagodas he had seen on his travels. Now, it is owned by a Buddhist couple and on site there are gypsy caravans with outdoor baths, safari tents with working fridges and queen sized beds, and a treehouse. There are pear and plum trees, an arch of climbing pink roses, and hydrangea bushes. A stone buddha looks down on lazy, fat koi slumping around a pond. Ancient gum trees swish along the river banks. At dawn, there's a chorus of hundreds of birds singing and tweeting and chirping at each other and at the sky.

end of the year in the far north

We stayed in a bach overlooking a breathlessly beautiful bay. Instead of tv, we watched the sun rise and the sun set on the deck and cooked everything on a BBQ or a makeshift campfire. In the afternoons, a lazy brown mutt would sometimes wander over, plop at our feet, and silently implore us for food and water. Time was so unimportant that we didn't even know it was New Years until the texts from friends started to roll in.  

The year ended and started in the Far North; where you can forget New Zealand for a while, and pretend you're somewhere undiscovered in the far Pacific isles. The sand dunes and the lighthouse perched like it was the end of the world. Spiky red pohutakawa trees blooming along a sandy, empty beach. And everywhere - a view to end all views, a horizon so seamless you felt your eyes were playing tricks on you.

{ Kaeo, Cape Reinga, Matauri Bay, & Te Paki Sand Dunes on Yashica Electro 35GSN, shot with Kodak Ektar and Portra }