Kariotahi

Busy mood at work on Friday, with lots going on. Met up with Simone, Lucy and Simone FG at Mea Culpa after work, for great gin and tonics. Lucy and Simone were heading off to the Film Festival opening 'Hidden', which made me slightly jealous. My first film isn't until tonight.

Later Hannah, Rosie, ET, Liam, Q and I hung out at my house, watching the increasingly fraught OC. After what was actually an amazing episode with many twists and turns, we hung out under the patio heater for far too long. Patio heater is increasingly tempermental, requiring lots of loving attention from Q.

Saturday morning kicked off a little too late with a haircut and a catch up with Gareth, my hairdresser from when I was fourteen who Lucy recently tracked down. Secondhand book shopping followed, and I managed to bump into Bonnie who was en route to Bali, for two weeks of "bombs, drugs and sharks" as she put it. Seems like everyone's getting out of Auckland right now.

Yet another copy of FutureShock later, met up with Hannah and ET, for coffee and Ponsonby wandering. We avoided the rugby on Saturday night, I had drinks instead, and we danced crazily until about twelve when we headed to a party at Phil's house. Having had a very decent head start on the partying, the night quickly turned into a large one and we wound up at Stevie's 'rave' in Newton at about four.

This morning Jessamy and I hit Bambina for breakfast, which made me look forward to going to Bills in Sydney this week. After this, I picked up Mark and we made our way to Waiuku. We made it out there without too many hitches, and found Jeff's house by two. We both took still cameras out and got lots of photos over the course of the afternoon. We wandered around his parents farm first, finding a very excellent scout bunk house, and then drove out to Kariotahi beach, one of my all-time favourites. It was great to go out there again- the last time must have been Brad's birthday at least four years ago. Today there were lots of parachutes and paragliders out over the cliffs, it looked amazing.

We went into Waiuku central- or the 'Ku, and had coffee at Sorelle, a great little cafe my parents had put me onto. It was fun to be out there again, I used to go when I was at primary school and stay with Shana on the weekends. It's very weird though, the Steel Mill looms so large. It's visible all over town. I think it will have to have a presence in the finished film.

London's still featuring in all the conversations. It looks like a New Zealander is missing, which brings it even closer. Very scary. The only upside is that there's just of news flooding back from everyone that's there. It's great to hear how everyone's getting on, it's just a shame it's under such negative circumstances.

On a lighter note...League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse tonight, very exciting...