![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This place is screwed
Jan. 27th, 2006 11:14 pmOk, it's 26 deg Celcius at 11:30pm here in Canberra, and it's hailing. Hailing, I tell you. And no, I've had one beer and nothing illicit. This place is truly bizarre.
On a more ...something, I dunno... front, I saw Mrs Henderson Presents. I laughed like a drain. Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins are fab. Hoskins almost manages to carry off "debonair", which is an achievement. Will Young really surprised me with how well he did. Well, I was in the UK when he won whatever the competition was, so I really expected him to go the same way as Hear*cough*Say. He's got a nice voice, though, and his acting was adequate. And he's got a cute butt, what can one say?
I felt the movie itself lost momentum about 1/2 way through, although the ending was fine, and the whole plucking-of-the-heartstrings subplot did not work for me, at all. But it's definitely one of the top five movies I've seen in the last couple of years. Well recommended.
Also, I found a bloody awesome blog on Wellington City, called Wellurban. Lots of stuff on Wellington's urban life and its design. While the central city is a bit of a hodgepodge, there are some fantastic buildings and civic spaces. Wellington Library is the best public library I've encountered so far, anywhere, for example. It was one of my "tiki-tour" spots if anyone visited me there. (yes, we've established I'm somewhat strange).
Any blog that talks about sustainability and cocktails in adjacent posts is definitely for me. There are some great statistics. There are 154 bars in Central Wellington (which includes the CBD and two inner-city suburbs). When you consider that the the population of the greater Wellington region is less than 1/2 a million, you can appreciate that this is a lot of bars. As well as the fact that you can walk from one end of that area to the other in less than an hour. However, he makes a fascinating distinction between the city population and the metropolitan population, and comes up with this statistic:
City Metropolitan
Wellington 160,000 450,000
Sydney 122,000 4,500,000
No wonder Wellington punches above its weight in terms of "cosmopolitan-ness". Ok, it doesn't matter how many people are in a town - you can have a hick town with over half a million in population. Even when it is the capital city. *ahem* However, I do think that a city has to achieve a certain critical mass of population (in a concentrated area) to feel like a "real" city. And obviously Wellington has it where it counts.
Oh, it's stopped hailing. The temperature has "fallen" to 23 deg, and is a nicely moist 79% humidity. Hell, this is the reason why I swore I'd never live in Auckland again. It'd be ironic if I got acclimatised here, and ended up living there when I go home. Actually, I love Auckland. It's just the 'burbs, the fact that I couldn't afford to live in the (central) places I love, the abominable public transport and the weather (humidity, mainly) that get me down. It's a gorgeous town. If you're not stuck out in the godforsaken urban sprawl.
On a more ...something, I dunno... front, I saw Mrs Henderson Presents. I laughed like a drain. Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins are fab. Hoskins almost manages to carry off "debonair", which is an achievement. Will Young really surprised me with how well he did. Well, I was in the UK when he won whatever the competition was, so I really expected him to go the same way as Hear*cough*Say. He's got a nice voice, though, and his acting was adequate. And he's got a cute butt, what can one say?
I felt the movie itself lost momentum about 1/2 way through, although the ending was fine, and the whole plucking-of-the-heartstrings subplot did not work for me, at all. But it's definitely one of the top five movies I've seen in the last couple of years. Well recommended.
Also, I found a bloody awesome blog on Wellington City, called Wellurban. Lots of stuff on Wellington's urban life and its design. While the central city is a bit of a hodgepodge, there are some fantastic buildings and civic spaces. Wellington Library is the best public library I've encountered so far, anywhere, for example. It was one of my "tiki-tour" spots if anyone visited me there. (yes, we've established I'm somewhat strange).
Any blog that talks about sustainability and cocktails in adjacent posts is definitely for me. There are some great statistics. There are 154 bars in Central Wellington (which includes the CBD and two inner-city suburbs). When you consider that the the population of the greater Wellington region is less than 1/2 a million, you can appreciate that this is a lot of bars. As well as the fact that you can walk from one end of that area to the other in less than an hour. However, he makes a fascinating distinction between the city population and the metropolitan population, and comes up with this statistic:
City Metropolitan
Wellington 160,000 450,000
Sydney 122,000 4,500,000
No wonder Wellington punches above its weight in terms of "cosmopolitan-ness". Ok, it doesn't matter how many people are in a town - you can have a hick town with over half a million in population. Even when it is the capital city. *ahem* However, I do think that a city has to achieve a certain critical mass of population (in a concentrated area) to feel like a "real" city. And obviously Wellington has it where it counts.
Oh, it's stopped hailing. The temperature has "fallen" to 23 deg, and is a nicely moist 79% humidity. Hell, this is the reason why I swore I'd never live in Auckland again. It'd be ironic if I got acclimatised here, and ended up living there when I go home. Actually, I love Auckland. It's just the 'burbs, the fact that I couldn't afford to live in the (central) places I love, the abominable public transport and the weather (humidity, mainly) that get me down. It's a gorgeous town. If you're not stuck out in the godforsaken urban sprawl.