Dream note
New Zealand-based Indian singer-songwriter Lucky Ali talks about his “upbeat, perky and positive” album and his two wives.
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Murder on the Street
Shirker, penned by New Zealander Chad Taylor features a murder on Shortland Street – the place, not the programme.
Root Problem
ICANN, the US agency that registers regional suffixes like .nz, is trying to charge for its services. The Internet Society of New Zealand has threatened to look elsewhere for root service, raising the spectre of an…
Mahy magic
Margaret Mahy’s 24 Hours, her latest teen novel released in America, is “compelling and emotionally satisfying”.
Slow Potato
New Zealand researcher Graham Harris’s potato digging made him a finalist in the “Slow Food” 2000 awards.
Hardie-Boys’ China Adventure
NZ Gov-Gen Michael Hardie-Boys will wrestle alligators and leap from speeding sampans as the guest of President Jiang Zemin.
Circus Ribbons
Wellington performers staged a twelve hour festival in support of international White Ribbon Day, organised to raise awareness of violence against women.
Thatcher Revisited
Ten years after the fall of the Iron Lady, her policies still reverberate around the globe: “More than £4bn of assets have been privatised in countries as diverse as the Czech republic and New Zealand.” …
Maori Shakespeare
Te Tangata Whai Rawa O Weneti, (usually known as The Merchant of Venice), currently filming in New Zealand will “introduce the Maori language to the world,” as well as making Shakespeare more accessible to…
Oracle Speaks
Flippin heck, the Chris Dickson-skippered boat for Larry Ellison’s Oracle America’s Cup challenge does an unchartered turn during a training run on the Waitemata. The boat’s 21- ton keel “inexplicably sheared off”.
The Porn’s on You
“New Zealand Member of Parliament Winston Peters lashed out at Wellington’s National Library of New Zealand, painting its provision of free Internet access as an invitation for unrestricted surfing of porn sites and for foreigners to check…
Meat and a Green
Matthew Norman munches steak, savours Cloudy Bay Sauvignon and wonders if the man next to him has former Gov-Gen Lord Arthur Porritt’s edge vintage in his veins.
Travel Edge
“Bungee jumping got its start here, and if dangling off a bridge by your ankles isn’t your idea of fun, there’s hiking – or “tramping” as the locals, known as Kiwis, call it – along with…
Nuke Free
New Zealand continues to play a key role in the call for a New Agenda, successfully co-sponsoring wider acceptance of Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments at the UN.
Grief Vultures
“At a conference in Auckland, New Zealand, Dr. Simon Wessely called for an end to grief counselling, which he denounced as ineffective and even voyeuristic, tossing counsellors with otherwise-humdrum lives into the same dreaded category as ambulance…
Sauvignon Savvy
Stoneleigh Vineyards’ ’99 Sauvignon Blanc: “this wine manages to have lots of tropical fruits in the nose, while maintaining the dry, herbaceous character that the grape is known for.”
Digital Planet
New Zealand is the leading edge of the digital planet, with the highest IT spending (per capita) in the world.
Orphans of Poland
Schoolteacher Krystyna Skwarko survived the death camps of Stalinist Poland, fleeing to Persia and eventually resettling in New Zealand with her two children and 700 Polish orphans.
Lazarus
New Zealand First’s annual conference saw leader Winston Peters returning to traditional themes of nationalism, battling on behalf of the battler, equal rights for all New Zealanders and anti-political correctness. He also mentioned that NZF is still…
PM Groucho re TV
“I find television very educating. Every time someone turns on the set I go and read a book.” Helen Clark is in perfect agreement with Groucho Marx’s thoughts on the box.
Barker on Pace
Team NZ skipper Dean Barker tops the November World Match Race Rankings, beating his lieutenant Bertrand Pace into second place.
£40m free mag
TNT and Southern Cross, Britain’s free mags for antipodean expats, have been sold for £40m. The buyer, Trader Media Group, plans to launch a complementary website.
Vagana Captured
The Bradford Bulls League team have extra muscle in the form of 18-stone Joe Vagana, ex-Warriors. “Joe’s capture will send ripples across the game,” says Bradford coach Brian Noble.
Power Dressing
The Powerhouse Museum’s Fashion of 2000 features New Zealand designer Karen Walker’s “it” broken pearl dress, alongside work by Stella McCartney, Galliano and Versace.
Edge Jet
“Created in New Zealand, Jet Sprint Racing places over-powered engines into undersized boats and blasts racers through swampy, shallow and tight cornered courses.”
Muscling In
Wellington will host the 2002 World Bodybuilding Championships. The influx of talent should put paid to the brain-drain hysteria.
Tuna Tussle
How much is too much? New Zealand, Australia and Japan have brought in independent scientific experts to settle the row over tuna quotas.
Leia Skyjumper
Carrie Fisher on drugs, Thai food and going stratospheric: ‘I was in New Zealand recently, on one of those bungee catapults, which I was far too old to go on, and just as we were about…
Location location
New Zealand is hot property, drawing location scouts who scour the planet looking for the perfect waterfall or mountain stream.
Godzone/Godawful?
Australian-based Kiwi Bernard Lagan trashes New Zealand’s health, wealth and spirit. Helen Clark exercises the right of reply.
Wave of Light
National Children’s Memorial Day is dedicated to families mourning a child. The event is marked by twenty-four hours of candle light, starting in New Zealand.
Power Dressing #2
Dress for Success provides smart clothes for UK, US and NZ women looking for jobs. “This isn’t about ‘ladies who lunch’ sprinkling love and charity on the poor. The Dress for Success thing is…
Maine Marine
The US Conservation Law Foundation calls for marine sanctuaries, citing New Zealand’s flexible marine conservation scheme.
Milk Flows South
Kiwi Milk, one of New Zealand’s big dairy players, has swallowed Kaikoura Co-operative Dairy Co. The merger will “assist with increased milk flows”.
O’Donnell’s limit
“As star of the (Kiwi-directed) mountain-climbing epic Vertical Limit Chris O’Donnell had been helicoptered to the edge of a jagged rock formation in New Zealand’s rugged Southern Alps and deposited to “hang out” for…
Tumeke Te Nana
Karl Te Nana picked up Man of the Tournament and R10 000 after New Zealand’s winning sevens effort in Durban.
Woolly Coincidence
Was it morphic resonance that caused New Zealand sheep to start rolling across cattle girds at the same time as their Welsh cousins? Could a similar force be affecting sisterly novelists?
Flu in Freetown
Sierra Leone was an important staging port on the long route home for WWI ANZAC troops. Freetown’s cemetery commemorates a handful of Australians and a lone New Zealander, their journeys cut short by influenza.
Counting Crowe
Amazon keeps count of DVD pre-orders. Gladiator gores Perfect Storm 80 000 to 30 0000 . Also due out on DVD is Crowe’s “breakthrough performance” in Romper Stomper.
Geeks Downunder
“Geeks have a great chance Down Under” states the Economic Times. This, and other such headlines, are drawing high-skill immigrants to New Zealand where “living conditions are definitely better than elsewhere”.
Sauvignon Temptation
Former Scots Rugby rep Rob Wainwright recalls a New Zealand tour run along the lines of a temperance society outing. The players escaped the coach for a day of deep-sea fishing, which swiftly “degenerated into deep…
Versatile Machine
Pakistani engineers have developed a “bed shaper cum seed drill”, and are exporting the all-purpose agri-tool to Uzbekistan thanks to New Zealand sponsorship.
Green-edged Canada
“The Green Party is part of an international movement of environment-centred parties that began in New Zealand in 1972.” – Values Party perhaps?
Howzat?
John Wright gets personal on his new job as coach of the Indian cricket team: “One of the challenges of the job is to communicate with people. You have to be sensitive about it.”…
Location #2
“As globalisation impacts mainstream Indian cinema, one of the early fall-outs is a flight of locations, with Indian film-makers snapping up every excuse in the book to shoot everywhere – from Alaska to New…
Burmese Campaign
From New Zealand to Burma, and then into prison for playing pro-democracy songs. Londoner James Mawdsley used his OE to fight SLORC.
Kosher Washer
Dishdrawers by Fisher & Paykel are taking the American Jewish market by storm. The separate compartments make them the kosher washer of choice according to New Zealand sources close to the Paykel family.
Horsemen of the Edge
“New Zealand horsemen have arrived in the village. They have taken over a surplus cowshed just behind the blacksmith’s. I visit and discover that, having seen better days, the shed is being converted with vast energy…
Wave Action
A South Pacific-style reef in Bournemouth is the brain child of Prof Kerry Black of Waikato University. The big waves will help turn the resort into the next “coolest city in the universe”.
Xena kills jiggle TV
“Is it the end of the Baywatch phenomenon? In place of the silicon- enhanced charms of David Hasselhof’s babes is the well-toned New Zealander who yells yi-yi-yi-yi when vanquishing an opponent, leaps through the…
A&LD rave
“Ever find yourself overwhelmed by the mass of information the net makes available?” Make like those in the know and head to New Zealand (and the web’s) hottest site, Arts and Letters Daily.
Squash Title
World #1 Leilani Joyce was narrowly beaten in the final round of the World Women’s Open by Auckland-based Australian Carol Owens, who has indicated she’d like a place on the New Zealand squad in the future….
Role-model Winslet
As well as being every New Zealand director’s actress of choice, Kate Winslet can handle a baby.
Whale of an Appetite
Whales eat up to five times as much fish as humans, therefore protecting them is absurd, according to Dan Goodman of the Japan Institute of Cetacean Research, speaking at a whaling conference in New Zealand. …
Milford Magic
“Awesome!” screams Eric Forseter, 23. “The sheer power of being under a natural phenomenon like that is unbelievable.” Milford Sound, “a virtual catalogue of natural wonders of the Southern Hemisphere,” awes and exhilarates visitors.
Ice and Cannibals
Alan Gurney details three mid-nineteenth century voyages to Antarctica. Included is a “grisly description by a New Zealand missionary of the cannibalistic Maoris’ method of creating shrunken human heads.”
