sailorette’s diary - a diary writen by a sailorette for her loved ones to read after returning safely home from sea

This week I picked up my copy of Creative Review, and for the first time ever, actually read an article from beginning to end. The article was “The Naked City. São Paulo: The city that said no to advertising” by Patrick Burgoyne.

It had me stuck to the toilet seat. São Paulo’s right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, has passed a Clean City law whereby all outdoor advertising has been banned.

The article is accompanied with photographs from Tony de Marco’s Flickr account. They show a new São Paulo. A blank canvas and an advertising graveyard. Skeletons of billboards rise into the sky, revealing buildings and architecture that their adverts had previously concealed. Its quite poetic and beautiful.

And I’ve pulled a common thread here - my previous post about Noisemapping London discussed aural noise pollution, now Kassab has addressed visual noise pollution.

He has calmed the city. Put the public before the private. And got away with it.

Well almost…

The Brazilian Association of Advertisers is calling the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist.” What a surprise! Here are the advertisers - the newly repressed - fighting for their rights…

Kassab is perhaps dictating. He is dictating a new law to clean up his city. ‘It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn’t legal, so we have decided to go all the way‘.

And go all the way he has! Be he red, blue or purple, Kassab has succeeded in doing what many others would not dare venture. I applaud him. São Paulo has alot to teach the rest of the world.

Nico beat me to this, but thought I’d post it anyway.

So lets just have a sum-up here. The years only a third of the way through and I’ve already managed to visit three (or four, if you’re a Scottish Nationalist) countries. They recommend save the best for last, and I would almost agree.

Perhaps it was my new board, or maybe it was the food and the local beer, maybe the rather picturesque scenery had something to do with it and that the lack of fresh snow and left-over jetlag from New Z that just melted away.. but I ♥ Switzerland!

First thing : the journey. Sam, Anneli, Nico and I flew out of London City Airport: a small town airport in a massive capitol. You’re checked in and through security in a matter of minutes and arrive in what appears to be a pub / waiting area. The flight was so fast - that might have something to do with what I was comparing it to (26 hours to New Zealand) - accompanied by lovely little Swiss Air chocolates, and two sudoku’s later we arrived in Basel. I ♥ London City Airport

But enough about that - how about my new board? Well… it was perfection. Bindings? Snugger than a snow bunny in a bun. Sam had been taunting me as he’d just had a weeks snowboarding in exactly the same resort (rather an unplanned coincidence), and had “gotten so much better.” By day two, I was (almost) leaving him in the slush. I ♥ Arborâ„¢. I ♥ Rideâ„¢.

And all of this wrapped up in the dramatic range of the Swiss Alps.

to Z. It is almost the furthest we could have gone from the little island of Britain. A journey of 24 hours, 4 countries and 13 hours later. A journey through the sky to bring us to the Land of the Long White Cloud. Aotearoa. New Zealand.

is for Best ice-cream in New Zealand. Our first stop when we landed, was to drive up to the peninsula and have an ice cream. Boyesnberry ice cream is marvellous. It won the Silver New Zealand Ice Cream Award

is for Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, pop 300,000. Twas our first stop in New Zealand and a city to set the scene for the country’s ‘borrowed’ towns - taking scottish, spanish and english architecture and blending it to create disneyland-like streets.

is for Dunedin: our next stop and a city that boasts the world’s steepest street and a near exact replica of Glasgow University. We sampled some rather weird coffee and took a ride on the taieri gorge railway, originally started in 1879 to provide easy transport for livestock and provisions to the upspring of gold mining settlements.

is for Elspeth - one of my best friends, a doctor, a one-in-a-million and a certified, bonidfied citizen of New Zealand. She lives in Christchurch and currently works in plastic surgery, not the boobjob kind, but the saving-skin-cancer kind. Doctors have a law, that they must stop if someone is injured. During the holiday, a hells angels crashed in front of her parent’s camper van. Elp ran to his rescue. I think her patient wished she’d been a bike miracle mechanic rather than a doctor.

is for Fiordlands. New Zealand is very remarkable for is small size, and very wide glacial valleys. When a glacier erodes away the bottom of a valley near a coastline so that it drops below sea level, a Fjord is formed. The first european settlers in New Zealand called these areas Sounds. I’m not entirely sure why, but a Sound is different to a Fjord. In order to rectify their misnaming, the Kiwi’s called the area the Fiorlands. All they need now is a ‘j’.

is for Glaciers. The reminants of the glaciers that created the Fiordlands still exist. We took an early evening helicopter ride over Fox Glacier and it’s neighbour, Franz Josef. I was surprised to read that it was a geology student who discovered that the Fox Glacier was again moving down the mountain.

is for History, and not much of. The country of New Zealand is a very young country. It was settled less than 200 years ago but was first found by the dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, in 1642. This is what gives it cities and towns a feeling that they came out of a box and would fit perfectly on a model railway track. The country of Aotearoa, on the other hand, is over 1200 years old. The first settlers were polynesian sea travellers who called their land the ‘island of the long white cloud’. These were the Maori, the first people of New Zeland. A people who, before the europeans came along, had no written language and remembered history through song.

is for increadible scenery through Arthur’s Pass - a visual orgasm for our eyes… and the best was still yet to come.

is for Jumping. Out of Airplanes and off bridges. While the first modern bungee jump was made in Bristol in 1 April 1979, the first commercial bungee jumpwas done in Auckland, New Zealand by a Mr A J Hackett.

is for Kaikora. After Arthur’s Pass and picking up Elp’s parents, here we headed - a small fishing and surfing town on the east coast of the South Island. We stayed in the theatrical Apopka Lodge, a hostel filled with driftwood-framed photographs of the first white family to settle there, alongside elk heads mounted on dark red velvet wallpaper. Here, we became entertainers of the sea, singing and swimming alongside wild dusky dolphins.

is for Lakes. I forgot to mention Te Anau! a lovely lake where we stayed during our first week at the Backpackers Lodge on the hillside. Here the quest for Gustav’s dream kitchen, ended, and we spent a day Kyaking in…

is for ilford Sounds. Here we took a days trip kyacking around the marvellous sounds. The Maori legend says that the Earth Mother, Papatuanuku and Sky Father, Ranginui (great names!) gave their son a greenstone hammer to carve out the south Island. They say he needed practice alot of practice, and by the time he reached Milford, he had reached perfection. While we were in New Zealand, a man had tried to cross the Tasman Sea in a kyak and had drowned the day after he saw land. His wife and son had been waiting in Milford Sounds to greet him.

is for Name. The name New Zealand actually originates from Dutch explorers naming the islands after “Nova Zeeland”, a place in holland. Captain cook then anglicised this name to become the name we call it now.

is for Organisation of fuel distribution. Elspeth is a paranoid petrol petroller. In our first week travelling, we had 6 fuel stops. Distance travelled: around 900 miles. Our Second week, we had 2 fuel stops; distance travelled: around 700 miles. I don’t think I need to say who drove the first week.

is for Picton. After Kaikora we drove up this harbour town, where you take the ferry across to Wellington. A very nice peninsual here with a lovely walk down to the sea marking old Maori Pa’s - guarding settlements set up to watch against other tribes. When the Europeans tried to first settle New Zealand, they were defeated by the ferorcity of the Maori’s. If the Maori’s had managed to band together, the europeans would probably have given up. As it was, the internal wars between the Maori’s were not resolved…

is for Queenstown. A town we all would have liked to visit, but didn’t have the time. We drove past the local bungiejump (see J is for Jumping) but decided to visit the Chard Farm vineyard instead (see W is for Wine).

is for Roasted poo. New Zealand may have remarkable scenery, but they really do have crap coffee.

is for So beautiful. After Picton, we stayed one night on D’urville Island Resort, named after the French Explorer D’urville, who charted French Pass - the sea between the island and the mainland. We could have stayed there longer. A beach view from our bedroom, glow-worms in waterfall grottoes, Kayacking and Stingrays, hikes up the old school track, our neighbours the Takahe Bird. And there was still more to see, do and relax in. The resort was owned by a South African who had one undersized leg. When he was 4 years old, he was in an accident and broke his leg. When the doctors came to take off the bandge, they removed it rather clumsily. What they didn’t realise was the leg had been badly burnt, and the skin had disintigrated. His leg is undersized because he only has one muscle left.

it for Tramping - the Kiwi term for tramping. Beware when taking a kiwi tramp, as their grades of difficulty parallel their fitness levels. Elspeth and I took a walk that was described as “fit for all ages”. There was hardly any track and as Elp exclaimed “my gran’s rather fit, but she would never have been able to do that!”

is for Unexplored territory. Most of New Zealand is unexplored, and perhaps more noteworthy, unnamed. If you so wished, you could go find a mountain, and name it after your favourite sheep.

is for Very tasty food.

is for Wine. There are 10 main wine regions in New Zealand and our second last day was spent travelling through one at Wairau valley. Our first stop was Johanneshof wines, a german owned vineyard guarded by a very old dog. Next was an Organic Vineyard owned by the director of the Harry Potter movies and here we had a very interesting chat about organic growing, the fall of the American empire and chinese wine. Fromm was a very nice winery, swiss owned that probably did the best pinot’s out of the lot. Stay away from Spy Valley. Unfortunately for us, the South Island is more focused on Chardonnay’s but it still has a good selection of Pinot Noirs. Amongst the ones we tried, these in particular stood out:

Fenton Road, Central Otago
The Tiger, Chard Farm, Queenstown
Pinot Noir, Fromm, Wairau Valley
Pinot Noir, Johanneshof, Malborough

is for ‘Xcellent holiday. Brilliant trip. But I don’t think i’ll move there. The country definitely lacks an essential ingreadient that I seek for.

is for “You think you’ve done it without any problems… then you’re boyfriend’s passport falls apart and theres a strong possibility you might have to leave the country without him”. Luckily the NZ customs called all 3 countries and made sure he could pass through. As it turned out, Nico didn’t show his passport once after leaving NZ.

is for zzzzzzzzz… the jetlag wasn’t that bad… I was a willow zombie at work (the day I landed)… but the readjustment to a normal human being wasn’t too painful.

my flickr set
nico’s account

This year I received a hoard of geekdom for my birthday. A ‘gift token’ Wii remote control and a beautiful red LaCie Lego Brick Hard Drive, a.k.a. Godtfred (pictured above), both from the geek of geeks. Needless to say, my inner-kid has been ignited.

Never underestimate the godliness of presents you can play with. I’ve now catagorized all my pictures by year/month/day, merged my various music collections and filed & collated my design work.

Ow-wah!

There’s still another surprise awaiting.. will post more when I know more…

Report.

Theres a tagging chain letter going round. Someone writes 5 things you might not know about them, and passes it on to 5 friends with blogs by tagging them.

A meme.

I got tagged. And if i’m to play the game, I need to respond to Dom and Nico with five things you might not know about me.

1. I was Tyne & Wear Table Tennis champion 1991-1993.
My nemesis was a girl called Sam Goldberg, who was a dangerous cheater and had a nervous twitch that involved sliding her gold earring in and out of her ear.

2. I used to have my tongue pierced.
It lasted around 8 months.I finally took it out because it got boring and wasn’t appreciated by the opposite sex.

3. I have an eyebrow scar.
When I was about 2 years old, in a spanish restaurant I sat, food all around my face. I started clambering out of my highchair, reached towards my dad, who, seeing the mess I was in, stepped away… Spanish tiled floor - my face.

4. I was almost lost as a child.
This involved ‘hide and seek’ with my dad at the Quayside in Newcastle, a police search, and the dredging of the river Tyne.

I was eventually found playing happily with two kids at an indian wedding.

5. I am genetically my father’s daughter, and my uncle’s daughter.
Work that one out.

And thus having completed my task, I pass the gauntlet to:
1. James
2. Mamma-muu
3. Maria
4. Toby - a pictorial response?

About a year ago this blog was built by Mr Nico Nuzzaci. A year later, Nico is highlighted by the glow from his computer and I am puzzling over tags.

What I can tell you is that, when I was little, tag was one of my favourite games. Now I’m into Ultimate tag warrior (wow… what my 7-year old imagination would have made from that, my 25 year-old self can only imagine). Ultimate is a plug-in for wordpress that allows you to display your tags in a variety of geological ways. It rekindles my love of information design and now i’ve managed to do a ‘weightedlongtailvertical’, something that sounds like one hell of a cool skateboard trick, but is actually a lovely way to display your top 20 tags.

Very nice work miss lorelle.

The little christmas widget is now available for hire. It will act out little elf tasks right there on your desktop like fetching a gift-a-day and telling you how many shopping days you have left till christmas.

download it here

p.s. big thankyou to nunziefluff. Without you, little widget would still be hiding in santa’s grotto. x

Nico found this on youtube. Directed by Luigi Scattini.
An italian’s direction of sweden. Quite fitting with nico himself.

I’m a very lucky girl!

Over half a year ago, I broke my very shit and over-expensive casio digital camera. Since then I have been taking pictures in my mind. Click click, goes my mind almost every other day.

That is not why I am lucky.

My lovely Nico just gave me my christmas present early. And it was the rather nice Canon 400D. Check out my flickr where there will be much more sophisticated, and brilliant photos coming soon…I promise, and so does miss 400D.

“If you get lonely you can share my bed tonight.”

That’s my flatmate, A, speaking. The week my boyfriend, nico, is away in sweden, she decides to try lesbianism. I think its all the stripes she wears, its driving her horizontal.

Yesterday morning she suggested we go see a band who’s hit song, “My Best Friend”, chorus’ the lyrics:

“Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was a lesbian
Damn! I wish I was, and that you were, too
So I could fall in love with you”

Suspicious me? No. I asked Nico along.

*Annika Norlin, left, with Maia Hirasawa.

The gig was at The Water Rats, an old theatre bar by kings cross. A warm, friendly pub where I was the minority, and no one said sorry. The warm-up act was a half-japanese, half-swedish girl, Maia Hirasawa. She had a great voice, and I mistook her for the lead-singer in the band that we were there to see. The band that I have not named yet. A name that comes from a special taxi service run in the most heroin addicted city in america. A service that, when rung, the chauffeur answers “Hello Saferide”. And so we come to the 3rd line-up of the night, and the band we’d come here to see.

She* was cute, charastmatic, and funny. This came bubble wrapped in a very bad english accent. The songs sounded even better than on the album (the original reason why we go to gigs) and her small-talk added new stories around the songs.

My flatmate, A, didn’t even notice when they played “My Best Friend.”

The Suit. A uniform, a costume, a ritual or a lifestyle. A Suit. Born from the union of Mr formal to Miss normal, to iron out individuality and judgement. A Suit. The pin prick in the fashion balloon.

Do you like the suit you own? Does it express the culture we are now living in? Is it clever, quick-witted, tailored with your personality and adaptable to your thoughts?

If you’re feeling unloved by your suit these boys have the answer.

WARNING
Contains strict attention to detail, beautiful cuts and sharp ideas.
Shop opens soon. Sign up here

Two weeks ago I found myself at a loose end. Nico was away in sweden. I had no mini projects that needed finishing, or could be finished with the materials I had available and to top it all we had an hour extra to our day. I remembered seeing people cycling up to the new swimming pool that had opened in our local park, london fields, and thought I would bite the optomistic pie, suit up, and head on down.

I was rather surprised to see a queue of people coming out the automatic, anti-queue doors. As the mother of the family in front of me exclaimed, “its all the crazy hackney people wanting a pool so much that as soon as one opens, they race to queue up for a swim.”

Surprisingly enough this queue of people were absorbed by the olympic size of the pool itself, and there was room for everyone to swim around merrily. It was a very social occasion, with many london fields residents debating about whether or not this was the largest outdoor pool in europe. It is, definitely, the largest outdoor pool in London. As my parents found out, we hackney residents were lucky enough to receive this £3 million swim parlour, as it will house not just our eastend torsos, but also the australia and south african teams in training for the olympics.

And what lucky bunnies we are. Just this sunday I went again, and the weather being colder this time made the heated water evaporate into a low cloud above my head. It is one of the best public pools i’ve swum in and the meeting of nature and human bodies brought back many nostaligic-glorified memories of geography and biology classes.

It only took several months but finally its here! A new logo for N, accompanied by vv. I think they work rather beautifully together.

x

Another bike spotting incident this morning, or actually more like a ‘walking in with nico pushing my bike’ spotting incident:

A guy cycling down the road, in hackney, singing reggae really loudly, with a kitchen sink over his head.

“Only in Hackney!”

“Go to Hel” - not exactly the thing i’d normally write on a postcard to my parents. But there it was. Plucked from a list of phrases milked with mentions of Hel. Note the missing ‘l’ at the end of this word. Not a typo. This missing letter, stands to distinguish the multi-columned monument of Hell - the Enternal Fire of the Damned - to the singular column of Hel - the Quiet Fishing Seaside Resort of the Polish.

A Bit of History
Hel is at the tip of the Hel peninsula, stretching about 35km out into the Baltic Sea. It stretches back towards Gdánsk, a city absorbed in Polish history stemming from its main position as a port to the Baltic.

The peninsula’s skeleton is thus. The railway and road provide the backbone. This is surrounded by a thick layer of forest where many Poles spend a happy hour searching for the seasons’ mushrooms and berries. The forest layer is further surrounded by an epidermus of beautiful white sands. The peninsula was not always this structured, and was once a set of small islands. A polish king decided to protect the peninsula with sea walls, thus creating the towns chalupy and kruznica that are there today.

Gdánsk, meaning town located on Gdania river, was at one point known as the german translation, “Danzig”. At this point Danzing was under the order of the rather funkily named Teutonic Knights. The city remained Danzig until right after the Second World War when it was flattened by the Red Army and returned to Polish possession. Nice!

Our Trip
It takes a while to get to Hel. There isn’t a Highway to Hel, only a single carrige way road that follows the railway line to the tip of the peninsula. We flew into Gdánsk airport but missed out on actually seeing the city itself thanks to bus No. 110 chugging along at 20m/p/h to Wrzeszcz station. From there, a 2 hour train journey took us up past the famer’s fields of Gdynia and, the excellently named, WÅ‚adysÅ‚awowo, and then along the Hel peninsula to Hel.

Arriving at the luminous station we were greated, as the guidebook said, by landowners asking if we wanted rooms. We’d already booked somewhere so declined offers to ‘ein room’ and wandered on up the main road. After thinking my worst thoughts had come true, we finally found our residence for the next 6 nights. After taking in the view - a dilapidated house filled with pigeons and peacocks - we took off in search of nutrition.

“The Fish is Hel is amazing!” Beautiful buttery halibut. Absolutley delicious. Another favourite of mine was Zurek served in a bread bowl, a traditional polish ’sour’ soup with potatoes, whey and sausage. The beer was pretty darn good as well - Okocim replacing Zywiec as one of my favourite beers. Krupnik vodka is still my favourite with its honey colour and way it silks on the tongue… .

The town of Hel has a rather quaint personality that makes someone like me feel like they have gone back in time. Cute little café’s and ice cream places perch along the boardwalk and main road. Local’s sell seashell necklaces and fluffly seal’s. Wooden changing huts line up along the beach and the place is filled with a calm you would attach to 1950’s england.

Nevertheless, Hel’s personality has fluxuated over history. The only church in Hel, has, as nico stated, ironically been turned into a museum. Occupied by Russia, Germany and Poland, the small town has adopted it’s varied owner’s architecture and cuisine. In the late 1800’s it was officially cited as a seaside resort for polish holiday-makers only to change during the Second World War when it was the main polish defense against the german ships. The battle of the Hel peninsula was the longest lasting of all the polish attempts to fight off the germans.

The one thing that has remained constant is the traditional man-powered fishing boat. Fish is at the heart of Hel’s commuity and it can be seen in the religious fresco’s of christ preaching to his disciples in a fishing boat, and read in the weather beaten faces of the local fishermen. Having read the book Cod a while ago, the significance of fish is something that I find very interesting. While in Hel I was reading The Fish Can Sing by the icelandic Halldór Laxness. Slow to begin with, it was the perfect book to read while in the fishing village of Hel. The themes of fish, community, simplicity, culture and nature swam in my mind and with nico’s paragraph’s from “No Logo”, the hooks of privitisation and capitalism hung hungrily in the air.

I would suggest go to Hel soon. Go to Hel before Poland becomes too developed and absorbs too much of west europe’s languidity. Go to Hel and eat fish!

More on Hel from wikipedia
Nico’s story

“zzzzeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooommmmm”

The NINJA’s have arrived!
A few days ago little Ginga Ninja and Nunzchucka were born. They’ve been having quite a bit of fun ninja-ing around. Ginga Ninja’s been training up for his first big FLY to stockholm to hand out with the Ginga Ninja Master and improve his special move, the ace. Heres what they’ve been up to.

Ninja’s use anti-gravity to stick to walls

Ninja’s Showering

DJ Ginga on da dex

DJ Ginga and MC Nunzchucka

Ninja’s surfing

Ginga Ninja packed and ready for his Flight

Ginga Ninja Card

This is a comment to nico’s post, but as he has no comment options on his blog, i’ve had to reference it through mine.

In response to the why, maybe the reason is just to do it; a change - to give yourself the choice.

As Chuck says

“I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about… in a way this is trading one compulsive behavior for another, but at least with the new one, you’re choosing it.”

You may or may not be wondering how the snus abstinence has been going with nuzz. Well, its been difficult but it is now official day 9 WITHOUT snus and he’s doing just fine. Think he’ll stick this one out and that i’ll have a real authentique nico, sans snus. As he says himself, he’s not quite himself yet.. but he’ll do fine for me.

Today was THE basketball match…well…THE FIRST OF MANY basketball matches. It started as an idea between me and benny to have an east vrs north london basketball match. However it didn’t really turn out like that but it was still really good fun. A saturday sunny day spent scuffing up dust clouds as we lept with inexperience, hands waving madly in attempts to stop a potential basket, or really just to try to get the ball.

The crew included myself, nico, g, benny, maria, julia and gustav’s ex-flatmate hannah. Hannah spent most of her time on the mobile phone. G was rather good, good enough to cover hannah’s mobile phone handicap. It was probably the most fun basketball game i’ve played. And after, collapsing on the grass, dusty and tired, chatting in the sun, it was one of those days you thank life for your friends, saturdays and parks.