Hello all and Happy Mother’s Day to my maternal readers!
I’ve been behind on blogging, so I’ll try to catch everyone up on things. I need to hit several unrelated topics, so bear with me.
Hackintosh. The computer is done, and it’s beautiful. We encountered several more hurdles before we got it completely up and running, and I’ll try to summarize them here. Newegg shipped a bad hard drive, so we had to run an operating system off of a USB jump drive for a while, which was weird and slow. They also shipped a bad monitor, so we had to use my roommate’s monitor while we were waiting on that. Installing the OS went relatively smoothly following Wolfienuke’s instructions written specifically for my motherboard. Whenever I had specific issues, I’d post on the forum, and surprisingly, I got answers. I have found the OS X 86 community very supportive so far. That’s especially nice since I can’t exactly call up Apple if anything goes wrong with my machine. It’s risky. It’s fun.
For a while there, we couldn’t get the OS to recognize the full size of the hard drive. It was stuck at 128 GB, even though it was a 600 GB drive. We solved that by switching the drive type to AHCI in the bios. Eventually, we had everything running except the Quartz Extreme wasn’t working for the video card. I finally solved that by substituting one of Aquamac’s graphics strings for the NVinject kext I was using. Now the computer is pretty much completely up and running OS X 10.5.6… it’s incredible. I’ve been installing software like crazy. Current highlights include Adobe CS4 Master Collection, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Express 8, Reason 4, and some others.
Transition paragraph: The computer now sits in my room at home because my sixth semester at Vanderbilt is over. I never installed a wireless card in the machine, so it currently has no access to the internet. It makes me feel kind of hard core to have a powerful machine completely dedicated to production. I look forward to using it a lot in the coming weeks. My summer has begun.
Vanderbilt. As for this past semester at Vanderbilt, it was a crazy one. My busiest semester yet. It was also a lazy semester for me. I’m not sure if it was my time in New Zealand or the two months of dead time I had after I returned, but I had difficulty doing my work this semester. I should take a lesson or two from my powerlifting buddy Brooks Conway, one of the most disciplined people I know. So yeah, I didn’t exactly make Dean’s List this semester, but I didn’t fail anything. I’ll try to correct that next semester… when I’m a senior in college?!?! WHAT?!?!
On that note, seeing all the preparations on campus for commencement was especially frightening for me this year. Right now, I am not looking forward to graduation at all. I don’t have a clue what I’ll be doing after Vandy, and to be honest, those question marks scare me a little bit. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a good job… and by “good job”, I mean a job that pays me a reasonable amount of money to do something interesting (probably in media production, to be vague). Who knows. Lots of uncertainty there.
Memphis. After finals ended this semester, I stuck around for a while to hang out with friends. One of the main things I did was spend a few days in Memphis for the Memphis in May music festival last weekend. Lots of Vandy people were in town, so I had a great time hanging out. I only went to the actual festival on Friday night because the weather was pretty crappy all weekend. Still, that was awesome… I saw Matt Nathanson, Jack’s Mannequin, Ben Harper, some Steve Miller Band, and All American Rejects. A few other guys and I stayed with Robbie, my little brother in BYX. Robbie was great about showing us around Memphis (we ate barbecue like three times), and of course, the Zettler family treated us like kings. My final night in Memphis, I went with my new friend Amanda Ayerst (she’s awesome) and my pledge brother Craig to see Craig’s older sister perform in her junior cello recital at University of Memphis. She is a gifted musician. It’s always a joy to be around the endlessly entertaining Bullington family.
I had SO MUCH FUN in Memphis.
Recording. As it turns out, Craig is also a gifted musician. He plays the violin. I spent two days in Nashville before I went home, so we decided to record something. We could have covered a number of songs, but we randomly decided on Somewhere Over The Rainbow. In accordance with my secret goal of one day developing a fanbase and becoming a YouTube celebrity*, I shot video of the recording process and edited it together… on my new Hackintosh! (see how I brought that full circle? oh yeah…) I have two weeks in Atlanta before I leave to begin my summer adventures, so I hope to finish a few projects and complete a few more new ones like this during that time.
Check it out:
*Not really.
Summer. I am pleased to announce that I have finalized my summer plans. I will be working in beautiful Jackson Hole, WY as a counselor at Camp Living Water, a Christian ranch camp that I helped start in 2007. This summer, I’ll be a part of a team that plans and runs seven weeks of camp for mostly middle schoolers and high schoolers. I’m excited to return to Jackson with my good friend Colby, who also worked there in 2007. We’re going to make it a road trip, and we plan on visiting the Grand Canyon and a few other national parks out west on our way. Yeah, go ahead and get jealous. I’m pumped about the photography. If you check out the Camp Living Water link above, you’ll see some of the shots I got in 2007; they’re all over the site. In fact, Jackson Hole is the reason I bought my DSLR. But even more than taking photos, I’m looking forward to seeing friends, coworkers, and campers from two years ago as well as meeting plenty of new ones.
Sure, a more responsible summer plan for me would have involved an unpaid media internship of some kind, but nothing worked out. I don’t mind. This summer is going to be awesome.
Mother’s Day. By the way, I have the best mom in the world. I’ll be planting flowers in the yard with her this afternoon because that’s all she really wanted for Mother’s Day. The woman just wants to plant flowers with her children. How sweet is that?
Thanks for reading everyone. I’ll try to be more diligent with my blogging as the summer goes on.
Quick warning: this is another nerdy post. Read at your own risk.
As you know from my previous post, I’m in the midst of building a computer. I had the parts delivered to my house in Atlanta, and I picked them up when I went home for Easter last weekend. Drew and I have started assembling the machine. We would be completely done by now, but we hit a roadblock or two. This is alright; we expected to encounter setbacks with this new adventure, but it is a test of our patience.
First of all, we stupidly bought a 500 watt power supply for this beast. We didn’t realize that the video card alone sucks up 400 watts. Fail! I’ve sent it back for a refund, and its 800 watt replacement should arrive tomorrow. Also, Newegg shipped me a defective monitor. It’s got something sliding around loose inside of it, as if an assembly worker accidently left a tool inside. It sounded really broken. So the monitor is also on its way back to Newegg for a replacement.
We will be able to finish the build when the new power supply arrives tomorrow. The assembly process has been inspiring so far. We had a number of close calls fitting things into the case, especially the fan assembly. I bought a really powerful cooling fan, and it clears the enclosure lid by about a centimeter. Phew! I also had to modify the viewing window on the lid so that the little fan built onto there could fit inside the case. Building the hackintosh is really exciting. Also, it’s beautiful, inside and out. Check out the photos to see what I mean.
The adventure has just begun. Once we’ve got the machine built, the next challenge begins: installing the operating system(s). More to come!
1. An apology. Sorry for not blogging much the past couple months. I’ve missed you.
2. Hackintosh. I’m building a Mac with my friend Drew Scoggins. It’s called a “Hackintosh” because people don’t usually build their own macs. For those of you concerned, there is no illegal hacking involved, but it’s tricky because you have to carefully select the hardware to work with the software. As it turns out, there is a community of people online who do this. It’s called the OSx86 project. These people, many of them computer experts or enthusiasts, carefully document the hardware that has been tried, what works, and what doesn’t. Drew and I are using this resource (and Drew’s experience) to build a powerful production machine from scratch for roughly a quarter of the price that Apple would charge. I intend to use the computer primarily for audio and video production. This next part might be for nerds’ eyes only, but here are some specs on the hardware I purchased:
Two (2) Seagate 640 GB 7200 RPM internal hard drives
I’ll try to keep you updated on our progress as we build the machine in the next few weeks and attempt to run OS X 10.5 on it. I’m excited.
3. Speaking of audio production, I just had a recording session with my friend Marty Pendleton last night. Marty is a talented performer who does a great cover of John Legend’s “Ordinary People”, so we decided to lay down some tracks for kicks. We hauled my gear over to St. Augustine’s, a small chapel on campus with really live acoustics. Marty had a decent karaoke track to use, so we only tracked vocals there. To make the most of the space, I tried a new mic’ing technique… well, new for me, but a classic technique in general. I close-mic’ed Marty with my large-diaphram condenser, and I put a stereo pair of condensers (XY) at the opposite end of the chapel to function as room mics. Hopefully I can adjust the levels on these later to create a higher-quality reverb than I could have faked with a plugin. I haven’t started editing Marty’s takes, so the track isn’t done yet, but I did post some photos from the session. Check those out.
4. Google evidence. This is completely random, but when I repeatedly see people do things that don’t make sense, I feel the need to blog about them. I have encountered a certain presentational phenomenon with greater frequency recently, and it has started to make me crazy. By “presentational phenomenon”, I mean something that I only see when people are presenting information, like delivering a sermon, giving a lecture, etc. Over and over again, I’ve seen pastors and professors use the number of Google hits on a search term to suggest that the particular concept or topic in question is popular or relevant in our society. Have you seen this? The other day, my professor was lecturing on leadership ethics, and she showed a slide with a bunch of these search terms with negative ethical connotations and the number of hits they generated. One of them was “infidelity”, which generated 5.6 million hits. Others were similar. Her point? Leadership ethics is lacking in our society today. Weak sauce.
I think people are using this technique in an attempt to be relevant in a dot-com-wifi-ipod-internet era, but it only weakens their arguments for one simple reason: There is not necessarily a direct correlation between the number of internet references to a subject and its relevance in our society. That is a massive assumption. Furthermore, given vague, one-word search terms, Google cannot differentiate the contexts from which all of these references come. Using my previous example, any sites that include the word “infidelity” would be returned with the search results, whether the sites supported, refuted, or were completely unrelated to the point my professor was trying to make.
I’m not saying that my professor was wrong, but she fell victim to the trap of using poor evidence to support her argument. To further illustrate my point, I have included a few Google search results of my own below. What claims could I make about our society with these “statistics”?
“rape” – 7 million hits
“stealing” – 24.2 million hits
“murder” – 103 million hits
“racism” – 24.4. million hits
“elbow” – 24.5 million hits
“glue” – 27.4 million hits
Clearly, we live in one messed up, amoral, elbowy, gluey society! Heaven help us.
So, in case you’re not in the Vanderbilt University Concert Choir, here’s what you need to know for any of this to make sense: Vanderbilt pays for us to go on a tour every spring break as a recruiting method for the university. The locations change according to a four-year rotation, and this year we went to Chicago and St. Louis. Every year, I keep a journal of my tour experience, and this year was no exception.
Day One – Friday night through Saturday Night, February 27th and 28th, 2009
You know what I love? Over-packing. That’s exactly what I did again this year, only this time, I didn’t have to bum a ride off JCR to get my bags to the MRH. I was still late, but so was everyone else. I’ve decided that over-packing and being late are VUCC Tour traditions for me.
Let me back up a bit. Earlier on Friday, I went with Ryan Brazile to Target to acquire secret buddy gifts at real-world prices. (All the food at the munchie marts on campus is ridiculously overpriced. We were delighted to find Goldfish for less than seven dollars.) At Target, Ryan bought a full-sized pool noodle for his secret buddy. We both thought this would be an amusing and original idea. When we arrived at the MRH later that night, we were disappointed to see that two other people also thought it would be an original idea. There were three pool noodles in the secret buddy gift pile.
We hung out and killed time at the MRH. Men’s Group sang, Chamber Singers sang, and everybody ate cookies and drank hot cocoa. Oh, and it was Bill Molesta’s birthday! Happy 22nd, Bill.
The bus was packed and rolling by about midnight. Appropriately enough, someone played Mulan, and we all sang along with the “Be A Man” song. It wasn’t long after that before I dozed off. Here’s the magical part: I didn’t wake up again until we stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel five hours later. After breakfast, I fell asleep again, and when I woke up, I was looking at skyscrapers. Oh yeah.
We didn’t really have anything planned for our first half-day in Chicago, but it didn’t take long for us to find something to do. The Art Institute of Chicago was offering free admission for the month of February, so Saturday was our last chance to take advantage of that. We walked many blocks in the (freezing) cold to get there. The museum was nice. There were many original Van Gogh and Monet paintings, as well as a variety of other intriguing art forms. I took some photos.
After the museum, some of us went for REAL Chicago-style pizza at Giordano’s. I shared a deep dish Hawaiian pizza with a few other people, and it was wonderful. We decided to take the train back instead of walking so far in the cold, which was a good decision.
Back at the DoubleTree Hotel, I played some guitar while Craig played violin before a much-needed shower. Then, Room Titillation napped… hard. We all slept for roughly four hours. Then some of us had to leave for ice-skating, which I didn’t sign up for (I find it boring). So when people left, I went down to the lobby in search of free wi-fi and to start this journal. That’s right; the internet was only free in the lobby. If you wanted to use the Internet in your room, it would cost you $10 a day. And the pool? $15 a day. Ridiculous. This is why I’m a Holiday Inn kind of guy.
Then dinner happened. Casey, Angie, Sam, Katelyn, and I went to Panera. I got broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl, or, as I call it, a “loaf of soup”. The girls thought that was a gross name for my entrée of choice, but I don’t care. It was wonderful. Also, Sam expressed his insecurity about the fact that I may record embarrassing things he says in this journal. So… this is how that worked out.
Later that night, a couple guys joined me for a hangout in David’s room. This actually started when Craig and I decided to go play “You Raise Me Up” outside his door until he opened it in amazement. That was a fun conversation. I enjoyed getting to know David a little better. We played a bunch of songs together, sometimes using David’s supernatural ear talent to find chords we didn’t know.
Not too much else happened that night after David kicked us out. Back in the room, it didn’t take long to fall asleep.
Day Two – March 1st, 2009
We had to wake up early to leave for the First Presbyterian Church in Arlington Heights. This is Allison Lock’s home church, and she met us there. We didn’t so much give a concert as just kind of fit our music into their church service. It probably wasn’t worth the hour-long trip to get there. When we left, Robbie read the horoscopes to us. Always entertaining.
For lunch, we chose Chipotle because there was one near our hotel. Okay, I need to talk about Chipotle for a second. Apparently, a Chipotle is coming to Nashville, and everyone is really excited about it. I’ve heard endless tales about how much better Chipotle is than other burrito places like Qdoba and Moe’s. People are crazy about Chipotle. Needless to say, I was anxious to see what all the fuss was about. My verdict? If Chipotle is better than other burrito places, it is only marginally so. Specifically, their tortillas were of better quality, but the chicken was spicier and there were fewer options. (I don’t like spicy food.) All other ingredients were exactly the same. So, if you are one of those people who LOVE Chipotle but HATE Qdoba, open your eyes. It’s the same food.
At Chipotle, I began texting my brother Bart to see if he could remember which movies were filmed in Chicago. Some of my favorites on that list of films include Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Dark Knight, Home Alone, Planes Trains & Automobiles, and Rookie of the Year.
It was snowing pretty hard when we visited the Sears Tower. As a result, the view from the top was less than impressive. I took photos of everything but the view.
I was tired when we got back the hotel. Nap time.
Our group dinner happened at a restaurant called Capi’s Italian Kitchen. The “group rate” was $22.50 per person. Dinner was fun, but the food wasn’t nearly good enough to be that expensive. The total check was almost $900, and we had to pay it in cash. I joked that Capi’s didn’t really have a group rate, and we were scammed into paying too much for our food. But seriously, it was a huge rip off. Dinner was good, though, because we started getting to know Tyler Verdell a little better. He has sat next to me in choir all semester, and only now am I starting to talk to him. My name is Shane Stever, and I am a jerk.
The PJ Party, an annual Tour tradition, happened that night. We played all the usual games. David broke the ceiling trying to hit a piñata, Eeyore was enthralling (and heated), and Do You Love Your Neighbor was crazy as usual. I laughed really hard. The laughing continued when I returned to my hall to find a big group of choirites in one room taking turns reading a graphic romance novel aloud. Ridiculous.
I got to bed around 2:15. Luckily, we didn’t have to be up as early the next day.
Day Three – March 2nd, 2009
We got to wake up late, hallelujah. I grabbed a bagel, and we bussed to Hinsdale Central High School. I guess we added Hinsdale to our itinerary kind of late because we sung in their band room for two different periods of music students.
Just… in their band practice room… no auditorium, no risers.
Regardless, both of our performances for the students went well. Men’s group seemed to work nicely.
It was awkwardly between lunch and dinner when we got back to the hotel, and I was hungry. Someone suggested Giordano’s again, and I thought that sounded like a great idea. A group of us walked down there for a second dose of deep-dish Chicago-style goodness. After that, we lingered at the hotel until Second City.
I had signed up for Second City weeks before Tour. I wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to see them perform in Chicago, and I was very excited. Second City is a famous improv/sketch comedy club that has served as the launch pad for dozens of celebrity comedians over the past 50 years. Many SNL cast members got their start at Second City. The show was fantastic. I laughed really hard. We even saw Andy Enkeboll there… random! But the drinks were perhaps the most expensive in Chicago. Andy Brookshire and I shared a thirty-dollar pitcher of Chicago Fire, a really fruity mixed drink. So basically, we found the gayest drink on the menu… and then we split it.
I ended my day by making a run to the grocery store with a few other guys. Craig hadn’t bought anything for his secret buddy since Friday, so we had to help him get back on the ball with that. Sam was also negligent in his duties; he bought fruit snacks for his secret buddy, but he couldn’t refrain from eating them. It was a simple day, but a good one.
Day Four – March 3rd, 2009
On the mornings where we get to sleep in later, we just stay up until 2 AM to make up for it. When the wake-up call comes, we still want to destroy the phone.
Our last concert in Chicago was at Naperville North High School. This was also our last school performance for the tour. Again, we performed for the school’s choir students in their choir room. It has been a bit upsetting that we were given such small spaces and small audiences at the few schools we visited this year. On previous tours, I recall performing in auditoriums for entire student bodies. The scale of our school performances was significantly smaller this year, and I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it’s the economy.
We were already checked out of the DoubleTree, so we left directly from the high school for St. Louis. The drive to St. Louis took about 5 hours. We didn’t have anything official planned for the night, so I got in touch with KJ Blair (one of our BYX pledges who happens to be from St. Louis) to see if he wanted to hang out. Much to my delight, KJ was available. He picked Ryan, Craig, and myself up from our Holiday Inn (yeah, eff you DoubleTree!) and took us to a sweet place called Fitz’s for dinner. Fitz’s is a restaurant/brewery famous for its root beer. It was delicious. I enjoyed a cream soda, a burger, and good company.
After Fitz’s, we went to KJ’s house to meet the family and hang out. It was delightful. We watched American Idol and parts of High School Musical 3.
“Did that junkyard person just do a triple pirouette?” Good times.
I am SO GLAD we got to hang out with KJ in St. Louis. Definitely one of the highlights of this tour for me. He drove us back to our hotel, and we were mostly in bed by 3 AM.
Day Five – March 4th, 2009
The highlight of the day was our performance at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. I was able to wake up at noon because we didn’t have to sing until 2 PM. That was nice. The Basilica is outrageously beautiful. The artwork alone inside this massive structure took 70 years to complete. It features the largest collection of mosaic artwork in the world. And concerning VUCC, the space is known for its seven-second acoustic reverberation time. It was a pleasure to sing there, except for two things. For one, we were only able to do a small selection of our sacred music. But mostly, there was a guy buffing a wall in the lobby of the church with an electric sander, and he refused to pause while we performed. So as our chords rang out in the space, they were accompanied by the shrill whine of a power tool. That was upsetting. But! My day was brightened once more because KJ showed up at the concert with his mom and two sisters. What a swell guy.
After the Basilica, the group went to the famous Arch, but I didn’t go. I hadn’t signed up for it because it was $15 and I had already spent enough money. I went back to the hotel and took a nap.
I woke up around 6 PM, which left me an hour to find my final secret buddy gift before banquet. In Nashville, I had bought gifts for every day of Tour except the final day. I planned to get a nice souvenir or something for my final gift. So Craig and I set off around 6:30 to search the surrounding area for a gift shop of some kind (Craig needed a final gift as well). Unfortunately, nothing within walking distance was open. We were out of luck, so we had to get creative. We ended up giving our secret buddies a few snacks from the vending machines with an I-O-U for a guitar-violin serenade.
The final gift-giving is a part of the ceremonial revealing of secret buddies that happens during Tour Banquet. As it turns out, my secret buddy was Robbie Jones, our accompanist. Her final gift to me was a cool choral CD featuring some pieces she knew that I liked. It was really great.
The banquet food was good this year. It was Italian. The quotes and superlatives were especially entertaining. In general, banquet went really well. In keeping with tradition, many photos were taken at the conclusion.
There was much music-making that night, and it began with Craig and I serenading our secret buddies (Ayla and Juliana) with a folksy-bluegrass rendition of “You Are My Sunshine”. From there, a bunch of us all sat around in someone’s room playing every random song we could remember. That fun lasted several hours. I even got a massage out of it.
When the campfire-esque group finally broke up, I went and hung out in Isaac’s room with him, Grace, Steven, Alex, and Bill for a while. That was cool. By the time I got to bed, I was extremely tired.
Day Six – March 5th, 2009
I woke up early enough to enjoy the continental breakfast this time. We had one last concert to give, even though banquet had sort of “concluded” tour the previous night. We sang at the Christ Church Cathedral for a small audience of mostly senior citizens. Unlike the Basilica, we were able to do our complete program in this Cathedral, including our secular pieces. So we got to do “That Lonesome Road” and the Men’s Group piece “Grace Kelly”, both of which afford me a solo. It was pretty awkward to perform “Grace Kelly” in a church for that audience. I thought it was funny.
The Cathedral was a nice acoustic space. The reverb time wasn’t nearly as long as that of the Basilica, but it was rewarding to sing there. Afterwards, I changed clothes and re-boarded the bus for Nashville. We dropped some people off at the airport as always, but I prefer the cheaper method of getting home.
VUCC Tour 2009 went off without a hitch. It was a great tour, especially for David’s first one. Huge props to him and the officers, especially Isaac, for a job well done!
This post is mirrored on Facebook and is acompanied by PHOTOS!
Hey everyone. Sorry again for the late production update. As I mentioned, I’ve been out of town, so it’s been hard to find wi-fi and/or cell coverage. We were really pressed for time when we were trying to finish the album, so I didn’t have any spare moments to devote to blog updates. I just got back in town tonight.
Before I lose those of you with few spare moments yourselves, be sure to check out the new production photos I added to the album on the Photos page.
So here’s what happened:
It took us two huge recording sessions to finish all the tracking for the Christmas EP. Last week, we moved all my recording gear over to Joe’s house to track drums and everything else. We recorded for about 12 hours that day. Then, we wanted to continue making progress with all the tracking, but my family took an impromptu trip to South GA, so I was unavailable for a day or so in between. Long story short, it came down to Sunday night, and I was leaving for another family trip to Pennsylvania at 4:00 AM Monday morning.
We had to accomplish the impossible: track remaining electric guitars and bass for Snow/Heat Miser (which was a lot… five tracks total), vocals (including BGVs) for Snow/Heat Miser and Emmanuel, redub melodica for Santa Claus Comin to Town, AND produce the whole album in ONE NIGHT… and I hadn’t even packed my bags for my six-day trip yet. It was indeed impossible. We didn’t pull it off.
But we DID finish tracking everything, which was the important part. Joe and I worked until about 3 AM editing takes and whatnot, but we knew there was no way we’d even finish the drum plugin chains before I had to leave. Finally, I hit the road for PA Monday morning with my family, and I brought my hard drive along for the ride. I sculpted tracks for about 5 hours of the 13-hour drive up North.
At Gram and Grandfather’s house, there is no Wi-Fi or T-Mobile cell coverage, so I found myself suddenly disconnected from the rest of the world, including the eager-for-updates Joe Brim. I have no problem taking a break from the internet for a week, but when you’re trying to post your album online for others to download, an internet connection is especially important.
In between socializing with family, I snuck upstairs and produced like a madman. About a day later, I had finished the mixes as much as I could, but time was out. I have to say I’m not 100% satisfied with the mixes, but it was the best I could do with the time I had. Either way, it was an incredibly fun and educational experience for me. We tried so many things on this project that I had never done before. For instance, I never had the capability to track real drums before I upgraded my rig. To mic Joe’s kit, we recorded 8 mics simultaneously. That was new.
For those of you who are interested in production or just desire some behind-the-scenes information about the recording process, I’ve included some of my insights on each of the tracks below:
Santa Claus Is Comin To Town (Yes, we misspelled “Claus” on the album)
What a fun song. My favorite thing about this track is the fact that we included a face-melting melodica solo. I don’t think the solo is particularly impressive or anything, but just the concept of a melodica solo cracks me up. Also, I faced a mixing dilemma with the electric guitar for this song. Originally, we intended for this song (and the others, for that matter) to be entirely acoustic. Then we added the electric, and it sounded good, but I liked the acoustic feel for this song better, so I kept the electric guitar medium-low in the mix. Oh, and I kept the laughing blooper at the end because like most people, I find Joe’s laugh irresistible.
All The Right Reasons
When I wrote this song, Joe and I thought it would have a really energetic, peppy, cartoonish feel to it, but it ended up being way more chill. In fact, the mood is so chill that I’m kind of afraid you guys will miss the sarcastic elements of the song. Just to set the record straight, it’s totally tongue-in-cheek. I wanted to make a song about loving Christmas for all the wrong reasons, and I did, but being as sarcastic as I am, I produced it like a sincere song. But seriously, Christmas is about Jesus. Not presents. Not shopping. Not even giving or family. I was watching “Deal or No Deal: Christmas Special” today, and Howie Mendel (Jewish) was giving presents out to the audience members, Oprah-style. Several different times, he said things like “Christmas is about giving, so now I’m giving everyone in the audience a hundred bucks!” or whatever. WRONG, HOWIE. Even though no one seems to have a problem with that statement, and giving is good and Christ-like, Christmas is NOT about giving. It’s about Jesus. The end.
My favorite thing about this track is the sweet overdriven Rhodes keyboard sound I found in Reason. It comes in on the second chorus, panned to the right to complement the electric guitar on the left. Listen for it!
O Come O Come Emmanuel
As I mentioned earlier, we recorded these vocals dead last, at like midnight or 1 AM. Bleh… not a good time for my voice. Given some extra time, I would have re-recorded all those vocals in the morning.
Speaking of vocals, there are three tracks total. I added a bass harmony under the third (original) verse.
The recording geeks among you might notice that the acoustic guitar has a nice stereo spread, and that’s because we used an X-Y mic pattern (using the Samson C02’s) to record my Ovation in stereo for every song on the EP.
And the keyboard synth interlude? Yeah, another sweet rhodes sound from Reason, this time with delay. I programmed that MIDI part on the road. It worked out, haha.
Snow Miser vs Heat Miser
Okay, first of all, every time I told people we were doing this song, I got blank stares. I was flabbergasted by the number of people who had never heard of it. Flabbergasted. In case you’re one of those people, Snow Miser and Heat Miser are characters in the claymation movie A Year Without Santa Claus. It’s a classic. If you haven’t seen it, you need to see the original performance of this sequence of songs. Here’s the YouTube video I used to transcribe the chords for our arrangement:
Secondly, this song was a near disaster to record, but it wasn’t our fault. Somehow, my project file in Logic Express got messed up, and it kept randomly shifting our audio takes. I spent HOURS manually realigning tracks for almost every instrument with the tempo. It was a tedious process that sent me in circles, solving timing issues that created others. It was a mess. So, if you detect some weird timing things in this song, please be kind. Technology was against us on this one.
Other things: We needed an electric bass for this song, but didn’t have one, so we tried to make my acoustic-electric bass sound truly electric with amp modeling and distortion. It was weird, but it worked. Sort of.
Recording the vocals for this song was way too much fun. It was like musical theater. Joe was “way out of [his] comfort zone.”
My favorite thing about this song is probably the “imp” background vocals. Those parts consist of three tracks of two singers each, panned around to sound like a small men’s choir. I’m really happy with the way those turned out. Oh, and I couldn’t take the song seriously until we tracked drums. They hold the whole thing together.
Auld Lang Syne
This was all Joe. We recorded it in complete takes, with Joe playing guitar while he sang… no editing. (I LOVED the “no editing” part.) I tried to isolate the guitar and vocal mics as much as possible, and the result was a noisy track due to the volume adjustments I made to compensate for the low gain. I was able to filter a lot of the hiss out, but if we recorded this song again, I’d definitely do it a different way.
The end of the song was literally recorded on a laptop, which was another one of Joe’s really cool ideas. Raw, natural, cool.
Okay, I’ll shut up now. Thanks for listening, everybody! Let me know what you think about the album. Also, feel free to ask questions if you’re still curious about something.
IT IS FINISHED!! Finally. And just in time for Christmas. I would have updated you on our progress more frequently, but the past week was completely devoted to finishing the EP. I’ll post more details and a bunch of production photos soon, but here’s the FREE DOWNLOAD link:
Recording has gotten off to a slow start. Joe and I have officially started recording tracks for two songs: Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town and All the Right Reasons, a song that I wrote. Last weekend we tracked acoustic guitar and some of Joe’s vocals for Santa, and this week we laid melodica and acoustic bass guitar for the same song. I’ve been editing and producing the tracks as we go, so with the addition of drums and maybe some electric guitar, Santa Claus will arrive… in town.
Tuesday and Wednesday, we switched our attention to my song, All the Right Reasons, which is a tongue-in-cheek song about Christmas commercialism. (You know, like Silver Bells, but with less sugar-coating.) We recorded piano and my vocals. Then, I used my newest toy, Reason 3.0 (with the Reason Drumkits Refill 2.0) to start programming other stuff… like a sweet overdriven rhodes keyboard and some incredibly real-sounding fake drums. (Huge thanks to Tyler Winters for letting me borrow his copy of Reason!) I’m using Logic Express to control Reason 3.0 as a rewire “slave”, and it’s a really powerful production tool.
So yeah, we’re a little behind schedule. If we are going to finish this EP before Christmas, we need to pick up the pace. So far, we have not planned our sessions very well, which has led to some inefficient recording. Also, while I don’t have much of a life right now, Joe has a job, so he can’t just chill and make music all day like me. My plan to remedy this situation is to start preparing the project files with greater detail in advance. We’ll be more deliberate with our goals for each recording session to make sure we’re accomplishing what we need to accomplish. When Joe and I can’t record together, I’ll be mixing and editing on my own. In fact, producing what we’ve recorded so far has taken up most of my time this week. My friend John Hunter is also a recording enthusiast, and he says it best: “Music is a full-time job.”
So that’s where we are for now! Check out the Photos page for a few pics of the recording process so far. We’ll keep adding to those as we go. Oh, and FYI, other songs we have planned for the EP include O Come O Come Emmanuel, Snow Miser/Heat Miser (from the claymation movie A Year Without Santa Claus), You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch, and more!
To recognize the transition from “New Zealand Journal” to “Normal Blog”, I have given my wordpress a makeover. For those of you following along from before, here’s an update.
I’ve been back in America for almost a month now, and I love this country more than ever. I do, of course, miss New Zealand (especially the people), but I am enjoying American luxuries such as cookie dough ice cream, cool whip, and Thanksgiving in general. I don’t go back to Vandy until January, so I’ve essentially got a two-month winter break. What am I doing with all that time, you might ask? Nothing, really. Well, I’m calling it my sabbatical. After all, I am recording a Christmas EP.
That’s right. My musical friend Joe Brim and I are recording a six-song Christmas EP including at least one original Christmas song, and we begin tracking tomorrow. I’m very excited about this. Part of the reason I’m so excited is because I recently augmented and seriously upgraded my recording gear. The principle player in my new rig is the wonderful Presonus FireStudio Tube recording interface. I also bought a pair of Samson C02 cardioid condenser microphones and some other stuff, so I now have recording capabilities that I have been dreaming about for a long time.
Oh, and we’ll be giving the EP away for free, of course. Joe and I will use this blog to keep everyone updated on the production process. We intend to incorporate photos, videos, and other fun media, so stay tuned! It’s bound to be a jingle-bell-blast.
Today is my final day in New Zealand. As I write this, a shuttle will arrive in less than an hour to take me to the airport, away from Flat 33 forever.
Before I continue with the sad stuff, I’ll update you on my activities for the past few weeks. First of all, the stores here have been decorated for Christmas for several weeks now. Without Halloween (which they have here, but don’t care about) and Thanksgiving to hold them back, the commercialism begins disturbingly early. Regardless, it makes me want Christmas cookies and apple cider. And presents.
Cole left two Wednesdays ago to travel Australia with his dad before returning to the States. To bid him farewell, Cam (from Arise) and I joined him for his last dinner in New Zealand: Abra-kebabra. We thought it was fitting because kebabs (which are like wraps) are popular in New Zealand, and Abrakebabra is a sweet place. Later, we enjoyed 50-cent ice cream cones at McDonalds. I’ll miss Cole, but he promised to visit Vandy, so it’s all good.
Matthias and Elise left last weekend. I got gifts for both of them and wrote them cards thanking them for all the unique experiences they afforded me over the semester. It was sad. I won’t bore/depress you with the details. But Elise’s parents took a bunch of us out to dinner that night, and it was delicious! They even “shouted” (took the bill), so it was incredibly nice. I’ll miss them.
Last Sunday, an awesome worship band called Planetshakers came to Arise. They’re like Hillsong, and they’re from Australia. That was really awesome. I took a bunch of pictures, and I’ll probably post them on Facebook later. I’ve got two of their CDs now. So if you’re into Christian music, check out Planetshakers.
Wellington is home to an incredible national museum called Te Papa, and I had never been until just a couple days ago. It’s a shame too, because that place was so cool that I should have gone multiple times. Hannah and I went and took photos. Te Papa is probably the most beautiful museum I’ve ever seen. It’s an enormous, intricately designed building with magnificent exhibits, some of which are constantly changing. That was sweet.
Today, Sunday, November 9th, will be the longest day of my life, thanks to the magic of time travel through flight. Here’s how it works:
I fly from Wellington to Auckland, land in Auckland at 3 PM.
I depart Auckland at 7:15 PM and arrive in LA at 10:15 AM, a 12-hour flight that takes me back in time 9 hours.
I depart LA at 4:00 PM and arrive in ATL at 11:15 PM, a 4-hour flight that takes me 7 hours into the future. Magic.
Well, today I say bid farewell to Hannah, Christella, Wellington, and ultimately, New Zealand. As most of you know from reading, my time here has been incredible. I’ve learned an enormous amount from the university courses I took here, and even more from the people I’ve met… the friends I’ve made. It is sad to break off these relationships, especially knowing that there’s a good chance I’ll never see some of these people again. But I don’t think of it that way, for I will return to this great land again. I will once more traverse the sheep-dotted hills, perfect beaches, and steep, spectacular mountains.
To all of you, my readers abroad who have journeyed vicariously with me through this blog, I thank you. Your support and encouragement have enhanced my experience in New Zealand in a way I did not expect. It is with mixed emotions that I leave this country, for I am sad to go, but very excited to return to you all.
Well, I guess this is it. My experience with this fantastic culture has come to a close… for now.
To Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, haere ra, haere ra, haere ra.
Hey everybody! Welcome back. Today I’ve got some cool stuff I’ve been meaning to talk about… first, a bunch of random thoughts. Then, I’ll outline the short north island road trip that Cole and I finished about a week ago. I’ve even thrown in some multimedia elements (ooooo, ahhhh) to supplement my writing this time. One of the great things about blogging is the freedom it gives me to organize my writing however I wish. In this case, that means little to no organization whatsoever.
I’ve had a few “kicks” recently, and by “kick” I mean temporary obsession. You know… like when you pull out an old CD and listen to it for a few days just because you feel like it. Well, I have a good/bad habit of gleaning large amounts of information from the internet just for fun. This is good because I learn heaps of useful things (especially about my artistic hobbies), but bad because it takes up more of my time than it probably should.
A few weeks ago, I had an acoustics kick. Acoustics = the way sound bounces around a space; the science of sound. I spent several days learning about studio design & construction, soundproofing, bass traps, deflectors, absorption panels, standing waves, frequency responses, and all kinds of other things. This probably sounds really nerdy to you, and let me assure you, it is. But these kinds of things fascinate me.
More recently, I had a VUCC kick. VUCC = Vanderbilt University Concert Choir, the choir I’ve sang with since freshman year. One day I just pulled up iTunes and listened to all my VUCC recordings. I had already forgotten about some of the ones from 2006, so it was fun to rediscover that music. Good times. I was not able to join a choir here in Wellington, and I really miss singing.
You know what else I miss? My guitar. I realized a couple months ago that leaving America without my guitar was a huge mistake. Sure, I had good reasoning. I was trying to avoid the hassle of taking my guitar on multiple flights around the world. But it definitely, definitely would have been worth the hassle to have my beautiful Ovation here with me. (And to all you Ovation haters, I don’t wanna hear it.) When I get back, I plan on spending more time with my guitar to practice the ten or so jazz chord shapes I recently found on the internet. As it turns out, there are tons of video guitar lessons on YouTube for free. I’m the kind of person who would exploit that.
Let me talk about Arise for a bit. I’ve been attending Arise Church since my first month in New Zealand, and I love it. I go every Sunday, and I’m involved with a LifeGroup that meets bi-weekly. It’s been awesome getting to know many of the members and staff of the church. I’m certain that the relationships I’ve begun to form with people from Arise will be one of the things I’ll miss the most about New Zealand. My experience at Arise has also encouraged me to get more involved with the church I attend in Nashville. I feel the need to belong to a praise band once again.
In other news, I won a photo contest a few weeks ago. It was a digital photography contest sponsored by Victoria International, so it was only for international students at university. I won the “student life” category with a B&W photo of Allie I took at Day Bay a few months ago. Ironically enough, Day Bay is nowhere near university, but she’s wearing a backpack in the photo, and the background doesn’t give away the location.
For winning, I received a $100 voucher for the CD/DVD Store. With it, I purchased the new Metallica album, Jon Foreman’s Fall/Winter EPs, and a Planetshakers CD/DVD combo. For the record, I’m obsessed with Jon Foreman and Planetshakers right now, but I’d give Metallica a B-.
I realized the other day that I have not yet written about Marmite, so I have to do that now. “What is Marmite?” my American friends and family might ask. Marmite is a popular food product in New Zealand. It is essentially a yeast spread that people put on toast and crackers and such. It is a blackish-brown paste that tastes like ink. It is disgusting, and to illustrate this point, I will list the first four ingredients of Marmite by weight:
Yeast (80%)
Sugar
Salt
Mineral Salt I don’t know why they eat this stuff.
After much deliberation, I marked my absentee ballot and sent it in today like a good citizen. At the risk of being disowned by my family, I took a photo of my ballot and posted it below.
Now, about my final road trip! Two weeks ago, Cole and I decided it would be a shame to leave New Zealand without seeing more of the north island, so we (quite spontaneously) took a four-day road trip. We literally conceived of the trip on Friday and left on Monday morning. It was a lot of driving and a lot of fun.
Day One – 13 October 2008
I woke up around 7:30 so I could gather my things and make it to Stafford (Cole’s place) for the rental car shuttle to pick us up at 9. I met Cole on time, but the shuttle was half an hour late. We brought a bunch of our own groceries.
At the rental place, we had to buy the GOLD insurance plan because my VISA card isn’t a true credit card, and the company had a really overprotective bond policy. It wasn’t that bad though because it covered the windshield and stuff, so I didn’t mind. We were given a little white Toyota with a CD player thanks to Kieran, the employee who hooked us up. The CD player was crucial because Cole brought a selection of CDs from our south island trip. I started out driving because I’m 21, and only 21-year-olds can handle the GOLD plan…
We headed north on Highway 1. At one point, we stopped by a string of desolate-looking power line towers to take photos. It seemed like a good idea at the time. For lunch, we visited the little town of Hunterville. We ate outside of a smoothie shop called “Revive”, and we bought plastic utensils to make our PB&J sandwiches. We bought ice cream at Revive to thank them for letting us use their picnic tables.
We continued north until we found Lake Taupo, and we stopped at its edge. A truck parked nearby was blaring techno music, so Cole and I bounced to the beat as we snapped photos. The weather was perfect.
We took a short detour to Huka Falls, which is a really fast and strong waterfall in a scenic area. It was cool, but because of the size and shape of the outlet, I found it difficult to photograph.
Then we went to Rotorua and found the Hot Base Rock, our hostel. There was a scenic park/playground nearby, so Cole and I went to check it out as the sun was setting. The playground had some awesome spinny things that I had never seen before, so we played on those. There was also a huge spider-web-climbing-tower thing that was a lot of fun. I was setting up my camera to take a photo of Cole and I climbing on it, backlit by the sunset, when a couple children jumped into the shot. I ended up getting a few cool photos of the random kids playing on the spider web tower. I guess with photography, sometimes you just luck out.
Elise had recommended a trendy place called “The Fat Dog” in Rotorua for dinner, so we checked it out. It was cool, but expensive, so we chose a slightly less expensive Italian place. I had lasagna; Cole has risotto… after we figured out what risotto was.
We went to Pak n Save for beer and yogurt. The cashier was missing several teeth, which was awesome.
Our hostel had its own natural hotpools, so we relaxed in one of them while we drank our beer. The water was about as hot as an artificial jacuzzi would be. I enjoyed it.
When the hot pools closed for the night, Cole and I grabbed a deck of cards and went to the public kitchen to socialize. No one was there. So Cole taught me a variety of card games to beat me at: 99, Golf, and Egyptian Rat Screw. Cole is good at cards. I am not.
Our beds were in a dorm-style room with about six other people, so it was a little awkward and crowded. An interesting fact about our room: Each bed had one pillow except for mine, which had zero pillows, and one other guy’s, which had two. Now, I don’t want to be hasty, but what little deductive logic I possess leads me to believe that my pillow was stolen.
I used my sleeping bag as a pillow that night.
Day Two – 14 October 2008
We got an early start on the day. With all the driving we planned to do, we really couldn’t afford to waste the morning. We ate the yogurt with our cereal for breakfast. Crumpets too!
We drove north almost non-stop until Whitianga. We learned the value of I-Sites from our south island trip, so we wasted no time finding one in Whitianga. The I-Site there was awesome. We just walked in there and told them we had a couple hours to fill, and they planned our day for us. They also gave us valuable information about the tides at the hot water beach and backpackers for that night.
We ate lunch and went to Hot Water Beach. I have feeling that Hot Water Beach is the only one of its kind in the world, so I googled it. Here’s what Wikipedia says:
“Hot Water Beach is a beach on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand, approximately 12 kilometres south east of Whitianga. Its name comes from underground hot springs which filter up through the sand between the high and low water tidal reaches.”
That’s right. You go out on the beach, dig yourself a hole, and sit in your own natural jacuzzi. SOOO awesome. Of course, we bypassed the shovel rental shop on our way in, so we had to borrow one. Eventually, we took over a perfect hole as its inhabitants left, and we just laid there for a while. I call it a perfect hole because its location allowed us to regulate the temperature of the hot water. The hole next to ours was filled with water so hot you couldn’t touch it, and by simply moving sand around, we could pipe the boiling water into our hole to make it hotter. Also, the sun was shining and it was fairly warm, so Hot Water Beach was a tremendous success. I was pleased to discover that I actually got a bit sunburned out there.
After about two hours on the beach, we showered off and drove to Cathedral Cove, aka NARNIA. Without a doubt, Cathedral Cove is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The unique rock formations on the beach (from which the cove gets its name) combined with the breathtaking beauty of the area in general are probably what led the makers of Prince Caspian, the latest Narnia film, to shoot there. The beach makes an appearance 48 seconds into the film’s trailer. Check it out:
It was a quick 40-minute hike to get to the beach from the car park. Even when we were on the sand, it was hard to believe that we really weren’t in a fantasy novel. When I was walking under the “cathedral”, I saw a group of three trying to get a self-timed picture of themselves jumping up in the air. After watching them fail twice to jump at the right time, I offered to take the picture for them. When I picked up this dude’s camera, I realized that it was a Canon 50D fitted with an L-series lens, the combined value of which is probably worth more than the computer you’re using right now. So that was cool.
As it turns out, that dude was from Arizona, and he was a CGI design student doing location scouting for his film school in Auckland. I liked their jumping idea, so I let him take a picture with my camera of Cole and I doing the same thing. That picture turned out awesome, even though other tourists are in the shot. (You can see that photo and all the other ones in the latest bunch that went up with this post.)
Cathedral Cove was unrealistically gorgeous. We finally made ourselves leave, and Cole got ice cream. We made it a goal to eat ice cream every day on this road trip, and I’m pretty sure we accomplished that goal. Cole drove us into Coromandel even though he technically wasn’t allowed to drive the rental because he’s not 21 yet. But I had already driven basically the entire length of the north island, so it pretty much needed to happen.
The actual town of Coromandel (located on the Coromandel Peninsula) is a small, quaint municipality. We arrived after 5 PM, so all the shops were closed. Most small towns shut down after five. We found the backpacker and went into the office to book beds for the night. The woman who ran the office lived in the house connected to it, and she was obviously in the middle of dinner with her children when we arrived. We felt bad. She was really nice though. She gave us a dorm room all to ourselves and directions to a good place to watch the sunset.
We drove up on top of the hill that Backpacker Mom told us about, and I expected the most glorious sunset of my life. However, there were some clouds on the horizon, so it wasn’t that great. As a general rule, the more prepared you are to photograph a scene, the less photogenic that scene will be. This is why the best moments always seem to come and go while your camera is sitting at home.
Back at the backpacker, Cole and I ate Hearty Irish Stew and didn’t leave the gas on. We drank tea, played more cards, and took showers, which were unfortunately coin-operated. At first, we thought we could outsmart them. After all, the little coin box on the wall looked totally fake, and the water turned on without depositing any money. But it was only when I inserted 50 cents that the water turned warm and remained warm for exactly five minutes. I hate coin-operated showers.
I slept well that night, partially in thanks to the nice Marmot sleeping bag that Matthias let me borrow. Danke schön Matthias!
Day Three – 15 October 2008
We returned to the kitchen for breakfast to find all the doors and windows open. Apparently, someone had left the gas on the previous night, but… it wasn’t us. I’m like 97% sure it wasn’t us.
We took a really curvy, “u-turn” mountain road to Thames, and then we got lost somehow. Since we knew we couldn’t have possibly gotten lost, we asked some constructions workers. They confirmed what we suspected: We were not lost; we had just taken a SHORTCUT! It’s true. (Accidental, but true.)
We drove through Matamata to Taupo for lunch. At the Taupo I-Site, the lady told us we should definitely spend some time on the lake, preferably while enjoying a $40 boat cruise. “The lake is very important to us,” she must have said six hundred times. As Cole and I made our PB&J sandwiches on the trunk of our little white Toyota parked next to the lake, we watched people whack golf balls into the lake as part of the Lake Taupo Hole-In-One Challenge! ™. The goal is to make your ball land on the gaudy, bright-red artificial island unnaturally placed about 70 yards off the bank of the lake. “Yes,” I thought, “very important to you indeed.”
We checked out “Craters of the Moon”, a thermally active area you can walk around for five bucks. It was alright… it reminded me of the geyser area at Yellowstone National Park. Cole and I joked a lot about “lunar-as mud people” and other random things. Actually, Cole and I pretty much never stopped joking around for the duration of the trip.
We visited a few shops and an internet cafe in Taupo before we hit the road for Napier. It was on the long, straight State Highway 15 near the town of Waimihia where I received my first speeding ticket ever. In fact, it was the first time I had even been pulled over by a cop. I was going 118 kph in a 100, which is the same as going 73 mph in a 62. Going 11 over on an interstate in the US probably wouldn’t get you pulled over, so Cole and I thought it was ridiculous. The infringement cost $120 NZD, but Cole paid for half of it because he’s such a swell guy. The good news is… Cole wasn’t driving (he’s still 20), and the ticket will not affect my license or insurance in America. Hooray!
We liked Napier a lot. It is a sweet little city with a rock beach, an amphitheatre, fountains, a flower clock, and “Opossum World”. We checked in at the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, which was an old restored hotel from the “art deco” era of the 1930s. Actually, Napier is quite famous for its abundance of genuine art deco architecture. It’s like walking around in a Dick Tracy comic book.
For dinner that night, we mixed two-minute noodles with minestrone. We shared the kitchen with a pair of French lovers who prepared a gourmet feast for themselves, complete with red wine. Our distinctly “college” meal paled in comparison.
After dinner, we went out and sat on the moonlit rocky beach. I took some photos of the moon over the ocean and laid there for a while staring at the sky. Cole and I talked about life until droplets of rain urged us to head indoors. Back at the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep.
Day Four – 16 October 2008
I woke up to the sound of heavy machinery drilling itself into the earth’s core. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. A construction team began working just outside my window at about 6:30 in the morning, which should be illegal. I was able to fall back asleep once, but that didn’t last long. Eventually, I admitted defeat, got up, and took my shower.
We enjoyed a continental breakfast as a part of our stay at the hostel. A CD/DVD Store was nearby, so I used my newly awarded voucher there to buy the Metallica CD. We listened to Metallica on our way to a town called Hastings, which is near Napier. We were told that we could drive to the top of Te Mata Peak, and we thought that sounded like a great idea. The weather was perfect, as usual. Te Mata Peak had a bunch of really steep drop-offs with no protective railing, so Cole and I enjoyed sitting dangerously close to the edges. At one such vantage point, I discovered a seashell fossil in the ground. Since I was in fact on top of a mountain (or at least a really large hill), I imagine that seashell landed there a very, very long time ago.
After Te Mata Peak, we visited Arataki Honey, a family-owned business that is New Zealand’s largest beekeeping operation. This place was cool. We got to sample all the different kinds of honey produced by the region, from the mild clover honey to the strong, uniquely Kiwi manuka honey. Fun… and delicious.
Before we left the Hawke’s Bay area, we had to get our ice cream for the day. We heard about a good place nearby, but I can’t remember what it was called. I do remember that they had a “malted milk” flavor, which I thought my dad (the flavor salesman) would find interesting. I sampled it, and it was pretty gross… it just tasted like old milk. I ultimately decided on much more delicious flavors for my double-scoop waffle cone.
From there, Cole and I made an almost non-stop dash for Wellington. We actually didn’t stop for the last 300 kilometers of the journey. It was raining when we arrived in Welly (surprise surprise), but a rainy conclusion couldn’t spoil a fantastic trip. With only four days, we couldn’t see everything the north island had to offer, but I don’t regret a single decision we made. It was ridiculous fun.
Dear Reader, thanks for sticking with me this far. With only 14 days remaining until I catch a flight home, this is probably my second-to-last New Zealand blog post. Many of you have asked how I feel about leaving New Zealand. My feelings about ending my time here aren’t easy to describe. I would have to say that I’m comfortable here, and I like it a lot, but I’m definitely ready to come home. As far as school is concerned, I recently turned in my final film essay on “Sounding Science Fiction in The Matrix“. I have two management finals, one a week from tomorrow, and one five days after that, on the day before I leave. So far, I’ve met my goal of making an A- or higher on every assignment, so hopefully that will continue for my finals.
