We did quite a bit during the week we had, and managed to do just about everything on our list which was a big relief. We flew into Auckland, picked up our rental car and cruised down State Highway 1 to Hamilton to have a quick visit with my Auntie and Uncle whom we’d not seen since our wedding. After a quick bite of some Hell Pizza we made our way down to Stratford where we were going to be staying with my Nana.

It was great staying back in Stratford with the family, the last time we we’re back in Taranaki was in 2008 towards the end of our camper-van trip to the south island. Not much seemed to have changed in 4 years, but it was great being back for a few days, we didn’t get a chance to go up the mountain this time but we did to head out to Midhurst and see our first house and say hello to our old next door neighbour and swap a few stories.

As well as being able to visit family, we were also in Taranaki as it was close to Daria & Symon’s wedding venue on the outskirts of New Plymouth. The wedding was on a Saturday afternoon and it was a perfect day, weather was blistering hot and sunny and the sky was as clear as could be, with thousands of stars glimmering throughout the evening. It was a really fun day and I know that Anita had a wonderful time catching with with the old Antunes crew from Sydney at the wedding, and also at dinner the next evening.

Once the wedding had finished and we had exhaused pretty much everything there is to do in Stratford, including driving out to the farm in Matau to pick apples & plums, we drove south to Wellington for a couple of days of sightseeing in Wellington. As it so happened, the day we drove in was Valentines Day, we had plans to meet up with a friend, but that didn’t happen so we cruised around Wellington city looking for a bite to eat, and couldn’t find anything we were looking for (something traditionally kiwi) so we walked back to our motel past the Basin Reserve and grabbed a sneaky Pizza Hut takeaway, total romance I know! We had a really fantastic motel opposite the hospital and nice and close to everything, including the airport.

The next morning we got up early and drove to Te Papa Museum to check out the Colossal Squid, amongst other bits and pieces of NZ history. After a good lunch feed of Fish & Chips we were lucky enough to see a little penguin swimming around and devouring a school of fish in the harbour. We finished the afternoon off with a ride up the Wellington Cable Car and a walk down through the Botanic Gardens and back to our motel.

We had such an amazing time during our week in New Zealand, we even had enough time to snap some pics along the way! Till next time…

Sydney

The Bale

We arrived to The Bale quite late as our flight had been delayed a few hours in Sydney, but on arrival we were warmly welcomed by our butler (who’s name escapes me), Anita received a lovely bunch of roses, and taken up to our villa which was magnificent, we had a quick swim in our private pool and crashed out, twas to be a big few days of lazing around to come. The Bale was fantastic, they have a wonderful room service menu with plenty of healthy options which we indulged in for the first day or two… I think we spent most of our time here either in the pool, on the day bed, at the beach, or eating! We did managed to still go to the gym a few times as well so it wasn’t all fun in the sun! It was the perfect way to wind down after our whirlwind trip to Sydney for the wedding, nice to have some time just to ourselves to unwind.

The Balé, is a unique boutique resort located on the hillside of Bali’s fashionable Nusa Dua area, overlooking the Indian Ocean, walking distance from white sandy beach of Geger and adjacent to the Bali Golf and Country Club. The resort boasts just 29 immaculately designed pavilions, each with a sleek modern interior and refreshingly simple garden, blissful daybed, and its own private pool.

The Chedi Club

After our 3 nights at The Bale we were picked up and transferred to The Chedi Club in Ubud. The Chedi Club is set in amongst rice paddies as you can see, a bit of a change from the beach area of Nusa Dua and The Bale. With that said, we loved The Chedi Club, it was so peaceful and relaxing being surrounded by nature anywhere that you looked. Our villa was fantastic, with a large pool, huge outside bath and plenty of free spirits to indulge throughout the stay. We spent quite a bit of time wandering the grounds most mornings, visiting the swans and birds. We made one trip out of the resort on recommendation of our butler who said that we might like to go to the Monkey Forest and check out some of the shops in Ubud. Every evening The Chedi Club had an afternoon tea session followed by cocktails which quickly rolled into dinner. We had a balinese feast on our second night which included many traditional Balinese dishes, and plenty of Babi Guling (Roasted Pig). The head Chef Stefan then took us though their culinary class where we learnt a bit more about traditional Balinese cuisine and had our hand in preparing and cooking a few dishes of our own, unfortunately we then had to eat them… The staff really went out of their way to make our stay as special as it could be, and their turn down service on the last night with the elephants made from towels was a nice touch!

The Chedi Club Tanah Gajah by GHM is set in the lush, rural landscape of Ubud in the central foothills of Bali. Once the private estate of a renown Indonesian architect and interior designer, Hendra Hadiprana, its 20 thoughtfully designed suites and villas are situated on a five-hectare property surrounded by rice paddies as far as the eye can see.

AYANA Resort & Spa

Our last 3 nights in Bali were at AYANA Resort & Spa, set on the cliffs near Jimbaran. We arrived in style with a nice 2 hour journey in a S-Class Mercedes Benz winding down from Ubud to the Indian Ocean. AYANA was a different type of resort to what The Chedi Club or The Bale were, AYANA had people everywhere, checking in, checking out and venturing out for all sorts of activities, it was a little overwhelming coming from Ubud where things were so secluded and private. We had booked a Club Room which gave us access to their Club Lounge, 5 meals a day and nice escape away from some of the busier areas. While we didn’t have a villa here, we found that there was plenty to keep us occupied, we pushed ourselves at the gym on most days, played a bit of mini-golf on their course and relaxed by the ocean and main pools. Our nights were spent at The Rock Bar, where we had priority entry and seating while we sipped cocktails, ate plenty of tasty morsels, and watched the sun set out over the Indian Ocean. On our last night at AYANA we booked ourselves in for their Pesta Lobster dinner which was set 30 metres out to sea at the end of the pier. We were surrounded by music from bamboo xylophones and the sound of the ocean as we indulged in a five-course lobster dinner with the most marvelous dessert imaginable. It was perfect end to the honeymoon, and an experience that we both will remember for a long time to come.

Named after a ‘place of refuge’ in Sanskrit, AYANA Resort and Spa Bali, Indonesia, is perched on limestone cliffs above the Indian Ocean near Jimbaran Bay on Bali’s south-western peninsula. The 77-hectare property enjoys majestic views and a secluded location across its 1.3 kilometre coastline. This is one of Bali’s most lauded properties.

Unfortunately all good things had to come to an end, but without the fantastic help from Elite Resorts of Asia Pacific and their resort recommendations, our experience would not have been the same. If you are after an amazing experience in Asia Pacific, then look no further, their expertise is nothing less than sublime!

Shaan & Anita’s Wedding
28th August, 2011
Curzon Hall, Marsfield, NSW
Ceremony in Enchanted Garden, followed by Reception in Agincourt Room

Rise Against – Make It Stop (September’s Children)

Rise Against teamed up with the It Gets Better Project and picked up the theme of bullying, homophobia and suicides. The video includes snippets of multiple YouTube submissions provided by the It Gets Better Project, in which individuals share their stories and let others know that “it gets better”.

Their lead singer Tim said the inspiration behind the song was “When the month of September rolled around, and the wave of gay-teen suicides happened, I realised there needed to be a song about this, and also because the rock scene in general kind of fails to comment about this stuff – it sort of doesn’t comment about this stuff; it largely ignores this kind of thing.”

“And rock being a male-dominated, testosterone-driven place that I’ve been in the eye of the hurricane now for several years, I realised that it can be a place that can perpetuate homophobic behaviour unless it’s addressed by bands like us,” he said. “The message is: It can get better, it does get better, give it a chance to get better, don’t end your life prematurely. And don’t give credence to all these bullies that would give you all this crap and try to make your adolescence something that’s hard to deal with.”

Bang bang go the coffin nails,
Like a breath exhaled,
Then gone forever.
It seems like just yesterday,
How did I miss the red flags raise?

Think back to the days we laughed
We braved these bitter storms together.
Brought to his knees he cried,
But on his feet he died.

What God would damn a heart?
And what God drove us apart?
What God could

Make it stop
Let this end
Eighteen years pushed to the ledge.
It’s come to this,
A weightless step.
On the way down singing,
Woah, woah.

It was a pretty quick trip on the National Express to Colchester Town station after which we made our way to our hotel. We booked a few nights at The Rose & Crown “The oldest hotel in the oldest recorded town in England” which was a wonderfully old Tudor style building that looked like it could fall over at any moment. It had a pretty awesome little pub on the bottom floor and once settled in we popped down for a few pints before heading off to Gran’s.

With communication lines being a bit delayed due to us not knowing she had a working phone, we turned up a little unannounced, apart from our letter a month or so earlier, and gave her a bit of a fright, she wasn’t quite sure exactly who we were at first, she thought that I was there to read the gas meter! Once we got over the initial shock we had a lovely cup of tea and a good chat, she was a little overwhelmed still but we managed a few shortbread biccies and headed back to the hotel, we had planned to catch up again the next day with Anita’s uncle and Auntie as well.

The next day we took a bit of a tour around the Colchester Castle museum which used to be a Roman Keep back in AD60 when the Roman’s had control of the United Kingdom. Since then it’s been through quite a few hands, it was used as a prison for a while, and is now a history museum for the area. It was nice wandering around and learning a bit about the area, a bit of education on holiday is always welcome, just not any homework!

We spent the most of the next day and night touring around various parts of Colchester with Anita’s Uncle, Auntie and Gran and checked out the Wimpy (a burger joint I remembered from back in Rotorua, New Zealand when I was a kid) for a bite to eat.

It was a really awesome experience and something that no-one could ever take away from us, an important chapter in Anita’s life and i’m just glad that I could be there to share the moments with her.

Off to Paris next!

A recent check of my iTunes library had just over 30,000 tracks which equated to 82 days of music, unfortunately too much to fit onto my iPod Classic now though so i’ve had to get a bit smarter with the playlists that I use to manage my music. 30,000 tracks can be a little overwhelming to just have on shuffle as I usually find a lot of b-sides, rarities, live tracks and other random music either from clients or for party playlists popping into my ears throughout the day. While I listed to my music through iTunes daily I like to listen to the music that keeps me inspired and gets me through the day rather than some of the music that makes up my library, and the only way i’ve found to effectively manage that was to be completely anal about how my music is organised.

I’ve now got most of my ripped CD collection complete with album artwork, correct track names and genre’s (it’s this sort of stuff that makes my OCD happy!) all that’s left to do is to give them proper ratings and re-organise some of my smart playlists to better sort through the tunes. If any of you are looking to clean up your iTunes then I can recommend Tagalicious by the Little App Factory, as well as SongGenie & CoverScout by Equinux which will help getting your iTunes Library under control. For those PC users out there Tagalicious is coming soon or you could try TuneUp.

A little aside, I did get a bit excited by Steve Jobs latest Keynote for WWDC as I think iCloud is really going to bring some positives for accessing your music across multiple devices in multiple locations, not to mention iOS5 and Lion 10.7 look pretty tasty too! But why did I pay for MobileMe for all those years…

And now for some new music!

Faker – Dangerous

Faker have been fave Sydney band of mine since their debut album ‘Addicted Romantic’, and it’s nice to see that Nathan is writing and recording good tracks again, I wasn’t a fan of their last album ‘Be The Twilight’ but the electro feel of this new track has really grabbed me today, so I thought i’d share. ‘Dangerous’ is taken from Faker’s forthcoming album due for release later this year through EMI.

Faker – Dangerous (radio edit) by theinsound

Looks like there is the usual record industry ‘exclusive’ going on here with Pedestrian.tv, so head on over to their site to check out the track.

Cavalera Conspiracy – Blunt Force Trauma

It’s awesome to see that Max and Igor are together again and recording kick ass tunes. I was pissed in Sydney when they cancelled their Judas Priest support Sydney show in 2008 as I was really looking forward to seeing Max and Igor do their stuff on stage, unfortunately it was not to be… Maybe they might tour through Singapore supporting this new album Blunt Force Trauma? I highly doubt it though.

Here is the new video for their first ‘single’ Killing Inside, it reminds me a little of the early Sepultura videos.

In Flames – Deliver Us

The last In Flames album was one of my favourite albums of 2008, coincidentally released around the same time as the last Cavalera Conspiracy album. I really liked the In Flames and Pendulum track Self vs. Self which came out on the last Pendulum album, although it wasn’t truly metal, or drum & bass I thought the mix went really well together so naturally I was looking forward to seeing what they would do on their latest ‘Sounds Of A Playground Fading’ and I was not disappointed. Take a look at the vid and then buy the album, you won’t be disappointed! Buy now: http://bit.ly/leyuXy or from iTunes.

On a lighter note…

On a lighter note, I’ve been really getting into the new City & Colour, Frank Turner & Eddie Vedder albums, ‘Little Hell’, ‘England Keep My Bones’ & ‘Ukelele Songs’ respectively. They have all made quite an impact on me as I’m currently going through the process of choosing some music for our wedding ceremony and reception in August. We’ve chosen a couple of tracks from the City & Colour and Eddie Vedder albums which really seem to speak to us and what we want our day to be about.

While these tracks aren’t ones we’ve chosen for the wedding, I think they are both really great tracks, so have a quick listen to them and let me know your thoughts.

City and Colour – Fragile Bird

Eddie Vedder – Can’t Keep

To be honest I could keep on going as it seems that the last few months have really brought some fantastic music to me, including new Sepultura album which has some really standout tracks on it and rocks harder than the last couple of albums anyway. The 2nd album by Drapht has been getting a lot of rotation on my iTunes lately as well as the new Jebediah album.

It doesn’t look like Singapore will be getting any decent shows in the next few months with promoters only bringing in Neon Trees, so it looks like I’ll be stuck to my iTunes collection for another few months, at least until the 20th of August when we get back to Sydney for 10 days!

Scratch that! Every Time I Die are touring Singapore on the 6th of October @ The Substation

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trailer

Synopsis

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first film in Columbia Pictures’ three-picture adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s literary blockbuster The Millennium Trilogy. Directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, the film is based on the first novel in the trilogy, which altogether have sold 50 million copies in 46 countries and become a worldwide phenomenon. The screenplay is by Steven Zaillian.

Official Site: http://dragontattoo.com

Our Holiday to London

In total, I think we took over 500 photos and will have to find some time soon to edit those and put together a nice coffee table book using iPhoto, so for the moment i’ve just put a few of the photos I took using my iPhone and Camera+.

Big Ben & Westminster

I took these couple of shots while on the upper deck of a Big Bus Company hop on, hop off tour we went on. The day was a scorcher and we toured around London and saw all the famous landmarks, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and The Tower of London

Buckingham Palace

We went and checked out the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, as you do, there were a good number of people there too, it was bloody packed! Americans, Kiwis, Israeli as well as a large number of French students who seemed to invade most places we were in London. We saw and old lady walk from the palace while all the shenanigans were going on, Anita turned to me and asked if it was the Queen, wish we got a photo of it, she did look very similar, but unfortunately it was someone else.

I took this shot outside Buckingham Palace after the Changing of the Guards and gave it a couple of nostalgic effects to try and convey the sombre expression that Queen Victoria has on her face in the statue.

Other Bits & Pieces

This was taken a couple of days after a London Men’s Convention, we were there on the day of the convention and were surprised to see thousands of men all streaming for the hall, we found out later that it was a Christian thing.

We ended up seeing St Paul’s about 3 times on the trip for some strange reason, maybe it was because of Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe which was just down the road.

This was taken at a London Underground station while we were on our way to Hammersmith Station to then walk to Barnes and see Jon & Ronnie for a couple of nights.

We had lunch at this pub in Tottenham when we were staying with Jon & Ronnie in Barnes, Neetles loved her Fish & Chips and my Bangers & Mash were awesome too, washed down with a couple of bottles of Bulmers Cider and all was good with the world!

We had the most amazing time in London staying in and around Kensington, the food was to die for, a few trips to Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s was a nice change after being stuck in Singapore with their limited product range at Cold Storage. Unfortunately we ran out of time to see everyone that we had planned on seeing, especially Sis but thing’s just didn’t work out as easy as first planned. That said I do think we will be back to London before we leave Singapore, we just had too much of a good time not to!

And that was it, next stop Colchester, Essex to meet Anita’s Grandma

Live music in Singapore… finally!

This year has started well with an Iron Maiden show and then a Deftones show the next night. On friday night we are off to see Stone Temple Pilots and I Am Giant which should be pretty awesome. I’ve just bought the I Am Giant – City Limits / Neon Sunrise EP off iTunes and have been listening to it most of today, check out their latest video for Neon Sunrise

I Am Giant – Neon Sunrise

I’ve also got a couple of albums on pre-order from iTunes at the moment, namely the new one from Jebs, and the new Rise Against album featuring Architects

Rise Against – Architects

Rise Against – Architects

We’ve missed a good deal of shows from not being back in Australia but thankfully things are starting to move in the right direction with live music in Singapore, so hopefully we might get to see some more tours later this year, Aphex Twin are playing next weekend also but probably going to give that one a rest and have a quiet weekend.

I’ve really been getting into the new tunes from Drapht, Girl Talk, A Day to Remember, Bring Me the Horizon, and Against Me lately, but there are some really cracking albums out and about at the moment.

Ok, i’m outa here to fix up what WordPress 3.1 did to my blog design and then head out and celebrate Anita’s birthday!

Lost My Nerve by Jebediah

You can also get a new Jebediah track, released today from the lovely folks at Dew Process, just hit up the link below, throw in your email address and get ‘Under Your Bed’ in a 320k mp3 file delivered to your inbox!

Download – http://dewprocess.bandcamp.com/track/jebediah-under-your-bed