Recap of Day 5

On the 5th day of Mike's visit (sounds biblical, doesn't it?) I still had a job. :)
That's where I was on Wednesday, while he trolled around Wellington. He climbed up Mt Victoria, which is quite an achievement:

Bungy in the middle of Courtenay Place

Courtenay Place

Majoribanks Street, on the way up to Mt Vic

Kai in the City, an AWESOME restaurant with Maori cuisine and hospitality, where I took Mike the following week.

View of Oriental Bay from the pathway up Mt Vic

View from the top of Mt Vic

View from the top of Mt Vic

In the afternoon, Mike met me at my job where I had a surprise for him: I had told the head of the label that Mike was in town and that they should meet up, since Mikee (label guy: no joke, that's his name) had a couple of NZ bands that were playing a few shows in NYC in the fall, and Mike may be able to pitch the shows to some of the agents at his office. One of these bands, the Black Seeds, are probably the biggest band in NZ at the moment, along with Fat Freddy's Drop.

So anyway, Mikee wanted to meet Mike, so I brought the latter up to meet the former. About an hour later the two of us left the office with an armload of CDs and DVDs of the various bands Mikee's promoting, and a date to meet him later at Matterhorn for drinks.

Mike (sans "e") and I then went to grab some fish and chips at Mac's Brewery on the harbour, which I then immediately regretted as it didn't leave me in optimal shape for my double hiphop classes an hour or so later.

I left Mike taking a nap to go to hiphop, and when I came back the little fella was still knocked out (I'm telling you, those fish and chips are serious business).

We managed to drag ourselves out after much hemming and hawing to meet up with Mikee for "one" drink. That was the plan, especially since we were catching the 8:00 AM bus to Rotorua the next morning.

We got to Matterhorn and managed to find Mikee at a table with a few other folks, said hi and told him we couldn't stay long, and he introduced us to his companions.

Well, hello.

The first happened to be Barnaby Weir, singer of the Black Seeds, as well as creator of Fly My Pretties, which if you paid attention to my earlier blog is a band/project I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally like. I was a bit taken aback, as I knew how popular the Black Seeds and Fly My Pretties were, as well as how quicky their upcoming show in Wellington sold out.

One of the other people at their table was Hollie Smith, another Fly My Pretties collaborator and singer of hugely popular song "Bathe in the River" (something like 13 weeks at No. 1 in NZ?) from the kiwi film "No. 2".

Yeah, so, pretty friggin cool, I must say. The funniest thing was that meeting them was solely due to Mike, and he had no idea who they were. Meanwhile we were treated like royalty at Matterhorn merely for sitting at their table.

It should be said that Barnaby Weir was an extremely nice guy. Completely egoless and genuine, and he gave us all kinds of tips about little-known places to visit in Rotorua and Taupo, and was sincerely delighted to talk about NZ and hear our impressions of it.

They actually invited us to join them at Cabaret, another music venue, to see fellow musician and FMP cohort Adi Dick play, but we had to gracefully decline. We had enough excitement for one night, and had a very early start the next morning!