I forgot to mention that I ended up watching the New Zealand Vodaphone Music Awards this weekend featuring many good New Zealand bands. Here’s a couple clips of some of the best ones (Interestingly enough, the song by Brooke Fraser talks about someone having a Canadian birthmark and Toronto on their hip. Hmmm, I still don’t get it, but oh well). Enjoy and let me know what you all think.
Here’s another clip, this time of a famous New Zealand band from the 80’s. They give us the warning of not going out in the rain. When I first heard this song, I thought it was cheesy, but it still plays everywhere and is a classic here. Listen to it a couple times and it becomes pretty catchy. So here we go guys. Here is Dragon singing ‘Rain’. Enjoy.
Here’s a couple drunk driving ads played in New Zealand. The ‘Legend’ one is most recent, and the second one is not that recent but pretty scary. The third one is just kind of cheesy in my opinion. Just to end it all off, the last video is a funny video for Toyota, it has nothing to do with drunk driving…but HOKEY POKEY! (which is what New Zealanders call that sponge toffee stuff on the inside of a crunchie bar). Enjoy!
In case you didn’t know. We won the Rugby World Cup! WooHoo! Crazy parties happened all over the city. Here’s a vid of the Haka done after the world cup win, followed by a funny video of ‘flash mob haka’s’ that have happened all over the place (Pay attention to the police offer that joins in on the Haka as well, its hilarious!). The third video is a failed attempt of someone trying to do a Haka in Times Square, New York. Watch and see what happens.
If you haven’t seen these clips, YOU NEED TO! They are funny random clips from New Zealand. The ‘Nek Minnit’ clip can be used with any situation. Also, remember ‘YOU MUST ALWAYS BLOW ON THE PIE! Safer communities together’. Hahahahahaha! Enjoy
OK! So on top of my last blog entry which I hope you all read and saw, I just stumbled across a clip of Nana Mouskouri singing a Maori song. Which is crazy. For those of you that don’t know of Nana, she’s a Greek singer (who I actually don’t really like very much), but she sings mainly in English and a ton of other languages including French, and now Maori apparently. Here’s the clip of her singing this Maori song back in 1976.
Ok for those of you that don’t know, the rugby world cup is being held in New Zealand this year, and the opening ceremonies was today. It has happened every 4 years since 1987. It was in 1987 that New Zealand and Australia jointly held the very first rugby world cup together, and New Zealand was the winners. Since then, New Zealand has never won or hosted it again. But this year, they are hosting it for the very first time on their own, and hopefully they will win. And for all you Canadians, yes, Canada is competing in the rugby world cup even though they don’t actually have a professional team. But oh well…Cheer on New Zealand and Canada. Anyways, the opening ceremonies were amazing!!! Here’s coverage of the opening ceremonies I found on YouTube. Please watch it, and hope you guys enjoy. It was a great show. And p.s. New Zealand played the very first game today straight after the opening ceremonies against Tonga and they ended up winning with a score of 41 to 10. Hope you guys enjoy…and remember to cheer on the All Blacks (New Zealand’s national team). Maybe you guys can all figure out how to do a ‘haka’ on your own. It would be funny if everyone could do a haka when I get back home this Christmas…hahaha good luck
Ok. So as you can tell I’ve been posting a lot of YouTube links. Oh well! DEAL WITH IT!!!! AND WATCH THEM! lol. So the following links are just a couple random songs I’ve heard lately from Yusuf Islam (who you may know of as the former Cat Stevens, who also is Greek but converted to the Islamic Faith, hence why he changed his name to Yusuf). Despite him not being Greek Orthodox anymore, lol, here’s a couple good songs you might remember. The first one is actually a newer song of his where he does a duet with Ronan Keating (who I have no clue who he is. I think he was from some Irish boy band, but apparently most people here have heard of him. Probably since he’s a judge on the UK X-factor show and a lot of the shows we get here are from the UK). Anyways, they are random videos, and old, but they don’t make music like they did in the 70’s lol. Enjoy all your old people and all you wanna be retro’s. Also the last video clip is amazing, it was during the U.S election rally and is peace train, crazy train and love train duet (or tri-et i guess) featuring Yusuf Islam, Ozzy Osborne, and the O’Jay’s. It’s old school but funny, haha. Enjoy people!
What ever happened to Lindsay Lohan? Oh wait, she did drugs, got drunk, stole some stuff and is under house arrest. But she is still able to make ads for Air New Zealand. Here’s a video link of her being interviewed by that weird Rico creature while under house arrest. By the way, in case you didn’t know, the skycouch is basically when you buy 3 seats on the plane so that they can fold down in a special way giving you the ability to have a bed on the plane and sleep. Its kind of cool, slightly expensive, and from what I’ve seen nobody really uses it. But here’s the video, enjoy. (p.s. listen for the comment at the end of the video when Rico gives Lindsay some jewels and says “It’s no problem. And don’t worry, they’re all paid for”)
Hey everyone! So here’s a few of the pics I took during my weekend in Auckland. Fun times. Not that many pics though since most of the time I didn’t have my camera, or had possibly had a few too many drinks to know how to use it. Enjoy! (P.S. You should be able to click on the pictures to enlarge them I think)
Ok. This is a picture of my face after I was dared to eat one of the soft shell shrimp that was ordered. They’re basically baby shrimp deep-fried and salted, and you eat the whole shrimp including the eyeballs, tail, shell, and antenna. It wasn’t that bad, but my face says otherwise.
This is a picture of my flatmate Justine. I got her to pose with a shrimp in her mouth. The funny thing is she didn’t realise that there was a fat creepy beaver statue right behind her where she was sitting. It scared her a bit once she actually saw it.
STOP!!! Don’t shoot!!! It’s only Justine. P.S. She was actually just tired and wanted to nap, but the bartender thought she was drunk and gave her water (even though she only had one drink all night) lol
GROUP SHOT!!!
Horray! Another group shot of my flatmates at the bar. Fun times
This was a funny picture. We thought there were weird people posing on their balcony, but if you zoom in close enough on the picture you will see that someone has just set up some manikins on their balcony. They even dressed them up and posed them to look real. Funny thing is that after I took this picture and we were all staring up at the manikins, all the tourists around us decided to stop and look up and take pictures too. Hahaha
Ok guys. I have no clue who Rico is, but he was on the airplane safety videos when I came to New Zealand. Its like some weird squirrel creature of some sorts. Here’s a video of Rico with Snoop Dogg. Enjoy
What ever happened to Richard Simmonds? He’s doing safety videos for Air New Zealand now. Watch below to find out, and in case you guys didn’t know, Air New Zealand is known for the funny safety videos they show before taking off. It makes the flight less scary, lol.
Ok. I also figured I would let everyone back in Canada know that Canada and USA played some hockey games here in New Zealand recently. Tickets were over $100 to go see the games. From what I heard, it seemed to be rigged and that they didn’t play a good game, almost like they only came here for the money and possibly a free trip to New Zealand. That being said, Canada won 2 of the 3 games they played here. Go Canada!
Hey everyone. I have been so busy with school lately that I haven’t had much of a chance to blog. I figured I would post some videos of New Zealand singers and bands you guys can all check out. The music is a bit different here, mainly because most of the concerts they do here are from New Zealand singers. Have a listen to the videos and stay tuned, I will be posting pictures soon from my weekend adventure in Auckland with my flatmates (including my reaction to eating a soft shelled shrimp – you end up eating the tail, eyeballs, and antenna things and everything). Hope you enjoy.
OK so you probably think I’m being derogatory in the title, but Homai Te Pakipaki Is basically a low budget New Zealand version of American Idol. It actual means ‘Give me the clap!’ or ‘Give me the dried human head’ depending on which way you translate pakipaki from the native Maori language to English, but in this case its Give me the Clap. And many weeks, I watch this show and definitely clap, and even pay 99 cents NZ to vote each week. Yes, most of the contestants are Maori in origin, but you don’t have to be Maori to be on the show; Pakeha (or Non-Maori/White People) are allowed to participate on the show as contestants, but I feel that most of the time it’s a Maori singer that wins. Its basically a karaoke kind of thing. And yes, I know I haven’t updated my blog lately, but I’ve been so busy with exams and school it’s been slightly difficult. I promise I will update more often soon. But for now….Have a look at one of the contestants from season 3 of HOMAI TE PAKIPAKI!!! Yes the format is low budget, but for New Zealand it is defiantly good wholesome entertainment. P.S. I might convince all my flatmates (or roommate's as we would call them back home in Canada) to go out for an audition sometime soon and see if any of us can make it on the show. Considering the population of all of New Zealand is approximately equal to the population of the GTA I’m sure at least one of us will stand a good chance of possibly making it into the show. They have 10 contestants per week, with each weeks winner getting a prize of $1000 and qualifying for the semi final and possibly the finals. But for now…until I blog again…have a look at one of the singers who competed one Homai Te Pakipaki with the song that everybody’s heard: Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you” (P.S. they never sing modern songs, and all the songs they choose are from the 80’s/early 90’s – most likely because of the limited budget they have of what karaoke song versions they can buy. Hahaha)
Ok well its not really an update. As many of you know, I decided to take the Easter Weekend off and head up to Auckland for a weekend away from here. Auckland is actually not the capital city, as you might think it is…the capital is actually Wellington (But Auckland is still the biggest, most well known city in New Zealand). Here are a few photos from my time there. They are pictures of the city, including a panorama shot from the Sky Tower (which is like a mini CN Tower). Funny thing is that that new walk around the CN Tower there doing now is actually a copy of one that they do in the tower in Auckland for awhile now. Its still cool though. Might try it sometime when I feel adventurous enough. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy the photos and I’ll update with a better blog entry soon. Also, you can click on the photos to see bigger versions of them I think. Sorry for the late update…schools just been taking over my life for the last little while since the semester is starting to wrap up. Ill post more details next time. Bye for now.
This is a panoramic shot of the city from the SKY Tower. You can see the harbour and the main building near the center.
These are photos of the harbour area and the SKY Tower lit up at night
Here you can see a shot looking out of a bridge I walked on in the first picture, and a view from the SKY Tower viewing platform in the second pic
The first pic shows the platform outside of the top of the SKY Tower. If you pay enough money you can go outside and walk around the perimeter in a harness, or even bungee jump off of the tower. CRAZY. The second photo is another shot from the top
Here you can see a sign showing how far away Toronto is from where I’m standing. Pretty far. And that’s going in a straight line and not in a zigzag path. The second picture is the entrance to the Auckland Zoo
Giraffe and Zebra’s at the Zoo
Asian Elephant and Orangutans (I think that’s what they are) at the Zoo
Orangutan on the left. The picture on the right is of a Kookaburra bird, which is something makes a laughing noise
A Tiger (looking like it’s ready to attack something), and Alligators…Wait…are they going to attack too?
The left picture is a zoo employee feeding the Ring-Tailed Lemurs. The photo on the right might be hard to see, but the dark shadow in bottom right is a Kiwi bird, which is a bird that you can only find in New Zealand.
The first photo is a Maori sculpture of some sort. Maori are the native people here, the speak Maori which is New Zealand’s second official language (and surprisingly there are three official languages here. The third is New Zealand sign language). The photo on the right is the SKY Tower again.
This is one of the last photos I took before I left. It was taken down at the Princess Wharf looking back up at the city. By the way, if your ever in this area there’s and Ice-Cream shop owned by an Asian lady for over 20 years that has the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten. She even gave me free caramel sauce and chocolate chips. Made me feel like a kid again. Hahaha.
