There's been a bit of blog drought the last fortnight. Didn't write down my playlists for the last couple of shows and the recordings are off being ripped by a mate for my forthcoming trip to NZ - apparently my neices and nephew are big fans :). However I do remember playing these last Friday:
Neds Atomic Dustbin - Kill Your Television
The Go Team - Bottle Rocket
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Blackbox Recorder - It's Only the End of the World (sounds a bit ominous given the 24hr plane ride to NZ next week)
Pure Reason Revolution's - The Intention Craft
The Fall - Clasp Hands
The Fall - Telephone Thing
The Research - C'mon Chameleon
Subway Sect - Ambition
Electralane - Eight Steps
I did an outside broadcrast thingy for the station on Sunday too with my mate Eric for the Pitlochry 10km run. That was a laugh and a half but also technically interesting as well to see how a radio station gets a mobile unit (bloke chasing/commenting on the runners in a radio car), their outside broadcast unit (read as stage like a radio 1 roadshow but with the behind the scenes stuff full of all sorts of mixing, switching and relay kit) and the studio all to hang together in an apparently seemless way to the listener...fascinating in a geeky sort of way.
Anyway....it's hard to believe it's only 5 days to go before Dave (long time pal from primary school) and me head off to NZ and right down to the bottom on South Island to a place near Wyndham in Southland NZ.
The intinerary is - Edinburgh -> Heathrow -> Los Angeles -> Auckland -> Christchurch. The original plan was to fly down to Invercargill from Christchurch but I decided that the chance to catch some NZ scenery would be better placed by renting a one way car rental from Christchurch down to Invercargill over three days. The plan now is to drive from Christchurch to Lake Wanaka where my wee bro's (Steve) wife's folks have a place and stop off and hit the pubs and generally soak up the NZ atmosphere.
Then we head my down to Wyndham and the rental gets dropped off on Sunday lunchtime at Invercargill airport. After that we're picking up Steve's motor from Invercargill airport (they're leaving it there for us - Dad's been over a couple of times this year and that seems to work quite well) and then wending our way up to Steve and Kath's place on Friday or Saturday. Although I'm a crap flyer - I've only been to the States (once), Germany (once - business), France (school trip), Amsterdam (a few times on business when I worked for Telecity) and Copenhagen (also with TeleCity on my RIPE registry training course) - I'm really looking forward for getting lost in NZ when we get there. I'm looking forward taking wrong turns, wierd map layouts and basically stumbing our way to Steve's in such a far away place that it might as well seem like going to the moon at the moment.
Anyhoo....the excitement hasn't quite kicked in yet. I'm a bit rubbish at handing my life over to a glorified metal tube with sticking out bits packed full of aviation fuel and jet engines that might as well, as far as I'm concerned, appear to be left overs from the 1950's space race. That whole bit fills me with apprehension and outright bloody fear.
The oddest/fearful/awesome thing I reckon will be flying several thousand miles over the pacific with barely a landmass below and then crossing the international dateline. The dateline malarky has got me totally confused. But all I care about is touching down in Christchurch and jumping into the rental and doing some exploring next Wednesday? Thursday? UK Time ? NZ time? I've no idea.
I'll also be spending some time down in Stewart Island at a place called Halfmoon Bay where Kath (Steve's wife) comes from. The connection to the internet is stonking for the residents (10Mb connectivity apparently) which is good because although I'm over in NZ for 6 weeks, four of those weeks are working remotely and two weeks are actual holiday.
Anyhoo...stay tuned for photo's and general rambling about the trip.
Kev