Glow Worms, Paihia, MDS, and Thanksgiving

A few weeks ago, we all loaded up in the Disco and drove 3 hours north to the Kawiti Glow Worm Caves. The caves are a must see, much cooler than what you would see on the Discovery Channel. There was a great story about how the caves were found and who owns the property now. Short version? A woman had enough of her husband and ran away. Must have been pretty desperate too to be hanging out in a dark cave!!! I was surprised by how small the worms were. I don't know what I was expecting, but they are very very small pin lights on the cave walls. When they are grouped together, they look like stars in the sky from very far away. Something we learned, glow worm poo glows too. Bet you didn't know that! They wouldn't let us take pictures inside of the cave, but we still have quite a few from the area. Below you will find some cool rock formations outside of the entrance.



A meeting house, the entrance to the caves and the exit.



The rest of the pictures are on the backside of the cave. We had about a 15 minute "tramp" through the area to get back to the car park.



I don't know what Mom is telling that tree, but it better listen.

From there we drove to the town of Paihia. I really loved it there. We only stopped in to visit and have Lunch/Dinner, but I would love to go back to take advantage of the many activities. I want to snorkel with dolphins and go kayaking. To be perfectly honest, we were only up in that area because I wasn't paying attention when we left the house. We had decided that we were going to go south to another Glow Worm cave that was only an hour out. I completely spaced, but we decided to continue on since I didn't realize it until we were over half way there.

Last weekend we attended the holiday party for Mike's work. MDS treated us to a beautiful evening of food, drink (way too much as some have seen on facebook), company and presents. I truly enjoyed myself and Mike's co-workers were so nice to me. I was told I was missed often, hopefully I can go back soon. I was a space case again and forgot the camera, so I don't have pictures to post. I would like to share with you what his company did for presents. Each employee drew another employees name out of a hat. Then they were presented with a post card where we got to choose what type of donation to a village in need we would like to offer in the other persons name. We were given a dollar amount and could make any choices up to that dollar amount. I don't remember everything that was on the list but there were things like chickens, two weeks of water for a family of 5, and condoms. I just thought that was very generous of the school and makes so much better use of their money than buying gifts for their employees.

Our Thanksgiving was quiet this year. Just the 5 of us. Mike had work and Marty had school, so we celebrated on Sunday versus Thursday. I chose a ham over turkey. My oven is so small in this house and you can only cook one thing at a time. We still don't have a microwave, so I went with what I could work around. We kept up with our tradition and made it a movie weekend. We watched all of the Harry Potter movies. We started on Friday night and ended on Sunday. We did get out on Saturday for a bit to tramp around a local park and marine area. It still amazes me how many neat areas there are that we keep finding in our own neighborhood. At dinner we did give thanks for being together, being healthy, and having the opportunity to live a beautiful part of the world. (gosh my table is pitiful)

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. We will update again soon!

Wellington Trip

Porter here,

Recently I was offered the opportunity to go to AnimFX, a games and visual effects conference held in Wellington. Media Design School was kind enough to afford me this excellent opportunity to meet and greet some of the most creative people in New Zealand, as well as some awesome guest speakers.

I left Auckland around 8:00pm on a Wednesday, because the very next day at 9:00am, I had a Game Industry Master Class. Basically, this class was all about the business of games, contact gathering and management and what the latest trends in games that publishers are interested in. I really enjoyed the classes and the speakers had quite a bit of information to give. The speakers were:

Joseph Olin (President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences), Jim Simmons (Producer at Sidhe), Sean Kauppinen (CEO of International Digital Entertainment Agency)and Christian Svennson (Corporate Officer and Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development). I felt a little outclassed, just being a 3D Tutor and not something like Mike Porter (Creative Director in Charge of Education, Digital Creativity and Conflict Resolution Mentor to the Stars) Oh well...

The flight out of Auckland went off without a hitch, however the blustery conditions in Wellington made the landing a little more hairy than I would have liked. Nothing like the sideways landing I had in Amsterdam, but not as smooth as I would have wished.

MDS was extremely kind in booking me at a very nice place called the Museum Hotel. I was told I was sharing a room with another tutor and the first thing that came to my mind was "I Love Luci" and twin beds side by side in a small room. What I was shocked to find, was a wonderful apartment with my own "wing". Later I realized (realised to my Kiwi friends) that the room was to serve a double purpose. More on that later.

Below left is the Museum Hotel and the two pictures on the right are the conference room and a portion of the lobby. The picture in the middle is where I spent my entire Friday morning writing furiously, trying to get every bit of knowledge that the guys were very gracious to part with.

Thursday night, I found out the real reason we had an apartment and not a regular hotel room. Paul Millett had invited several guests up for beer and conversation. We had a pretty good turn out where I met Jeff Okun is a visual effects supervisor and has worked on movies such as "The Last Samurai" and "Blood Diamond". Jeff is also Chair of the Visual Effects Society Awards Committe and is on the board of directors for the Gnomon School of Visual Arts. A heavy hitter for sure. Has to be a jerk right? Wrong, awesome guy and we had a great conversation about space, sci-fi and why our brains try to help us, even to the point where it will hide stuff from us that we need to see. I also met three very nice people from Massive Software, the guys and gals that had a hand in the visual effects of Lord of the Rings, whose adaptive AI crowd software was used for the massive (get it?) battles in Middle Earth. These guys were nice enough to send me a demo, which I have yet to download, but will do so soon. I am horrible with names and several of the other people escaped my grab for business cards. I am sorry if I left you out!

Jos Ruffell was the host for the event (Above left). He is one of the guys from Sidhe Interactive and was kind enough to facilitate a great guest speaker for MDS. More about that speaker later in the post. This was on Friday and the event moved from the Museum Hotel to Te Papa. This was a wonderful venue to have the keynote speeches. The picture above middle is a Māori group that started the ceremony with song and speeches and the finale was a lady with a booming voice telling us to follow along to a song in Māori. She was awesome! You can see her in the middle picture on the far right, back row. After the speech, the Keynote speakers pressed noses with the Māori group, which is a traditional greeting.

After this, the keynote began. I have to say, my three favorite speakers are pictured below. Richard Taylor on the left, is the man in charge at Weta Workshops. Click the link, you will be glad you did. In the middle is Jeffery Okun, introduced above and last but not least is John Stevenson. His keynote was so powerful that I pestered him to no end to come speak to the students at MDS. He did and they were moved. He was a co-director on Kung-Fu Panda, but also worked on Dark Crystal and Labyrinth as well as many more productions, cartoons and movies. He is unabashedly not politically correct, but is also extremely focused and passionate about being the best you can be and giving 110% to everything you do. Thanks Jos for hooking this up and thank you John for being one of the nicest people I have had the pleasure of meeting.

After these keynotes, there were several others that had to do with games, however the guys giving the keynotes were also the guys that I spent an entire day with, the previous day, so I spent some time looking around Te Papa and taking pictures. This is a small sample. The cool this here is there is a "holograph" playing on a glass panel. This allows you to see the actors projected on the model of the boat in the middle. It was almost a "Help me Obiwan, you are my only hope" moment. It was a very cool effect.

The left and right side pictures were from inside the Museum Hotel lobby and the middle picture is on the way to the Sidhe party on the docks. I would like to show more pictures but it appears I have used up my limit or something. Weird. Anyway, it was a wonderful trip, I met many cool people and I am still trying to write all my emails for all the contacts I made. Whoever painted that Willy Nelson, nailed it! The larger picture is even more amazing.

Wellington Harbour, Te Papa and a beautiful church up on a hill. Wellington was a very cool place to visit and I hope to make it back there during Christmas holiday.

Huge thanks to Mario Wynands, Jos Ruffell and all the awesome people that put AnimFX together. I hope to see you all next year!

Armageddon, Tramping, Nanny and Mike's Work

Hello Everyone. I know I have been slacking on the posts, thanks for being patient. We haven't been out to do a whole lost the last couple of weeks, but I do have some pictures for you. Two weeks ago we went to Armageddon which is NZ version of Comicon. It was my first time to one of these things. It was cool to see all of the new video games coming out and the people all dressed up. We sat and listened to Seth Green give a little talk about his new show coming out Titan Maximum. Marty waited patiently for about 15 minutes with his hand in the air for his turn to talk to Seth. He wanted to do his impersonation of Chris from The Family Guy and ask him a question. However, he didn't inform the mic guy and he took off after Marty asked his question. He was so disappointed he didn't get to do his impersonation. He was stoked though to have been able to talk to him. Seth called him "Boy in Hat". The third picture is Marty with an actor who has a movie coming out this year. Have no idea what it's called, but hey maybe it will be a big hit.

We went on mini hike that same weekend. It's called tramping here, my stand in joke is that every time I say "I went tramping" I feel like I should be in heels and a short skirt. (dang, that would be a sight...something I should use to threaten my kids with I think. You act up I will dress like this in front of your friends!!! KEEP IT UP!) We found a park and walking area that is along the cliffs right in our own neighborhood. When we walked down the cliff side there were several people fishing right off the rocks.

If you look closely at the first picture there is a bird in the bottle brushes. The first few times I saw this bird it was always in the same area. The very first time I felt bad because I thought someone had lost their pet parrot. The next few times I thought the bird was really smart to stick around thinking that maybe it's owner would find it. What a ding bat. I have no idea what this bird is, but it's beautiful....and obviously not a pet.










The second picture is Marty rolling down a hill. It's not a good picture because the hill was really big and steep. He was yelling the whole way down as we laughed and tried to get him to not be so loud. Let's just say all of the lovely quiet families who are trying to teach their kids cricket stopped to look at the loud Americans.

My mom came in this past weekend. Nanny will be here until the end of December. She came bearing gifts...Spices, Transformers 2, and Tampons. Yes, I said tampons. Let's just say the tampons here are meant for the...fragile and dainty. Kelsey was beyond stoked to have her Kotex. Weird how things you would never imagine doing so, make you happy.

Mom has actually done pretty well with the time change. She was able to stay up until 10 last night, which is pretty good within the first week. We have plans to get out and sight see over the warmer months...whenever they decide to arrive.

Lastly, here are some pictures from Mike's work. The first two are from his classroom and the rest are of his co-workers during the Halloween gathering. Not too many people dressed up, but at least they gathered...until the beer was gone.