Marmite Sandwiches.

Pecha Kucha.

I liked my Pecha Kucha experience. I am looking for opportunities to force my brain to take in new stuff. There were 12 speakers. A couple of them wouldn't have passed Speechgiving 101 in NCEA ..... and thus we were glad of the 6 minute time limit. At least we had pretty pictures to look at (and they changed every 20 seconds to accomodate our short attention spans). The other 10 were all varying degrees of interesting. I liked the guy who talked about designing fonts the most. He was a pretty funny speaker, straddling a nice line between arrogant and self-mocking. He's designed fonts from scractch that are commercially used.... and stunned me with the actual number of 'glyphs' (letters, symbols or numbers) that you have to design for a complete type-face.... Somewhere over one thousand, if it's got bold, italic, bold-italic, small caps etc.........

I decided I could marry him, because he was funny and fonts are cool. On stage he appeared good looking (for a font geek). I thought as a courting gift he could make me a set of fonts based on my handwriting. That'd be cool! It would have to be my writing when I'm using a really good pen. That makes a differnece. To me, that would be about the most romantic present ever.

But at this point I will note that Reidun and I decided to flag the 50 minutes of mingling at the beginning, and to go shortly before the presentations began. Apparently (as the flustered seating-guy told us) they had been told to accommodate 90 or so people and ended up getting closer to 150, so they were having to haul benches out into the back of the theatre, behind the pillars..... We had what you would call 'partially obstructed' views. Reidun could only see the speaker if she leaned into me, but at least there were big pretty slides projected onto the wall.

Anyhow, I saw the font guy closer up later in the night and decided I would not marry him. He was this close and didn't even know it. Also, when me and Reidun went out for some fresh air (and cigarettes for her) I saw him talking to a blonde font-groupie. I had competition.

I also liked the commercial photographer who showed us pictures of them erecting the 55 wind-tower thingies up north somewhere. And the guy who did an interactive art installation where you went into a full covered (dark) bouncy castle type thing (made in Levin!) and had to creep across a crevace at one point.... and the only way to get across was to grab the hand of an actor (which mysteriously pops through a hole in the wall - like in a horror movie). If you don't hold the mysterious hand, you fall off the ledge onto a bouncy bit. And this was all set up so that people had no idea what was in the installation and had to go in alone. I like that concept that it's a solo experience.

As a side note, Pecha Kucha uses viral marketing....... and I noticed on my site-meter that someone from that site had checked out my blog on the day I talked about it. I am now recognised as part of the virus (unsuccessfully, as nobody who viewed my blog came along.....). I felt a bit odd about that.

Basketball.

We had two games of basketball tonight. The second game was kinda in slow motion. It was odd. It might not have helped that in the hour long gap between games we all had a pack of lollies each (one of the ladies in the team was selling them as a fundraiser for a kindy). I may have been on a post-lolly-low. I could actually smell my own sweat, which is rare. But on the plus-side, I scored a decent amount of points in both games. I have low expectations (on offence) and was pleased to get about 8 points in both games. In the first one I went on this odd roll of hitting jump-shots from the top of the key. Swishes. I was in some kinda zone. In the second game they were mostly from offensive put-backs. The game we sat and watched between playing was painful - 45-2 (and that 2 p0ints was in the last minute and a half). And, even given that scoreline, the team that was up actually put on a full-court press for most of the second half. That's cruel!