Heading to Auckland, Wellington, and Sydney for a few weeks. I'm still not using Twitter but know I have a lot of friends only here; if you're in the area and want to say hi email me at nelson@monkey.org. I'll be posting postcards on Instagram. instagram.com/nelson.minar
Wellington art. Street art, cinema door, hotel sculpture.
Today is census day in New Zealand. All 4.5M people there (including visitors) fill it out today. They have a website for doing it: census.govt.nz. Imagine the scaling problem for that website.
Toured the New Zealand Parliament. Transparency and politeness as foundational virtues, it’s very nice.
Wellington Museum. Māori art: traditional (Māui) and aerosol.
Leaving New Zealand tomorrow for Australia. Sad to be going. Auckland and Wellington aren't exactly the most exciting cities in the world but they are both very nice with more to do than you'd first think. Here's heatmaps of where I went courtesy of wanderin.gs
Visited Te Papa museum in Wellington. Mostly for the Māori exhibitions but no photos allowed. So here's photos from the excellent Gallopoli exhibit. Bonus Ken with carved gate.
Day considerably brightened by an encounter with a marvelous drag queen. Beautifully dressed and poised, preparing for a photo shoot at my hotel with Latrice Royale and the Prime Minister. Wellington pride is this weekend, missing it. Missed Sydney's too, bad planning.
Arrived Sydney, having a rough time between some health problems a disappointing AirBNB. At least the WiFi works, amazing how that one connection makes all the difference.
Sydneysiders enjoy a wide selection of sauces at the grocery store.
Hearing a lot of "How ya goin?" or "How're you going?" here in Australia, more than I remember last time. To my American ears it sounds almost aggressive but it's just a friendly greeting, not even a question really.
Sydney snaps.
Mortuary Station, a stop on the cemetery railway. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent_Street_railway_station
More Sydney snaps, including the rare and majestic bin chicken.
White Rabbit gallery, a private collector’s exhibit of Chinese contemporary art.
My favorite from White Rabbit, “Long March — Restart”. Video game / communist mashup from Feng Mengbo.
Sydney bonus, ice cream shop downstairs from us.
Headed back home to San Francisco today, not looking forward to the 14 hour flight. We had to cut our trip short unfortunately, sad I don't get to spend a couple of weeks pretending I live in Sydney.
Air Singapore lounge: a Bloody Mary and a bowl of congee.
The end of our Sydney adventure. Everyone at the airport has been super helpful and friendly.
Made it home. Man, traveling with a wheelchair is a pretty good experience; everyone's helpful, you get to skip the lines. Shame about the wheelchair part though.
Coming back to the States has its perqs. Enchiladas, sopes, and a michelada at SanJalisco. (Now with photo)
