new zealand – LizQuilty.com

March 8, 2011

KatiKati Ukulele Fest! April 1st-3rd

Found this today http://www.culturevulture.co.nz/blog/ukulele/festivals-events/katikati-ukulele-festival-2011/

After enquiring it actually looks pretty darned decent!, heres a few more details

A month out and planning is well advanced, to make the Katikati Ukulele Festival a fun weekend for everyone. A children’s art competition to decorate ukuleles is underway. Preparations for the festival depend on local support and willing volunteers, and so far we have had a good response.

Thank you to Creative Tauranga, who featured our festival in the February issue of Creative Beat.Also to Jacquie at Katch Katikati who has spread the message far and wide.Fundraising, to make the festival affordable for all, is still going on.

Let us know if you can help. We still need a sponsor to photocopy songs sheets for festival participants.Ukes-A-Plenty have been busy busking and performing at various functions. We busked for the Red Cross Christchurch appeal, at the weekly produce market on Friday evening.

We are making it a weekend long festival, to encourage people to come to town and stay overnight.Friday, April 1 we have a free music jam at Katikati RSA (on main highway, at south end of town.) Delicious meals are available from 5.30pm and music from about 7pm. Just join in, or get up for a number. Any instruments welcome.

Saturday, April 2. Main festival is in Katikati Memorial Hall, from 12.30pm till about 5pm. Gold coin entry. Bring your ukes along, for a sing and play long with Mr Ukulele, Kevin Fogarty, workshops from Big Muffin Serious Band on strumming then plucking, followed by an open mike session.Big Muffin Serious Band will be in concert from 5.30 till about 7pm. Entry $5, school children free. www.muffin.net.nz

Sunday, April 3 at Athenreee Homestead, Athenree, (just off SH2 on road to Waihi Beach.) There will be a morning tea, homestead tours and ukulele entertainment from Ukes-A-Plenty from 10am till about 12. A fundraiser for the worthwhile restoration of Adela Stewart’s homestead, with entry, tour and yummy morning tea just $10. See their website for details. www.athenreehomestead.org.nz

Comfortable accommodation is available at Sapphire Springs Holiday Park, www.sapphiresprings.net.nz/ Just a few kms from town in motel type cabins and with lovely clean hot pools, also at Athenree Holiday Park, or various B&B’s, Motels etc. See websites for KK info. www.katikati.org.nz or www.katikati.co.nz

The Children’s art fest is being organised by Linda Ojala, lindaojala@hotmail.com. Teachers at Katikati primary and year 7/8 at the college are participating with their students. All the ECE centres in town have the details, as well as Pahoia and Matahui schools. Any other children can pick up an entry form and ukulele template at the information centre. Entries need to be in by Wednesday March 16.

We have a lovely red Makala ukulele, (thanks to Music Oasis, Waihi) a designer uke bag, with tuner, two uke books and a free beginner lesson (if needed), which is being raffled, along with a spectacular food basket and laundry bucket raffle. Spot prizes, to make the day more fun for all ages, are being gratefully received.

Financial support is also very welcome.So if you can help we would love to hear from you.Please contact Christine Donehue phone, 0274 809 261, (07) 5495827 or camellia@pcconnect.co.nz if you would like to help, or for more information.

February 4, 2010February 4, 2010

Changing the New Zealand Flag – Humour

As a child, i grew up in a normal New Zealand school (several actually!) , the one thing we really hated doing drawing was the new zealand flag.

First you had to get blue paper, or colour the whole damned thing blue (which took HOURS), Then do a square of some sort on the top left and do your cross inside that. Then once you had that you put the diagonal lines through the cross. It was about then you realized the flag actually has white lines either side of the cross and they are already coloured in so you would madly try and get that in. Then you had to try and guess where the stars went and if it was NZ that had 5, or Australia? and how come Australia have a 5th star? are we abnormal ? can we not count ? does this make them better than us?

Eventually we would end up with something that looked like this

Not so pretty huh? but now apparently we have a Maori flag, to be honest most people in NZ are not Maori, and that’s just as hard to draw!

So now there is suggestion that we have a whole NEW flag, at which point i thought AHHH!!! BRILLIANT!

Now we can be like overseas flags, using just 3 stripes (only 3 crayons and a ruler required!!), or even like the Japanese with a large round polka dot (looks like somebody head butted it!).

I have to say, even Switzerland have a brilliant flag, which is easy to draw, even if it does get mistaken for a first aid stop!

If we decide on using the Union Jack again maybe we can simplify it. Stripes seems to be a fairly common theme according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_striped_flags

so I’ve come up with a few ideas of my own. All are simple and easy to draw, I have tried to make them as Modern as possible, and they should appeal to Maori and White New Zealanders and really anyone online. The best one I believe is the more simple one. Easy for kids to draw, easy for anyone to identify with because im sure EVERYONE has felt this way before.

What is it you ask?

Post your ideas in the comments – including pics! 🙂

ps. This is said in humour, entirely in jest. No offence is meant to anyone.

March 24, 2009

Buying things on trademe

Okay Ive had a few questions for a ‘Buyers’ Trademe hints and tips. Here goes.

$1 Reserves
Bidding Hours
Prices
Postage
Contact
Feedback
Expensive/Large Items
Testing
Changing your mind
Honesty

$1 Reserves

Watch the $1 reserves. If you customize your left hand menu (click the Customize and change it to full) you can have the $1 reserves at hand all the time.

Bidding Hours

NEVER bid on anything during the hours of 5pm-11pm. This is when the most people are on and bidding goes through the roof. You can pay up to twice as much by bidding on things at this time of night.

Go online at obscure hours to check. The first thing i do in the morning is check trademe. The amount of people between 6am-9am is low so you often dont get the bidding wars you would get in the evening.

Prices

Check the price before buying, compare with similar items. Often you might think what you’re getting is a bargain only to find out you overpaid. Bid with your mind not your heart or testicles (dont worry if you miss out, there will ALWAYS be another one).

Postage

Check the price of postage, some traders sell at a loss and make it up on $10-$20 postage. They use the excuse that 1 price for North Island one for South, and they dont allow pickups (even if they live next door).

Contact

Contact as quickly as possible. If you won the auction and want it, then email them. Never get nasty in emails, even if you waited 2 weeks. Whatever may have happened may be a genuine problem with the seller (got sick, other commitments etc). Hold back on placing bad feedback until at least 1 month after resolution. Never post bad feedback in a fit of anger.

Feedback

Check the feedback on a user before bidding! if a user has less than 10 feedbacks, more than 5-10% bad feedbacks (ie only 90% good) then dont trade with them unless you are going to pickup, and see the items before paying.
Also take into account the bad feedbacks they do have – are they just idiots who had no idea the rules of trademe? or long time trademe users that know whats going on?
Check out this cool tool for filtering feedback

Large/Expensive Items

Dont bid on large expensive items unless you can pickup (ie Laptops, TVs etc). If they get shipped and broken or lost (or the buyer claims they were and just scammed you) then somebody has lost $1000 or more.

Testing

Test things before you pay and go home. If you break it or find out that its not working a few days later then its not entirely believeable.

Changing your mind

If you buy something and change your mind later for whatever reason …

a) you are an idiot – its annoying and waste of time to the buyer
b) dont try and lie and make up some stupid story about your account being hacked, the kids did it, your dog did it, some flatmate did it – nobodys that stupid
c) admit that you did it and apolagise, take the bad feedback without returning it.
d) let them refund their sucess fee
e) give them good feedback, if nothing else for wasting their time.

Ive done this, i got over eager and carried away and ended up bidding on something that was more $ than i had. I realized what an idiot i was, emailed the user and was most apolagetic. I told the truth and was lucky enough to not get a bad feedback on it.

My point is, everyone makes mistakes, dont make it worse by making up a lame excuse 🙂

Honesty

And along the lines of that … if you cant pay till next pay day – most people are happy if you say ‘ill put the money through next tuesday’. They tend to get annoyed if you claim you already put the money through when you clearly didnt or some other excuse that you got held up.