Wellington City Council would like your views on the draft Long Term Plan 2012-22. The draft plan sets out what the Council is proposing to do over the next ten years. Public consultation on the Wellington City Council Draft Long Term Plan runs from the 16th April to 18th May 2012. This is your chance to have a say – your support will make all the difference.

There are a whole bunch of things involved in the long term plan that the Wellingtonista collectively and individually have opinions on. Hopefully there will be more posts about those soon. But today I’d like to talk to you about an issue that’s super close to my heart*: getting the Wellington SPCA into a new building so that they can continue to provide an amazing service for the community.

If you’ve been to the Newtown centre, you’ll know that while it is full of adorable animals and really dedicated people, it is also crazy cramped, old and falling-downy. The small space means that it’s that much harder to have proper isolation spaces to prevent diseases from spreading, and there’s no room for new initiatives. It’s also down a really long pot-holed driveway, and there’s very little parking around.

Meanwhile, the old Fever Hospital up in Mount Victoria is sitting empty apart from vandals. Here’s the situation in the words of Wellington SPCA:

The Fever Hospital on Alexandra Road (also known as the Old Chest Hospital and owned by Wellington City Council), a historically-rich Heritage building in the heart of Wellington, remains the preferred destination for us. The Council have stated that we are the preferred tenant and have voiced a desire to see us in the building as soon as possible.

The Fever Hospital site will provide a heritage home for a heritage community organisation. It will convert a disused human hospital to an animal one with an educational focus. Located in the centre of the capital it places us where we need to be; at the heart of the community.

Wellington City Council have existing obligations to complete a large amount of capital works on the building before we can commence our own construction work, and ongoing maintenance once the building is tenanted.

Unfortunately the Council has decided it does not have the funds available to complete this work, nor is there funding budgeted for the next 10 years.

Obviously, the council has to think carefully about where it spends its money, but Wellington SPCA, which does vital work but receives no direct** government funding, is absolutely deserving. For more information and/or to sign a petition, check out the Rehome the SPCA site.

* Full disclosure: I worked for the Wellington SPCA for a couple of months last year, and I continue to foster cats for them.

** Animal inspectors are trained by MAF, but that’s it.

Hummingbird has been on Courtenay Place for a long time (twelve years!), and has just undergone a complete refurbishment. The Wellingtonista was invited along to check out the revitalised space and new menu, and what we found was very very good.

In their own words:

The site was once, many decades ago, a butcher’s shop and in the process of peeling back all the room’s many layers we found that shop’s original tiles and brick.  They were incorporated in our design, and so the place is something of a palimpsest, with the old coming through to the new.

The new Hummingbird has a lot more emphasis on eating, and much of the design has been aimed at making the dining room more comfortable.  We’ve also retained a whole new kitchen team and so have a new food offering, which is heavy on using good, local produce and trying not to do too much to it.

Our own words follow after the jump. Caution: content will contain mouth orgasms and make you hungry.

I hadn’t been to Hummingbird for a long time, because I didn’t think it was really the right bar for me. Jed from Hummingbird acknowledges that it had become somewhat known as ‘Cougar* Territory’ (and one of my dining companions confirmed that his workmates had ‘warned’ him about this when he said that he was going to dinner there), and so work has been done to change the atmosphere. The renovations have succeeded in giving the space much more of a restaurant feel. Gone are the very ’90s purple walls and that annoying curved screen at the door. Instead, walls have been taken out to make the bar area more airy, old tiles and brick are exposed, and tables are made from reclaimed scaffolding planks.  A gas fire makes the room lovely and warm on a freezing cold night. (The lighting wasn’t very good for taking pictures of food though, unfortunately, so you will have to imagine it, or better yet, go try it yourself!)

I ordered one of the nicest cocktails I’ve had in a long time – a spiced old fashioned (Willet’s single barrel reserve bourbon, spiced sugar, bitters) which came with a fire of its own, served with a flaming fig in the glass, and once it was sadly finished, we went for the Hummingbird house wine, a Pinot Noir available by the glass, 500ml and 1000ml carafe. Sensible sizing!

The menus are simple, printed on A3 paper.  “We wanted everyone to have the full menu on one page and also the cocktails, and we wanted everyone to have easy access to the wine list.  The menus are all printed in house because the dishes change a lot, ” says Jed.

Everything sounded delicious and we didn’t know where to start, so we asked our lovely waitress Florence to ask the chef to send out whatever he felt we should eat. Best decision ever! A dozen Mahurangi oysters (they also had Bluff available) arrived at our table quickly, in their half shells on ice. I’m not a huge shellfish fan, but I thought I’d give these a go. They were delicious with a little of the accompanying sauce and a squeeze of lemon, little fresh mouthfuls of the sea. I’m still not sold on the texture of oysters though, so I concentrated on the fresh bread and yummy Olivo oil.

Next our table was covered in a selection of grilled sourdough that we divided into quarters and pounced on. I had never had Waikanae crab before – in fact, you don’t see crab on many restaurant menus in NZ that I’m aware of (although I’ve some really good crab still in the shell at China Delight, and also soft shell crab tempura at Kura in Auckland), but this was lovely. Sweet flesh, mixed with tasty aioli. Yummmm. The mushrooms with marscapone had the depth of flavour of a thousand roast animals, which I discovered as I checked the menu again, was because the marscapone was truffled. Meanwhile the duck neck sausage and peppers was incredibly rich as well . Apparently duck neck sausage is encased in itself, unlike a traditional sausage. However it’s made, it was delicious. Unexpectedly, I even enjoyed the entree dish of Kapiti octopus with chorizo and beets. It tasted a lot like parsnip, which is a good thing.

The time between entrees and mains was well-judged, and once again, we divided the plates we received between the four of us. When Florence had told us about the specials of the day earlier on, she’d mentioned that there were two kinds of aged beef available – we were served the Wakanui Blue scotch fillet, while there was also a petit angus fillet from Hawke’s Bay. I don’t know all that much about the different places, but I love that they do. Localised eating is so hot right now. And apart from that, the beef with its pureed aubergine? Total mouth orgasm. I wouldn’t normally order chicken at a restaurant because I find other proteins more interesting, but Hummingbird’s was very nicely done, a breast roasted with lemon and sage (according to the menu, although it seemed more pan-fried to me). The duck, from the entree part of the menu but really big enough for a dinner if you had sides as well, was served with lentils and Valrhona chocolate, and had us in raptures. The fish of the day, served with clams, was Snapper, seared skin on, and was also amazing. But I think my favourite part was the roast potatoes we were served on the side. They were peeled and turned beautifully, and there was just something magical about them – they kind of reminded me of going to some restaurant as a child – perhaps even a Cobb & Co type place, and encountering deep-fried roast potatoes for the first time. I know that doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it absolutely is.

We were all very well satisfied and full, so it was just as well that we only had three desserts to share between us.  The creme catalana was nice, but the salted caramel sauce that came with the chocolate pudding had us fighting over who would lick the plate. Salted caramel’s pretty trendy right now, but few places make it actually salty enough to really wow the palate – Hummingbird’s was spot on. And then there was the Vanilla Vanilla Vanilla – three different tastes on one plate. The lemon and vanilla curd was something I would happily eat on toast for breakfast every single day, the goat’s cheese cheesecake was utterly sublime, and happily, the vanilla panacotta obligingly trembled just like a woman’s breast, the way a good panacotta should. We may have had a little bit of wine when we decided it needed to be captured for posterity:

So that’s a 1200 word tour through a menu. I enjoyed every minute of it. Laura was like “oh god, we have to find fault with something or we’re not being good critics!”. All we could come up with is wishing our water had been topped up a little more, and that there’d been a sauce spoon with the oysters. We ate as the guests of Hummingbird, but will definitely be going back on our own dimes. As soon as possible.

* I hate the idea of implying women are predators, but I do know people who choose to identify themselves as cougars. And I generally dislike them. So we’ll run with this for now.

Sometimes I envy my friends’ careers, so I thought I’d talk to them about how they got to where they are now. Today I talk to Kim Laurenson, who sells jewellery online.

1. What do you do?
I run Cupcakes and Mace – a laser cut jewellery business , I blog, and I am a temporary administrator and customer service rep.

2. Is that what you thought you’d be doing, back when you were in high school?
In high school I thought I’d work with computers, maybe try to get a job as an IT helpdesker. I left school early and did a short course at the Waikato Polytech where I discovered formal study wasn’t for me.

Before high school I dreamed of owning a business that sold all the trinkets and beads I wanted to buy.

3. Was there one specific thing that made your career change direction? Or was it a gradual shift?
It was a gradual shift brought on by a desperate need for a change in situation. I needed to leave the performance appraisal filled, multi-tiered management fueled workforce behind and figure out what I really loved doing.

I started blogging and making laser cut jewellery while employed full time. I saved money and reduced my costs till I had a nest egg and was able to leave my job.

4. What are some of the highs and lows of your job?
Not having a permanent job or secure income has given me a lot of freedom. I know now that I don’t have to put up with bad work situations. There is no one way to earn a living or forge a career. Realising that the rules don’t really exist has been a definite high.

I love the customers that Cupcakes and Mace attracts, they tend to have similar values to me and appreciate receiving a personalised service.

I still worry that not picking a path and climbing the corporate ladder will backfire later in life.

5. What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received? And/or what advice would you give to someone who wanted to run their own small business too.
Just do it! There’s rarely a perfect time to change directions and starting from the bottom can be hard when you’re already settled in a career.

If you have a back up plan you’ll be more confident.

Wellington Fashion Week explores the unique creations of the fashion industry and the many concepts that make Wellington’s fashion its own. Join us as we explore and experience the latest in fashion and as we take time to give our designers the accolades they deserve.

Tickets are available for some of the shows, and you can buy them online. Megan and I will be going to some of the events, along with Martha over at the Wellingtonista, and will report back to you. It appears that WFW will be as inclusive of plus size people who like clothes as every other fashion week ever, so I am looking forward to the makeup and the hair.

Sometimes I envy my friends’ careers, so I thought I’d talk to them about how they got to where they are now.

1.  What do you do?

I’m a Production Engineer at Weta Digital in Wellington.

Production Engineering is responsible for designing, developing and maintaining core pipeline infrastructure used by most departments throughout Weta. This includes  Review and Dailies Pipeline, Asset Tracking Services, Environment Management and The Rendering Pipeline. Our team’s systems provide the main building blocks that are essential for supporting and tracking all processes involved with rendering and data creation.

Weta Digital has one of the largest render farms in the world, consisting of over 40,000+ cores and a few petabytes of storage to manage. Production engineering maintains the main software interfaces responsible for managing processes and tracking data generated in this area. Scalability is a major requirement.

2. Is this what you thought you’d be doing in high school?

No, not at all. I wanted to get into Avionics or maybe the power industry. I liked controlling big giant machinery, and power stations are rather big. I spent a high school holiday out at Hamilton Airport learning some avionics, and several other holiday working in power stations writing software for ECNZ.

I studied embedded software and electronics at Central Institute of Technology in Upper Hutt, which no longer exists. I don’t think there are courses in this area any more, which is a shame. Nearly all my colleagues are immigrants who never studied in New Zealand.

If you have access and time to learn programming at home (and there’s great resources on the internet) then there are great opportunities in New Zealand. If you don’t have that privilege you can still catch up with the early starters. There’s really not much to programming once you get into it, and the whole field changes every few years so old timers don’t have huge advantages.

Writing software that has never been written before to solve problems nobody has ever solved before.

Unfortunately the magic of movies is completely ruined for me. I can see how they achieved the magic effects. Apparently I’m bad company for watching sci-fi DVDs.

Lunch is a meeting. If someone asks you to work across midday you should say  ”No, I have another meeting then”.

Also, listen to your mum.

Sometimes I envy my friends’ careers, so I thought I’d talk to them about how they got to where they are now. Today I talk to Joseph Slater, who works in hospitality and owns his own businesses.

1.     What do you do?

I own and run Monterey, Six Barrel Soda co. and Kreuzberg Summer Café with my pal Mike.

2.     Is this what you thought you’d be doing in high school?
Definitely not, my leaving report says “intended occupation: lawyer”, I grew up in Tauranga and it seemed like the only options were so limited, trades, teaching, medicine or law.

3.     Tell me about what studies you did – are they relevant to what you
do now, or were you on a different path at the time?
After high school I came to Wellington and started a law/psychology double degree, I left law after three years when I realised I didn’t want to be a lawyer and wasn’t applying myself at uni. I finished my BA and moved overseas for a few years. I worked in and ran bars in Australia and Europe and came back to set up shop.

4.     What are some of the highs and lows of your job?
Seeing a restaurant you own full of people and good feedback from customers is pretty cool, it’s nice to know people appreciate the work you do. Stress and hours are probably lows but working for myself is worth it.

5.     What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
Bankruptcy’s not so bad.

…Why should you care? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s hard to find staff in the broader ICT field. It starts at tertiary level where the universities and colleges of New Zealand are failing to attract their full number of candidates and it runs through to most large companies where the IT team is generally more than 70 per cent male and that’s being generous.

All too often I’ve been to conferences (even ones organised by TUANZ) and seen two or three women and that’s it. Generally, they’re the PR folk who organised the event in the first place. Women simply aren’t anywhere near the level of staff you’d expect if all things were equal.

I’ve been to those conferences too – generally though in my roles doing communications for technology companies, or the government. Being in a minority isn’t a lot of fun. I’ve got two anecdotes that may contribute to the larger picture.

• At an Open Government bar camp last year, in which we discussed ways to do more with data that is harvested by government agencies, the organiser suggested that if you were struggling with some of the technical issues raised, you should find someone with a beard to explain it to you. I called him out for that, and he apologised, but it was a unwelcome reminder that women aren’t expected to be technical.
• Recently a Boston API  Jam (an informal conference) was organised, and was listed with the perks of attending including being brought beer by women. Luckily, many people were quick to jump on this sexist ‘brogrammer’ attitude, and sponsors pulled out, leading to a pretty comprehensive apology from the organisers  that acknowledged the difficulties of a male-dominated tech industry.

There are many, many more examples of negative experiences women in tech have had, but it gets kind of depressing to list them. Instead, here’s two bright points that I think suggest the situation can improve.

• Tech people get a lot of tshirts, from vendors, from conferences, from all kinds of things. These tshirts are normally boxy, and come in men’s sizes only. Webstock, a yearly web conference in Wellington, offers its tshirts in women’s cuts and sizes as well. This is a very clear acknowledgement that there are women in the industry. I have a friend Brenda who’s a brilliant programmer, and goes to a lot of tech events which are mainly male, so at Webstock  she was very excited that there was actually a queue in the women’s bathroom.
• In Wellington, and in other cities around the world, there are a series of events called Geek Girl Dinners, where women in tech speak about their careers, their passions and their hobbies. These dinners are subsidised thanks to sponsorship, and student tickets are generally around $5. It’s a great way to find role models and inspiration.

How does this relate to us here at Careers New Zealand?

Obviously, we want to help people be aware of what job options they have, and what training they will need to get into those jobs. We don’t have a mandate as such to try to get more women into technology, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work towards that goal anyway. IT jobs are often well-paid, so more women in tech roles would help redress the gender pay gap in New Zealand. So what should we do?

Paul has some suggestions.

If we are to encourage half the population to take our industry seriously as a career choice, we need to make it an industry that is enticing, that is interesting, that is even grudgingly accepting that women can and should be a part of the community and we have to start at the very basic level…
…. But we need to encourage women into this industry and that means starting well before the job interview. That means starting before they’ve made the choice at tertiary level – that means going into high schools and making sure the girls who are yet to decide on their future are encouraged and welcomed into the IT world.

We need to do a better job, as an industry, at selling ourselves to these kids. We need to go in to schools and tell them about the cool stuff we do. We need to tell them about designing games, about travelling the world, about getting paid well above the average wage. We need to talk to the kids and encourage them to join in, and we need to talk to everyone who doesn’t belong to the computer club, or who spends their lunchtime at a terminal in the lab. We need to preach to the unconvinced, to the unconverted and to the boys and girls who are able to do maths, who get science and critical thinking and we need to get them to consider their options.

That includes the girls, and if that means we need to make a change to the culture of this industry then we absolutely have to make that change, because excluding half the population simply isn’t acceptable.

That’s some good advice. Now to act on it!

Sometimes I envy my friends’ careers, so I thought I’d talk to them about how they got to where they are now. Today I talk to Martha Craig, who works in retail and owns her own businesses. 

1.  What do you do?

I own a shop called Wanda Harland. We sell lots of designer, crafty, cool stuff including jewellery, furniture, hats, ceramics, baby clothes, art, clothing, handbags. Everything but the kitchen sink. I also run a couple of brands which we sell wholesale and I have some internet sites where I sell my various products.

2. Is this what you thought you’d be doing in high school?

When I left school I had absolutely no idea what to do, so I worked for 6 months in a pharmacy.

3.  Tell me about what studies you did – are they relevant to what you do now, or were you on a different path at the time?

I completed a BA in Politics and Art History. By the time I got to university I’d decided I wanted to be an architect, but frankly was too lazy for all the work, or a journalist. I enjoyed my time at university a huge amount and learned lots about the world. I’ve been chipping away at a post graduate diploma in communications over the last decade! None of my studies are specifically useful, but I think having the ability to think, be confident, converse and engage are all supported by tertiary education, so I’m glad I did the degree I did.

4.  What are some of the highs and lows of your job?

I really love my job. Our customers are a delight, I’m not just saying that to grease up, it has been a great surprise to me how much I enjoy meeting people every day in the shop. Every time new products arrive it is like opening presents and that is definitely a big plus. The lows are dealing with paperwork and juggling finances, but really that is a small part of the job and not too much of an issue.

5. What advice would you give to someone wanting to open their own shop?
Ask yourself lots of questions and don’t ignore the answers, even if they’re not what you want to hear. Things like; are you frightened of failing? Do you have something unique to offer? Talk to lots of people, think and dream about it loads. Do it.

Kimberley at work for the Waikato Times, in a rescue chopper

I work happily here at Careers New Zealand as part of the Communications & Marketing team, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally envy the jobs of a number of people I know.  I thought I’d talk to some of them to see how they got their careers going. First up is Kimberley Rothwell, who is a journalist.

What do you do?
I’m a feature writer for the Dominion Post, the largest newspaper in Wellington. I write for all sections of the paper, but mostly the Your Weekend magazine. I also edit sections as the need arises.

Is that what you thought you’d be doing, back when you were in high school?
I wanted to be a journalist, but I was sidetracked by the film industry for a number of years and only trained as a journalist in 2004.

Tell me about what studies you did – are they relevant to what you do now, or were you on a different path at the time?
I studied history, English and a number of other arts subjects. I just really wanted to get a BA under my belt, and studied whatever I was interested in at the time; Russian literature, classical studies, French language. None of it was ‘relevant’ to what I do now, other than opening my mind after growing up in a small town, and giving me analytical and thinking skills. I also know a lot of dates thanks to studying history.

What are some of the highs and lows of your job?
I think the February 22 earthquake is an example of the highs and lows of this job in one fell swoop. On the one hand, the earthquake was a once in a lifetime story in which you really feel like you are participating in an historical event, which for a history buff like me is amazing. On the other hand, a terrible, terrible thing had to happen in order for that to happen. I was sick with worry about my mother the entire time, I didn’t stop shaking for two days. I was one of many Dominion Post journalists and reporters who wrote victim biographies which requires calling family members or colleagues who are enduring the worst experience of their lives. Some people respond with anger, and see your interest as an invasion of privacy, others are grateful for the chance to talk about their loved one. I wrote a story about one particular earthquake victim in which I had both responses. It required a lot of compassion and fearlessness.

The other highs of my job include meeting the many generous people who give up their time to talk to you, who have amazing stories to tell, and who really do inspire me. In my first year here, I met people with HIV who told me intimate details of their lives, and recently spoke with a number of people who are homeless. People have invited me into their lives which is a great honour. Some of the lows include having to cajole people who are suspicious of the media. You’re also, in a sense, a public figure. I wrote once about how my toddler son tipped over a sugar bowl in a café, and someone wrote to the paper complaining about the state of parenting today.

What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
“Head down, tail up!” from my now-editor Bernadette Courtney, on getting my first job at the Waikato Times. She knew I was desperate to be a feature writer but would have to earn my chops as a reporter before I could be. Whenever I didn’t want to write the story about the school play I remembered what she said and worked to make it the best story about a school play ever. And sometimes school play-type stories gave me great contacts, so I would be who they called when a Watergate type story erupted

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to be a journalist too?
It’s not enough to be good writer – you have to have a good head for news, an inquisitive mind and a willingness to do the story about the school play before you can tackle Watergate.

If you’re on the Twitters, you would have seen yet another digusting piece of bigotry and bullshit churned out by Rosemary McLeod about how transgender people shouldn’t be parents.

The @dompost rebuttal? “The column is her opinion.”. Yes, and they’re the ones who paid for her to have that opinion published.

Luckily, the Queer Avengers are actually thinking about the children, (like how Trans people in New Zealand have a suicide rate 25 times higher than that of non-trans people) and have organised a protest for tomorrow.

Protest against transphobia in the media, like Rosemary Mcleod’s recent article in the Domnion Post which launches a bigoted attack on trans parents. It’s time to celebrate good parents, whatever their background or identity, and say no to transphobia.

The protest runs today, Friday February 24 from 12:30pm until 13:30 at the Dominion Post, 40 Boulcott St. More information is about the event on Facebook.

Oh, and for more Rosemary-related lols, you must read this rebuttal from a Wellington sex worker to one of Rosemary’s older columns about exploited prostitutes with dirty feet.