Shut Up Hamish

It’s been just over 2 years since I last blogged. A lot has changed in that time. The U.S. under Biden pulled their forces out of Afghanistan. The war of Ukraine started, or perhaps had already started at that point, but it continued and shows no sign of peace. There was a change in leadership of he strongest country economically globally, back to the prior administration – that being Trump as if…

Part 1; words written during the festival, before the weed Attending my first Laneway since 2015, and my first over 30 I had some trepidation. I first attended in 2012, and was ambivalent then – with headliners M83 and Alt J being about all I remember of that festival. I felt out of step with the times then, as I still do now, so in that respect not much has changed. The festival peaked for me…

Spoilers ahead I feel I was tricked a bit by the marketing of this film. It seemed by the trailer as if it was going to be a different take on your usual romantic type set up. I was expected some art house tropes but it seemed as if Norwegian director Joachim Trier had something different in mind to approach the modern love story. At least for the first half it seemed this way. The film follows…

One month since the release of my debut album…

So after years of indecision about whether to release it or not, I finally put out my debut album ‘I’ve Been Waiting For This’. Listen to it on Spotify here (also available on other streaming services). Originally demo’d and written starting in 2017 while staying in a farm house in Northern Germany – at a community I lived in – I took these demos and tweaked them, recording live drums at the…

[New Track] Do It In A Half-Assed Way (Released to Soundcloud)

In anticipation of my debut album which I believe I’ll release next month (I’m bad with being official with release dates yeah, but check this space), here’s an old rhyme routine from 2015 that I’ve given the unceremonious ‘dump’ release for on Soundcloud right now, after discovering it on a harddrive. I think it samples Yellow Magic Orchestra, and references Rakim etc… Enjoy! <div…

Are our phones changing our perception of time?

It’s a commonly agreed upon assumption – that your perception of time changes as you grow old. When you’re just out the starting gates, in your first few years of sentience, a year feels like an eternity. For a two year old, a year is half of their existence, and and therefore without a reference of time to compare their lives to – every thought, feeling and memorable day seems to take twice as…

We filmed a music video in the forests of Northern Germany…

As detailed in a previous blog on life in a German Community – I lived for several years in a small but productive community of international volunteers. Originally set up as by a group of like-minded young people searching for a place to study their philosophy (the Germanic education and agricultural esoteric philosophies of Rudolf Steiner known as Anthroposophy), the community had grown with…

I have to be honest; I didn’t understand half of the cultural references of the film and had to google while I watched. But from the dialogue alone, I was pointed towards Hieronymus Bosch, the 1945 Judy Garland film The Clock, the Cole Porter song Night and Day and the American portrait painter John Singer Sargent. So I supposed I’m more similiar to the not-so-street savy Arizonian…

Opinion: There’s no good ideas anymore, and everything is just being recycled

The ‘everything’ in the title of this blog refers to culture.

Here I am, experiencing what is a typical morning in my relatively mundane existence. Having finished some work of a routine and not particularly specialized nature, I’ve sat down to enjoy the respite of a cup of coffee and a scroll through social media on my phone. It’s what I was waiting for all morning. Work was enjoyable, not so…

Guide for getting the Working Holiday Visa for Netherlands (from a New Zealander)

Work and travel in Europe sounds like a great idea right!? Even better if you have a year long work visa for a country. You can stay longer, you won’t have to worry about leaving the Schengen zone after your 3 month tourist permit is finished, and you can work a little to save more money.

So it’s a win/win. In my experience, some of the easiest countries to apply for Working Holiday Visas are…

Blog: A 24 hour bus ride from Berlin to Bosnia, a broken phone and a Hostel volunteering experience in sunny Mostar

(Prologue) Before leaving Germany:

Sometimes it feels like I lurch from self-created crisis to crisis. This feels like one of those moments. I’m living in Germany, where I’ve been for the last year on a Working Holiday Visa. This ends in two days, and although I’ve been ringing and emailed New Zealand and German embassies, the rules surrounding the end of the visa are not clear. Perhaps I have to…

Volunteering at Roskilde Festival 2018

Music festivals are about the bands, yes. I should know this being the live music obsessive that I am. But they can be about so much more than just music and partying, and Roskilde for me confirms this. Even though there is a great proportion of the festival geared up towards the hedonistic – the humanitarian side, which includes being run by volunteers, and with all profits donated to charity,…

Travel: Leaving New Zealand (again) – Returning to Europe; albeit with some hesitance

Last year I found myself working on a farm in Germany for several months. As the seasons changed from Autumn to Winter, I felt the draw to return home – to see family and friends that hadn’t seen in nearly three years, and attend a friends wedding. I booked a return flight, assuming I would find some work and save money and be able to return either back to the farm I was working on, or somewhere…

In the current part of my last-20s travel journeys: I’ve left London, my television office job and extremes of living in such a large city, and have some how stumbled upon farm life in Northern Germany.  How does a city slicker like myself cope with life in an agricultural environment such as this? Better than expected it turns out.

There were ups and downs in the first 6 months after leaving…