You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Continue fine, I hope it may

When you look at your tasty California sushi vegetable fried dumplings inside their wee plastic packaging and hear yourself think, "Hey, is that meant to be motion blur?", and then realise that it's condensation - that is the time when you realise that you were up too late packing boxes.

(I feel I should point out that I was thinking that it was, like, a single frame of dumplings in motion or something. It's not like I thought they were vibrating rapidly, for example - that would have been weird.)

One of the nice perks about Weta is that we get things like a guy with sushi coming once a week, bearing hot meals and teriaki beef sushi. There's also the free fruit & vegetables, and free coffee and tea, and occasionally random stuff, like packets of japanese noodles. When we're in the peak of production, I know that there are plenty of artists who never eat at home. (In fact, I had that happen at the end of Return of the King - at one point, I worked out how long it had been since I had opened the fridge, and got a bit nervous...)

In the normal course of things, I seem to cook more often than most of the people I work with. Of course, I'm counting chopping up and cooking an onion, garlic, mushrooms, zucchini and capsicum with one of those packet pastas - which is pretty much the tee-shirt and jeans of cookings, I think. (Which means just the packet pasta is... what, trackpants? And a frozen meat pie is equivalent to a stained singlet? Hmm, I don't think I want to pursue this analogy.)

Anyway, cooking is fun, and I like having the opportunity to occasionally do something bigger, like a roast. Plus I like the puzzle-solving aspect of using leftovers - lamb chops become lamb couscous with sultanas, cashews, mushrooms and onions, for example. Or roast beef becomes shepherd's pie, and the extra boiled potatoes from the shepherd's pie become leek and potato soup. The only problem with cooking during the week is that if I get home at 7:30-8:00pm, I may not eat until 9:00pm; but if it's just frying fish-cakes, hash browns and mushrooms, and microwaving frozen peas & corn, some broccolli and a chopped-up carrot... well, it doesn't take that long.

But sometimes I'll just zap a frozen meal. Or pop home to the parents.

Hopefully I'll get to cook for the flat now and then - it's always more satisfying to cook for someone else.

***

One of the excellent things about my move back to the Manuka mothership is that my new room has windows. Lots of windows. The name of the room is the Garret, because it's at the tippity-top of the building; there are windows on all but one wall, and what sun there is streams through my window when I forget to adjust the blinds. Obviously, this doesn't help on a day like yesterday, which was a miserable mix of downpour and drizzle - but when there's a clear blue day like today, it's very pleasant to let your eyes rest by staring out into the rolling green hills.

I dare say that getting the extra sunlight can't be hurting my mood any - working without windows for six months was pretty grim, especially now, when it's always dark by the time you leave. (In fact, the sun is just slipping behind the hill as I write this, and it's only quarter to four - it will be light for quite a while yet, but it won't be lovely and warm any more.) But even so, I'm looking forward to next Thursday. Ah, sweet holidays...

Posted by svend at July 8, 2004 3:52 AM