Wellington on a budget

I was broke, so in my attempts to live in Wellington city on the lowest possible budget I resorted to the cheapest backpackers accommodation I could find. NZ$15 per night is enough for a dorm room at “The Lodge in the City”, it isn’t luxury accommodation, but it’s clean enough that you can live there without seeing too many rats or other creeply crawlies in the bedrooms. The people there however are awesome! I met so many cool people in that place it wasn’t funny. I highly recommend anyone going to Wellington stays there.

And for fine dining, you can’t go past the local graffiti’d fish n chip shop! Surprisingly, this is a functioning shop and they do serve edible food there. I recommend avoiding anything not deep fried (makes sure all the bugs are killed 🙂 ). And to top it off, this fine establishment is only a couple of minutes walk up the road from The Lodge in the City!

RIP Mike!

Dr Michael Hewitt Benn died in Calgary, Canada on Wednesday, December 21st at the age of 80. He was one hell of a guy. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met and the best boss anyone could ever ask for. He would do anything for anyone and was the epitome of kindness and generosity.

One of the last conversations I ever had with him involved him convincing me he had enough money to keep me employed for another three months. On pestering him about where the money was coming from, it turned out he was intending to make a trip to the bank and take my income out of his own personal account! I turned him down on that offer, but it is a shining example of how generous the man could be.

Mike, you will be sorely missed!

Dr Michael H. Benn

I worked for Mike at the University of Calgary 2004/2005. We published a paper about Lycoctonine … Lycoctonine revisited

Old photos from Cumberland apartments

Here are some old photos I dredged up from my time in Cumberland apartments. Thanks to Sushi and Dars for some of the photos.

Shoulder surgery tweets

For those of you unaware, I had shoulder surgery last week. I recall finding it incredibly amusing watching @ninjalikescheez tweeting immediately following surgery, so I decided to follow suit and risk public embarrassment and shame by doing likewise. Some would call posting your inner thoughts on a public timeline whilst drugged out of your mind crazy and stupid. I don’t disagree … but I did it anyway because I figured it would be amusing 🙂 I’ve posted highlights below for your amusement and so that I can reflect back on them in future without having to rifle through thousands of other tweets to find them.

Oh, and if you aren’t following me on Twitter already, please do so 🙂

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