Back last night, after a very tough week away. The poor laptop has a trojan which no anti-virus or anti-trojan program can fix, despite staying up each night till 3 a.m. attempting to solve things. All the trojan-causing pop-up ads do is ruin the goodwill and reputation of the companies that appear—now I know whom not to deal with. However, my Dunedin experience was delightful, while I managed to have a good meeting last Tuesday in Auckland with the Comte Audoin de Dampierre to exchange notes on Aston Martins (he has owned nine of them).
   Sometimes you have to go away to reap some good karma—the Vodafone ID Dunedin Emerging Designers’ Awards saw victories for two young people who had come an awfully long way: Jarno Viitala of Helsinki and Lucie Marquis of London. For me, it was a chance to go on stage to represent my fellow judges.
   While the Aston Martin was fun, Dunedin’s BMW dealer, Cooke Howlison, loaned a used 320i, which managed to get a flat tyre on the second night. Whatever I would get would be a step down from the Aston, but the breakdown aside (to which the AA said it could send someone in an hour’s time while we searched for the toolkit), it was a reliable means of transportation for the four days. The down side was that no one smiles at you, and when you break down, hardly anyone offers to help. It is a down side to driving Bavarian.
   I managed three interviews with TV One and one with the local Channel 9, and the nice folks from the Otago Daily Times managed to slip in a few quotes from me. I guess I must have fitted in with their stories’ flow—the standard of reporting remains high down there in Dunedin, so the quotations were not gratuitous. In fact, I was impressed with the local media. I usually am impressed with Dunedin in general, where values still rank highly among everyday folks. That seeps through into Dunedin commerce and society, and, as I understand from the latest census (though this is hearsay), a population growth after decades of fairly static numbers.
   I’m a bit of an old hand at the ID shows now, always looking for new angles for the stories. This time around, a behind-the-scenes special on judging the Emerging Designers’ Awards will give my piece a bit of differentiation, while the travel piece—which I traditionally do when I go there—is a little unresolved.
   Photographer Doug Rimington and I were shown around the Otago Settlers’ Museum, which may turn out to be the bigger story than the originally planned one. In either case I won’t spoil the plot too much.
   It’s good to be back, but travelling makes you very tired. Even during my last overseas trip I managed to blog; not this time, with back-to-back responsibilities, which, given the great nature of Dunedin, I hope I have again in 2007. Posted by Jack Yan, 21:20  permalink

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