Gandalf The...Kiwi?

I have just discovered, much to my amazement, that there is someone who is actually, legally, called The Wizard of New Zealand. He even kinda looks like that famous character from The Lord Of The Rings too.

Sort of.

Nevertheless, he's a real person (and yes, still alive) who's made a reputation of himself by speaking publicly in Cathedral Square, Christchurch. He's even got his own website and Wikipedia page. In fact, in 1990, he was officially invited (and which he obviously has accepted) to become The Wizard of the whole of NZ by Prime Minister Mike Moore, right smack in the middle of his electoral term. The only reason why that fact would be interesting is because he was only Prime Minister for 2 months, then went on to bigger and better things (I think).

Naturally, you won't be able to read anything of this minute size. Click on it to open it in a new tab/page, then click again to enlarge.

Anyway, back to the original topic. Here's another interesting fact. The Wizard is also a 'living work of art'. Literally. He even went on display at the Auckland City Gallery. The medium of art? The 'artist's corporeal substance'.  

cor·po·re·al (kôr-pôr'ē-əl) adj.

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of the body. See Synonyms at bodily.
2. Of a material nature; tangible. 
   

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 

Once again, rinse and repeat open in new tab, and click to enlarge.

I think he's abit used to the fact that most people don't believe that The Wizard of New Zealand is his legal name now. He was born Ian Brackenbury Channell, but I guess he wasn't too happy with his name and decided to change it.

In any case, ever seen what a wizard's passport and driver's license? Wait, on second thoughts, ever seen a wizard have a passport and driver's license?

"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"

"All the better to see with, my child."

So...there's a Kiwi version of Gandalf. I wonder if he has a white stallion too?

Penang Part 1 - The Drive Up

Okay. So I figure, I should finally stop being a lazy-ass procrastinator and get down to business and blog about this already. It's been almost a month since we went.

Warning:-There's gonna be alotta photos, since Nic was very bored in the car, and giving her my cameraphone was one way to keep her distracted so she didn't fidget out of her skin during the drive north.

We started our trip later than we had planned, because I was being stubborn and refused to go to sleep early the night before. Sleep usually wouldn't be an issue for most people, but because Nic doesn't drive, it was up to me not to fall asleep to stay awake for the whole journey. By the time we left, it was close to lunch time. Because we were both hungry, we stopped for a yummy Burger King lunch at the Jambatan Restaurant in the Sungai Buloh rest stop.

Part of our lunch that day (the rest had already gone 'down the hatch'). 

RM40 for Burger King... T.T

After a quick lunch, we were back on the road again. I opted not to drive too fast, going between 100km/h to 120km/h, mainly because I wanted to enjoy the scenery (especially around the Cameron Highlands turnoff), and also because I wasn't 100% sure my bucket of rusty bolts (RE: my car) wouldn't start falling apart piece by piece if I went any faster.

 Ahhh...the open road. 

Look at those fluffy clouds! And the beautiful blue sky...

 There was alot of truly awe inspiring things to see along the way.

 And some weird ones too. Imagine if you could see this tree late at night? Creepy, no?

Halfway through the journey, we then saw one of the most offensive things we had ever seen. 

Right smack in the middle of all that gorgeous scenery, you see this ugly, monstrous environment killer chugging out tons of black smoke.

It was the YTL Cement Factory. You BASTARDS! You killed Kenny our environment!

Anyways, after the excited babble of self-righteous indignation (from both of us) had died down, Nic started getting bored. So I told her to take more pictures. And more pictures she took.

There were pictures of clouds..

...and more clouds.

There were dark clouds...

...and blue-effect clouds...

...and even clouds that looked like pigs. (As per Nic, it's the one on the right. I just thought it looked like yet another cloud).

I must've had like 30 pictures of just clouds! The closer we got to Penang, the darker and heavier the clouds grew. Then the rain began.

It poured bucketloads!

Nic also had alot of difficulty at times taking photos. Here's why.

Yes. She kept switching my camera to video-mode instead, then got frustrated when it wouldn't take photos.

Anyway, here ends Part 1, because after that, we'd reached Butterworth and Nic stopped taking photos as she needed to begin her role as Navigator/GPS Operator. So sadly, no photos of the pretty scenery surrounding Penang Bridge. Maybe next time.

Stay tuned for Part 2!