Alex Hallatt 2/4/19 Alex Hallatt 2/4/19

Arctic Circle Cartoon - Selfies

The art gallery shown in the first panel is based on the lovely Christchurch Art Gallery, near where I live in New Zealand.

Alex Hallatt 2/2/19 Alex Hallatt 2/2/19

Reasons to Be Cheerful - Fish and Chips on the Beach

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The beach at Kaikoura is grey and pebbly, but still beautiful. It’s a great place to eat fish and chips, as long as you can keep the seagulls away.

Alex Hallatt 2/1/19 Alex Hallatt 2/1/19

Living in New Zealand: The Dairy

What Britscall a newsagent and the Americans call a convenience store, New Zealanders called a dairy. It is where you going to get the paper, a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and in New Zealand’s case, ice cream. We used to have a fantastic dairy in London Street, Lyttelton, called the Empire (it was also a pub/hotel and had excellent drinks deals at happy hour, which was a good time to meet up with people.).

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In 2011, like many old buildings in London Street, the Empire Hotel was badly affected by the earthquake. It had to be demolished and it was sad to see it go, though the owners at the time of the massive ice creams had moved on. Now there is empty lot where's the Empire Hotel used to be. It is called Collett’s Corner and they are crowdfunding to try to finance a community building. They need is nearly $10 million dollars, so it will be a hard ask.

One month after the February 2011 earthquake, the poor Empire was being held up by some serious steel scaffolding.

Alex Hallatt 1/31/19 Alex Hallatt 1/31/19

Social Media Free February: Quitting Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn

Inspired by the book, Deep Work by Cal Newport (I’m inking while listening to the audiobook. Oops. I think that may be against the idea of the book…), I’m taking a social media break for the month of February. I don't actually use Facebook and Twitter as much as some people I know, but I do think that I need more time to be focused on some important things this year. I need to do a lot more drawing and writing, as well as get to grips with the garden and learn some new software so that I can migrate away from the iron grip of Adobe.

I will still be updating this blog and you can sign up to my newsletter if you want to know what Is going on with me each month. If you wish to contact me, there is good old-fashioned email (write to me at alexhallatt.com).