I’m gonna keep you on your toes for a little bit about what this week’s title means. Stick around til the end to find out…

NZME Exhibition

I was lucky enough to start off my 8 week internship at NZME right in the middle of some of my team’s busiest weeks of the year: prepping for their annual Exhibition! I should probably explain what NZME is before getting into it. New Zealand Media & Entertainment is the largest integrated media company in the country, and while I had thought I wanted to work somewhere small, it is so unexplainably cool to be able to work here for a couple months! NZME owns and operates eight of New Zealand’s most popular radio stations; the New Zealand Herald-our daily newspaper-among other publications; several digital brands including OneRoof, NZ’s version of Zillow; and a wide variety of podcasts. On my very first day, I was granted access to see the studios where radio shows are hosted, which was definitely a highlight! I’ve never seen myself working at such a place because I really didn’t know that this kind of thing existed but it feels so cool to work in the same building as local celebrities, even if I’m not as familiar with them as the Kiwis are. My internship is with the B2B marketing team, which works with the businesses that advertise on NZME’s platforms. The Exhibition is essentially an event to thank the clients and give them a taste of what’s been going on. This year’s theme revolves around old and new, showcasing the company’s roots in the earliest forms of print publication and highlighting upcoming innovations.

This was certainly not a traditional week in the office. The end of last week and Monday were filled with lots of prep, and most of Tuesday was spent on site at the venue, Webb’s Auction House. This super cool space is typically an art gallery where pieces are auctioned off, so to use it for our event, they repainted and wallpapered a lot of the walls to match our theme. I’ve never seen (and certainly not been part of) anything quite like this. Until you work on planning an event of this scale you don’t realize how many minute details need to be accounted for, down to what are we going to use to attach the welcome sign to the metal frame? or what are we going to eat while setting up the venue all day? (Don’t worry…I had that one covered. My task one day last week was picking out a huge order of snacks for the team, during which I learned all about the best snack brands and local NZ specialties). I found this past Tuesday to be one of the most memorable days of my time abroad so far, albeit a bit stressful with everyone running around. Our designers truly put together a beautiful color scheme and branding with absolutely everything on theme. It was so satisfying to walk away at the end of the day and see how the space was transformed, knowing that I contributed to making it happen. Being that I came on so late in the project-they told me they started planning in October-I cannot even imagine the organization and planning that it took to coordinate ordering everything, but it honestly went extremely smoothly.

As a side note, the “Tiri” ring pictured below has a fascinating backstory. Radio Hauraki, a rock music station, was established in 1966 as the first private station of the modern broadcasting era in NZ. Private commercial broadcasting was illegal at the time due to a monopoly on radio frequencies held by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. The station operated in international waters from a boat called the Tiri in order to get around the restrictions until 1970 when the monopoly was eradicated. The buoy shown here is a fascinating artifact remaining from this time of censorship, and the “pirate” station is still extremely popular today.

Wednesday and Thursday were the days of the actual event. Wednesday was for our direct clients, so it was a little bit more formal and included a sit down dinner. Thursday was for the agencies, and it was more casual and a bit livelier of a crowd. Sadly, Wednesday was my coworker Guiann’s last day with the company. He was one of my team members and sat at the desk right beside me. Even though I only knew him for about a week, I’m definitely going to miss him. He’s one of those people who makes every effort to ensure that everyone feels included, explaining their inside jokes to me and always asking me tons of questions about myself. I believe he said he’s going to work at an agency for a while to see how he likes it. The company culture is so warm that everyone was continually joking with him about staying and expressing how much he’ll be missed. This was one of my first times experiencing a coworker leaving in a professional setting, so I witnessed lots of the prep that goes into it. He was actively delegating his responsibilities while helping our boss with interviewing replacements up until his very last day. I’m excited to see what tasks of his I get to take on, as he handled a lot of the computer programming and data analysis parts of the work and was showing me some of that before he left.

Weekend in the Coromandel

This weekend, a large group of us from the program-Gretchen, Sophie, Jackson, Dom, Ryan, Mae, and I-decided to take a weekend trip to the Coromandel, a picturesque peninsula about two and a half hours east of Auckland. We rented a car and headed out to our Airbnb on Friday after work. That first night, we were blessed that it was the new moon and we were so far away from light pollution that the stargazing was about as good as it gets. Being in the southern hemisphere now, we were seeing the US’s late summer night sky, along with some stars that are never visible to us at home. It was truly breathtaking to see. I was so surprised at how well my iPhone camera picked up the Milky Way. You can see in the photos below just how epic it was.

We chose to stay right near a popular attraction called Hot Water Beach. This was a super unique geologic feature; the sand essentially covers a mineral water hot spring, so you can dig a hole at low tide and enjoy your own natural spa pool. I was surprised just how hot the water was at some points. Even the sand in some areas was hot enough to burn our feet from the water bubbling up from beneath the surface.

Now finally let me explain why I accidentally ate an ant. Our Airbnb was a super cool property with three “pods” with beds and bathrooms, and an open air outdoor kitchen connected them in the middle. The host was actually there during our stay so we shared the outdoor space. The pods were very nice and newly built but unfortunately were riddled with bugs. Late night on Saturday, I was going to put in my retainers in the pitch dark since two people were already sleeping (I know, I’m so responsible right?). I began to taste something bitter, almost peppery and kinda chemical-ly. I immediately put my flashlight on to check the case which still had my top retainer in it and it was SWARMING with ants (okay drama queen there were like 7 or 8). But still. Oh my gosh. The realization was nothing short of mortifying and so sickening. But, at least I learned a new fun fact that black ants taste like pepper because of their formic acid content. I just wish I didn’t learn it from personal experience. I was freaking out that I wasn’t going to wake up this morning from ingesting an ant or two, but bless, I lived to tell the tale.

Professor Alexander, I hope that this was enough of an original experience for this week’s blog😆