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Hunk Unc: Last year I told my friend I had feelings for them and they told me they didn't feel that way about me, I believed I had moved on and recently realised I still have those feelings and hate myself for it, I'm not sure what I should do. Students, today your Unc is pairing up two emotionally shipwrecked souls with the same issue in different fonts. One of you confessed feelings, got rejected, thought you’d moved on, and then your heart did the deeply rude thing of circ

A feed for fuck-all Lemongrass Kitchen What: Vietnamese Price: $11.00 - $15.00 When: 11:00 - 21:00; Monday - Sunday Nothing mindblowing, but wins by the size and value of their menu. ⭐⭐⭐ There’s something doggedly endearing about Capital Markets that calls me back. It’s beyond the fact that it’s a gold mine for plates of food at reasonable prices. The bare concrete floor and the restaurants built inside old shipping containers give the space a liminal but functional feel; i

What to watch on Welly’s local streaming service This week, I’m covering one half of Aotearoa’s fourth most popular folk-comedy duo—Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. From indie rom-com, to downright absurdity, to Men in Black 3, this national treasure has a varied and pretty weird filmography. Most of his greatest hits are streaming on Aro, so have a read of my picks and then go get watching at ondemand.arovideo.co.nz! An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018) — $5

They Got It Right This Year (Almost)! Ah, the Ockhams. Or, as Susanna Andrew coined last year, the “Shock-’ems”! Her point was not just that there’s something a little weird and very milk-loving-Briscoes-sale-deck-furniture-Kiwi about our national book awards being sponsored by a massive construction company. Nor was it just that her pick for the fiction award didn’t make the shortlist—though that was true, too. She also thought that, in an industry as small as New Zealand bo

Dear dating diary, The past two weekends have potentially been some of the most romantically confusing and stressful I have ever experienced. For the first time since being single, I have been seeing multiple people at once. I know this is no big deal considering I am not exclusive with anyone. However, the stress ensues when your circles begin to cross. Two weekends ago, some friends and I decide to go to a gig. Our friend is hosting pre’s so we head there and to my sh

Students, today your Unc is combining three different questions that all essentially ask the same thing. All of these questions come down to one thing: vibe. Mixed signals are mixed vibes. Not wanting to ask someone directly is trying to catch a vibe without making things awkward. Wanting to build “rizz” is wanting to improve the vibe you’re putting out into the world. The annoying truth is this: every single person on this planet is different, and every single person commun

Within the span of a week, I’ll be trying to accomplish a long-term task just to see if it’s possible, and to see what I can get out of it. Life lessons, skills, resilience training? The stimulation alone should be enough motivation. Currently, I work a lot. By day I slave in the Salient office, but by night I’m my alter ego: hospitality Front of House. My parents always forcefully encouraged me to have a job or two during study. In the past three years, I’ve complained to th

Salient Celebrates New Zealand Music Month! Vera Ellen: HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT TIME Happy New Zealand Music Month, bitches! While all you caffeine-addicted trackie-wearing zombies file in and out of your Maclaurin lecture theatres, ears stuffed full of musical garbage, just know that somewhere in the crowd I’ll be there with my dad’s vintage Workshop jeans and my Vera Ellen tunes. One decaf flat white, please! Just kidding! I’ve relapsed on caffeine, of course. But I still do my b

A feed for fuck-all KC Cafe What: Cantonese Price: $7.00 - $16.00 When: 11:00am – 11:30pm, Sunday – Thursday, and till 1:30am on Friday and Saturday. One of Wellington’s best, even for those on a budget. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Of all of the iconic jewels studded in the grubby yet glittering tiara that is Courtenay Place, KC Cafe & Takeaway deserves top billing. Not as glittery as St. James or The Library, but it is bursting with charm and prowess. Nick Iles, of Two Bear Sandwich Club fame

Dear dating diary, I am quite simply sick and tired of talking to men who, no offense, have no personality. I hate to say it but the fact you spend all your free time scrolling on reels and using ChatGPT as a search engine is starting to show. I’ve had enough of men who idolise Christopher Nolan. You’re boring!! Believe it or not, I actually did understand Inception the first time I watched it. You need to find a new hobby, expand your Letterboxd watchlist, and get a freaking

Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns How The Devil Wears Prada 2 undoes the brilliance of its predecessor Spoilers ahead. The year is 2006. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep)—tyrannical Editor-in-Chief of major fashion magazine, Runway—turns and enters a car. Her former assistant, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), waves from across the street. We cut to Miranda inside the car: over her face, the passenger seat window reflects the highrise building in which her offices are housed.

A feed for fuck-all Earl’s What: classic, USA-style sandwiches. Price: $10.00 When: 7:30am - 2pm, Monday - Friday. They forgot to convert their prices when this New York deli moved to Pōneke. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ At first glance, ‘juicy’ doesn’t sound like how a sandwich should be advertised. I like to eat mine, not drink them nor have them disintegrate in my hands. But sinking your teeth into a toasted Philadelphia Steak from Earl’s means realising that ‘juicy’ is actually exactly how y

Matagi Vitolio & Apiha Tumatanui Ngāi Tauira Salient Column Māori activism in Aotearoa has been driven by the core principle that we have a responsibility to protect our rangatahi and future generations. This responsibility gives reason to decisions made in activism, for education, and for communities. The aspirations and dreams that we hold for mokopuna unifies the collective activation that is most present throughout recent Māori activism. Today, not only does this princ

Record Roundup Honey Dijon: The Nightlife Honey Dijon is an extraordinary and extraordinarily respected DJ known for her Chicago-style deep house music; largely the domain of black queer innovators in the early 80s, Dijon continues in the tradition of the likes of Frankie Knuckles and Marshall Jefferson. Her gifts are best exemplified in her tour-de-force Boiler Room set at Sugar Mountain in 2018, a set which has something of a cult following in itself. In a recent interview

Now hear Unc out for a second. You ever watched Too Hot to Handle? Whole show is basically people acting like they physically cannot interact without it turning sexual. Entertaining, sure. But also… bleak. Because if you genuinely think you can’t be friends with someone just because you could be attracted to them, that’s a you thing. Not everyone you get along with needs to be put in that category. If it’s just a normal friendship and one of you gets a partner, nothing should

Bi-Weekly Game Reviews Christopher Curtis There were a lot of games I could have chosen to represent my favourite genre, the Strategy Role Playing Game (SRPG for short)—epic war stories told through characters clashing on grid-based battlefields, each character or class fulfilling unique roles. There’s often a steep learning curve to truly grasp their mechanics, and as a role-playing-game where story and character progression take centre stage, they naturally move at a snail

A feed for fuck-all FJ Noodles and Dumplings What: Northern Chinese and buffet-style Price: $15.50 When: pretty much always (10:00am—1:00am on Sunday–Thursday, & till 5:00am on Friday & Saturday) It’s definitely got heft, but hard to enjoy. ⭐⭐ As another Red Rain Warning rolled over the city and I finished packing another load of nonsense into a cardboard box, it was clear that tonight was going to call for a bowl of easy and plenty. Enter stage left, FJ Noodles and Dumpling

What to watch on Welly’s local streaming service 2025 was the first year I properly attended the New Zealand International Film Festivall—and I didn’t hold back. Volunteering as an usher meant I could catch films on shift and score a handful of comped tickets. Across two weeks, I watched 17 films… a respectable effort. While some of my favorites haven't hit streaming yet (I cannot WAIT to recommend Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost), here are a few standout NZIFF