Wow, what a weird, wacky and somestimes wonnderful night. I spent the day removing hair from my legs
which were then left silky smooth after I shaved patches that I’d skipped and applied some lotion and baby oil. Anyways the rest of the day, I stressed out with Mum about my dress and doing other beautifying things. Then, I cooked dinner and stressed out cos Penny and Sarah were late. Finally they showed up with Dyland, and Mum & Neil finally left.

So, I cracked open the champagne and we ate chicken & tarragon pasta – which Penny & Sarah loved but Dylan didn’t. Making conversation was weird, like I was trying to talk to Dylan without being too obvious. So we talked about his fetish for women’s underwear (which he denied) and the school papers (we’re both editors). He couldn’t believe that Onslow’s were worse – we showed him! Then, after cake, we all ran around in a flurr getting ready, except for Dylan who settled down to call Daniel and Peter I wonder what he said to them! Nevermind. I did my makeup and put on my dress then I ran around trying to find a German plug so Sarah could blowdry her hair. The hall was really dark cos a light bulb was dead and I was just walking up to it, and the cupboard door was slightly open, then suddenly I see these two eyes! I screamed so loudy, then I like, fell to the ground and just sat there in shock. Fucking Dylan man! It was then that I realised how low my dress was, and that I didn’t haqve the tits to support it. Dylan told me to eat my broccoli! Yeah, what ever! I think I’ll just take a moment here to point out that I realise I’m like “Dylan Dylan Dyaln”. It gets worse!

Anyways… So I was looking all gorgeous. Penny had fixed my hair and my crown and I felt really good. Then of course I knocked off my crown getting into the taxi, and my skirts trailed in the mud. Typical, man! Anyways, we got to Abbys and were greeted by “Oh my god, that’s so coo, pretty, cute etc”. They (Rosalie, Ammy, Ireana & Abby) all said I looed really good, so I was happy. Ireana’s breasts were popping out of her dress. Being tinge typsy, I said “Why did you think I was going to be mean to you? I know we don’t always get on but…” And we hugged – kodak moment. We had to tak squillions of pictures, naturally! Abby’s mother was like “I don”t know you so Abby said “That’s Joanna” and her mother was like “Oh, _ I know who you are_” and everybody laughed. Geez, I wonder what she told her!

I was sitting on the sofa for a while with Abby & her friend, and (I was quite drunk) I apologised for being such a bitch last year. It was so strange! Flashback city, man! Then I had a heart ot heart with Anita E about this guy Gareth. More pictures…. After a while, I was sitting with Dylan, enquiring about Ben. Suppodedly he’s got a new girlfriend slut called Jess who’s making him talk like a homie! I sai I’d hate her too then, and he was like “get over him, Joanna!” I saaid “I am! I’m in love with him but I’mm over him!” and “it’s just that he was such a nice guy” but he said “No, Ben is not a nice guy”. He said it a lot actually. Then I said “Well he was only my second kiss, so I have a right to be obsessed – the first one doesn’t count!” And he was like “Only your second kiss?” (Now that I’m sober, that seems sarcastic, but I’m not sure) so I said “Yeah well, according to Sarah, she’s the only person you’ve ever kissed”. Of course, she came up then, which iced the conversation for a while, but then he was like “I’ll always remember my first kiss – it was s good” and I responded “Me too – it was horrible/scary, I was pinned to the wally by a bouncer in a nightclub – but I’m not drunk enough to talk about that…”

That’s about all of our fascinating conversation that I can remember, except that the whole way through he was complaining about Abby’s short skirt – “Notice how she sticks her legs up in every picture?” – He’s such a bastard, man! Trouble is, he’d only pilfed a little bit of my vodka, so he was practically sober – oh shit! God, I wonder if he’ll tell Ben that I love him! Could be interesting!

We left for the ball in 2 shuttles – I sat on the floor next to Nicola, nuzzling Penny (who thought we were going to Hamilton) an d laughing at Rosallie who kept on telling me to pull my dress up – Jason Dimic could’ve had a god look, had he been so inclined!

Finally we got there, got photographed, went to the loos, sat ouside in the freezing cold. Time is a wee bit muddles now, ‘cos of the wine I drank at Abby’s ver quickly, with vodka and coke too, so I’ll synopsis/summarise: Sarah vanished reall early on – never to be seen agan. They had a room at Trekker’s! Dirty couple! Penny vanished for a tim too, but that was coo. I hung around outside with Justina and Karen and Sam Bedford for a while. Then I was inside with Jess, and we went dancing with Brendan Frater & John Student Rep. Damn, I felt cool! I reminded Brendan of Kiwi Ranch & grabbing Roxanne – he didn’t remember it! Techno rocks! It was so cool! I must’ve been drunk! Then Tamati finally showed up, and I took him & Sam B to see the Bakehouse. I held an arm of each of them – I didin’t want to let Sam Bedford go. I was so weird. Like, Tamait did this monologe-ish thing, and we were standing so we’dve been close (Sam and I) and – I might’ve been slightly mistaken, but I think there was a slight spark – I’m not sure though. We’d been talking earlier – I told him it was hi sduty to get me stoned. Fucking hell man! I guess he’s rich though!

Penny was always talking to the Bouncer dude, then, near the end when most everyone had gone, it was like a fight between him & Graham on the dance floor! I was just laughing! Then, when Grahem won, I went & talekd to Jess – told her briefly about Ben but also, more importantly, how I’m half in love with Sarah’s boyfriend – a friend wh doesn’t have to be biased! It was really cool! John B got with Christy, the stupid bastard! We cabbed home with KateB – she stopped me from getting in the caar with the drunken bouncer, thank god! I can’t believe how stupid I was going to be! Sore feet, lot earring, laddered stokcingt. Penny got with Graham. God, I cannot like Dylan. I won’t let myself.

Sydney and FullCodePress

So, as you will no doubt recall, I tried out for Full Code Press, and didn’t make the team, so the lovely Tash suggested that I come along anyway as volunteer. It meant a flight at some ridiculous time in the morning, but also my first Koru Club experience in 15 years or so. I love Air NZ’s newish inscreen entertainment screens, especially since a flight to Sydney involves stupidly long amounts of time on the tarmac. I got to meet all the Code Blacks people that I hadn’t already met, and it made me chuckle how we all had webstock satchels.

My hotel wouldn’t let me check in early, so I went and had a walk around Darling Harbour, having breakfast, reading the (tabloidy) paper, drinking average coffee and enjoying it being t shirt weather. I went back up to the hotel and they still didn’t have a room ready, so I sat sulking in the lobby for a bit before I rode the monorail and went and got a very nice pedicure inside the mall. And then, finally, I could check in. This was my room:

The bedroom looked out into the super huge giant atrium, and the living room had these awesome nighttime views:

I like views of the city at night. I also like getting to finally have naps, and wake up and have Kate B be there, and I like going swimming with her, and then drinking wine with her and looking through her portfolio. I like that her web work is pretty much the opposite of mine, it being all advertising, all flash, whereas I am all advocating for accessibility, in theory if not quite so much in practice.

Anyways, so Kate and I sorted out our hair and jumped in a taxi to go and meet up with her friend Rob and The Mayor of Newtown, at a pub called Cooper’s that was not dissimilar to the Southern Cross with its outdoor terrace. There we compared handwriting, broke glasses and spent a very long time trying to decide where to have dinner. The Mayor’s initial suggestion of a place across the seat was vetoed by Kate on account of the bad lighting, and my criteria was that it needed to have wine. Eventually we set off for a different Vietnamese place, but it was closed, so we went to find a different one. King Street is almost exactly like K’Road, in terms of architecture and people and shops and eateries. We found a Vietnamese restaurant that may have been called Viet Maison, which had a Tiki-Bar although I didn’t see that initially, and OH MY GOD, we ate the most fantastic food – soft shell crab with garlic butter, salt & pepper eggplant, crispy pork hot pot, duck pancakes, lemongrass tofu, coconut rice, oh my god oh my god oh my god. It was so fresh and amazing. I want to eat there every day. Can’t we swap half Wellington’s Malaysian restaurants for some more Vietnamese places? Please? Kate broke another glass, and so we went to another bar called Zanzibar. The Mayor bumped into a friend of his who was in a band and owned his own tiki shack. I’d had enough wine that I was struggling to not imply that the friend was in INXS. It was 1am before I knew it. It was very much fun.

The next day was FULLCODEPRESS so I found my way down to the Conference Centre, and then into the Exhibition Centre, which is the largest building I have ever seen. It’s like, a kilometre long, at least. The FCP stuff was taking place in the middle of all the shiny technology exhibits, so it looked like this:

I hung around for a bit while they were just getting started, and was given access to the official FCP blog, and then I went and met my cousin Jacinta for lunch. She took me to a really lovely Thai place past Chinatown, and I shamed myself by being unable to finish my chili and basil tofu because it was too hot. Laaaaamer.

Another swim and a nap later, I was ready for the FCP lock-in. My role was to blog and twitter about it using the #fcp09, to talk to the nice judges, and to try and sniff out mysterious smells in the media room. It was lots of fun. I also enjoyed making Clint from Rainbow Youth dance for me. Okay, so I wasn’t really helping anyone very much at all, except in my capacity as entertainer. I still felt good about being involved. But not so good that when 2am rolled around and people started sleeping that I didn’t feel stupid for being there when I had a nice hotel across and up the road waiting for me, so I found a security guard to let me out and had a heart-pounding but brightly lit walk back.

I had wanted to get back to FCP by 11am in time for the finish, but that zopiclone, she is a hard task mistress, and it was not to be. Instead I went and ate barramundi in the sunshine. That was lovely – trying to find the FCP annoucements was not so much fun. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix when he needs to get a piece of paper signed. Not a single “information” desk in all of the kilometres of building actually had the information. In fact, a couple of them gave me unformation, and sent me miles off in the wrong direction. Luckily I eventually found some of the judges, but not before I had discovered a conference called “What causes happiness?” (apparently, cupcakes for afternoon tea causes happiness) which would be a nice counterpoint to the conference I’d see the next day at the Powerhouse Museum called “Depression in older people”. Anyways. I got there just in time to hear the judging, which was really really interesting to find out what makes a site good, according to the experts. And The CodeBlacks won! Hurray us! And hurray charity, as I wrote about in my work blog. Etc. So really what I should write about now was the cat-herding required to get everyone to the Pump House for drinks, and then off to the Spanish area for dinner, but everywhere was full so we ended up in a really old Greek restaurant where the lamb was tasty but I suspect that the vegetables had been cooking probably since it opened in the olden days. People appeared to be flagging so I taxied back to my hotel, but they actually stayed up drinking until 2am. Good for them!

The next day was a nice sleep in, a leisurely checkout, then freshly squeezed juice to treat my swineflu/airconditioning flu, and i set off to the Powerhouse Museum. More walking. I was determined to get there because I’ve always been impressed with Seb Chan’s work, and I really enjoyed it, although the ghost figures it used were spooky, and there were a lot of school children loitering about. Who are they to enjoy the culture? Pah! I was hungry and their cafe was uninspiring so I walked down to the madness that is Paddy’s Market, purchased a light shade and two Chinese cigarette posters (in case we ever start an opium den in the tiki shack), and kept looking because I didn’t feel like foodcourt Asian. In fact, I walked all the way back to Darling Harbour and made my way down all the cafes, looking for a plate of fish’n chips that would be under $30. In the end, I came to a place with an adequate bbq, and beers that I guzzled down, but because I had so much time left and I didn’t want to walk anymore, i plonked my fat ass down at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe to eat a degustation plate by myself. Mmmmm. I left with a sea of brown floating around in my eyes, it was so intense. Back to my hotel to collect my bags and be collected by the shuttle driver, and into Sydney Airport. I made my way directly to the MAC counter as soon as I spotted it, where with the lady’s help I purchased a Russian Red red lipstick, but she lacked a matching liner and advised me to look at other brands. I also bought a compact of colours from their special collection that no doubt I did not need but I dearly wanted. I pulled up a seat at the bar, and strangely enough, the other NZers found me there. I watched In Bruges on the plane, and thoroughly enjoyed it, along with the pie I got. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting home to my own bed.

Cupcakes and Mini Webstock

Now I’m not sure if you remember, but after Webstock earlier this year, I made cupcakes for Tash and Ben and Mike and Deb to say thank you so much for their hard work. Well, it turned out that they liked them so much that they hired me to make 100 cupcakes for their third birthday party. Here’s a photo of how some of that looked:

Because I am slightly insane, i decided to make six flavours – vanilla w chocolate frosting, mocha, lemon & cream cheese, mixed berry & white chocolate, gluten-free chocolate and almond, and vegan pina colada. I ended up pretty much drowning in batter and my stomach hurts just thinking about the leftover icing in the fridge!

The Webstock Mini night made it all worthwhile though. It was a lovely chance to get really dressed up, hang out with my besties, try to corrupt Alan, and heckle people drunkenly via Twitter. Even if i did end up drink at the Malt House – at least they had signs up saying they were renovating the male bathrooms and were hopefully removing their incredibly misogynistic urinals.

#GOVIS09 and twicking up

That was the Tuesday. On the Wednesday I was at work until after 11pm, duvet and all, struggling to sumarise 18 months of work into one 34 minute slide presentation. According to the Twitter feedback, I did quite well (scroll down) – or here or ,here – the problems of multiple identities! Once I managed to get some proper cafenet access and had a chance to read all that, well, I was just completely blown away and may have had a little cry. I definitely had a hugely swollen head and cut’n paste the praise into an email I sent to my whole family. It was just so amazingly nice to be acknowledged for the work I do – even though, or especially because there’s like 40 days left of me working there. It’s a tiny bit of a “oh, are you sure you’re doing the right thing, SSC?” and also a “I know that I am smart and talented and can be employable”. There were drinks, and I met a stalker who brought me wine then there was dinner at Roxy. It was tasty and entertaining, even if I had to talk to Australians for ages. Oh god the pain of it all!

The next day at the conference, I felt much much more secure and safe and smug, and more people wanted to talk to me. I even started calling myself a ‘social media expert’ but you must believe that I was saying it as if I was saying “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” Nat’s closing speech was of course my favourite of them all since I missed Matt’s but his was very highly regarded too. It was fun. I learnt things.

And then there were drinks. And more drinks. And a lot of fish on sticks, and hot roast beef sandwiches, and homemade pistachio ice cream, and more drinks, And then I ended up going to Hummingbird for the Tweet Up, and then I went to China Delight for dinner with the Toms and some new friends, and then we went to Hummingbird for a drink or two more. Alisa left my old work to manage the bar there so it was nice to catch up with her.

My weekend and the future

There has been a lot of sleeping and trying to stay warm. There has been feasts at Siem Reap. There’s been a lot of twitter time. There’s been a lot of duveting. That’s really about it. Tomorrow I go for an eye example, since glasses are still subsidised at work. Then on Tuesday I’m going to EAP to plan for the future. After that, well, who knows? I could use some quiet times but I’m not seeing a whole lot of that happening any time soon. I am more confident about being hireable based on GOVIS though. Career highlights are nice.

Sleeping and so forth

It is odd to have bedded two people in such a short space of time, (although my record is still 3 in two weeks in 2003) because of the contrast between the old and the new. It’s also redonkulous that I’ve bitched and moaned about wanting to be able to actually have sleepovers, but when it comes down to it, I had to leave a warm bed and go out into the cold cold night because of how I am physically incapable of sleeping without taking zopiclone. Doing a line-by-line comparison would be amusing for me but also totally totally inappropriate, so I will just leave the public exposure of private things to the contrast between my necklaces clacking together as my head moved back and forth, and the moment of having a lover gently unclasp my necklace, which seems to be even more of an intimate act.

Also yesterday I was twittering about how I was wearing my “I love Helen” badge that Bad Tom gave me for Christmas (hey, so it turns out that public servants are actually allowed to have their own thoughts and opinions! Who knew?) but as punishment from the gods, I was working on a comms plan and I had to emphasize the value for money and the outputs for the public in it. As my (life-long public servant) father had said right after the election and I’d been missing work to stay at home and cry “awww it’s so cute that you think things will actually change with the change in government”. It is still the same project that my intern and I have been working on. It still has the same purposes, ideas and findings. We just have to wrap it up in different language, because apparently, that’s value for money. Retch.

Other crimes and punishment themes that I meant to expand on. I still need a spanking. Wait, what’s the line between want and need these days, in this post 9/11 world? And when will Austrians find Nazi jokes funny?

On that note, I spent the day working from home on Wednesday because I wanted to concentrate on doing some serious writing on case studies instead of being distracted by wiki issues, which meant that I was in theory about to watch the Inauguration, but without Sky there were too many people talking on TV3 so I went back to sleep and read Gawker media commentary on it later and cried. Then I went to Lisa’s to watch Skins 2 and hang, and in the car on the drive home I cried when Roxette played on the radio, and then I cried in joy watching The Daily Show coverage, not least because of all the joy that was so clear in them, not just because it was change that they could believe in, but it was challenging comedically too to capture those moments that were so amazing but to still be all Daily Show all up on them.

Kowhai says that she wishes she could be as in touch with my emotions as I am, but this is me with total motherfucking eat a bag of dicks PMS and I feel like the world is ending, and I want to eat all the bread in the world and oh my fucking god, could I just start bleeding already please? Please? Tonight I was bitching furiously to Good Tom and Good Anita (did we decide to call her that?) about my period’s control over my body and how like, nine years ago KateB told me to have a keep-a-nigga baby when Ass was doing the very long drawn-out breaking off, and I was like “OMG TERRIBLE” but I think there are too many signs of an imminent period (not to mention the whole thing where I’m probably infertile) to think that there was something amiss, especially since my last period was two weeks long.

I was going to go home and get drunk and cry by myself after work today, but I needed to buy a new cellphone charger cos mine has died, and also potentially a new remote control for the lounge dvd player cos that bitch is a fucking bitch, but then there was TCD store open which I’ve never seen before and it was so pretty and shiny, and there was this sexyass dress, and then on the other side of the shop it was available in purple, and I didn’t think it was right and then I thought “what about if I had a belt?” and I thought “what would Joan Holloway do?” and just as the shop assistant was asking me if i wanted help, Good Tom rang to see where I was at, and I asked him if I should buy the dress, and he said “does it make you look ugly?” and I said “no” so he told me to buy it, and the shop lady complimented me In on my whole outfit with it, so I bought it. And now I am poor. #whitewhine. In fact, I’m feeling like an exceptionally poor mother right now, because we’re out of cat biscuits, which means I’ve been giving Sebby extra wet meat, which of course he loves. Also that last expression sounds so eww.

Also, there’s things and there’s stuff, of course, and historians – or rather me reading this two year from now will go “what history? what stuff?” but for now I will nod smuggly. Mostly, being pre-period makes me totally feel like there’s the end of the world arriving, and I know that it’s not, but it’s like you try playing “So here we are” as loud as possible by Bloc Party and put your head down on your desk and see if you don’t cry. I’m considering creating a fictional list like the FCC fictionally assembled after 9/11 of songs that are all no-gos. Pretty much the only things I am left with is hip hop. I know that all things considered, that was as best and as good as it could be. But like still, I’d rather be in Samoa eating snails right now, if you know what I mean.

On my birthday last year I woke up in bed with a nice girl, and then Anji showed up and brought us coffee, we all went to brunch and then cleaned Karen’s apartment. The year before that, I was fucking relieved not to be having vagina surgery, and was possibly still really stoked to have been felt up by a boy who was one the best pashes evah the night before, we went to Cafe Istanbul for dinner and I saw the Real Hot Bitches for the first time ever. And I think that last link does a good job of summing up other years, but I will point out that on the day I turned 20 I dumped my boyfriend (ala, the ASSCUNT of twitter from the previous entry) because he wouldn’t make an effort to see me, and ten years ago, I had a really sucky 18th birthday in which people I cared about said nasty things about me because I drank and (shock horror!) smoked pot (one of those three people is now one of my best friends, one of them does far too many drugs now, and the other is in Australia) and it turns out that another one was sleeping with the guy I fancied at the time. Etc. So today’s not really being able to sleep until after 6am and all the voices in my head speaking in Scottish accents ala Anna from This Life, then workshops, dinner at Caffe Italiano and Quiz Night is really not that stand-out-y.

Has it become apparent to you via this post that birthdays are actually very important to me? I hope it has, because I’m living in a flat who fail to notice that,and it’s weird. Actually, this is the third birthday in a row tat I’ve had in which one of them will fail to pay it any attention. Oh, but, on a non-flatmate note, I haven’t had a birthday cake of my own on my actual birthday since I was 17 – until this year, when Anji and Bambi bought over a beautiful delicious cake for me with champagne bottle corks. I’ll put in photos at some stage. And also creepy video of karaoke. Karaoke was SO fucking awesome, it was such a good night, I love me some friends, and also Yvonne at Longxiang who dealt with me having 18 friends at dinner and that not even being close to all of them. I’m not always entirely sure why anyone likes me sometimes, but at dinner I totally got it and it was lovely.

Also random blah blah. Something about sex. Oh yes, the twitters on Saturday night. I’ll tell you, I am SO fucking horny right now. Like, there’s the usual depression thing of wanting to lose yourself under someone, having them thrust aside all thoughts in your brain even for a couple of minutes, the validation of having someone wrapped around you, and then there’s pre-period hormones, in which everything is a turn-on (see above quizmaster love from tonight, although of course that’s not a new thing because of course I fancy the rare people who appear to be smarter than I) and oh man oh man oh man sometimes all you can think about is getting a pounding.

Then there’s the decision that if 27 was the year of debauchery, which it hardly was, then maybe I wil make an attempt to make 28 year of health (starting tomorrow of course). Even my taxi driver tonight asked me if I suffered from Anxiety, which holy fuck yes I do. I should defend myself in saying that he asked because he had it, not because I appeared totally buttfuck crazy, honest. Anyways. Full circle. I hide in bed to avoid the world (read: flatmates going “oh, not at work today?) then hate onthe world (read: flatmates) for not doing anything for my birthday. Yes, that’s right, you can’t win with me at all, anyone. Haven’t I made that clear already? I should I suppose clarify here: I fucking miss Kat’n Kane, and Bopha and Brad, and Kateb and Clayton and Simon like, so much. I am deeply deeply nostalgic for flats of yesteryear when they were more than just a collection of individuals under one roof.

Except, you know, if you give me a good fucking right now. And that won’t happen because I am far too anxious. Joy! Yes, cycle, yes, I will get out of it. Man, I am looking forward to sleeping tonight.

Oh, and finally, have i mentioned lately that I think Sebastian is gay? There’s always bitemarks on the back of his neck. I wonder if the gay cat world has bears, because he is big and hairy. But he is also poised and handsome and constantly grooming. But the cats he talks to during the day look like twinks to me. I reckon that’s why he kept trying to do Sammy when we lived with Iva, even though Sammy was actually (sort of) female. Ahhh cat sex, that’s a good note to end on, right?

But I don’t smoke pot anymore, of course, and man, I so fucking miss that. Did you see the parts in my journal in 1999 when I used to be in my pyjamas, and someone would call, and my flatmate would be in love with them so I’d put on my grandfather’s silk dressing gown and get driven across town to go smoke with them and then go home? Good times. I wish the world was that simple right now.

Yes I know that I am full of “oh I wish that things were still that way or that way or whatever it is that I want”. And yes, I realise that might make you think that I am unhappy with the way that things are right now. I wish I could write and explain the things that are causing me drama. I have layers of privacy written into this journal, and I could make posts on different levels, or write in different spaces, put in linked footnotes, or be really obscure, but I don’t want to do that. I wish I could tell you what I dislike about my job, very specifically, but I am reduced to saying “government can be a little bit slow-moving”. I wish I could tell you what the problem is with my homelife, but I will sumarise by saying that Kat and Kane are moving out in February to go to Tauranga to be nearer to Kat’s Mum, and you can’t argue with that. But oh yes, of course it doesn’t actually matter when they’re going, as much as I love them and will miss them so much, because oh yes, that’s right, I’m BEING EVICTED. They’re terminating the lease on this house that I love so much on February 3, so I will need to be gone, and find somewhere new. I left a note for Smoo telling him about it and saying that I hoped he would come with me when I set up a new house, because I love living with him, but he’s gone to Hamilton for Xmas, so I don’t know what he’ll say and I’m a little bit scared that he’ll be all like “oh you know what? Done our dash at this flat, time for me to move on”. But I suppose if that’s the way the road goes, that’s the way the world goes.

I am trying to be very calm and very philosophical about everything in my life right now. It does not help that I have failed to go to the gym for a couple of weeks, that my alcohol intake has increased exponentially with the season, that I can’t remember the last salad that I had, that there’s a full moon and most significantly that I am down to a pill a day, if that, because apparently it is far too too hard to find five minutes to cut them up and fill my seven-day box.

So there have been more than a few tear-bouts. Like when my car got towed from the carpark near work that I’d only parked in because I’d failed to sleep and was running an hour and a half late, and that was all the coins I had. I didn’t know who to call and I didn’t want to bother anyone with my drama, but as I later suggested to my counsellor, if anyone was in my position and they failed to call me, I’d want to punch them in the head because of course I’m always there for them (so I have resolved to treat myself like I’m actually my friend, so that I will see that I am actually important and special and deserving of cherishing and nourishment – the way I view my friends but have difficulty seeign myself). So yeah, I called Shirley, and cried and cried, and through a series of navigational mishaps, we ended up driving out to Petone. I had a big panic attack – or is it an anxiety attack – in her car. My heart rate went out of control, my entire body tensed up to the point where my left side felt like it was a heart attack, my flesh tingled, and I had the most disgusting metalllic taste in my mouth. I was more successful in fighting it because I was in someone else’s company than I normally would be. And we wen to the beach, and I stood ankle deep in the cool water and tried to unclench my body, which had of course gone into total survival clenched mode.

We wandered down Jackson St forever, trying to find a place for dinner that was open which would fit us in, and finally we came across Gusto, down the opposite end from Wanda Harland. Yum! We had a cheese plate which had a brie that gooed everywhere, and antipasto with four kinds of preserved meats. The service was a little new, but very well intentioned. And after we had retrieved my car from the towing yard, $180 later, I stopped by quiz and was so upset and stressed out about my workshop the next day I hardly even noticed when the Quizmaster hugged me.

The next day I had a huge big challenge organising an interactive workshop on wikis for 50 people. I panicked and doubted myself and thought I’d fucked up room bookings when it was of course some people overstaying their time in rooms, but other than that, it went pretty good. And then after work I got drunk over dinner at Longixang with Karen and Kowhai and Lisa, and we drove out ot Martha’s shop opening and I drank more champagne and bought presents for Anji and Karen, and a bear-shaped rug that I am SO going to fuck someone on, while my fire-place video plays on the TV. Maybe I will add in photos some other time.

I didn’t write about the Wellingtonista awards yet either. Such an amazingly good night. I can’t believe that things went as well as they did. It was such a stressful period leading up to ist, but on the night, it appears that we pulled it off quite well indeed. My dress was pretty, and that;’;s what’s most important, right? and OH MY GOD Blam Blam Blam were so astonishingly good,a nd I jumped up and down and up and down and dancd and danced and then I hugged them and the whole time I was dancing I had the biggest grin on my face going “BLAM BLAM MOTHERFUCKING BLAM ARE PLAYING AT AWARDS I FUCKING HELPED ORGANISE!” (although props for the actual night must go to Mitch and Russell) and it was just so fucking lovely to know that 678 people voted, compared to 57 from last year. The Wellingtonista have filled my social calendar this year and I love them all dearly, even when they don’t read their emails properly.

And there are other things that are lovely in my life. Kat and I may have finished our Veronica dates, but the other night on our girlie date night we watched Dirty Dancing and then The Breakfast Club and I know that even when they’re gone in February, they’ll be coming back all the time for wrestling. And fuck, I so don’t want them to leave. Do you know how amazing our vege garden looks right now? I don’t want ot have to leave this house, it’s just not fucking fair. This is my home. How dare they “consider their options”? Shirley’s consoling words have been all about promising me that I’ll find a place with a better kitchen, but how will I find a house big enough to fit in all my crap? I have so much crap. My aim over the holidays is to throw out three things a day, but I dunno if I’ll get that done. Yesterday I was hungover all day from end of work drinks, with Tom buying Bollinger at Arbituaguer, and then much sake at Hede, and teapots at Alice, and more wine at Hawthorn, and today I had half a dozen people (Karen, Tom, Kowhai, Shirley, Frances, Lisa, Kat & Kane) over for drinks in the sun, which of course turned into drinks with candles outside and everyone wearing my hoodies and wow, I’m so fucking huge. My idea of spontaneous entertaining starts with texts at 10am, and then there’s bratwursts and frozen samosas and a trillion cocktails. We’re having Xmas at Mum and Neil’s, even though their deck isn’t finished (I am SO dreading the mess already) and so Karen and I went entree shopping this morning. And I have already finished the white rum, apparently. D’oh!

What more did I have to say? I am so fucking craving some physicality. I want to devour the world. So let’s end it there, yes?

So this week, my manager has been away, but luckily she gave me a very comprehensive list of things to do which has had me making many many calls. Do you know how easy a comms girl’s job would be if people actually answered their phones? Easy like woah is the answer you are looking for. But as a key feature of Comms is being patient, work has been busy in the sense of lots to do, and slow in the sense of much waiting for others. It’s that waiting that had me having lunch with Miss Kimberley today, so I could give her a copy of 101 Stories that I want to tell you, for her raffle, and now it turns out that instead of just buying some tickets, I’m also selling them. Go to her page for more details, or get in touch with me when I’;m more sober (It’s 3.24am right now).

Anyways, towards the end of the day, we were supposed to go to Concrete for a drink, but I went there with Mel last Friday and most of their cocktails were $20. Seriously? And not even a Long Island Iced Tea? No way am I paying that (although the $8 glass of rare and tasty white that I had was bloody good and also generous), so we suggested that we get a bottle of wine in instead, since our coopted lady wasn’t done (she was waiting for our minister to wake up, apparently), and so I went to Kirks’ and bought an $18 bottle of very tasty Sav. We had nice conversation and plotting for next week and stuff, then I wnet with one of Lani’s friends down to Ministry Drinks. It was Caribbean themed, which meant rasturbated pictures of Bob on the wall and cricket stumps. I sold two tickets and left to go to New World Metro for a $17.50 bottle of Shingle Peak Sav that I thought was $12.50, and a bus up to the lovely Miss Lisa’s house. She cooked me spinachy cheeesy pasta and we watched ANTM the recap episode, until we were joined by Dave, and headed down to Havana for Amber and Karl’s goodbye drinks. It turned out that I’d left not just my phone but also my wallet at Lisa’s house (I am so usually not that girl),so we cabbed back for it, and she stayed, so I went back and talked to many ex CWAers. And I was all woah.

Then I found myself on a couch talking to some British boy, so I made Karl change places with him, and he was saying he flew kites, and I was all “oh,that’s so interesting” so I bid everyone goodbye as they left and settled in to talk to the Brit. He was all blah blah blah and I was all “tehehe accent” and our knees were touching, and our thighs against each other, so I was like omg, makeout. He said he was a chef, so I was like “okay, so what would you cook for me? I’m drunk and kind of cute” (cos I know that he’d been staring at my cleavage like woah), and he started going on about crab, not in a vol e vant (sp?), but rather in a wonton wrapper, and I was like oh yes? saying that I’d never eaten crab but trying to imply that I was totally willing, but then he went to the bathroom, and I was all “okay, he’s got 10 minutes to get back here”, checking my watch, but then he was all talking to others, and he reawlly did remind me of Kateb’s ex, and there’s no way I’d do that, and I was like oh stink bro, you’re a chef, all I wanted was a hot beef injection, but I taxiied home and now I am here. Hurrah. l

Today my feet are less sore than they’ve been in a bloody long time because this morning Kate and I went and got manicures and pedicures where they shave off loose skin from your feet with razors, and a massage for $34 each plus tip. That’s insane, and where if I had more time I’d insert some kind of rant about how it makes me feel somewhat awkward that I’m pretty sure I haven’t been served by a white person once since I got here, except in bars and trendy cafes. The awkwardness comes, of course, from thinking that my idea of a stereotyped country with marginalised minority groups are being reaffirmed. I could also rant about the lack of energy efficieny here – we have to open the windows to sleep comfortably at night because there’s no way of turning down the radiator, but those are stupidass things to bitch about when you’re on holiday. And besides, the fatness here works out bloody well for me when I found a large shop full of gorgeous clothes that are sized for me me me. In fact, I probably should have bought ‘regular’ instead of ‘tall’ jeans, and maybe the grey pants instead of the black ones but that’s okay.

Tonight Kate and I are going to a halloween party with people from her school. I’m going as a butterfly, sort of. Well, I have a large and majestic pair of wings from this astonishing costume shop that her friend Stacey took me to the other night when she was babysitting – we also found a place with $3 frozen lemon margaritas, an endless supply of tortilla chips and kickass salsa, and all you can eat $9.95 Mexican mains (for the record, all I can eat was one dish) – and I’m going to wear that with my corset, of course, and some blue glitter false eyelashes. I’m hoping Kate won’t back out of wearing HER outfit because otherwise I might feel somewhat uncomfortable. But I guess it doesn’t really matter, because who are the other people to judge me? Exactly.

Tomorrow I’m off to San Francisco. I’ve made my way around New York quite a bit now, I think. The subway’s pretty easy to navigate. I’ve been to four out of five boroughs, and I’ve seen all sorts of different areas. I also saw Tom McRae. He played in a little cabaret-style room that reminded me muchly of The Classic to an audience of maybe 60 people. Only 60 people! The intimacy of seeing your favourite singer-song writer like that was pretty overwhelming, and as expected, I welled up when he started ‘You Only Disappear’ after taking crowd requests.

What else? I hope to write a longer and more descriptive narrative at some stage, but who knows if that’ll happen? But the next time you hear from me, I’ll be at Olivia’s. \m/ \m/ (Hahahah. It’s not my fault. There’s Metallica playing loudly here).

Speaking of the twins, I got my hair cut on Saturday but no one noticed that night at Germany because I was dressed like a German beer-hall girl (or my closest approximation anyway). On Tuesday night before I went to The Postures’ debut gig at San Frindigo, Anji and Karen came over and painted my hair in stripes of purple and blue-black. It’s unfortunate that the haircolour change has coincided with Period Skin, so I feel like it looks really crappy. I’m sure it doesn’t though.

I have yet to pack, but I have a large bag with nine kilos of Kate’s winter clothes to take with me. I also have an extensive list about what I want to take, so I figure that’s most of the battle. Unfortunately my camera seems to have vanished – I’m going to blame Smoo not wanting me to publish the photos of him and Blair playing Gay Chicken after they showed up incredibly drunk in the middle of Germany, sporting duct tape Hitler moustaches, SS armbands and babbling abotu their Brokeback bike ride that they’d just had. My camera also had pictures of the Black Forest Cherry Cake I made, which was truly an awesome thing of beauty and awe. I hope I can find it before I go away.

What else? Yesterday I caught up with an ex cow-orker who’s been in Australia making babies. Her tummy looks fake, but not as fake at Katie Holmes’s. Tonight I’m going for a couple of quiets. Today at lunch we went up to Finc, which I wasn’t impressed with. I had a steak sandwich, and it really disagreed with me – so much so that two bathroom stops were required on my way back to work strolling down the gorgeous waterfront. I <3 Wellington on a sunny day. And now I get to go and heart two new cities, the luminous Kate and the gorgeous Olivia (and s5, who is perhaps the best human on the planet ever). I am a lucky lucky girl.

I'm sure there'll be internet accessing at some stage over the next two and a half weeks, so stay in touch. And if I get eaten by a snake, or killed by OH MY GOD THE TERRORISTS ARE EVERYWHERE, well then at least I didn't live my life so ginormously fat that I couldn't even leave the house and had to wash myself with a rag on a stick.

xojo

EDIT:

Firstly, what I left out of my Auckland recap was that while I was at Annabel’s, she pulled out her copy of Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys as I emailed her a copy of 101 Stories, and it was soooooo weird reading it again. Did I really write that? Did I really live that way? Strange. No wonder people have mentioned what a progression 101 is. But I would still really love someone to send me back a copy of Boys because I haven’t got one. Please? Someone? I know they’re mostly pretty bad photocopies anyway, but maybe someone has one of the A4 versions that they could send me? Thanking you in advance.

Other things that are good in my life right now is meeting up with the rest of the Wellingtonista crew tonight for martinis (except for me because I am under 30), and then a cocktail party tomorrow night for Cinta’s hens’ night. Then on Sunday dinner for Karen’s birthday. On a much healthier for me note, I signed up to do personal training boxing sessions today. I’ll get to hit stuff! Yay! I think that will be fucking awesome stress release, and also I’m trying to mix up my exercising, because I don’t want to get bored and I really need to step things up for the sake of my wrist and also not dying on the flight to America.

I am so looking forward to America, like woah. The time is creeping closer and closer. In fact, America at the Country Club is next Saturday August 12. We’re having a kegger Frat/Sorority party with John Hughes and Showgirls. And a pillow fight. And junk food. And initiation ceremonies and hazing. You should come along. In real America news, I rang Kate at some ungodly hour last Friday night when I got home. I was aiming for her birthday but kind of missed, and also I was drunk and lonely, and I miss her! All the same, I’m really not looking forward to the phonebill.

This afternoon I am sniggering at the Peaches CD I’m listening to and trying to postpone doing more phone calls, but since there are a hundred people on my list (almost literally – once I finish assembling my list there will be anyway), I suppose I shouldn’t put that off for much longer. Work is interesting right now in terms of RFPs, and black holes, and also new projects that I am working on, and the fact that I went on some weird trip on Tuesday and cleared out about four things I’d been sitting on for months. Go me. And now I must go and pee. It’s important that I tell you this, honest.

Finally, just some links to things I’ve been up to lately – TV Squee / Rockstar Obsession / Pirate and Auckland photos. That’s about all. OH! And I have an RSS feed that works now, which I would add in to the bottom of the page, except that without a laptop I can’t FTP in, but you can find it at http://hubris.co.nz/rss apparently, according t the wise Heather. That’s it now. Ask me some questions about what you would like me to tell you about.

Before I get on with the usual recounting of everything, let me just announce Canadia at the Country Club, 5pm Saturday May 6 – don’t worry, it’s planned so that you can come to this and still go to the Phoenix Foundation gig. We’re going to eat pancakes and maple syrup and bacon (if you’re that way inclined) and fries with cheese, and Chocolate Mooooooooooooooousse, and listen to the Arcade Fire and other goodness, and learn facts about Canadia, and end all our sentences with ‘Eh’ and I might plan another few activities, and it’d be rad if you could come.

And now let me get on with Friday night, which saw me leaving work on the dot of five and declining to go out for a drink (holy fucking shit, I know) in favour of going home and doing a mountain of dishes and prepping for my Spanishy potato dish which I’m hereby going to call Papas Garbanzo. Prepping means a mountain of agria potatos cubed and boiled, and cans of chickpeas rinsed and drained, and numerous garlic cloves crushed and roughly chopped and placed in a bowl with diced red onions, and feta crumbled and paired with chopped parsley and a little basil, and spring onions cut into pretty little loops, and chorizo sausages defrosted, diced and fried till crispy and put into yet another bowl. After that there was just time to set the table and get changed before I had to go and pick up Jisa for wacky one-way driving adventures in Brooklyn trying to find Jimmy, and then to Mount Vic for Jessie and Jane. I threw open the invitation to everyone else with a J in my phonebook, but to little avail. Boo-urns. But that’s okay, because we sat in the glowing atmosphere, and drank good red wine, and not so good red wine, and stuffed our faces with the papas garbanzo, and the green beans almondine, and then coconut cream and apple cake with caramelised peaches and raspberry strawberry SORBET (which you must yell like “Ole!”) and Jessie told us rock’n roll stories and we annoyed her with a lot of usage of the phrase “like throwing a sausage down a hallway” and its many variations. It was a geniusly good time.

On Saturday my head hurt, but I had to get up early to gossip to Heather and confirm that it was indeed her who had been drunkenly texting me the night before. Then there were an awful lot of dishes to do. Nevertheless I did them, and napped, and made myself pretty in time to meet the divine KateH, or Popular Kate as you may remember her, for dinner at Arashi. It was so nice to go out just with her – we tried to think of when the last time we’d done that may have been, and the best we could come up with was like, July 2002. We followed that with a drink at Harem, which was wacky crazy cool and I wish we’d eaten dinner there cos the menu looked yum, but as it was, we had to knock our cocktails back quickly in order to make it to Dylan Moran on time. He was genius, wonderful, excellent, angry drunken belligerant hott Irishman. His onstage persona was much like Bernard Black, but a little more articulate. Hott. I laughed lots, and I also laughed a bit because my friends who saw the show in Auckland said that there were many curvy bookish type women in the audience there, and so it was in Wellington. Afterwards we went to Good Luck for a drink, and meant to go to Bodega for the A Low Hum, but the cocktails were just too good and we didn’t want to get up. Eventually though with KateB in tow we decided we wanted food and headed back to Harem which was shut, so we went to Tupelo instead, where stupid boys tired to impress us with their asses, drank from our wine bottle and tried to offend us with videos on a cellphone of a girl who ejaculated semen out of her very hemaroided bottom. It’s probably not the kind of thing you want to see every day, but if you’re introduced to it with the “this is so offensive, this is totally going to offend you” type introduction, there is no way in hell that you’re going to be offended. Except by the guy’s total stupidity. KateB disappeared, and Tupelo shut down, so KateH and I were forced to sit outside in the alleyway with KateB’s coat and bag for LITERALLY half an hour since KateB’s phone was in her bag, and we were not overly impressed by that.

On Sunday I slept in late, and then later I picked up KateH and she came over for dinner, and surprise surprise, she knew people that Bart’s mum knew. And we watched the Garland video, and looked at photos, and read the bible, and oh, how long ago Uni was and how young and full of hope we were all then.

And now Sebby has been missing for 24 hours, and I am worrrrrrrrrrrrrrieeeed. Today I had lunch with Amy and Andeee but they had friends and sisters there and so we didn’t really gossip, and I haven’t seen them since 2004, and it was strange. And no one is upstairs at work today, and I had to log on downstairs in the morning and the boy’s computer that I was using was sticky and eww. And blah blah. I hope Sebby comes home when I get home today after PAYING FOR MY FLIGHTS. Wahoo!

Come to Canadia. What’s that all about eh?

EDIT: He wasn’t there when I got home, even after I called and called him so I went to my room and bawled and bawled, and then I heard him mewling and he came in and I cuddled him and cried some more, and he was like “sheesh, what’s the big idea, it’s only been 30 hours but can I have some extra food please?”

On Saturday I felt great on account of having stayed up til 5am so I was stone cold sober again. I cleaned the house, had a shower, treated Seb for fleas, kicked the boys out of the house and set off flea bombs in my room and in the lounge. Of course, it was after I had locked the front door and exited that I heard the BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP of smoke detectors going off, so I had to rush back into the lounge, find a chair to clamber on and pull out the battery, all the while coughing in the flea gas. Still, at least it should have killed the larvae in my lungs, right?

I repaired at the Medditerean Warehouse with a margharita pizza (and one of these days I will learn to spell) and the paper, before continuing the Italian theme with shopping to prepare for ‘Rome at the Country Club’. Later, after attempts at napping and some of The OC, which quite frankly I find myself really not giving a shit about, the darling Lisa Fur came and picked me up, and we went to her house via being served at the mill by Conor Oberst, who has apparently fled to New Zealand where he can shed his cold cold tears on his cold cold bathroom tile before getting up to sell cheap cheap liquor to ladies and say “laterz!” to them. We went to Lisa’s house and she played me absolutely devestating videos by the Dears, which you shouldn’t watch unless you’re prepared to cry. Then Brad and KateB came over (do you like the way I invite my friends to other people’s houses? I’m really good at that) and we had some more drinks and played some more music and then took off for the Aro Valley for Joel’s house.

At Joel’s, we sat in the garden and feared for our lives when he threw more furniture on the fire. I saw people I knew from when I worked for VUWSA and was happy that they were the people I liked. I think we were either very early or very late, but it was nice to see Joel again, even though I goddamnmotherfuckingshitfuckcunt forgot to get my Straitjacket Fits CD back off him. He’s had it for like a year now. Grr. Then we left to wander the streets slowly, and I started a long text conversation with my friend because we happened to be passing his house. Upon reflection, I realise that I do tend to text random things at random times (*). Brad peeled off somewhere, and Kate fell asleep on Lisa’s couch, so I made Lisa play me vinyl and make me popcorn. She’s a good bitch like that.

On Sunday, I was in pukesville. Apparently drinking a lot of bubbly straight from the bottle is bad for you. Who knew? Nevertheless, I soldiered on with Rome preperations, chargrilling red peppers to go in homemade hummus, making trifle with banana cake and pineapple in lieu of tiramisu, and putting pizza dough on in the breadmaker. Eventually I had to call a timeout so I retired to the local cafe for coffee and grease and the paper before coming back to the mountain of dishes and assorted other hospitality tasks that awaited me. And then I awaited my guests. You know, Kate mentioned that she thinks there’s been a drop in recent years in the number of people who actually call (or even text) to say that they can’t make it to an event, and I think she’s right. That said, there was still a stream of “oh, I’m too hungover” or “oh, the formula one is on” texts that made me go grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. But the people who did come were very cherished, and appreciative of the effort I’d gone to. Also, my flatmates now think I am the greatest flatmate in the world, because it turns out that while I’d heard that Caligula was quite porny, I figured it’d just be softcore boobs and fake sex. Oh no, my friends. It was hardcore jizz baths, penetration and cunnilinguis. With costumes. And sex with horses. Hurrah! I fear I have set a high standard for further Country Clubs, but oh well. I can rename it the Cuntry club and feature porn from all around the world.

Last night Karen and I went to Kazu for some food on sticks. I should point out that we went to the good new one, without the terrible service and the quivering pizza that are found at the Tory St branch. The one on Courtenay Place is right next to the once beloved Arashi, which has since removed both ginko nuts AND their banana & peanut butter spring rolls from their menu, so what’s the point? Then we wanted to see Sione’s Wedding but it was all sold out so we went to A History of Violence instead, which was good. And violent, strangely enough.

Today at work I sat in on a videoconference featuring Tze Ming Mok, who was almost frighteningly articulate and Tusiata Avia talking about writing from a non-European perspective to an audience of Wellington High and Wellington Girls’ girls via video links, and it was really interesting. It made me think lots of things which I have completely forgotten about now, because it’s the end of the day. The ‘compare and contrast’ between the two of them in pretty much every aspect of their work was really interesting, as was also thinking about identity in general. Oh, I know what I wanted to say, and I’ll have to paraphrase really badly here, but Tze Ming spoke about how there’s a sort of expectation in the circles that she moves in that she will write about certain things, and I suppose that’s something that I feel too – not, of course, as an essayist and a blogger, but as a person with an online journal. It’s something I spent a lot of time talking about in the olden days when I was at counselling, my need to keep people entertained. And then I’d say something deep and then I’d say something else to make Kalpana laugh. Awesome, nice consistency there. Hmmm, this all sounded better in my head over lunch. Nevermind, I’ll call it off here.

Last weekend was very very choice. On Friday night I went with two cow-orkers and three ex cow-orkers to Tupelo, which freaked me out a little with its redness. I left at 8.30pm when Kate picked me up, and they apparently stayed out until 4am, so it is just as well that I left when I did, especially since Kate and I went home with quadruple chocolate ice cream and Hairspray. Now we both want to learn how to do the mashed potato and other assorted dances. Hairspray is total radsicles (and radsicles is the new awesome – it’s like popsicles but cooler. Hehe). In the morning I made Kate pancakes and used my good china, even going to the extreme lengths of putting lemon juice in the little sake pot. Suck on that, Martha Stewart. Later I put on my pretty new dress that very few people have complimented me on (what’s up with that?) and met up with Lisa Fur and Brad to go to Bic Runga at the Michael Fowler Centre.

*Insert wide-eyed awe and aural orgasms and much spine-tinglingness here.*

She was playing with the whole band who played on Birds and played the whole album, so I might just pop up my review of that from Pulp now and then times that by a thousand and add in the goodness that is Neils Finn’s stage banter, and the amazing hotness of her base player who had his bass at exactly the right height – two inches lower and he would have been a nu-metal wanker, and five inches higher and he would be a geek – for maximum sexiness, and the total adoreableness of Annika Moa and the wonderfulness of our seats right by the sound desk, and the incredible aura and Strong Pixieness of Bic and and and wow. Just wow. I was dazzled. Simon Sweetman, you can suck a fuck, because of course it was polished. They’re the top fucking musicians in the country – how could it be anything but? I do wish that she’d played a couple more tracks off Beautiful Collison like the title track or ‘Election Night’ but that’s okay. It was still wow. I was moved pretty much to tears.

And then of course Jessie was there, and so the lobby was a lovefest of everyone I know – Jimmy and Esther and Ash (who Lisa ran away from when I was like “she’s from the internet” and it made me laugh a lot) and and Amelia, Jess Clayton and um some other people maybe? So I invited everyone to Rome, and was responded to enthusiastically. Me and Lisa and Brad headed down to Good Luck via Lisa’s car to drop off posters, to await Jessie. A couple of drinks later, she texted to say she was at Motel with the band, so Lisa and I went there. The bar was insanely full, and I was intimidated by the beautiful people, and while yes, I have occasionally entertained thoughts of being pressed up again Shayne Carter, it was always in more intimate settings, so I paniced when I finally fought my way to the front to get a drink and didn’t want to ask for a menu but I knew that I wanted a drink that would last a long time, so I remembered Wellurban and ordered a dry martini. I forgot that I haven’t drunk martinis regularly for quite a while. It was definitely a strong drink. It was the right thing to order though, because after that I saw it was what Bic herself was drinking. She came and sat at our table and I squeed, and Jessie told her that I really liked Jessie’s haircut, and I said that yeah, if that whole singing thing didn’t work out for her, she could have a career as a hairdresser, and then encouraged by her laugh, I said that that concert was amazing, and that two years ago when she played the cathedral she’d asked the audience if we liked her tights, and I did like them. And then I realised that despite having said earlier that I didn’t, holy crapping fuck, I was talking to Bic Runga, and she was just so nice that I genuinely did like her tights. And now I will stop using italic tags and just reflect on how stupidly starstruck I felt, but how much I basked in her glow. And of course, it was very very rad to see Jessie again, and her hair is so cute it’s ridiculous. Everything was so wonderful, I was just walking on air.

On Sunday I played Domestic Goddess and shopped and cleaned and cooked dinner for my whole family, which they’re still telling me was great, even though it was just the exact same food that I served my dinner party that one time. It was a very pleasant night though. On Wednesday Anji, Karen and I had dinner at The Last Supper Club, and while the food was tasty (although I asked for my fillet steak to be medium rare and it came out blue), the waiter was smarmy (sample line: “there are three mints for you on that plate” – oh really? Is THAT what they are? Cunt.) and we really didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as last time. Then we went to V for Vendetta which was awesome and left me dreaming of nuclear warfare and being all alone when the bombs started falling and crying cos I’d left Sebastian outside.

Yesterday Mummy took me to lunch at Captiol to thank me for doing some design work for her. I had bruscetta and pasta with zuchini and ricotta and a French wine that was a combination of reisling and pinot gris and very tasty it was too. The waiter asked me if I was Joanna, and I said I was and he pointed out that he went to high school with me, and I laughed and said oh yeah, and pretended to not know what he’d been up to for the past couple of years. It makes me happy though that so many of the beautiful people from high school are still working in hospitality. I am so shallow. Last night we went to the quiz at the Realm, and I had too many beers and sucked at pool so I went home and then Del let herself in and her friend in knee high white boots trimmed with oversized laces and fur accosted me asking for hugs and snuggles. Maybe I shouldn’t have judged her so harshly based solely on her boots, because she said some slightly intelligent things about the Gilmore Girls that I was trying to watch, but she was very very drunk and loud. It was like Courtney Love coming to stay. I sent Bart a text going “come home NOW”. He was very apologetic.

Today there is the goodness that I have already described, and in an hour I’m going to go and have a drink with Sarah, and then maybe stare at all my workmates as they have their netball team dinner, but I should really go home and chargrill the kilo of red peppers that I bought for $1.95 at A-Mart instead. See you tomorrow night or at Rome.

Oh, and also, something I forgot to mention was how great it was to finish something creative that I’ve been working on for ages, and the end product of that is 101 Stories That I Want to Tell You, which you should get, if you want it.

But nevermind that. Let’s talk about going to Spotlight at lunchtime with Kateb for netting to promify our dresses, and how I was going to get black but the call of the pink was just too strong:

Then let’s talk about how the skies opened around 4pm and I had holes in my shoes, and my car was parked a long way away and luckily I’d given Kate the spare key to it cos I got to it late, and then we had to schlep over to Newtown to decorate the hall and I was soaking wet and freezing cold and reaaaaaally not in a good mood. Plus decorating was tiring and hard, and we were running late and Brad’s friend who was helping us kept on talking and talking and oh oh oh, just the drama of it all. But when we were done, the place looked fucking rad:

Kate came over to my place to get ready, and since I knew I needed to snap out of my grump, I went to “spend a couple of minutes by myself” (read: rub one out), before showering and sorting out my hair. Of course, we ended up looking fabulous, as the above photo will prove. We spent a while having some drinks and trying to convince Bart and Del to come with us, before abandonning that idea and jumping in a taxi. The hall was pretty empty at first, so I was very worried for Brad’s sake, and I was trying to count and do maths and things, but eventually it filled up, helped along by the arrival of these two, Katy and her flatmate:

We sat and drank coruba & coke for a while, cos it was donated, and then Brad started playing ‘Get into the groove’ which is one of my favouritist songs to dance to evah, and since my friends weren’t feeling it, I went and jumped into a group of strangers including this girl Holly:

They were very very rad people and were very complimentary of my outfit, so I decided that I was ON FIRE that night, and that everybody would be my friend. When Katy and I were slowdancing the first slowdance, I spied two boys standing at the side so we grabbed them instead and they didn’t appear to mind at all. Later I fell in love with one of Brad’s tutors (although I suspect I didn’t realise who he was at the time) when he whirled me around the dancefloor and told me to stop leading. How powerful and manly! Oh how I was swooning.

At one stage, I went outside to find Kate, and found her talking to a 15 year old kid who’d wandered up to boast about how he was on his 20th beer. When he turned around and said to the Asian girl behind him “I don’t like Asians!” I decided that was enough, and it was time for him to move on, so I went and found Brad, who grabbed a very tall friend of his and politely asked the young lad if he had a ticket. He moved on then. Apparently he was also kicked in the balls by a friend of the Asian girl. Excellent.

It was just such a fucking fantastic time. I danced and danced and danced, and although I didn’t win Prom Queen, I certainly felt like it, and so I successfully vanquished all my demons from dances at ASIJ 12 years ago. Oh yes, that’s right, all my demons. I’m totally a demon-free zone now. Honest. Here’s some more photos from the prom – if you want to see them larger, go to my flickr account page, obviously. And the best part of all is that Brad made a whole grand.

When Kate and I got home, we found Mark and Bart sitting out on the front steps drinking, so we stayed and talked to them for a long time, and I did the most awesome fall-flat-on-my-face fall ever. Radical.

The next morning, strangely enough, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, but I dutifully rolled out of bed, showered and headed off to pick up Anji and Karen, via a ten minute wait at Macdonald’s for them to serve me up a burger instead of the ick that is the Macdonald’s breakfast. Not that their burgers are much better, of course, but this was an emergency. I got Anji to drive to Waikanae, because I still felt drunk. We went to Swell Cafe for Mum’s birthday brunch, which you might remember from the news stories about its quarter mill bronze statue being stolen. Or you might not. I don’t care either way. Ha! It was really nice there, but oh boy I was feeling ill. Then we went to Oma’s house to sort out more stuff and pick up more furniture and I puked some more and sat on an outdoor step and cried. I was very very happy to get home and unload the buffet and bookshelves.

After a nap, I went to the supermarket and made awesome sandwiches of streaky bacon, camenbert, hummus and rocket. Hurray! And I tried gingerly to drink some beer, but then switched to red wine. Around 11pm, I headed off to Nial’s house for Blair’s goodbye party. Luckily it was a very mellow night, just lots of sitting around in the very cute garden. I didn’t know people at first, but I was overly tired so I was in very giggly very saying lots of stupid things mode, so it was alright. The boy who I’d originally thought was gay talked loudly at me about how gay he was, and about how he used to make his ex girlfriend wear a Hayden Christensen mask when he flipped her over, and I felt ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly I just laughed at the things I was thinking in my head (*).I did tell the hot Canadian right as he was leaving that I fancied him rotton, and he laughed at me. Well, it wasn’t quite a “ha HA, like you could ever have a chance” kind of laugh, or even a laugh of pity, it was just a laugh and a “I’m sure you’ll get your pash this year”. And yes, I told him right when he was leaving, because I am laaaaaaaaaame like that, but at least I told him. So that’s all very well and good, and I don’t feel bad about it. And it’s good that he’s gone, because while he was a very easy crush to have, I just have far too much going on in my head right now(*). Oh, and of course he’s also a stupid maple syrup-eating surrender monkey.

Having been up until 5.30 texting, Sunday was a day for lying on the couch groaning and watching season two of the OC. I think much of the week was like that, actually. Hmm. On Wednesday I saw Capote, which wasn’t the feel-good hit of the summer. Then I decided I needed to stop feeling angsty about the number of people in my house (it’s strange getting used to having two boys and one girlfriend who is still trying to find a flat around, after living with only Anji for six months, but there’s no need for me to have a bug up my ass just because oh the pain, they’re sitting on my couches watching tv when I want to lie down and watch the Gilmore Girls in quiet), so I cooked a flat dinner for them and Brad. I was going to make a pear cake too, cos our tree is loaded down with pears right now, but when I got home, Del was already making one. Great minds and all that.

On Friday after work my workmate Sarah and I escaped down to Monsoon Poon for some very good conversation and some wine. She’s getting married in less than a month, and so she keeps asking me questions about things like invitations or social graces, or accomodation and stuff, which is fine, cos I’m happy to help, but it’s making me plan my own wedding something crazy, and hello, I’m not gettign married for another five years (that’s assuming Brad’s still single then). We were joined by the boys a while later, and then by Rene who is an ex collegue. Eventually KateB showed up to and by that stage I’d consumed quite a lot of wine. Sarah left and we had a platter of food which probably wasn’t nearly enough in proportion to the amount of wine we were drinking, and we went to Ponderosa where I watched Kate pee and she did the same to me. Not like, cos we were doing it in public or anything, just that we assumed that there would be stalls but it was one big room and so we decided to have a significant bonding experience instead. I was thinking that the bathroom looked mighty familiar and then I realised yesterday that it’s tiled like the one in Veronica Mars in which she does all her business. Ha HA ‘business’, do you like what I did there? (Yes, wow, that is a poo you should be proud of).

Somehow we managed to convince Dylan to come to a uni party with us (I did mention that the last time I went to a party at Jess’s there were both nipples shown AND a person in a panda costume), and we headed up to Kelburn via the supermarket for more wine. We probably didn’t need the wine. I had a good time at the party talking to Arthur and Brad who are at drama school together, and the fabulous Jess, and also Robbie, who as it turns out isn’t Lemon Cohen at all, and most awesome of all was that there was no one else from Salient there. Then Kate was a little worse for wear, so we decided it would probably be a good idea to get her home(*). When I saw Jess yesterday in Aro, she laughed at me for being like “omg, leave my friend alone! She’s been my best friend since we were 5, don’t hurt her!” cos people had placed flowers on her head. They laugh because after delivering that speech, I delivered Kate an all-mighty slap. Sorry babe.

Yesterday morning was consequently not much fun either, but I rallied by around 4pm when Anji and I went up to Mum and Neil’s for a BBQ. Boy it was hot, so very hot. I like BBQs. Then I went and picked up Karen and we headed over to Aro Park for the Bitchcraft carnival. I bought pretty earrings and we went and got fish’n chips and settled down on the grass to watch the Dukes of Leisure play. They looked like this:

I’m aware that you probably can’t see that much, but I’m hoping that it’s just that I have a crap monitor. If you can’t make it out, that’s a tree with a string of dead dolls hanging behind them. Anyways, the Dukes were very cool. They’re kind of sonic soundscapey like HDU or Jakob, and since I was lying on my back looking up at the stars, it was perfect. The Bitchcraft fair looked awesome when all the stalls turned on their little lamps. I felt like I was in an alternative Stars Hollow, and that is a rad thing to feel.Then I went home to dance the panda dance for Brad. I contemplated going to the Bitchcraft afterparty, but it was on the other side of town and my hands were still tingly with hangover. One of these days, I’m going to cut down on the amount I drink. For serious.

But I don’t really have too much time to worry about it, because I have to go and buy black netting at lunchtime to promify my skirt, and then after work KateB and I must rush over to the Wellington Pipe Band Hall to decorate it, and then rush home and get dressed and rush to get drunk and go back in. I also need to make sure I pack a change of clothes, cos while the twins will be definitely coming to the party, I may not be quite as free with my movements as I would like to be in that outfit.

It’s been very rad having KateB back in town. We’ve been eating lunch together every day this week since she’s been freelancing around here, and on Tuesday I took her home with me for drinks and soup, hair dying and watching of the Garland video. I can’t wait until Brad becomes a famous actor so I can unleash his dancing upon the world. Actually I really should take the clip of the Garland Gang cd rom and put it up on the interweb. That sounds like an excellent idea. I’m sure he’d thank me for it. Also, who knows a good place in Wellington to get a crappy old VHS digitised so I can keep it safe forever? You’d think I could do it at work, but the developer was all “no no no”. Dammit, I know how to do it (or at least I did five years ago), you’d think I could borrow the G5 in my own time.

Bart’s been living in my house for nearly two weeks now, as has his girlfriend, who is having trouble finding a flat, so if anyone knows of a place going, please please please let me know. He and She and Mark who is yet to move in are all trained chefs, so I’ve had some dinners cooked for me. That’s great, but a little strange. I’m used to being a much better cook than the boys I’ve lived with. But they’re all lovely, and I’m getting bits and pieces of furniture trickling in from Oma’s in order to fill in the gaps, and that’s great. I’ve also got a car now. Or rather, I have Mum’s old car and I’ll be paying for insurance and registration and all that, but if any of the cousins need to borrow it they’re allowed to. Can you drive, Cous? Not that I’m expecting to see you in Wellignton any time soon probably though.

I saw Brokeback Mountain on Wednesday and decided that I should just punch the girl I fancy in her face and ask her to go fishing with me. I thought there was a little too much scenary, and that Salon’s review of made some really good points, and that if I was to speak like Joss, I’d say that it did more telling than showing. But it was still great, and there were boobs, and hot boys pashing (although not enough), and I cried. But I saw it at a Newstalk ZB preview, and they were the worst audience ever. Maybe because they’re used to talking to the radio they thought it was okay to talk through the film and wear way too much perfume and go “oh yes” and “oh no!” out loud the whole way through? Stupid long time listener/first time movie watchers. And while we’re on the subject of sexuality (oh yeah, Newstalk ZB is like, sooo sexual), I read an interview with Dan Savage in the Onion AV Club, in which he said (to paraphrase) “if your boyfriend is a homophobe, that means he’s also a misogynist because he’s reacting to the belief that in gay relationships one person assumes the role of the woman and he’s seeing it as a bad thing to be a woman” and I was like “yes!”. I like it when people who are smarter than me articulate things real good.

And I think that’s my lot for today. Just come to The Prom okay? And vote for me for Prom Queen. I made the ballot forms so I really should have rigged them, but I was good and didn’t.

You know who should go solo? Like, in Antartica or something? The guy in the hat at the Pluto gig who was TALKING THROUGH THE WHOLE GIG. Up the front. Near the stage. In the sad songs. If punching him to knock off his hat and pissing on it wouldn’t have been just as distracting I would have gladly done it. Pluto have played better gigs, but I didn’t say that when Karen and I were retroly having cake at Midnight Esspresso (retro cos we used to do that in the olden days after seeing Garageland or Superette or the 3Ds at the old Bodega) and Milan came in and sat behind us and perked up his ears at what I was saying (mostly about how gleeful I was that they’d played ’8 O’Clock’, and how annoyed at Stupid Talking Guy I was. Then I saw Miss Lucy_Fur walking down the road and I waved but she didn’t see me, so I called her cellie cos it’s very amusing to watch people do the “ooh is that my phone ringing?” look, and then the mad scramble in the bag to find the phone. She and her friend Dawn came back down to the cafe to say hello.

Now, a confession: I am sometimes somewhat lacking in self confidence! No really! Sometimes when I meet them I don’t know if people actually like me, and I feel a little iffy around them. It took me ages to realise that Heather could actually stand me, and then the same thing happened with Jessie (I was like, wow, she must really like eating roti and must dislike being alone) and it just goes on and on. I am a spazz.

Anyways. That was Friday night. I stumbled home drunkenly around 2am and knocked over everything in the house, but didn’t wake Anji up, excellent. I cleaned on Saturday. It takes me like half an hour to vacuum both the couches. No it’s not just Seb-shed, it’s funny rub-off chenille stuff, and hair and tangles. Yum. I hope that once my couches are less new they’ll be less sheddy. Then KateB came over for takeaways and gossip and wine and we watched Mean Girls and then she left for like, a year. With a dagger.

Last night Dave and my parents and I went to a Serisen Wines dinner at Capitol. Holy crap it was amazing! We had Moana bubbles to begin with, then a first course of salmon gravlax with crumbed oysters and a lime olive oil matched with a limey 2004 Riesling. I don’t like salmon, and I’d never eaten oysters before. I figuratively licked my plate clean. I suppose pretty much anything tastes good when it’s deep fried, but the oysters were light and fluffy, not sluggish like I imagined that they’d be, and the salmon was paper thin, and didn’t smell or taste fishy in the way that salmon so often can. Mmmmmmm. The next course was bass and chive ravioli with clam sauce, matched with a chardonnay. I don’t know how clammy the sauce was – it seemed more buttery than anything, but it was really really nice. I don’t think that the accompanying clams were much good, but that is of course coming from the perspective of someone who doesn’t like shellfish. I don’t like cheap chardonnay either, but this stuff was lovely. The courses were pretty small, and spread out well, and the wine glasses were topped up too, which was fantastic. Then we ate duck confit with mushroom and potato pie and muscatel jus, and a Pinot Noir. Oh my god, mouth orgasm! The dessert, really simple grilled pineapple and marscapone with a late harvest Sauvignon was like TRIPLE MOUTH EXPLOSION ORGASM YUM. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. For $85, this was bloody excellent value, and I’m looking forward to going to the Ata Rangi one. Oh yes.

In other news, because I am furious with the temporary editor of Pulp who was in place for one issue, I may very well put up the FULL text (which doesn’t make me look like some kind of retard who doesn’t know that the Spice Girls had a second album before their third album, plus with bonus witty subheadings) of my story tomorrow. Also, I am moving offices to be with the Hott Young Things where I can be better utlized. Two people told me on Friday that I was doing a good job, woo! Of course then I went and fucked up majorly. Nevermind, it’s all half fixed now.

Also, I am in love with the new wallpaper and chandeliers at Indigo, and I may very well marry them, as soon as I get a divorce from the pineapple and marscapone that I also plan on marrying. Oh! And Auckland: I’m coming baby, oh yeah I’m coming real good. Haha. Also I’m visiting Auckland on the 9th and 10th of September I believe, and I intend to have drinks in my suite, assuming I get a suite, or something, and it would be lovely to see you then okay? Choice.

ACCOMODATION
We stayed at a place called Club Fiji, which was nearish Nadi Airport, but had the added distinction of actually being on a beach. Sure, Nadi Bay was really shallow, and when the tide was out the sea was miles and miles and miles away, but it wasn’t too bad to look at. The pool was salt water, which was nice, and there were sun loungers all around, and lots of pretty thatched permanent umbrellas everywhere to sit under, and palm trees and flowers and it was just lovely. Our bure was the futherest away from everything, which meant big long walks to and from the bar & pool, but that’s okay. It was a really nice bure too – wood floors and wood lourves, a big high ceiling, a mosquito net over the double bed which lovely Kate let me have, and a little frige that we filled to the brim. The bathroom was quite spacious too. One night there was a three inch spider in it, so I screamed, but Katie bravely put it outside. I was quite suprised at her coolness in the battle.

The man in the other half of our bure wasn’t quite so cool, however. Oh no. In fact, he told us to turn off our music at 5pm because he was trying to nap (wanker!) and then came and yelled at us when we came back from dinner at 11.30pm (slightly more justified – he should have knocked on the door and been more polite, however). We hypothesized like mad about him, since he appeared to be by himself, before deciding that he had been jilted at the altar and had decided to come on his honeymoon by himself. The fact that a security guard told us that he’d complained another night about the fact that we were LAUGHING, (because how dare we enjoy ourselves on holiday?) seemed to solidify this theory. When we had to get up at 7am to go on a day cruise, I walked ahead of Kate, and he came out and hurled buckets and buckets of abuse at her, saying that we sounded like a pack of drunken hippos, and that she was a fat piece of shit (I don’t know if you’ve seen Kate, but suffice to say that she really isn’t) and that he recommended that she didn’t eat for a year. After that we told the reception staff that we wanted to change rooms, but we didn’t get around to it. We just stalked the guy at the restaurant instead, making loud remarks about how hippos come in herds, not packs. If he’d said something to me instead of Kate, i was going to play Good Cop, and invite him in for a drink and a hug, but he didn’t.

AIRPORTS
I hate airports. Especially if they’re not airconditioned. Or your parents (apparently) think you’re coming back the next day and no one is answering their phone and you are outside in the freezing Wellington wind and you don’t have any house keys and you’re supposed to be at Jessie’s party soon and it’s so cold and your flight was so delayed and you’d already waited for hours the night before at Auckland Airport for a bus and oh I just hate you airports. I’m always crying at you.

BOATS
I was thinking last night that before I went to Fiji I hadn’t been on a boat since January 2nd, 1998 (post The Gathering), but that’s not true cos I went on a ferry between Russell and Paihia, and also on the Hokianga ferry, but we took a lot of boats in Fiji. We went on a Sunset Cruise which we thought would be a big boat, but it was just a rowboat with an outboard motor that we had to cross the sandflats to get to, carrying glasses of wine, and then the guy asked us if he could go faster, and it was great but all the wine flew out of our glasses. Then there was a catamaran out to South Seas Island, and a little boat to get to the island & the submariney boat, and a smaller boat to get to Malamala and their little boat and that’s about it. Well, it certainly felt nautical to me. This is a boring thread.

BOYS
It seems that there is some appreciation for the curves in Fiji – or perhaps because of the heat I was wearing lower cut tops than usual and it would have been the same in NZ. But I’m not sure. One night Kate and I were sitting out on the porch of our bure having a drink, talking shit about the next door neighbour and just generally enjoying ourselves. Kate went inside to pee, or get more drinks, or cheese, or something, when along came the security guard. No, he wasn’t there to tell us to shut up, he just wanted to hang out. Okay. So we made chit chat, and blah blah blah, and Kate came back out again, and we talked some more and then he was boring us and we wanted him to leave but by that stage he was already sitting on the steps of our bure smoking. Since Kate and I had already discussed whether or not we were going to go to mysterious Hell bar that only appeared at night and blasted out bangra til all hours, we asked him if there were any good places we should go to if we were going to go out in Nadi. He was like “you want to go to nightclubs? I know some good places. I’ll take you out tomorrow because I finish my shift at 10pm, so you can get some dinner and I will meet you here”. We were like “oh okay, that sounds okay” before he was all “but you can’t let my bosses know, we’ll have to go secretly, blah blah blah” and “my friend is a taxi driver, I’ll get him to take us” and it just seemed a little more dodgy. And he was staring in the bad way, not the good way. After he finally left, we decided we’d wait and see if we were still keen to go out the next night. After an early morning and a long day on South Seas Island, we decided that no, we weren’t particularly keen to go out, and so we debated all the ways that we could get out of going out – like pretending to be sick, or hiding, or going out by ourselves. He was waiting in the dark for us to walk past though, so we just said we were too tired and he said maybe another night, he’d get his friend to take us out and join us when we finished at 1am. Well, we certainly weren’t very keen to be passed around like that, so in order to get out of it, on another night, we got a guy from the bar to walk us back to our room….

Our waiter at dinner the first night very coconspiritoratorly asked us if we smoked, and I thought he was after a lighter, but then apparently he said somethign about Bob Marley, and I was like “ooooh. No.” but he kept asking, like he wanted to sell us weed, and then he kept touching me, always patting me or stroking me from then onwards and it seemed like he’d go for wherever my sunburn dejour was. I don’t like being touched so much, dammit!

One night we were sitting at the bar having a drink when three local boys asked us to play pool with them. Being obliging young ladies, we said yes, and so we ended up playing two games against them. One of them decided that the best way to pick me up was to talk about how fat I was, first touching my upper arms and saying “powerful muscles!” and then when they asked us if we smoked (dude, what the fuck is it with everyone trying to sell us pot?) and I said no, he was like “oh, I thought you were so fat because you smoked so much”. I was like “I think you’re the rudest boy I’ve ever met. I didn’t say anything about how bad your skin was, you know, where are your manners?” He didn’t get it. Turns out they didn’t get a lot of things. When they kept trying to force their beer on us, telling us how great Fiji Draught was, we asked if they worked for the brewery, or if they were doing viral marketing. They didn’t get it. The guy that was trying to pick Kate up apparentlyl taught web programming, so she told him that I edited websites. He asked me what I did, so I said that I wrote the content for the site. He didn’t understand what content was, and asked me if I wrote in php. It’s nice to know that programmers universally don’t realise that websites actually have to have content! The other guy that was trying for me, who kept touching me got really nasty and competitive when he thought he was losing, while the guy with the bad skin got really bitter that I was playing with his friend. We had to call it a night right about then. They were just toooooo pushy.

Another night at the bar we were talking to everyone there, including Marilyn from Blehiem who we’d got to know on South Seas Island (her and her husband had been coming to Club Fiji for twelve years, twice a year – they took one holiday together and one holiday apart each), and a couple of expats. One of them said he was developing a new resort, and he said he could get us tickets to go out there. Well, yeah, we’re oppotunistic, so we did talk to him for a long time. We got to talking about the upcoming election, and he said he wasn’t voting, so I (of course) went off on a speil about how you’ve got to believe in something and stand up for it (but only if it’s something that I believe in, of course!) and we got on to the civil unions bill – which he thought was wrong. Homos are unnatural. But lesbians are okay – are you guys lesbians? He asked about three times. I told him the say thing every time, that I wasn’t gay with Kate, but yes, sometimes I like women. And then we went into a loooooooooooong speil about how it was perfectly natural. His arguement of course came down to “anal sex with men is gross”. I felt a little bad saying in front of the bartender “so when you’re with a woman, all you ever do is put your penis in her vagina and that’s your whole relationship there?” I think he was too drunk at that stage to get it. He started going on about the bible, so Kate asked him to quote specific passages that spoke out against homosexuality, and I was waiting for him to say Levidicus, but oh no, he didn’t even know that, so we told him that there wasn’t a single mention of it in the bible but boy that was a nice shirt he was wearing of mixed thread. Then Kate said “I’m a scientist…” (which anyone who’s ever heard the story of how outrageously angry she got when we were playing headbands and she was Einstein and when she found out she yelled “BUT YOU SAID I WASN’T AUSTRALIAN!” and we were like …………… until Simon said “are you thinking of Young Einstein?” should know means that she is full of crap, but I was too drunk to hear her say that bit) and launched into a story about how in Africa, there’s been studies done that show there are gay lions who are totally welcomed, because they don’t represent a threat to the leader’s authority, but they help to protect the female lions. Hey, it seemed plausabile at the time, the guy totally believed her – probably partly because he was still hoping we were lesbians together with him. In retrospect, if Kate ever tells that story about the lions again, I told her she should said it’s been written about in a book called Gay Pride. I am hilarious. Anyways, eventually the bar closed, and we realised that the creepy security guard – who had periodically been asking Kate where I was would be lurking around our room wanting to go out with us. We asked the guy to walk us back to our room, and his eyes went !!!!!!!!, so when we got back to our room I said “you do realise we’re not going to have sex with you, right?” and he said “do you have anything to drink?” and then peed in the bushes while Kate went back to reception to get them to unlock our room cos we’d lost our key (inside, we’d left our room open but housekeeping must have locked it). Charmer. Eventually I got bored, and he hadn’t given us tickets, so I went to bed. He asked Kate to go for a moonlight walk on the beach, but strangely she declined, so he finally left. I hope that our gay lions have changed his outlook on life.

COMEDY DUO

Apparently Kate’s dad has suggested that her and I together are a comedy duo. Once she told me that, it was a phrase that I heard many times in my head, when Kate’s suitcase weighed 30kg at check-in, or when we lost our room key, or when we couldn’t get out of the water on Malamala Island because of the undertown and slippery sand, or when we got caught up in hammocks etc…. Possibly the biggest mistake this comedy duo made was to try to walk through the field between our resort and the next. It was dark, deep and full of infectious mosquitos, ditches and streams. No snakes though.

FLIGHTS
The flight to Fiji was much more spacious than I thought it would be. I loved the tan fake leather seats. We asked if we could be upgraded, and they checked, but apparently it was full. The continental breakfast was quite good. I didn’t have champagne. The movie was Lemony Snickett so I didn’t watch it. The flight back was much more squishy. I drank some wine. The movie had Vin Diseal and kids in it. What was Lorelei thinking?

FOOD
I ate a lot of rib eye. The food was mostly decidedly average, but the steak was good.

INJURIES