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.

That made the rest of the week a little more dealable-with-able, along with sending a series of “this is why I am angry with you” emails to a series of people. And so on Friday morning I found myself up before 7am, with the shuttle picking me up at 7.20am. Golly gee, that was an early morning. Air NZ has gone all super high tech at the airport, where you check yourself in at a kiosk, print your own sticker for your bag, and just biff it on the conveyor-belt yourself. At this stage I would like to mention that the Caltex in the Newtown shops still sends an attendant out to pump your gas for you. What is happening to service in the rest of the world? Won’t someone please think of the children? Anyways. I had heaps of time so I got a coffee from Fuel and read the paper, but if I’d known that they wouldn’t give me a stamp for the coffee, I would have gone to Wishbone.

The flight itself was uneventful, and touching down in Tauranga was pretty. As soon as my taxi driver found out that I’d never been to Tauranga before, he proceeded to narrate everything, which is what I hoped for. He gave me so much information that I was constantly able to pull it out over the weekend and impress Kat & Kane, or at least make them start calling the taxi driver my boyfriend. He answered my questions about how much a taxi to the Mount would be, pointed out where the buses went from, explained that the Strand went off on Saturday nights (his words) and lifted my suitcase out of the car for me. The reception staff at the hotel were just as friendly and nice, finding me a room that was available then rather than making me wait, and asking when I’d like my complimentary drink delivered. My room on the fifth floor was absolutely lovely:

Devonport St is the main shopping street in Tauranga, apparently, so there were lots of places around. There were also lots of vacant shops, but mostly it was a pleasant little high street full of chain stores. A block over and down I found a little plaza area, and decided to eat at Bravo because they had lots of sunny outdoor tables. I had mushrooms on toast with super crispy bacon and enjoyed the sunshine. I found the city art gallery and marvelled at the collection of NZ paintings that BNZ bought during 1982-1987 before they went bankcrupt or whatever, and talked to the attendant about how patronage of the arts will no doubt suffer in this current R-Word climate. After that, I strolled around a bit more before heading back to the hotel for a lovely nap on the huge big bed. Even Damian Christie recommends the hotel, and that says a lot.

Then it was KAT TIME! She came to meet me at the hotel and I hugged her so hard I almost went all Mice & Men on her. I offered to buy her a pedicure, so we went off in search of a place that would take us. The first place we tried right across the road was busy, but the second one we found (there are nail salons EVERYWHERE in Tauranga, it’s a little weird) the woman said she could do us both at once. Oooer. So we clambered up into the massaging chairs and soaked our feet while she slid back and forth between us. I know we didn’t have appointments, but she was really rushed because as we discovered she had another client coming in, and I just don’t think we got a very good deal. I was really disappointed that we didn’t get the dead skin razored off our feet, or any kind of massage (in fact, she only rubbed lotion into one of my feet!) and the nail polish job was patchy, and since my toenails are unnaturally thick, I always put polish on their edge, but she didn’t. For $48 each, I thought it was seriously lacking (although looking at their site now, what they list is what we got). Still, I bought some bright yellow nail polish as well, and it was relaxing to have the soak and the electric massage, and that’s what I was after. Perhaps I was spoiled by my only other pedicure experience in New York. And in fact, looking at prices of other places on the net right now, maybe that’s pretty standard or actually fairly cheap. Ahh well.

So yes, anyway, Saturday. They picked me up and we went to Grindz on First Avenue for breakfast after we flagged walking up to Fifth for some sort of market. They said that the staff at Grindz can have bad attitudes, but my french toast and coffee were great, even if the toast was more eggy than I personally prefer. Plus I love that Grindz has a whole dedicated playroom for kids to keep them out of my ears. We did some shop-browsing, then jumped on a bus over to the Mount. Kane wanted to go to a particular op shop, so we went to the “bad” part of the Mt Manganui shops. It all seemed a bit sad and shut down. I tried on a thousand pairs of sunglasses, but I still can’t find any I like as much as the glasses I wear these days which I’ve had since 1999 (May 1, 1999 to be exact! Which was also the first day I told someone to their face that I loved them is how I know that for a fact) and they’re all scratched up to hell. Eventually we got to go and plonk our asses down on the beach and watch a family learn to surf. I couldn’t help but cheer every time any of them caught a wave, especially the 10 year old girl. Kat also made me laugh and cheer and clap by performing the chicken dance from Arrested Development for me and also for Lisa, except that it was too high-res to mms to her. But here it is for you. Turn your head!

And if that video doesn’t make you happy, then you are officially (OFFICIALLY!) the lamest person on the face of the planet. Now, when I twitted that I was going to Tauranga, I asked people what I should do. Almost everyone who replied told me I should go for a walk up the Mount. Here is a picture of the Mount.

Back at the hotel (my room was apparently aproximately the size of their house) there was more napping (I LOVE napping with people, I could totally be friends with Bret and Jermaine) and many episodes of The Simpsons before we strolled off to the fish dock for dinner.

When I woke up to my alarm, I looked at the time on the alarm clock that I’d also adjusted, and realised that MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A BITCH my cellphone had ALSO changed its time, and there was 25 minutes until my plane left. I grabbed all of my shit and rang a cab and dropped off my key. After waiting ten minutes for my taxi to show up, the driver tried calling the airport for me, but the flight was already gone. At the airport they offered to put me on the next flight to Auckland, but it was only going to save me $20 or so and I would have had to wait around there too, so I decided that I’d just take the next flight to Wellington – at a cost of $370 extra. I waved my arms in pretendish-fiero when I found out that at least I’d get air points for that flight so that I wouldn’t cry. I took my complimentary Herald On Sunday to a picnic table outside and waited three hours for my flight, really regretting not having taken the time to call the airport before leaving the hotel so that I could have showered and had a decent coffee and breakfast in town. Sigh. And then the fucking shuttle in Wellington went all the way around Oriental Bay and then back into Newtown while I sat there fuming and just wanting to be home and clean and with my kitty. Grrr. Bad way to end a holiday but oh man, it was a glorious time, so chilled out, relaxed and pampery. It was exactly what I needed and the perfect time to have it too. I will go back.

My first memories of the Brown Sugar Cafe, (probably from 1997 going up to check on AUT, and then on so many subsequent trips back and from Auckland, including one particularly memorable road trip to Mark F’s 21 where Jo (starla) only got to come along because she returned a teaspoon to her mother in time) were of me drinking cappuccinos, which came with a chocolate-covered coffee bean on the spoon, They used to have monstrously big foccaia sandwiches filled with tomato, alfalfa and thick long slices of Camembert cut all the way across the wheel, and they cost something like $5, but no more. They do still have chicken and cashew croissants, but they’re smaller, staler, and my bill for a tiny croissant, a juice and a bacon in cibatta was $18. State High Way One Robbery, I tell you!

But that area is my most favouritest to drive in, so off I set, cranking up Eight Arms To Hold You and realising that I know all the words still, and – as I twittered once i got off the Desert Road – their songs have essentially the same structure as my essays I used to write in fifth form. Introduce your theme, provide three examples, sum up. And these sheets smell like bayous, not mine, not yours, not yours. It was sweaty and hot, and on the Desert Road all I could think about was the piece I wrote called ‘North of You’ in 101 Stories That I Want To Tell You, and hey, it’s 2009, you’re going to contact me, right? It’s been three years. But it was a different person’s handprint that I have burned into my thighs. I fucking hate being left alone to my thoughts all day eh. It was like every single line of every song I sung was directly applicable to me – even when I switched away from Birds to Britney Spears in total desperation.

There was tar on my shoes from Taihape, which made the pedals sticky and somewhat scary to operate. When I got a can of the newly redesigned coke from the Tairua Caltex and waited an eternity for their one bathroom because it was just after 5pm when the public toilets close, it exploded on me in the car. I lost my glasses somewhere before Hamilton and spent a frenzied frantic ten minutes tearing my car apart to re-find them. I got stuck behind a Newman’s coach liner from Hamilton to Huntly, and then I overshot the city because I got confused about Great South Road and State Highway One and ended up on the expressway to Auckland before I manged to call the Romantic Getaways place and finally found it. I was overwhelmed by seeing Kat again, and trying to hustle into my room, and trying to get a shower, and discovering that my room hasn’t been renovated at all, and in fact they’d given me a single bed because I’M NOT MARRIED but Kat insisted that I’d paid for a double so I may in fact be sleeping on the owners’ bed, and that is why I only have two pillows, despite all the other furniture piled up in this room. Half the corridors here are still linoleum, and i need to use school-camp quality bathrooms – unless I go down to K&K’s honeymoon suite, where their shower has two heads, and oh yes, I had them both going, at different temperatures on top of me and I giggled and giggled and giggled at the sensation, and also at the thought of wasting all that water, and then Kane came back to his room and I told him that his wedding treat was waiting for him, and oh how we laughed!

Eventually after more cat-herding than even I would ever be able to deal with (parents, cousins, brothers, oldies, littlies) we headed down the hill to the Old Courthouse Cafe for a lot more waiting for late people. I got some wine as soon as was civilized to do so, and oh, it was nice, It’s been hard being so dry lately when my friends are all so wet, The staff were very unsure with wines, but the wood-fired scotch fillet was oh my fricking good amazing.

More cat-herding found me and Kat and Brooke and Vanessa in Kat’s suite, ever so vaguely watching The Princess Bride, while Brooke practised doing Kat’s makeup, and Vanessa and I had facials and hand jobs. I’ll put links in to the appropriate PPP posts when I have internet, I swear. But now I might find my book, see if I can read little while I wait for zopiclone, and get my eyes ready to cry lots tomorrow! OMG OMG OMG! They’re getting married!

Air NZ says that it’s rolling out personalised entertainment in August on all Pacific flights, but they hadn’t reached our plane yet. Geez, could I sound more whiney? Seriously, outside is one of the most beautiful places ever and I’m still bitching about the flight. It’s the dread of the nearly 6 hours return. Anji was right, I think we’re going through Tonga. We had steak pies and Kapiti Ice Cream. The air hostess poured me a double vodka and soda, which washed away the sicky feeling of Lindauer at Auckland Airport. I listened to Bic Runga on my ipod and tried to sleep.

It took a while to get through customs at Apia, and then fight off taxi touts. Someone from the airport eventually told us where we needed to trade in our vouchers, so we got lei’d and clambered into a van with plastic covered seats. Who needs knees anyway? We sat for another long period, waiting for a couple from business class. Privileged douches I thought, although as it happens they took that long because of one of their bags didn’t arrive. I rescind my judgment so that I may never lose a bag. The older couple sitting in front of us started talking to the rich yuppie woman who switched on her blackberry as soon as she got in the coach (I’d turned on my phone so I could take photos because my camera was in my bag, but then I put it away because I didn’t want to be that girl. Remuera Woman decided that it was vitally important that she share her wide knowledge with Yuppie Woman, so she started telling her about how in NZ most Pacific people live in the same area, and then started going on about how unfortunate they were, blah blah very very very condescending, and her husband chimed in with “I hired one once but…” It was at that stage that I leaned over and whispered to Karen “I hear they all know each other too!” and put on my iPod so I wouldn’t have to listen any more.

Sigur Ros made a good soundtrack for the lush tropicalness of the island. It was 7 in the morning, so the roads were full of school kids in different coloured uniforms heading off to class. Every little shop advertised Beer Valima. Almost all the houses we passed were open-sided fales. It was a little weird to see things like microwaves sitting out in the open. Horses and dogs and piglets and cats and chickens roamed around like the hoodlums they are. I miss Sebastian.

We were worried that our room wouldn’t be available when we got there, but luckily, it was, and we were shown to a very very cute over-water fale, the porter hefting my 20kg suitcase on his shoulder as he pulled Karen’s along. The fale had a bathroom that took up a good quarter of the space, with open sides. Not a whole lot of privacy in the room for two people, but I guess these things happen.

I threw our welcome garlands into the ocean and pretended to be doing a maritime funeral, but my camera lense was kind of condensed from the change in temperature. We decided to go eat breakfast (waffles), sweltering in the heat, and then put our togs on for the first time. The water was absolutely magic. So warm and lovely although not all that deep. I frolicked for a very long time before I turned wrinkly, and it was time for a great airport-taint-washing-off shower, recliners on our private balcony and stupid magazines to read (I’m looking at you, Madison!) We tried to nap before lunch, and managed to doze off. I volunteered to take the single couch-bed for the night, figuring I’d sleep fine with all the tiredness and the zopiclone. That was of course before the mosquitoes showed up.

At lunch, we ordered the house ros? because it was part of our meal plan, and if you’re looking at that and it displays like an ?mlaut, it’s because I am so very fucking rock’n roll. I had a fish fry that arrived in a big grass basket, with manioka fries and breaded eggplant, while Karen had a spicy raw tuna Ahi Poke salad. Yes! Being on holiday is nice.

Because I followed my wine with a couple of Vailima beers, when we got back to our over-water fale, I was very keen to keep on drinking, or at least to satisfy a long-held wish of mine – to be swimming and drinking beer at the same time. Our room’s minibar was complimentary, but of course, there was no bottle opener. Cue much much hilarity as I struggled to open my bottle. I wish that American Will had been there to open it with his teeth, or at least pretty much all of my male friends who all smoke and open their beers with their lighters. Instead, I put on my own comedy show for Karen, when she suggested I open one beer with another. You know how at imaginary keg parties they spray all the sorority girls with beer? That was me as the bottles slightly unclipped, spraying all over my togs and into my mouth as I sucked them down. Eventually the lid came off and I trip tropped down into the water, now on low tide, to float on my back and drink beer for a couple of minutes. Of course, it was half foam by that stage, but I achieved what I wanted to achieve, and Karen took my picture.

Then we had Quiet Time in our room, lazing on the private balcony. I opened the other bottle with the aid of the closet hinge (eventually) and finished up both stupid Madison magazine and the chicklit (but good-ish) book called something like The Easy Hour. I’ve read it before if that helps explain what entertaining reading material it is. Eventually, it was some time after 4pm, so it was obviously cocktail time. We put on our togs, but there was no bartender present in the swim-up bar, so we went into the main one instead, Oh wait, but first we checked in (reception wasn’t open when we arrived) and got free maitai vouchers, which we prompted used. We sat in the bar for two cocktails, me rereading jPod and taking photos of the ladies setting up the Palm Court in magenta and purple tableclothes with some turquoise napkins – totally Pretty Pretty Pretty colours! I got all whiney as 6.30 took too long to arrive for dinner. Crazy messed-up timetables!

The restaurant was dark, but nice. I had their Samoan equivalent of prosciutto & melon – spiced beef and papaya, as well as the daily special of WAHOO! fish with spaghetti. We drank the house red wine, topped up from carafes, and it was bloody tasty.. Go the Californian Cabernet. It makes me want to book a holiday to San Fran, to stay with O + S5, but to also do a day trip wine tasting around Napa. Remind me to win lotto. What else? We went back to our room, and I took my sleeping pills. I crashed out pretty early, but woke for a long time in the middle of the night to mozzies dive-bombing my ears. Cunts! Oh, and we had a moonlight swim in the pool, with bonus full moon and a bat flying overhead. Night swimming is my most favouritist.

The second day, I decided to have the cowboy breakfast. It was pretty much bologneise that was supposed to be served over potatoes, but wasn’t. I tell you this less because I imagine that you care about what I ate, and more as a jump-off point for talking about the surprising Americanisms of Samoa. When I’ve been to Fiji, and obviously Rarotonga, New Zealand has been their main major other culture. Here however, they drive on the right side of the road (assuming that they’re sticking to their assigned lane, which wasn’t that often based on our shuttle driver, and oh yes, just like a woman from Remuera, I will decide on an entire country’s behaviour based on one person). Their chicken is American (eww?) while their Rib Eye is from New Zealand. The posh toilet block by the restaurant has flat elongated shallow toilets with a crescent-shaped seat that auto-flush, just like most public American toilets that I encountered, and airdryers with the force of a hurricane that literally (LITERALLY!) are so strong they make your hand skin ripple, like the bathrooms in an Irish pub off Times Square I was forced to take an emergency poo in after visiting Sephora (PPP link).

Oh, and most most most magnificently, in the swim-up bar in the geko-shaped pool, they give you your cocktails (when the bar is staffed, that is, and they still have to go in to the main bar to get the ingredients) in RED PLASTIC CUPS! !!! CHK CHK CHK! So much excitement. We contemplated packing the cups to bring them home, but didn’t.

Karen, meanwhile, had banana penekeke which was billed as Samoan pancakes but is mostly deep-fried bananas with maple syrup, They’re so good that I had them for breakfast today. While we were stuffing our faces, the lovely staff were moving us from our over-water Fale La into one of the Royal Villas – Vila Aili. Did I mention that I got us a $1500 upgrade for free when the Garden Suite that we wanted wasn’t available but we’d already paid for it and our meal plan? According to the Coconuts website, the over-water fale is like US $399 a night, and the Royal Villa is US $400. We paid like NZ $4400 total for five nights, five days of meal plan at NZ $75 a day (Breakfast, lunch and three-course dinner, with lunch and dinner having unlimited (ish) wine and beer), flights and taxes. I think we win. Maybe? I dunno. Well actually, I think the mosquitoes win, but fuck’em, we got plugin thingies from the gift shop, so they can fuck off and die. Oh also, the plugins have NZ plugs, but most of the plugs here are American, to return to the earlier theme.

What else did we do yesterday? Lots of swimming in the pool, paddling and floating in the ocean. Did I tell the porn-star story about the beers already? I did. We didn’t get a bottle opener in the new room either, so there were more shenanigans. I found a handy wooden corner to pop it off, so to speak. I also popped it off when I woke up and heard Karen snoring. Very quietly, of course.

We took a stroll to along the beach to the Sinalei resort which we could see in the distance. It looked very close but took a long time to walk to on the sand, especially with my big blister caused by the arch support in my birki jandals that I’m not used to. The Sinalei beach was like Scorching Bay to Coconuts’s my little secret beaches, and there were shrieking children. We had a cocktail each at their dock-ish bar, then had a paddle. The tide had come in while we were there, so half the walk home was a wade. Exhausting. No one should have to do that much work on holiday!

That night being Saturday, they had a fire-dancing show in the restaurant, which made me think of the Patricia Grace book The Children of Champion Street in which a magical eel brings all the cultures together in Cannons Creek and they all dance their special dances. I used to work with her son and have met some of his brothers. They are all very very very attractive and look much younger than they actually are. And, a confession if you got this far – at Anya’s goodbye party at the See Dubya Eh, I pinched his bottom, and then looked away so noone knew it was me. Te hehe.

Anyways, the fire dancers were very cool, even if I had to drink kava that Karen wouldn’t take. I was supposed to say “Manuia” which made me think of Mike Brown, but of course in writing it, I realise that he has a P. But not a habit, if you know what I mean. Karen also wouldn’t get up and dance when asked. We just concentrated on our food – Karen had Tuna Tartar (with anchovies and egg yolk) and I had Oka, which is sometimes (well in Raro) known as Ika Mata, which is raw tuna soaked in lime juice and coconut cream. It is delicious. Our main course was the ever-present Cabernet and our steaks and afterwards, I had Chocolate Dream Cake full of molten chocolate fudge sauce. Holy crap it was good.

We were so stuffed we could hardly move (I’ve named my belly Brian,and Karen’s is called Andrew), so we went back to our room, drank Amarula and read each other a chapter of The Pirates! In an adventure with Napoleon by Gideon Defoe, who pretends to be related to that Cruise-oh guy. We keep getting the accents mixed up, but we’ve finally decided that the Pirate Capitan talks like a pirate, the Pirate with the Scarf (his number two) is a Scotsman with occasional lapses into Irishness, the Pirate in Green is a faaaaaaaaaabulous homosexual, the Governor of St Helena is a toffee-nosed Brit, and, surprisingly enough, Napoleon is comically French. I popped zopiclone and fell asleep by ten pm.

On Sunday morning, I had deep-fried bananas for breakfast and my first coffee in a long time. We took advantage of the high-ish tide to go snorkeling for the first time, 20 metres from our villa. Booyah! There were some rocks with isolated patches of live coral. but there were lots of fish. Schools of silvery fish, parrot fish that are more faintly coloured than in Rarotonga (EDIT: turns out they were trevalli), and really playful Pierrot fish, Or maybe clownfish. Karen and I aren’t sure (EDIT: turns out they’re Trigger Fish. Oh well!). They get all up in your face, which Karen sees as a threat (because it apparently butted her), while I feel it’s an invitation to follow. There’s a quite strong current from our beach, so a couple of times I floated down to the beach by the swimming pool, got out and walked up again. It’s like skiing, or going on a water slide with the gap in between to relax your puckered snorkel mouth.

After snorkeling and perhaps some showers from our rock tub, (insert pictures here), we went to chill out in the giant library/common space, and I found myself a marvelous Jackie Collins novel to pass the time. There were two shelves dedicated to abandoned German novels – except Karen informs me now that some of them were French and some of them were Danish. There’s also German information in the booklet in our room, so I informed her that there used to be a huge German presence in Samoa until like, 1860, or perhaps after the first world war (5th form history was a while ago) until NZ took over guardianship. “And boy, did they fuck up” says Karen (insert link to wikipedia article on killing thing here) – if I can’t find the link, it’s “that thing what Helen apologised for”. Have I mentioned lately that I love Helen? Fuck you, Code of Conduct, you’re loving the violation, you dirty bitch.

On the blackboard outside reception, we discovered that there was a bbq lunch, and we were gleeful. Did I mention already that our holiday agenda was sun, sea, drinking and eating? I was trying to come up with ‘S’ words there but failed. Karen suggested “snacking” but seriously, I’m totally limited to exactly three meals per day here. Apart from cocktails and Vailima of course. And if I happened to grab any fish. Heh. Anyways, I had ribs while Karen had some big steak of some “local” fish. It may have been groper, but apart from when I rub suntan lotion or chilled mango body butter on her, I am keeping my hands to myself. She says “the flavour certainly grabbed me though”. As would like to this dumbass Australian guy in the bar who says he’s counting our drinks, and then tonight told Karen it must be good book when she was clearly enjoying her reading. Douche. Ahhh Australians, we can hear them for miles around here. Some of them are nice enough though, like the woman in the pool who asked if it was me drinking the Catapult, and warned me it would knock me on my ass and then proceeded to fall back into the pool when trying to get out of it. They were merry and nice.

More snorkeling when the tide was higher at 4pm, more showers and pirates and hilarious beer-openings. At dinner, Karen ordered the escargot for an entree because she could, and daaaaaaaaaaamn it was fabulous, all butter and garlic and mushroomy. I had “cajun sashimi which was lightly seared tuna. It was so pink it looked like jelly, and it was delicious. Karen ate fish with papaya and I had the special of Mongolian chicken. We drank many glasses of cabernet sav (go Cali!) and afterwards lingered in the bar for more cocktails. There’s only two n the menu we haven’t had now, and we’ll take care of that tomorrow.

On Monday I had French Toast for breakfast. The waitresses have started giggling at me for the amount I drink – not just the beer and wine refills but the sheer depravity of having OJ and coffee AND water at once. More snorkelling was had, and we saw starfish and real parrot fish, only they were teeny tiny, and cardinal fish, and prettiness. I’m a bit scared of snorkelling in shallow water, due to the time that I had a panic attack and got cut up real bad on the Fiji coral at Malamala Island, so I get a bit angsty here when there are large banks of rocks’n coral to drift over only two feet below you. But I know if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s floating, so it’s not so bad. And when you find a live patch of coral it makes it totally worth it. Our equipment’s really good too, no leaky masks, or old snorkels without drainage valves. I so recommend this place, like woah.

Karen did some sketches of me but I look like someone else in them. I read more fabulous Jackie Collins and did imitation pilates moves in the pool. I had a burger “all the way” at lunchtime which meant it came with mushrooms and onions and apparently three kinds of cheese. Karen had a chicken salad served in a papaya. I don’t mean to complain, but it’s a damn shame there’s no drinks served in pineapples here, although their signature cocktail does come in a ripe coconut (insert picture here). Our afternoon snorkeling was too shallow because we went too early. Also it was grey and rainy. I changed the voice of the Pirate with the Scarf into that of a Southerner, because my version of Scottish and my version of Pirate are too similar.

It poured that night, poured and poured, and we did crossword puzzles in a New Idea that someone else had haphazzardly started but really sucked at. I finished the Jackie Collins and started some terrible vampire novel that’s set in New Orleans but isn’t by Anne Rice. We finished the pirates book, although it turns out I needed Karen to tell me how it finished (Zopiclone makes me forgetful, but I always remember to take my Lexapro and my Levothyroxine in the mornings.

But there was no time to fume. The Quadrant’s lobby was stark white and filled with scented candles. I rolled my bag down the long white walkway through the bar area and into a lift that had an embedded TV screen playing Juice. My room was tiny but functional. I discovered to my perverse joy later that I could sit on the toilet, blowdry my hair, drink vodka and watch TV all at the same time. What more could anyone want? A quick shower later, I was in a corporate cab from the Hyatt next door on my way to Kingsland. The sun was setting and reflected in all the shiny new architecture along Symonds Street. It was a beautiful view, but holy fuck, $18 for that distance? That amount would have got me to Greenlane in the olden days!

I grabbed two bottles of wine from Weta Wines, pleased it was still there and still open, and headed to Canton. There were still people at the table I’d booked (bastards!) so I went and stood on the street outside. Bopha came up and left to get cash and wine. Amy & Ross came along and left to get wine. Then came Martina and Heather. Robyn and Heather’s b/f Ben eventually completed our party, since Clay and Nige flaked.

I had been salivating over the prospect of dinner at Canton since I booked my tickets up to Auckland, and while the large group and noise of the place made converastion difficult, the food didn’t disappoint. As usual, I was appointed/appointed myself chief orderer, so with some deference to Martina’s vegetarianism, we had: black bean hapuku, sweet & sour pork, sizzling venison with ginger & spring onions, crispy roast pork, special black chilli chicken, sizzling vegetables and egg noodles with fried veges. YUM! Two people took doggie bags home, and with tea and dim sum and rice and corkage, we each paid $19.25. So good!

Afterwards we were going to go to Ruby for more drinks, but it was too loud, and so we settled on the Kingslander for a couple more bottles of wine. There were television screens EVERYWHERE, it was most distracting. But good to be able to converse. I like my friends. I cabbed back to the hotel eventually, and debated ordering porn from the in-house video system, just because I could, but it was $17.95 per movie, so I settled for watching Wild On: Naked instead. Genius.

The next morning, I set my alarm for 10.30 so I could wake up to meet Heather who was coming to the hotel at 11. We discovered that breakfast stopped being served at 10am, so tragedy of tragedies, we had to go straight for bubbly and cheese. As we sat in the sunny courtyard and I started to burn, we heard someone playing an electric guitar, and the sound bounced off the building next door. Given that Heather’d spotted John Toogood and Phil Knight in the lobby, we were happy to think that it was Shihad playing in our hotel, but it sounded pretty terrible, so maybe it was Grinspoon instead, who were due to be opening for Muse that night.

Once the sun got to be a bit too much, we tried to pay our bill, which took forever (the staff were friendly but not highly competant), and we got changed and went into the spa. Hurray! Yeah, a spa on a hot day after drinking caffiene and alcohol might not be the smartest idea ever, but it was loooooooovely. And then it was quite obviously time for lunch, so we strolled down to the Art Gallery, hoping to have lunch there, but found it was shut. Luckily Rueben at the New Art Gallery was open, so we parked ourselves on one of the balconies there, I had an average lamb salad, Heather had amazing french toast, and we had a totally unnecessary but very happy bottle of Deutz as well. Mmmmmm indulgence! And then just to show that we’re not totally cultureless, we went around the art gallery too. Upstairs was an exhibition called Making Worlds, which was really bloody cool. They had a seven minute animation loop called “City Glow” going on in a darkened room, which I totally could have watched all day. Although it made me feel far too Jessica Simpsony lame and pointless when I saw it was produced by Takashi Murakami and I was like “He did those brightly coloured Louis Vittion prints!”. Like I need to know that.

Eventually Heather and I parted company, and I went back to the hotel for naps and snacks, before KateH came to pick me up in the evening. We went to her beautiful house which is down by the water, and had a few drinks while we waited for the Checks and Grinspoon to get off the stage. Drive-thru burgers from Wendy’s ensured that our timing was perfect to actually get a park by the Waitakere Stadium, and we’d only missed two of Muse’s songs. We’re both so old now that we didn’t mind that at all. When did I stop queuing for things hours before they began? Was it around the same time that my knees started to go? But anyways, the gig was AMAZING. So good. When they played ‘Hysteria’, I had an auralgasm of the kind I hadn’t experienced since Dimmer. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Totally matched up to my dirty dream that featured it prominently in it. And we saw Amanda and Darren, which was nice, and left when they turned on the lights. And then we were naughty and had an after-hours spa back at the hotel, which was fantastic for sore feet and knees, especially since it was merely lukewarm. Best Friday EVER!

The next morning was Saturday, and I slept in, loving the bed, before I decided it was time to drag my ass out into the streets. I strolled down to Gloria to have breakfast, where my French toast wasn’t as good as Heather’s, but the coffees were nice and I read the paper cover to cover. Then I got on the link bus to go to the museum, but I started feeling all nostalgic and weird, because of all the memories of the route (which are detailed in ‘Link’ in 101 Stories that I want to tell you of course) and so I decided to just stay on the bus and go all the way around the city. Well, I got off briefly in Ponsonby to buy vodka and bread, but you know what I mean.

Finally it was time for me to meet Martina and David and also Karl at the Queen Street bus stop to go to the Lynfield YMCA for the wrestling. Oh yes. I went west, life is peaceful there. I went west, people had terrible hair. The ride on the 257 was pretty full of nostalgia too, given the two flats I lived in on/off Dominion Road. It was also interesting hearing other people’s stories, like where they lost their virginities. And drinking vodka from a ginger ale bottle made me feel like a fourteen year old again, and who doesn’t like that? We got to Lynfield with some time to spare, so we hunted out food for the boys, and I sang the YMCA song a lot with the actions, and we took this photo in front of the vets. And now I might just revert into a photo montage to sum up the awesomeness of the wrestling, and my brand new boyfriend with a spectacular ginger mullet.

After a cold long wait for the bus, we all started falling asleep on the back seat. Nevertheless, Martina and David came back to my hotel room for a while, and helped me polish off the remaining food and vodka, and I stayed up late watching E! again. Good times.

On Sunday I was expecting to have brunch with Bopha and Clayton, but she was stuck out west somewhere, and Clayton made other plans, so after checking out at 12 and leaving my suitcase with reception, I returned to Gloria to have a very very long breakfast by myself with the Sunday Star Times. Finally it was getting near time to find myself an airport bus, so I went to get my suitcase, and I asked them where the airport bus stop was, and they told me down on Symonds Street. So I rolled my case up to a stop in the hot hot sun, but couldn’t find any markings on it to indicate that the airport bus might stop there. I rang Maxx, and they gave me the number for the airport bus company, and I couldn’t find a human, but it did mention the route, listing the Hyatt which was right next to the Quadrant, so disgruntledly I rolled back up to the Hyatt, and the doorman told me the stop was right in front of the Quadrant. Cheers clever desk staff! So I was hot and stinky and smelly then, and worried that I might not make it to the airport in time, when a shuttle pulled up in front of me and told me he’d drive me to the airport for $15, the same as the bus, since he was going that way anyway. Yay! That shuttle totally redeemed the shuttle in. And so that was the end of my time in Auckland. Very good fun indeed.

Friday 29 June was my last day at NZAID. I’d suggested that I didn’t want to have a morning tea, and suggested instead that we could have drinks. My manager asked if she should invite ISU, the internet services unit. I squawked out “NO!” very loudly at her suggestion, because that is where the Web Developer works, and if someone is the sole reason for you leaving your job, you don’t really want to see him at your goodbye drinks. Instead, I told Lani to come down for it, and invited Bart to come up, and since Shirley’s starting there soon, she came in for a meet’n greet and to stay for drinks. My manager made a tiny little speech, but they didn’t even give me a card. You know how normally cards are really lame, full of impersonal messages from people who don’t even know you? Well I miss not getting one anyway. The boy who sent me sexually harrassing hilarious emails every day only stayed for one drink. Eventually everyone left, except for Bart and Shirley, and then the company director showed up which was very nice, and this crazy sixty year old woman. Bart and I laughed comparin gthe scene to my long, drunken goodbye at CWA New Media. Then the fucking cunt showed up. I went to the bathroom, went to my desk and logged out and forgot to clear my caches, and then went to get back and Shirls saying “we’ve got to go meet Dylan now”. So we ran away, leaving my tags behind me, and went up to Tupelo.

At Tupelo we drank more wine, and more wine, and more wine. Dylan showed up with his friend who I’d given a lecture on homophobia that one time, so I bought him a beer to make up for the one I’d spilt on his pants the last time we’d met. Eventually we all started playing ‘I have never’. I’m sure that wasn’t a smart idea. Shirley felt me up and I exposed my beautiful red bra to her and Dylan. It was one of those nights.

At some stage we stumbled our way up to the Southern Cross because Bart’d gone up there to meet up with his friends. More unnecessary drinks followed (but handily provided me with a receipt saying $15 at 00.39am, which makes me think it was two glasses of wine for Shirley and I) and then I remember thinking “why is that guy’s arm around my waist?” and then I believe that the guy kissed me, and I was like “umm, don’t you have a girlfriend?” and he said “yes, I have a girlfriend” and so I think we decided it’d probably be a good idea if he left, and so I went out in the rain to the back garden to find Bart. Smoo was there too, so I was like hurrah! And then the boy showed up again and I was like “didn’t you leave?” and he was like “yeah” and offered some lame excuse as to why he was back, but I just concentrated on talking to Smoo instead. Before the night was over I propositioned the last boy that I had sex with again and he was like “not a good idea” and then I woke up on the couch at 8.30am and was like “FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK” before crawling back into bed.

I crawled out of bed at 11.30am, somehow thinking that I could get up then, pack and still make it to check-in around 12pm. Interesting line of thought there. Of course, that thinking was somewhat handicapped when I got out of the shower and realised that my passport was not where it was supposed to be. I wanted to sit down and cry but I ransacked my room instead, wailing to Smoo who’d got up to drive me to the airport. By the time I’d found it in an old handbag, I knew there was no way I could make my flight, so I sat down and bawled, going “why am I such a fucking fuck-up?”. Then I shook myself off, threw a pile of clothes into my large suitcase and asked Smoo to drive me. My suitcase didn’t fit into the boot of his MR2, so we took my car. I’d kept KateH in the text loop and she was lovely, asking me if I needed her to book me a new flight, or send Shirley over to help me.

Qantas had no more flights to Auckland before 7pm that day, apparently, so I ended up forking out $400 for a ticket on Air NZ. It didn’t go until 2.30, so I very slowly bought a paper and a latte and a pastry and sat shaking at a table in the terminal, trying to do the sudoku. Then I went and threw up the pastry and the coffee and sat trembling a little more. When I finally got into KateH’s car in Auckland, I warned her I was about to cry again, and she said that aws fine. She drove me to Wendy’s in Manukau where I proclaimed that she’d saved my life – until all the saturated fat hit my heart anyway. We gossiped, and she soothed my soul over my fuckedupstupidity, and it was just so lovely to see her.

That feeling of loveliness disappeared when I got back to the airport and found no one waiting to check me in at the Pacific Blue counters. I asked at the service desk, and they were like “that flight’s already closed!” and I was like “OH MY GOD WHAT?????????????????” before the other woman said that no, it was just at a counter at the other end of the terminal. So I told my heart that was all thumpthumpthunp to calm the fuck down, and schlepped over to the check-in counter. They asked to see my tickets. I was like “umm, wasn’t this an e-ticket?” but apparently since I was coming back on Air NZ and not Pacific Blue, that was a problem for them. I had to go to an Air NZ service desk and get them to print out my flight details, trying really hard not to cry while doing so. Then they said that there were no more seats. I just about exploded. They had to unlock some seats or something, and told me that the plane was completely full. Great. I got stuck with a window seat. The rest of the waiting time was horrible. Every duty-free shop made me dry retch. Luckily I managed to sleep on the plane, although I’m sure I snored.

But then tobacco was $20 a box at Duty Free in Rarotonga, and I got a bottle of bacaardi, and my daddy was there to pick me up and drive me to our house in a late-model BMW. I opened up the lounge doors where I was sleeping and stepped out onto our lawn and looked at Muri Beach by the light of a full moon. I’d flown over the dateline and so I had a chance to redo my Saturday so it wouldn’t be the worst day of the year again…

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:

It’d been a somewhat difficult couple of months. Mum didn’t want to move back to Japan, and she made sure that everyone knew that. One night we went out to dinner at Flanagan’s (now Sandwiches) and she and Neil fought so extensively that all I could do was sit there and cry while my sisters tried to comfort me by talking about how we could build igloos out of the potato ‘bricks’ that the menu had promised. I was saying in my head then “it’s alright for you, you get to stay”. I wished like fuck that I was in sixth form, or my first year of university instead of being ten. I wished that I was allowed to go to boarding school instead, even though I realised that boarding school probably wouldn’t be the fun and games that Enid Blyton’s Saint Clare’s books made it out to be. But it couldn’t be worse than Raroa, the school I’d never bothered to get heavily invested in because I knew all along that I’d be leaving.

And since I was leaving, I fought with Kate more than usual, blowing up at her during a lunchtime game of The Game of Life, running off to the bathroom to cry while my friends took turns trying to comfort me. When lunchtime was over and we were sitting in a circle on the mat, one of the boys asked Mrs. Petez, my sworn enemy, why I was crying, and she started on some spiel about how everyone needed to be more sensitive. I choked at what I saw as being her total and utter hypocracy, and so I got up and ran out of the room again. I sobbed hysterically in the bathroom for a while, as you do when your world is like, totally ending, and then tiny little Frances showed up and took me on a walk around the field where the cold Wellington air blew on my hot feverish cheeks in a way that I found to be very dramatic, and I was certain that a character in a Judy Blume novel would feel the same way. When I returned to class I was asked to go and see another teacher – one that I actually liked – to talk about it, and so I sat in a spinny chair in a library resource room and tried to explain how Mrs. Petez hated me and how Kate was like, totally insensitive, or whatever it was that was making me so angry. Of course Kate and I made up and I stayed at her house the day that the movers came to pack up our boxes. My mother made sure to leave my sisters almost nothing, as her way of saying “I am angry that you are not coming too”.

Of course, leaving had its benefits too. I wasn’t supposed to be allowed to get my ears pierced until I was 12, but one day we were in Hataitai for some reason, buying flowerpot bread from a bakery that I think is now the Bellagio Cafe, and Mum said it would be a good idea for me to get my ears pierced then, so that they wouldn’t be too sore on the plane. I got little pink sparklers, of course, and studiously cleaned and rotated the posts, but even so a lot of my hair got caught up on them and my ear swelled up later in the hotel in Japan. Leaving also meant shopping sprees, and being allowed to buy not only Tiger Eyes but also Forever, Mum evidently having chosen to forget our discussion about the grammatical mistakes in that book about how they came when they were already there, and her incredibly awkward explanation about “whitey fluids”. Our flight to Auckland was all about hot stuffed crossaints since we were in business class, and I peered through the curtains at the plebs in economy with their packets of cheese and crackers and decided then and there that I never wanted to be one of them. Then we got a shuttle from our travelodge hotel into Newmarket and Mum spent up large on me. I watched The Simpsons (it may have been their first ever Halloween special) that night and talked to Karen and Anji on the phone – they already seemed so far away.

The Koru Lounge seemed really strange to me – I couldn’t understand why people would need the showers there, but the idea of free food was awesome. The plane was fitted out with a camera out the front, and onscreen maps about the distance to Tokyo. We were in business class again, so there was free champagne or orange juice while we were waiting to take off. I got to go up and see the cockpit later, and there were constant deliveries of peanuts and playing cards. It was pretty much my idea of heaven. I played around with the different radio stations and watched Home Alone and Fried Green Tomatoes. The three-course lunch had Tiramisu for dessert and to this day I often think it’s a Japanese thing, and for dinner there was John Dory in a champagne sauce. I’m not sure why these things are etched so firmly into my memory, but they are. I think the hard thing about being ten is that you’re still a kid, but you’re not really a child – especially not when you’ve had to leave your sisters behind. The flight attendents couldn’t just give me some stickers and a colouring book. Well, maybe they could have. I probably had a stuffed toy with me, although I’m not sure which one. Maybe Chi Chi the monkey.

It was of course nighttime when we got there after the eight plus hour flight, so I couldn’t see what Tokyo looked like. The Narita runway was picked out in green lights and it looked spooky. Our plane landed right after a flight from the Philipines, so customs was jammed. I’m not sure if Neil didn’t know then that our red diplomatic passports could have sped us through the line, or if he just didn’t want to be ostentatious about it, so we had to wait an eternity to get through. According to Mum’s diary, (and yes, I read it when I was twelve. I’m not proud), I was really good the whole time, even though I was probably about dead on my feet. I think a well-timed sugar hit from leftover airplane lollies might have helped. The bus to Shinjuku from the airport took another two hours. I may have dozed a little, but my eyes were just too big gobbling up all the signs in a language I couldn’t read, and Mum and Neil would have pointed out landmarks that they knew from the first time they were there.

The Keio Plaza hotel is two towers joined together at the base. The lobby was huge, and featured the biggest ’80s style chandalier I’d ever seen, all square-like and sparkling. I stared at it while we checked in, Neil probably fumbling to remember his Japanese while everyone from the front desk staff down to the bell boys in their green pillbox hats probably knew enough English to see us right anyway. The tallest tower is 47 floors, the other, in which we were staying on the 28th floor was 34. Always before whenever I’d stayed in hotels, I’d been in at least an interconnecting room with my parents. This time I was in a big room with two double beds all by myself. Over the next two weeks I would come to relish that space, and feel Very Very Grown-Up in there, but that night, despite knowing that my parents were just down the hall and only a phone call away, I was terrified.

1. My kitchen is all sorted out now. This was a bigger task than you might think, given that we are now officially (OFFICIALLY) the coolest flat in town with two fridges and a full-length freezer. Badoom Chish.

2. My books, also, are all sorted out on a new tall black bookshelf that Briar brought with her but won’t be using because she said she’s not really in to books. And they’re all alphabetical, and chronological by author, and it makes me happy. Except when they’re all sorted out like that I can tell instantly how many of my Douglas Couplands have been appropriated by evil borrowing fiends, and that makes me sad.

3. The leaving beads around my neck (three more sleeps!) go really well with my black and white striped top. An emo is I!

4. Now I don’t have to worry about any more job interviews, I can finally get my hair striped blue-black/aubergine. But I need to get it cut first, since while Anji’s trim looked good at the time, the bluntness of those scissors has left me more split-ended than ever.

Big things that make me happy

1. It’s less than a month until I go to America. Fuck Yeah! Suggestions for what to do with myself in New York and San Francisco will be gratefully accepted.

2. It’s five sleeps until I start my new job!* I’m going to be Helping People. Or at least the government body that I will be working for will be. I will be its web coordinator for six months. And I will make more money than here. I will, however, be far away from Contours so I might have to join a gym down that end of town. Any suggestions?

*Contingent on my passing security clearence, that is. The form was about 30 pages long, and wanted to know such things as addresses of where I’d lived overseas, details about where everyone in my family works and where they were born and their nationalities, stuff about my flatmates, everywhere I’ve been overseas, my religious affiliations if my ties

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.

Thursday 2nd December
Last Thursday, I hopped in my mother’s car and I started driving and I started singing. Nine hours or so later, with stops to grab coffee and laugh at the fact that The Brown Sugar Cafe hasn’t changed its menu in seven years at least, and to eat lunch in Taihape and to gratefully make it to Tirau right on the dot of five pm in order to make it to their nice bathrooms before they shut, and without a stop to paddle in Taupo cos I kept going “next bay, next bay” and then I’d run out of bays, but with a stop in at Volcanic to leave a note for La begging him to call me and to be disgusted at what they’ve turned my proud house into, and with a little extra time spent getting lost in West Auckland, I finally arrived at KateB’s place in Oratia and got to stop driving and stop singing.

Kateb and I drank a lovely bottle of Sacred Hill Rose out of tea cups, ate dinner and talked a whole pile’o shit. I convinced her to let me sleep in their lounge instead of their spare room in which Glyn had been screenprinting, cos it was a little fumey to my oversensitive nose. So lovely to catch up and gossip. I slept really well when I went to bed too.

Friday 3rd December
I had a super hot wonderful date booked at 10.30am in Grafton so I had to haul my ass across town to get to that. Hayley was thrilled to see me, of course, and we spent a long time debating the merits of semi vs permanent, and in the end we decided on an as-permanent-as-possible semi, in order to maximise the shine. I picked a reddish colour for all over, and a darker purpley shade for low-lights. Bright bright bright! We had a wonderful gossip while she did the foils, then her trainee (I think) painted the rest of my head and one of my nails is still tinted from scratching my ear. Whoops. Nevermind. When they put heatery things around my head, they sat me in a chair with a massager built in – oooooooh lordy I giggled at first and they laughed and laughed at me. Hayley gave me a headrub when she was shampooing my hair and I purred. Then she cut the layers back in, and the fringe, and decided to do funny things on my left hand side. She was like “I love that you’re not arguing with me” and I was like “you’re holding a pair of sharp scissors!” but I of course trust her completely. Fuck my hair looked SO FUCKING GOOD when it was done. I told her I was going to dinner with all the Kates (thinking that KateM got her hair done by Hayley, when in fact it was one of the other hairdressers, nevermind) and that they’d all be inspired to get their acts together and book in for another/their first appointment. I got a fiver off for that I think. So yeah, it was $180 all up, but if you saw me on Friday, or even Saturday, you’ll know that I totally got my money’s worth, purely in saunter factor.

By the time I was done, it was midday, and I was heading to Newmarket anyways to try and find something posh to wear to the wedding/pulp party/whatever, and so I figured I’d pop up to Katem’s office to say hi. There’s parking at her office, which is great, and she was at work and thinking about lunch, which was even greater. So we headed down to some cafe on Remuera Rd (Umbria?) for some good food and nice wine and fantastic conversation. The trouble with KateM is that she’s very good at saying what I want to hear, so in discussing a particular boy she was all “I really do think he actually liked you, it was just really bad timing for you both”- which is great to hear but probably not very healthy cos it means that I obsess more – and lord knows I already obsess enough! But we had a really good catchup and gossip and she told me she was coming to my dinner that night and that I should order her something meaty if it looked like she was going to be running late.

Then I went up to Benediction to have coffee with KateB and she gave me a yellow mesh RJC scarf that she’d been sent but that suited no one, except me because I have fucking great colouring and can wear pretty much any colour. So yeah, it means I get to be way posh, since RJC is all like fancy and stuff, and expensive, and I’m so not naturally. I took the time to consult the paper to try and find a movie I wanted to see at a convenient time where I wouldn’t have to pay for parking. There really wasn’t a hell of a lot of choice, so I ended up going to the 3.45 session of Bridget Jones (again) at The Lido (which, if you are unfamiliar with, is on the cover of Dimmer’s album).

The Lido is in Epsom, which meant that I popped into The Millhouse to try and find something nice to wear. Big mistake. Sure they had my sizes, but the only things I liked were over $500. The Millhouse stocks Trelise’s fat-people range. I get to say ‘Trelise’ because I know someone who works for her, so hehehe check out me namedropping designers in this entry. So so wrong. Anyways, there was no one in the theatre except for me and two old ladies who talked loudly during the ads. The movie was funny enough I suppose, even though I was sober this time around.

I was due at KateH’s at 7pm, so I figured I’d go to St Lukes and continue my quest for Wedding Outfit. I found it! A black dress in flippy floppy material, it’s sleeveless and a little empire-waisted, and it had a pink and grey geometric print on it, which is a little strange, because that’s so much more mainstreamy than something I’d usually wear, but it is perfect for weddings, so (and let me put this in capital letters) YOU ARE ALL ALLOWED TO GET MARRIED NOW since I have the perfect outfit to wear to your wedding. Cos you’re inviting me right? Right? Yeah, anyways, so I can wear my tie-front black mesh cardigan over the top until the liquor sets in and I stop minding my arms so much. Excellent. Anyway, I was running around St Lukes when KateH texted me saying I should get to her house half an hour earlier so that we could go buy snacks in preperation for our slumber party, but I figured since I was already at the mall, I’d just do it myself. Three bottles of cheap bubbly for me, a bottle of Wither Hills Sav for her and a whole pile’o junk food loaded up and I was on my way to Pt Chevalier.

How’s my tensing going? It’s pretty shit right? I mean, for a Grammar Queen, I’m pretty loose. Oh well, y’all love me anyways because I am still SHRN. For serious.

At Kateh’s I got to wash the Auckland sweat off, and we drank a bottle while we got poshed up and watched Shorters. Then we taxied in to Kingsland to Mekong (which the divine Miss. H had booked, and then I’d rebooked to change the numbers from 9 to 11). The guestlist? On the AUT side of the table: KateH, KateM, KateB, Justin, Maree and Shirley (Me: “Just call them all Kate, they’ll get over it”). On the NZm side of the table: Heather (who wrote about it here) & Paul and Martina & her brother Chris. And then there was me at the head of the table. There was some gooooood food and some good conversation. There was a lot more wine. There was sticky rice! I heart sticky rice so much. Dinner stretched out over a long time cos we had entrees first, and people were late and all that kinda stuff. I tried to talk to everyone and to make sure everyone was having a good time, as I always do. I am a good hostess, fo’sure. Well I hope that everyone had fun anyways.

Once dinner and many many bottles of wine were finished, the AUT side headed up to Ruby while the NZm side went home after one drink. I heart Ruby! It’s a small place, but they play great eighties music and make really yummy cocktails which people kept buying for me. All my friends were drunk and they kept touching me, and I was like “aaaaaargh! I haven’t had sex in a very very long time, what the hell are you doing?” We were all dancing and singing in that tight space when a guy came up and started dancing with me. He was very hands-all-over but was very cute, so I was like oooh, and all my friends were like oooooooooooooh. He kept dancing with me and I kept grabbing his ass and we were laughing and giggling for a long time, and so when someone suggested leaving I was like “ummm no, let’s just wait a bit”. He kept leaving and coming back and then hugging me and telling me how gorgeous and wonderful I was, and then finally I realised that every time he left it was to go and talk to another boy, and so click click click, I was like “oh you’re gay right?” and he was like “yeah” and I was like DAMMIT. But we still continued dancing and having ridiculous amounts of fun. Eventually the bar called last drinks and according to my bank statements I paid $49 for a bottle of Deutz. I have no idea what time it was but it was decided it was time for us to leave – since like, they were kicking us out and shit. Plus I’d just about got into a brawl for some reason with some girl – apparently I knocked her drink but she was a total bitch about it. Anyways.

We got dial-a-driver since Maree had her car there and so while we were waiting I had a very entertaining conversation with a very drunk Justin. I don’t remember much of it, but I was probably complaining about all of his friends that I’ve scored, and recounting the conversation about the one in particular that I’d had with KateM at lunch, and he was like “hmmm” and I was like “no, I know we’re right!!!” and then he said that I was one of the most intelligent women that he knew, which is always nice to hear. And then the dial-a-drivers came and it was all very entertaining squeezing into the back of one of the cars and stopping to let Shirley out somewhere. The rest of us went back to Pt Chev and KateH’s to watch Dawson’s Creek. Yay Dawson’s retroness! Justin passed out in the bed I was supposed to sleep in, and KateM went home at some time, so it must have just been me and Maree and KateH watching. The next morning I was supposed to go to brunch with Martina and Heather but I was too hungover so I stayed napping in KateH’s lounge and watching more episodes. Season Two is totally where it’s at, since that’s when they got all self-referential-ironic and actually had a sense of humour that they later lost. I’m suprised by how hot Pacey isn’t though. I’m sure he used to make me swoon. Then again, so did Eddie Furlong – and various real life people who now I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. Ahh growing up is funny. So is revisiting your not-so-grownupness .

Oh, and apologies to anyone who was in Arizona tonight who saw more than they wanted to when I flashed my boobies at my parents cos they asked.

Last night I got a txt message from Ayna saying “we shd jst get a bottle and get fckd at hm like the old dayz” and so that’s what we did. It makes me laugh that “the old days” that she was referring to was Christmas/New Years, but she meant it in that sense. So we drank vodka and gossiped and talked and talked and talked and eventually she made me go into town. We went to Jet Lounge but then realised that neither of us actually wanted another drink (i know, strange!) so we went home and crashed out instead. Her bed is really short, plus she woke up a couple of hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep, and since I was sharing her bed, I couldn’t sleep either which was really annoying. Around 6am she went to play on her decks and I finally managed a couple of hours sleep, only to dream about being woken up by my mother calling to find myself covered in paint. Odd.

Eventually my mother really did call, and Anji picked me up and took me home so i could shower and nap and pack. Then Mum droppped me off in town so that i could have lunch with Hulita. We had Malaysian at Roti, and the roti was reaaally yummy. And then it was off to the airport with me.

I’m really hot and itchy now, so I might stop writing. Excellent.

Saturday 24th June, 2000 – On The Train from Melbourne to Sydney

I’m sick, kinda hungover. I threw up a few bitter mouthfuls this morning, which was nothing compared to last night. So I’m sipping water now and thinking I will drink less in the future.

I’m really happy with my hair, it looks choice. So yay for that. Boo for the fact that I can’ curl up and sleep and look out the window, but hey, these things happen. At least there’s a needle disposal unit in the bathroom! Handy huh?

Oh, oh, the coolest most exciting thing that has happened so far is that I found notes in the magazine in the seat pocket! Here, let me copy them out for you. They made me smile so much!

“Dear Gracey,
Hello!
umm….
do you love Sean? I hate him
Luv Capa”

“Dear Casey
um… abobt your qestun I Dident spell it rite but this is a big secret ok
I Do sotove love him”

How cute! Go Gracey & Sean! What’s the bet he’ll end up leaving her for Casey though! Ooh nasty bitter Joanna. Yes, damn right I am. But that aside, I was so stoked to find those notes. I always loved messages meant for others in text books. I remember Ammy and I (or was it Rosalie) wrote notes we left for others in our classics books for the next classes. It’s kind of like a cross between graffiti and a message in a bottle. Soon maybe, I’m going to write a note explaining who I am, and pt my address on it, and leave it in the magazine. Hopefully someone will find it, and be as excited as me and maybe even try to contact me. Tanya and Anji used to write to some guy in Palmerston North after they found a message in a bottle from him.

Monday 26th, June 2000

Kini has my photo by her bed. I can’t even start to describe how special this makes me feel. It’s just so lovely to know that someone cares about me like that. I can look around her room and in one corner are the tulip lights I gave her, and on her shelf is the Winnie the Pooh picture, and that’s just cool. She really cares about me. And that’s lovely. I am going to start showing my friends more how much I care about them, I think. I mean, for the past six months I have just focused all my attentions on one person, and that’s just wrong. From now on, I will think about more people!

I am also going to listen to more * (name deleted on account of how i’m not willing to share this). This cd is awesome. I love it. I feel so peaceful, being in someone else’s house, and therefore being surrounded by other people’s possessions and memories as opposed to mine. This relaxes me. This helps me think clearer about everything.

*****

I had really vivid dreams again last night, tucked up high in Kini’s bed with tshirt sheets. In the first, I was back at Garland Road, and we were interviewing prospective flatmates in Clayton’s room. Kate M was there, and maybe Maree as well – I’m not sure. But anyways, the guy was saying that maybe we were too weird for him, which is when I realised i hadn’t seen what colour Kate B had painted her room, so I went to look – it was yellowy marble, and there were these exposed beams (ie it was a totally new room, not the actual one), very farm house.

Another dream that i had put me talking to someone from ASIJ – I can’t remember who the fuck it was though. Anyways, I mentioned Emily Bond, and she didn’t know Emily had died, so we both ended up crying and crying, feeling such a huge sense of loss. It’s strange. I wasnt really that close to her, but in my dream, it was like she’d been my best friend. It was just so odd to be remembering her now too, for no apparent reason. Unless maybe somehow she’s been assigned to be my guardian angel. I’d like that – I did always want to be cool enough to be Emily’s friend. And I could use a guardian angel to make me a better person!

The other dream was that I was staying in a guest house at some big estate, and I was madly looking for some pads, but all I could find were used ones that had been left out in the rain – icky. It was pretty nasty, but since I was waking every two hours to go to the bathroom, pretty appropriate. Oh, exciting breakthrough of the day? Using my first tampon. (this is where you leave real fast if you’re squeamish). I’ve tried them in the past, but was never really able to do it properly. Now, however, I think I almost have it. Maybe it should be in a tiny bit deeper because I can still kind of feel it, but that’s also probably because I just feel so concious that it’s there, if you know what I mean. The first one I put in, both my hands ended up completely covered in blood – it was very dramatic! Second one, there was very little blood, so that’s okay. I was a bit scared the first one wouldn’t come out.

Ahh, vaginas eh? Funny wee things.

****

Today I got up just before 11, and ate cocoa puffs whilst online. Later I had English Muffins and tea. Even later, I rang up Kini and got her to tell me where the shops were. It was a gorgeous day for a walk! I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going, but I found it in the end – some budget supermarket. It was realyl hideously run down, but I got some pads and some pringles, and that was all I was after.

Wednesday 21/6/00 , 2000

Again, Anji had to work early, so I stayed in bed. Either today or tomorrow, I had really crazy odd dreams. In the first one, I was like the receptionist at a brothel operating out of a school. In the second, I had me a big bag’o heroin that basically looked like kava powder, all brown like. I remember Anji was telling me not to touch it, yet I was snorting it off my little finger. Being on heroin was really dreamy. I was dumb though, and drove my car home, absolutely fucked up. But yeah, it was just a dream.

Another cruisy morning around the house by myself. I just wish that my bed was more comfortable! Around 3, I got my shit together, and headed off to Brunswick Street. I wal,ked leisurely down it, aking time to go into lots and lots of shops on the left hand side of the road. I had another brilliant coffee at Atomica, and another brilliant sandwich. They were playing Che Fu – Anji says it’s owned by New Zealanders. They sell a coffee blend called ‘Aoteraroa’ which is apparently Coffee Supreme – the same stuff they use at Olive.

I went back to the cyber cafe also, to find a nice long email from Maree. Apparently Kate Benton has moved in. Yay! That was very very exciting news. I find it amusing especially that it took Maree to tell me. I sms’d her to tell her I was emailing her, and lo and behold, she wrote me back straight away. She’d been watching Full House. Heh!

Eventually I met up with Anji at Joe’s, and had a drink. Then she and I went to meet her friend Leila and this other chick at a pub called the Punter. I got a trifle bored, cos they talked nonstop about work. Eventually we left and Anji and I went to a restaurant called Retro for dinner. It was really cool – old formica tables, mismatched chairs and tea towels as serviettes. I had linguine with tomato, bacon, basil and parmesan, which was yummy – not quite the creamy pasta I was craving, but close enough. Anji had a thai beef salad and we shared a bottle of red (for a change) We got cake takeout from Joe’s on the way back home.

We rented and watched Plunkett and Macleane about highway men with Johnny Lee Miller (yum!) and Robert Carlyle. It was dumb, but entertaining. I want an 18th centuary breast-squishy dress! Then we watched Angel whilst smoking the ever present pot. My clothes reek of smoke. Must wash them before I hit customs.

June 2000 – Thursday 22nd

Okay, going back in time now (it’s actually Saturday). That’s okay though, cos I am actualyl pretty smart and I think I can follow my own diary. Hopefully anyways!

So yes, Thursday. It was raining and all horridible and grey, so I didn’t really want to leave the house. I played psx for a while, but couldn’t find Tekken, unfortunately. When I did eventually leave he house, it was with my hood up. I debated abut buying a tshirt with a picture of japanese girls taking photos on it, but i restrained myself.

Anji was watching people playing cards when I got to Joe’s. Her and Guy are no longer friends anymore, unfortunately. Appparently he wanted her, but when he got over that he was also over the friendship. Ahh life’s a beetch, isn’t it? Yes indeedy.

Anyways, I was really sick, and getting steadily sicker, a cold degenerating down into a cough. Still, we walked to Lygon Street to meet up with her friends – Boring Mark from Wellington, and Helen Preston from oldskool days. And maaaaaaaaan, were they boring! I mean, they’re very nice people, but so so boring! We went to dinner at some Italian restaurant that looked nice, but the food was very mediocre. I had fettucine with bacon, mushrooms, cream and pesto. It should have been hotter. The waiter kept filling up our wine glasses, which I don’t like because we’re all perfectly capable of doing that, and it sucks to be rushed. What was even worse was the speed with which they cleared our plates. Not impressed! Fuck I’m such a hospo snob!

After dinner we went to a bakery for coffee, lured in by all the goodies in the window. I had a florentine but it was too thick, and not buttery and cherryily like it should have been. Ahh well. Then we wnet to some comedy club by the Nova movie theatre. It was about 150% of the size of the Classic, and painted black. The tables were pushed together so it reminded me of Soup Plus. I went and threw up cos I felt sick, and was really disturbed by seen bits of blue plastic in the toilet bowl, until I figured they must have been from day/night capsuales.

The comedy was okay – the sets were too long though. We left after the MC and one act. I was sooo tired, you see. Taxi’d home. If I ever find a meellion dollars, I owe it ot the cab driver. Okay then! In bed, I read for ages Love in the time of Cholera. It’s amazing!

Friday June 23rd 2000

It’s been two weeks. I must say those two weeks have gone by amazingly fast. I hope the rest of the time from here to that elusive “Long Term” that i’m better off in goes by as quickly.

Anji didn’t start work until 12, so we’d discussed going shopping to get a pressie for Niel, but I was too tired, and feeling a little too sickly. But later I got off up and set off (got off indeed, Gary Glitter!) for Brunswick Street – for the last time.

For my first stop, I went to a shop called Fun that sells jewellary and accessories. I bought a pewter coloured lurex scarf that’s so cool it can stretch out to shawl size as well. I also bought some body glitter. I wanted to get Anji some flowers, and also something candle-y. So, i looked in lots of shops. I went back to Net Central, but had no new emails. Then I decided it was time for some food, but i had no idea where to eat. I investigated a couple of cafes, but nothing really appealed. Then I went into a place called The Fitz thinking it had counter food, but they didn’t. However, I felt kinda intimidated, so i stayed for coffee and a muffin. They served the muffin on a full sized dinner plate, dusted with icing sugar and a flower out of raspberry coulis, which seemed a little over the top. It was too hot, and I burnt my fingers on melted marshmallow. Other than that though, it was nice!

I finally managed to find Anji a little paper lantern candleholder, and I bought her a candle to go in it as well. The woman in the African store I went into was like “wow, yo’ve got so much hair” – and I didn’t know how to reply to that! Everyone kept trying to sell me poetr or their new novel and stuff – I just smiled and shook my head. I was in a brilliant mood! I stopped at this funky flower shop to combind electric-purple little flowers with orange daisy thingies – it was an unusual combination but I think it worked well! Then I went back home and had a lovely bath, languidly shaving my legs and stuff like that. Then I lay in bed for a couple o hours, reading the fabulous book and doing my nails. Just before six, Ange walked past the door and was like “oh, I didn’t know you were home – I’ll cut your hair now if you like”. Which, of course, I liked. So I wet my hair and went down to the kitchen. While Ange cut my hair, her and Rachael and this guy Richard were talking about the flat they’re going to move into probably – in a building called “The Max” (I must remember to tell Brad!). Richard was going to call his mother to do a tarot reading on the vibes of the place. They were also talking about how Ange gets energies off the poeple whose hair she is cutting, so she uses protection balms and washes her hands and the energies way after each person. Luckily I had my hair over my face so I didn’t have to smirk too much!

Later we drank red wine while waiting for everyone else to show up. Richard was playing the Coldcut cd, so I asked if he had gone to the gig and we had a good chat about free tickets and and rock bands and yadda yadda. Eventually Timmy surfaced and Anji came home with Lee, so we were just waiting for Mikey. He came home with a prompting phone call, in a car with two other chicks, so Rachael and Richard went with him, and the rest of us piled into Lee’s car. I am so stoked with my hair. It’s about 3 inches shorter, and just has so much more shape now. Which is good!

Mihn Mihn’s looked really full, but they found space for us upstairs – lucky cos there were 10 of us. It took aaaaaages for everyone to order – Anji and I got sweet&sour fish, and duck with plum sauce. Dishes all arrived at seperate times, which meant we all had to drink a lot to fill in time. I tried one of Racheal’s scallops, and it was really nice. Everything tasted so good, apart from Timmy’s cold rice paper rolls. If they’d been hot, it would have been scrumptious. The fish was exquisite. Unfortunately, the duck came last, by which time we were almost too ful. But of course, I managed to cram some in. Mmmmmmmm! The bill came to $13 each – so good!

Back home we went to open the last bottle of red, and smoke pot, as per usual. I went upstairs and promptly threw up. A lot. It’s a mark of how good the food was that it tasted almost as good going out as it did in! By that stage, I was quite quite drunk, and turning melencholy, almost crying in the darkness. I associate the taste of vomit very strongly with someone. More than anything, I wanted to make a call, but I knew it was past 2am in NZ, and that no one would answer the phone. I even wanted to leave a voicemail message, but somehow I restrained myself. It helped how drunk and cute Racheal and Ange were. They took lots of photos of us, in between kickboxing and telling stories that went nowhere. Eventually, Anji and I were both really tired, so we went upstairs and I finished “Love in the Time of Cholera” – awww such a sweet good book! Love CAN last 70 years!

Monday, June 19th, 2000

I kept waking up all night and going back to sleep. Anji told me a couple of times to stop snoring. She herself was snoring too though! But anyways, yes, I woke up about 9am although that felt like 11am to me, which was good. Anji went out with Mike to get her hair dyed, so I stayed to potter around the house. I heated pizza under their funny grill, read Lolita and wrote in my journal. It feels a little more chore-like now to record everything, but I want records so I’ll have to get over that. Anji came home around 12.30 and showed me stacks and stacks of photos before we finally went for lunch.

We went to Atomic, because Anji said they had the best coffee. Fuck it was sooooooooo good. The place reminds us both of Olive – limited food selection, because the focus is on the perfect cup of coffee. But I had a cibatta sandwich anyways, with brie and advacado and salad and capsicums and mmmm it was yummy. Then we went to a net cafe, so Anji could check her email. I checked mine as well – I only7 had one from Jody, and sent a group SMS to Shirley, Maree, Popular Kate and Brad. I also showed Anji my cd rom. She’s threatened to chant “cunt cunt cunt” to me while I sleep so that I start to believe it.

We walked to a mall so Anji could pick up a shoe she was having fixed, and go to the movies. The place had purple carpet and walls, with gold painted pillars and screens – very swish. And the actual theatre had sparkly gold speakers and comfy seats with lots and lots of leg room. The movie we saw was pretty dumb, but kind of cute anywas. It was called Keeping the Faith and stared Ben Stiller as a rabbi, Edward Norton as a priest, and Jenna Elfman as the chick they were both in love with. Edward Norton – what a spunk, man! So it passed the time nicely.

After that, we walked home and sat around for a while before Anji decided she was hungry, so we went out for my birthday dinner. We just went to the end of Napier Street, so a place called “Growlers” that she said was extremely casual. Our waiter had blonde dreads and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He dropped a hunk of bread with a knife stuck in it onto our table, which was to be drizzled with olive oil and devoured. There was also a small bowl of olives which I steadily made my way through. Yum! I never used to like olives, until one time I had them on pizza with pineapple at Craccum whilst very very stoned, and that seemed to be a winning combination. And then of course there was the Martini phase where the olive was the best bit of the whole drink! But yeah, anyways. Anji had wild mushroom risotto, which I’d been considering, 0-until I saw Duckling on Black Rice. Oh my god it was so so good! It came with prossocuitio, and creamy lemon sauce as well, and I was just in absolute heaven. As we ate, we drank a very nice bottle of red wine, and talked. It’s astonishing the parallels she was able to draw from her relationship with Son of Satan.

Anyways, then Mike came to join us for dessert. I was completely full so I didn’t order anything, he just spoonfed me a bit of his sticky date pudding because he said it would change my life. Here’s hoping!

Later in the evening, we smoked pot and Anji got real stoned real fast, so she went up to bed. I stayed up later, reading magazines and watching the boys playing Ape Escape.

20/6/00

Anji had to go to work at 12, I think, so she got up before me. Once I finally got up, I just pottered around reading Lolita, writing my journal and that kind of thing. Eventually i had a shower and got dressed. Then Timmy and Mike were going into town and they invited me to go along too, so I did. We walked in, and they spent ages in a comic book shop. I read a comic of Brothers Grimm faerie tales that were pretty nasty. I could remember most of them from my childhood, though I can’t quite place them. Maybe I had some of the stories on tape, and others in a novel book, as opposed to something illustrated.

We went to Hungry Jacks, and I had a grilled chicken burger. It wasn’t as nice as I remembered them to be. Ahh well. Mike told me to take more drugs so that I’d like crowds better. he also said his ex girlfriend always dresses up as Roller Girl to go to the Box on Retro Night. They made fun of my pop obsessions. I didn’t really mind.

Then we went to Myers, and looked at male underwear for a bit. I never got to pose very much in underwear, unless you count slips. Which may or may not be a good thing. Then we went upstairs to spend ages looking at videos, cds, playstation games, television….. It was quite quite boring. But still, I guess it was good of them to get me out of the house! And then we went to another playstation store and stayed there for a million years. Damn I wanna cd burner and a digital caamera! I gotta get me a decent job! Then we took a very crowded tram back to Brunswik Street. I felt a leetle bit bad cos I probably looked scowly, cos I was a little bored, and a lot tired and shy. So we had a drink at Joe’s, and I waited for Anji while they went to Bar Open. Once Anji had her staff drink, we went and joined them, and drank a bottle of red to their white.

Then we debated for a while as to where to have dinner (for a change) and Anji said we should go to a pub near home called the Builders Arms, so we did. The food wasn’t all that – i had lamb fillets on greek salad – but we played pool while eating, which made it more fun. Mike made it his mission to teach me to play – he said he’d made his ex one of the best pool players in uckland. Everytime he leaned in to help me with a shot, I wanted to laugh at wha a cliche it seemed like, but unfortunatly, he was just trying to teach me pool, I think. Damn! Ahh well, I guess the lesbians are sleeping in his room anyways!

We got home in time for Buffy, of course. Before it was on, the boys were playingp psx, and Anji got all shitty with them because she was bored. But once miked rolled her a joint, she was better. I’ve realised the reason I don’t enjoy smoking pot that much here is because they put tobacco in it, so it’s just not nice. Apparently, that’s because the pot is grown hydroponically, so it’s heaps stronger so they have to thin it out, but blaargh why?

After Buffy, it was pretty much straight upstairs to sleep. But OH MY GOD Willow shacks up with a girl! “I’M NOT MARRYING SOME BLOODY LESBIAN”

We rang Neil to say Happy Birthday to him. I lied adn told him I’d gotten him something TREMENDOUS for his birthday. Well, Anji and I might get him a Grease Karaoke video! Mum told Anji she’d pay for shoes for me if I could find any. Well, I haven’t found any. I can’t relaly go for guys dress shoes, so I might have to go for some streetwear style. But I really don’t like Royal shaped ones, you know?

Sunday, June 18th, 2000

So, on that note, let’s move on to Airport stories, ignoring the obvious parallels between this and my last trip to Australia. It was so lovely, being with Maree and Kate M and Brad and CLayton, the people I’m closest to. And yes, of course I cried. I’m going to be away a whole month, and I feel really bad about leaving Brad with all the responsibility of the bills and with finding us a flatmate. But honestly, this trip has been what has gotten me through the past couple of weeks. I have never needed or deserved a holiday more!

****

Stuff is nifty. My feet hurt from queing though! It took soooo long to get through customs. I got stuck in the middle of a whole bunch of Taiwanese on a package tour. They had a tour guide with them, I think, because he talked a lot, loudly, and everyone laughed. He had Elvis hair, and despite his saggy man breasts and beer belly, he was wearng a tight tshirt. It was truel truely hideous! There is a smell like rotton eggs on this plane, which is pretty hideous too.

I’m really excited about this holiday, despite the fact that I’m going to miss my Auckland friends like crazy. It’s going to be really good for me to spend some time alone and record my thoughts. I don’t have to be scared about what I’m thinking either, which is a pleasant change. You know what? I am so proud of myself for surviving when I thought I couldn’t. I mean, I know I broke down and begged Thomas to help me, but when he didn’t, I managed to pull through. Thank god for Shirley and Maree, and Mum especially. All my _friends_ mean so much to me. I want to make them proud of me by taking better care of myself.

Oh, the plane is taking off now. Bye bye Auckland! I wonder if we’ll crash. I don’t think I’d mind – not because I want to die, but because I feel really at peace right now. I’ve had my breakthroughs and everything. Oh dear, I think I’m going to cry again. I _always_ fucking cry at airports, although never before as bad as the last time.

You know, Kara has never seen me sober. Oh dear, she must think I’m a fucking fruit bat. Brave girl, I think she’s lovely. Clayton shouldn’t have been talking about Shirley in front of her. Neither should I. Damn. Ahh well. He’s such a sweetie, I hope they’re happy together!

*****

I think I have developed an unnatural obsession with my drink. I am amazed at how the lemon slice perfectly fits half the glass. I’m intrigued by the bubbles, and wondering how the fuck they could be drawn. I want to scan my glass and use it for a background for Hubris. I need to redesign. I want floating text over a fixed background. It looks like there’s a bullet mark in my window. I could see the bullet moving in slow motion through the window into me, and it just felt like the needle last time they took my blood. There was a _lot_ of vodka in this drink, I think. Oh, they’re serving dinne! It must be all of five pm. How Grandma! I’m still very full from my Pork McRib, but I’ll have a pick at it anyway. The pork McRib was very disappointing, unsuprisingly since I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for it. BUt still, it was good to have a goal!

Ohhh I have reached the very middle of this book. That is very cool. I only wish there was more good writing in this book, instead of dumb babble. Do you think I will ever be published? I’d so love that. I wish I could write a novel, something that would affect other people. I know I’m not supposed to talk about this, but the thing I am most terrified of is that I had no impact on Thomas at all, that I haven’t been significant to him. I know that was the case with Morphine Matt, and both of them affected _me_ so profoundly. I would hate it more than anything if I just didn’t matter to Thomas, if I hadn’t changed or enhanced him in any way.

Chicken or beef? Chicken or beef? Chicken I think. I wonder if I’ll eat again in Melbourne. Probably. But we might save Mihn Mihns for another night. Damn the vegetarian meal smells nice. I am so not hungry though. I had chocolate covered coffee beans and red bull for breakfast today. It made me babble lots, all that caffeine. I think everyone thinks i am looking better too. Sure, I’ve probably put back on the weight I lost (looser jeans were fun!) but maybe I have my spark back. I thought it was gone for good. What’s that Leonard Cohen line? “Thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes – I thought it was there for good, so I never tried”. Well, maybe one day I’ll meet the brother that will make me truely happy.

Witty banter again – the plane wings look awfully flimsy. I wonder if they are made from paper, and if that is completely legal. I should go find a bathroom sometime. After the meal. It’s okay – airplane toilets are too small to kneel in. I rememebr dancing around in my underwear last night in the handicapped stall at Roasted Adiquition, in between sari re-arrangements. Sassy! I’m so glad Shirley liked my speech – I just didn’t know how to do justice to all the things that she’s done for me.

The clouds look just like icebergs. I wonder if I’ll see any dancing penguins. Who the fuck came up with that concept, anyways? I mean, what links chips and penguins??? Oh wait, i guess they ARE called Bluebird. But penguins seem to show up in the oddest places. I mean, Squirt? Linux? What’s going on? Is there some secret penguin conspiracy? Maybe the Emperor penguins are taking themselves too literally.

I think coke should go back to 500mls, and the price should go down again. Fuck that dollar sixty stuff. Oh sorry, that came from me thinking about the 250ml cans you get on aeroplanes. In Japan, coke sometimes comes in 200ml cans, like Red Bull, only they have pull ring tabs that come right off, which are far more dangerous. Oh my god, I remember drinking like, cocoa and shit out of cans too. Here comes the drinks trolley again. But I’d better not. I feel drunk already.

Well, dinner’s over now, and I’m enjoying dessert. It was Chicken curry – not bad, pretty much like Eastern Curries. Better than the Healthy Choice monstrosity Brad brought home yesterday. I am, I am looking after myself! This custard looks remarkably like (admittedly yellower) semen, but it sure tastes a whole lot better. Oh I want your hot cum all over my tits! I think it’s a lot worse watching porn when you are no longer a naive little virgin. Although, quite frankly, how i managed to go through with intercourse after the penetration shots is beyond me!

****

Mmmm, filter coffee, blarrgh! Oh, AND a Bardot remix. Choysa tea, man. And speaking of tea, man I have embraced it very quickly. Which is a good thing. I am way too on edge. One day I am going to have a shoulder massage that won’t hurt because I’ll be so relaxed. Oh yes, I will! But whilst in Melbourne and Wellington, I’ll drink coffee. I don’t know how i’ll get through the days at the MOE otherwise. Mmmmm Fuel Coffee! And mmmm Fuel Hot Chocolate.

****

I think relationships should come with airsick bags. Motion sickness. Emotion sickness. Oh god, I am quoting silverchair. Just as well I switched to the concert station. Goddamit that coffee is FOUL. I really need to pee, but I think there’s someone in the bathroom. This polynesian guy and girl just walked past. They couldn’t have been more than 17, but they were carrying a baby. What goes on?

*****

We must get into Melbourne pretty soon hopefully. I have steel bladder, I can hold on! Fuck it’s going to be good to see Anji again. Must remember to claim sleeping bag. And ask at the bus counter where to get off closest to Fitzroy. Fuck I’ve written heaps. I’m going to read through again.

Ahh, aeroplane toilets. There’s a sign on the door inside that says “please lock” which I think is really unfair, because like, I’d really prefer for everyone to see me peeing. The rubbish bin has funny pictures of things on it that you’re supposed to dispose of in there – emotion sickness bags, razors, nappys. But then there’s something really weird that I can’t figure out, but I guess it must be a pad. Fucking odd looking pad. Maybe it’s like the real old fashioned kind you have to hook onto a belt thingie, like in “Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret”. Maybe. I’m cold. I want my hoodie. Only no, that’s in the cargo hold somewhere.

What does scratch aeroplane windows? They are always scratched, as far as I can tell, but it’s not like planes drive through foliage or anything. What an odd concept!

I keep writign down little quirky observations just like i keep going to reach for my bag and cellie to check for text messages. Only, no, my cellie is in Auckland, n a bag with my Macy Gray cd, my Geri book, and Ru-bear. I miss them all already!

I don’t get why Channel 7 is so much quieter than the other channels. Maybe I should write a letter of complaint. Ha! Beck is on the crooners’ channel, with “tropacalia”. That amuses me biglots.

Wow, I never knew where Melbourne was on the map until now. 46 minutes left. I’m bored. I need something to read! I want my cellphone and text messaging. Ah well. Maybe I’ll try napping. Oh fuck, I had coffee. Hmm, I need another vodka.

Later:

The airport seemd to take forever to clear. Then I had to find my way to the Skybus, and tere was absolutely nowhere to dump my trolley. I had to take it back into the terminal, where I gave it to some woman so she didn’t have to pay to get herself one (I was at the domestic terminal by that stage). But I managed to get myself onto the bus okay, and the bus driver told me to get off at Franklin Station. I was so so tired at that stage, and I just started thinking about how badly lost I got the last time. Plus, I think all the stress of the past month really started catching up to me, and I just about started to bawl. But I didn’t.

Getting off the bus, I was faced with the problem of finding a taxi. I’d kinda thought there would be a rank at the bus station, but no. So instead I set out to walk to a busy looking road, with my handbag and a backpack and suitcase and sleeping bag. I was _not_ a happy camper! No cabs passed me by, so I was searching for a rank. I finally came to some huge big building, so I figured there had to be one there. There was – it just had no taxis waiting. But there were about a dozen Asians. We all had to wait at least ten minutes before the first taxi arrived, and then of course, they got it first. A little while later another taxi came along, and i asked if he could take me to Fitzroy. He said he could, but was I first in line? No. So he said he’d call me another one. Then this girl came up to me and said she’d ordered a couple of taxis. She asked me where I was going, and suggested we share, so I agreed. A taxi came along then, and another one for the last of the Asians, and we were finally off. When we got to Napier Street, the girl said not to worry about paying, but the driver suggested i pay $5, so I did. They were both lovely. If I’d had to wait much longer for a taxi, I probably would have cried!

So we sat around in Anji’s lounge, and I met her flatmate Mike. He has two chicks staying with him, Racheal and Ange, who looked really really similar. At first I thought they were sisters, but when I saw them snogging, I realised otherwise. Racheal “did my numbers” for me, and what I read in the book seemed very true. Ange said she’d cut my hair for me, yay! We smoked some pot and had some red wine, then decided to flag going out to dinner because I was too tired, and Anji seemed kinda tired too. Instead, we ordered in Italian. Anji and I shared a vegetarian pizza. Mike brought down his cd mixer, so we played all sorts of music, from Flying Nun classics to very cool techno. Him and Rach had a fight and looked just like Tekken characters. Later they danced very cooly, like someone from Bust-A-Groove. It was nifty. The one downer was when they started playing Beth Orton, but I thought “no, I’m being dumb”. I am going to reclaim music, and create NEW associations for it. So there!

I’m reading Lolita because I feel like I should. Maybe it’ll offer insight into the whole school girl thing!

When I went to bed, I was like “awww I don’t have my teddy bear” so Anji biffed this huge big bear at me that belongs to Timmy. So I slept with that, and it was lovely. The bear was bigger around than Thomas even, but snored less.