I can’t remember them all, but I think I know all the good ones. I will note the age that I was when each present came. If they were just cash, and I haven’t put them in.

9: A small box of sinkers and fish hooks. We had tried fishing a few times that summer and I think this was a going-home present. I kept it on the table by my bed. I would not open it because he said lead would give you brain damage.

10: A toy submarine to share with my half-sister. I explained to him the standing interdiction he and his wife had against war toys, which made him reach into the back of the car and snap the deck cannon off, leaving a hole. When we put it in water, it would always sink.

12: A small sign saying ‘Mark’ that was actually a decal torn off a Datsun Mark II. He must have been poking around at the car dealership on Whitehorse Road when he saw it.

15: A hot melt glue gun. It was my birthday. My father used his the summer before to stick seashells to things decoratively, so he thought I might like one. His wife said, later on, that he was emotionally handicapped and that I hadn’t wanted it. I thought it was pretty good actually.

17: A mechanic’s tool kit. I never really work on cars, but I still use the shifter and screwdrivers that came with this kit. It was a bastard to lug home from summer holidays.

21: SCUBA tank connector. This small bit of metal allowed my dad’s tanks to fit my regulator, which I had bought along for holidays. I decided that diving with him was too dangerous, so he used it by himself. I should have left it there, but he wouldn’t have got the message.

23: A small torch. I actually needed a torch this year, so it was a good present.

I probably don’t need to make much of a commentary on the list as a whole. I realise now how akward my father is. He wants to show that he cares, but doesn’t always know how. I also suspect that he doesn’t know very much about my life, and almost nothing about me as a person. Sometimes I try to tell him, but when I do I get the feeling that he’s not really interested. Perhaps he’s happy to think of himself as caring, but doesn’t understand that there’s a gap between appeasing his conscience and having a real relationship. I don’t know. The presents mostly speak for themselves.

Full real this was one of the best gigs I’ve been to, ever. Everyone was there, and heaps of people I didn’t know but eventually met, like Jo and John and those guys that wanted to feel Morgan’s sock-stuffed bra (he went in drag and was a bit deflated when nobody commented on it, until the very end of the night when someone wanted to squeeze his tit.) The Bakery was decked out with a huge stage, mirrors on the wall and giant mushrooms for decor, and there was an Alice in Wonderland dress theme.

The lineup was Wilde Green Marsh, The Judy Planes, The Bank Holidays, 7 Day Weekend and Silky Krusher and the Sex, plus DJs. WGM are my old band that I left last year - they’ve replaced me with Jo on keyboards who gives it a very cool Rocket Science-type sound and are now suddenly loved by everyone. The Judy Planes are a new guitar/beats girlie thing that sound okay and, more importantly, look absolutely stunning. Their singer was rather friendly to Morgan, but it may have just been part of her ‘aren’t I wonderful?’ party schtick, or a pharmaceutically induced period of high spirits (not that Morgan wasn’t looking a catch in his new dress and strappy shoes - I’m just jealous). The other bands were neato too - 7 Day Weekend all have matching hairstlyes and they wore big matching flower costumes on stage. I heart them 4 eva - they play bangin’ electro. The last band, Silky Krusher and the Sex, had absolutely everyone dancing around like idiots. Tho their music was a bit forgettable, their energy and the lead singer’s performance was magic. The stage was covered in beer puddles by the end of their show. Actually, that may have happened earlier now that I think of it.

To add to the atmosphere the carpark out the back had a croquet court (c/w balls and mallets) and a setting for a tea party, presided over by Tomas as the Mad Hatter (move along everybody, move along!!). A bottle of champagne appeared out of nowhere and we all drank it from teacups while Tomas ran up and down on top of the table yelling at everyone and taking his clothes off. Some dude dressed as the Cheshire Cat sat on a tripod and grinned at us. Free beers were coming through from backstage - everyone there was a friend of someone in one of the bands so security wasn’t exactly tight. I think Tomas, holding a candle for ambience and in his underpants on top of the table once accidentally dripped wax in Kat’s hair. (Kat’s new boyfriend was there, but he’s a social phobic or something and always kept some distance away from people he didn’t know.) The night ended with Silky Krusher and the aforementioned slam-dancing. The poet Gabrielle Everall was there, with a nice conventional hairdo that really suited her. I dropped Tomas off at his awful new apartment in Fremantle. (I will go and see his new baby next week.)

I wish this was all happening last year. Things are just so wonderful now, especially with the Bourgeois Bogans. I want to be in a band again. Oh, and Tomas and I are thinking of doing a reunion show at the Castle - YAY!! I wanna do Psycho Killer: psycho killer ques que se - fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa you better run run run run run run awaaaaaaay!

Before I get down to business, I would like to retract my earlier comments to the effect that ‘Perth Meetup all suck dick’, in the understanding that I looked for them in the wrong part of the Brass Monkey the other night. We’ll get it together eventually.

Here are some pictures (finally) from New Zealand:

The rainy town of Dunedin, on South Island. The call it the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’, but it really should be ‘Land of the Interminable Miasmatic Haze’. It actually brightened up a bit after a few days.

My messy bed at the backpackers.

The conference room, which was more than sufficient for my tiny audience.

Lake Te Anau, on a Sunday afternoon. Te Anau is a boring hole full of backpackers and people on jet skis, but the lake is nice enough.

Tuatapere, NZ’s ’sausage capital’. I nearly crashed the car when I saw this. It’s Mr Hanky, isn’t it?

And back in Sydney, with the Sunday anti-racism rally. I would have preferred an anti-bogan rally, but they went with the ’safe’ option ;)

Ooh, lunch time.

# The new Harry Potter: forget the special effects, just let me look at Hermione in her ball dress for three hours. And the Weasley brothers get all the best lines in the movie, imho.

# I was having a small nervous breakdown until I got the web working here. Ahh. *calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean*

# Seeing Chris and Ross and Jammoa and Kat again is neato in the highest degree, though it feels strange to be back as well. It reminds me that my home is, when all is said and done, actually that broom closet in Sydney now. More on that tomorrow, and some pictures of NZ.

# Webloggers’ meetup tonight. be there and be square

Back in Sydney for 48 hours before I head west. The flight was ok, but those airline meals are just not big enough, so I’m famished.* Tomorrow it will be time to pack again for Perth, think Chrissy presents and attend the anti-racism rally (1PM, Town Hall - look at what you kids get up to when I leave you alone! For shame.)

I owe everyone many comments & compliments, and they will get them soonish. If you want an account of my exploits, see the previous post. So many photos to show you.

*I’ve never used that word before. It sounds kinda sexy, don’t it?

I just heard you can see a glacier if you go far enough north. I am very south so maybe I will run out of petrol. Who would have thought a glacier could survive this pain-in-the-arse heat anyway. It’s just like Australia here and I’ve been to the pool. It’s hot.

Been to lake Te Anau, which is touristy and boring. Milford sound (a real fiord) is only any good if you’re on one of the cruise ships which I wasn’t but I had a car and got to see the Milford road, rest stop by rest stop, which is the best thing yet. Eglantine river, yeah.

Going through Homer Tunnel is like driving up Satan’s butt. It’s dark and wet and dangerous and very cold all of a sudden. The road is falling to bits in there and if another car is coming you think you’re going to hit them or hit the wall. There’s like one small sign that you’re about to enter the 6th circle of hell and suddenly you’re in there with your sunglasses on trying to work out where you are and if you’re crashed yet. It’s the best thing ever.

Went down to Manapouri the next morning, hit the beach and saw some dolphins, went across to Invercargill which has good fish and chips and more park than it knows what to do with. Then the Catlins which suck because Lonely Planet calls them ‘enigmatic’ when it’s just farmland that’s hillier than all the surrounding farmland and there’s some waterfalls and shit but nothing much.

Going to Queenstown maybe. Where are these glaciers?

UPDATE: Fox and the west coast are beautiful. They call NZ ‘Godzone’ for a good reason. It never stopped raining.

So we’re hanging out in the lounge room - me, Tom and the Dutch neanderthal - just talking shit after watching TV, and in walks a new person. She’s a tall twenty-something redhead, and she’s on her way to her room but the neanderthal convinces her to come in and talk with us anyway. Let’s call her Stacey. As it turns out she’s in town for a zoology conference and works on seahorses. Thus follows an hour long conversation revolving around seahorses and exactly what it is she’s been doing to them throughout the course of her master’s - as usual in these situations, all the guys will stop and listen to anything she says, and she, being a grad student, wants to tell everyone about her work. This lasts until 2am, when Tom is ready for bed and wants us to go with him so we don’t wake him up when we come in. The neanderthal stays up for a while with the girl, Stacey, which seems to be his right as Alpha Male.

None of these people, I must add, are actually that annoying. Even Mr Dutch Neanderthal has a gooey nougat center.

So the night ends with the neanderthal coming in and asking us ‘would you f**k her? I would f**k her for sure.’ The next night A. has left, and in his place is some Scottish guy and the same conversation happens. We’re up late and Stacey comes in. This time she has the timetable for her conference and reads the titles aloud as we’re talking: ‘body temperature fluctuations in the laughing kookaburra’… ‘phenotypic plasticity in the saltwater gland of crocodiles’ and so on. We talk to the Scottish guy but are always interrupted by some interesting bit from Stacey’s zoology conference or another story about seahorses. She obviously laps up the male attention and poses on the couch.

So after a while, Stacey goes to bed and Mr Neanderthal does the sexual innuendo thing again. And the results are interesting. I will now tabulate the data from both the first and second sampling efforts:

Tom: “she’s good-looking but she talks too much. I wouldn’t want to be with someone like that.”

Mr Scottish: “I walked in and you guys were talking about seahorses. I wanted to get up and walk away but I thought it would be rude.”

Dutch: “I would f**k her but I would put a rag in her mouth or something to keep her from talking.”

These are the sorts of things men say when women aren’t around. It’s ordinary. I was still surprised by how unanimously they agreed that Stacey was annoying, though. Tom even seemed to dislike talkative women on principle, and he himself never shut up (nor did he have much choice when it came to women I suspect, on account of he was short and stumpy). Really the conversation was interesting, and more so because it meant so much to her. I might be biased because I like talking about biology but it amazed me, that quick pronouncement: ’she’s gorgeous but I wish she would shut the hell up’.

There are men, I think, who have a hard time being friends with women, and people who don’t like hearing about things that other people are interested in - and there are also men who like to own the conversation, like it’s their place. I’m still trying to figure out what all this means. It has me a little bit convinced that I’m getting way less than I deserve…

resolved to take a page from the neanderthal book next time.

I’ve decided that Dunedin is quite okay. It’s not as cold as I though it would be, although the sun not going down till 10pm is a bit disconcerting. The backpackers kinda sucks but it’s cheap. (There’s a Dutch guy sleeping in the bunk above me - a huge Marine who loves to get out his knife whenever it’s remotely justifiable. Last night he decided to go to bed with a walkman and two cheese sandwiches, so I spent an hour listening to slurping mouth noise and tinny heavy metal music, occasionally drifting off to sleep but being woken up by the slapping of drum solos on his chest. Tonight I think I will stay up late.) All the touristy stuff like the Botanic Gardens and the art gallery are okay if you have time to kill.

I think if I spent more than a couple of weeks here I’d end up with a New Zealand accent - I’ve already noticed myself doing those cruel and unusual things to vowels that they do without even meaning to. I must have a very malleable sense of identity. Sometimes it’s just easier, like when I went to look for a tent yesterday:

Me (as I walk into the camping store): Do you have any tents?
Sqeaky-voiced teen: Sorry? What’s thet?
Me: Do you have any tints?
Sqeaky-voiced teen: Oh nup.

I’ve decided also that I rather like conferences. Down here they aren’t short of snacks either, with stacks of cheese-based pastry items to keep you happy between papers. I’ve been doing the networking thing and meeting everybody, though I don’t remember half the peoples’ names because they all lost their name tags on the first day - everyone is friendly and that’s the important thing. There are a few tools, but they’re mostly the old geezers who love to go on and on about what they did in Scotland or something like that you just don’t want to hear. At dinner yesterday there was a guy who looked just like Austin Powers, but I didn’t bring it up with him as to why (he might not have been aware). My presentation, conveniently out of the way on the first day, went exactly according to plan. I enjoy reading papers now, and can usually get away with fingernails intact and without mumbling too many words in the delivery. Someday, I do believe, I will be quite good at it.

Now I will go to the end of town and look for the World’s Steepest Street. Can I be arsed to walk up it? We’ll have to wait and see. I’ll post some photos when I can get to a decent internet café.