The Procrastinator

Death and birth of data and disks

2012-01-10T21:10:00.001+10:00

Western Digital Community - How To.

'via Blog this'

This has just saved my data. As a firmware update had bricked my WD ShareSpace, I thought it would be a cinch to mount one of the RAIDed disks and copy the contents over to a temp RAID until I find a long term solution; I was wrong. I thought I had the disks in RAID 1, but it should be easy grabbing the data off them right? hur dur.

While I thought it would be a simple case of getting an EXT3 driver for either the Mac or Win7, the RAID caused problems on the disks.

I tried:

MacFUSE 2.0.3 with fuse-ext2 0.0.7 - nuttin'
OSX Fuse 2.3.4 with fuse-ext2 0.0.7 - I was able to mount sdb1 but not sdb4
explore2FS 1.07 - could read the files off the partition with the data (sda4 or sdb4), but couldn't copy them
ext2explore 2.2.71 - nada
ext2fsd 0.51 - could read sdb1 but not sdb4
linux reader - no
vv 0.7 - nein
Ubuntu 11.10 trial off USB in Mac OS X Lion - non
Ubuntu 11.10 trial off DVD in Mac OS X Lion - niet
Ubuntu 11.10 trial on PC Win 7

Yay!

The link on the WD website had a nice simple run-down on the commands to get the RAID going. I didn't follow exactly and got the RAID volume going in degraded mode only using one disk. This was in case it all went wrong; I still had one disk left, see!

Once I had the Win7 notebook working and had mounted both the old RAID disk and a new drive to copy the contents, it only took 9 hours to extract the data.

Color Palette and the 56 Excel ColorIndex Colors

2011-08-31T10:02:00.000+10:00

Color Palette and the 56 Excel ColorIndex Colors:

almost everything you ever ever ever wanted to know about colours in MS Excel.

Force cells in Excel to use Text format rather than Number format - delphi

2011-08-19T16:23:00.000+10:00

Force cells in Excel to use Text format rather than Number format - delphi

Obvious solution is obvious. Except for me.

I'm reading in test case values from MS Excel for an automation framework, so many values are coming across as floats, irrespective if I try and reformat them in my code. A simple prefix of a ' and everything is working. So simple yet this has eluded me for weeks.

Main Page

2011-08-17T23:18:00.000+10:00

Well I have had a fun day. I've made it outside only once to pick up a parcel; a Concept 2 Model E rowing machine, which I put together whilst going through a brain-acher posed by a friend.

The problem is from OS X Address Book no longer playing nicely with GMail contacts.

I'm probably on a red herring, but the log file shows...

2011-08-17 13:23:22:941|AddressBookSync|772|111430|ISyncSession|Error| Unresolved reference encountered during push for client com.apple.AddressBook

2011-08-17 13:23:22:941|AddressBookSync|772|111430|ISyncSession|Error| Relationships causing error:

2011-08-17 13:23:22:942|AddressBookSync|772|111430|ISyncSession|Error|

Record 'A51D87CA-7388-4F9B-BE56-14364B80ED75'(com.apple.contacts.Group) refers to record '1CF84336-07C5-4AA8-8AF0-AD8CD76A3BCD' in relationship 'distribution email addresses'

Apart from stating the obvious that relationships cause error, I'm wondering how to analyse the Address Book DB. The previous post was how to get to the Address Book now that Lion had set the Library folder to hidden by default.

Once you have access you need to be able to see it. Fortunately we have a number of ways it seems. Address Book uses SQLite for storage. Open Office can view this natively just by opening the database and selecting to connect to an existing database as type 'Mac OS X Address Book'.

Otherwise we need to set up a ODBC connection. Fortunately we have some options.

Within /usr/lib/ there looks to be some suitable files (libsqlite3.0.dylib and libsqlite3.dylib) but I probably didn't set things up correctly. I did find Actual's ODBC drivers, but they wanted $$$ for something that I was sure someone had worked out how to do before. Fortunately www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/ has exactly what you need. Install sqlite0odbc-0.83 and you 're nearly there.

The final step is to ensure the database is associated with the driver to be viewable as a data source.

Open up ODBC Administrator as the link above suggests, specifying the location of the driver.
Open the /Users//Library/ODBC/odbc.ini file
Add the location of the database you're trying to access. Database =
Open OpenOffice, Select Database -> Connect to an existing database -> browse
You can select the data source you have just created.

Main Page

Updated to Lion? Must be missing user Library, here is how to get it back. « TechnoCraz!

2011-08-17T16:51:00.000+10:00

This has been doing my head in all day. Apple have decided to hide the user's library folder from us. I can understand most people don't want to see it, but if you do, there is a simple fix:

1. open a term window.

2. $> chflags nohidden /Users//Library

3. .....

4. PROFIT!!!

Updated to Lion? Must be missing user Library, here is how to get it back. « TechnoCraz!

Maturity Models Have It Backwards « Developsense Blog

2011-07-25T12:09:00.000+10:00

Maturity Models Have It Backwards « Developsense Blog

Happened to stumble on this whilst searching for TPI® NEXT information. I think the key point is most organisations stop once they get to the low to middle stages of models (the 'defined' or 'repeatable' level and miss the point of getting to the higher levels ('optimising') which is where the most benefit is achieved. At that point, the clever analogy that Michael uses starts to come true.

Continuing on the same theme, it's as if the organisation has gone to school, learnt their times tables, but haven't grown up. It's probably a fault of most models and most organisations using them (I know I've been guilty of this) that once the teenage level of maturity (strict process adherence) are reached, then 'mission accomplished'.

There really needs to be greater emphasis on models and consultants to push to get to the truly high levels of maturity; where the organisation 'thinks' on how to approach different projects and processes are adaptable and chosen according to the conditions and goals. Scott Duncan's comment alsostruck a chord.

RDoc cheatsheet

2011-07-21T10:54:00.000+10:00

Lovely handy RDoc cheatsheet. Should make sure I actually bother writing handover documentation for the keyword driven framework I'm building.

Test Driving Your Code with OCUnit

2011-01-17T10:42:00.000+10:00

I'm liking development in XCode. Tools are so intuitive. OCUnit is built into XCode, with near identical syntax to other XUnit frameworks. HW simulation available which while obvious, isn't always done well for many devices. I'm not sure the arguments of a 'closed platform' hold completely against Apple; they have made it very simple to develop apps, and if you want your app available for your enterprise only, you can do that (it seems). Sure, it's filtered.

I'm keen to look at Android. It's obviously easier to get tools out there, so I'm eager to see the maturity of the dev and unit test tools themselves.

Test Driving Your Code with OCUnit

Zennaware » Home of Cornerstone Subversion Client for Mac OS X

2011-01-05T10:58:00.000+10:00

Finally got sorted installing dev tools on my mac. Looked at Git but for the meantime I'm happy with SVN. Set up an account with Assembla, and have crawled around the interwebs dowloading potentially useful tools. It's not too strange coming back to development on a Nix box but all this pretty GUI stuff is rather nice.

Zennaware » Home of Cornerstone Subversion Client for Mac OS X

Great comparison on hosted SCM services here

http://www.svnhostingcomparison.com/

Synchronize Outlook, Google Calendar, Gmail with Funambol/ScheduleWorld : clipclip

2010-10-20T10:10:00.000+10:00

Really good article on the issues and solutions around syncing. More importantly, it has pretty pictures.

Synchronize Outlook, Google Calendar, Gmail with Funambol/ScheduleWorld : clipclip

From closed Windows to fresh air

2010-10-19T22:40:00.004+10:00

I've finally taken the plunge and purchased a Mac. For the ease of image manipulation to support my expensive photography hobby, to aggregation of my personal data effects in one place, within a few hours I am up and running. . . . . I don't recall any MS Windows migration being so painless, even if it was between machines, let alone OSs.

Some top tips if you are thinking of doing it.

iPhone - follow links in new page. Pressing and hold a link will trigger a pop-up prompting if you want to open link in new page, or current page.
iMac - iTunes migration. Have all your music in one place; e.g. NAS drive. Do not move it.
iMac - iTunes migration. Move your iTunes library XML file, and find/replace all references to your NAS music store location. e.g. PC was file://localhost/X:/Music and I replaced with file://localhost/Jupiter/Public/Shared Music/Music/.
iMac - iTunes migration. Once the XML file from your decrepit PC has been COMPLETELY updated with the new absolute path on your sexy new iMac, import this into iTunes.
iMac - iPhone App migration for iTunes. Move the folder "Mobile Applications" in your iTunes base directory somewhere else, then drag and drop them from Finder into iTunes. Otherwise you will receive an "Error -50" and start getting pissed off.
iMac - general migration. Ensure you have GB ethernet. Any network file transfer will occur in minutes rather than hours, and you know how many films containing the skin end of the spectrum you have; it would aeons to transfer over 100MB.
iMac - SW install. Don't do it after a glass or two of wine; you end up purchasing Lightroom 3 and other things. The package arrives tomorrow.
iMac - SW install. Don't install the OSX updates immediately, that can wait while you get your core apps done. Kick it off after you are done or in the morning and let it do it's thing; it might require 1-2GB of updates.
iMac - SW config. Set Google Chrome on your PC to sync with your Google account (if you haven't got one, get one). Install Chrome on your Mac and also allow Chrome to sync. Hey presto, Bobs your Uncle, Fanny's your Aunt, wudubileevit, you now have matching bookmarks across devices.
iMac - iTunes/iPhone/Outlook. Firstly, export your contacts from MS Outlook to CSV (bye bye!), then import into GMail. Gmail will give you some dialogues to ensure you have minimal or in my case zero duplicates. Now update the contacts sync info in iTunes to specify sync with GMail contacts.
If you are tired then go to bed. No good will come of configuring your electronic life when tired. Tiredness leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to errors. Errors lead to data loss. The road to data loss is dark and one way, and we can all feel the disturbance in the force when someone has data loss.

Product Risk Management

2010-10-07T19:13:00.004+10:00

I'm just updating content for a training course, and I know I spend a lot of time conveying the importance of testing etc etc, but to do so in the most succinct and digestible way, to ensure the thought or lesson objective is retained.

I'm currently trying to communicate the importance of risk-based test strategies, and one of the biggest concepts ofr me is that "The main purpose of testing is to mitigate risk, therefore our testing strategy should be focused on risk mitigation, rather than purely requirements conformance".

The basis for this is my perception that the majority of testing is founded upon the idea that the requirements as defined are to be treated as 'gospel' and therefore deviation from the requirements alone is all that is required to ensure successful delivery.

In actual fact, it is the tacit knowledge; the undocumented requirements that are seemingly obvious to end users and seemingly invisible to others, that should be captured and assessed. Such things as performance, useability, security, compatibility, in fact all the other abilities, should be factored in.

So, my question, is if testing is about finding defects against system, is there a more elegant and or accurate way to describe a test strategy as the artefact that documents the focus of testing as identifying the most critical defects which would expose the system to the biggest risks.

Medicare e-health contract in limbo | The Australian

2010-09-23T08:34:00.000+10:00

The (U/O) HI story continues.

I don't know what the problems are, but it seems government organisations work to different time-scales than private enterprise, who are all ready to press ahead in this case.

ongoing GMail

2010-09-07T13:24:00.002+10:00

Down to 41 pst files left, and I'm starting to enjoy GMail especially with some of the new stuff like priority mail.

Moving slowly into the past

2010-09-01T10:58:00.003+10:00

After years of trying to avoid it, I have finally bitten the bullet, faced the music and kept up with the Joneses, by moving to GMail. For a start, it runs far more quickly than MS Outlook, especially when dealing with the amount of email I have kept, but also it means I can access it wherever rather than having to boot up to view.

The only challenge is migrating 61 pst files, yes that's right, 61 dirty fat pst files, from my PC to the interwebs. For each project I work on, I create a new PST file, and move pertinent material from Inbox to the project PST file. This works great as I know everything will be in one place, and at the end of the project, I can close that PST from Outlook and reduce the number of emails in my face.

Now however, it is getting harder and harder to manage all of this so a cloud-based solution makes sense.

Unfortunately, unless you have a Google Docs domain you can only upload slowly via Outlook itself, copying files into the imap mirror folder. There are a few scripts that can assist, but due to the miss and miss rate, it is easier, but rather time consuming to upload project by project.

16 down, 45 to go. . . . .

Agile recipe

2010-08-26T16:36:00.004+10:00

One of the most interesting things of Agile is that it means so many different things to so many people. The first thing I would have to say is that it is just like waterfall or rigorous software methodology (RSMs) projects. Yes you heard me right; there is no difference between Agile and Waterfall.

The fundamentals of software development remain the same regardless of the process, and I tire of the Luddites who espouse the virtues of Waterfall or the evangelists who reckon there is no way other than the Agile way.

What is software development?

A Customer requests a product.
A Developer creates a product.
A Tester verifies and validates that the product has integrity and is suitable to be presented back to the customer.

I've obviously simplified these roles, so the same person may wear the hat of customer and tester, plus each role might be decomposed further, but isn't the above the essence of software development?

Let's take one part of the process. What is the underlying process for a customer requesting a product?

The customer speaks to the developer and asks for a product.
The developer says whether or not it can be done and agrees, providing a time for expected delivery.

Lets look at the two approaches in ideal implementations.

In Waterfall, or more accurately a RSM, requirements are captured, documented in a clear and unambiguous fashion, with extensive formal reviews to ensure quality prior to agreement with all parties.

In Agile, the requirements are captured individually on cards and verbally agreed between the customer and developer. Confirmatory questions and regular feedback ensure mutual understanding.

Now looking at them realistically:

In Waterfall, or more accurately a RSM, requirements are partly captured, poorly documented by those who have little understanding of how to capture true business requirements or communicate the value of each feature requested, followed by a cast of thousands demanding sign-off, followed by endless changes, updates and political positioning around getting what some departments want out of the budget.

In Agile, the requirements are captured individually on cards and verbally agreed between the customer and developer. Confirmatory questions and regular feedback ensure mutual understanding.

So there we have it. I've been fortunate enough to work on RSM implemented projects and where the domain is well known and stable, say a telecommunications protocol (Q.931 for example), it has been really clear what the requirements are, and hence was easy to implement and test. However, it seems the majority of IT systems involve a customer who isn't sure, a developer who doesn't always understand the domain, and a tester who is dropped in the deep end and is primarily an end user.

What Agile does is give immature IT shops, or fast-moving industries where time to delivery is key, an approach to allow the customer constant feedback to ensure the project stays on track.

What Agile does is address the inadequate implementations of RSMs employed by software firms, by ensuring communication, courage, and response to change operates more effectively. The thing is, if people followed the process correctly, then they wouldn't need to try out Agile.

My biggest concern for companies moving to Agile is not what it gives them but what it doesn't. If you don't have the staff that are capable of following a detailed rigorous process with documentation that ensures communication is maintained, what makes you think they can deliver in an Agile world?

I see a lot of organisations struggle with Agile, and in most cases it is because the calibre of the people involved is not high enough to deliver in a courageous and fast moving environment. There are some amazing individuals in organisations; I met some testers yesterday working their way to making testing integrated into the hybrid Scrum teams, but you can tell there are some people they are dealing with that are better suited to having a strict process regime.

My point is Agile is not lacking in rigour, only the rigour has to be applied by the individual rather than the process. It is just as 'expensive' (this issue of cost comparison between Agile and RSM is something else that bugs me), just as hard work, but the onus is on skilled and motivated individuals, rather than average SW engineers and end user testers.

I'm now faced that my wrap up will sound more like a rant, but I suppose it surmises or at least demonstrates the strengths of the many different approaches to SW development.

Firstly, I do not think nor believe anyone else stands by there being only one way to develop software. There are many Agile and many RSM processes, and like a persons sexuality, there are many positions and processes along the scale. Terrible analogy I know but it makes sense. Actually that doesn't work, because people can't change their sexuality. I believe the process should adapt to the conditions of the project and the needs of the application. As a result, we have as many different processes as we do have religions (that's better, sex and religion and software development processes in the same paragraph).

I feel an epiphany coming on.

What are the conditions for a project moving to Agile?

Do you have highly skilled motivated staff. (be honest now; are they really that motivated? Does drinking 6 Ouzo and cokes at lunch really count as a skill?)
Is the domain ABSOLUTELY clear (does the customer really know what they want?)
Is there a formal process in place that already works? (if it is working for you, why change it?)
Do you have the skills and infrastructure to support highly automated testing? (you ARE going to automate aren't you?)
Do you have the support of management to move away from heavyweight documentation? (are you really going to get your BAs, developers and testers to develop 148 page word documents like test summary reports, negating any benefit achieved by using story cards).
Do you have an engaged customer? (without that you are just doing Waterfall without requirements? You're on your own now.)
Are the developers doing unit testing? (If they aren't doing unit testing, why do you employ them?)

Now lets get back to my original point. How many issues above can affect both Agile and Heavyweight processes alike? I think the issues that affect success are more down to the rigour of implementation of approach rather than the approach itself.

Cheap equipment

2010-07-29T13:31:00.004+10:00

Unreal deal at Harris Technology for a 5 port Gigabit switch. I bought mine last week from Officeworks only because I showed them the ht.com.au website and Officeworks were selling the D-Link DGS-1005D for $80, compared to only $48 here.

HT have the same price for the DES-1005D (10/100) as the DGS-1005D (10/100/1000) so I can only assume it is a typo.

Considering that the majority of other 5 port and 8 port switches are around 90 to 130 AUD, this is an awesome deal.

Happy days.

ATM pokie

2010-07-29T11:39:00.003+10:00

In what the presenter suggests is a more successful attack than John Conner on an ATM, Barnaby Jack gave a successful second-time presentation at the 2010 Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, after last years was pulled at the request of one of the ATM vendors. He demonstrated two exploits, one via the network connection, the other via USB. You might ask how you can get at the ATMs USB slot; well the vendors provide a standard lock. As happens so often it seems that only a combination of physical and software security will provide a robust system.

Really interesting demonstration and a great example of thinking outside the (strong) box.

iPhone 4 antenna continued

2010-07-22T10:36:00.002+10:00

The lack of testing of the software and design for the iPhone is continuing to affect customers. Apple has taken steps with a news conference, and the handing out of the rubber band-aid to reduce the likelihood of attenuation from shorting the two antenna's and changing the resonant frequency, but there are still plenty of articles analysing the problem here and here.

iPhone 4

2010-07-15T07:46:00.006+10:00

Weak signal strength issues seem to be increasing from a few isolated incidents, with the associated software fix, to a full-blown design issue. If, as it is looking increasingly likely, that the antenna design means that the signal can be attenuated by shorting the two antennas out, then a redesign or some fix is going to become necessary. The Telegraph has estimated the cost of a recall and or fix in their article.

Apple originally claimed that the issue was down to an incorrect signal strength algorithm, thereby showing the users an incorrect number of signal strength bars. That's now be shown to be a tiny part of the problem, with the issue being in hardware, not software. Nevertheless, it is another example of where more comprehensive testing would have revealed the problem. One news article identifies that only a very small number of altered prototype phones were available for testing in the network.

Apple now claim that all phones suffer attenuation when held in a particular fashion and the iPhone 4 issues are just a demonstration of that. However, not all phones place the antenna without insulation on the outside of the phone, so this explanation seems a little weak, considering the analysis this article goes into explaining the design flaw. This made me consider the possibility that somehow, accidentally, the entire phone could be destroyed by an electric charge touching the antenna. I'm surprised the whole thing is exposed as any grounding or connection to another electrical source could damage the phone. Most phone antennas are internal but when phone antennas were external (think Ericsson GH337) the antenna was housed in rubber.

Regardless of any internal circuit protection, the fact you can change the length of the GSM/UMTS antenna by shorting it with the WIFI antenna, thereby changing the resonant frequency, is more than just an issue of your fat fingered hand phone holding style; its bad design. Sadly it seems the aesthetics were more important than the functionality according to another story.

Unit testing and training; a day to reflect and update.

2010-06-28T16:35:00.004+10:00

I can't believe how long it has taken me to be bothered to convert the JUnit 3 tests to JUnit 4, and transfer the exercises on our training courses to be set around Eclipse. Sad I know, but without an appropriate lull in other work, and a need due to a forthcoming course that would benefit the change, I've never got around to doing the updates.

It didn't even take that long, but I'm off to PNG at the end of the week, and I thought it was an opportunity to update the pracs on the unit testing exercises. Previously, these were arranged to run from command line, using Ant. It was a simple transfer to Eclipse, with my main concern how Eclipse managed the project.

If any of the classpath definitions was absolute rather than relative, then anything I set up in a project would fail once I transfer Eclipse from my PC to another. In the end, the .classpath file and .project file look simple and are based on current node as the root.

This way, I can take my install of Eclipse, transfer to memory sticks, along with the exercises, and not worry about configuration problems.

As I only look at Java a few times a year, I end up ramping up over a time to get to the same level of comfort. The tool integration provides a great opportunity to demonstrate further approaches with greater ease, such as easier refactoring, clearer code coverage reports, and greater relevance to attendees work experience.

With that in mind, I am reviewing the code coverage tools I added as plugins, in the hope that there is something as sophisticated as Clover but that costs the same as a coffee; at the moment, most of the tools cost the same as a coffee machine.

Ideally I'd like to have centralised training servers with SVN and CI tools running, but without a regular need, it makes it hard to justify.

Now I've made the change with the tools, I can look at enhancing the content to increase the information on mock objects, have greater information on refactoring, demonstrate the ease with which you can write unit test cases, rather than having to assist students in editing code using notepad.

skulim tisa wokim studens amamas, or 'How to keep students happy'

2010-06-25T15:21:00.005+10:00

Of to PNG in a few days to do some CSTP and developer training. One of the most interesting aspects are the genuine and honest nature of the folks there. They are incredibly polite, to the point that it can be hard to extricate information from them when they are placed as students in a classroom. The poorly translated title is my question.

It may well be that I'm not reading the situation correctly, but I'm interpreting their reticence to speak as respect to the teacher, or perhaps the way education is performed in PNG. I like to engage with students for a number of reasons.

To confirm they are assimilating the information.
To identify areas, concepts and topics they are not comfortable with.
To ensure they are within their comfort zone, and are able to ask me further questions.
To be able to gauge when a break is required.
To understand if the material presented is relevant to the role they perform.
To keep my ego inflated.

The last point stems from the perspective of the trainer as an entertainer. In order to provide the right level of energy, and to pace the delivery correctly, I must understand how the students learn, and what makes them tick.

Without any feedback, this becomes almost impossible.

This will be particularly hard when I have to run one training session on a Saturday. This presents two issues, as I won't be able to go diving, and I face a far greater challenge to normal to ensure the students are engaged and excited about the training.

Ice-breakers, energisers and other techniques for engagement are ok but . . . . actually typing those last few words has pinpointed perhaps what I should be looking for.

They are not comfortable voicing their opinion, so perhaps mime might be the way to go. One of the easiest ways to engage people is through humour. Good comedians make you laugh as they provide a mirror to an embarrassing event or situation that you the audience has faced, and use themselves as the protagonist in the centre of the situation. Through exaggeration of the circumstances, and self-depreciation, they allow us to laugh at them, and also relate how they are embarrassed by a situation we might have also come across.

So humour is the weapon to break down the silence, mime is the vehicle, and I must be the target.

Simple. Bugger.

Risk Analysis

2010-06-09T13:57:00.004+10:00

I've got my head immersed in risk assessments at the moment. The organisation I'm currently working with is developing a risk based approach for testing and auditing, which will affect a large number of organisations and individuals in the domain, and the consequence of some areas reaches into high safety integrity.

The standards and processes around risk identification itself though is the hard part. There are multitudinous ways to identify risk; FMEA, FTA, HAZOP & CHAZOP (the Chas and Dave of the risk world?), SWIFT etc etc.

Which one do you choose?
Which one would you choose if your life depended on it?
Which one would you choose if you were a vendor developing a system and didn't want to spend much money?

So I'm having to evaluate all the risk assessment standards and approaches. Thank goodness for both ISO. In fact, thank goodness for the AS/NZS organisation, as the AS/NZS 4360 was adopted as the new ISO 31000 standard for risk assessment. The accompanying standard (the catchy) ISO 31010 goes into some wonderful detail about how many approaches you might take to identify risks, including weighing up the pros and cons of each approach.

Yet there isn't a one size that fits all. While I'm not surprised by this, my single model for risk assessment is turning into a 3 or 4 part model.

Step 1 - Generic high level top down approach using risk catalogue.

Step 2 - Mandatory analysis of the standard.

Step 2a - choose from FMEA, SWIFT or CHAZOP

Step 3 - Optional. Do a specialist risk assessment such as Privacy Impact Assessment.

For once the standards bodies have got it right, in recognising that no one approach is satisfactory under different conditions. While that is a blindingly obvious statement, many standards documents contradict this viewpoint, and appear to be fairly rigid in their structure. On a side note, this is all the more surprising considering how few SW testing tools adopt IEEE 839 terminology and instead come up with all kinds of weird shizzle.

This has led to an interesting consulting cul-de-sac. Most of the time we are able to recommend one particular course of action, based on the information we have. In this instance I am having to recommend that you can do all sorts of things. The challenge is to place some structure so that whoever does the evaluation of the approach against the target, employs a consistent repeatable approach, that delivers the same outcome time after time.

Two things I'd like to invest in; cloning and foresight.

Hot Pixels continued

2010-04-06T13:32:00.006+10:00

I've searched the internet and the hot pixel thing is big.

There seem to be many many postings of Nikon users with hot pixel stories:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikond90club/discuss/72157607795021505/
http://photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00Tx71
http://prashchopra.blogspot.com/2009/01/another-d90-hot-pixel-story.html
http://digitalphotographer.com.ph/forum/showthread.php?p=849679
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r21331974-Hot-Pixel-Problem-with-new-camera-what-to-do
http://nikonheadache.blogspot.com/ This article is particularly interesting, as it covers the poor service Nikon provides to address this issue. Sending customers to service centres to fix a common problem is unecessary, when there is software out there to fix this. Turn the servicing software into an end-user product, and Nikon will reduce service costs.
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=312&topic_id=1239&mesg_id=1239&page=
http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=391316
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=158350
http://www.planetnikon.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11414

While Minolta, Konica & Sony and the Olympus cameras have a built in solution:

I've contacted Nikon twice to find out if they are able to provide a more convenient solution to sending your camera away to a service centre, and I hope to get a better answer than being pushed back to the service centre to answer my query.

Hot Pixels

2010-03-21T15:54:00.002+10:00

After having my Nikon D90 for about 14 months now, I've noticed two hot pixels. At ISO200 with shutter speeds less than 1/125, they are visible. Above ISO1600 you notice a few more, but below ISO800 two become obvious.

This isn't a surpise. I was more surprised that there were no issues with any of the pixels. What got me was that apart from taking the camera to a Nikon service centre, there is no way to re-map the CCD so as the offending pixels are turned off and surrounding pixels are interpolated. The Olympus cameras apparently have a built in system, and Nikon have a system that removes such artefacts but this only works for long exposures.

Nikon don't provide any utilities for pixel re-mapping, which considering this would save their service centre staff a log of aggravation, doesn't make business sense. A guy from Russia has written his own remapping software for Nikon Coolpix and is available here, and there was a tool around for a D100, but yet there isn't anything available for Digital SLRs.

I'm almost thinking of writing my own tool for this. The Russian gent has posted details about the protocol to view and perform the pixel mapping here, but it is probably just too much effort. To be honest, if Nikon service technicians already have this, what is preventing Nikon from providing it to consumers, albeit with a more user friendly interface. A simple check to confirm before changing the EEPROM would be sensible for your average user, which displays a zoomed area of a black image before with the hot pixels, and expected behaviour after with the correction hopefully being applied to the correct pixel.

Anyways, I'll keep hunting that someone might have posted the Nikon software online somewhere.

Training Steps

2010-03-03T23:47:00.006+10:00

I had a bit of a think while at the ANZTB conference (which has nothing to do with infectious diseases of the lungs) about how to approach training.

I don't think it is by luck but certainly we have been fortuitous in the way our training is structured.

Looking at what the best way for individuals to acquire knowledge, much is placed on the relevance on the topic at hand by the attendee.

As a result, the trainer must deliver war stories along with demonstration of the shrapnel scars.

As you grow the number of trainers, it becomes harder to ensure consistency around delivery of war stories unless you start inserting them and making the stories generic case studies. Instantly, there can be a perceived lack of relevance do to them being prompted not spontaneous anecdotes. It is as if the more ad-hoc a story is, the more believable it is, while metrics collected over years that demonstrate a particular technique (think software inspections) somehow lose their validity due to the way they are repeated.

Perhaps it is a question of why metrics are treated with scepticism, but equally perhaps it demonstrates that the transparent and open story telling with the pros and cons of an approach, with the emotional attachment that comes with it, is what convinces people during training to adopt a particular technique.

With that in mind, thinking how training can be delivered around a case study, relies upon thinking of a case study that has a fluffy, 'and finally' news item quality about it. It needs to engage people on an emotional level.

As the diagram above suggests, you provide a case study to students, which replicates the proposition of a puzzle or problem. You then suggest a high level solution to the problem. For example, the problem is that the benefits of testing are questioned. The high level solution is to provide examples of how testing helps the organisation, and with most organisations focusing on revenue and costs, the benefit of testing is provided with identifying cost savings. The detailed solution is found through optimising testing to address the most critical areas, and hence a solution is found.

This allows a natural flow, as the next problem would be "you are asked to define a process to identify the most critical areas of the system to help ensure the effectiveness of testing". High level solution - risk assessment. Detailed solution - Use of Quality Attributes, risk catalogues, technical eval etc, and then do EDIP (Explanation, Demonstration, Imitation, Practice) on one technique.

Its got me thinking, as benefits to training include an improved flow through a training course, as well as an improved learning outcome due to the increase of perceived relevance (notice I added the word perceived) of training content, making the training material more, for want of a better word, believable.

I'm sure I'm missing a trick with the various educational approaches that are out there considering humans have taught others for thousands of years, but there is a huge shortage of competent trainers in IT. I can remember a trainer called William who had worked with some of my colleagues to develop HLPlex (High Level Language for Exchanges) and I had the utmost respect for him; not only did he know his subject matter liked he knew his bowel movements, but he had the ability to inject learning into brains. So many trainers lack either the subject matter expertise or the capability of putting information out there and inspiring others.

Too many people consider training, especially IT training, an easy gig, but we are change merchants. Some how, we have to overcome the cultural inertia that exists within organisations, groups and the minds of individuals. Good trainers have to make their ideas so palatable through the relevance, emotion and approachability, that the concepts presented are accepted without question.

Like I said there is a dearth of good presenters, hence we need to come up with a way of average testers being able to deliver content, overcoming the inertia aspect. If there is a reliable process or technique for getting information over to a variety of individuals then I have to find it.

eHealth security

2010-03-02T13:44:00.003+10:00

I've had a fair bit of involvement with IT solutions for Health, looking at everything from process improvement of methodology for development of a system integrating patient diagnostic imagery, to upgrades of VoIP, to compliance and conformance of eHealth systems.

And while the vast majority of work is considered from a testing perspective, there is always an element where I have to consider operational procedural perspectives, and compliance with any standards that cover such things.

This article highlights the issue. Even with all the debate regarding patient safety and security, and even with what you might consider a professional and responsible organisation, Medicare has shot itself in the foot by not ensuring patient privacy.

Having had my notebook stolen by a Federal Government employee once, I might be predisposed to expecting all employees to posses questionable ethics, but actually my expectation is that those who work for government fully understand the significance of the role of a public servant. The responsibility is in the meta-title itself; the person is there to serve the public. This person is entrusted with the records of citizens to provide a variety of services, from health, education, aged care, welfare payments, etc.

A single act unfortunately tarnishes the group as a whole, plus it places doubt in people's mind regarding the intent of initiatives that the public servants try and implement. In this case, people will question the advertised benefits of introduction of the Health Identifier, if those proposing it, implementing it, controlling it or using it, are likely to misuse the information provided to them in confidence.

So while I continue to look at the conformance of new eHealth systems, I have to keep a beady eye on the compliance and associated risk with non-compliance, of operational procedures and guidelines; not because its fun but because the benefits of eHealth systems will never be realised when the scope is scaled back or additional guidelines are in place, to reduce the risk of a few individuals misusing the system.

2010-02-25T22:27:00.002+10:00

There has been an interesting court case I have been tracking. It has led to the conviction of three former Google executives of violations to Italy's privacy code, due to the uploaded of video by some school kids of themselves bullying another child who suffers with Down Syndrome.

While ISPs are not held accountable, the hosts of material that infringes on such laws are. This seems to cross over into the same territory that led to Anna Bligh to complain about Facebook allowing alleged offensive content to be published onto websites dedicated to two schoolchildren murdered in separate incidents.

One of the big attractions for the internet, hence a catalyst for it's growth was the perceived freedom that allowed individuals to indulge in their fantasies. Whilst the content posted onto the dedication pages was most probably offensive and possibly illegal, we seem to have reached or at least nearing the crossroads of the internet.

If we allow freedom of expression, then prepared to be trolled, and do not be surprised at input that some individuals might provide. If you dislike the input that some individuals provide, then feel free to lock down the interwebs. If you lock down the internet, do not be surprised when your online services are attacked.

While I understand Mrs Bligh's sympathies for the irreverence shown towards the victims, the internet is not the preserve of the political classes for communicating to the population. Rather the internet was developed by individuals to aid communication for academic, social and at times nefarious means, and have, from one perspective, been hijacked for commercial and political benefit. The twitterati should not be surprised when IRL incidents are impacted by Anonymous.

The internet is not regulated, controlled, logical, rational, sociable, ethical, nor civilised. It transcends national boundaries, crosses cultural divides and makes money where none is found physically. Internet users in every single country can be contacted. Chinese dissidents are supplied with the tools to communicate freely from internal and external sources. Russian gangsters acquire identity information. A girl in the US posts her musings about cute Japanese culture. A boy remixes the wav files from Windows to make a song.

The rule about the internet is there are no rules. That is until governments have complete control over it, including content, access and speed. I think governments are starting to realise, that the easiest way to control public opinion is to control what is accessible through the internet. A sanitised, healthy version will appear and I don't think I'm delusional in this opinion; Mr Conroy has the plan going forward, and dangerous websites peddling harm to our children will be excluded from public view.

The thing is, the government doesn't own the internet, so why should they control it?

The Falkland Islands

2010-02-25T21:30:00.005+10:00

It seems Argentina seems to have got the backing of such wholly respected politicians and statesmen such as Mr Chavez.

Due to a British company now drilling for oil in what some people would claim is within British territorial water, Argentina are looking to the UN to approve their claim that the continental shelf geography allows them to claim territorial claim over the drilling area.

The thing is, I'm still not sure how Argentina can claim sole ownership of the islands and surrounding waters. It was once occupied by Argentinians during the early 1800's but prior to that, it has been variously explored, mapped and claimed by French, Spanish, Patagonians, Portuguese and British seaman.

Simple argument; as it is closer to Argentina, they can have it. If we are going by the continental shelf ruling then Australia now own Papua and Papua New Guinea, while Malaysia now owns Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei.

While we are at it, lets hand the Canary Islands (Spanish) and Madiera (Portuguese) to Morroco, Gibralter (British) to the Spanish, Cyprus(erm) to Turkey, Jersey (British) to France, Bermuda (British) to USA, Clipperton Island (French) to Mexico, Hawaii (USA) to Kiribati, American Samoa (er USA obviously) to Samoa, Christmas Island (Aus) to Indonesia.

If we are going to do this seriously, then lets hand over Japan to the Chinese, Ireland to UK, UK to France, Indonesia to Australia or visa versa, Sri Lanka to India, Seychelles to Madagascar, and Taiwan to the Philippines.

3000 British people call the Falkland Islands home. /discussion.

Training - What is it?

2010-02-19T13:50:00.000+10:00

The K. J. Ross & Associates Summer School has been a good opportunity to reflect on what makes a good trainer. I developed a peer review form ages ago to record a trainer's performance, yet there are so many qualities essential to training and presentation, I'm starting to find it hard to place adequate measurements in place to determine if a trainer is ready for the big wide world. In other words, "Who am I to say!".

Firstly, by being a trainer, you end up, or have to have, such an in depth knowledge of the subject you are teaching to gain the trust and be perceived as being an authentic purveyor of the information. If the class don't believe you then they won't believe what you teach them and you will fail.
Secondly, you have to be able to relax. If you look under pressure, then chances are you are stressed, and the class will read this, as a lack of confidence.
You. Must. Engage. With. The. Audience. You are on-stage. You are a performer. It doesn't matter if you have the knowledge and expertise if your delivery style is as dry as a Tanquery Gin Martini without a smidge of Noilly Prat.

3 covers so much.

Gauge the pace of delivery to meet the brain capacities of the audience. Is this startingly new material for them? Don't say that it is, but slow down. Does it appear like they know it? Speed up, but confirm they are keeping pace.
Vary your voice. Your voice is a very useful tool for getting information over, but use it too often and its like a waterfall to peoples ears; they hear it but it's a constant stream and doesn't have any detail or clear distinction.
That means vary pace and volume, including talking quietly and loudly, insert pauses and don't be afraid of dead air, so don't add "umm, err".
Be careful about moving around too much. They are focused on your voice and face. It is helpful to gauge if they are awake when their eyes don't follow you around room, but make sure you are walking to check the attendees alertness, and to move to a closer position to help engage with them subtly.
Powerpoint. Its incredibly useful yet deadly. Use it to display paraphrased ideas, rather than lengthy details or descriptions. Use it to prompt you, and project key messages, rather than for it to contain more than you are saying. And whatever you do, never ever ever ever read each slide word for word. You will lose the crowd within 5-10 minutes..
Use of props. This can be both useful and a distraction. I haven't worked out if there is a magic rule for when the former becomes the latter. Certainly, they are a visual cue when doing a call-back to a previous discussion point, and they might inject humour into the introduction of a topic, but I'm sure there are limits.

There are other aspects too. Some people have a natural ability for quick thinking, and I also think it can be developed in some individuals over time. This allows you to adapt to particular situations, perhaps with difficult students or when the exercise doesn't go according to plan. Saying that, all adaptability does is to provide you a back-up plan, when others might have prepared more fully and hence not needed to adapt.

Training has become one of my main areas of focus over the past 4 or 5 years, and yet it still challenges me; there is always a better way to get your message across. Many more people now consider online training a critical path to rolling out training in the future. Having sat CBT courses when I first joined Ericsson 14 or 15 years ago, I know they are far from replacing a classroom and a skilled trainer. Yet if the skilled trainer provides guidance how CBT might provide a bit of variation in the delivery and present the most appropriate information in an online manner, then we might have some success.

One of aspects I see attendees value in attending IRL courses is the ability to have a skilled trainer relate and explain content to an individual, and enthuse that individual with the same passion in the topic as the trainer. CBT has no passion, so what content is best suited for that delivery? Content that might have heated debate with CBT thereby removing the opportunity for contentious discussion, or where content is bland?

I'm going to continue looking at some open source and commercial LMS and see how well they integrate with our CRM, and while there seems to be something fundamental missing when discussing online delivery, I'm hoping a great epiphany will strike me and make me push ahead with CBT.

'es mad about e health.

2010-01-22T11:34:00.004+10:00

I got emailed an article in Computerworld this week, which seem

This article seems to be based on the rants of one individual who is blogging on this topic. The fact that one of the main objectives of this person's blog is to "provide commentary on what seems to have become the lamentable state of e-Health in Australia" and "to foster improvement" is hilarious. Obviously there will be a negative perspective of a topic irrespective of any merits of benefits there might be.

The blogger seems to be aiming target at NeHTA, as he has failed to recognise the challenges of being handed a poisoned chalice. Having been involved a little at NeHTA, it was easy to see that while every effort is being made to define pragmatic Australian standards for e-health information systems, numerous other parties will directly influence the likelihood of success. One instance that springs to mind was NeHTA had developed a simple directory service to identify nodes on the network. It was put forward as an Australian standard, but one vendor who had a hugely complex and excessively featured commercial non-standard product, vetoed the standard, forcing the market place to use it.

When the interests of individual stakeholders trumps the benefits to the health industry, which by it's very nature is expected to be humanitarian and altruistic, you have to question the probability of success.

By no means to I think NeHTA is exceeding expectations; I think as a quasi-government organisation there is a lack of commercial awareness, a work pace that would make chess players fall asleep, and an immaturity of project management, but I don't think this is any different from most organisations, and they recognise the importance of being pragmatic with the suggested implementations. If a vendor already has a product out, or has some of the features, they won't be penalised by the standards, more the level of conformance will be established.

Dr More also seems unaware that as well as defining technical implementations, operational standards are also being defined to ensure the technical implementations are not compromised by poor work practices. Certainly, some areas in NeHTA (although I can't speak for all) recognise that no matter how well the system is designed, if the configuration, operational practices, support processes and policies are weak, the technical systems will be vulnerable.

But hey, I haven't read any suggestions on his blog as to what should happen.

What does Apple do next?

2010-01-15T12:56:00.005+10:00

Some interesting conjecture around what it is that Apple will deliver next. The latest idea, or at least it is the idea that hasn't been delivered yet, is an Apple Tablet.

Big iPhone or keyboard-less slow MacBook? Who knows. It is hard to think that Apple would get it wrong though. As a Tablet user (Toshiba M750) I like the concept of the tablet, but there are limitations.

I like having a large screen
I get frustrated at having to flip the screen around
I don't like having to reach over the keyboard, hold the screen still with one hand whilst writing on it with the other.

Yet there are so many benefits and opportunities with a Tablet. I don't know if it comes down purely to limitations of the underlying OS or the understanding of what the problem is, that is meant to be solved by a tablet. For me, I can take notes during consulting, and have an electronic white board when I am training/mentoring. It offers a more accurate control experience, as we are more used to holding a pen and 'pointing' at things than having a slight separation of controlling a mouse to guide an arrow around a screen. I certainly noticed a difference between mouse and stylus navigation and the ease in which I could focus on the task in hand with the latter approach.

So then I find an article which mentions an Apple patent for use of eye-tracking software to allow users to navigate and control a computing device.

Perhaps this will change the way we work. One can hope.

Acceptance Test Driven Development

2010-01-05T15:36:00.001+10:00

Interesting presentation on tools and process for Acceptance testing in an Agile environment.

Acceptance Test Driven Development

View more documents from Naresh Jain.

Climate change. What is the debate about?

2009-12-17T19:39:00.004+10:00

The whole debate on climate change seems strange.

You may find plenty of peer reviewed publications on everything ranging from bleaching of coral, tide measurements, reduction in the polar ice caps, changes in the behaviour of the North Atlantic pump and changes in migratory behaviour of birds and insects. There are plenty of exceptions to; this should help improve the model and hence prove or disprove the hypothesis that climate change is occuring.

I'd say the MAIN issue is whether it is man made or natural.

Irrespective of peoples beliefs regarding climate change, there was a realisation that uncontrolled consumption of the Earth's resources was 'a bad thing'.

We have started on the path of conserving energy, looking at the reduction of waste, and recycling. The perceived threat of climate change through human activity has been another catalyst for us to recognise the effect of humans on the planet, just as the issues of CFCs, overfishing etc.

I'm sure scientists might take liberties with the statistics to make their models fit, so lets hope peer reviews by those in the field, and not skewed, uneducated reviews by journalists, politicians and capitalists, prove or disprove the theory of climate change.

It is very likely that the majority of cynical folk will continue to love their 4.7l V8 Holden, refuse to swap from incandescents to Fluoro or LED, recycle, compost, insulate their homes, drink recycled water, buy biodegradable cleaning products, spend 4 minutes in the shower.

You get the picture. Are you going to join them?

Bing - white out christmas

2009-12-04T18:38:00.003+10:00

Article on how Bing is fail. Classic. I don't ever remember ever having a problem with Google, and perhaps that is why I use it. In contrast I don't ever recall hearing anyone recommend Bing. Perhaps that is because the name alone is annoying and sounds like that M$ sound 'ding'. Check C:\WINDOWS\Media\ding.wav for a reminder.

Just because you have good marketing, doesn't mean the thing will fly.

I'm in ur modems steeling ur interwub packs.

2009-12-04T12:02:00.002+10:00

Had such fun trying to get my home network sorted. Having just moved house and waiting far too long for Optus and of course Telstra to provide DSL service to my place, I've been disappointed.

Recent issues have included:

FTP dropping out.
Quick speeds when tested but web pages taking a long time to load.
Slow downloads. As in stop watch slow.
Failure to connect to work VPN
random outages.
Slow DNS

The first thing I have done is switch to OpenDNS. This has removed my dependency on crappy Optus DNS, which appears to be built on a single 8086 connected to the interwebs via IP over Morse. That has immediately sped up getting to a site.

Next problem was identified when I was trying transfer a zip file of training material to our downloads.kjross web server, to allow the printers access. Filezilla has always worked for me, the settings were unchanged but it was bombing out after 200k. I had another 8100k to go. After trying Ilisys mirror FTP areas and trying for 2 hours, I gave up and used wireless which worked. That showed me the only difference was the physical connection.

I reckoned it was the POS Sagem modem. I got it free from Optus when I signed up, and I had also found out it doesn't support VPN pass through which is a pain.

I still had a D-Link DSL502T vA kicking around, and so to make sure it worked properly I upgraded the firmware with the modem kicking and screaming for 3 hours, to V2.0oB12. The exe failed miserably numerous times, and the web update failed 9 out of 10 times, then it just worked.

Reconfigured the modem to sit in front of my DI624 wireless router to provide an onion firewall setup, and it all worked. Speed test showed me the speed was slightly slower at 12Mbps down from 14.5Mbps, but that doesn't mean squat as the D-Link is FASTER. I don't get it. Web pages load visibly faster, and I was able to FTP the 8MB file in seconds. No dropouts, no failures mid transfer.

If someone knows why Sagem produces a modem that allows you to perform FTP but only in 3k chunks I'd be all ears. Also seemingly preventing VPN passthrough without providing a config change just doesn't make sense.

While I thought the old 502T was past it, the new firmware and extra configurability has proven it was well worth keeping as a backup modem. Sagem = So gone.

Nicely done video of Shuttle Launch STS 129

2009-11-29T20:51:00.002+10:00

nicely edited video taken from the on-board cameras of the Space Shuttle on launch.

STS-129 Ascent Video Highlights from mike interbartolo on Vimeo.

Out with the old, in with the new

2009-09-16T12:01:00.002+10:00

And so The Beast has been retired. With memories ranging from RACQ rescues in tropical storms, driving through golf ball hail without damage, sailing across dunes on Fraser, and escaping steam with burst coolant hoses in Gympie, Byron, Burleigh, Pottsville and other places, the end has come.

It has been replaced with Black Beauty; a 2.5 turbo Subaru Forester XT Luxury. Big enough to get my surf board in, enough cup holders to keep me in caffeine, a radio that works, moon roof, brakes, waterproof drivers compartment (compared to The Beast that is), and air conditioning.

Quite a contrast, and it's already putting a smile on my face.

Things I will be looking at is

getting it rechipped.
installing sat-nav
updating or hacking a ipod input into the head unit.
firming up the suspension
seeing what bits I can recover from wrecked Subarus to put into this one.

Otherwise, it is an awesome and comfortable and quick car.

Testing in Agile

2009-08-30T23:29:00.003+10:00

Interesting article on the place of dedicated testers in Agile. So far I haven't seen much demonstration of the benefits or problems of dedicated testers in Agile teams with the use of metrics etc, but at least this puts some discussion points together around the issue.

Too often I have heard developers say they test the code 'very well' and unless they are TDD guns, it's likely I could write another umpteen tests that assess more critical parts of the system/function/blancmange on top of their tests. This is mainly due to developers not being taught testing skills, just as few testers are taught development skills. With that in mind, and considering that the developer's strength is in their ability to write code, and to continue with the theme, a tester's strength is in their ability to skeptically analyse a specification and consider the most critical parts to test with well constructed and organised scenarios that expose predicted weaknesses.

Therefore a dedicated tester, or at least a part resource that can evaluate the story/requirement with such criticality that additional test cases (and hence defects discovered) are designed that otherwise would have been missed.

Perhaps this isn't even restricted to Agile but should encompass all IT projects; there seems to be a concept that testing is a tiresome necessity but we have forgotten why. The main reason it is there, is to provide a deep and skeptical appraisal of the system, on the behalf of the customer or end use. Who is the best person to do this? Do you read other independent reviews of a car that you are interested in buying? Do you buy a car without having a test drive first? Do you expect that the manufacturer does some internal testing? I started off on foody type analogies with cooks, chefs and waiters, but they all amount to the same thing; you expect a product to have a variety of levels of quality assessment (notice I didn't use quality assurance) before you even get close to it. I mean, would you buy an Operating System or some such thing that required the customers to perform their own defect detection activities?

Agile Research

2009-08-30T22:16:00.011+10:00

Trying to get notes together to provide a bit more meat behind a course presentation. I always reckon a mix of real-world anecdotes, theoretical approach, and a whole bunch of tools and tricks, supported by plenty of hands on provides the right approach. Some people's learning style is about getting dirty with stuff, some like talking about it at breaks, some like listening, others like drawing diagrams to express themselves, while some like taking notes. There are some that require energetic debate for it to be taken on-board.

Anyways there is some great stuff out there for Agile these days, and being loving caring hoooomans there is plenty of sharing going on.

Great Agile cheat sheet.

Scrum Cheat Sheet

Great blog with some nice links here on xprocess and their site here
Another blog here with some good stuff on velocity.
Version One have a good Agile 101 here
Good site with definitions and graphs here.
Another good but of course obvious place to start research is with the various relatives of Agile such as ScrumAlliance which has a good glossary of terms.
Agile FAQ is here.
Another good blog which describes the estimation process in Scrum is found here.

Ashes to Ashes

2009-08-24T11:25:00.001+10:00

I don't think there is anything more to say.

Ethics in business

2009-08-04T10:04:00.003+10:00

Consider a hypothetical situation.

Imagine you had been asked to provide a test manager type resource to an organisation. You provided one of your most experienced staff members, then looked to backfill (as that person performed other tasks). You found a suitably experienced resource and started bringing them in.

What if the real true blue Aussie company, say, oh I don't know a Christmas Catalogue company, decided that the resource you had presented wasn't appropriate. The company might suggest that your person didn't offer the right 'cultural fit', and that they had come to that decision in 2 or 3 hours of your person being there. What if the person you had put forward had genetics based around the asian region? What if you suspected this company of being racist? What would you do? Would you find someone else? Would you tell them to stick their tinned meat products and cheap festive garb up their comfortable white blinkered behind, or would you try and educate them? Or would you kowtow to them?

While this is of course a hypothetical situation I certainly want to strive for only working with ethical companies. The rational arguments against discriminative behaviour far outweigh any emotional argument for. After all, if we were truly racist, wouldn't we send the entire population of immigrants (even the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th generations) back to Europe and leave it for the indiginous population.

Anyway, like I said, this is all hypothetical, but inspired by a news article that surprised me regarding the number of death threats Obama gets per day.

iTunes images and xml files

2009-07-31T09:07:00.002+10:00

ARGH. Been trying to organise my iTunes collection especially as I've had a few dramas with the storage of the music.

- had a harddisk crash on a PC with 3 drives. 2 set up RAID1 whilst OS (Ubuntu) running on 3rd. Fortunately it was the OS drive that crashed, but I had to rebuild that to get to the music.
- had a second disk crash. This time, one of the RAID drives. PC wouldn't boot either, random beeps on boot during POST, graphics card not working, seating of memory affecting it sometimes, plus OS had crashed again.
- Moved to NAS. Working ok, except by trying to clean up what I had, I somehow deleted some of the album covers.
- downloaded icoverart. This allowed me to list and identify the tracks with missing artwork.
- After sorting out 1000's of songs, iCoverArt complains about some tracks yet the image shows in iTunes.
- It looks like I have an Album art folder on the NAS and one locally. And I'm guessing they don't match. Some of the missing art from an iCoverArt perspective is visible in iTunes.
- Now trying to look at iTunes XML file and work out how the persistent ID is used to find an image file.
.
.
.
- Oh, its that simple. The persistent ID is the suffix to the library identifier. Just a search reveals which hex labelled folder has the ITC file. I was trying to work out if some AND op on the persistent ID and the library ID revealed the directories that the image file is in.

Anyway, iCoverArt is working pretty well to help identify and search for album artwork, along with http://www.coverhunt.com/ and http://www.discogs.com/

It's on, it's off

2009-07-24T21:58:00.000+10:00

So perhaps I counted my chickens. The contract fell through, which is a shame after having 4 different parties interested. C'est la vie. Hopefully the open home on Saturday will keep the momentum going.

SOLD!

2009-07-21T07:56:00.003+10:00

Well would you believe it; the house is under offer, and pending building and pest reports will be sorted in 35 days. It would be good to be able to move on and not have to worry about having to deal with someone I can't trust, and I'm not talking about the real estate agent.

If anything Dale deserves a medal for getting such a decent photographer round for the house, doing such a good write up, and acting as an independent voice of reason during discussions with Cathy.

There is still an open home this week, so I have to iron the doona and get the fire going for the morning, and hopefully it might continue the interest there has been in the house; it's nice to keep the momentum.

On other fronts, I've got a Bluetooth mouse that works very well thank you very much, and England have one the first test at Lords. Bit of a good day all round really. Just a pity I noticed a pair of my suit trousers seem a little bit tighter around the waist . . . .

Womble

2009-07-13T20:03:00.003+10:00

We've been very honoured to look after Womble for the last week. With another 2 weeks to go I've fortunately seen past the puppy dog eyes and found his true character; a hungry, horny and occasionally disobedient creature of fun.

Just tonight, countless cries of "Womble, come here!", "stop!" and "HEEL!" went unheeded as he ran into the dark on Coolangatta beach, bounding up to a group of people in the dark and scaring the crap out of them.

Having never had a dog before, I'm a bit lost when it comes to knowing how to control a dog apart from what I have seen in that dominatrix dog trainer show and what I remember from Barbara Woodhouse days.

It's strange, as I do seem to managed to deal with picking up steaming dog do-do, washing the poor boy, and walking him daily. He is a pretty good guard dog to and a strangely good judge of character, barking incessantly at someone deemed not suitable for entry.

House for sale

2009-07-13T14:21:00.003+10:00

Well, after 18 months of living here, it is time to wipe the slate clean, make a fresh start, throw the baby out with the bathwater, go back to square one and take things to the next level. Spent the last few days gardening, cleaning the pool, cleaning, tidying, painting and generally getting the place decent for viewing.

Definitely time to move on, but I will miss the place, especially my Kooka friends and the Koala.

It's on the web at RealEstate.com.au and the agents website First National Real Estate.

Getting plenty of interest but who knows in the current market. There's no rush at least but if it keeps the ex off my back with threats then that has to be a good thing.

CITCON Brisbane 2009

2009-07-01T12:12:00.007+10:00

So I attended my first CITCON this year. As K. J. Ross & Associates were sponsors 1) I was obliged to go but there were other attractions such as 2) it was a free as in beer conference 3) it was nearby physically, being in Acacia Ridge, but not that close in terms of places I would visit out of choice 4) some serious drawcards with the attendees.

It was number 4 that was the clincher, with people coming from private enterprise and government, local and overseas, testers to developers, geeks to geekettes, and more than anything, people who wanted to share their experiences and be open to learn something new.

Twitter and flickr were kept busy with people updating the interweb tubes regularly.

http://bit.ly/BkRTV and check #citcon.

I'd probably go next year but that might be challenging as NZ is proposed as a venue.

we're all going to the zoo tomorrow

2003-04-14T13:05:00.004+10:00

I've been lazy; I'm aware of that. I haven't written anything in ages, and I feel consternation
at losing touch with people back home. I'm not busy at the moment, but
there have been some interesting things in Manly.

For what good it did, there was a paddle-for-peace, where around 300 surfers formed a peace logo in the sea. It took around 20 minutes for us all to paddle out and form up, when we then sat around, bobbing on the waves for another 45 minutes. I think the organisers were expecting hoards of press in helicopters to fly over, and for our pictures to be splashed across the front of The Australian, along with a breaking news report at 5pm. In reality, it made the back page of the Sydney Herald, and front page on the local rag, the Manly Daily. I have a feeling that John Howard was far from quaking in his shoes when he heard of a bunch of surfers protesting, and I doubt he rang Blair or Bush to warn them of the impending revolt.

It crossed my mind that while those who were in favour of the war said that at least we were able to protest about our governments actions. I wonder what good it does when despite living in a democracy; the majority is not listened to. Oh, what is the point of thinking about it?

We had a little incident at the place where I'm staying. One Friday night, between one and 3 am, the power was turned off to the place, and some people broke into the back garden, and stole some clothes off the line. In the end they discarded most things and only took my wetsuit. Annoying to say the least. Fortunately, there was a sale at the surf shop down the road, and I picked another one up with 30% off the price. Good deal. I have to say I look rather fetching in it.

The work situation hasn't really changed much. Blake put me onto an agency where I had a chat. Nothing much has come of it yet, but it has kept my optimism up for a while. So what do I do? While Cathy goes out and earns an honest living, I wax my board, put on my new wetsuit, and head to the beach. To be honest, I still spend maybe two hours a day searching the web, ringing agencies and making my CV the sweetest looking CV in the world.

On top of the job hunting and surfing, I'm starting to invest time in indoor activities, an example being modelling, of the plastic rather than flesh variety. It started when Cathy got me a small model of a Mirage, and the latest has been a Harrier GR3. Most exciting. I think one is allowed to regress into ones childhood, when you don't have a job.

There have been a few birthdays recently; we went out for a surprise meal and a bit of boozing, when Lisa had her birthday. I somehow ended up in a very sorry state, but of course it was all for the sake of Lisa's birthday you understand. Last Monday, the 7th was Cathy's birthday, and her birthday treat was the day off work and a trip to the zoo. We had heard some good things about the Taronga Zoo, which helped me as neither of us are too keen on zoos if they are a bit 'eastern European', but we like them if they are anything like Marwell Zoo. It's a crap theory because at the end of the day all zoos are the same. Taronga has some amazing exhibits. Actually, what do you call a cage or pen of animals? There are examples of native bats, spiders, red kangaroos, grey kangaroos, rock-hoppers, platypuses, emus, water dragons, and all kinds of native birds, plus some excellent areas for gorillas and chimpanzees. All of these animals looked really happy. The animals that didn't look happy were the arctic leopards (not surprising when it's a hot day), the very bored or drugged lion, the equally bored or drugged Siberian tiger and the red panda. All the big cats were in an area the size of the average back garden, which obviously isn't natural and the red panda had just been moved from one enclosure to another, and had the unenviable position of being the target of screaming kids. Still, it's a nice zoo and they are improving the place all the time, plus they have some excellent breeding programmes running, and it has one of the BEST views of the harbour.

Eddie should arrive sometime today and it will be nice to see a face from home, although Cathy and I have no idea what we are going to do to occupy him. To be honest, I don't know what I do to keep myself occupied. Well, I have to admit that I do spend a few evenings a week at the internet café playing CounterStrike on the net, where I go by the name of 2zer0, but that's another story.

language and culture; what is this place about?

2003-02-17T13:05:00.004+10:00

A typical day starts thus; I get up at 0530, shower and change, and usually catch the 0620 JetCat to Circular Quay. I pull a few yards, taking bags up or down, and then go for first boff. Usually about 10 or 11 o'clock is the first split, sometimes accompanied by a zob. Lunch boff rolls around and I go for my 1/2 hour break. More bag carrying, sometimes a few room checks, maybe a pick-up from Mac Street, possibly a group pull. When it comes to the end of the shift, I make sure I have collected my split, check the next shift time and head home. If I have the energy, I'll go for a surf, but today I pulled an extra long shift, and it hurt plus I feel so drained I dont think I could manage to paddle out, so I sit here, out of the thunderstorms and type.

The work speak has been interesting to understand, but learning Aussie slang has been better. I always used to say "no worries", but it seems to have aquired additional vowels. "Ay" can be said at the end of any sentance as can "but", e.g. "It's busy today ay" or "it's hot today but". Both are used rhetorically and are not questions. I was always hanging on to peoples sentances, expecting more to be said after "I didnt win in the lottery today but." I don't get it, but I have to admit to saying it. This shocked me when I said it. I was out surfing, and I have got to know a few of the locals. Sitting out the back, I was talking to one particular bloke I know, about the waves and I said "Yeah, it was better yesterday; its closing out more today but." I could feel my brain say to my mouth "but what?". I hope to recover from these language problems soon.<

I said I get up at 0530, when in fact the hostel cat, while insufferably cute, jumps in through the window at 4am and requests our attentions and food. This time of the morning is never that good for me. The peculiarities of this cat never cease to amaze me; it turns its nose up at smoked salmon, fresh ham, beef and spag-bol, but hoovers up cat biscuits as if the pigeons and roaches will eat them first, which they might.

Yesterday at work was slightly different, as I managed to leave work early, and I met Cathy to head towards Hyde Park. As we came out of the underground, we were met with a sight of thousands of people. I have been feeling particularly anti-American and anti-Blair lately and found my channel of release through the peace march in Sydney. Fortunately, after seeing that thousands marched in the U.S. Im now not anti-American, rather anti-Bush. Dubya and his intellectually stunted colleages seem hell-bent on creating hell, and get upset when anyone criticises them, plus lambasting foreign governments and worldwide public opinion. The U.S. Ambassador to Australia criticised the opposition leader Mr Crean for opposing the P.M. Mr Howard regarding Howards support for the U.S.A. Another example of U.S. government sticking its nose in where it doesnt belong. How dare he interfere with the politics of another country where he is only a guest. The ambassador was suitably castigated the next day.

My visa means that I can't work at the hotel any more, due to the 3 month limit for any one employer, so I can concentrate on getting an I.T. contract out here, and maybe a little bit of surfing. If I dont get anything within a month then Cathy and I have decided to make a break for it, as we cant hang about in Sydney for much longer if we arent working. It is just a city after all, and there is so much more to see out here, like all of the east coast, the west coast, a little of the south coast and some of the north coast, plus all the stuff in the middle.

Seeing as I stop working within the next few days, Im going to start looking for a car or van, as well as more work, as well as maybe another surfboard. Well, I think I have earnt it.

just dont mention the cricket

2003-01-30T13:02:00.003+10:00

Another tour of despicable cricket has seen England exceed past performances and conjoured up the miracle of playing like they were the Tanning Village school team. Im ashamed to be British at the moment, and saddened when I hear that Brighton is falling apart; Fat Boy has lost his thin girl and the West Pier now has the first underwater Candy floss stall. Blair is still Bush's bitch and Saddam is hiding all his anthrax, missiles, Imperial Guard and lightsabre in his moustache. Sharon is going to bring peace to Israel in a second term, by waging war, and I only feel a little sadness about the Bee Gee's although I can only wish there would have been a better way to stop their music.

The swell is poor so Im not catching many waves, but then I'm working so much at the moment that its hard to do much else. We did pop over to Bondi to see Blake and Lisa, where I showed Blake my prowess with a surfboard, by slicing his leg open as my board rode over him. The weather was good and it has been quite changable lately. For instance, yesterday was only 25'C while temperatures in the suburbs of Sydney reached near 40'C and out west got to 44'C. Sea temperatures remain a chilly (compared to the superheated atmosphere ) 22'C.

Work is strange; I completed an employee survey today. Why they should want my opinion I dont know. I critisiced everything, from the supervisors management style to the lack of a sprinkling of cocoa powder on the machine made cappucino in the staff canteen. I take my employee surveys very seriously, and answering questions such as, "Do you feel that your uniform is suitable and stylish enough to perform your job?" I answer no. Today as temperatures reached the high thirties, the doormans top hat was made of 82% sweat,
10% skin, 7% bush fire dust and 1% felt. Our shirts became see-through with sweat, and Im sure this isnt the scene that a widower from Iowa isnt paying for when they book their cruise to Sydney.

While we are on cruises, Im staggered at how people can consider they have visited somewhere when they stop their for 3 days. Its akin to that list you keep as a boy about how far you got at the boys club disco; none of it actually means anything, and you are just going through the motions to clock up points, just to say you have been there. The majority of them American, who I incidentally project hate towards for allowing such a dicksplat as Bush into office, are convinced that seeing a city involves buying as much of it and shipping it home in your suitcase or camera film. They do have numerous and spacious luggage, that Im sure a few aboriginal people have been taken to the states. I was a part of this I must admit, as I heard the murmurings from the case and the vibrations of the digeridoo could be felt through the handle. Its curious, as so many nations can be considered blind to culture. I think the English find the eccentricities of English abroad very interesting, as well as the architecture and the way the culture is presented, while the japanese love having pictures of themselves at the famous landmarks, as they seem to revere these places they go to. While not appreciating the culture itself and certainly not experimenting with the local food, the Japanese adore and respect the place and people they visit. The Americans arrogance still goes unchecked. The US dollar is considered an acceptable tip, when they should really consider getting themselves some local currency, the way they dress suggests wealth and store cards for Gap and Pringle, ( the white or khaki shorts with blue polo neck, white knee length socks and trainers is really in this season says Versace), and the expectation that Australia is some sort of third world country as you cant get the superbowl live, cars are on the wrong side of the road and you cant get obese size polo shirts in the shops without an orange fluoro strip with Billabong or Ripcurl down the side.

I dont even know how the US managed to make it to WWII when there wasnt even the internet to help download a map and a useful information site detailing such things as local currencies and language for Europe and Asia. I spoke to one guy the other day and he kept saying he was a shnook. I have no idea what a shnook is, but it sounds nasty and I bet he has a record for it. He used Just for Men on a regular basis and said that people could see the Irish in him from the fire in his eyes. Personally, I saw the early stages of cataracts, but how do you break that to a shnook?

I have only a few weeks to find another job and I have been looking for more IT contract stuff. Id like to earn lots of money for working my brain hard rather than earning only a little money for working my body hard. It doesnt seem right as bodies wear out sooner and I do get the odd strain from the bag carrying malarky, but someone has decided that you can earn more for typing and thinking about computer things, rather than going, "yes sir, of course sir, do you need a luggage rack sir? how do you find the room sir? You must be tired sir. You are going to tip me aren't you sir?!".

I have been improving my mind with some crosswords and trying to read more. I find it hard when the 6am jetcat ride means that my eyes have not cleared of mucus and insects and i cant focus on a book, but lately I have finished a disappointing Dean Koontz, a mixed bag of sometimes disturbing sometimes dull short stories in 'The Devils Larder' and giggled my way through 'Sean and Davids Long Drive'. The pick of my new books is Schott's original Miscellany, which has such useful facts as the complete list of Bond films, with the Bond, villain, Bond girl and car, the curious fates of a number of burmese kings, the degrees of Freemasonry plus UK and US standard bed sizes. How useful is that! I had to buy it for the potential it has if ever I organise or participate in a proper pub quiz. Did you know that St. Sebastian is the patron saint of pin makers? "Worm and Sponge" is the 9th order in when firing a cannon in Nelson's Navy! Elks go in gangs while starlings group in murmurations, and John Cleese was the Rector of St Andrews in 1970. The second best book in the world, after my copy of 'High Frequency Circuit Design and Measurement' book signed by Jack Charlton.

Cathy has now found work in Manly; no city commute for her. A new restaurant has opened up on the beach front, having expanded from its origins in Bondi and Coogee. The boss sounds a rude fool, but Cathy brings free food home at the end of the night. Its far too spicy for her to eat, being mainly Thai curries, so I have to perservere and eat it myself. She took to complaining about what hard work it is, being on your feet for 6 or 7 hours a day. I sat there smug, having myself done that in the heat here at work for a while now. I have been working and she had complained that she wanted to 'do stuff' on my days off, when I would rather sleep in, surf, read books and chat with her over a cup of tea. Now she knows so well the pain of moving from a sedentary office job in an air-con office, to a slightly more physical job with customers that dont tip and often complain. Australians are by British standards rude, in that they actually say what they think of the food, rather than chewing through a mouthful of unswallowable gristle and exclaming that the food was wonderful. On the flipside, they dont flatter when the food is good.

I know that the dancers and crew for 'Riverdance' are staying at a certain hotel. Of course I could not possibly comment on where this hotel could be. Incidentally, one of the crew members is trying to get all the front desk and bellmen tickets for one on the leg twitching performances. Minus Michael Flatterly, as of course he is now 'Lord of the Dance'.

Cathy mentioned something today that had been on my mind but unwilling to say; living in Byron Bay is better than being in Sydney, especially when we both miss staying at Mike and Mel's house. I can imagine passing the time, surfing, eating nice food, and generally letting your mind expand, but I do wonder how I could make money in Byron. The idea of starting some sort of software company up there has sounded good in my head, but no doubt would look bad on paper. While I can think that plenty of people would like to move out of the major cities for a change of lifestyle and a new company or department. I'd like my own company, especially as I have seen how people can screw them up so easily.

Must stop typing for a while, head is burning from curry that Cathy brought home, and the booze that I used to put out the flames is slurring my typiong.

on the brink of war and I'm somewhere safe

2003-01-28T13:02:00.004+10:00

Life as a bellman continues. I met up with Blake and Lisa, and Cathy and I went for a picnic with them in the Domain; a piece of parkland behind the Opera House. I left to go to work and Cathy went for a job interview. The usual events have happenned at the hotel; Chris Tarrant came to stay and tipped us with 6-packs of beer and leftover Fosters T-shirts that were free anyway, I get offensive looks from guys as I ask, "Are you checking in Sir?" and it clicks that the girl getting out of the car isn't his wife but a hooker and he is the pimp, thick rich americans with far too many soft large suitcases and far too many pairs of kharki shorts. blue shirts, sneakers and knee length white socks, quiet Japanese with stylish functional cases, nervous English, unsure how much to tip and wishing they could still carry an elephant gun around the more dangerous parts of the empire, and plenty of rude locals that expect some sort of service but arent fussed as long as you deliver their esky of beer and the other dozen ill-packed plastic, paper and canvas bags that constitutes their luggage.

Then I leave, and return to the small hostel, Manly Bungalow, and wax my board, and wish for a decent swell to come in, or that it was at least daylight when I return from work so I could see the lack of swell. Christmas in Byron seems an age away and I miss Becky and Reza, and I miss Holly, Mike and Mel. It seemed perhaps not complete, as having our own place up there would have helped, but close, as I felt part of a community. Sydney is faceless and full of common english looking to be a bigger fish in a bigger pond as opposed to whitebait in the hustle of London. There are too many people thinking that this is some sort of mecca for the lazy when the majority of people seem to work damn hard. Something doesnt fit right, and Im not sure what it is. Hearing an english accent here is starting to bug me, as its usually from a bunch of beered up blokes from Guildford, who are wanting to get away from their failing jobs in Refridgeration, Dixons, or direct sales for Lloyds TSB. They all seem to want to do something different, and get a tan, but unfortunately all they bring is English pessimism, drunken rowdiness and air of superiority, and the latter is exactly what Im doing now. The city is tainted with corporate culture, the ad-men ruleth and McDonalds sells the Billabong burger.

On top of all that, some cheap thug from the states is trying to ruin the rest of the planet, by trying to ignore its own international indiscretions such as supporting a myriad of terrorist organisations around the world, and deciding somehow that Saddam and his 'tache has become a matter of 'grave national security'. Im sorry, I know I should have put National Security in capitals. What has Mr Hussein got to do with Osama Bin Laden or doesnt that matter anymore. The shifting of focus from Afghanistan to Iraq has been one of the most impressive bits of spin this century, but still doesnt detract from the matter that while more than 90% of the Australian population is not in agreement with any possible war with Iraq, the US has put on pressure and Aussy troops are being sent. You work it out. Do the politicians listen any more. Are we actually at risk at the moment from Saddam? Is he going to launch an attack on someone, and if he does, have we run out of bigger bombs to hit him with?

Who the hell gave Dubya the right to attack a country just 'coz they don' luk rayght tu me'. How does Dubya feel about using weapons of mass destruction on a people to make sure that they dont use theirs first. Oh, thats ok is it? Thats in the rules. Just like the US is allowed to pollute the atmosphere, sell banned drugs overseas, give unlabelled GM grain to countries that have made a choice to remain GM free, and generally bend everyone else over and stick that flag up 'em.

I used to want to go into the army, and I still regret it to some extent, but I couldnt cope with the hypocrasy of telling someone not to create weapons, by killing them. Being a part of that would be sinful, regardless of religion. Oh yeah, North Korea, you arent allowed Nuclear power either. I know we have it, but thats not the point; we are always right, and are allowed to have nuclear power and our own nuclear accidents, plus have plenty of warheads to go around, but you aren't as you are far to, ahem, 'third world' for our liking.

In the middle of the playground is the U.N. who is the impotent teacher with no control over their class, the boss who cant get the staff motivated, the marriage guidance counsellor who is sleeping with the husband.

So I stay in Sydney, hoping that London isnt reduced to some 'Threads' vision of the future, where Albert Square has an 'scary muslim next door' story running, post apocalypse victims are left looking like those mutants in the mines on Mars from 'Total Recall' making the homeless at the moment looking like dandies, and Blair looking more like Dubya's bitch. I give up. Last time I got interested in politics and sent a letter to my MP, he ended up dead within a month on a kitchen table with an orange in his mouth. I'd love a bit of direct action, but I dont have a pilots licence or a beard, and I have far too much apathy to participate in a
bit of rioting. So I just put my angst here, where talks of further terrorist attacks like Bali crop up every other day, and people here are worried that diplomacy seems to have been forgotten about.

I'm still job hunting, but the IT industry is quiet. I've been looking at other positions, but Im starting to get the feeling that it might be time to move on from Sydney. The severe drought has meant over 50,000 farming jobs have been lost in NSW alone, so there is little hope for even fruit picking work. There are a few cars that we have seen around that look ok, but Im still going to get any nice ones checked over. The last thing I want is Cathy and I to be in the middle of the outback with nothing but brake fluid to drink, having had to consume the radiator water, once the gearbox fell out of the car and stranded us beside countless memorials of shells of cars with skeletons in, the scenery looking not dissimilar to Mad Max. I dont think I would last long in the Thunderdome, but I reckon I could have Tina Turner begging for mercy once I got a handful of that hair.

Next shift is 1400 tomorrow, but I dont think I am too busy. Ive just polished off the rest of Cathy's spag bol washed down with one of Chris Tarrants beers, sitting in my pants at 2am, with the temperature at around 20'C. I dread to think what its like in the UK. Rain, congestion charges, scraping ice off the car in the morning, stupid driving, 3 hours of daylight, 8 pounds for 2 beers and a O.J. council tax, Debenhams sale, Railtrack and the Hornby trainset kids in the Government, the Royal family and what they are trying to keep secret this week, Tony and Cherie and interesting old friends, coats on to go to the pubs.

The thing I miss most about the UK at the moment is the adverts, you don't know how lucky you are. UK TV is the best.

Im off to the army surplus to buy myself an Anderson shelter.

back to normality

2003-01-10T13:01:00.002+10:00

New Years day was a write off. Most of it was spent in a semi-permanent vegetative state, trying to read a book or staring into space. The day after and I had a bit more life in me, and made it to the beach for a surf. I went to the pass, supposedly a good right hand point break, but then Im still doing more paddling around than standing up. I moved down towards Clarks beach as the direction of the swell meant that the less crowded beach break meant I was more likely to catch a wave. While Im there, a small pod of dolphins passes by. The sun is shining, people are chatting to each other as they wait for the waves to come in, then some dolphins appear. Fantastic. They swam past us in only waist deep water, jumping and splashing around.

It was excellent spending more time with Mike and Mel, and I seemed to be getting on pretty well with Holly. I think that was more down to the way I never had the guts to tell her to stop doing something, as she isnt my child to bring up, and that not only am I at a similar educational level, but that I have the time to behave at a that level. There were lots of chasing games across the carpet and a few games of peek-a-boo. For a 11 month old she is very mobile and chatty. Her vocabulary includes 'dada', 'dakka dakka' which is the name for most things, 'ay' used in surprise, 'phlurrp' which can mean lots of fun, tastes nasty, or Im full up, and a reasonable dose of crying, which also has more than one meaning.

To those with kids this is no revelation, but for me, I was most surprised at how vocal and conversational a nearly one-year-old baby could be. Ok, she still cant drink beer and she seems to make pooh like its going out of fashion, in as many colours as there are in the rainbow, but she is a joy to hang out with. It sounds like I got clucky, while I think its more a case of finding a baby that is actually good fun. She loves playing, like shouting in a bucket (I showed her that one) and playing with cordless phones and a red ball. I tried showing off at how I could at least throw it and catch it; she didnt seem that impressed and showed me how she could bite into the ball, then chew cardboard. I had to concede defeat.

Mike and Mel are still very sociable people and despite it being their holiday had and are having many people over. Friends Annie and Phil came over, for a barbeque and while I'd like to say it was an especially nice evening, it was just as pleasant and lovely as all the other evening, but had the addition of two more lovely people.

The day after, it was crazy room change. An english student from Switzerland was coming to stay for 10 weeks, so we were moving into Holly's room and the student was taking the spare room. He's Stefan, having just completed a bank apprenticeship and seems to have a lot more get up and go compared to myself. Within two days he was out cycling, having surf lessons and going down the pub. Young whippersnappers.

It was drawing to a close. I was still surfing nearly every day, sometimes taking Michaels modified bike with board carrier, which made the journey to the beach a lot less strenuous and less wasted if the surf was poor. Note. Must buy camper van soon. On the last day in Byron, a wednesday, we prepared a picnic, and Cathy, Holly, Mel and Myself all went out. We drove over to Bangalow, a little country town inland from Byron. In the park the river has been dammed to create a swimming pool. Under the shade of pine and gum trees we set out the picnic. A lizard at least 40cm, maybe 50cm, came to join us. Holly got to explore outside which was obviously stimulating her, and we got to see a bit more of the area. The town itself is really a village, and looks like a frontier town. A main street is lined now with antique shops and small art boutiques, but you can see it was once full of general stores and farm shops.

Afterwards, we popped in to some friends of Mels who are staying at their Granny's house in the hills overlooking Byron Bay. Chris is an artist and web designer, while Natalie is a film producer. Their baby Zoe was poles apart to Holly, and I only seem to appreciate that now. Zoe was quiet and shy. No matter, I played with their dog Nookie instead. Dont ask. The pool, surrounded by palms, gum trees and lovely flowers, overlooks the bay and is next to the house. You can sit in the Gazebo and read, or dive in and cool off and it made a wonderful change swimming in freshwater and not saltwater. This lifestyle.

Evening came and we were nearly packed. Becky picked us up for one last drink at the Rails, and I got to meet a lovely couple, Christine and Doug, friends of Becky. They were having a little drink to celebrate their daughter who had tragically died 5 years before, and I was in awe at the way they really did celebrate. There is more to their tale, but its not for me to tell. You will just have to come to Byron Bay yourself.

The coach arrived as the storm was nearing. Lighting filled the sky and each bolt illuminated the clouds like there was a faulty fluorescent tube behind them, blinking sporadically. A new pillow purchased from Woolworths ensured that as long as there wasnt a vomit boy on the coach, it would be a more pleasant journey. This is noted as a top tip for travelling Australia; take a pillow.

Getting back to Sydney was both sad and pleasant. The sea was colder, but the break is more familiar to me, there are friends here, but they are down in Bondi, I can earn money here, but I have to put my ego and pride in my locker before I start.

Its time to knuckle down and earn some money, then buy a van and get the hell out of Dodge.

the carnage begins

2002-12-31T13:00:00.003+10:00

Waking up on Christmas day as the heat increased and the insects began their chorus while walking around a house full of decos, seemed both very Christmassy and not very Christmassy at all, all at once at the same time. Becky and Reza had stayed the night but left early in the morning. Cathy and I made tea and enjoyed
the moment. I sat in a hammock under the trees, feeling the heat of the sun. We opened our presents and cards in front of the little tree that Mel and Mike had put on top of their TV.

After the present session and breakfast of fruit salad on the veranda, we made turkey and cranberr sandwiches. The turkey was lowest on the list of ingredients on the lump of grey meat we had purchased at Woolworths, but it sufficed once combined with said cranberry sauce and put between good bread. Becky and Reza picked us up and we went to Wategos beach, where under an increasingly cloudy sky we encamped and had a lunchtime picnic of bad turkey sandwiches, beautiful handmade sausage rolls, filo parcels and ham sandwiches supplied by Becky. This was all washed down with champagne. A decadent and hedonistic Christmas, but more was to come!

After a decent break to ensure I didnt get cramp from eating, I went in the water. That last part is a lie but I have to say that for Mums sake. Reza and I paddled out and tried to catch a Christmas wave, which we did. Sat on the clear azure blue water, with the sun shining down, and the imposing hills surrounding the bay, with Mount Warning in the distance, I smiled to myself. A moment later I end up laughing with joy as dolphins start swimming amongst the surfers, not 15 metres away from me. Im going to bottle that moment up forever; my body was content with the nice food and a bit of exercise and the soul was full of wonderful emotions as I began to realise that surfing with dolphins pisses all over worrying about house prices or jobs. Being a bell boy isnt much, but being a bell boy who can go to Byron and drink champagne with friends then surf with dolphins beats commuting in the rain to work in Burgess Hill, no matter how much you get paid. When we left the beach, we took Becky's van which meant we could drive over to theirs later on. Cathy and I came home and finished opening a few last presents, then pottered around in the afternoon and early evening, including watching the Queen's speech. This after all signifies the beginning of the post xmas dinner slide into oblivion as alcohol and food gang up on the body to render it immobile and fatigued. I had a couple of attempts at making the obligatory 'phone calls home, but the queues outside phoneboxes were as long as the list of reasons to hate Jeremy Beadle.

At about 930pm we drove over to Becky's house with a bag full of goodies, including port, wine, mince pies, shrimps, steak and wine. Becky had got some lovely salmon from work which we barbequed to perfection, along with our shrimps and steak. The feast went on for hours, although an early casualty was Reza who seemed to have consumed too much fire water too early and dissappeared to bed until morning during a toilet break. We crashed late and woke many times during the night from the sound of fruit bats, mice and possibly man-eating carnivores that lurk in the trees at the rear of Becky's house.

When we finally awoke in the morning we all took turns to find Cathy the largest web around the house and the spider that lay within, then we drove back to Mike and Mels house.

The next few days were spent in utter relaxation. More food was barbequed and more ice cold beers and wine was drunk while lying in a hammock under the hot sun. More trips to the beach including Wategos and Clarks Beach, with a bit of surfing thrown in for good measure to ensure not all the consumed Christmas calories ended up converted to fat.

A few days after Christmas day saw the special market day in Byron Bay, where all the stalls are lined up along the path that runs along the top of the main beach. The Hari Krishnas were also out in force, pulling a painted wagon by hand along the beach. The wagon was maybe 8 or 10 metres tall with a tented canopy on top, but so as to allow the wagon to pass beneath the many power and telephone cables strung across the streets of Byron Bay, the canopy was on a hydraulic pole which could collapse and reform itself once past the wires.

Soon after that evening saw Matt arrive, Mikes brother, with a lively little boy Trent. Within half an hour Mike, Melissa and Holly had returned, and the house became alive once more.

Life had continued in much the same vein as before, except there were more people around. Michael was off work and was able to spend plenty of time at home. There were more barbeques, getting to know Holly, more
surfing, and while I was surfing, Mel would take Cathy to Tallow Beach for a swim. The dynamic of the house had changed but it was a pleasant change.

As New Years Eve drew near we prepared ourselves for the big event. There was a duff in town ('duff' is coloquial for dance party as its said to be what it sounds like. e.g. duff duff duff duff; repetitive beats and
all that) on Lawson Street while there was also fireworks on the beach, bands on at the Beach Hotel and The Rails, plus other gigs and DJ's playing. Roger Sanchez was going to be around, but I can't remember where.

On New Years Eve itself, Becky and Reza came round and we all had a very nice barbeque. Id had a New Years Eve surf and was feeling a little tired but Becky entered like a hurricane and whipped people up to a frenzy.
I think the barbeque was Soy chicken drumsticks, but Im not sure. Thinking about it, we ate kebabs, and maybe some sausages. Cathy made the kebabs with some lovely marinated chicken. The Soy drumsticks was another night. After a long period of eating and drinking and not feeling in the mood for going out, Becky got us all together and we began the walk into town, in shorts and t-shirts, carrying cans of whisky and coke, and myself having a mask of zinc cream painted on by Michael and Reza. The town was pumping, and there were thousands milling around. For a one bus-stop and three pub town it was heaving. The music had kicked off and there were smiles everywhere. As midnight struck, fireworks went off and the world went mad. Hugs everywhere and my zinc cream became mirrored on t-shirts and faces as the hugs went on. This is how NYE should be celebrated, in hot weather, with clear starry skies and scantily clad people.

My memories of the turn of the millenia were standing on Brighton beach, holding a chilled bottle of champagne that seemed to be slightly warmer than my hands and nose, staring into the cloudy sky at the blobs of fading and bursting colour in the sky that I was later informed to be the firework display.

This year was spent at 2am walking along the top of the beach with Cathy, surrounded by people whos collectives brains would not have solved one single Daily Mirror crossword due to the imbalming effects, staring at a clear night sky with fireworks overhead, and a gentle warm breeze carrying the music of the town to us. The long walk back home was a joy, collapsing in a hammock with a drink at about 3am.

Happy New Year. We saw it first.

go north young man

2002-12-24T13:00:00.002+10:00

Handing in my notice for the bellboy position was a blessed relief. I have always had a strong sense of loyalty to my co-workers if not the company, so despite the position only being a temporary one, I found it hard to release myself. When it came to my immediate boss finding out that I wanted to quit, he asked me to retract my notice and suggested that I stay on the books in case I needed any work in future. How many times have you heard of bell boys being asked back? Perhaps I'm a good bell boy? I must admit to being able to draw in decent tips; the accent helps and I lay on extra thick for the Americans and Poms.

Cathy and I have decided to leave Sydney for Christmas and New Year. We have some web design work that can keep us busy; its a site for Cathy's brother. His idea is to start moving the shop into the 21st century and getting on the web. www.campingandangling.co.uk is the result. Its simple to begin with but Robs idea is
that it should grow and grow with time.

We had decided to go up to Byron Bay, as from what Becky has said, it should be exciting. There are street parties and fireworks over the new year and plenty to keep us occupied the rest of the time. The couple I met last time I was in Byron Bay, Melissa and Mike, are also able to accomodate us. I must admit to some trepidation at sharing a house with their baby Holly as well. I know babies to be pretty poor conversationalists, are not big beer drinkers and lack certain subtleties in their toilet technique.

We arrived on December 21st, after a twelve hour coach journey. The trip wasnt particularly pleasant as within half and hour of leaving Sydney, the man sat in front of me decided to fall violently ill. He vomited down his window and the side of his seat. Miraculously he was silent in his actions and the only giveaway was the smell of vomit that grew within the coach. The other was that he hadnt finished, and after climbing over a rather large girl who was sat next to him, he moved towards the rear of the coach where the toilet lived. His stomach was only half empty and he made sure this other half was covered liberally over a number of passengers as he staggered towards the toilet. Only when the lights came on was the full extent of the damage revealed. A girl had lumps of porridge like acidic substance spattered down her arm. A man had lumps of porridge in his lap and on his leg. How the culprit missed soiling the large girl he was sat next to remains a mystery to this day. Needless to say, he stayed in the toilet from the shame of his actions and to avoid the wrath of a stinking, acidic porridge covered coachload.

Fortunately we arrived in Byron Bay, minus sense of humour but happily minus vomit. Becky came to meet us, and got us a drink at the beach hotel, as Mike and Mel were getting ready to go to Sydney. They were off south and had bad luck with the van. Becky was going to give them a lift to the airport. We arrived after our drink to receive a quick handover; I took in the details of barbeque firing, while Cathy learnt the intricicities of the washing machine. We were also informed as to how serious the water shortage had become, as we were only one level away from having to bathe in our own urine. Then they were off.

The days leading up to Christmas were wonderfully relaxing. Sydney had become a riot with the shopping and seasonal music in the shops. Thinking about it, I dont recollect hearing any Christmas tunes in any shop in Byron Bay. We went to the beach, with me trying to surf at Tallow beach. This break dumps heavily and I finned my leg before losing a fin and dinging the board. I could hardly walk as my leg had been cut open, but it healed quickly. I finished up my Christmas shopping and we also stocked up the fridge with steaks, shrimps, sausages, wine, beer, salad, chocolate, and a Christmas cake that Cathy had iced.

On Christmas Eve, Becky and Reza came over for dinner, another barbeque, and we ate our way through sausages and steaks, drank lots of wine whilst talking about life, the meaning of life, and lifestyle. Sitting surrounded by cicadas and candles made me appreciate that I had made the right decision by coming away for Christmas. There was always going to be certain aspects that I would miss, but enjoying the Christmas period with good weather seems so much more civilised than huddling indoors watching Only Fools and Horses
and badly cut-for-TV action films.

blame it on the bellboy

2002-12-17T12:59:00.001+10:00

The first week of work was tough; I had to learn the secret of politely asking guests if they would like
their luggage to be taken to their room, finding my way around a 503 room, 25 floor hotel, learning the names of all the other staff at the bell desk, knowing the procedure for taking cars to the car park, how to tag bags,
group labelling, recognising a good tip potential and a empty walletted guest, and how to deal with getting up at 530am for work.

By the second week I was bored. The only redeeming feature of the job is the interesting people who work in the hotel. For instance, one of my compadres was a trapeez artist who is looking to settle down, another is a surfer from Byron Bay, there is a web designer who works at the hotel for the extra money, then there are the boys from the hotel school. Some are in it for the love of the job, while I expect many to make a career change at some point. There is also a big gay community within the hotel, whose numbers include a retired prominent Sydney drag queen, a hispanic out and out gaylord, and various others, which all adds to create an atmosphere that is much more exciting and interesting behind the reception desk than in front of it.

While it is a pleasant and luxurious hotel in the guest area, the service area is chaotic and messy. Lifts and vestibules smell of old food, past room service deliveries lie discarded on the floor, along with 3 day old newspapers, rotten fruit, coathangers, broken a-frame signs, dustbins and housekeeping trollies. Compared to the organised and disciplined practises withing the IT industry, the hotel industry is a debacle. Inefficient, bad working practises, gratuitous wastes of manpower and resources, petty bureaucracy, overly complex hierachy with small minded and megalomaniac idiots put in a position of management without any management training. Departmental animosity is so severe that cooperation only occurs on a rare and individual basis. I have the handicap that I want to fix all these easily remedied faults within the system, but it
would be a pointless exercise and of course Im in no position to do so.

Life otherwise is generally similar to treading water. Im waiting for Cathy to arrive and we are looking to run off and leave town when she gets here. The job is good as at least I am not spending more than I possess, and the tips top it off nicely. It took longer than I thought to get paid, but again thats down to the disorganised payroll office, who is run by a hermit, on certain days of the week, and who locks the door and answers to no-one.

If I finish work at 1500 then I can be in the water at 1600, while if I start work at 1400 then I am in the water by 0930 for a good couple of hours. The surfing is good and I seem to have some ok days and some great days. It all depends on the measured amount of seawater I consume while out on/under the waves.

The tediousness of the work was relieved for a couple of days when Ged and Norm popped in from Singapore. I joined them, along with Blake and Lisa, for a raucous night on Oxford Street. I was refused entry to the Q Bar as the badly dressed girl didnt agree with my dress sense, meaning the others left an already quiet bar to join me at a loud busy sweaty bar a few doors down. It was meant to be a quiet night, which meant Blake and Lisa left around midnight and I walked back with Ged and Norm at about 3am. Tequila shots, Jack and coke and beers does give you that 'quiet night' feeling. After staring at the topless girl who had run past us in the street, I felt inspired and left Ged and Norm at their hotel while I sniffed out a strip club. Im not sure what the point was, as I had difficulty seeing, but it seemed the right thing to do. I can only assume I had a thoroughly
entertaining evening as the strength of the hangover would indicate I had spent some fair amount of time in the sordid playhouse.

Another more gently evening was had when we went to Phillip's Foote, a bar and barbeque restaurant situated in The Rocks. You purchase the meat you want to cook and incinerate it to your specification in the provided grilled crematoriums around the place. My steak was so well done that I had turned it from meat back via vegetable through to pure carbon compounds. It tasted delicious, especially with the range of fresh bread and salads that helped removed the charcoal filter taste from my steak biscuit.

After being reminded by Ged of the lifestyle that is possible from an IT career, I returned with new found vigour in my hatred for my job, when I had to get up at 0530 from my bed to make the ferry in the morning. Never mind, I might win the lotto or Cathy might find a job which can allow me to fully dedicate my time to wave-ology.

living in the city

2002-11-22T12:59:00.003+10:00

What have we here, a city with a population as large as New Zealand, a harbour that is the site of a beautiful bridge and an unusual arts centre with a design based on a palm leaf. I live in Manly. In Manly I have bumped into Paul Tribe (Tribey), a guy I know from Leeds OTC, and Bob Comport, who I know from school and 6th form. I have spent much of my time learning how to surf, and had almost given up alcohol and caffeine.

That was until the boys from London arrived, and my body was subjected to a good and proper poisoning.
It was worth it too. They were all staying in the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi, and much hilarity was had over the course of about 4 days while they were here. I also got a small taste of the rum that Rob had bought for me until its contents were emptied onto the floor of the hotel room, by a clumsy clown.

Parts I can remember are a number of bars throughout Bondi, a big night out in Coogee, involving wrestling,
massages, champagne, sweaty sweaty clappy clappy, random taxi journeys, loosing people, sleeping on a broken sofa bed, Ols snoring, the digital camera kids, a college disco somewhere in The Rocks, loosing my chain from Brazil, having the first hangover in weeks, and sitting in the special children bus. I can understand why Blake and Lisa have decided to escape and stay out here.

Even while my body was repairing itself from the damage inflicted on it, I went to an interview at the
Intercontinental hotel. The initial position I had applied for was Telecommunications Officer. To me, this sounds like a substantial and rewarding position and I was fairly eager. When the details of the position came through, I was less enamoured, as the job title should be changed to 'telephonist'. While Im not belittling it and I still went for the interview, it really hasnt got the same career prospects.

After being interviewed by a nice English lady in HR, I get to meet the front office staff. They decide I might be better suited to bellboy. This is another change from what I expected but I thought it worthwhile at least.

I could tell they liked me and I got the job. Bellboy though. Did I come all the way around the world to be a
bell boy?

To cope with this dilemma, I felt a breath of fresh air was needed and I escape for a few days up to Byron Bay.
Becky lives up there, and I wasnt sure when I would next get the chance to see her, so I thought it a good chance to get out of town and see a bit of the country. The first thing I recommend for coach journies in Australia, is make sure you take a large quantity of valium before you set off. The journey one way was 12 hours, and the seats are not that comfortable, and certainly difficult to sleep in without distorting your neck. The second thing I suggest is scrap the coach and fly; its easier, quicker and less painful, and there is not too great a difference in cost.

It was lovely to see Becky, but she did have to work for a couple of days when I was up there. That was fine, as she also lent me the van, so I explored around the beach to the lighthouse, had a few hours surfing here and there, sunbathed and generally enjoyed the town. She took me to an open air church on the saturday, with logs for pews, set on the top of a hill, overlooking a very welsh looking valley, followed by an old hippy commune in Nimbin, with every citizen trying to sell me their herbal products if you know what I mean, from cookies to bags of rastafarian tobacco. The museum there is worth the journey alone. To complete the show of diversity of Australian culture, we went to a Rodeo in Bangalow. There we saw 6 children in the 5 to 8 year old category, damage parts of the body that should be given a chance to grow, at least until they father children. I looked very out of place, and it was good being the only tourist. The uniform of Drizabone oilskin coat and cowboy hat was everywhere. VB beer was in everyones hand, and the air was thick with farm talk, town gossip, and animal waste products. I returned sometime Sunday bemused at what goes on in the country.

My first paid days work was on Monday and fortunately it was purely orientation. I got to meet the General Manager, find out about the history of the hotel and watch a marketing video explaining how wonderful the hotel and the brand is. Funnily enough, 6 continents Hotels, of which Intercontinental, Crown Plaza and Holiday Inn are part of, is actually owned by Bass Breweries. Im working for a British company!

Anyway, its dull; I dont give two hoots for the hotel and certainly cant see a 4 year stint as bell boy possible,
unlike some of the blokes who have been working there from 2 to 10 years.

Being a 5 star hotel, there are a lot of wealthy guests and V.R.P. very rich people. None of these people bother
with tips and so its left to the ordinary folk who are treating themselves a bit, to give the tips to the staff. I'm sure that if Karma had something to do with it then I would be getting bigger tips. I consider that I have always
tipped well, yet Im not getting much in return. Saying that, the Australians arent big on tipping anyway.

The worst part is the starting times. I think I need to be jet-lagged to cope, as my start time is usually 7am.
I cant understand it! 7am is an inhuman time to work at. Its money though, so I might as well make the most of it.

In the mean time, I am getting to meet the woman who runs the hostel where I stay, with the idea of running it.
The pay isnt great, even compared to bell boy, but I would get accomodation and I need to find something before Cathy gets here. The job is fairly cruisy and the place is only 100m from the beach.

So apart from hearing how my old company is to become a victim of the state of the global economy, and finding out how little IT work there is in Sydney especially before xmas, Im just enjoying the sunshine, and watching myself as I descend from lucid educated IT professional to obsequious sycophantic retard in a badly fitting unform.

funny facts abound

2002-10-24T12:55:00.003+10:00

I have learnt quite a few things while I have been away.

Northern Hemisphere compasses do not work in the southern hemisphere (FACT!)
'Phoning home is hassle; you dial 8233 9009 1 001385 3170 0011 44 1273 734 179.
Sydney sucks money out of you
More people are killed on NZ roads than on UK roads yet it has 1/20 of the population. There are crosses everywhere.
I think New Zealand is the most beautiful place on earth to live
The best places to stay aren't in the Lonely Planet.
bananas and surfing seem to go together. Nutella and banana on toast, banana smoothie . . .
the more seawater you drink the better it gets
I miss duvets, baths and proper marmite
I dont miss traffic jams, miserable rude people and crap weather

g'day! fancy a banana smoothie?

2002-10-20T12:54:00.002+10:00

Sydney differs from Auckland and New Zealand in so many ways, notably regarding the number of people. I think Sydney has around 3 million people, which covers the whole population of New Zealand. Its big, sprawling, urban, hot, brash, and not without a hint of americana.

I think I have spent about a week here, and Im only now starting to get used to it. Becky up in Byron (another concept album name) said that Manly is the best and most civilised part of Sydney. While I think she is right, it wasnt what I was expecting, but Im thankful that I didnt end up in the den of iniquity that is Kings Cross. As in the area of the same name in London, the main
users of the streets are those with unfeasibly short skirts, large beards, or possess a permanent fixture of some alcoholic beverage in their street-filthy hands. Its great. Strip clubs are oiled and squeezed between backpacker hostels, tourist shops, fast food outlets selling huge varieties of partially cooked meat, and internet cafes. The latter is the safest place to observe the goings on in the world outside, as obviously I dont have the desire or money to visit the strip clubs. Honestly.

There is a cinema that I stumbled across in the Kings X area, and I had heard about it from others who had visited Sydney years ago. I Went to buy a Warriors T-shirt and found an NRL shop, above which, the shop-keeper explained, was a vegetarian curry house, and above that was a cinema furnished with cushions and beanbags. I havent been to watch anything yet, but it sounds good.

Im still deliberating on how to get to India for Daryls wedding. It sounds wonderful, but Im starting to think about the pennies, and that really wouldnt help. It would be a shame to miss, but if I havent got the money, then I havent got the money. Additionally Cathy, whos foolishness knows no bounds, has decided that nearly a month in New Zealand wasnt enough for her, so she is coming to Australia. This is a good thing as she has been trained well in tea making and sunbathing, therefore making an excellent travelling companion, and the sunbathing making good use of the time while I am drowning in the sea learning to surf.

The idea of learning to surf was based on having thousands of bronzed men carrying fibreglass under their arms, and not wanting to feel left out, I went and bought one myself. I didn't want a Mini-Mal when the world and their son were buying one, so I bought a second-hand 6'6 Ron Wood shaped board. I got a 3mm wetsuit for 30GBP and got a leggy, wax, comb thrown in. The guy who sold me the board also sold me his old decrepid board bag, which makes me look a little authentic, as it has seen far more wave action than me.

Faint heart never did something naughty, apparently so it goes in the Navy, so I got in the water and had a go. After two days, I have strained my shoulder, swallowed more sea water than a fish, and never saw one wave; not from above the water anyway. I cant even sit on the board for longer than a minute, but at least I have managed the knack of crawling back on my board and vomiting discretely. Im sure I'll pick it up. Soon. I hope. Else I think I might be finding a new way to pass the time when I should be out jobhunting. At least it beats jobhunting in the UK, where that would be spent out of the rain, staring at newspapers and thinking about whether to put another jumper on. Im perfectly happy to lie on my board, thinking about jobs, in glorious sunshine, spewing elegantly out of my smug mouth, and thinking about which cafe to sit at while I dry off.

Ive got the Aussie bank account, and Im sorting out my Tax File number this week, while also moving out of Manly Beach Hut, which is a perfectly good, clean hostel, is haunted with the atmosphere of a University first year halls of residence. There are about 4 plates in the upstairs kitchen, 2 tea spoons, a cheese grater and kettle that go on long vacations, tea towels
that were possibly used to dry cats in Egyptian times and all this for the hygienic allergic inhabitants who number in excess of 30.

Ive found a decrepit and charming hostel down the road, which has a much more laid back atmosphere, with less drinking and intersex sport, and has a yoga and meditation centre next door. While its far from ideal, its better than being woken at 6am as people come back from clubs, just as I wake them at 7am to go out for more drowning practice on my new board.

Nature report: No sharks seen yet, some snorkelling possible around Shelly Beach, bats with a wingspan greater than a metre live in a tree near the wharf, cock-a-roaches hang out in gangs on street corners and I found a cat nearby that is bigger than most dogs. At least two or three times the size of most cats, it carries off small children. Maybe I exaggerate about the children; they weren't that small.

another country, another entry stamp

2002-10-18T12:54:00.003+10:00

There is one born every minute. I had a look at getting the Warrant of Fitness (WOF) extended on the car, but it failed and needed a minimum of NZ$300 work done, mainly welding. Niels the star who works at the Brown Kiwi, told me to just try and sell the car. After cleaning it up, and painting over the rust patches with a touchup brush, I took it down the car fair by Quay St. I sold it within half an hour. I hope part of the reason it sold well, was my salesman skills. I found out the blokes buying it were from Bangalore, and we talked about the bars there, and about Kolar Gold field just outside of town. They were so relaxed, they didnt even notice the WOF was about to expire, and I got NZ$1600 for the car. A loss of NZ$400 but then thats not bad for 3 months motoring and not having to do NZ$300 of work.

After that, I seemed to just be passing the time until my flight to Sydney. Some people I had met before turned up. Bob had been off on school holiday but couldnt get back in to 217, and arrived with Frank, plus Lisa and Ryan showed up. I went to one of Ryans gigs in Devonport along with Lisa. A latino gig, with the spring afternoon sunshine streaming through the windows, and girls dancing to the latin rhythyms. We got a lift back by another band member, a scottish nutter who drove like he knew the roads, but to a different city and on the other side of the road.

The rest of the week was spent reading, until I decided to try and see Trev and Maria before I left the country. Lisa was a bit bored what with Ryan gigging all the time, so she fancied coming with me. i had booked a coach, but Lisa wanted to hire a car. After ringing round a number of places, and me ending up missing my coach booking, Peter told us t just go and hitch.

Us? Hitch? Its 180km to Whangarei, and it was 2 o'clock. I had no idea if we could make Whangarei and by 630 we were in Orewa and going nowhere fast. We had got a ride north of the arbour bridge in Auckland by a builder, then a ride for 4 exits from a banker, then some stoned girls drove us to Orewa. After that, nobody looked at us. We stayed the night at Pillows, a place I had been to
before, and ate fish and chips on the beach. There the strange spectacular of a sunset with people practising martial arts on the beach.

Orewa is a sleepy coastal town, so that affected us and we went to bed.

I spent the morning writing a nice sign for Whangarei on some card, Lisa drew some flowers on it and we sat by the side of the road. No sooner had we sat down than a car screeches to a halt and we pile in. The driver hadnt even seen our beautiful sign, and we should have taken the hint. Eamon drove hard and fast and all us passengers found virtual brakes had appeared at our feet.

Once we arrived I found out that Trev and Maria had closed the cafe. For good. Still, the next few days were spent seeing all the friends I had met through Trev and Maria. Chris turned up with some friends. Danny showed up, and recognised Lisa from the meditiation centre. Lawson was still in town and seeing him again is like being hit with a 100 metre wave of friendly Glaswegain. We also paid a visit to the land Maria and Trev are buying as Warwick rang in the morning.

Seeing the land showed what Maria and Trev want to do. The tipi site was being excavated ready for the following week when the tipi gets delivered. It was also chance to say goodbye to Warwick and Jenny.

After a fairly messy night involving music, good food and wine, and some of my bad drumming, and a few hours sleep, Lisa and I were on the coach to Auckland.

It feels like I have condensed the past 2 days too much. It was exciting but fun, but random, but cool, but fattening, but drunk, but friendly, but tipi. . . .

Im going to miss New Zealand, the Warriors, the Maori town names, green culture, rural communities, amazing vistas, huge national parks, clean tasting beer, dangerous roads, glaciers, rivers, huge forests, cleansing rain, amazing animals, creative resourceful people, fascinating culture, but the Marmite is SHOCKING.

go north young man

2002-10-01T12:40:00.003+10:00

Now its getting a bit last minute as we rush up north, but its worth doing rather than not doing it at all. The drive up to Fox Glacier was impressive as the scenery changes from glacially formed to created by rivers and the sediments from. The vegetation changes as well, so we were tropical rainforest by the time we reached the coast. The views of Lake Hawae and the north part of Lake Wanaka were breathtaking (Im getting bored of that word).

The road followed the coast perfectly most of the time, swinging in and out, with mountains on the right and the waters of the Tasman sea on the left. Fox Glacier is a very small town indeed; with one petrol station and one store come grocery come newsagent it was a peaceful place. Ivory towers backpackers seemed nice enough, and it had good views over town. Another classic example of paper walls, but beggars and backpackers cant be choosers.

We tried to organise the skydive for the following day, and as I got up at 0700 I realised I might as well go straight back to bed. The rain was coming down like curtains at a toddlers party. Instead we waited for a dry spell and then walked to the glacier. A rock fall had closed the path, but being adventurers we ignored the ropes and signs and walked up to the glacier, and noticed the 50 or so other adventurers. I climbed to the glacier itself and broke a chunk off. I like touching things and a big ice cube is no different. Its got almost a paste inside the ice from crushed rock and it makes your hands filthy and its GREAT!

Another night at Fox glacier, after trying and failing to get a reflection of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman in Lake Matheson, and we headed north. The plan was to get to Picton by 2030 that same day, as we had a ferry to catch. We passed through Franz Joseph township, near the glacier of the same name, stopped for petrol at the dreary town of Greymouth, grey by name and nature. We wanted to get to Hokitiki as its a big craft centre. In the end while most of the greenstone is found in the southern island, most of the Maori carvers are in the north island especially around Rotorua. i did persuade Cathy to come to the Kiwi sanctuary. There was a mental one legged Kiwi and a couple of others lurking in the dark.

Once we left Hokitiki, there was no hanging about and taking turns at the wheel we drove to Picton, taking the coast road north before missing Nelson and taking the inland road to Blenheim, arriving at Picton at 2027, pretty damn good.

We boarded the frry, found a space to sleep and tried to, if it hadnt been for some hard of hearing sheepshearers. While they couldnt hear each other, everyone else on board could here everything. It was 1am by the time we hit Wellington and I drove Cathy up to Mount Cook to take in the view of the harbour and the city, then we drove to Pukerua Bay near Muri, parked up and went to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of seagulls, the waves, and Leftfield at an earbleeding volume as Cathy turned the car to ignition to see the clock. Apart from the rude awakening, it was a lovely day and we drove for most of it, stopping only briefly for a stretch and fresh air by Lake Taupo before cruising into Rotorua. We rang the first place, Spa Lodge and they had space to we wandered over and tried to get over the stench. To say Rotorua smells nice is saying the US has an ethical foreign policy. The hot springs creep out of gardens, cracks in the roadside and on hills surrounding the town, so steam just appears from nowhere. The craft shops (such a patronising phrase) are great, with lots of greenstone carving. Its very touristy but who cares,

you have to see all sides.

The hot mud pools and geysers were great, although the geysers didnt perform for us, well, only a little. The Tamaki Maori Cultural village was our next stop in the evening. An honest and sincere expression of their culture Id like to think. We saw the challenge for when another tribe comes to visit, some songs and explanation of weaponary, a Haka was performed and then we ate a feast, a hangi, cooked in an earth oven. If it means that people are educated about the culture then I dont care about the number of coaches filled with tourists.

Its getting whistlestop now. Onwards to Waitomo and we saw the limestone caves to the north of Waitomo and the Waitomo caves themselves. The Limestone caves are huge, extending hundreds of metres below ground. Years were needed to chart the caves. The Glowworm caves down the road were spectacular and worth seeing, more so for feeding the noisy father and daughter to the glowworms. The spectacle should be enjoyed in absolute silence, as u need to be able to take in the site. Its like looking at a green map of the stars. So alien and so beautiful.

Back in the car, lets get to Auckland.

There was no room at the Brown Kiwi, the hostel in Ponsonby that I keep going back to, but Cathy was feeling generous and paid for us to stay at Mollies. This very classy motel has just been refurbished. There is antique furniture in the minimalistically decorated rooms. Perhaps styled too much with bachelors in mind, it was still luxury compared to the hostels. In the kitchen was a DISHWASHER!!!! WASHING MACHINE AND DRYER. The rooms were underfloor heated, and there were large TV's in the two bedrooms and lounge. The bathroom had a separate bath and shower, and both bedrooms were ensuite. The fridge and freezer were huge, the sheets expensive and this cost less than 50 pounds. Luxury. Better than a hotel room and nicer than the nicest motel.

Now it was time to move on, I had to sell the car and Cathy had to return home.

hanging out with the parrots

2002-09-25T12:28:00.000+10:00

Te Anua is a relaxing place to be after all the excitement of Queenstown. My leg was healing, and we were thinking of either doing the Milford Track or some other. Ideally, we wanted to do the Milford Track. Described in National Geographic as the best walk on the planet, or something similar, and reckoned to be a rite of passage for most New Zealanders, it was obvious that we shoud at least give it a go.

The weather hadnt been particularly kind lately and it was becoming a wet blanket on a lot of activities. The plan to do the Milford Track became its latest victim. Due to the season, many of the bridges had been removed and the DOC huts were without gas. That wasnt our main concern, due the greater inconvenience of the avalanche risk in the area. I guess we could have ignored them and goen ahead anyway, but maybe its best to wait for when the weather is good.

Instead we plumped to do part of the Kepler Track. Again, once into the mountains, the avalanche risk becomes to great to proceed further, so we contented ourselves with the trip up to the first hut. This could be done in a day, there and back if you have a light load, but we wanted to spend one night away from the village. Its cheaper for one, and I like the outdoors living.

Its a long slog up the hill, tramping through an ever changing forest scenery, catching glimpses of the view as we climb. The lunch stop at the Bluffs took longer than I thought and I think Cathy was getting bored of my comments like, "Its just around the next corner", and "Its can only be another one or two hundred metres". After another hour we reached the Bluff and had lunch. It was about 3 o'clock and we started thinking that we should have really got up earlier.

Another hour or so through different forest and we reached the tree line. Its hardly surprising, but as you climb the vegetation changes. From almost rainforest to fern-filled forest to a pine mix, without ferns at all. Then the grass and moss scrub of alpine country. The scenery opens out in front of you and you see the harshly glacier-sculptured landscape of fjordland in all its rough glory. There isnt anybody about, no electricity, no mobile phone masts, pylons, rubbish, noise except the wind.

Another 45 minutes and we made the hut, got comfy and had a cup of tea. There was a Danish guy at the hut as well, but considering the hut can sleep 50 or more, it was deserted. While we were cooking dinner, some strange calls were heard, and a shadow moved in the moonlight on the decking outside. We opened a window and had a nice meeting with a Kea. These alpine parrots, the only alpine parrots in the world, are supposedly very intelligent. I dont know about intelligent, but they are inquisitive.

I went to fill up my water bottle and one was waiting for me outside. I placed the metal water bottle on the ground and as it 'tinged' the parrot came up and had a nose around. It tried carrying the bottle away, and kept tapping the bottle to make it ring. Like the dolphins, hanging around with intelligent creatures is maybe not spiritual but certainly entertaining. Seeing as the cold was getting to everyone, I lit a roaring inferno of a fire. Greatly appreciated by everyone I think you'll find, including the Kea.

The wind picked up that night, so much so that we could feel the hut move. I think the Kea got blown away in the night. By morning we were depressed as the weather had closed in and the wind was just as bad. A lie in 'till 12 meant we could at least give it a chance to improve, which it did, so we finished our breakfast/lunch/loafing and legged it back down the hill. This was after exploring the Luxmore caves, where we found amazing artifacts from early mans history. Probably.

The rain soon came back and we got back to the hostel, Te Anau Backpackers in town, had some food and very quickly went to sleep.

The next morning saw us stiff and tired, but realising we had to rush a little bit as Cathy was starting to run out of time. I hired some snow chains, filled up and drove to Milford Sound. Along the road were some fascinating places, such as 10 mile bush, flat knob creek and kiosk river. We got to Milford Sound and decided to hop on one of the boat trips. It was the perfect time to see Milford as while the weather was bad, the waterfalls were everywhere, making it all very picturesque. We stopped off at the marine reserve on the way back which was interesting. Due to the huge amounts of freshwater coming into the Sound, deep sea animals come to the surface as they are tricked by the visibility.

After thinking about staying the night in Milford and realising it might not be worth it, we drove back to Te Anau and then onwards to Queenstown. We have to pass this way to see the west coast.

Since the Southern Laughter hostel was a no-no, Cathy did the books and went for Hippo Lodge. Now THIS was a nice place. Spacious clean kitchen, clean towels on the bed, with a little chocolate hippo on the towels. I met a Kiwi lady who was showing a Nepalese Sherpa the sights of New Zealand. The views over Queenstown were well worth the stay at Hippo lodge on its own, but I wish we had stayed here before instead of Southern Laughter.

strength and honour

2002-09-20T12:36:00.000+10:00

Wednesday 18th was meant to be our skydiving day, but there was a bad storm. While it was very windy in Wanaka (sounds like a good name for a first album), it was dropping 1.5 metres of snow on the hills. Too windy for skydiving and too snowy for skiing.

We decided it was time to make a move; we had skiied, drunk coffee at nice places (Fusion), tried to skydive, gone walking, and stared for hours at Lake Wanaka. The most obvious destination was Queenstown. We checked out, late as always, from the Purple Cow. Despite it being quite a nice hostel, I felt decidedly underdressed compared to the Japanese snowboarders who looked SOOOO COOOOOL! I might as well have been wearing flecked trousers and luminous socks compared to the bleeding-edge fashion of these snow warriors.

I rang up 'Southern Laughter' hostel. There might have been some laughter at some point in time, but it had long since passed along with dry rooms and a clean kitchen. We were in the outbuilding along with the people who work there, and when they arent working they are getting very pissed and getting to know each other intimately on the sofa in the lounge. I might not have minded if I hadnt been woken by the loud drunken conversations or have to sit in the soggy patch when I had my breakfast in the morning. Actually, there was no soggy patch, as I interrupted mid-coitus in the night when I need the loo. The dribbling but sheepish couple had faces red enough to glow in the dark. I was happy.

Generally though, I think Queenstown is overrated, full of kids wanting to be cool but not knowing how to go about it, and assuming spending money on cRaZy activities will help. Me, I plumped for the Nevis highwire, and the jetboating, as I think that will make me cool. Unfortunately the jetboating was off as all the rivers were swollen.

We made up for it in Q'town by eating and drinking well. There are some cool cafe's and eateries. 'Vudu' did some very nice pastries and cakes, while 'The Cow' on Cow Lane (or Cow La as Cathy wanted to call it) does excellent pizzas, and if you ask for some bread to start with, you get a loaf, a WHOLE loaf, freshly baked, with butter, an EC mountain of it. Cathy also did an awesome meal of roast veg with roast nuts and sesame seeds served with pitta, aoili, red pepper humous, garlic mushrooms and couscous.

This helped settle me down for the day of the big bad bungy. This was a fairly sleepless night, what with fear and drunk people and noise and rain and a full stomach. I awoke crotchety, tired and not very eager to do the jump. We checked out at Southern Laughter (hahahahahhaha. not) and went to the AJ Hackett office. There, others were stood, looking nervous or backslapping each other in fake bravado.

The coach arrived and the assortment of idiots got on board. An American, some english, including a foolish girl from R.A.M.C., some koreans, including a very brave girl, and an Irish couple. Everyone had the grin of fear on their face, myself included. After a 4 wheel drive up the hill we caught our first glimse of the contraption. The Gondola is suspended by four wire cables over a canyon. A small trolly takes you out to the gondola then the preparations begin. The cuffs are put on then you watch the first few jumpers. Its a long way down and their screams fade quickly as they descend. It came to be my turn, and I sit in the comfy chair so they can attach the bungy. One of the guys plays with you, in the sense of testing your resolve, and playing mind games. His buddy mentions it might time to revamp the rope, which I smiled and tried to look relaxed about. Like a lamb to the slaughter. I have to say a few words for the tape which I do. Nothing profound, "I havent done anything wrong ever! Its not my time!" Then I jump.

I thought, really thought I was going to die. I screamed but then couldnt. The only sound was of rushing wind. I kept falling, it felt like an eternity, and I could see the ground coming to meet me but it wasnt going to shake hands. Then the wind stops and your body relaxes a little. Your ankles try to swell up to make sure you dont fall through the cuffs, but then the elation at having missed a messy demise coarses through your veins along with the adrenalin that has been released in unethical corporation sized amounts. Only then did I start feeling the pain caused by a missing lump from my shin. The bungy clip and flicked and hit my shin, causing a considerable amount of pain. Ahhh, the buzz of dangerous sports.

The rest of the day was a blur, and I didnt notice the face of the bloke who was staring at me, only that I was ready for a fight. It turns out he remembers me and after a bit of prompting I remember him. It was Shannon, from my old cadet unit. He remembers Colour Emmett, while I have to admit to only remembering a small boy in a badly fitting uniform. I certainly found it hard to recognise the bloke who was taller than me, wearing a beard and yak coat, scarf and some kind of ethnic beanie.

We had a good chat and caught up on the Eastleigh gossip. he was with a friend from Boyatt Wood, that bastion of middle-class in the railway terraced last century museum that is Eastleigh. It was very very strange to bump into someone I know at the end of the world, but even stranger when I had blood made of rocket fuel and lumps missing from my leg.

I need less of this excitement. I got Cathy on the insurance as I was a bit of a liability, and she drove my battered tingly body to Te Anau, for some peace and quiet.

too much snow

2002-09-17T12:24:00.001+10:00

Mount Cook has a very small village at the foot of it. The views are comparable to being an ant in 50 metre high white sand dunes. That doesnt work either. The glaciers bring boulders down the hillside, the hills are carved as easily as cheese, the air is so clean it feels like it was made fresh that morning, the mountains so intimidating that they would suffice as a fortress.

The YHA in Mount Cook village is lovely, built in an alpine style, with a sauna, TV lounge, great kitchen and amazing views from the rooms. We met up with an Irish couple that had been staying at Vagabonds in Christchurch, and also attempted a couple of walks. The previous snowfall had made walking dangerous and many tracks were closed due to avalanche risk. This was to be a recurring theme over the next few weeks, but it didnt stop ius this day from walking up to a good viewpoint along a valley up to Mount Cook.

After the stroll, we got going and headed to Wanaka. Its a quiet town on the south end of a large lake. The lake itself doglegs, so you only see part of it. There was a problem on arriving; again down to the snow, there wasnt any room in any hostel or most motels as skiers and snowboarders had turned up for the fresh powder. We hunted high and low until we found a place with room and we had to resort to Lakeview Motel. This ended up being an excellent compromise. We had a veranda, and a studio flat, with TV, small sweet kitchen and amazing views, definitely better than those in town and we got the evening light while the rest of town had slipped into darkness far earlier.

We got aquainted with the town, and saw what there was to do. Skiing, which has never really appealed to me, appeared on the menu. Skydiving also made an appearance. We booked the skydiving and rang about the skiing. Skydiving for the sunday and skiing was organised for Monday and Tuesday. In the end the skydiving here was called off; another recurring theme. Instead we paid a visit to the Warbirds museum and the Puzzle town. Both on the outskirts of town, the former is a museum storing WWII planes and the latter is a collection of puzzles including optical illusions and a very very very large maze. I fell over in the optical illusion room and it could have happenned to anyone. There was a room full of holograms which were ok, but there was an optical illusion room with moulded heads of famous people. It meant their eyes really did follow you around the room, and surprisingly the image that was the most disturbing was Mother Theresa. I never thought I would get to say that she was disturbing, but Einstein, Churchill, Mandela and Beethoven were a joy to see compared to her.

The roast lamb cooked that evening was surprisingly good considering the size of the oven. I think Barbie had been the previous owner. We needed the feed as the next two days of skiing was energy intensive.

Our first lesson on the Monday was with a Maori skiier; you cant have preconceptions in this place. He was great and very relaxed. I seemed to go ok, while Cathy having skiied before, brushed up and was used as the model for us. b*(&%. The afternoon lesson was with another very relaxed guy, american, and looked far too cool. By the end of Monday I could snow plough, sorry wedgie, and wedgie turn. Whats more I LIKED it. I never thought I would say it, considering those Ski Sunday shows of past on BBC showing dreary downhill skiing had put me off. Its great, but I had started having a sense of humour failure when I got bored of falling over, especially at the top of the ski lift.

Tuesday was far better as I tried different runs and had a couple of runs where I DIDNT FALL OVER! Things were going well.

true blue

2002-09-10T12:21:00.000+10:00

Cathy has arrived and having someone to travel with would not doubt be interesting. We are staying in Vagabonds, a hostel on Worcester St in Christchurch. The first few days were spent relaxing and allowing Cathy to get over jet lag. The obligatory punting trip was done, powered by a particularly humerous punter, or at least I think thats what he was called. His patter was good and while we cruised up and down the river he gave a guided tour in both English and Japanese. While I was impressed with his multilingual capabilities, his Kiwi accent on Japanese would have allowed him to play in Star Wars, with "kiwanofuji Jabba nosha" and "Skywalker campai no kaywa bimo moshi no Jedi" seemed to be two of his popular phrases

when describing the architecure of Christchurch.

Seeing as the weather was good, we had a walk round the botanic gardens, plus drinking, getting my boots repaired seeing as they dont make Boots Combat High like they used to, and staring at maps for hours saying things like "Well, we could drive there" then having a cup of tea and forgetting about "there".

Once a few sights were exhausted and knowing that Cathy didnt have a lot of time in New Zealand, we packed and left and drove to Lake Tekapo. Its a fair drive, but we stopped off at a few towns along the way, mainly to go to the toilet, drink tea or get some petrol. Hardly riveting but it passes the time.

By the time we arrived at Lake Tekapo it was dark and we struggled to find the YHA, particularly if you drive to fast and miss the 'town' completely. Down by the lake, we enter the YHA and were met by, nobody. There wasnt anyone behind the counter, so I investigate round the back and get accosted by Jim and his dog. Apparently this dog is a man eater; many backpackers have been lost due to the vicious streak and we were castigated for disturbing this dangerous animal.

Jim, the dogs worried owner is an old gentle spoken Scotsman, who we had originally thought it to be a lost cause for trying to befriend, especially after the initial dog-centred introduction, but Cathy and I played tag team friendship with him. He was an ex para and despite his years (60+) continued to skydive; he had loved his time in the Army and it had given him an interest in travel. I moved back and let Cathy go onto him with her knowledge of Scotland. In the end he kept coming back for more, and opened up without hesitation. He was learning Japanese, and loved living in New Zealand, and we were both glad we met Jim.

While our social skills were being put to use on Jim, we thought it best to exercise by climbing Mount John. This affords some of the best views of Lake Tekapo. Its difficult to walk when you are glued to the vision that is below you, and the lake is quite breathtaking. Its a similar blue to a lagoon, caused by rock flour suspended in the water. This rock flour is brought down in the streams from glaciers. I learnt that on a poster in the hostel, so I suppose it must be true. Whatever, the lake doesnt look real.

The second morning we awoke to find that snow had been dumped around the lake, reducing colours still further. Instead of green and brown hills with snowy peaks, surrounding a blue lake and clear blue sky, there was white hills, blue lake blue sky. Thats it. Breathtaking. Cant describe it. There isnt any point. I saw it and its in my head. My brain wasnt able to cope with a few that had so few colours in it.

We paid a little visit to the old church by the edge of the lake. Its a very pretty church but I was starting to feel the graveyard wasnt big enough to bury the coach loads of loud tourists crawling like ants over the scenery. The working dog monument is nearby and an indicator of how rural a community New Zealand is, where the working dog is held in such high esteem.

Onwards and southwards to lunch by Lake Pukaki, a slightly less blue cousin of Lake Tekapo. We found the proper picnic spot, but again the coaches had ejaculated the demented hords of cramped tourists. We backtracked, and found a gravel track down to the lake and brewed up a cup of tea. Ahhh, peace.

Once we had absorbed the scenery a little more we headed to Mount Cook.

madness, absolute madness

2002-09-07T12:19:00.000+10:00

This mornings cup of coffee just didnt hit the spot. I guess after yesterdays relaxation I needed a bit more of a kick. This was easily resolved by ringing 'Thrillseekers Canyon' who happen to dabble in a bit of bungy jumping. Why not? I had a relaxing day yesterday in the Springs at Hanmer, and the bungy is on the way out of town, and Im going to Christchurch.

I didnt think it would take much in the way of courage. The handing over of $100NZ wasnt too painful, the terrace view of the bridge that crosses the canyon didnt really fill me with too much trepidation, the walk to the aformentioned bridge that I would be later jumping off wasnt filled with dread although I felt a slight connection with members of the French royal family who had walked to the guillotine. I became slightly more nervous when stood on the edge of the platform, feeling the weight of the bungy cord between my feet and peered over the edge, but I still had the smile on my face.

That all changed when the ever such nice chap told me to jump off the bridge. I did, I screamed. I shouted, "Holy fucking cow". Im sorry, thats all I could think of, and it was completely spontaneous. I wanted to shout, "Kamikaze" or quote some poetry, but instead my brain had lost all sensation of the rest of my body and I was facing death. My brain rebelled and squirmed its way to my feet to get away from the fast approaching ground, and my feet had somehow found hands and were holding on to the ankle straps.

Oh yeah the view of the gorge was great, I love rocks and will become a geologist.

I write this the day after Cathy has arrived and she has found a 134m bungy in a town called Cromwell. This stamps all over the 35m jump I did at Hanmer Springs. She wants to film and no doubt study my reaction, as she is curious what my initial words will be as I fall, thinking there is some automatic language response to fear and feels that my reaction might provide some valuable insight. Me, Im crapping myself, and Im afraid the 'F' word will make an important contribution during my 8 seconds of freefall that is available at this 134 metre beast. To put into context, its taller than most buildings in Canary Wharf being equivalent to about 40 storeys. This is just stupid. 8 seconds, thats a book, a biscuit or a blokes phone call. These are all much more productive than jumping again.

One is not amused, or at least the majority of my neurons arent. There is one stupid one at the back going "Yes YES YESSSS, JUMP JUMP JUMP! JUMP!". Im trying not to listen to it, but its got a loud voice. We should get to Cromwell in a week or so. What joy.

the nanny

2002-09-06T12:14:00.000+10:00

A gentle day today. I drove to Hanmer Springs, a hot springs town (hence the name McFly) inland from Christchurch and Kaikura, but between the two towns, so an ideal place to stop. Im taking a very sedate route through the South Island, and finding it to be the most stimulating and least stressful way.

I got there after a gentle drive through the hills and arrived just after lunch, finishing off the last of my Morrocan mess stew. I had plenty of time and the weather was sunny, so I wandered to the hot pools. The pools are large, hot and all smell of sulphur, especially the sulphur pools. Funny that. Its warm, bubbly, relaxing and beautiful. The place is landscaped like a random wild swimming pool; a number of rock pools are linked by gushing hot spring water, 3 hexagonal hot pools are arranged outside the changing area, designed for warming up, the sulphur pools are off to one side and a lot hotter than the other pools, and raised, overing a view of the whole area. Steam slowly rises from these, and the water overflows to the next pool and

the pool after that. This is all cheesy but it knows it.

I think this was the first bath I have had in months, and certainly the most luxurious I have had in years.

The town of Hanmer Springs also seems to be the ideal place for business conferences, as the majority of people at the hostel were staying for just that. They all worked for 'The Warehouse', a national bargain hypermarket in NZ, and decided that the best thing to do before the conference was to play drinking games the evening before. Sounds good, especially if Im invited, which I was.

After a couple of hours though, I really had to eat, and if you stop drinking, you dont really start again, especially if they had moved on to spirits. That left me talking to . . .

The Nanny

The Nanny has been the worst person I have encountered so far. The theives I never encountered, immigration staff are just doing their job, pissed kids in hostels are just having fun, alcoholic managers in hostels have issues that are their own problems that only they can solve, but Mrs Nanny was no Mary Poppins. I was so angry after meeting her that I wrote about her in my journal.

"A displeasing face; this was my first impression. This was someone who, while enjoyed travelling, did not learn anything from anyone on her journey."

"I have never enjoyed listening to a story that begins 'I have a great interest in my hobbie blah blah'. This to my ears sounds like, 'I am trying to impress you with my wide range of skills and know you will be suitably impressed' when in fact they really want to say 'I dont think I have a very interesting life, so I will dress it up so you might like me'". Plus why call it a hobby? If you collect stamps you dont say " I have an

interesting hobby of collecting the labels used to notify the postal service that one has paid for carriage."

The melodramtic raise of eyebrows to convey shock or to indicate to the recipient of her monologue that now was an appropriate moment to exhibit a gasp or nod in agreement with The Nanny and her opinion. These eyebrows covered critical eyes, yet they werent perceptive enough to watch the boredom creep across my face, only show a look of disgust as I rebelled and showed an opinion opposite to that which was correct. ie hers.

Conceited, blindly ignorant to her own ignorance, a person who pointed, not just to indicate, but there was venom in her veins as she held the gesture, she made disparaging comments on her travelling companion, she patronised, interrupted, criticised, corrected and gave education where none was wanted. Being the polite sort I bit my tongue but you ever think of employing a nanny, she is ideal if you are looking to crush the spirit of your children and for them to suffer inadequacy complexes throughout the whole of their life. Her arrogance and narrowmindedness was poisonous, and no matter how hard I tried, which was more than she did, I could never see her point of view.

There is more, but I think I got a little carried away. Hanmer springs is a nice town though, and the YHA I stayed at is clean but lacks character, apart from the one I met.

flipper and me are like THAT

2002-09-04T12:09:00.000+10:00

I guess you could say it was a nice day today. I was a little lazy and Dave who runs TopSpot backpackers rang "Dolphin Encounters" for me, and booked on the 1pm trip. Dave is a top guy and worth staying at Topspot just to see his vinyl collection. The view from the lounge is breathtaking as it takes in the town of Kaikura, the blue water in the bay, and the snowy peaks of the Kaikura range.

I walked down the hill into Kaikura high street, after a bit more kauri bowl polishing, and went into the Dolphin place, got the wetsuit, undersuit, hood, bootees, gloves and fins. Something tells me the sea is a bit cold here. About 25 of us sit in for the briefing, followed shortly by climbing aboard the bus which takes us to the two boats at the wharf.

After about 30 minutes sailing and listening to radio chatter, we pinpoint one group of dolphins. There were two groups of Dusky Dolphins, 500 heading south very quickly, about another 20 minutes away, and 200 fairly close by. Time meant that we went for the smaller closer group and it was thought they might go south anyway, as the dolphins were moving away from a pod (i think) of Orca coming from the north.

We spotted them not long after and tried to catch their attention. Singing, diving and trying to make eye contact does the trick. They swim past you, leap from the water, circle you, play diving games with you, circle you some more, play with you, and you wonder why anyone would want to hunt them or hurt them. Dolphins are cool. They play, eat fish, have sex, swim, jump out of the water, play around, have large families, hang out with their mates, and they are interested in humans as long as the humans dont swallow sea water accidentally and throw up in the sea.

I was sick all the way back to harbour, along with a tough looking but green aussie and a big american. My lunch of Maltesers and saltwater hadnt done the job, but it hadnt spoilt the day or year. Dolphins are great, dolphins are lovely and they are my friends. They just dont find me interesting for long.

2002-09-02T12:06:00.000+10:00

The countryside here is worthy of a good explore. The Department of Conservation (DOC) look after the national parks, and there is one near Nelson called Abel Tasman, after the explorer. Its the smallest national park but it has one of the great walks in; a coastal walk that is set along the granite hills following the coastline, with the occasional foray into the rainforest interior.

I had been wanting to do some proper tramping and had got my chance. I planned to walk over three days, taking the inland track first, as it was harder and I expected some good views. I wzas rewarded well for my efforts and also knew that I had planned to make the following days a lot easier allowing myself to enjoy the stroll more. The DOC provides huts which you can book in advance or pay on the day, although the latter doesnt always guarantee you a bed if busy and there is a surcharge. The huts have bunks, a heater and a cooking area, filtered water (as there is giardia in the river water) and cold showers. This was far more luxury than I was expecting so I appreciated it.

I appreciated the crystal clear skies, the loneliness during the day as you would rarely encounter anyone for hours, the beauty of the scenery, the silence apart from birdsong and the sound of wind in the trees, the warmth of the sun which led me to lay like a lizard on a boulder to soak it in, the feel of the ocean as it sooths your weary feet in the evening, and the sharpness of the shower in the morning before you set off.

Alone with your thoughts in a beautiful place was a wonderful thing to do, and I hope to be doing more of it.

When I returned to Nelson I checked my mail and double checked the time that Cathy was coming to visit. Another good experience is tramping with someone, and being able to share the load of cooking stoves, food, water etc, plus being able to ignore people when you want as you have someone else to talk to. Not that I had needed to often, but it will be a refreshing break. Like seeing trev and Maria, its also bloody good spending time with friends, and for all the fun meeting new people, spending time with mates is good.

It could become a habit though, what with Daryls wedding in December, the London quiz masters visiting Melbourne in October and Ed wanting to dive the Great Barrier Reef sometime while Im in Australia. It doesnt get much better than this, meeting cool new people and meeting up with old.

from the south of the north to the north of the south

2002-08-29T12:02:00.000+10:00

Moving on is always a curious thing. Staying at Stillwater Lodge in Mana was lovely. A very friendly German couple, Anja and Tom, have taken over the running of the place only recently, but I still think they be able to keep the 95% BBH rating that the hostel has already earnt. Tom and I played pool until about midnight, then I drove down to the docks, after being breathalysed outside the hostel. The Police are pretty strict for drink driving as its a major problem here. As you drive along a road you see both wilting and fresh flowers adorning many many crosses; a provoking sight.

I got to the harbour at 12, for the 0130 ferry. Its early but cheap, but that doesnt really matter as its cancelled. I sleep in the car at the docks, being careful not to park on the train tracks that criss-cross the tarmac. I can see the headlines, "Semi naked tourist escapes after car crushed at docks", "And we go to Paul Mileg at the docks who has some amateur footing . . ".

All ferries are cancelled on Tuesday.

Earliest ferry I can catch is Wednesday night. It'll have to do, but I wasnt planning to be this long in Wellington. Saying that, despite not wanting to spend any more time in big towns, Welly is alright. I like it. It has a buzz about it. Some of the people can be a bit snotty and some a little pretentious, but the woman who did the BEST homemade humous in Courtney, she was COOL, and the cafe espressoholic or something does excellent salads.

I had to sleep and wash somewhere so Tuesday afternoon I checked into Rosemere, ( I think it was named such ) or maybe Rowena, but its the other hostel on Brougham Street. Crap kitchen, good paintwork, cold rooms, but off-street parking. They also have very nice showers.

All I want to do is cross into the south island though, and Im fustrated. I go and see "24 hour party people" and think its a good film, but wish I'd had the bottle to stand up and dance during the film, as that is what needs to be done. It has one of the best soundtracks I have heard in a long time, but then thats because its from my yoof.

Im still waiting for the ferry, but passing time by reading, eating, sleeping. Eventually I wander down the docks on Wednesday night, after ringing to check they are running. We wait some more; the ships are delayed, the weather is still bad but the crossing will happen. I watch "About a Boy" on the ferry, trying to kill more time until I get to Picton and SEE things in the south.

Im the last car off the ferry, is someone trying to tell me I should have stayed on the north Island? Fortunately I had already booked through to "the Villa". I think Carol Smilie would call this a "delightful little ornately carved wooden victorian house". It is so I wont argue with her. There is an open courtyard, lit by white xmas lights ,centred by a large open stove, a spa pool in the corner, and large patio doors off to the dorms. Im given hot apple crumble and ice-cream when I arrive which is lovely. They had golden nuggets of something in the crumble and I never did swap recipes so I suppose I will never know what they were. There was a free breakfast in the morning, and apart from it having some of the hottest, strongest showers, warmest rooms, comfiest beds, beautiful house and close proximity to the hostel make it one of the best places I have stayed in.

I leave early in the morning and take the coast road to Nelson. This is far more picturesque than the main road, plus I get to see some of Marlborough Sounds, which is idyllic. Im staying in the Travellers Arms hostel. I think. I cant remember, as I spent about an hour choosing a place. I should go for the first one, but I dont want some large rambling hostel, I want to be able to wash clothes as, like all stupid backpackers, I seem to have a fixation with the small things. These are.

Laundry
Warm Rooms
Clean comfy beds
Big Kitchens with lots of plates, pans, fridges and storage space
thousands of dancing girls
hot powerful showers
a comfy chair/hammock to read a book in

The hostel I have found has all of the above with the exception of dancing girls, but it does have both many comfy chairs AND a hammock, a South American one at that, it also has a nice fire, a huge clean kitchen, and only a few bunk beds. Is this whats important to me now? I used to be concerned with deadlines, council tax bills, customer meetings, latest CDs to come out, which is the best pub that month in Brighton, trying to go to the gym, and trying out a new wine from Oddbins. Its all different. I like it.

a load of bull

2002-08-28T11:49:00.000+10:00

I've got progressively more prejudiced and opinionated over the last few weeks and have come up with some solutions to world problems; if Australia becomes a republic, as I feel they ought to and more importantly want to, then they can take the Union flag out of their flag. It would just have 6 stars and I think that'll look silly, plus cost a fortune in changing all the touristic tat, teatowels, hat etc that have the flag on.

Britain is to blame for most of the disputes and wars in the world at the moment. Considering that Cyprus, Israel, Afghanistan, Fiji, India (including Pakistan), Burma, Australia, Canada and Zimbabwe all used to be British Territories or dependants, only Canada is in a decent state. I think we might be to blame.

So I have left the north and Whangarei behind for a while. I stayed at Orewa, a dull seaside town, north of Auckland, Hamilton, a slightly less dull town south of Auckland, New Plymouth, a dull town with a big snowy dormant volcano in the back garden, and Im now in Wellington. having stopped at Wanganui and Bulls.

Hamilton was dull, but I was able to do a bit of shopping, and got a sleeping bag. Foolishly or perhaps not so foolishly I left my sleeping bag at home, thinking rightly that I wasnt going to need it in the pacific islands, but I have wished I had brought it once I reached New Zealand.

New Plymouth was pretty much the same, but I got the car serviced, as a light had lit up on the dashboard, and I didnt know what it meant. It seemed sensible to get the oil changed as well, before doing a long bit of driving in the south island. The hostel in New Plymouth was lovely. Called Shoestrings Backpackers, on the edge of town, it had a large warm fire, nice kitchen, and its run by very friendly people. It even had a sauna which was ideal after a cold day out on Mount Taranaki. This is the dormant volcano at the back of town.

While I got the car serviced, and a pair of trousers repaired, I decided to go up the mountain, or at least as far as I could get. Its peak is at 2600m, but considering its winter, and you need an ice axe and crampons to reach it during this time of year, I was content with ascending as far as I could. I got dropped off at the DOC centre and got a map and the latest weather report; it wasnt good so I took a route that would get me halfway up the hill. I was glad I did, as by 1000m up I was having to kick into the icy snow to keep my grip on the steep slopes. At 1500m I stopped for lunch inside the Tarahangi mountain hut, and the weather closed in. Where I had been able to at least look down the mountain, I couldnt see 100m in front of me. Not terrible but not nice if you are on your own, adn I was glad to have the map. I did think about trying to reach the summit, but I saw 6 guys, with mountains of equipment, crampons, axes, ropes, and what looked like really warm jackets, moving very slowly up the mountain. If they were taking their time and new what they were doing, I didnt think there was much point in me having a go. I made a partial circumference around the mountain, above the snowline, sometimes crawling out of snow where I had sunk up to my chest, and wished i had got here in the summer. This is one of the few proper mountains in the world, where you can reach the summit and back in 8 hours, depending on conditions. Today they just weren't good conditions.

I left New Plymouth, glad of the exercise but wanting to get to the south island. I could'nt decide whether to stop on the way to Wellington, or to see if I could reach it that day. I stopped in a place called Cardiff, and seeing as I was born in Cardiff, Wales I wanted to see what similarities there were. I dont know who its fortunate for, but there were none.

Wanganui didnt interest me much, but the town of Bulls did. The place has a particular sense of humour and have enjoyed coming up with new names for the shops, ie. the Church is "Forgive-a-bull" and the supermarket is "Comest-a-bull". Hilarity.

Palmerstone North didnt sound very enticing, so I had a look at Levin, dull, otaki, dull, so before I knew it, I was on the outskirts of Wellington.

There didnt seem to be much room in the hostels around town, and I got one to ring up "Beethovens" for me. They had beds so I wandered over. Beethovens is or at least used to be very famous. Allan, the owner, is a world famous musician, but he is renowned by all backpackers for being exceedingly anti-smoking and generally quite a rude person. This is all hearsay of course. His assistant on the other hand is the epitomy of insanity, but then thats what comes from being an alcoholic. He leaves the hostel in a mess, the dogs unfed, the breakfast burnt, he gets so drunk he threw 2 girls out of the hostel at 4am, then asked people in the morning "did the two girls leave in the night?", and the place is basically falling apart. Despite being in TV documentaries a few years ago, this place should be bulldozed. There are rude and eccentric handwritten notices around the whole building, piped classical music is switched on at 0700 and gets turned off sometimes at night, a jar labelled "sperm donation" is positioned in the hall, which does contain a few used condoms, there are many busts of Beethoven around the place, some have a jaunty-angled tinsel halo, the wiring in the place is very Heath Robinson, and finally the place is cold and some rooms stink. Stay there if you fancy an experience.

It was handy for one aspect; being able to go into Wellington, and have a little bit of a drink. Thursday 22nd I went to an Irish pub (no fiddle nailed to the wall), then a bar with live jazz. There I met some hairdressers dancing around handbags. They insisted on me joining them. We went to another bar and met some US guy who had been working on the modelmaking and prosthetics in Lord of the Rings, and some Kiwi guy who invited us back to his house. a group of 5 and only 2 people know names, and only for each other. It got weird, excessive quantities of alcohol were consumed, and at 5am, I make my excuses and left, to be awoken 2 hours later by Mr Beeth Oven. At least he was deaf and didnt have to put up with his music all day and all night.

I got out of Wellington and decided to stay in Stillwaters hostel, in Mana, about 20km north of Wellington. Its a simple drive into town, and the place has free internet, a lovely kitchen, a bathroom, wait for it, WITH A BATH. Not just an ordinary bath, but its a jacuzzi. The large TV room with leather settees can be entered from the dining room cum snooker room, or the enclosed terrace, or the balcony. You can hire kayaks, and its about 50m from the waters edge. This is more like it.

The ferry to the south island is booked and I go Monday night/Tuesday morning, arriving in Picton at about 5am.

food, glorious food bro'

2002-08-20T11:47:00.002+10:00

Things I have been eating.

Fillet steak, fried with garlic, cloves and cream, with roasted gold kumara, yams, new potatoes and red onions, served with a spinach salad.

Maggi noodles, chicken flavour, adding finely chopped spinach and spring onions. It almost looks like a takeaway meal.

Rowlys famous purple chicken, (chicken marinated in red wine and rosemary, cook in the juices), served with potato and kumara rosti (twice this has been a grey burnt disaster), and creamed parsnips with chopped red capsicums.

Roasted vegetable soup (kumara, potato, pumkin, yellow capsicum)

brie and berries toasted on curry bread.

chillied creamy scrambled eggs on soy and linseed bread.

Rowlys special italian baked beans (tin of beans adding fresh basil, oregano, tomatoes and a little cheese) on toast.

Farmhouse apple crumble, normal crumble mix, using white and brown flour, unrefined sugar, molasses, and muesli, (minus the nuts and dried banana), pour some golden syrup on the apples, add half a cup of water, maybe a little cinnamon, then pour on cumble mix,

sprinking some muscavado sugar on top.

peanut butter on toast.

marmite on toast.

cheese on toast.

margerine on toast.

toast and tea.

thats enough of that.

go the warriors!

2002-08-11T11:41:00.000+10:00

Trev wanted to get connected to the internet. He's been using someone else connection for a while and wants to start sending emails but the luddite in him rejects the idea of it being a simple process, and asks for me to do something about it. I have rather enjoyed ignoring computers lately, and the last few weeks have meant I either havent wanted to email, havent been near an PC or havent had the time especially if I have been washing dishes, so I wasnt looking forward to sorting it.

I walked round town to find out what I could about ISP's, and on my return to the Mezzanine cafe, I found the couple from Brighton eating at Dr Nash's table. After the directions I had given them when we had stayed in Opononi, they had driven through Whangarei and found it without difficulty. I guess "opposite Pac-n-save" is pretty simple but its nice when someone listens to me and understands me. I know what some of my directions are like.

Warwick turned up early afternoon and we picked up Jackie and Stu and headed to Auckland for the game.

I dont know anything about Rugby league and I havent learnt anything since, but I think it was a good game. The Warriors won and the best argument I have heard when talking about money, American foreign policy or how much house prices are around the world is "Go the Warriors!". The crowd was good, we had beers and plastic hotdogs, it was cold and it was my first Rugby League match, so it was similar conditions to my first football match (Aston Villa vs Notts County in 1982, Notts won 3-1). The cheerleaders were fantastic and Im having one delivered shortly. The hits were hard and one guy died, but I think he might have been a spectator.

It was an awesome experience, with a great atmosphere, far friendlier than a football match back home. There were kids everywhere and I thought it would be unsafe for them but then I was seeing it with British eyes; all the violence was on the pitch, which made it an even more gladitatorial affair. The Bulldogs are top of the table had a 17 game unbeaten run, but this was stopped by the Warriors who are 4th in the table. I think Im going to be following the Warriors from now on, and I never thought I'd have a Rugby League team to follow. We drove home happy, slightly drunk, and cold.

Starting to get itchy feet again. The Shaolin Monks are in Auckland on Tuesday and I also want to go to the Bay of Islands. Not sure what to do or which direction to go in, although I should go south soon. This is written on Trevs laptop and Im wanting to steal it off him, but two or three weeks of washing dishes doesnt seem a very fair exchange.

guns are bad mmmkay

2002-08-09T11:38:00.000+10:00

Friday, only a few hours to kill before heading back and I want to do something. There was a poster in the hostel for a small-bore rifle range up in the hills above Kaitaia, and I gave the guy, Pete, a ring and went up there. Now, I have always been suspicious about guns and rifles, as their sole purpose is to take life. A gun collector is a different breed altogether.

Pete is a farmer and has taken over the land from his father who died a year or two ago. He had a friend, lets call him John. John used to help on the farm, and was Petes good friend, but Pete thought John was a bit dodgy as John had got his wife by stealing her off another man. Thats mates though. Johns wife got cancer and was slowly dying, and on the day she died, Pete finds out that John has been having an affair with Petes wife while his own wife was dying, and they were planning to take Petes family farm off him.

What would you do? Pete has always shot guns, hunted with them and collected them for years. He knows how to kill things. He thinks bad thoughts about these friends of his. What does he do? He thinks about killing his wife and old friend, knowing which rifle would do the job, but keeps his farm going, gets his head together and meets someone new. In the end John gambled that his dead wife would leave him money but has actually written him out of the will, and is now penniless and without friends. I reckon he got what he deserved.

I dont know if I would have that sort of self control, and he goes down as another person that has impressed me. Many people have killed and been killed for less.

We spent the morning talking and shooting. Its been a while since I last shot a rifle but I soon got back into it, and got my grouping down to about an inch; not great but I havent shot in years. Pete has old Enfields from carbines to No.4's, SKS, Japanese rifles, M1, M14, M16, an SLR, Hungarian rifles, Swiss, Swedish and more. We spent most of our time with single shot and semi-automatic .22 rifles. Here shooting is a necessary activity in killing vermin like killing possums and also killing wild pigs, so its part of the rural culture. It isnt made into a sport with nice red jackets, 200 hounds, Pimms, and a trumpet, but in mud, rain and done in working clothes.

Anyway, I did get pleasure out of shooting, which worried me. I thought I had got rid of that side of me, but its still there. It was good FUN shooting, and i liked the sound of the falling plates as I blat away with a semi-auto rifle with fat scope.

Time to head back to treehugging and veggie food.

Trev and Maria werent going to be able to go to the Rugby match as they had a big booking for Saturday night, so it was just me meeting up with Warwick, Jackie and Stu. Jenny and Zoe were coming later as Jenny had loads to do, including some business in Ponsonby.

not 90 mile beach

2002-08-08T11:35:00.001+10:00

I have never been one for coach journeys, and while I could have driven on 90 mile beach, having got the car stuck in mud once, I didnt want to risk it again especially with a tide coming in. The people on the bus were; two English girls, a Dutch couple with their two young children, and their parents. The couple had just bought a motel on the edge of Kaitaia.

Sonny, our driver and tour guidetold us various facts about Northland. Some of it was interesting, some of it was tosh, but then thats what you get for coach tours. I hadnt realised that a lot of Yugoslavs came to New Zealand and became gumdiggers, and that they got called Dalmations as this was the area of Europe they were from. I hadnt realised that gun, Kauri gum, the deposits of sap from the Kauri tree that are found in the ground, used to be as valuable as gold. I hadnt realised that Cape Reinga is the place considered by the Maoris to be the physical point on the earth in New Zealand where the departed souls begin their journey to the afterlife. I hadnt realised that 90 mile beach is actually nearer 90 kilometre beach, but then thats just being pedantic.

It was a good day out and took the stress out of driving along the beach and down the main road, and of having the car broken into if I had left it at any point. We went toboganing, on tobogans down the side of a sand dune and the coach was able to drive down a stream to the beach. I think my car would have become part of the beach if I had attempted it.

Still, it was a long shower to remove all the sand.

bunch of tree huggin' hippy crap

2002-08-07T11:30:00.001+10:00

I got a small fortune in organic produce and it felt similar to going away to Uni, as Maria plied me with all kinds of goodies, that I was sure to leave in various hostels. I knew I had to get back to Whangarei by Friday night as we were all going down to watch the Warriors play the Bulldogs. I havent been to a Rugby match before, let alone a Rugby League match in New Zealand, so I was making damn sure Id get back in time.

I thought leaving on Tuesday and head off. I kept changing direction all day, not really sure where I was going. I reached Kawakawa which proclaims to have some world famous toilets. They are interesting, but then I only wanted a piss, and it seems a little extravagant to have such fantastic toilets when the money could be spent on police to stop having your car broken into. Actually they are really nice toilets. There is a really good burger bar opposite with a nice cafe a few shops down. So its worth sitting in one of those and watching people take photos of a toilet. What does it say about a town that decides to sell itself as the town with nice public toilets.

I left and headed east.

Driving along I saw a signpost declaring that a "Historic Site" was to my right. I went up the gravel road and saw a small church. It was shut and not that, um, interesting, so I turned the car around, and got it stuck in the mud. It took me half an hour to get it out and the car and I were both spattered in mud, but the smell of burnt tyres and clutch lingers to this day in the car.

I couldnt decide whether to go to the Kauri forest but I seemed to be making good time so I went through Opononi and made my way through roads that consisted of chicane after chicane. If you took the A272, the Horseshoe pass, Silverstone, Lombard St, and a sine wave, compressed and added them, then laid it for 20 kms through mountains, then you might have an idea how twisty and turny this road was to the Waipau ( spelling?) forest. Here in Waipau there is Tana Mahuta, the largest tree in New Zealand and one of the oldest trees in the world. Its a strongly spiritual tree for the Maoris and it is bigger than breathtaking; its awe-inspiring. Estimated at over 2000 years old, and 18 metres in circumference, its a beast, a big boy and puts you to shame.

Think North American Redwoods with a Maori physique. You could have built a whole ship out of this tree, and unless Im mistaken I think these trees were used for that purpose years ago. The Europeans came and chopped loads down as they are good for houses, but I think they look more impressive in the ground. These trees are big enough to carve a complete staircase in the middle of them. Down the road from Tana Mahutu, there are four more large trees and a couple more within a few kilometres, but there are very few big trees left.

I drove back to Opononi as I noticed a few hostels there. Globetrekkers in Omapere, just south of Opononi is closed at the moment, and was the first place I tried, but the lady there pointed me to House of Harmony, which sounds like a sunday afternoon BBC costume drama, but was a very pleasant hostel. Strangely full of Italians and a couple of people from Brighton, it was friendly and WARM. There was a nice BIG FIRE and they had NICE FURRY CATS that you could use as hot water bottles on your laps.

Right, up early, oooooh about 10 ish and time to head north Ive decided. I dont think Dargaville is a very nice name for a town, hence my decision. I got to some town called Rawene, where I catch the ferry across the water, and get some more petrol before crossing. The man who owns the petrol station is from Chiswick. Why am I surprised? Why does this place both feel like a very foreign country and a very welcoming homely one? Money is in dollars, I dont understand the roadsigns, people talk in tongues and a hot dog isnt what

you think a hot dog is, but blokes from Chiswick sell petrol.

I head to Kaitaia via the back road, as the back road is always my preferred option, stopping off in Ahipara, taking in plenty of stops and listening to Beth Ortens new album. I still cant get over the scenery, and the quaintess and unique styles of the houses. Here you can build a house however you want. No stupid rules for how it should look, or standards to conform to. Rules are mainly for stupid people, or for those who lack originality. Warwick who we visited the week before, has built his own house over the last 20 years. He had electricity put in two years ago, but hadnt needed it before. He has a mezzanine floor in his lounge where his

drum kit is. Pot plants sit on a beam across the kitchen, the wood stove sits near the middle of the lounge heating the whole house, no two windows are the same, with diamond shaped windows, a triangle and a square frame in the lounge. He has a composting toilet that while it doesnt smell of daisys, it doesnt smell of pooh either.

This town was the same, sun decks around houses, outside toilets, expanses of glass, skylights, solar powered, windpowered, built into hollows or sited on ridges. People are building the house they want to live in, not those built by Mr Barrat or Mr Wimpey.

Anyway I got to Kaitaia, booked myself on a coach trip up to Cape Reinga and 90 mile beach for the day after. I had booked into a hostel in Kaitaia and found the owner to be a half Maori, ex army, healer, that burped when he was performing his healing feats. You see something new everyday.

friends and siblings

2002-08-05T11:27:00.001+10:00

Sunday, and Im still angry about the car, but what can I do. I have driven around the estate a number of times to see if I can catch me a bored kid with a North Face bag and a stupid grin as he reads my private therapy journal. I went swimming, in the very municipal pool then Trev, Maria and I went to see Warwick and Jenny.

Warwick has a large plot of land, part of which he is wanting to sell to T & M. I wandered over the land, with them describing where things would be like the house, studio, tipi, bus. It seems as if they are planning to have a small festival on the land. We were planning to go up to some hot springs with Jenny but by the time we got back and had a cup of tea, warmed our feet and had a chat, it was getting dark and easier to get home and have roast dinner.

Sunday is always a day for relaxing and not planning anything.

Monday is a day for getting smashed glass in your car replaced. I had been to the glass place the week before to get a stone chip repaired (sometimes I surprise myself with how mundane travelling can be), and they were happy to sort me out a second hand piece of glass and get it fitted. Again it seems that the people of New Zealand arent into making money but are interested in making sure that you get a good deal, come back again, and also talking about themselves a bit while you are there in the shop. That sounds like a crap analysis. The guy who fixed the glass spoke to me. He treated me like a mate he was doing a favour for. I cant remember the last time I got that in a shop in the UK. I have always liked talking to people in shops as it makes life interesting, but its hard work. Here, people want to talk to you, and not just because Im a tourist as I see that

everyone talks to each other. Its all good.

Getting itchy feet though. Car is fixed, and its time to move on a little.

Rang the sibling as it was her birthday. Glad she is back from Afghanistan, although she could have brought me some guns and stuff.

crime scene, some waterfalls

2002-08-03T11:24:00.000+10:00

I had a few problems with the CD player I fitted; for some reason it wasnt getting enough power and I instantly questioned my knowledge of the Honda Accord wiring loom. I backed this up by purchasing the Haynes manual for said vehicle, digested and re-digested the circuit diagrams but found that the US and Canadian models they featured had different colours to the Jap import that I had.

Oh joy, I just have to trust myself on my knowledge of wiring. It works but it was being very strange for the first couple of days, as if the car had some sort of immune response against the object I had inserted into its electrics. No matter I thought, as I gave Lisa a lift to her work at the call centre, minus my glorious music. I just hoped that it would fix itself before I drove north to Whangarei. I drove round town, buying things, sorting out insurance and the change of ownership for the car, and by the time of getting back and eating my warm Ponsonby pies, Doug had thought I had left without him.

We made Whangarei in a couple of hours and the journey was a lot easier than previous excursions on the coach. Trev and Maria were happy to see us and had closed up early with their new opening hours. Still being a new place, they are constantly changing the menu and opening hours to find the right balance between maximising income, decent predictable opening hours and having some sort of lifestyle.

The next few days saw me slipping into the same routine of washing dishes, making a mess of coffees and orders, and rolling cutlery. Doug had a chance to see Whangarei then left on the Thursday.

By the time Saturday rolled around I was tired, Im just not cut out for this work thing, and missed the weekly visit to the organic market. I made up for it by doing some shopping, then we all went up to Whangarei falls, a tranquil spot on the outskirts of town. After marvelling at the waterfall and walking through the forest surrounding it, we went back to my car and noticed that it had been broken into. Having the glass smashed is a pain, but the worst bit was having my journal stolen which was in my bag. I had poems, japanese writing, stories, email addresses, recipies, drawings, and like photos or limbs the journal was fairly irreplacable.

A woman had spotted a Maori looking kid/youth/piece of shite hanging around my car and as he had walked off, she had followed in her car. She lost him but came back to the car park and let me know what she had seen, let her kids look after my car while she gave me a lift to the place where she saw the thief/toe-rag/vermin last. I ran around the housing estate where she saw him, but it was a pointless exercise apart from allowing me to let off steam. what was nice that while I was annoyed at having my car broken into, someone was around to restore your faith in people and help you out. The lady was very kind and apologetic, even though it wasnt her fault, so while I was angry with the scum/bored kid/outcast who had broken into the car, I was happy to meet the woman who had given chase, looked after my car and tried to help me catch him.

No matter. The waterfall was nice.

a set of wheels!

2002-07-29T11:09:00.001+10:00

I think some or in fact lots of beer was involved in Saturday night. We went to a nightclub on the southern part of Queens St, in what appeared to be a disused building. The club was up a large flight of stairs and only cost $5 to get in. After drinking far too many Tequila, Vodka and Redbulls I remember not sleeping much at all, then getting to Ellerslie Racecourse at 10 wandering around aimlessly staring at 15 year old Honda Accords and rusty Ford Falcons. I ended up buying one of the former as it was being sold by a very sweet old Malaysian couple, and I trusted them. My instinct hasnt proved wrong and despite the electrics being slightly suspect, the car is a goer.

I couldnt buy it straight away as it had the family number plate on it, so we drove back to their house to discuss arrangements and hopefully to meet the owner of the car; the couples brother in law, Vincent. He happened to be out playing golf, but his wife was in and she agreed to the price. Charlie the husband in the old couple then walked me to the bus station and told me the story of his family and how many of his relatives had come to New Zealand from Singapore and Malaysia on his recommendation. The majority of them had stayed. I can understand why.

I got back to the hostel, hung-over, tired but relieved that I had bought a car as I was getting sick to death of sitting on buses and being dependant on expensive scheduled routes that take you to towns that everyone else has already gone to, and I went to bed. You know that excitement that you get when you look forward to something special? A christmas when you are 7 where you have asked for a bike, or the excitement going to school the next day, knowing that you will be seeing a girl in Art which you have squirly maelstrom emotions for. Thats how I was looking forward to getting the car.

Myself and Vincent did phone calls on Monday morning, and he came from St Johns (Wood?) to Ponsonby, where we exchanged handshakes and hard cash. I have never understood the pain associated arising from parting with hard cash compared to the lasseiz faire attitude we have to using plastic. Its all a conspiracy with the banks and shops as they know this and exploit this weakness.

I have a car though, a 1987 Honda Accord, 2.0Si, Electric everything, including folding mirrors, Rego ATC569. Notice its not registration or reg but 'rego'. Its started, I can speak a little kiwi eh. Add O's to things if it improves the 'noise' the word makes, and it makes sense, as boring works become exciting and interesting, especially if you have to use them alot. I bought the car because it feels loved. Vincents wife had driven it for most of the time, it only has 130 000km on the clock which is particularly good for a car of its age, and its a manual, as I cant stand auto's and I was worried about reliability. Arent I sensible.

Monday afternoon was beautiful as it was when Phil, Mick, Charlie, Clare and I went out out to Mission Bay. There the girls got creative and built a truly beautiful gecko from sand, while the blokes played football on the beach, sending the girls into the water to fetch the ball whenever necessary and then taking a break from the sport to have a cigarette break. It was finished off nicely with fish and chips. I paid $12 = ? for a LARGE coke, two LARGE chips, a LARGE potato fritter and a LARGE piece of very fresh very tasty fish, possibly called Tawahaki. We got back in time for Phil to get to the dentist for more work and in time for tea.

I spent the rest of the afternoon fitting a car stereo, a CD player one as I dont have tapes, and didnt see the point of listening to old technology. The car has the same wiring loom as my old Rover Sprint and Im sorry to say that I can still remember the colours so wiring it up was a cinch.

I felt now I had a car it was time to go. I was preparing to leave and go back up north.

back at the brown kiwi

2002-07-27T01:02:00.002+10:00

Auckland; a city that while beautiful is fairly uninspiring compared with the rest of the country. I came back to the Brown Kiwi as I enjoyed it there last time, and again found it welcoming and pleasant. The people there, the majority of which are British, are nice and I don't feel like Im in the middle of some hormone fuelled school disco with a bunch of kids on their first time away from home, but still the washing up doesnt always get done. I was here to 'get things done' as I now had a mission; a car, an Aussie visa, laundry and a shower.

While I was there that week, Phil went and came back, Charlie had got herself a job at GPK, Sarah was still slaving over soap imported from Littlehampton in the Body Shop on Queens Street, Mick was preparing for Thailand, Sarah was pining over Em and throwing herself into bedmaking, while I remained completely undecided as to what I should do next.

I finally made the Australian Consulate before it shut. It has since moved from 132-138 Quay St to 194 ish Quay St, into the Price Waterhouse Cooper Building. Tuesday afternoon I walk in and ask for the forms to apply for a working holiday visa, which I promptly fill in and hand back. I come back the following day and pick up the visa. Simple isnt it. Much better than taking days off work at home to sort out such trivial stuff, while here it becomes a little adventure and the essence of my existance. I thrive off these little missions as there really isnt anything else more important, such as work, hoovering the flat, shopping, talking to the estate agent, rebuilding the PC or any of those other mundane jobs that I dont have to suffer here.

I tried Turners Car auction on the Wednesday night. That was rather strange as the bloke with the hammer kept going on about "do I see 2, do I see 2" and "beautiful car in the colour". I still haven't fathomed why he placed such emphasis on the special feature that cars that were under the hammer had a colour; it was hardly as if they were transparent, but it kept him in a job so I cant grumble.

After eating lovely Drambuie truffles, chocolate cake, fresh paninis and other such treats, I found that being as accustomed to this healthy (to a point) eating lifestyle, I couldnt readily give it up. I therefore made 'nice food' in the hostel. This always draws a crowd and creates talking points other than the predictable "when I" stories of people in hostels. Ryan and myself swapped recipies and his 'chicken with cuts holding camembert and hazelnuts' has held my interest for some time. I will test it shortly. On this occasion, I was looking to make a soup, so I chopped and roasted pumkin, kumara, capsicum, garlic and red onion, with a generous sprinking of sweet basil. Once roasted I cook and mashed the veg in water and cooked it further, then added milk and ahem, a little of some cream that I 'found' in the fridge. The first bowl I ate that night, the second was after a number of us had gone to the Sponge or the Oval, I cant recall, for a few drinks. The usual munchies crept up and Sarah was demanding food, and I was already heating some soup. This and some toasted Soya and linseed

bread got shared amongst 5 drunk people. Be warned, soup just reheated in the microwave attains properties akin to napalm, and it took nearly 2 weeks for the skin on the roof of my mouth to be repaired.

I ended up cooking for Sarah another night, as she offered some broccoli. Wondrous stuff brocolli. I was orginally going to cook chicken marinated in red wine and rosemary, potato and kumara rosti, creamed parsnips with capsicums and the addition of broccoli made the meal complete. The rosti was an unmitigating disaster, and led to the whole meal being delayed. I used 4 maybe five pans, with the rosti sticking to all of them. I gave up and roasted the greying remnants of the potato and kumara.

While the 'purple chicken' didnt look particularly appetising, it tasted good, and the creamed parsnips worked well, but I think I need some advice on cooking rosti. Doug offered some, including washing the potato first and using cake rings to keep the shape, but I was past the point of no return and needed saving. Sarah ate it and enjoyed the parsnips which she usually despises so it cant have been that bad.

I went to turners again in Penrose on Saturday, as it was an auction with no reserve price. As a consequence I was thinking this would be my day and I would pick up a bargain. It wasnt to be as the crowd was 4 or 5 times that on a Wednesday which was around 50. The prices were too high so I gave up and went to the Skytower. This is the highest building in the southern hemisphere, and is an impressive sight. The main observation deck has areas of glass floor. This is very disconcerting, as despite the informative and reassuring signs saying the glass is 39mm thick and as tough as the concrete, you can see the ground below and you tread as lightly on the glass for fear of breaking it and falling to your death hundreds of metres below. After eating a British rail dried sandwich which had somehow transported itself to the Skytower to avoid being eaten, and a stroll in the market next to Victoria park, I got back and vegetated with a good book. Life is sweet.

How ya goin there, eh mayte

2002-07-23T00:55:00.003+10:00

Back in the real world. I turn up to Auckland and it does exactly what it says on the tin; its a city. I'd picked a nice hostel in Ponsonby, the up-coming cafe district, and I chose well. Not being a snob but I thought best leave the year-outers to their fun and games; they tend to stay at the party palace hostels in the town centre.

The first few days I was still in Island time; getting up late or early, but not really doing anything. I spent a day reading a book, then did a bit of shopping another day. Bought myself a rucksack cover to protect it at airports and its also waterproof, which should help when I go to the south island. Its been a bit boozy and stuff at the Brown Kiwi, but its a good crowd. One night turned a little too messy. It was Phils birthday and we all went down to the Cavalier on Victoria St. Headed off into town and got him very drunk, to the point where he gets thrown out of the club. I felt it best to get him home, which I do, but in the morning he has discovered

that his front teeth have been smashed by something the night before. I have no recollection, and he certainly doesnt. The only theory is that he rolled off the settee in the lounge and smashed his teeth there. $3000 of dental work needs to be done.

I decided to leave the scene of the crime, or rather I was getting bored of waiting for my new bank card to come through. Oh I didnt explain, someone has been taking money out of my account in the Cook Islands, and its been going into the account of the hire company where I picked up the motorbike. I have had to cancel my card, and it seems that LloydsTSB in their wisdom haev no procedure for getting a card to overseas customers. I'd like to get that black horse and turn it into glue. Bunch of imbiciles.

Anyway, as I wait for my card to come through (which still has more money in my account than WorldCom) I thought I would head north to Whangarei (Maori pronunciation - Fangaray). I stayed a couple of days at a hostel, the Bunkdown Lodge, very pleasant, except that after leaving my Merrels on the doorstep they were soon stolen. This has been rectified and they have a shoe rack, but dont leave your shoes outside. Personally the hillbillies who live in Whangarei tend not to wear shoes, even though its about 11-13'C, and they walk around bearfoot, so why they would steal my stinky trainers is a mystery.

I had to wait to Monday to see Trev and Maria as they are only open a few hours on Saturday and closed Sunday. I turn up on the Monday taking a few pictures and I see Trev tidying up the outside of the terrace. Within minutes I had a hot coffee and was helping with the washing up, after eating a very savoury muffin. The food is all veggy and they are using a lot of organic stuff. For those from Brighton, its like the Sanctuary but with all the the bits and pieces from the Mansions. Imagine putting a green veggy cafe in the middle of Texas; this is what they have done, trying to educate people.

I didnt think Wednesday was funny at all, after chilling out with Trev in the morning, they put me on the counter. Now I have never served in a cafe in my life. I have never used a proper coffee machine and I certainly dont know how to make a 'Panini 4' or 'the special'. it was an unmitigated disaster. Maria and Trev would come out of the kitchen and ask me who had ordered the soup or the flat white with soya and I would have to answer that it could be anyone in this room, or they might have left or my writing might be wrong. Funnily enough I went back to pan bashing on the Thursday and we were all a lot happier.

Despite the happiness, Maria and I have felt the presence of ghosts in the cafe, and we dont know why. It could be something to do with the healthy eating or something might be making us paranoid about the building. Even Trev felt it the other night. Most strange. If you are ever in New Zealand then get up to Whangarei and to the "Mezzanine Cafe, 79 Walton Street, Whangarei". Its above a Homeopathic medicine shop and a healthfood shop.

I needed to come back to Auckland for a few days. First to let Maria and Trev sort out the mess I left orders in, and I have to get my visa for Australia, and Im trying to buy a car in Auckland. Soon as I get a car, and the bank can be 'kind' enough to pull its large corporate thumb out of its fat corporate arse and send me a new piece of plastic I'll start travelling around NZ.

How the French ruined the Pacific or - Je veux du pain s'il vous plait

2002-07-07T00:48:00.002+10:00

Disappointment is my biggest complaint about Tahiti and French Polynesia. While it is certainly a beautiful place, sort of, it has rained since I arrived. I eventually gave up and went to Moorea, an island just off and visible from Tahiti. It suited me well, as Anna and Kirsty were moving on to the states, and I was getting bored of Papeete.

I went to Moorea, and turned up at Chez Nelsons. It was picturesque but the worst elements of the two cultures, French and Polynesian, surfaced here. The service everywhere was arrogant and rude with delays being the norm. Saying that, the diving was superb and I went for a shark feeding dive.

It was certainly a good exercise in control of your breathing, as the excitement and fear means that you use more air than normal. Having around 20 black-tipped reef sharks ripping fish apart about 30-50cms away from your face and a couple of large lemon sharks looking menacing tends to raise the bloodpressure somewhat. Ok, it was bloody amazing and I would love to do it again, but in my ignorance I suspect but dont know that these things change the sharks behaviour for the worse.

The dorms at Chez Nelson were small, in fact it was 2 to a room, so I dont know how that is a dorm. No matter. Rika was the Japanese girl sharing my dorm. My nickname bcame Beroncho Rowlychan, (beroncho is big bottom lip) and I have learnt how to say I need the toilet in Japanese; that should get me by when Im in Tokyo shouldnt it?

The upside to French Polynesia is the way you can enjoy a continental breakfast, or have fresh, fresh baguettes for breakfast lunch and dinner with good french cheese and wine. Still, the bastards like Nuclear testing, so I was glad to leave Tahiti all in all.

Reflections and insights on the Cook Islands.

2002-07-02T00:42:00.004+10:00

Vaipea girls are the ones to watch out for in Aitutaki.
There are devils and spirits in the woods, but the locals dont like to talk about it.
Hinoi, whose 21st party I went to, is a photographer.
There is a special reason why Vaipea is called Hollywood. You have to go and find out for yourself.
Aitutaki is a true paradise.
Puffys do the best burgers on the island.
Sophie has a camper van without a roof and its in Perth, but its free.
King Lear is a boring book to swap with at a hostel.
Rinos bikes are knackered.
The best snorkelling is at the end of the runway, but the people at the resort tell you its dangerous.
A can of coke at Pearl Beach resort is over a pound.
Mosquitos are a real pain and carry Dengue Fever here.
Tua, who runs Backpackers International sees and hears everything, and she is really nice.
Ive now met most of the Prime ministers Family.
Commitment isnt a word used often in Cook Island relationships.
Germany lost the world cup, thank goodness.
You can ask the Aitutaki TV station to put a film on for you, or whatever you want to watch.
You cant watch the world cup final live though.

Aitutaki Church

2002-06-30T00:29:00.008+10:00

Nearly got into a fight in a local bar last night. Brandon and myself went down to the Blue Nun, and got invited to join a table by some woman. The guy sat next to her got slightly agitated, tried to pull something out of his back pocket, and it was only a 6 foot 20 stone maori guy who slapped him and stopped him. We went on to Fletchers soon after that. Cant be going and upsetting the locals.

To make up for the beer last night, I went to church today. The singing is quite spectacular and is far more beautiful to hear than some of the dirges we call hymns. Again we stumbled across the free buffet in the Sunday School next door. It wasnt the only reason I went to church. Honest.

Cook Island Tourist Information Centre

2002-06-26T00:26:00.007+10:00

After a lot of umming and ahhing I changed my flight and decided to stay another week here, but also go to the lagoon island of Aitutaki. I got picked up and went to Toms Cottage, after a small flight in an ickle plane. From the air the island is beautiful, with many motu (little islands) dotted along the edge of the reef.

I hired a scooter one day and found some of the standing stones (marae) on the island, and also climbed the highest peak on the island which affords some pretty splendid views of the entire lagoon. I went up a few days later as I had forgot the camera, like a prat.

I did make sure I had my camera when the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, Robert Woonton came to open the Aitutaki tourist information centre. I even got to press flesh with the man, and he joked how you could meet your prime minister this easily back home. Im sure Blair wouldnt be opening a tourist centre on a pacific island for another. The best bit was after where a huge buffet with booze had been organised. Didnt need to cook that day, which is good as I was starting to get bored of tuna sandwiches and pasta.

Went for a dive one day, but I think the diving is better in Fiji; far more to see there.

A mixed crowd

2002-06-23T00:25:00.007+10:00

The Cook Islands are a true tropical paradise with an interesting flavour of Maori culture. While the islands off Fiji were the beautiful ones, Rarotonga has white coral beaches all the way around the island, with a reef about 100 metres off the beach, leaving the entire coastline of 32km surrounded by amazing blue lagoon waters.

Im staying in a place called Backpackers International, about 10 minutes from the main town Avarua, and the beach is a short walk down the road. I had bumped into Dave who I met at Seashell in Fiji and an American girl, Amber. For the course of our adventure, we became Juicy, Rubber Lips and Amberlicious, but Im unsure why. It might have something to do with nicknames from school. I certainly didnt ask how Dave got to be called Juicy.

As even this, the largest island, is pretty small at 32km circumference, and me being lazy I hired a motorbike/scooter. Khaled will be dissapointed but only the really poor backpackers or scaredycats have mountainbikes. Its also one of the fastest bikes on the island, which I now realise to be excessive as the dogs here have a habit of throwing themselves out in front of you when they hear you coming. Im sure I have seen the dogs huddled in groups and timing their coordinated run across the street as I have come past.

I have finally purchased a snorkel, mask and rash vest. It makes snorkelling a little easier if you have your own stuff, and it is so worth while around here. I have seen shoals of trumpet fish, who are very curious and arent as timid as the unicorn fish. There are many Picasso Triggerfish here, which are some of my favourite, although I have realised they have some vicious teeth as you can hear them take bites out of the coral. I wont be waving my fingers at them any more. I also had a ray fly under me the other day; so graceful and elegant looking and it had a splashing gasping fool chasing after it, namely me.

Other gossip, a few of us gatecrashed a locals party we could hear from the hostel. Barry had tracked it down and we all followed, after Lyn had galvanised us into going. It was a fairly mixed crowd, with lots of college kids for a guys 21st birthday. He doesnt drink or smoke but had spent $1600 NZ on booze, which is about 500GBP. Well worth it, and I seem to remember the moon turned a rugby ball shape, due to the amount of Steinlager I drank. I got to meet a few interesting sorts; a few local gang members, the Cook Island PrimeMinister's daughter, and the largest Marijuana grower on the Island. It was a mixed crowd.

Since getting into the speed of things here and learning a little of Cook Island Maori's I have changed my flights to stay another week, and I am going to the island of Aitutaki. I met Kirsty, Anna and Anna who were staying at Vara's and they flew off the other day to this island. It sounds good and I have since heard other good reports. I want to extend my tan into the bottom end of the Dulux browns so don't want to go to wintery New Zealand just yet, or spend too long in expensive Tahiti, just for the sake of a bit of skin cancer.

Oh yes, bumped into some Swedes, and they think my "Nasta Odenplan" train announcement is funny. I had to say something in Swedish and after "Kan jag fa en ol tack" and "mosta kisa" (spell) the train announcement was all thats left. Oh well.

My brain is starting to free wheel from not having to do any work, and I built the largest card tower the world has ever seen, and have come up with the idea of staging the Actors Olympics. Im pretty convinced that after seeing Tom Hanks play ping-pong in Forrest Gump and Paul Newman play pool, there should be some even held for them. I leave you with the thought that I really have so much spare time on my hands that sometimes I just sit and giggle to myself. I have tried to do the cross island walk but the clouds have been stuck on the hills for the last day or so, but I have explored a few beaches, gone jetblasting at the airport, seen the Black rock which the locals believe is the physical gateway to the afterlife, and seen some truly amazing beaches and scenery.

I have tracked Scaramanger to an island atoll and will be reshuming undercover ops from there. Sho long Mish Moneypenny. until my next communication . . .

Kava nights, Suva days.

2002-06-18T00:21:00.008+10:00

I had an interesting few days away from the Seashell resort. I went along the south part of the main Island Vitu Levu, towards the capital Suva, stopping off at Sigatoka, where a local girl took me round a few of the sites, including Tavuni hill fort, and ended up in the local pool hall for a couple of games.

Suva was pretty hardcore compared to the rest of the island; the street-traders are more ruthless, the litter worse, and the diversity of poverty more extreme. It was also far from peaceful, as the hostel where I was staying at was undergoing an extensive refurb, plus they had a hyperactive 4 year-old and a dog with paranoia, so sleeping was more of a luxury than a basic human right.

I was informed of a mugging that had happened a few days before, 100m away from the hostel, and on the morning I left, a restaurant was burnt down and a family stabbed to death in their beds. Apart from the museum and a very large market I thought it best to leave Suva and find somewhere better to sleep and relax.

After a 5 hour bus journey across roads of dubious quality, I arrived back at Seashell and the friendliness of the place hit me. Like Cheers, everyone knows your name, Rakesh the barman new I would want a Fiji Bitter with a straw, David the co-owner welcomed me back, Margaret seemed very happy to see me, and pleased I had heeded her warnings about the sword sellers in Suva. Rob was still kicking around Seashell after going to the Yasawas, and I managed to have a last drink with him. 'Its all good'.

I fly out to Rarotonga on Wednesday so another night of Kava and Fiji bitter and a giggle by the pool then Im out of Fiji. Its a good place, the locals are very friendly, and there is an interesting contrast between the Fijians and Indian Fijians. The Indian Fijians have a very serious work ethic and are very industrious, while the Fijians are more on Spanish time with their laid-back attitude. This does mean a discrepency generally between the wealth of the Fijians and the Fijian Indians. I was half expecting some sign of tension between the two groups but they will all readily admit that there isnt and everyone gets along fine.

The east side of the island is also generally wetter and more lush, with a lot more tropical jungle covering the craggy hills, while the west seems to have more rolling hills covered with sugarcane, tobacco and grasses.

Top places to visit in Fiji:- Seashell Surf and Dive near Momi Bay, The Beachouse near Korolevu, any of the Yasawas (reports have been good), Bequ for diving and of course go to Seashell if you fancy surfing the world famous Cloudbreak as they can sometimes get a slot on a saturday there, which is still cheaper than staying on Tavarua, the exclusive resort for Cloudbreak. BeachComber Island is meant to be a bit of a giggle with one dorm housing over 100 people and non stop parties.

First days in Fiji

2002-06-15T00:13:00.005+10:00

What can I say?! Brighton seems a thousand miles away but then it is. I have started missing hot water, quality toilet paper and PG Tips but then when the air temperature is a minimum of 28'C and the sea temp isnt far off that then you dont miss it too much.

I spent the first 10 days or 2 weeks in a chilled resort south of Nadi (pron. Nandi) in a place near Mobi Bay (pron. Mombi) called Seashell Surf and Dive (pron. Seashell). After two days trying to adjust my brain to the searing heat and being 12 hours out in my body clock, I moved into a dorm and started an Open Water PADI course.

I seemed to take to it well and I didnt suffer from the Bends, Nitrogen Narcosis, vertigo, claustrophobia or plain insanity. The diving is fantastic and I've seen a huge variety of clown fish, trigger fish, anemonefish, plus exciting stuff like turtles, black and white tipped reef sharks, sea snakes, nurse sharks, jellyfish large and small, morey eels, and a huge range of hard coral, which is particularly good around Fiji. Might try and see if I can work in a surf shop in Oz when I get there, but after the last dive, my eyes got screwed when I hadnt equalised the pressure in my mask. My head was equalised, but my eyes turned a nasty colour. Serves me right for getting too into the turtle I had seen.

I have become mildly addicted to Kava, the local brew, which is a mixture of a ground root vegetable and water, and it has its own special ceremonial drinking ritual attached. The effects are generally sedative, with the main active ingredients being novocaine and other analgesics/anathetics. It tastes like shit though.

I have absorbed a huge amount of surfer slang as there are a lot of surfers here and they do love to talk about the sets they caught on the reef breaks here, which are particularly good when the swell is cool and the wind isnt making the waves crumble. The Quiksilver worldchamps were held just off the coast so most of the dooods here are pretty stoked with seeing some top rides. w...ers.

The local girls are ridiculously flirtatious and I have had a couple of uncles inviting me round to meet their daughters. If you dont hear from me again, then come to Fiji and bust me out of an arranged marriage.

I moved on from the surf doods, and went to the capital Suva; a messy sweaty humid hole of a place with clubs, widescreen TV and beggers. I'll try and watch the Denmark England game tonight in, of course, an Irish bar.

Big up to the people I have met so far. Rob looking for 'any danger', Kris flying the Finnish flag on his board dood (whaaats happenning), Sam (stop looking so smug), Lucy (see you in Oz), Susan (back to your bacterial cultures my dear) and Nancy (ebonics? whatever). I hope Paul finds peace and himself somewhere in the world. And I wont tell you about Sweetlips Laru, Bond has yet to complete the mission.

Im off to Rarotonga next, and no, I have no idea where it is. I heard from Anja that Big Trev and Maria have set up a veggie cafe in NZ, so guess where Im heading after.

In the meantime, my urgent stomach is telling me that I will be spending time in a darkened room, so moce (mothey) everybody. Pass me the toilet paper.