greymouth

made it to greymouth where I'll probably stay for one night. Then hopefully tomorrow (if I can make the minimal effort required to book things) will go to the Fox Glacier or the Franz Joseph Glacier.

phone number

of course, being in a new country, I have a new phone number available in the usual place.

around NZ

so I spent three or four days in Wellington, which was pretty nice -- nightlife there goes on really late - was out until 5am or so on Saturday night (then went to meet my aunt on Sunday morning for breakfast, incredibly hung over after drinking a couple of litres of red wine).

After that I took the ferry and TranzCoastal train to get me to Christchurch - an incredibly English looking city. I was there for a few days and had a good mix of walking round the city, hiking about on the top of a hill (reached by cable gondola) and heavy drinking with three fun girls (see pic in other post for image of one of them) who I found within minutes of my arrival at the hostel (Base Backpackers, pretty good so I'll probably stay at one of their other branches later on). Also in Christchurch, met up with Yosh who I know from a previous life.

This morning after getting about an hours sleep, after an evening that started off swilling wine in Charlie B's backpackers hostel (which girls had moved to as it is substantially cheaper, in exchange for being in a 38-bed dorm rather than an 10-bed one like we had been in in base), then onto forced wine guzzling (which is what the pic on other post is) then out for a walk to get some chips from 24h fish and chip shop on the other side of the city centre (in which shop some crazy dude had just slit his wrists all over the floor... didn't put me off the chips but I think the english girl and irish dude were not so happy). Threw food at seagulls for a few minutes eating the chips, then ended up in a bar drinking Tiger. (I discovered myself getting irked that they weren't giving me the bottle caps with the beer which I realise is because they used to not give me tiger bottle caps when I was in Allez Boo in Sai Gon, the caps there having prizes concealed underneath)

Then the two I was with got a taxi back to their hostel whilst I walked back to Base Backpackers. Halfway across cathedral square, I was was accosted one of the other chicks I'd been drinking with earlier had somehow ended up hanging out with some accordianist from Charlie B's in the middle of the square.

Drunkenly sat there for 10 mins or so, walked girl all the way back to Charlie Bs, went back to Base, found some dude slumped asleep but upright in front of one of the internet terminals - he toppled over after five mins or so, which was pretty funny. He also had all sorts of felt tip writing all over his face so I think he must have been in this state for some time.

Sent out a bunch of drunk emails and drunk SMS. Hopefully nothing too embarrassing.

Plan is to go for a walk tomorrow day time, and then day after head down to the west coast of the south island and work my way down from there to Queenstown where it will be time for bungy jumping!

yellow bag

Rather than sleep in preparation for my train ride, I ended up drinking with some girls.

double pages

the last clean double page of my passport is no longer clean... NZ Immigration felt that their little stamp needed a whole double page to itself (though at least they seem to be putting them lined up nicely and leaving room for more stamps now). There's about 7 blank pages left, though, scattered throughout.

kitty

wellington city YHA has a kitty cat! a ginger one. it was busy watching all the rubbish bins be taken away this morning, though, and didn't want to play with me.

somebody loves me.

At the Wellington airport baggage claim, a poorly trained // in-training fruit detector called Max discovered that by humping my bag (which had contained an apple two weeks ago) he got a doggy treat. So every time round the hall (which was pretty small) over he came for another go, and had to be dragged away, claws tightly round my sack. Lucky he was so cute else I would have been most upset.

window tax

another country, another internet kiosk. but this one also has the 'file... new window' option disabled so I must use my old gmail-search-the-web trick to get more of them opened. wtf do they not want people having lots of windows open? bitches.

socks

I went to buy some socks in Dyer, a big department store. I wandered lost and overwhelmed for 25 minutes before giving up and eventually managing to escape back into the street. Then I found a Big-W so now I have the australian equivalent of ASDA socks, for only $5. They are black.

lazy

too lazy to write much at the moment. but:

i) in 10 mins, i'm off to new zealand

ii) last night I was awoken at 0130 by some drunk dude pissing in his bed. 2nd time this trip. brings back fond memories of Oslo.

iii) Will my star alliance gold card still work this year? Its undated, but the big database in the sky might now say it is invalid, so I'll be reliant on the poor communication between airlines to ensure my gold class treatment.

Melbourne again again

third time in Melbourne! kinda feels like being home.

Adelaide

more free wireless (web only) in Adelaide. Slept 12h last night as I was quite tired from the train journey (two hours of rather disrupted sleep) and from quite a lot of drinking in Perth. I'm staying now in the YHA which as always is more expensive, cleaner, quieter, and better organised (for example, they use the seven-fridge method of communal fridge cleaning: each of seven fridges is labelled "The contents of this fridge will be thrown away on $DAYOFWEEK"; to keep your food alive you must move it every so often so that it never ends up in the Monday fridge on a Monday, etc.; however, their multifloor synchronised cleaning meant that all of the men's bathrooms (one per floor) ended up being closed-for-cleaning simultaneously, right when I woke up and needed to pee). As part of my 2006 YHA membership, I have received a free clip-on Koala. Participants of SuperComputing 2002 Globus contingent can probably imagine the fun I am having with that. Only 7 days left in this country…

still in perth

still in perth - this is one of the most sociable hostels that I have stayed in. Bunch of australians, germans and japanese plus a scattered few others. Large amounts of food served to each other by everyone - last night I got spag. bol. and didn't even have to give out any of my 'AUD10 for 4l' wine!

have been up to kings park to watch the pretty sunset several times. last time we took a picnic which was fun until an argument about "I think gays are fucking disgusting" vs "I do not" broke out, at which point parts of the group stormed off home.

went to fremantle yesterday. old buildings (at least in the australia sense).

my gloria jeans frequent drinks card is almost full - one more and I get a free cup of coffee!

I have been told about some kind of salt based deodorant that one can obtain from health shops near here. I will try, as I have had no deodorant for a week.

phở

went for phở in northbridge. delicious. joked with the french chick i was with about how there were loads of roaches in vietnam. she expressed some relief that we were in australia not vietnam, and almost perfectly on cue a big motherfucker scuttled across the restaurant floor towards us. lucky for her, we'd finished eating by then. I thought it was hilarious… she just kept muttering 'its fine, really its fine'.

next year

its next year. my new years was fun. nothing happening until around 22h30. the german chicks i had planned to go drinking with ditched me, or maybe i ditched them - not really sure. latched onto a group headed for northbridge, 10 mins walk from here - many people and stages of performers in the street. for half an hour i was faced with the bizarre prospect of reaching new years sober and with only red bull in me (I'd had beers in the afternoon and at lunchtime but they had long worn off). Luckily we ended up in some club where i pounded large amounts of vodka to make me drunk. threw another redbull into the mix around 23h40, fired party poppers. eventually moved to another club with a longer queue and a cover charge (the two german chicks appeared at that point and said we should not go, but the sydney chick i was following said we should so I did). more vodka. some dancing, some dancing on stage blocks. eventually sydney chick disappeared (~05h00) presumably from getting tired of me trying to snog her. i wandered back to the hostel to find the german chicks on the internet in the lobby (the blonde one is more commsjunkie than I am it seems). they were teasing some other dude, saying that the dark haired one was really german, but that the blonde one (who was clearly typing in German) was swedish. not sure why. went to bed. slept 2.5h then stumbled down to the kitchen for my free breakfast of toast and vegemite (x3 slices). japanese girls who had also been out with us until ~01h00 awake already. and thats the end of my new year.