Armaggeddon Expo

So on Friday night I went to Sci FI Soc's Pub Quiz night. It was a quiz based on several subjects in several sections (General Info, General Sci Fi and Fantasy, Film, Quotes, Music, Alcohol) answered by teams. My team ended up winning, due largely (I say without a touch of modesty) to my own enormous intelligence (although another member of my team, a guy named Richie, also contributed quite a few answers. It was really fun and when Sci Fi Soc does it again I'm gonna enthusiatically join in.

Afterwards the hosts cleaned up, and I helped out a bit, and then we watched Flash Gordon (in honor of the fact that one of the guests of honor at the Anime/comic/scifi convention that started the next day, Armaggeddon Expo, was Sam Jones, the guy who played Flash in the movie). I was surprised that only one other guy stuck around for that. Because we started at 11:30, by the end of the movie I was asleep. What parts I did see I liked. It's a very campy, weird movie, but it's a lot of fun.

Saturday I went to the Christchurch Convention Center for Armaggeddon Expo. I spent the first hour browsing around the various stalls and vendors selling stuff. Madman, an Australian company that basically is the distributor for all of the anime and manga that gets to Australia and NZ, had a huge booth with really cheap manga (NZ$10 a piece, which works out to be about US$5), so I ended up buying quite a lot. I also bought a special edition of issue #1 of Transmetropolitan, which I got signed by the artist, Darick Robertson, who was another guest.

I spent the rest of the day seeing Hulk vs Thor (a surprisingly entertaining film, altho I found it amusing when a Valkyrie, rallying the Asgardian warriors against the destructive force of the Hulk, declares that their place in Valhalla was guaranteed...which is great, except by the very nature of the fact that they were even there meant that they were already IN Valhalla...I know, mythology geek) , and going to the comic panel (by Darick Robertson) and the manga panel (by Queenie Chan, an Australian manga artist of Chinese extraction), which were both pretty cool (I shall make an effort to check out their respective works). I also saw some anime and an AMV (anime music video) contest--some of which were really cool, some of which weren;t that good--I'm looking at you, generic Linkin Park/Naruto AMV. After that I left, and walked back to the bus stop with a fellow UC student, with whom I discussed anime, until we reached Cathedral Square, where we separated, where there was this concert for Earth Hour (8:30-9:30 Saturday), which I wanted to see. I was surprised that the musician in question was Hera, someone I'd actually heard of and liked. I stuck around until the end of her set, bought her CD, and had her sign it, then got a picture of me and her together. It was quite cool

The second day I made sure to get there early enough to see the Wonder Woman animated movie, which I had heard was good. I found it was as well, especially as it didn't let Diana et al get away with their whole Amazonian philosophy of "men suck." Also, the bookworm character got to be badass! I also liked the reaction of the President of the US's female aide to the events of the story : "We seem to have been saved by...armored supermodels?" All in all, it was pretty cool. I saw more anime, looked around the vendors again, saw a talk by Peter Davison (who was the Fifth Doctor on "Doctor Who"), saw a really awesome anime movie called "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" (which I had bought the manga for the previous day), and took lots of pictures of the Cosplay contest, which had some people in really cool costumes. The second to last event I participated in was the Pillow Fight, which was divided by age into "under 10," "10-14," and "everyone else." Some of the pillows that hit me felt like they had bricks in them! It was not as fun as I was imagining. The last thing I did at Armageddon Expo was see "Tokyo Zombie," a really weird Japanese zombie comedy, about 2 jujistu loving fire extinguisher factory workers who try to fend off the zombie apocalypse. It was weird and somewhat uncomfortable, but in the end I wasn't sorry that I had seen it. After that I made my way back to the bush station, and except for some momentary delays with my driver's scanner thing breaking, I got home as per usual.

So I also finished reading the Bromeliad trilogy, and so I'll try to say what I thought of it. Any other cool events of course I'll also write about.

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror

So I finished the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror over the weekend. It went pretty quickly: it's a pretty thick book and it took me less than a month to finish it. I liked a lot of the stories included in it, with special notice going to:

"Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" by Geoff Ryman
"First Kisses From Beyond the Grave" by Nik Houser
"Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery" by John Schoffstall
"The Night Whiskey" by Jefferey Ford
"In the House of the Seven Librarians" by Ellen Klages
"Messages" by Brett Alexander Savory
"La Fee Verte" by Delia Sherman
"Father Muerte & The Flesh" by Lee Battersby
" Cup and Table" by Tim Pratt
"The Churring" by Nicholas Royle
"Directions" by Caleb Wilson
"Journey Into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert
"The Good Ones Are Already Taken" by Ben Fountain
"31/10" by Stephen Volk
"Femaville 29" by Paul Di Fillipo
"A Siege of Cranes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
"The Lineanments of Gratified Desire" by Ysabeau S. Wilce

Some of the rest were OK, but they weren't great. Even some of the ones I've listed here, primarily "Journey Into the Kingdom," were great stories almost ruined by downer endings. I don't understand the fixation of some writers with endings where the main character fails (this was the problem I had with "Femaville 29") or have endings like "Journey Into the Kingdom," which takes the likable protagonist and turns him into a psychopath. Really, "Journey," which starts with a cool ghost story the main character is reading, would have been better had only been that story and not the character's reaction to it (which leads to the aforementioned psychopathic behavior). And, ironically, another huge problem with the story is that it pulls its punch: the main character's insane behavior, which is caused by the fact he's delusional, is revealed to be not insane at all, BECAUSE HIS DELUSIONS TURN OUT TO BE TRUE! If you're going to turn a likable character into a psychopath, you can't make him justified in his actions, because he's a PSYCHOPATH.

Really, too many of these stories seemed to revolve around taking a normal person and then revealing them to be insane or evil. "Journey," "Dog Person," "Sob in the Silence," and "Raphael" spring to mind. "Raphael" also suffers from an incomprehensible plot, and "Dog Person," which actually does the best job of using this idea, ends on an incomprehensible plot twist. I guess something in the water in 2006 led writers to think that writing stuff like this wsa "edgy," instead of aggravating.

I'm beginning to miss Terri Windling as the fantasy editor for this anthology series. Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant turn up plenty of brilliant stories, but a lot of the "fantasy" stories seem to be almost horror stories in disguise. A lot of the other ones are simply weird. There is also no heroic fantasy, which I found myself missing. "A Siege of Cranes" is the closest the anthology gets to a traditional heroic story, and it is quite dark and grim, although wonderfully creative and innovative.

All in all, it was a solid collection, but I hope that next year's anthology is a little lighter. I think that next year's anthology might also be the last, as not enough funding is coming through for it next year, which is a shame.

I keep ending up in Lyttelton

So Saturday was a bit of a bust in regards to what i was planning to do. This was to take the Diamond Harbor Ferry to...well, Diamond HArbor, as well as visit the Lyttelton museum and the Lyttelton torpedo boat museum. The Diamond harbor ferry turned out to be a little bit more expense than I was expecting, so I decided to leave it to another time. The Lyttelton Museum wasn't open, so I decided to go to the Lyttelton torpedo boat thing. After getting lost several times (including once when I found myself walking on an abandoned rail line toward an industrial complex) I finally found it: 30 minutes out of town and costing $2, it turned out to be tiny, with one room with the remains of two of the torpedo boats (like primitive subs) that New Zealand had built at the turn of the twentieth century (after all, Russia had taken the Crimea, so obviously New Zealand was next). After that whole mess, I walked back into town to go to the Lyttelton museum. This was basically just the place where various townmembers had donated various things to a town collection: stuff that had washed ashore from shipwrecks, souveniers people had brought back from all around the world, models of famous ships, old uniforms and medals. It was an odd mix, but it was kind of sweet in its own way.

Today I got up very early in order to take advantage of the Grand Tour ticket I had gotten (I think from IES, but it might have been Ilam Village). This was a tour around Christchurch by bus, put together by the Christchurch Tramways, the people who own the Christchurch tram, as well as the Christchurch Gondola and the Punting on the Avon. The bus went to each of these locations, as well as a few others, whilst the driver told us about Christchurch. He must have been an architechture student at one time, because he commented a lot on the styles of the buildings we passed. We say Mona Vale (a beautiful garden in the middle of Christchurch), went punting on the Avon (punting is the English version of gondoliering, with a slightly different boat-- the punter of my boat was a Chilean who told the Australians also in my boat about how he wanted to go to Australia), saw the Sign of the Takahe (an elaborate hotel and restaurant that looks like a castle constructed by a crazy guy who went broke buidling it), went up in the Gondola (like last time, it was sadly foggy at the top), went to Sumner Beach for lunch (I had Szchewan Beef of questionable quality) then went back to the Cathedral Square, where I used a tram ticket the driver of the bus had given me to take the Tram around the center of town, then around again until it got in front of the Art Gallery, where i got off and looked at the artwork (which was mostly modern and some of which was actually kinda cool-like the strips of color all around the second floor balcony that apparently represented the flags of the world with their identifying characteristics removed. All in all, a nice day, even tho I was kinda tired by the beginning of it.

So I will try to write about either the Bromeliad trilogy (already finished one of the books and am moving thru the second one) or what I thought of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. On Tuesday IES is having a pre-Rarotonga meeting, if anything cool happens there I'll report on it. Next weekend is Armageddon Expo, a scifi/anime/comic/general nerdiness convention, which I'm kinda excited for (never been to a con before). Anyways, see y'all later!

My Jewish evening

So this evening I went to the Christchurch synagogue. I ended up getting there about a half hour early so I just sat around until some other people with a key showed up. This turned out to be a couple (the man was from California and i think the woman was English) who were very friendly. Only a few people actually showed up. Of these, I think only one was actually from New Zealand. The rest of us were from English, American, Dutch, Argentinian, and Brazilian. It was a brief series (about a half-hour), then we had a brief Kiddush. They didn;t have grape juice, so I drank the wine, and instead of challah, they had these little crackers and hummus. (i know, I know, it;s disappointing). At the end of it all, this guy came in who I think was the rabbi for the Orthodox congregation that shares the synagogue, and told me about the Chabad house that was having a dinner. So I decided to go there.

I ended up getting a little lost, and almost wandered into this lady's flat before she stopped me, but I eventually found the place. There were a lot of people there, many of whom seemed to be Isrealis who were passing through. I ended up at a table with two Isreali girls, their father, and a Kiwi girl who said she wasn't Jewish but was trying to adhere as much as possible to the Tanakh. The first course was pickled lettuce, pickled carrots and a tomato dish that I didn;t try. Then all of the Isrealis and the Chabadniks started singing in Hebrew at the top of their lungs, pounding on the table. The guy who told me about this place said I'd be able to tell where it was by the singing and now I knew why. I also spotted Tamar, the other serious Jew in the IES group, and said hi. The second course was spicy potatoes and rice. It was quite good. It was a fun evening, but I left when the kiwi girl left because i didn't want to be totally surrounded by people speaking a language I didn't understand.

Tommorow I'm gonna go out to Lyttelton to try to see all the things I didn't see last week. I also finished reading The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, so I'm thinking about doing a post on what i thought of that.

Steampunk!

So on Friday I was expecting to go to the Ellerslie Flower Show, which is apparently quite famous in New Zealand (altho there has been recent controversy when it moved from Auckland to Christchurch). However, when I got there, I discovered that tickets were $37, and I didn't want to pay that much to look at flowers. Instead, I went over to the Arts Centre (the old grounds for the University of Canterbury) and went to Rutherford's Den (an exhibit on Ernest Rutherford, the man who split the atom and who did most of his work at Canterbury). It was pretty cool. You actually get to go to the little nook where Rutherford did his experiment (it's a really small room and quite unexeceptional--I think it was a coatroom before Rutherford used it). Anyways, it was pretty cool.

That night I went to Ninja club, where we watched a Japanese karate movie called "Black Belt." Its apparent claim to fame lies in the fact that the people doing the karate are actually doing karate on each other. The plot's fairly thin--an evil miltary captain is trying to confiscate karate dojos so he can turn them into brothels--and there's actually not that much action in the movie, but it was still fun to watch, especially with other martial arts enthusiasts. On the way back to my flat, I found myself accompanied by the four Japanese people I know here-Taka, Yoh, a girl whose name I don't remember who is Yoh's girlfriend, and my closest Japanese friend, who told me his name but which I was unable to understand because of his accent and his tendency to speak softly. I found it interesting that they were (for the most part) talking in English to each other-probably to practice it, but if I was in their situation I'd probably backslide whenever I had the chance to.

Saturday was an eventful day for me. I got up early in order to go to the Lyttelton Farmer's Market, which I'd heard good things about. I ended up getting some pesto and something called a "hot juice," which turned out to be a concoction of lemon, lime, and ginger juice that was piping hot. It did good things for the sore throat I was feeling, tho. After agonizing over it, I decided against getting blueberries, even tho they looked tasty. After that I went to one of the other things the charming town/suburb of Lyttelton has to recomend for itself. This is the Time Ball, a contraption atop a tower on a cliff. The ball drops at precisely 1 o clock, which helped mariners calibrate the clocks that helped with early longitude calculation. It was actually a nice tourism spot, with the interior of the tower set up with turn-of-the-century furnishings and the ability to go up on the roof, which I did.

After I was finished with that, I decided to do one more thing that had been recommended to me in Lyttelton: buying an icecream at the General store. For $2, you get an amazing amount of ice cream, so that was pretty cool.

After I got back to my flat, I dropped off the pesto and went over to a nearby park where Culture Galore, the Christchurch cultural festival, was happening. There were food booths run by the various societies in Christchurch (The Singapore society, the Egyptian Coptic Church, The Malaysia-New Zealand club, etc.), and booths by other organizations. I had snack food from several of the booths (the Malaysian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, and Scandanavian booths, I believe), as well as a little goat's head made of salt dough I got from the Singaporean booth. Christchurch is an amazingly diverse city (I believe I heard someone that 1 in 4 people here were foreign-born, but that's almost certainly false), and I'm discovering that part of the fun of coming here was learning about a lot of places other than New Zealand. Anyways, as I was leaving I happened upon some Morris dancers, and then I had to stay. after they were done, they invited people in the audience to come up and learn a simple morris dance, and of course I volunteered. I think Morris Dancing might be the most adorably dorky folk costume ever, but it;s fun to do.

Later Saturday night I went to Sci-Fi Soc's Steampunk party. People were dressed in some interesting costumes, which I shall post on Facebook as soon as I can. I spent a lot of the night conversing with an English guy named Richard and a Kiwi girl named Janelle, which was nice. I really enjoy a good nerd conversation. I think I'm gonna like Sci Fi Soc.

Intriguingly, I've discovered something interesting about NZ slang. They refer to potato/tortilla/whatev chips as "chips", like we do. However, they also call what we'd call fries chips (or sometimes "hot chips"), like the English. Surprisingly, it's rarely confusing.

Today was a lot less eventful as yesterday. I had plans to meet up with one of the clubs I joined on New Brighton beach, but I got there a bit late and ended up meandering on the pier, and then into the New Brighton Mall, which was a series of little shops down a common street. There was some kind of antiique car show going on, which I snapped a few photos of. There was also a remarkable collection of junk shops, which I perused for interesting stuff. I might have picked up a souvenier or two there. I had lunch at a fish and chip shop, which promised "Indian and Fijian takeaway." I decided to try the Fijian food, which in my case was fish in a coconut milk based sauce. It was good, but not great.

I'm not sure what my next noteworthy exploits will be, but I'll report them when I've figured it out.

Talk to you later!

Kiwis are the avian equivalent of teddy bears

So on Tuesday we went to Willowbank, which is a native bird reserve and Maori cultural center. It was nice seeing some of the IES people I hadn;t seen in a while again. First off we had a Maori welcome, where this one guy in the group (which included us, a party of elder American tourists, and a Japanese rugby team) selected as our chief had to accept a peace offering from the tribe (who were quite effectively scary) and then we all went to this building with a stage where we saw the maori do a whole bunch of haka, including one where they had us join in which was basically the maori version of the hokey pokey. It was fun, if a little for the tourists. We ate lunch there, where we could pick the main dish and everything else was a buffet. I selected the salmon with sweet chili glaze on a bed of rice, which was quite good. After dinner this guy took us to the various native bird pens, where we saw white herons, moreporks, little owls (which are an introduced species), tuataras (although I didn't see any), giant snails, and other cool stuff. I was kinda sad that there weren't any keas out (those are the world's only alpine parrot, which apparently quite like destroying the tires and windshield wipers of the cars of unwary skiers), but oh well. The kiwis were off in a little enclosure of their own, which was dark (they don't like direct light, so we weren;t allowed to take pictures with flash of them). We did see a whole bunch of them tho, and they were quite adorable. In a memorable moment, we discovered that they were also keeping at least one giant eel in the enclosure as well, when it almost ran over one of the kiwis. There was also an enclosure which had a ferret in it, which made me quite happy, even if they are a destructive invasive species here. They also had a possum, which was quite adorable for such a pest.

Wednesday I went to a party to celebrate the release of the CD of one of my fellow IESers. It was dull, with no nonalcoholic drinks, altho they did have good puppy chow (the chocolate coated chex mix stuff). I eventually left to go back to my room.

Tonight was an introductory night for SAGA (the roleplaying club) where you could pick a short game. I ended up picking Settlers of Catan, mostly because I had never played it but I'd heard it was good. It was fun and my fellow players (all kiwis) were interesting people. The woman who brought the game was a talkative and outspoken ultraliberal foodie who spoke disparagingly of organized religion (specifically Protestant Christianity, although she did tell me all the things she disliked about Judaism once she learned I was a member of that particular religion), and asked me about Oregon, the American political system, and our gun control system (or lack of it, in her eye). Because I wasn';t paying as much attention on the game, I didn't do so well, but it was an amusing time. After the game was over, we hung around and chatted about random stuff for a couple of hours, which was fun and interesting. I think I learned a lot about New Zealand culture in those few hours than I had learned previously in my last few weeks. As I was heading home after one of my fellow game players decided she needed to go home, I happened upon some of my fellow IESers and hung out with them as they read horoscopes and watched the end of Jurassic Park. Then I came here.

So tommorow I hope to get a haircut (I know, I know), and then go to the Ellerslie flower show, because I'm missing the Wild Foods festival on the West Coast (because I didn't plan ahead for it) and so I want to do something every day this weekend to make myself not feel like a lazy bugger squandering my experience here in NZ by just staying in and cruising the internet. Anywhoo, I'll report back on what I end up doing this weekend, whatever it turns out to be.

Watchmen, werewolves, and time travel

OK, it's been a little while since my last post so here I go. Not a whole lot has happened, but I did go see Watchmen, a movie I was quite looking forward to and enjoyed immensely. Zach Snyder did a very good job turning the comic into a movie. I especially liked the opening credits, which set 50 years of superhero history to Bob Dylan's song "The Times They Are a Changin'. " It worked quite well capturing the complex history of the comic in an interesting way. All the actors were solid (even Malin Akerman, whom a lot of other people apparently didn't like), especially Jackie Earle Haley as Rorshach and the guy who played the Comedian (I'm too lazy to look it up now). The only problem I had was with the ending, which, although it wasn't as ridiculous as the ending to the comic, left a bad taste in my stomach. It seemed overly cruel and not quite understandable vis a vis the way characters acted. But all in all it was a great film, and I'm sure I'll buy it (along with the Tales of the Black Freighter animated movie which is going to come with it) when it comes out on DVD.

Anyways, on Saturday I went to SAGA (the roleplaying club)'s afternoon of "BBQ & Boardgames." I ended up playing a lot of Werewolves, which is a lot like Mafia, only with werewolves instead of mafia members. I'm gonna see if I can get a set of cards to play it. I think that the members of SAGA seem like interesting people, and hopefully I can get into one of the games. For the BBQ part, I ended up eating these weird bean patties (they didn't have any non-pork sausages), which were OK, as I listened to some of the guys arguing who could win against Batman (not even Anti-Batman and an army of Bat-clones, apparently), and whether the Empire got a bad rap in the original Star Wars trilogy (those rebels overthrew the rightful government that was just trying to keep order, damnit!). After that, we went to see Watchmen. That's right, I saw Watchmen again, it was worth it.

So I just got back from Sci Fi Soc, which I hope will also be a fun club. For our first event, we watched Back to the Future, a movie which I had forgotten was so good. Nobody really talked (it's kinda a new club, and I think people were shy), but the other members seem like interesting people. They're holding a party next week, and I hope to go (I just need a costume--I need a bowler hat).

So tomorrow, Eunice is taking us IESers to Willowbank, where we'll be given dinner, see a Maori welcome, and see real kiwis. It'll be nice to see the IESers again--I haven't seen some of them in a while.

Anyways, I'll try to update tomorrow as well. See ya!

My Weekend

Thursday night I went out with some of my fellow IESers to this Mexican restaurant called the Flying Burrito Brothers. It ended up with there being like 20 of us, so they had to seat us at a BIG table upstairs. The waitress (who was from California) asked if this was a special occasion, and someone claimed it was Amanda's birthday (which it wasn't). I had a very tasty burrito, but unfortunately I couldn't get much chipotle sauce out of its container, which was frustrating. That burrito would have been awesome with some chipotle sauce. I've noticed that there are quite a few Mexican restaurants around Christchurch, which surprised me and my fellow IESers a bit. I came here worried that I wouldn't be able to find tortillas for my quesadillas, but it was no problem. And the burrito I got at the Flying Burrito Brothers was quite delicious. Anyways, at the end of the meal I resisted the temptation to get some chocolate cake, which turned out to be a good thing, as Amanda got a complementary piece for "her" birthday, and she shared it around. After that the group split up into two groups, one going to a latin club while the other looked for an Irish pub called the Bog. I went with the Bog group. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that although I wasn't planning on drinking any (they had live music and I just wanted to listen), my driver's license wouldn't be enough to prove my age. If I go another time, I'll have to take my passport. This other girl who was having the same problem and her boyfriend went with me back to the bus. As soon as I got on the bus, I started to feel tired and I pretty much went to bed when I got back to Ilam Village.

Friday I didn't do anything really. I went to the Maori and Indigenous Studies BBQ, where the grill was broken, and met up with some friends who had stayed at the Bog. Apparently they had missed their bus when they were coming home, and it was only a stroke of luck that they were able to take another bus that got them close. Once the grill was fixed, I had the sausages, which I made sure were beef, and were OK. I think the problem with the sausages they always serve at BBQs here is that apparently NZ hasn't heard of buns (or the school is just too cheap to buy them, we always end up using pieces of sliced bread) and also the ketchup is too sweet. Also, apparently Friday evening there was a rugby game which a lot of people I knew were going to, but I foolishly decided that since I wasn't interested in sports stuff, that I wouldn't go. I regretted that decision when I didn't do much with my day. I decided to go the "Kiwi 101" session put on by the International Christian Federation (which I was a little leery about), and ran into a Japanese guy I'd run in to at the Maori BBQ. I didn't catch his name because he speaks very softly, so I only understood about one word in ten that he says. He seems a nice guy. The Kiwi 101 session was fun, with lots of "lollies" (the NZ word for Candy, which bothers me somewhat), and lots about NZ history, culture, landmarks, and politics, mixed in with funny Australian commercials about NZ. There was also less Christ than I was expecting, but I think that I will avoid further events put on by the ICF, just so I don't give them the wrong idea.

Saturday I was planning on going out to Sumner Beach, but I ran into my friend Kate, who was going with some other people to a local farmer's market, and invited me to tag along. We were going with Carolina's homestay family (who I discovered were the same people as my Operation Friendship family), and it turned out the farmer's market was at Riccarton House, a place I'd been looking for for a while. I bought a lemon macaroon from a lady, which was quite tasty. I also bought some pesto, which I later tried on some pasta, which was also delicious. I also got an opportunity to go into Riccarton Bush, a nearby park that the last intact kehikitea forest in NZ, apparently. Because it was important to not contaminate it, there was a 2 door system to get in, where one door had be closed for the other to be opened. Walking around in it was oddly like going home, even tho kehikitea trees look nothing like the evergreen trees in Oregon. After the market was over, my fellow IESers and I walked over to Riccarton Road, where they looked in a Outdoors store for cheap camping gear, then went to the mall for various things. I was able to pick up a colander (which made making pasta quite a bit easier), as well as some underwear and socks (to delay the need for me to use the criminally expensive laundry system here), and a New Zealand flag, as a souvenier for myself. When we finished it was raining, so Carolina called her host mother, who came to pick us up. She brought one of her daughters with her, and the daughter used the flute cleaning rod Carolina had bought for her mother to turn me into a toad. But she turned me back into a person when I told her my girlfriend wouldn't like to have a toad for a boyfriend.

Sunday I decided to go to Sumner beach. It was pretty easy: all I had to do was to get on the 3 bus and stay on until the end. I wandered around the shops in Sumner (of which there weren't a lot) and then out onto the beach, where there was this huge rock with a cave in it. I went through the cave, then I felt hungry. Unfortunately, I discovered that a lot of the shops in Sumner don't accept my debit card and I had no cash. So I took the bus back. My soft-spoken Japanese friend got on the bus after me, and we chatted. I think he had gotten on the bus going the wrong way, so he got to Sumner by accident. Anyways, he got off at the city center. I was planning to just go back to the University, but I decided to check out some shops on Riccarton Road that I hadn't had the opportunity to on Saturday. Unfortunately, most of them were closed on Sunday. One place that wasn't was a Cambodian noodle shop, where I had dinner/lunch. Then I got on the bus again, and went back to Ilam. I spent the evening watching Rambo II with my flatmate Damien.

Today is the first day of week 2. Now we have tutorials, so hopefully they'll be OK. Anyways, I'll report back when I have info

David Lev