Andrew and Kathleen

If you plan on not coming to the wedding, you'll need a pretty good excuse. Something along these lines.

Our friends Jen and Dale just announced a big surprise. We now have a tally of 3 pregnant friends. Must be something in the water.

Thanks, Jen, for letting me know about the latest instalments of the greatest ads ever, from Aiful, the Japanese credit company.

The Guardian has a story about the development of Elite. Back in 1983, games were developed by single, often self-taught, programmers, and were usually simple translations of board games or arcade games. Elite was different. Different enough to be rejected, in one of the stupidest decisions in computer gaming history, by the executives that Ian Bell and David Braben pitched it to.

"It said," remembers Braben, "'The game needs three lives, it needs to play through in no more than about 10 minutes, users will not be prepared to play for night after night to get anywhere, people won't understand the trading, they don't understand 3D, the technology's all very impressive but it's not very colourful'."

Elite sold by the truckload, and is as influential a game as Doom would later become.

Ninety per cent of Australians work in a negative culture of blame, indecision and conformity, according to a study of 900 major organisations... It found management styles and bosses' actions were out of touch with the espoused values of most organisations.

New Zealand is nothing like the video game.

Of all the places to bump into an old workmate I haven't seen for two years, I ran into Mike in Auckland's Britomart train station. He and I started at Norwich, which ended up being a death march of a project, on the same day. He was one of the most easy-going blokes I've ever met, and hopefully we can catch up for a beer in the few days I have left before I head off.

On Sunday morning I caught a bus to the foot of Mt Eden and climbed to the top. They call it a mountain in much the same way as Australians tend to call red-headed men "Blue", or tall blokes "Shorty", I imagine.

Quibbles about the size of the place aside, the view back towards the city was breathtaking.

The mount is actually an extinct volcano, and the crater has long since been covered in grass.

Bought a bunch of carrots and apples at the cash sink otherwise known as a mini-mart. I needed to eat something healthy, rather than subsist on my diet of fatty Japanese food. You didn't know Japanese food could be fatty? Had a mental image of sushi, sashimi, and rake-thin Japanese people living to be one hundred and forty years old? Don't you believe it.

And it wasn't until tonight, as I mentioned it to Kathleen on the phone that she told me, "You're a rabbit! Wait'll someone starts feeding you lettuce through the chicken wire!" Then she burst into laughter, which is normally okay as long as it's not directed at me.

In an apparent effort to dissuade me from any form of healthy eating, the client site, which just happens to be New Zealand's largest dairy company, has ice cream freezer chests on each and every floor. I seemed to leach ice cream from my pores for the first few days, but it's amazing how quickly having something every day can decrease its attractiveness exponentially.

Yet another reason to hate travelling. If I was at home, staying up until 2am watching an awful, 20-year-old Conan movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it would be the stupid idea it sounds. Instead, I'm up watching it because there's nothing better to do. Two hours of my life* I will never get back.

* In addition to the one hour I spent two years ago in a hotel in Jakarta watching Blue Heelers on ABC Asia Pacific, making a grand total of three hours I will regret for the rest of my life.

After one week, here's a figure of how well I'm maintaining a proper nutritional intake:

• Sunday - Japanese (katsudon).
• Monday - Japanese (ramen).
• Tuesday - went out for lunch, so I ended up eating the peanut butter sandwiches I'd made earlier that day.
• Wednesday - Japanese (ramen, but a different kind to Monday's).
• Thursday - Japanese (curry rice, which I'd been hankering for since I saw someone ordering it on Wednesday).
• Friday - home cooked meal at Ben and Elaine's.
• Saturday - Japanese (yakisoba).
• Sunday - Japanese (katsudon).

Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all.

Kathleen couldn't quite believe that I was so well organised as to be able to continue posting (well, okay, one post in a week) while overseas. Not so surprising when you consider what actually travelling for work is like.

Most people have this idea that working interstate or internationally is to be jetsetting around the world, staying in cool locations, hitting bars and restaurants every night, and doing a little bit of work to justify the trip. The actual logistics are somewhat less glamorous:

• Flying sucks. Period. Wasting two hours in the airport waiting for the plane, taking apart your laptop for security, sitting on your arse for hours and eating average food and watching shitty movies might be someone's idea of a good time, but it's not mine and very probably not yours, either.
• There comes a time, and it's usually about one week in, when going out and eating by yourself gets to be a chore. Sometimes you're lucky, and know people you can go out with. Sometimes, though, you're on your own. Sitting alone, waiting for the meal, trying to make conversation with the staff identifies you as a bit of a sad case. Alternatively, cooking at the hotel is a great idea in theory. In theory.
• Being away from your life, your loved ones, your friends, even just comfortable routine, can be stressful. Timezones and expensive hotel phone surcharges are killers.
• Sightseeing would be much more fun if you could share it with other people.
• Hotels are boring. Somehow, I always end up with a crap view of the highway, and never the cityscape.

• When there's nothing else to do at 7pm in a deserted CBD, drinking in a bar by yourself sounds a lot more fun than the alternatives. At least when you're a little drunk you can fool yourself into thinking you're having a great time, all the time. Is that the slippery slope to alcoholism? I don't know, but my liver's starting to develop an opinion.

I don't know, maybe I'm just whingeing. I'm enjoying seeing a new city, a new country, but at the same time, I wish I could pick and choose the travel experience. Staying in the CBD, which in most cities, seems to close down after close of business, doesn't help, either.

What are speed bumps called in New Zealand?

Milk bars, or corner stores, are called dairies. People really *do* say "eh?" at the end of their sentences. In addition to the national, world, and sport sections in the newspaper, there's a page of news specific to Australia. If you're driving and want to turn left, you have to give way to oncoming traffic turning right. The $1 coin is smaller than the $2 coin.

But by far, the biggest difference is that here, everybody seems to want to use EFTPOS for everything. It's as if electronic banking has just arrived, and it's so novel that everyone wants to do it all the fricking time. At the cafe, and buying a cup of coffee? No problems - just EFTPOS it! No money on you for the paper? Put it on plastic!

And people waiting in line to pay don't mind that the transaction has just tripled in time. Do you know why? Because THEY WANT TO EFTPOS SOMETHING AS WELL!!!

Meanwhile, I'm standing in line behind three people, each of whom want to pay separately - USING EFTPOS - for their f***ing breakfast, and the combined cost comes to a princely $10. 10 f***ing bucks!!! For crying out loud!

And god forbid you should try and push in and hand the money for your bill over. Cue combined glares from your friendly skinflints.

"It's not taking that long. Surely you're not in that much of a hurry."

Actually, mate, I am. Australia's in a different timezone, you see, and we get to do things quickly there because we're not growing old waiting for you to stop pissfarting about.

Bloody Kiwis. They're the judder bars on the greasy wheels of commerce.

I've managed to catch up with Ben and Elaine, friends from PwC days.

That's Elaine on the left.

They're both over here working on a project for Vodafone, starting to get itchy feet to get back home to Melbourne. I went over to their house tonight for dinner - after a week of eating katsudon or ramen every night, my body was crying out for vegetables.

It's funny, even though we haven't really been in email contact, after five minutes with them, it was like I just saw them last week. In some ways, I've been lucky that a lot of my friends are still quite close even though they live in other cities. People generally are really good or really bad at maintaining contact. I'm in the latter category.

I'm in Auckland, New Zealand, for two weeks for a project. Glad to see the power's back on here. Going pretty well so far, and I should be able to catch up with a few friends over here for work. The weather is beautiful - just like Hobart - and so far has held up pretty well. You watch though - I bet it'll start raining before the weekend.

I got in at 6pm the first night, and wandered off to try and find something to eat. And wouldn't you know my luck, I managed to find the most authentic ramen restaurant in the southern hemisphere, the kind where everybody - waitresses, chefs, hell, even customers - yell out "Irrashaimase!" when you enter. Looks like I've found where I'm going to be eating for the next fourteen days.

There's nothing more frustrating then getting a New Zealand dollar coin slipped in amongst your change. Those things are bigger than an Australian dollar, and everybody notices when you try and fob it off on someone else.

"Oi, mate! This is a New Zealand dollar. You trying to rip me off or something?"

You can't use them in vending machines. Parking machines spit them right back out. Not even Shittyrail will take them. The only way you can get rid of the buggers is by using it to tip at a restaurant.

So there's some poetic justice to find an Australian coin in your change here. "Oi, mate!"

"Yis, we hit it win we git the bliddy thungs!" say my Kiwi coworkers.

Woken up at 9am this morning by work. "We need you to go to New Zealand for two weeks on Monday." And of course, in my groggy just-woke-up state, I replied, "No worries."

New Zealand! On someone else's expense! Excellent!

Had to pull out of this weekend's umpiring appointments on a Thursday morning, which is extremely poor form, for the second week running. My hopes of a grand final appointment are steadily decreasing.

Given that today is the first day I haven't been in the office since the 26th of June, it might explain why postings have been scarce here recently.