I always like to check where my site shows up in terms of search engine enquiries. Google is my trusted favourite, and delivers me the most results although it can be slow to update because of the absolutely huge database it maintains. Funnily enough, a search for "Cheetachat Help" leads you to my Cheetachat Help page being listed at number one, ahead of Cheetachat's help page.... how did that happen? Also, for some reason, my photos page has started showing up as results for searches such as "topless beach pictures", simply because I noted that on one of my photos there seemed to be a topless blonde lying on the beach in the corner of the photo. Strange how the googlemonster works.

I had a fairly relaxing weekend, work on Saturday was probably the biggest anticlimax of all time as it never really got busy at all (which is REALLY surprising considering how many people were on Queen St for the parade). I guess nobody really likes McDonald's anymore. The managers must have been banging their heads against the wall, as all the extra people working really turned out to be rather unnecessary.

Things seem to be picking up in my life, problems may be working themselves out and the end of university isn't too far away. I just have to make sure that once I no longer come to university I still update this page as frequently as I have been doing so over the past 6 months, hopefully this shouldn't be a problem but since I don't normally have the chance to update on weekends and I neglected the page horribly at the start of the year I need to make an effort not to do the same this time around!

It's funny how the start of the university year doesn't REALLY seem that long ago - I guess it depends how I think about it, as it doesn't seem very long since I was on holiday and working at the Pt. Chev McDonald's, but it does seem that I have been working at my current store for quite a long time and it does seem as though I have been living at Nats' place for ages too... so I guess time is relative, depends on how you think about it, as I keep on saying.

I guess we've started planning for the trip to Australia next year, although May is a long way away, when you're planning something that could be as long as 6 weeks you need to start thinking about it way before then. As always, the biggest problem is going to be money. McDonald's doesn't really pay enough, and although I plan to work a hell of a lot more during the holidays (is it really holidays anymore once I've finished my degree?) than I do during university, it's still going to take a lot of hours and some pretty huge sacrifices if I want to get there. I shouldn't be too worried as I have done it in the past (just refer back to January and February 2001) but it is always a little bit harder to save when you are spending money on food, transport and accommodation all the time. I guess the positive side is that I have a lot longer to save, as last time I had between November and the end of January, while also making a (half-hearted?) effort to save for my fees. So I guess I'll be able to save up the money (eventually), and we plan to visit Sydney, the Gold Coast and possibly Melbourne as I haven't been there before and apparentely it's pretty cool. If anyone thinks that we CANNOT miss Adelaide, or any other part of Australia for that matter, please put your case forward and I suppose me and Nats shall consider it...

News (as of 27/9/02)

Life is very busy at the moment, only just over two weeks until my enormous 50% research assignment is due and I have so much work to do for it that it's not funny. At least I've managed to get one of my essays out of the way, ironically it had to be the one that's not due until after all the rest of them, but at least it's done! My history essay looks like it's going to be quite interesting, about the Easter Rising and whether or not it was a success.... a good chance to argue both ways and come up with some interesting conclusions.

I've been kind of isolated from the world in the past week, buried in my studies and all. I no longer get the chance to read the newspaper in the morning which is a shame, so I guess I have no real idea about what's going on in the world... oh well..... It means I can't offer you any interesting links, but maybe that's not such a bad thing as I get annoyed with blogs that seem to be more links than actual writing, it's good to show people a few intersting things that you've come across but quoting and linking for the sake of it is pretty boring and unimaginative in my opinion.

I was back at work today, for the first time since last Sunday - and MAN WAS IT BUSY! School holidays means that everyone's in the city, and they all want McDonald's for lunch, so the whole store has been rushed off its feet the entire week. Tomorrow's going to be particularly interesting as there's a parade for the start of the America's Cup and they're closing Queen St. for a couple of hours. This means lots of people in the city, and LOTS of people going to McDonald's again, should be fun though as there's about 35 people working which has to be enough.... will be good practice for the Santa Parade in November which is always the busiest day of the year!

The new webpage is working itself out, and amazingly it seems as though the trackers have comfortably migrated back and forth without too much hassle (so I still know who you people are that visit!), hopefully this is a good idea, and means that people don't have to waste time going to parts of my page they don't really need to go to. I think that I've cleaned up all the links, but if you find any dead-ends please let me know!

I spent about 8 hours yesterday writing my geography essay - goddammit! But I guess the good thing is that I managed to complete an essay that isn't even due for three weeks, something completely and utterly unusual for me! I now just have to worry about 2 more essays (well, one essay and a massive research assignment) and I'll be all finished.

It must be the minor graduation ceremonies this week, for people who finished their degrees in the first semester of this year. The cool thing is, that the next time Auckland University has a graduation ceremony (in May next year) it's going to be me walking around in the highly trendy robes carrying my degree..... sounds pretty cool!

Things are rather strange at the moment, where everything seems to be OK, but you know that there's something wrong because it just doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it doesn't really concern me, but Nats has seemed really unhappy in the past few days, not in an angry way but just in an "I give up" way. But she's not saying what the problem is, which leaves me in a rather confused state. Maybe it's work, because I know that they're way short on staff there which means nobody can get time off even if they really need it, or maybe it's family matters... or maybe it's me?

I bit the bullet, and (as you would have noticed), the news page has been mysteriously transferred onto my main page and the old main page has disappeard (Click here if you miss it already). There are still heaps of problems to iron out, none more than the fact that this page seems to be taking forever to load (I think the tag-board has something to do with that), while all the links on my other pages need to be updated - that includes all the archived news pages which will take forever. But I think this is a good thing - as it will mean there is one true focus for my webpage, and people aren't just going to the main page so they can get to my blog, they're already there.

It absolutely poured down with rain last night, to the extent where it sounded like someone banging on the roof with a million clubs.... quite scary actually as it was the middle of the night, and you're lying in bed praying that there isn't going to be a leak or something else like that.

I've actually been making good progress on my essays, and I have to admit that I'm feeling pretty good about myself at the moment. It seems as though many of the problems that have been sitting around over the past few weeks (months?) may be possibly sorting themselves out. But am I being too optimisitc, as has happened in the past it only seems to take one small thing to go wrong and everything turns to custard.

Once more it's become fairly clear that I should do something about my webpage as a whole. The news page (this page... silly) is doing really well, with frequent updates and lots of visitors while the rest of the site is being kinda ignored by me. Possibly what I should do is bite the bullet, make this my main page (which is basically a way that people get to this page) as it would save people time in getting to the page they really want to go to. Problem is there would be a LOT of HTML to change as every link to the news page would nead to be redirected, and I don't really have the time or the patience to do this at the moment. Is this a good idea at all?

Spring is most definately coming! At least now when I wake up at 6am in the morning it isn't pitch black (although that will return to some extent once daylight savings kicks in), and walking through Albert Park (the park next to the university) this morning seeing the sunlight filtered through all the trees and reflecting off the grass was an incredibly beautiful sight. I probably don't even need to be wearing my jacket to university everyday - although I know that the first day I don't wear it, halfway through the day the weather will take a turn for the worse and I'll end up soaked!

Heading up to the medical library today after Nats finishes work - which will be fun as it's one of the few chances I get to have both Nats and university at the same time. It doesn't have to be an either/or as things are quite frequently which can be frustrating, I guess it will be pretty cool if everything goes to plan and she ends up starting her degree in Psychology while I'm also here doing my Masters Degree. Wow, then I'll really be an academic..... LOL!

A politician calling for porn to be played on television all day every Saturday in order to boost the population. Could only ever happen in Sweden.

I spent about an hour last night helping Nats with her coffee workbook, which basically meant smelling millions of different types of coffees and describing their aroma before developing a positive way to describe the coffee..... apparentely "Verona" has a different smell to "Gold Coast Blend" or "House Blend". To me they all smelled like bloody coffee, and we needed a pretty wild imagination to come up with the differences - am I just uneducated in the realms of coffee smelling, or is it just bullshit that they all smell a bit different?

The America's Cup is now just over a week away, which is actually fairly exciting - although it means town is going to be a whole lot busier. I remember the last America's Cup everyone got into things, the television coverage was amazing and it was like the whole world was in Auckland. I think this time, although it's not going to be quite such a new experience, I'm in town a lot more so it might have more impact on me. The challenger syndicates have spent a shit load of money this time, and it will be interesting to watch them fight it out over the next 4 months.

In about two months (I think) my mother and sister are off to Europe - lucky things! I know it's been Ella's lifelong dream, and hopefully it will be an incredible experience, I'm just a little bit jealous I have to admit! But then again, I know my time will come, and eventually I'll head off on my OE, and have a good look at Europe as well as the rest of the world - just don't forget to e-mail me!

I had a pretty good weekend, it seemed to go by very quickly, and I did work all of Friday (which I count as part of the weekend!), and all yesterday, so it was only really one day off (which isn't bad for me). But I do feel refreshed after my break from university work, and ready to tackle what's going to be one hell of a busy week, with my aim to finish at least one of my upcoming essays by Firday.

A few days ago I noted how strange some search requests are, and amazingly how they end up at relatively innocuous blogs. Well, there's an entire site Disturbing Search Requests which is devoted to monitoring the weirdest and wackiest people on the net. Most people who submit the searches and just dumbfounded "why did it point to me?" Good for a laugh!

Of all people, I knew we could count on the founder of the Body Shop to come up with a really good illustration of how the world has changed since September 11th last year. Oh, and I found a hilarious cartoon which gives a good account of the current Iraqi crisis. On a similar note, it's good to see that the SPD have been reelected in Germany albeit with a reduced minority. OK... I hear you.... enough politics!

Just in case we weren't entirely sure about American arrogance, Bush has drafted a strategy to "take over the world". The new plan is to "not give a shit about anyone else", and to "blow up anything that looks like it may possibly have the slightest little potential to hurt America. Trust me, this is not a joke, read the story for yourself.

Satuday today, Nats and I had a pretty relaxing day involving lots of sleep, and reading and generally recovering after a pretty long and busy week. I worked 9 hours yesterday and ended up with really really sore feet - which seems to be happening a lot lately. Are my feet getting screwed up or am I just a wimp?

I only have five weeks left of university until it's the end of my Bachelors Degree - looking back on the past three years (almost) it seems to have gone by pretty quickly. As I sat outside BLT204 waiting for my first Maths lecture way back in February 2000, wondering whether I really belonged in such a huge place, it doesn't seem that long ago. There have been good times and bad, as I guess there always is in life, but even at the moment I feel like I've missed out on something. Everyone always talks about university being the "best years of their life" and it always seems as though everyone else is having the time of their life, knows everyone in their lectures and has millions of friends to have lunch with and so on..... and here I am hardly seeing anyone that I know right throughout a whole day. And I'm not a naive first year student, I'm just about finished Stage Three!

Maybe I was overly-optimistic, I thought that everyone would be as open as they seemed to be at school and they aren't. This is good in some ways I suppose, as you don't get all the shit that goes on at school - but at the same time you don't get the human interaction and everyone's so keen not to look like a dick that it's as if you're on a bus with a whole bunch of strangers all the time.

Why do I feel so tired every morning? I mean I've been waking up at 6am on most weekdays for at least the last three months and still, whenever the alarm goes off and I have to make that effort to actually open my eyes, and lift my head off my pillow it seems like running a half-marathon. Will I ever get used to it? Is it even possible to get used to waking up this early if you aren't going to sleep until around 11pm at night, I mean 11pm doesn't really seem that late - last year I was up until 2am most nights but that was because I didn't have to wake up until after 9 the next morning. Aarrrrgggghhhh.... I want my energy back!

It's so nice and comforting to see George W. Bush so adamantly war-mongering against Iraq even though the UN has got what it wants..... NOT! His plan to send Congress a resolution authorising him to use force if necessary is just another example of how clearly Bush wants a war no matter what. The weapons inspectors have been allowed back in, why doesn't he just wait and see what they find before launching a campaign that's bound to kill thousands of innocent civilians.... quite probably more than the 2800 killed in September 11. My theory is that Bush's polling results were on the way down, related to insecurities over the corrupt US economy, so he wants a war or at least a hint of a war to get that patriotic fervor going again so his polls head back up. Just a pity most of the US population is too stupid (or blinded by their own arrogance) to realise this...

That's it for my political spiel, the good news for today is that.... it's FRIDAY! That means no more early wake-ups for at least 2 days (although I start work at 9am on Sunday morning, but that's not too early) and a chance to relax a little bit after a pretty full on first week back at university. The problem is that I have so much work to do over the next three weeks I probably don't have the chance to relax for a second because my essays will be onto me in a flash. Working 25 hours this week probably hasn't helped, but at least next week I'm only working Friday and Saturday which gives me the chance to completely focus on my essays throughout the week!

As I was browsing through blog archives I came across an enlightening interview between Dawn Olsen and Jim Treacher, it's really interesting you know! Click here to read the interview!

I felt like crap this morning, after only getting about 5 hours sleep last night. I had a long talk/argument/whatever you want to call it with Nats, which went on until about 1:30. You know the kind where you hope that at least it will make some difference in the long run, and maybe it does because you're talking about stuff you normally don't talk about - but you get the feeling at the same time that the same problems will still appear and you wonder whether things are ever going to get any better. Not that things are always bad, they just have the tendency to go very bad very quickly.

Just when I thought I had all my essays under control, history comes out and bites me with the fact that my essay is due about three weeks before I thought that it was. Here I am thinking that I have about 3 weeks to concentrate on my two huge geography essays, and then once they're out of the way I'll have some time to do my final history essay. But no, the geography essay is due a week before the two other ones which means that I have barely two weeks to do it!

I've been reading a lot lately about what people should and shouldn't have in their blogs, and whether they should be taken seriously or not. Apparentely it all started because Dawn Olsen was posting rather sexy pictures of herself in her blog and people felt that she shouldn't be taken seriously because of it. I guess in my opinion if you don't like what you're reading then click that little X button in the top right hand corner of the screen (if you're using Windows), surely a blog is the one place where you can do whatever pleases you, unless it's deliberately abusing someone. And as for all the so called 'influential' bloggers, isn't the whole point of blogging to get away from the hierarcy of society and instead encounter a place where what you say can be taken at simply that value, and it not related to where you come from, what job you have etc. etc.

Yay, I got to sleep in this morning which was REALLY nice.... I actually feel refreshed and not as though I'm going to fall asleep any second now! I guess I'm being a little bit hypocritical here though, as getting up early definately does have its advantages - getting to university by 7am leaves you with a hell of a lot of time to study, or to update my webpage depending on my mood (why does webpage always win?)

Nats is at the hospital today for her checkup following up her operation to remove her tonsils, which in my opinion was a bloody fuck up! As you would have read in my news page just over 2 months ago it took forever for her to get better, and even now it hurts when she talks for a long time... get your shit together North Shore Hospital!

I feel as though my assignments are nearly under control, although I have two huge essays for geography coming up I've just about done all the research for both of them, and they're just under a month away so I'm feeling quite proud of myself. Now I just have to worry about what I got for my 30% history essay that I wrote just before the holidays, hmmmmmmmm........

It's going to be a busy summer in Auckland this year - with the America's Cup which actually begins in a couple of weeks with the Louis Vuitton Cup. After cleaning up 5-0 in the last two cups something tells me that it's going to be a lot closer this time, although you still get the feeling that we have the most knowledgable people around.

I've been researching a geography essay on housing and health over the past couple of days, which led me on a journey up to the Medical School yesterday. Now if you don't know Auckland University very well, the Medical School is about a 30 minute walk, or a 3 minute bus ride up the hill, across the motorway and opposite the hospital. This is soooo.... annoying as it meant I was tracking backwards and forwards across central Auckland yesterday trying to find the right books. But anyway, the Med. School is probably the ugliest building in the world, but has a surprisingly good library filled with bloody smart people! Funnily enough in my nearly 3 years of university I had never needed to go up there before...

I hope everyone likes the new face of my news page, I'm pushing the name "Agglomerated Insanity" as I think it shows my rather insane approach to things at times, as well as the geographic term "aggloermation" which means a concentration or clustering of activities in a certain place because they feed of each other to become more successful. The tag-board on the left of this page is a way of getting some instant feedback, which I've been pining for ever since I started my news page.... so go ahead, make a comment, abuse the crap out of me, or come up with some interesting insight, and hopefully the tag-board can become a hub of discussion.

Back to the last term of university for me, only 6 weeks to go and I'll be completely finished my degree. This is rather exciting I suppose, although lately university has been interesting me more than ever so it might be slightly disappointing to be completely finished and done with it.

I guess that leaves the question about next year rather open, as it's almost been decided that I'm not doing my masters next year I wonder whether this is in fact the right decision. I know that when I came back from Hastings I had basically been 'in' the university mode for a week continuously, and when I did some studying the Monday after I came back I found it interesting, appealing and engaging even though the topic I am doing isn't the most incredibly interesting thing of all time. Maybe I don't respond best to breaks, instead finding university most interesting when it's going on all the time - does this mean I shouldn't take a break? Who knows, now that it's been a week since I have done anything related to study I feel the passion has gone a little bit, but maybe I've just settled back into my normal life. Maybe a break is the best idea, but as it's probably one of the most important decisions I would have made in my life so far I don't really want to rush into anything.

I may finally be becoming a shift manager at McDonald's in the not-so-distant future, as I had a word last night with one of the senior managers and he seemed to think that it would be a good idea - so hopefully that's at least the first step towards something new and interesting for me.

Sometimes you really have to worry about the sanity of the human race, I mean some of the searches that people do on the net that end up at blogs can be weird, disgusting and horribly hilarious. Here are a few examples that I've found just today, having a look through a few blogs that I frequently visit: god knows how "problem getting fox philadelphia 29 reception" ended up at a blog, and somehow I don't think that it would have been that useful; while the person who searched for "www.ashley,s naked little girls age 13" definately needs to be psychologically examined, as possibly does the person who wanted to find out about "naked girls cleaning house service in houston" - you'll be lucky finding one! Other request seem fairly obvious ("your mother doesn't live here"), silly ("not tawded just slow"), philosophical ("It ain't what you don't know that gets you; it's what you know, that ain't so"), sad ("fake pictures of george bush jr naked"), squemish ("cambodia fried spider"), laughable ("british model breasts giving birth online" - are the breasts giving birth?), insane ("scary screaming person at stonehenge"), predictable ("naked women in degrading positions for free online porn") and painful ("kicked testicles"). It all goes to show that when people are let loose with the privacy of the internet you never know what they might look for, on the other hand one wonders why these blogs shows up in google searches... hmmmmmmm.....

As I'm (sadly) at university on a Saturday night I thought that I might as well update my news page so that everyone who blindly returns to my page each and every day has something new to read about. The reason I'm at university when I really should be out partying or having fun (not that I really go out that often), is that I have a bloody overdue library book which I'm being charged $3 a day for. As I am pathetically poor, I came all the way into university on a bloody freezing night to return the book...

On the subject of university, the holidays are nearly over and in some ways it seems as though they have gone fairly quickly - although the whole first week of my holidays was basically one long geography class. However, as I have said earlier, any time before my fieldtrip still seems like a hell of a long time ago, so in fact it does seem as though I have had a really long holiday - which I guess is a good thing!

I think I may have been a little bit negative about my life in yesterday's news. Things do seem to be going alright, at least for some of the time. I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is that instead of having good weeks, or good periods of time for even longer (and bad ones as well) it's all condensed into days and things are changing in a matter of seconds. I suppose that this can be seen as a good thing, because at least when things are going wrong and I'm feeling like crap I know that it's not going to last forever, and I can be confident enough to just fool myself into believing that it's nothing. While this may sound like a bad thing, I actually think that it's good - otherwise I'd feel like shit so badly I don't know what I'd do.

However, things changing so rapidly does have its bad aspects too. I can never be sure that the good times are going to last very long and it seems as though I have to be extra careful all the time as it only takes a little problem and everything goes to hell. Maybe this means that I have to be extra careful and avoid little problems, which makes it seem as though I'm not myself which in turn makes me feel really bad - does this resemble a Catch 22 situation?

Nats went to the doctor today, who seems to have prescribed her with a migrane as she's felt like shit ever since we got home (she wasn't feeling that great beforehand, hence the doctor's visit), but at least hopefully someone's eventually going to figure out what's going on and the migranes may stop.

It's funny how reading other people's blogs brings back memories and reminds you of stuff that you thought you had forgotten. Obviously at the moment people everywhere are looking back to the events that happened a year ago - and explaining their dreams and what they were doing etc. Funnily enough I never really thought that it all had a huge impact on me, I live on the other side of the world and I've never been to New York or really know anyone from there. I guess a better way of describing my feelings were that I didn't really have any idea about the whole scale of everything. But maybe things did affect me more than I thought, last night I had a dream about a plane crashing very close to where I live, and I had actually forgotten about this dream until a few minutes ago. But anyway, there were huge explosions and I knew it had something to do with September 11th, but everyone around me in the dream didn't really notice or care about what had happened. It was also one of those dreams that goes on and on and never seems to finish, I felt better when I woke up.

A year ago today was one of the weirdest, most confusing days of my life. Now everyone must be saying "hey... shouldn't you be talking about yesterday, September 11th", but as I live in New Zealand it was already 12:46am on September 12th 2001 when the first plane hit the twin towers. Therefore, for me September 11th last year was a completely normal day. I wrote a lot about my initial reactions in my news page last year (Click here for a read) and since then I guess the scale of what happened has sunk in a bit. Luckily it hasn't changed the world too much (yet), but everyone seems a lot less secure than they were, and people seem a whole heap more suspicious than before.

Things seem strange and confusing at the moment, on the surface everything seems alright - you get on with life and so on without too much going wrong. But all the time it seems as though things could all fall to pieces at the drop of a hat, there seem to be a lot of things in my life at the moment which really are balancing on a knife edge, and if something goes wrong I know that everything is going to go wrong and I'm going to be screwed. It's kinda scary thinking about it this way, maybe I'm just acting a bit negative.

Life has some really depressing moments you know, like when you have made a decision to change things because they are intolerable as they are, and it's all just driving you insane. But the change you make, it all just seems to make things worse and you don't know where you're possibly going to go next. I can't seem to be myself without hurting everyone, including myself, but at the same time by fitting into all these particular roles and hoping to make everyone else happy I feel that I am losing the person I am and what's the point of life if you can't be who you want to be, and you don't even know who you are.

It's only two days until a year has passed since September 11th, 2001. In some ways, it seems like forever ago I sat in front of the TV watching CNN and wondering if the world had gone mad. There has been a lot written about whether it's changed the world and how it's changed the world. Personally, I felt at the time that more drastic action may have been taken, and I think we've been lucky to get this far. Unfortunately, who knows how much longer this is going to last, as Bush plots to annihilate Iraq.

University seems so quiet during the holidays. Surely I should be back asleep in bed, or wasting time on the internet doing nothing at all (well.... I suppose I am doing that here), but here I am at university during the holidays because I have an essay proposal due two days after we get back. Sadly, the geography department completely lacks compassion and made the assignment due at this time, which means that I not only have to think up of an essay question (harder than you think), but have to start reading about it and writing a little bit all before next Tuesday. I guess, to look on the brighter side of things I've only got 6 weeks of my degree left, then I'll be "Joshua Arbury BA". Wow......

Things have been really strange since I got back to Auckland. Although it seemed as though my trip went pretty quickly, now that I'm back it actually seems as though I've been away for a hell of a long time. Everything seems really distant, like my whole entire life happened ages ago, and seems really unusual. Maybe it's because I hadn't been away from Auckland for so long, and then going away made it seem as though I had been away for a long time - I don't know.

It's strange how this course of events has changed how things seem in my memory - not so long ago I was commenting on how fast it seems that the year has gone and how New Years doesn't really seem that long ago. Now it seems as though it was ages ago, and that the year has gone really slowly, but then again it seems as though last week was ages ago... even the first couple of days of the fieldtrip seem like ages ago. I know that it's just me, as time is constant and doesn't exactly quicken up or slow down, but it's still funny how my perception of time changes very frequently.

In addition to my strange feelings at the moment, work felt really really weird yesterday, and in general I don't know whether I feel like myself, or that I can really identify with the person that I have been. And yet it doesn't feel as though everything has happened suddenly - maybe for the past month I have been living in some kind of a weird dream, blocking everything out and finally it's hit me that a month or two has passed and I really didn't notice what was going on.

Sorry if I'm boring and confusing everyone, I guess you'll all end up like me not knowing what you're thinking or where you're going or even who you are. Is this my quarter-life crisis?

On a brighter note, I managed to find myself some old New Zealand money that went out of circulation around 10 years ago yesterday. Along with three one dollar notes and a two dollar note I got an old ten dollar note. I guess this makes no sense to anyone who lives outside New Zealand - but it was pretty cool as I hadn't seen any money like this for about 10 years (well.... I have seen a couple of notes, but not for ages).

I just interviewed Lawrence Yule, the mayor of Hastings and a bloody nice guy too! Got some very useful information for my research project - which just about wraps up everything that I needed to do here in Hastings. It's back to Auckland tomorrow, which will be good as I miss my Nats and everything else about my home. While Hastings is a pretty nice, quiet place to visit - it's totally not me and I don't think that I could ever live in a quiet little provincial town.

It's quite funny to notice that in the US, a little independent film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has become number one. Passing all the big-budget productions, with a little film that only cost $5 million to make is rather hilarious, and shows that a good story can make all the difference. Now that it's getting lots of publicity for being so successful (like the Blair Witch Project) it's only going to attract even more people.

I'm not alone in my indecision! Talking to people in my geography class I have found out that it's quite a common cause for uncertaincy when deciding whether to take a break before doing post-graduate study or to undertake it immediately. Maybe what I should really do is have a chat to the lecturers or the stage three advisor and see what they have to say about it all. Since they're probably the experts and have seen more post-graduate students, and more students like myself, than anyone else I should probably make the staff at the geography department my next point of contact.

And I found another Internet Cafe in Hastings, although this one was incredibly difficult to find as I walked around Hastings for about an hour before I 'discovered' it. Fortunately it's a little less expensive than the one in Napier, but still three times the price they are in Auckland.

Funnily enough there are actually a few people in Hastings today, and I even saw a train! Apparentely about once a week the train comes up from Palmerston North and goes to Gisborne to pick up and drop off whatever they need. They're thinking about closing the railway line, and I think I saw why today as on the whole long train there was basically one carriage which had anything on it. The rest were crappy boring empty carriages.

It's really, really QUIET down here - I guess the people like it like that as everyone can't understand why I would like to live in Auckland, as it's just so nice down here in "Sunny Hawke's Bay!" All the councillors and so on think that their city is just "the bomb" (not their words). I just can't wait to see a traffic jam - does that mean I'm homesick?

My research project is coming along reasonably well, I may be able to interview the Mayor of Hastings tomorrow (although he hasn't confirmed it yet) - and I've got some pretty useful information from just about everywhere, it's amazing how every single thing that goes on in the Hawke's Bay seems to have some effect upon the migration patterns. But if you think about it, that's kinda obvious! I'll be back in Auckland by Friday night - only just over 2 days away!

I'm in Napier now, came down from Auckland yesterday on a bloody long trip through the north island. We're staying in Hastings, at a funny little holiday park thing, which isn't too bad as they make us breakfast and then clean up after us... pretty cool in fact!

Apart from that Hastings is really really boring, Napier's a bit better though as at least here there is some resemblence of a city. Hastings seems like an overgrown town without the facilities....

But anyway, if I don't write that much over the next few days it's because I can't get to a cybercafe (bloody $8 an hour!), so don't fret, I'm still going to look after my news page as often as I can!