I’m in New Zealand – Snow, Sheep and Samba

(PCs truly suck – I lost this whole entry while uploading it from a internet cafe in Queenstown NZ…Aaaaarrrgghhhh!!!!)

Yep, I decided the credit card could cope with a bit of ‘me’ time, and bought a Qantas ticket to Queenstown, NZ, for my snow fix for 2006.

I’ll regail you with tales of this short adventure in a new bubbleandsqueakshow episode soon – including:

- my meeting at NZ customs with the nice lady with the rubber gloves who seemed not only to know that my qantas ticket was booked in haste (wow – how do they know that) but also to believe I had all the hallmarks of a drug kingpin

- hanging out with Dan and Mark from London, who, due to thier burning desire to buy a car in Darwin and drive to Cairns, are sure to appear in a major newspaper near you under the headline “More bloody stupid ill-prepared Pommies take on the outback and become a statistic”

- my contribution to the snowboarding community of a new trick I have dubbed the ’shin grind’. I know it’s gonna be a winner with the medical centres here new winter, if my bruise is anything to go by… (oh, by the way, I did stick the landing on a 10 meter rail with a 6 foot drop at the end of it afterwards, too! Bummer I have no proof….)

I’ve just got back to Queenstown after my 300km round trip in my nice hire car. Drove from here to Wanaka, to Treble Cone, over the Crown Ranges to Cardrona and back (yep – had a day off the snow. Woke up this morning feeling like I’d had a 24hr ride in a tumble dryer).

All the while I was listening to “Giles Petersen in Brazil” – a podcast I found and loaded into the good ‘ol iPod before I left Sydney. Nice way to spend a day. Good tunes, and snaking through full-on “Lord of the Rings’ scenery whizzing by at butt-clenching, insurance-expanding speeds. I like hire cars…

And then there’s the YabbyMan

I have a mate named…well, lets call him ‘VADM Spray’.

Yes, the same ‘Spray’ who appears at the end of some episodes of my very own Bubble and Squeak Show (they’re the links on the right).
He’s one gifted mo-fo. Usually he can be found walking that thin line between ‘talented fellow’ and ‘bizarre lunatic’. I hadn’t really caught up with him for a couple of months (While I was finishing ‘Who’s on the box?‘), and found myself checking out his myspace – ‘Murrays Chosen Few‘.

(Actually, I think I’ve just fallen victim to the whole ‘web-techy’ de-personification thing that I keep hearing about. I mean, I just myspaced at least 2 friends who I’ve known before there was ‘the net’. Hmm.)

Duncs 1, Roach Zero.

Duncan de Clouet, our intrepid game reviewer, takes on a cockroach the size of a labrador.

(Tip: Turn the volume UP!).