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Before leaving Dunedin Wednesday morning, I met up with Dr. Nigel Chang of the University of Otago's Anthropology Department, who heads over to north-east Thailand for 2-3 months each year doing digs for the department's "Origins of Angkor" project. Angkor being the totally wicked ruins over in western Cambodia, which I fully intend to visit sometime. There's the remote possibility of me contributing my computing skills to the Origins project on-site in Thailand some day. Um yeah, that would seriously rule.

Then Wednesday evening I crashed in on a meeting of the Apple User Group of Canterbury, here in Christchurch, and met up with some cool folks using Macs here in town. The crowd was largely an older one; I'm used to younger, geekier meetings back home. The focus was definitely on more simple stuff, like Appleworks basics, but the people were all wonderful, and they served tea and biscuits! ("biscuits" in New Zealand, and I suspect elsewhere in the Commonwealth, are what we call "cookies" back home)

Tomorrow morning I'm headed to Methven to learn how to snowboard at Mt. Hutt over the next few days. A Kiwi girl (a U. of Otago Law student, no less) I met down in Dunedin offered to teach me how; the students are on break at the moment, and it's definitely the middle of winter down here, so... why not? Hopefully I won't break anything. If all goes well, maybe I'll get her to snap some pictures of me cutting some sweet powder down the slopes, or more likely falling flat on my ass. I have a feeling it'll be a lot like the trip Cloud and I took to Michigan for spring break last year, when I learned how to ski. I recall a helluva lot of falling, and a helluva lot of sheer determination.

Also via Doc, WarChalking. Absolutely friggin' brilliant! But not terribly useful in New Zealand just yet.

Unfuck you! The universal gesture of forgiveness. (scroll to June 22 if the anchor doesn't work... via Doc)

I learned how to play Cricket today. Thanks Mike! Further reading... first, Cricket explained. Second, Cricket explained to Americans. Third, fielding positions. Fourth, legspin physics. New Zealand is playing the West Indies as I type...

Watching the USA/Germany soccer game at Mike's place in Dunedin. World Cup seems way more exciting now than it ever has before. Perhaps that's because I'm currently in a country that actually cares about it, despite its team not even qualifying for the tournament. I'll definitely admit to being a fair-weather fan though; heck, I'm that way about sports in general. It's the excitement surrounding the entire event that sorta captivates me, not cheering for any single team.

These past few days I've been cruising around the Otago Peninsula, which is a simply magical place. It reminds me a lot of the Banks Peninsula, only smaller. Visited the Portobello Marine Laboratory/Aquarium as well as the Albatross Colony at Taiaroa Head, but was too late to catch the last tour of the day; oh well, already saw plenty of albatrosses down at Stewart Island. Today I wandered around Larnach Castle, NZ's only "castle," and the next trip out will be to a place called Sandfly Bay as recommended by Raz, who was here a few years ago.

Posting from Discovery World at the Otago Museum in Dunedin because, well, why not? Just finished checking out the BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit. Wow. Here's the winning shot. 'Course, the web version doesn't do it justice, just like my pics hardly do New Zealand a shred of it either. For the full effect, check the exhibit out in person.

Happy Father's Day to Dad and my other father figures. I love and miss you all. Wanna come down and visit? :)

I'm hardly as likely to find WiFi access as Doc in my travels down here...

Behind the scenes of the new Apple ads.

Hey Jason, it's also the perfect laptop to accompany you backpacking around the world. ;)

The weather held out for the game last night (meaning it was just bloody cold), but just when I started to get a grasp of the rules it was over- All Blacks: 15, Ireland: 6. Read all about it at nzrugby.com. These two teams have been playing each other for 97 years and the All Blacks have won every single time. But according to all the Kiwis sitting around me, Ireland definitely deserved the victory, and it was a boring game. Sure, I guess I agree with them, there could have been a lot more action, but this being my first rugby experience, I see nothing but potential in future viewings. Forget American Football- these blokes don't wear any pads, and they hit hard...

More interesting than the NZ/Ireland rivalry, however, was the All Blacks' lineup- 13 out of 15 players from Canterbury (punditry here), which happens to be Otago's main sporting rival. Check it out on a regional map. For those of you back home (what the weather's currently like here in Dunedin), it's similar to Michigan/OSU, or for anyone anywhere else in the world, it's your standard (read: no point whatsoever) rivalry.

So the crowd is a local crowd, a large majority being drunken students from Otago University, and the AB's coach loads up the lineup with the enemy... Thus we heard "OH-TAAG-OH" chanted over and over by 20,000 fans each time the Canterburians (is that a word?) messed up, calling for the insertion of the All Black Otago players into the action. Sport fans are a hard bunch. (Yes, "sport" in the singular rather than my familiar "sports" in the plural. Must be a commonwealth-ism...)

Got to Dunedin semi-late yesterday and picked up my ticket for the game this morning. NZ$20 (~US$10) for a spot in the uncovered terrace at Carisbrook (picture). And the weather's not looking too promising...

Goodbye college. Hello life. Hmm, I don't see, "Sell everything and travel abroad indefinitely" mentioned in there.

I'm heading to Dunedin on Friday, in time to see Michael Norris's symphony premier (scroll to June 14th). Also hoping to catch the All Blacks/Ireland rugby test Saturday night, which will be my first real live rugby game (unless you count this and this from Dublin back in 11/1999). Hopefully somebody there will explain the rules to me.

More reasons why Google is the best search engine ever. [via Google Weblog.]

Courtesy of Mark Bradford:

Ahh, escapism... Spiderman was bloody brilliant!

Many thanks to Jonas for the guest blogging. I'll get a bit more of it going on in the future, when it looks like I'll be gone for a while. This latest absence was kinda unexpected, but I rolled with it... :)

It's been a busy, offline past few weeks- after hiking the Heaphy Track (where it rained/hailed/snowed the entire time- awesome pictures) Danielle picked me up in Collingwood and we cruised back to Nelson to catch the Dalai Lama on the 29th. He was a trip- he smiled, laughed and joked the whole time, while bobbing around up there on his seat in front of the 1500 of us at the Trafalgar Centre. He's got a great message, a universal one- love and compassion for all beings. Can it get any simpler?

Then we drove back over Takaka Hill and spent about a week in Golden Bay, at a place called Shambhala. Much like Fossil Bay Farm on Waiheke Island, Te Nikau Retreat and The Old Slaughterhouse on the West Coast, Shambhala was quite cosmic- a peaceful spot right on the water, crystal-clear skies at night, awesome people and great cooking. Activities included an overnight horse trek with Gail and Don of Cape Farewell Horse Treks and a sunrise safari on the Farewell Spit, a 30k sandbar on the northern tip of the South Island.

I met back up with friends in Christchurch 2 days ago, taking the Lewis Pass route across the island to get here. We're gonna catch Spiderman tonight, and I'll probably be headed down south to Dunedin in the next few days. I'm also getting caught up on email (the inbox almost hit 200, uggh) as well. It's getting pretty chilly down here, I had a t-shirt on one day in Golden Bay, but definitely not down here.

On the picture-front, all the bloody Internet cafes in Nelson decided to "change their policies" over the past few months regarding laptop users. Now laptops aren't allowed, period. Bastids. Maybe I'll find some bandwidth down in Dunedin...