Things I wonder about:
– why can't I…

So, that Listener article – would someone consider ripping out and mailing me a copy in return for, I dunno, a homemade patisserie treat at such time as we are co-located?

Amy, I have that issue! I thought I'd recycled it but rediscovered it under a pile of New Yorkers.…

(Kyle, you grew up on the *Shore*, for goodness' sake. I don't think you get to be all Mainlandy without that disclaimer attached. :) )

Shush! You'll blow my cover!

Well, it's like you're trying hard to encourage it!

Oh, that Auckland, with her short skirt of... urban-ness. She was asking for it!

(Kyle, you grew up on the *Shore*, for goodness' sake. I don't think you get to be all Mainlandy without that disclaimer attached. :) )

Like you really need the encouragement?

Well, it's like you're trying hard to encourage it!

Top ten magazine covers designed to make the rest of the country dislike Auckland.

Like you really need the encouragement?

before starting work in a fortnight

Actually, we're expecting you on Monday, chum: don't be late.

That's an awful magazine cover for the ages.

Top ten magazine covers designed to make the rest of the country dislike Auckland.

I knew I was home.

Incidentally, who is that on the cover, making free with Peter Jackson/King Kong in perhaps the weirdest mixed visual metaphor ever to stand for Auckland's alleged awesomeness?

Madeleine Sami, I think.

This month's Metro magazine would have you believe that Auckland is a thriving cultural nirvana, though perhaps not quite on the scale of London or New York.

Incidentally, who is that on the cover, making free with Peter Jackson/King Kong in perhaps the weirdest mixed visual metaphor ever to stand…

Last time I was back in '96 I got to the MaF guy standing there in a lemon squeezer hat who looked at my card and my passport, then on handing them back smiled and said 'welcome home'.

I believe now their contract says they need to sing a couple…

We then headed up to Russell, with my old and good friend Mike, for a few days before starting work in a fortnight.

In my ignorance of New Zealand geography, I thought for a minute that the esteem in which we all hold Mr Brown had made his deserving of…

My life obviously seems of interest to me, but my friends and colleagues here will have lived their own lives and done their own things in the time I was elsewhere, and the communication street runs two ways.

Don't fret too much. Nearly everyone who comes back strikes this. I…

They couldn't locate in their frame of reference anything similar to their experience

Or... just to be devils-advocatey for a moment, if you met my mum for half an hour, you'd think she was a pleasant NZ lady from Invercargill who had never spent any time overseas – when in…

Such a marked difference from the "we know your type, you damn dirty overstayer" that you get in the UK and…

no matter how much I tried to communicate this, and more – the wondrous things I saw – I was always left with the feeling that I was a Martian talking incomprehensible gibberish.

Maybe they were just bored. ;)

I speak as someone who did the same thing in two…

I found it to be a bit surreal when I returned for a holiday last year – nz seemed to be slightly untouchable and vaguely distant, yet it was so good at the same time. There was also the strange bit where you realise that you and…

I want to return to New Zealand because it is home, despite that I am living in the country of my birth. I…

even those ambitious expats might be forced to return due to the global recession, as reduced opportunities overseas make them more receptive to lower New Zealand salaries.

Hmmm, for those of us who have somewhat secure employment overseas, this equation essentially works in reverse. In talking with another expat kiwi…

no matter how much I tried to communicate this, and more – the wondrous things I saw – I was always left with the feeling that I was a Martian talking incomprehensible gibberish.

Maybe they were just bored. ;)

I speak as someone who did the same thing in two…

I suspect that this feeling is common to all those who lived overseas (as opposed to simply doing the OE). I lived in Canada for six years.

I came home, not for work, but for…

OT: does my gravatar look black to you?

No, but it makes you look fat.

That is a sentiment I admire and respect.