Well, today I got up at 4:15am and got my stuff together before driving to the airport. I took a trip up to Auckland and had a bit of a bumpy landing. I didn’t realise until I was on the plane that I had managed to forget my book! I taxi’d to the central city and had breakfast while I was waiting for the American Consulate to open up and my appointment time to roll around.

I spent some time trying to remember who I know in Auckland and sending out text messages to see if they wanted to catch up some time today.

I had my interview at the Consulate at 11, there was about an hour to wait to get in. I had an interviewer who actually asked me a relevant question this time – why did I want to go to Gainesville if the company that had sent the letter’s office was in Tampa? The only reason he asked was, as it turns out, that he had actually done some post-graduate study in Tampa.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me a moment while I rant about US governmental policy. The fact that I’ve been flying to and from the US for over three and a half years means that I would think by now that they have a pretty good idea of who I am, and know that I’m not some stupid terrorist. Did you know that when filling out visa applications, because I’m male and between 18 and 40, that means I’m the “target terrorist demographic” and I have to fill out an extra form which asks such ridiculous questions as “Are you affiliated with any terrorist organisations?”… as if they’re going to have some very, very stupid terrorist that going to answer “yes, I’m here to blow you all up”. Honestly. Do they somehow think that after some idiot comes into the country and blows himself (and possibly others) up that they’ll be able to wave this piece of paper around and cry “And he lied on his form!”

Ok, enough with the ranting. While it still irks me that I have to go through this process and that by now I ought to be able to just say “Hey, I’m coming back” and there’d be some kind of expedited process by which I could arrange to get my visa.

Anyway, since after a series of near misses, I managed to see absolutely no one on my trip and spent the day in a coffee shop working on my computer. Towards the end of the day, I shuttled back to the airport – it was a lot cheaper, but I needed cash (which I didn’t have in the morning). At the airport I got sushi for dinner – I was very happy, the guy gave me and extra 10 pieces for free on top of the 10 I bought.

After that, I flew back to Christchurch and ended up with a constant headache from the constant bouncing turbulence. It wasn’t serious, it was just constant.

Once I was back in town, I dropped in on Cam, Rach, Ollie and Kristin playing Lego Star Wars on Xbox. I stayed for way too long (that game is addictive), then went back to Kath and Gareth’s and crashed.