At home, Chutney admires the red shoes I am wearing...

... and I find an old Olympus in my box of uni books,

some coloured rubber bands (look out, Rendy!),

and a collection of old toy trucks.

Taking a photo of taking a photo (with foul Sunday hair)

Shoes I want to like to wear but can't

I'm home now. It's nice here. I have an interesting book to read and a comfy hoodie to hunker down in.

Ooh! And cheesecake!

Off to get some good pictures and content now.

Sydney was lots of fun. The best holiday I've ever had, excepting the time when I was 7 in Desaru Johor and got to wear a Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit and get room service breakfast.

But Sydney was still great. It was the weather (toasty lovely). The food (unspeakably good). It was the people - Emily, Yann, David, Monica, the friendly man who saw us standing on the street studying a map and offered to help - so relaxed and easygoing, so friendly, so memorable. It was the debrief table in the afternoons with Doritos and iced tea. And also, it was the shopping.

Mostly I did pretty good with the shopping, and managed to avoid the onset of Holiday Shopping Brain (Yes, you know what I mean. Ruched capris, anyone?). There was, however, that one moment in David Jones when I almost succumbed to a Sass and Bide gold t-shirt. (I have a bad history with all things gold whilst on holiday.) Really, I ask you: a t-shirt that is gold? How could I imagine I would actually wear such an atrocity once back in cold and windy Wellington? It was close for a minute there, but I came to my senses in time.

It's slowly becoming good to be home.

One of those ideas so simple you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself, and so wonderful you'll just be grateful that someone else did anyway.

It is my newest (and possibly dorkiest) obsession. The first night, I stayed up until four in the morning in a desperate attempt to catalog every single book I owned. Then I had to trawl the web to find exact front cover matches. Then the inconsistent format of the publishers' details began to bug me so I started to edit them individually - still not done. But it's fun! Good dorky fun!

This debacle was a Step class taken by two instructors: an on-screen one and a real, living person. The on-screen instructor turned out to be a DVD of 6-8 people in early 90s exercise-wear all working out in this industrial area with stage lighting, dry ice and tribal drummers. Very dramatic and very United Colours of Benetton, except that I could not actually see the moves for all the concrete blocks and exposed pipes placed here and there for supposed effect.

While this was going on, the real-life instructor also felt it necessary to walk around, getting in our way, wrongly repeating the on-screen instructions, often crucial seconds too late, and thus satisfactorily irritating us all. To add further insult to potentially actual injury, I could not see what I was doing because the lights had been turned off. This was so we would (this is not a joke) "feel more confident exercising in the dark".

I don't want to be a part of this place anymore!

So I have to find a new gym. I think about a few places but end up calling Les Mills because I think I can get a free trial there. Also, it is the only other gym nearest to me, and let's face it, I am too lazy to walk very far to do my workout.

The phone is answered by a voice-recording of a very enthusiastic individual, "HEY THERE! WELCOME to Les Mills!". I jump in fright and yank the receiver from my ear. I don't feel welcome. I feel scared. I'm already envisaging a future trainer, all hearty and Jolly Hockeysticks-like, urging me on to do "just ten more!".

I just want to exercise. In the normal fashion. I don't want to be jollied along or plunged into darkness or turn up to find the class has been canceled altogether. It can't be that hard, can it?

During winter's twilight hours, however, we cannot pass by the small towns between the two cities fast enough. Glimpses inside the town's only pub, the single dairy or fish and chip shop - all gloomily empty - put a cold, dull feeling in my heart. Nobody on the half-lit streets, and houses merely dark scattered shapes with only the occasional square of light hinting at homes, kitchens, people.

It's always a relief to come round that last bend and see the friendly winking lights in the harbour. It is reassuring to think about the thousands of different lives all being lived in such close quarters: narrow streets, crammed trolley buses, multi-leveled carparks, office buildings and apartment blocks, many squares of light all set close together, each one a sign of a whole life.

I like this cold too. I like the need for layers of turtlenecks and jumpers, for scarves and gloves and soft, soft merino.

This weekend, I am buying a bookcase. Time to give my precious books a proper home.

Who would have thought, when once I promised that no foodish fingers should ever touch these pristine white keys.

I am not deceived. I will know the true damage tomorrow!

If this is the only way I can eat and still be happy, however, then I'm glad to do it, because, you see, Anthony Bourdain has been making me very, very hungry lately.