Had a full weekend. We went to the Pasifika festival on Saturday. It's supposed to be the largest cultural festival in the southern hemisphere. Not sure how much culture there is in the southern hemisphere, but it certainly was quite big. There were about ten "villages", for each country represented. We started at Tonga, and worked our way round. Stopped at a couple of shows, including a rather impressive one from Tahiti. There were also hundreds of stalls selling all sorts of things. Sigrid came home with a collection of clothes, a necklace and an anklet with little bells. She also bought the girls a toffee apple each, which we managed to consume between us somehow. And I bought some drugs.

I assume kava must be a legal import, because one stall in Tonga was selling it in some quantity. It's a mild anaesthetic, and sends you to sleep eventually, although it tastes like dishwater. I guess that's not a problem once you can't feel your tongue any more. We had some in Fiji, so I thought I'd give Sigrid a cultural experience. She's already sick of coconut juice.

On Saturday night, Sigrid had been invited to a party down at the beach. Venla's hosts took them down. About 90 minutes later they rang for a lift. They hadn't found the party, and had walked for ages along the beach. So I drove along a side road to see if we could find it. Except that the side road happened to be a camp site, and got locked at 9pm. They wouldn't let me out. Bronwyn's dad had to pick me up, and then Bronwyn took me down the next morning to get the car. I picked up a young guy on the way back, who'd been to the party. Apparently the party had already finished by the time Sigrid and Venla arrived, because ... well ... maybe it wasn't perhaps the sort of party they might have wanted to be at!

Kumeu show on Sunday. I did four sessions on the trombone, and managed to keep going somehow, but was pretty shattered by the end. It was worth it. Bronwyn took everyone else down. Rachael and Sarah got in free because they were helping at the Girl Guides.

Bronwyn had her wisdom tooth out last week, and it got infected, so she had to go to the emergency doctors on Sunday. She's a lot better now, apart from nearly throwing up when all the pus came out!

I once made some lights for the trombone, with a pattern generated by a control box and 16KB of memory chips. Except that it's no use at Christmas here because it's always blazing sun. So now I've been putting lights in the table I made (with the computer in it). 24 lights in. 6 to go, plus a few extra bright blue ones underneath.

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