Hello all,

Well today is the Queen's Birthday here in New Zealand. It is not actually the Queen's birthday, and I believe New Zealand is the only country that celebrates it today (it'll be next week in Australia, sometime around now but not today in the UK, etc.), but that doesn't stop anybody. It's basically just a day off school and work for most people -the fact that the Queen is still technically New Zealand's head of state doesn't really make much difference here.

My first semester has ended and I'm busy studying for exams, which will start next week. Philosophy is by far my scariest exam because they want us to produce new ideas and examples and other completely unreasonable things along those lines. Some people. To that end, I'll be spending the next few days trying to come up with things to say about the ethics of euthanasia, corporate responsibility, 'therapeutic' cloning, and war. I'll also be memorizing lots of psychological information, which reminds me: the psychology department of Victoria wants the entire world to be aware once and for all that schizophrenia is not and never has been multiple personality disorder. They seem quite fixated on that fact.

I went to see Swan Lake performed by the Royal New Zealand Ballet (almost worth being part of the Empire so you can have Royal things) the other night with a friend of mine. It was quite impressive and very well done as far as my untrained eye could tell. Of course, probably the more exciting news is that High School Musical is in town. If you walk downtown at the wrong time of day you risk getting trampled by hordes of small and medium-sized children entering or exiting the theater.

Exams should keep me busy for the next few weeks, and after that I'm going to be spending a week in Auckland with two friends.

That's all for now.