Wednesday 17 March, 2010, 3pm: Someone some how gains access to my apartment where my friends Sandra & Jef from Belgium are quietly planning the next stages of their adventure. They manage to steal a backpack & handbag from my friends (which contain, among other things, DVDs with photos, souvenirs and a recipe book from their 11 months of travel), along with a tin containing approximately $200 in coins from my flatmates room. 5 minutes later my friends realise what has happened and get in touch with me at work. I race home.

3.30pm: I get home, take stock of the situation, and file a report with the police. In the mean time my flatmate Matt gets home, and the 4 of us take a walk around the local area to see if we can see if the thief has dumped the non-cash items nearby. No luck.

4pm: Returning home and feeling quite resigned to the fact the stuff is gone forever I start to think about what else I can do to get this stuff back and go some way to restoring New Zealand’s reputation.

5pm: After putting up a note in my building I decide the next thing to do is to see if the online community can help out, spreading the word to as many of those who live in the Mt Eden area as possible. I quickly whip up this post, and share it with as many people as I can through my networks, asking others to do the same. I thought it was a long shot, but worth a try. (I also was mildly concerned people might think it was some kind of stupid viral marketing stunt). The post got shared more than I could have possibly hoped for, and got thousands of views.

Thursday March 18, 8.34am: David (who happens to live in my building) leaves a comment on the post saying that he had found a bag matching the description, and left me a phone number. Putting things together now, what I think happened was someone saw someone else’s retweet of my plea for help, then emailed the post on to David because they knew he lived in our street. I am still trying to verify this is the case.

8.52am: I call David’s flatmate who is home, and say I’ll be around straight after work.

6pm: Success! The bag is the right one, and better still has the photos, recipe book, camera and some other stuff in it. Of course the cash and handbag are gone, but at least the irreplaceable stuff is back.

The other great news is that we have since heard back from the police, who think they know who was responsible. I only hope they are dealt with in the appropriate manner.

Needless to say Sandra & Jef are totally stoked, having resigned themselves to the fact that they were gone forever, having left for Sydney on Thursday morning.

So I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped out by spreading the word any way that they could. I was overwhelmed with the response I got from people sharing our story on twitter and facebook. Thanks everyone. The Internet really is awesome.

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These are my lovely Belgian friends Sandra & Jef. They are coming to the end of what has been a year long adventure around Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Today was their last day here in Auckland, where they have been staying in my apartment for the last couple of days.

Unfortunately, some asshat also decided that today was a great day to walk into my apartment (while they were there), duck into my room, and walk out with Sandra’s handbag and a small backpack. Unfortunately that backpack contained, among other less important things like a camera and cash, all their photos from their travels in the past 11 months. Needless to say, that are quite upset about this (and it hardly leaves a great impression of our beautiful country).

Our guess is whichever degenerate did this was probably just after cash, and so has likely dumped the bags somewhere in the vicinity. We have been scouting around for the last hour, but haven’t been able to find anything.

So, my extremely long shot is this: If you are in Auckland, and you happen to find a green and brown backpack, or some DVDs, in the vicinity of Akiraho St (they think it was a JanSport one) then PLEASE get in touch with me: duncan at version3.co.nz. Sandra & Jef would be really grateful.

If you don’t live in Auckland, help me out by sharing this with anyone who does. Particularly in Mt Eden.

Update: We have recovered the backpack, complete with photo DVDs, camera, and collected recipes from around the world. A huge thanks to everyone who helped out by sharing this story with their friends. Three cheers for the Internet! More in depth explanation coming soon…

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My brother Jason is (kind of) a hippy that lives in a tiny town in the South Island called Greymouth. For those who don’t know that is almost completely the opposite of me, the city-dwelling (allegedly) metro sexual corporate dude. Despite this we are actually pretty similar in a lot of respects, he just showers less and wears ponchos more. He is also a really talented photographer, so hopefully he will also share some of his work via his blog (come on Jase). He has really only just begun his blogging exploits, no doubt there will be many passionate rants to come.

Sergei Filippov

Sergei is a great photographer who kicks around Auckland taking some killer gig photos (among other things). He is also one of the nicest people who you will ever meet.

Super Duper Street

Ed is truly a man of many talents. He hangs out down in our fair nations capital, and sporadically writes some super quirky, interesting stuff that makes me laugh, a lot. He is also the brains behind the Pasta Man phenomenon – get on board if you are a pasta fan. As if that wasn’t enough he is also a ridiculously talented musician, featuring in bands such as the lovely Ed Zuccollo Trio. Ed is going to go far.

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…they print out masks of your face and take you on holiday to Italy. You guys are awesome and I miss you heaps. Hopefully I can join you in person on the next one!

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I count myself as extremely lucky to have a group of super talented, smart, interesting friends all over the world. Many of them are doing amazing things that make me really proud of them.

One such project from some of those friends is CountMeOut. Put together by two Irish friends of mine, Cormac Flynn and Grainne O’Sullivan (and Paul Dunbar, who I don’t know but I am sure he is also awesome), who I was fortunate enough to meet while they were on their OE’s here in New Zealand.

Through CountMeOut Cormac, Grainne and Paul have made the process of removing yourself from the Roman Catholic Churches register relatively simple.

Why is this important? Because if you were baptised as a Catholic you will continue to be counted as a member of the church, regardless of what you might now think or believe. The resulting artificially high proportion of the Irish population considered part of the Catholic church is one of the primary reasons that the church is afforded such a strong supporting role in the provision of state services. There is a much more detailed explanation of why this is important along with FAQs on the site.

As I understand it, the thing that was the ultimate catalyst for these guys to create the site was the publishing of the Ryan Report, a detailed investigation of child abuse in Irish institutions.

Being a Kiwi I am not going to pretend to have any right to comment on whether defecting from the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is a good idea or not. I am proud of my friends for standing up for something they believe in, and actually doing something about it. They have used the Internet to both educate people, and make an otherwise laborious process significantly simpler.

They are already picking up some coverage from the mainstream media over in Ireland, and have had around 300 people complete a declaration of defection in less than a week. It seems as though they will succeed in both raising the issue, and creating some change.

I am inspired.

Photo of the beautiful interior of the Cathedral of Saints Patrick and Felim from slinky2000 on flickr.

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I think this is totally awesome, and really inspiring. I love that if you decide you want to do something enough, you can make it happen.

His enthusiasm for the project rubbed off on me, so I was happy to help him out by knocking up a pretty basic WordPress blog for him to record his adventures in: www.deathworm2009.com

He is also looking for donations and/or sponsors to help him out with financing the project, so if you can help him out I am sure he would appreciate it.

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• 1 vegan
• 2 Irish people
• 1 homosexual
• 2 Americans
• 1 thief
• 10 girls
• 2 boys
• 1 practicing Christian
• 1 Indian
• 1 sociologist
• 1 person who I went to high school with
• 11 people I had never met before in my life
• Too many Friends fans
• Not enough drum and bass fans

What is more amazing than anything that they do, or where they are from, their religion, sexual persuasion, or taste in music is that I now count almost all of them (just a couple of notable exceptions) among my friends, some of them among my best friends.

How is it that in general day to day life I seem to rarely meet people that I want to spend more than 5 minutes with but in the past three years eleven random, diverse people have almost all become my friends?

Of course the reason I have been thinking about this is that this week another flatmate is being added to the growing list of those who have left for far off lands. One that has become one of my closest friends. Another trip to the Auckland International Airport. Another good-bye dinner. Another round of big hugs, teary eyes, and somber drives back home.

So, bon voyage Tui. I know that we will always be great friends.

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Thankfully (well, hopefully) this oozing of friends is more to do with the lure of exotic foreign locations than the overwhelming desire to get as far from me as possible.

The latest to join the exodus is Redbeast. The details of the farewell weekend are hazy, but the memories of her time here are anything but.

Without her and Slydawn around I am likely to unleash my loosely cobbled together opinions on the general public at random. I feel sorry for the unsuspecting person who is coerced into an argument about the relative popularity of windsurfing in Mozambique.

So, there are now several vacancies in the friends department. A desire to engage in vigorous discussion about anything would be considered an advantage. Expressions of interest may be made in the comments field below in the first instance.

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