I'm at the Auckland City YHA, the same place I stayed when I first arrived here. It smells familiar. There's a comforting circularity to arriving back where I began, and preparing to depart.

In the past few days, I have discovered:

That it is possible to relax and enjoy a staged cultural experience.

That Pete of Spellbound Tours (Waitomo), besides being an exerienced and competent edu-tainer (like my OMSI friends) has an avid enough interest in photography to indulge a fellow hobbyist with after-hours access to one of his favorite caves.

That there exist people who are fascinated with me for the same traits that others find boring.

That I can function all day, and even enjoy it, on two hours' sleep.

That Rotorua YHA is the sole exception ot my general satisfaction with New Zealand YHA's. Their hot spa, which was quite nice, didn't quite make up for the ...
I don't have a word for it. What's the name for the quality of not trusting people, and making up rules to keep them in line, but not bothering to keep up your end of the arrangement, with the result that people resent and flout your control over their lives? Self-defeating cynicsm? Niggardliness? The opposite of generousity or trust?
They haven't learned what Uncle Johnny teaches about managing rental property: behavior standards are set by environmnetal cues. People in gracious surroundings tend to take the hint. Ugly security measures can actually increase crime rates, by sending a message of animosity to the inhabitants.
Anyway, it appears I should have been more appreciative of the fabulous service in Franz Josef, and the beautifully maintained woodwork in Dunedin and Christchurch, and the miraculous coziness and quirkiness of the 6-floor Wellington block, and the good-will of the ever-changing staff in the big-city hostels of Christchurch and Auckland.
I had begun to assume that recycling and even composting, quirky hand-written signage, encouraging reminders, fresh paint-work, and charmingly mismatched dishes, were the standard for all YHA's. Except Rotorua Kiwi-Paka. The bedbugs were actually less bothersome than having to stop in the middle of cooking a meal to walk into the next building, through the bar-cafe, to reception to find dishes which every other YHA simply leaves in the kitchen. The best thing about them was the steam-heated floors of the bathroom, and the tree-fern fence and spa-pool.

Whoo, doesn't pay to annoy your guests when they're hungry. I didn't come online to rant about one negative experience. I think I had something thoughtful in mind, about closure, and circularity, and moving onward.

Maybe my thoughtfullness has been tapped out for the moment, by two days of intensive conversation with a chance-met friend in Rotorua and Waitomo. Having partially recovered from my disgruntlement at the dishes situation, I tipped off a fellow guest about where to find his crockery as he arrived to start cooking. We ended up talking for about 9 hours, into the very cold part of the night, about many of a wide range of topics. Ontology, maybe: the nature of being human, and of the world, and of how any of it relates to our personal pursuits as travellers and seekers of understanding.

He took enough interest to alters his plans in order to accompany me for a couple of days, providing much-appreciated companionship, luggage-handling, and photography collaboration. While he mostly asked the questions, and set me to talking, I found myself challenged to an unusual level of eloquence and insight. Fabio will be thrilled to know that E1(Erica-the-thinker) is waking up again, even as the work-a-day Erica grieves her lost stability.
Example: the trivial question about "Is the cup half-empty, or half-full?" It is, implicitly, both. Empty is not-full, and full is not-empty, so if something is half full, the other half is implicitly empty. I love answering "both" or "yes" to either-or questions; conflating false dichotomies. Yet this trick is legitimately annoying when it masks, protects, reinforces, pure lazy timid indecisiveness.

There's something dangerously flattering in being lavishly admired for my defenses. It's like flattering a vain woman's looks, or a bluff man's ego: I'm intelligent, and eloquent, as a way of winning my own and others' respect. To protect me from being ill-thought-of.
But in the end, warm-heartedness, and the boldness to make a decision and take what comes, may be more important than any amount of sophistry.