I forgot to mention the goodies!

I knew there was something missing from my description of the day – the Dunedin goodies. boreal and rarsberry had sent me up a box of goodies to take over to Brisbane with me, as a promotion for the NZBC convention to be held in Dunedin next February. The goodies consisted of mini Crunchie bars (as produced in the Dunedin Cadbury’s factory) and a card with the convention details on it, wrapped up in the Otago colours of blue and gold. They’d sent 60 of them, so it was quite a large box (and meant I couldn’t take my nice yellow bookcrossing tote bag (which I’d spent ages sewing the 2005 convention patch on!), but had to take a larger bag to fit the box plus all those books.

Anyway, I was very aware of the fact that a bag full of books might look a bit funny on a x-ray, so I’d taken care to tell the person at check-in about the books, and wasn’t surprised that I was stopped when my bag went through the customs/security x-ray at Brisbane. “What’s in this bag?” the scarey-looking customs guy asked.
“Mostly books.”
He gave me a funny look. “What’s in all the little packets?”
I managed (just) to restrain myself from laughing – I’d completely forgotten about the box of goodies from Dunedin, and had been so busy worrying about the books that I hadn’t even considered what 60 small foil-wrapped chocolate bars might look like! I must have looked innocent, because he accepted my explanation and didn’t bother to actually search my bag.

The next drama was actually getting the goodies to Neesy. That shouldn’t have been a difficult operation, because I had her mobile number, and she knew they were coming, so we just had to meet up for the handover. The only problem was, when I texted her to let her know I was in Brisbane, she replied that she had come down with flu, and was probably going to leave work early and go home to sleep, so she’d have to get someone else to meet me. Anyway, after much texting back and forth over the course of the day, and many changes of plans, she finally decided that she was going to stay in town for dinner anyway, and we arranged to meet at the restaurant. servalan and Skyring came along too, and we had a nice dinner, handed over the goodies (plus some prizes that Skyring was donating), and got to meet Neesy’s partner Flinx73.