In October 2000, me old cobber Sherman Young came to Vancouver town from Sydney. The bugger picks a week when I am jet-lagged++ from a conference trip. He stayed at our place and I passed out at 9pm each night. Which meant I'd wake up early and take him out for healthy walks around the harbour while Helen did her morning ritual (production of ZZZs).

Sherman's X% through his Ph.D. and was in North America doing conference stuff. He's pregnant and is excited, nervous about it. He's such a geek- had an ultrasound of his kid on his Palm Pilot. Showed it to everyone. We kept joking about the kid being born with trendy square glasses already attached.

We took Sherm and his trendy square glasses down to a beach in Stanley Park to do the sunset thing. Brought beer then had several mintues of silliness trying to open the beer without an openner on a rock. Some passer-by took pity on us but the look of disgust on his face as he lent us the openner on his key chain said it all: "Yuppie losers".

When I say Sherman visited us, sometimes it felt like the other way around. He knows more about this town that we do! Half his relatives live here (the Chinese Tasmanian connection). As always, Sherman travels with some instant-friend powder. Add Sherman to town and stir, wait, and presto- instant production of perky intelligent female friends. This one was Michele who lead us to the BEST all-you-can eat sushi place in Denham Str. We talked, bleathered, said silly things, chuckled and hooted for hours and hours and hours and...

It was a whirlwind visit. In and out in two days. After he left, the cat slept on the air-bed we inflated for for Sherman and she wouldn't let us take it down. We decided that we'd just have to get him back or ship the cat off to Sydney.