Come on everybody now, do that Congo *

Found out last night at our last session of support worker training, that my Congolese families will be a single man, and a mum, dad and two kids - son aged 13, daughter aged 7. I learnt how to make fufu - a kind of polenta type thing that forms the basis of most Congolese meals.

And did you know that in the Congo, women are the bottom of the food chain - below their children?

* Conga, Miami Sound Machine. If you guessed that you get one million bonus points.

Actually there is something worse than number 2 below - having to write a story about a couple getting engaged on Valentine's Day at 7am the next morning ...

All is quiet on Valentine's Day

Or, why Valentine's Day sucks
a short list by Special K

1. When you're in a relationship, it's quite uncool to expect some fuss on Valentine's Day, because then you're one of those women that husbands/boyfriends etc roll their eyes about when rushing to the Warehouse to buy roses the night before. It's also not cool to expect anything on Valentine's Day because you're bound to be dissappointed by those husbands/boyfriends who say things like "I don't need a special reason to tell my honey I love her" but never do anything special at any other time anyway. But with the amount of advertising and crap in the media about V Day it's difficult for us girls raised on fairy tale endings not to want at least a card in the mail.

2. When you're not in a relationship, there's nothing worse than one of your workmates getting flowers delivered at work, or your flatmate getting chocolates and a poem (as happened today), when all you have for Valentine's Day is getting perved at in the shower by your cat. No, actually, worse is getting asked by your dentist what you are doing for Valentine's Evening. Or listening to the smug marrieds talk about the romantic nights they are having ...

3. So you're damned if you're in a relationship, and you're damned if you aren't. Much easier to be in Cambodia where there is no such thing as the Valentine's Day Hell, and let it just pass by unnoticed.

I wanna be your blog *

Or "What I Saw At The Big Day Out in Auckland Where Really Cool Bands Like Iggy Pop and The Stooges Played"

Left - Hot Boy Nicholas McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand shows Kimpy how to stamp her feet and shake her floppy haircut Beatles style while rocking 35,000 people

Right - Hot Hips Houlahan, aka Iggy Pop gets motherf**king down with his motherf**kin' ki-f**kin'-wi fans

He's a small man, brown like a beauty counter saleswoman, with straggly dyed blonde hair and some sort of hip dysplasia problem.
He wore the sort of jeans girls called Charlene and Sheryl wear when they've dropped the kids at their chain-smoking mothers' houses on a Friday night and are on out the town in the Hutt or maybe even ... erm ... Hamilton.
He punctuated every sentence with f**k or even motherf**k. He called us motherf**kin' kiwis in an affectionate way.
He got a whole lot of people up and stage from the crowd and called them his motherf**kin' kiwi dancers.
He was a 58-year-old unstoppable, crowd-surfing, swear-o-matic dynamo of rock 'n rollness.
He made bunny ears with his hands on his head like a little girl, before skipping off stage.
But he didn't show us his penis.
Left - Big Day Out special guests Natalia and Mafew

Below - Janna and Kimpy on the job finding the real stories

* I wanna be your dog - Iggy "it's enormous" Pop and the Stooges