boxes with too much space between them. Eventually I realised that the average house is the same size as it would be in Australia, or California; the space is distributed over three layers of basement, ground and first floor, thus taking up less of the building block. The basement is essential because of the climate, which is very cold in winter and quite hot in summer. People hang up the laundry in the basement. After the tour we ate at a Korean restaurant, and I had my first experience of disposable chopsticks (scrape the splinters off before eating). It is strange that the only meals I really remember were at ethnic restaurants -- apart from a few home-cooked dinners courtesy of Chrys Tackett, Joan Kuske and Susan Wood I seem to have eaten mostly hamburgers. I must have eaten something... Friday wound up with a party at Denny's, and I introduced Minstf fandom to the dreaded Scrabble-without-a-board. On Saturday a Minneapa collation at the Bozo Bus Building was followed by a visit to Bridgeman's with Denny, Carey, Caryl Bucklin and Dave Wixon. Bridgeman's is an ice-cream parlour, and the purpose of the visit was to watch Carey demolish a La La Palooza. This concoction is probably the world's largest ice-cream sundae, and 1 would not have been able to make any visible impression on one at all. Carey of course had no difficulty, and he nobly gave me the badge which the management hands over in exchange for an empty La La Palooza container. We ended the day at Caryl's, playing Tripoley, a simple but entertaining card game. Caryl and I insisted on playing for macaroni, on the grounds that it's no fun playing for money. I did suggest that we could put in our small change and play for that on the condition that we got it all back afterwards, but the idea wasn't terribly well received. On Sunday morning we went for a Dim Sum lunch, at that time not a common entertainment in Australia. As in San Francisco I was entranced by the succession of mysterious little dishes, though the Chinese egg custards which everyone kept recommending again failed to appear. To celebrate her birthday Jim Young's mother was present, and I chattered away to her about my travels. I mentioned that we had been through the Immigration formalities in Hawaii, and she enquired as to whether interpreters had been provided. "Oh no," I replied, realising as I spoke that we had our wires crossed, "they all seem to speak quite good English there." – 11 –