"This is just totally my idea of heaven," sighed one of the myriad unshaven, exhausted but very happy male competitors at the halfway mark of the weekend's around-the-clock Quake computer-game-thingee tournament deep in the bowels of the Aotea Centre.
I'd like to give you more details about the game and the tournament. Alas, Quake, although one of those computer games that is loved, played and deeply understood by millions, is one of those games that a person absolutely cannot follow if that person is female.
Apparently, there were about 20 females enrolled in this tournament. I looked for them but had no luck.
In the end, I guessed they were out in the fresh air somewhere, waking up to themselves.
This meant, alas, that I never did find anyone who could tell me what I needed to know in a way that sounded like something I wanted to hear.
Thus my description of the technical aspects of the game lacks precise detail, the alternative being to make some up.
Basically, Quake appears to be one of those find 'em shoot 'em numbers which you play on a network or on the Net, by yourself or as part of a team. (I realise that that description probably covers every computer game ever invented, but at least it puts us in the picture).
There were other details I did manage to grasp, though.
"I haven't had a shower for nearly two days," laughed one splendid hunk of eye candy.
"I decided not to have a shower before I came here because I knew I'd just end up needing another one."
Those were fighting words from an excellent man, and exactly the he-man line of chat to which your reporter instinctively warms.
Still, there was no denying that by Saturday afternoon the physical atmosphere inside the room was getting a little close.
Frank Gibson - the (very) young man who was apparently at the helm of this excellent tournament - informed me that there were some hundreds of people (he described the tally as some hundreds of computers) participating in the round-the-clock event. That means there were hundreds of blokes in one room for an unbroken weekend.
I will leave the drawing of the rest of the picture to your imagination. Suffice to say that they all seemed to be having the time of their lives down there in the cesspool, shooting each other on-screen, resting on their keyboards, and explaining to me that the key to survival here, and everywhere, was to eat things you found as well as things you bought.
It was a back-to-basics weekend, if you will.
Which is where men and women are different. Men like to get back to basics, and find a way to do that even when surrounded by computers.
Us girls, meanwhile, spend our lives trying to rise above the basics, or at least pretending that the basics are more complex than they are.
But let's not get too deep about it. I just wanted to point out why relationships between the sexes can never work. Feel free to stay in yours if you want - I merely want you to understand why it's ultimately going to turn to fertiliser.
Excuse the bitterness. I know it's probably time to let it go. And at least the blokes are happy.
"Basically, there's not a lot of plot going on," one young man informed me cheerfully, as we watched an on-screen team-member of his take aim and blow a couple of pixillated heads away.
"You run up these corridors until you see the enemy. Then you shoot them before they shoot you."
Do you develop many skills doing this?
"Yep," he grinned. "You get quite good at hiding."
Over here was a bloke who was thinking of hiding from his wife.
"She's a computer widow," he observed.
He'd been home for a shower and a rest at 5.30 am on Saturday and returned to the tournament a little later on the same morning. Before that, he'd been playing Quake at home for two years.
Which is a long time for a person's bloke to be occupied. Still, it gives a girl a good chance to go through his wallet. Let's go, girls.
<i>Kate Belgrave:</i> Computer tournament best left to the boys
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