It's a long ride home from language class on two metros so I bought an International Herald Tribune (a locally-tailored edition of the New York Times), flicked through the news section and began reading an op-ed about that giant squid a couple of Japanese scientists filmed.

I was tired and in a hurry to get back and prepare for a bit on the radio, so at first I missed the date-line.

There I was sitting on a crowded Paris metro reading an op-ed that looked lifted from the NZ Herald. Whoever Steve O'Shea is, he felt like an old buddy.

And on the ipod? A Fat Freddy's Drop album I bought off the iTunes Music Store a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday, I noticed the 'espace rugby' shop around the corner (near the local Eden Park chain store, apparently named by a former French rugby international who played there) has decked out its front window in Canterbury of New Zealand gear.

Down at the American library today there was a display book in the kids' geography section about - New Zealand.

It's only coincidence and I notice little mentions others wouldn't begin to register, so it's not much.

Enough to pinch myself though.