Greg Johnson picks up the phone in his Santa Monica apartment and says, amazingly, “Gidday!” Twenty-odd years living in California, and he still sounds like an Auckland boy. I picture boulevards flanked with Washingtonia palms outside his window, sparkling sea, and Johnson himself mooching about in the perennial sun, quite possibly wearing a fedora and sporting an unreasonable tan. “It’s true that I do not like the cold,” he admits. “Sunlight makes me happy, so I m a big fan of California. Where I’m living now, I can just stroll over to the beach, and the weather is perfect for me.”