well....
When I was living in Wellington (it's bigger and more lively than sleepy little Dunedin) I found my staff incredibly useful for walking through the dodgier parts of town at night. Although in my untrained hands it wouldn't be that much use if someone had attacked me, just the fact that I'm carrying a weapon probably made me a bit less vulnerable......if you're planning to attack someone, you'd pick someone small and defenseless, not the girl with the great big stick! The closest I ever came to using it was at a guy fawkes celebration where some drunk person pushed me and tried to grab my staff (I was just carrying it, unlit). My automatic reaction (*incredibly* stupid, I admit) was to spin around violently, yelling loudly and holding the staff as though I was just about to bash him 
hehehe. bear in mind that I was only 16 at the time, I'm not very big or strong, and have absolutely no training in martial arts.....so I'd have been in serious trouble if he'd called my bluff! But anyway, the staff did prove pretty useful, as it took him by surprise and he disappeared pretty quickly into the crowd ;
0
other things I've used my staff for....
Last year my room was on the second story of a big villa and there was a roof directly below my window. I was always dropping things down there, so I had a little wire hook that I'd tie to the end of my staff to retrieve them
When I went backpacking I wedged it between 2 trees to dry my washing on.
I vaguely remember somebody's staff being used as a limbo stick at some drunken jugglers' gathering. (heh, I'm not sure if I should admit that one).
When I was unicycling regularly, I used to use my it as support for learning some of the harder tricks like wheel-walking. (and no, I still can't do it).
heh.....and last week when I was trying some nasty combination involving throwing myself at the ground at high speed (at least that's what it felt like), I landed badly and used it to hobble to a treestump to nurse my very unhappy ankle.
heh, what a useful toy.
xaeda
as a side note, seeing as I'm doing everything possible to avoid studying....(hell, I even mowed the lawn today!)
does anyone else regularly walk through doors and get abruptly jolted cause you accidentally had your staff horizontal and it got caught? heh. I do that far too often, and it would make me feel better to know I'm not alone ;-) 
xaeda
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