Oh the agony of choice! Who am I going to take? It is certainly not easy to find a perfect travel companion.
I am going to attend a puppeteering workshop in Melbourne, so I will be busy during the day and the Dede I take will have to look after himself while I am out playing with other puppets. I assume this fact isn’t easy to swallow for some of them.
Arindam and Tony made very good suggestions. Mouse of course is the best organiser. If I took her I wouldn’t need to worry about anything. She would take care of any problems. Her downside of course is that she tries to pack too much into a single day. No doubt she would hustle me from each must see sight to the next without a break. She knows my current financial situation too and wouldn’t even allow me a coffee. She can be very harsh. My batteries are pretty flat at moment and to be honest, I couldn’t face a weekend with her! Another time, yes… but not this time.
Other suggestions were Scardy Pants and Lap Dog and I thought Chamber Maid would be a good contender too. On closer scrutiny though, I realised none of them could cope with being on their own during the day, but for different reasons: Scardy Pants doesn’t have any self-esteem. You have to coerce him out of the house at the best of times. He is so easily scared that even his own shadow gives him a fright. Lap Dog on the other hand is clingy. She doesn’t want to be on her own because she gets bored. She follows you around like a shadow. And the third puppet, Chamber Maid, is proud to be the shadow. Her strength is to be neither seen nor heard. If I took her she would rather stay in the hotel room and mend my socks than go out and explore. She can mend my socks at home and I know she would happily step aside to let another puppet go.
For now I have short listed Granddad Max, Cool Cat and Milky Bar Devil. What I need is a Dede that can explore during the day, but will listen to me at dinner time. I know myself. I will be full of new ideas after a day at the workshop. And when I have new ideas I can’t stop talking. Granddad Max is hard of hearing, so he would be perfect. However, he easily gets lost and letting him loose in a place where he has never been before…. I don’t know. Help! It is all too hard!
dedepuppets 
The solution is very clear. Foreign correspondent. He will be game to explore the surface alone and in your esteemed company. He will report back to the Dedes at home regularly and he will encourage you to seek out new experiences. Personally I think Mouse would make an excellent second choice as she too would bring back the gossip.
Yes, foreign correspondent would have been a great choice. But he is looking after the German blog on a daily baisis (or whenever something appears on the English blog) and he says he is overworked. He cannot take any more assignments :)
Where there any dedes you couldn’t finish for your recent exhibition?
No, I finished all the ones I had started and I also made five masks, Doing the masks I had an interesting revelation. Masks hide, while puppets reveal. I stick with the puppets :)