No it's okay, I'm enjoying this.

To answer your question, what makes awareness unique is the way that is content is experienced. When I experience a red sensation in my mind, the experience is a direct one. There's no intermediary, it's simply there and my awareness possesses it. I'm not experiencing a representation of a red sensation (that would be an infinite regression). It IS the red sensation. This, on it's own, I believe makes it unique to everything else.. but there's more..

The material world, on the other hand, is always experienced indirectly. The light wave bounces off a chair, which hits my retina, which in turn transform the information into a signal that passes through various neural networks and [insert mystery here] and a sensation is made inside my awareness. However which way it gets to the awareness part of the brain (whether through material or through dualism), I know for certain that the chair that I experience in my mind isn't actually the chair in the material world. It's a metaphor / a symbol.

So this is the point where we disagree: somehow, somewhere in the mind the indirectly experienced material world is able to transform information into "something" that can be experienced directly through awareness. You seem to think that this "something" is material, whereas as I'm unsure but leaning towards that it's not material.

If the content of my awareness is material (the materialist view), there must therefore be qualia "floating/waving" around in the universe waiting to be experienced directly (since that is how they are experienced). Except I've never had a direct experience of anything in the material world. It's always represented indirectly. So how would this occur? How would I perceive an object in the material world that can only be experienced directly? Is there a bank of qualia in my mind that gets used up as the content of my awareness changes? Where is this bank, and what does it look like? It follows that qualia, being material, should be measurable, no? Red sensations that can only be experience directly, but somehow material, should be detectable. And yet there's zero evidence of this anywhere -- except in consciousness.

So let's compare qualia to everything else in the material world..

energy, atoms and space are all experienced indirectly. qualia are experienced directly.

we can measure and detect energy, atoms and space with relative ease. qualia (red sensations) have up until now never been measured or detected (although this remains a possibility)

energy, atoms and space exist outside of consciousness (at least, I've never seen them there) qualia seem to exist only in consciousness (at least, I've never them anywhere but there)

So really, Qualia seem to behave in the opposite way we would expect them to if they were like the rest of the things we find in material world. And yet, we're supposed to believe that they're material regardless? I would say the evidence is against the materialist world view. That qualia actually don't fit the definition of the material world.

I would also argue that the only reason theres more evidence for materialism, is because the scientific method is tailor made to understand the material world. The scientific method isn't useful when it comes to things like concepts, numbers and sensations. Yet all of these things exist. I think you're saying these are material things, whereas I was would say that it's unlikely that they are. The fact that, up until now, the scientific method has been unhelpful in understanding these things.. is further evidence that there's another level outside of the material world.