QUEENSLAND FUN

I've been pleasantly surprised by the good times had so far during the Queensland segment of my trip. It's not that I have anything against the place per se, but I haven't lived here since 1998 and only ever return to fulfill family obligations (not known for being too stimulating) so I had extremely low expectations for the trip. Which means of course it wouldn't be hard to exceed those expectations.

It takes much more than 9 years of absence to erase the memory of a muggy, humid, energy-sapping, sweaty, dripping, stinking hot Central Queensland summer, so I was pleased that the temperature in the Sunshine Coast was quite reasonable (I've since learned that this has been the coldest Christmas season in a decade). My journey began with a few days spent relaxing there at my sister's house, and many of those days were overcast, drizzly and delightfully warm which suited me perfectly.

Less enjoyable was the six and a half hour drive up to Rockhampton that I endured along with my two younger sisters and future brother-in-law. That's a long time to be stuck in a metal shell. With ANYONE. One perk was that my (non-driving) sister's bladder is even more demanding than mine - a fact which anyone who's ever been out on the piss with me will find quite unbelievable - so there were plenty of toilet stops on the way that were not initiated by yours truly. We finally arrived in Rock Vegas around 10:30pm and the evening was spent drinking beer and catching up with my younger brother and the folks.

We had only two full days to spend up here and the time has passed pleasantly, likely due to the fact that I've spent the majority of my waking hours each day OUTSIDE the festering hell-hole that is Rockhampton. (I've decided I'm too old to be polite about the place. It really stinks). On Saturday we set off in my brother's four wheel drive to Five Rocks, a beautiful beach in the Byfield National Park area north of Rockhampton. Unfortunately the huge sand dunes we needed to traverse to get there defeated us, so we went instead to Stony Creek for some swimming and soccer-ball-kicking action. It was so nice. It's the first time I'd jumped in a natural body of water since the Greek sailing trip and it felt gooood.

Saturday night I caught up with some old friends, one of whom I haven't seen since high school (Facebook! Hooray!), which was really cool but also a little scary. My travelling tendencies have seen me live in seven different cities in four different countries over the past five years alone, which means I'm rarely around people who've known me for more than a couple of years. The girl I met up with was a good friend at school, and she reminded me of some of the questionable decisions I made about how to spend my teenage years. Still, I wouldn't be the super-fabulous, wonderful ray of sunshine I am now without that brief skid off the rails as a teen :-)

We're driving this morning down to Bargara to meet up with the rest of the clan for our Christmas extravaganza. And speaking of dodginess from Christmases past reminds me that one cousin in particular has a lot of embarrassing ammunition about childhood choreography to very crap pop songs. I think I can still remember most of the moves to our rendition of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now". Thank god there were no digital cameras in the eighties.

DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW, ER, RAIN

My Sydney visit has almost come to an end. It's been heaps of fun catching up with people and re-engaging with my former hometown. I'm staying with friends who live just down the road from my old flat in Annandale, so the area is familiar and comforting. Comfort is important when your entire world consists of one backpack and a load of things packed into boxes and suitcases and strewn all across the world. Speaking of which, I went out to my Sydney storage unit the other day and discovered that my treasured possessions are all just a load of crap. After all my experience moving around the world, you'd think my pre-travel brain would be a better of judge of what my post-travel brain is going to consider worthy of retention. But no, I could only access the front few boxes and they were all full of rubbish. Somewhat disappointing, really.

Something that was much less disappointing was my ninja-vist to Canberra (so-called because it was lightning fast, like a ninja). I was in the city for almost exactly 24 hours, but I rushed around and managed to catch up with loads of friends who I haven't seen for over a year as well as some I haven't seen for even longer. Unfortunately, doing my Speedy Gonzales impression meant I wasn't able to catch up with everybody I wanted to see. On the bright side though, now they have a good excuse to come over to London and visit me!

I had intended to stay in Canberra for three days, but it just wasn't working for me. Nothing to do with the people of course - it was fantastic to see everyone - but Canberra and I need a bit longer apart before we can resume our amicable relationship. I found it a wee bit depressing to be there, so I dashed back to Sydney (driving through the rain, hence the title of this entry) before my positive memories of the place were superceded by negative impressions filtered through my London lens. Pretty much anywhere in this country is going to seem boring and quiet after living in London, but Canberra is especially prone for obvious reasons (ie. it actually IS boring and quiet). I need to maintain a positive impression of Canberra because so many people important to me are from there or will be spending a significant part of their lives there which means it will always be somewhere I return to.
To visit, that is.
Not to live.
Ever again.

I hope.

HOMEBAKE 2007

It's summer time!! Having escaped from a cold Scottish winter I was expecting Sydney to deliver searing sunshine and sunburned skin. Instead it's been mostly cloudy, cool and rainy. Still, feeling a bit chilly at 21 degrees is better than shivering uncontrollably in a flat with a dodgy boiler as the sun goes down at 4pm and the temperature drops below 7 degrees. Not that I want to rub it in or anything, guys :)

I've seen more sunshine over the past few days than in my last month in Scotland. I'd forgotten how bright the Australian light is and also how incredibly high the sky appears to be. I'd become so used to constant cloud cover over the UK that the sight of a seemingly never-ending expanse of bright blue sky kind of freaked me out. It still does actually. Crazy country.

Anyway, 48 hours after landing at Sydney airport I was rocking out at "Australia's premier all-local festival". And by 'rocking out' I mean snoozing under a tree. Jetlag stinks. But I was snoozing to the tune of some really great Aussie artists. I saw (heard) Art of Fighting, Ed Kuepper, Kisschasy, Angus & Julia Stone, Josh Pyke, Sarah Blasko, Missy Higgins, The Divinyls and Paul Kelly, as well as this DJ guy called Muscles who was surprisingly good. It was a really chilled day, and a great way to ease myself back into the Australian lifestyle.

Speaking of Aussie lifestyle, I'd forgotten how repulsive drunken Australian men could be (I've managed to live in the UK all year long and not have a single trashy night out in any of the Walkabouts). And the smell of a warm Carlton Draught tinny as it's tipped down one's top by an incoherent, stumbling bogan with a bare chest and a shirt tucked into his pants like a flappy tail. Very important cultural experiences that I'd managed to erase from my memory after only 10 months away.

Some of the experiences I've been more than happy to reacquaint myself with include: seafood laksa, affordable sushi, Coopers Pale Ale, Sydney's Chinatown, the ANZAC bridge, the Annandale pub, Smith's crisps, eucalyptus trees and King Street Newtown. And of course, all the friends I've managed to catch up with over the past couple of days. I'm only in Sydney for a week, then I plan on moseying on down to Canberra. It will be interesting to see if that little trip provides any nostalgic memories. I do like the Dickson Asian Noodle House. Mmmm, laksa. Gotta go, suddenly hungry.

SCHRODINGER STICKER

This sticker is funny. You can read up about Schrodinger's famous thought experiment here if you like, but I'm guessing if you're not already familiar with it you won't be very interested in the explanation. I'm really such a nerd.

NINJA EDIT: A friend has pointed out that I'm really only a Pop-Nerd because my nerdiness doesn't extend beyond popular science/internet fads/etcetera. Apparently you need to be much more well-versed in the obscure to qualify for the Nerd crown. Damn it! Not only will I never be geek-chic (due to a complete inability to comprehend the concept of megabytes and ram and all that crap) but I now realise I'm going to have to work a lot harder to be accepted into the Halls of Nerd-dom as well. Will seek out the latest Lynne Truss book to guide me along the path, she's one big nerd.

LEAVING LONDON

I've just had another fantastic weekend in London. Arriving off the Edinburgh train late in the afternoon, I went straight to a friend's place to get ready for the party of the century. It was a combined housewarming/birthday party for four people. The night began with fairy bread and chocolate crackles (at my insistence - I was by far the most demanding of the birthday quartet) and ended with smashed wine glasses, spilled drinks, tequila shots and absinthe. I woke up on the sofa the next morning, dazed and confused.

There was no time for hangovers, as I was booked in to spend all that day with a good friend from New York who was coincidentally in London the same weekend that I was. I hadn't seen him since we both lived in Vietnam so we caught up on three and a half years of travel and adventures and also managed to practice our rusty Vietnamese language skills over dinner. The whole of Monday was also full of catching-up-with-people-before-I-go-overseas appointments which were a heap of fun but the hectic (compared to my sedentary Edinburgh lifestyle) pace of the whole weekend left me sleep deprived and happily exhausted. Monday night was my official farewell/birthday dinner and it was spent in wonderful company at an amazing Thai restaurant in Fulham. So today I'm completely exhausted and am looking down the barrel of a 22 hour flight back to Australia. Hopefully I won't be sitting next to anyone as horrible as I did on the way over. I'm thinking the lack of solid sleep over my last weekend might help me combat jetlag. Ever the optimist.

A SCOTTISH CHRISTMAS

I've just had my first winter Christmas, and it was delightful. With all of my Edinburgh flatmates moving out over the next few weeks, we decided to bring Christmas forward this year so we could celebrate together. The decorations had been up for a week or two just to get us in the mood, so by the time the big day (November 28) finally arrived we were all choc-full of Christmas cheer.

The day began with what I can only assume is a traditional Scottish custom: traipsing through the drizzling rain to buy food for dinner. It looked set to be a feast: we bought potatoes, pumpkin, turnips, parsnips, vegetarian haggis, cranberry sauce, and for the carnivores roast chicken, sausages and bacon. After all the hard work of deciding what to buy for dinner, I spent the rest of the day shopping for presents and wandering through the German Christmas Markets. Each year Edinburgh transforms the East Princes Street Gardens into a Winter Wonderland complete with market stalls, rides, a giant ferris wheel and an ice skating rink. It's really lovely, and all the bright lights and action happening down there of an evening help distract you from the fact that it's already dark at 4pm.

Returning home to help prepare the Christmas feast, I joined my flatmates in the great tradition of boozing up while cooking. We were awash with alcohol, courtesy of a former flatmate. She had very kindly left us her television set when she moved out, and as we were all about to move away ourselves naturally we sold it and used the proceeds to by a huge quantity of grog. We were drinking that tv well into the wee hours. As an indication of just how "merry" I managed to get, by the end of the night I was cheerily singing away to the christmas song collection that had almost driven me to pierce my own eardrums with a skewer when it was being compiled a day earlier. Not convinced that me singing is an indication of drunkenness? Mariah Carey was on that CD. Say no more.

The dinner was delicious and a huge success. We followed it up by watching The Muppet Christmas Carol over a glass or four of wine, then moving on to drunken charades, the Rizzla game and something called Consequences. The Rizzla game is where you each write the name of a celebrity on a Rizzla (which is a rollie paper) and stick it on the head of the person next to you. Everyone then has to guess who they are by asking "yes or no" questions. I came dead last. I hate Tom Hanks anyway.

Consequences is really fun. You each take a sheet of paper and write down the name of a man, fold it over and pass it to the next player. They then write the word MET followed by a woman's name. This too is folded away out of view and passed on. The next line is HE SAID then SHE SAID, then the final outcome. So each line is written with the author having no idea of what precedes their line. One of my favourites coming out of this game was the following:

Rod Stewart met Mother Teresa at Whistlebinkies (a grungy live music venue in Edinburgh). He said "when I was 5 I took swimming lessons and now I plan to swim to Belgium, want to come?" and she said "hold that thought, I need a wizz". Then they went cruising around the world and lived happily ever after.

So it was a fun evening full of delicious food, gooey desserts, chirpy Christmas music, free alcohol, great company and lots of laughs. The other Christmas in December has a lot to live up to!

A BRAVE NEW WORLD

John Howard is not the Prime Minister of Australia.

That sentence makes me so happy. Although I have to agree with Paul Keating that it's more a sense of relief than joy. I was desperately excited watching the election results unfold online. The minute I woke up Saturday morning I logged on to the ABC election coverage and discovered that Labor was only five seats away from kicking Little Johnny out of Kirribilli House.

Then I received a phone call from my (uncharacteristically tipsy) mother, who was hosting an election night BBQ in the back yard with practically our whole street in attendance, and we blabbered on while I continued to hit the refresh button on my laptop.

I'd been passed on to talk to my sister when Labor hit the crucial 76 seats required for victory. Hooray!! It was so good to feel hooked in to the actual election night experience by being on the phone to Australia at the moment that Kevin Rudd ousted John Howard. The ABC started calling the emphatic victory a "Ruddslide", which is extremely corny but it inspired me to send virtual cocktails to all my Australian Facebook friends to celebrate (mudslides, of course). Aah, victory is so sweet.

Naturally I don't really believe it's going to be a Brave New World; the wave of idealistic optimism washing over the country will soon evaporate when the reality of realpolitik starts to bite. For the moment I'm enjoying the feeling that a thumping majority of Australians have turned away from the divisive and dishonest policies of the Howard era and are looking for a new way forward.

PS. The cartoons come from www.101usesforajohnhoward.com and include from the top down: a barbecue starter, a fart in an elevator, a fossil and a toilet brush :)

MARY POPPINS IS EVIL

WORKING FOR THE MAN

"Thank you for calling Scottish Gas, how may I help you?"

For the last four days I've been the friendly voice on the end of a phone copping abuse from shivering old pensioners on behalf of the incompetent, uncaring, lazy collection of paper-shuffling morons that is Scottish Gas. I was offered a few days' work at a call centre, and having never before experienced the pleasure of being chained to a headset and a call timer I thought it was an interesting experiment to play on myself. I'd heard horror stories about call centre work: micromanagement, restrictive scripts, not being allowed toilet breaks. How would I deal with having no autonomy? Would I be forced to pee myself to protest against authoritarian control of bladder relief opportunities? And how on earth could I be bubbly and chirpy for seven hours in a row without the assistance of three pints and half a bottle of vodka?

In the end it didn't turn out to be as awful as I had feared. The folk at the call centre company were really friendly and easy-going. No asking permission for toilet breaks, no being yelled at for letting a call continue for more than two minutes, in fact, there was no shouting at all from the management. The old dears on the phone weren't averse to hollering down the line though. Although to be fair, you couldn't really blame them. Basically, they'd all been promised free central heating under the Scottish Government Central Heating Programme. Each of them had just received a letter advising when they could expect it to be installed, and the dates ranged from some time in December right through to June 2008. Now I realise patience is a virtue, but in order to qualify for the programme the heating in their home had to be inadequate or non-existent. So we were flooded with calls by freezing eighty-year-olds who had no heating or hot water, had already been waiting seven months, and were slowly solidifying into granny-sized icicles in their highland homes. The Sunday Mail describes the situation here.

There was really nothing we could do except pass on their complaints to Scottish Gas (who would no doubt ignore them) so it wasn't the most pleasant of helplines to be working on. Although I was tempted at first to tell the oldies to stop whining and pay for their own damn heating instead of sponging off the young Scottish taxpayer, I was quickly won over to their cause when it became clear Scottish Gas had f*cked so many of them around so badly. So now I'm firmly on the side of the Grey Army in the battle against the Big Evil Corporation. Four days out in the big wide world of work and suddenly I have opinions...what's the deal with that?

Lessons learned by me this week: the sun rises about 8am, time drags when you're sitting in a cubicle, Scottish Gas is full of muppets, commuting sucks, old people can be very nice, and four days' work is quite enough for one month thank you very much.

A GOOD NIGHT OUT IS...

...hobbling home at 5am with no voice, a sprained ankle, a stolen banana in your handbag and a half-eaten chilli in your pocket. Pass the Berocca, please.

EXPLODING FOOTPATHS ETC

It's much more exciting over here than it is at home. I don't think I'll ever be able to top the story of the building across from work in London spontaneously collapsing into rubble onto the street below or the related experience of looking up from my desk to see a motorbike flying past the window. Two more things happened recently that aren't quite as exciting, but worth mentioning.

Two nights ago at around 5.30pm, one flatmate and I were at home when the power blacked out. Luckily I wasn't in the electric shower with shampoo in my hair as I was the first time the power (and hence the water supply) ran out. Assuming it was our fault for not charging the electricity key, I wandered out and noticed that the safety lights were on in the stairwell, meaning the whole building must have lost power. When I poked my head out the window I saw the entire street had blacked out, and house alarms were wailing out into the black night. And just to assure my southern hemisphere readers, the Edinburgh night is indeed already black at 5.30pm.

I read in the paper that about 15,000 properties blacked out because of a fire at an electricity substation. And the best part is that once it was switched off, another substation overloaded and a huge fireball exploded through the pavement into Morningside Road. What I wouldn't give to have been Nick Rees, 23, who witnessed the fireball.

So that was the night before last. Last night I was walking home through the Grassmarket just after 9pm when a police car screeched past me. It was quickly followed by a fire truck and as I rounded the corner I could see lots of gawping people gathered around a bus that was on the wrong side of the road and appeared to be parked against a block of flats. As I got closer I could see that it wasn't actually parked against the flats but had run smack into them, demolishing a bus shelter in the process. There was glass strewn all over the road, lots of excitable people on mobile phones, but nothing really interesting going on. Nothing short of dead bodies could have convinced me to join the crowd of onlookers. Not that I'm morbid or anything, but it was too bloody cold to stand around staring at broken glass.

After the adventures of the last two nights I'm primed for more excitement now. I wonder what fascinating happening tonight will bring? Maybe Edinburgh's extinct volcano will inexplicably erupt again, or a UFO will be spotted hovering over Arthur's Seat. I'll admit it's a bit of a leap moving from a substation fire and a bus crash to concrete evidence of extraterrestrial life, but you never know your luck in the big city. Stay tuned.

CODE MONKEY CLIP

There's no story here, I just really love this song and think the Sims clip is great. I'll dedicate this entry to all my code monkey friends :)

HALLOWEEN

I've never been a fan of Halloween. I've always thought of it as an American holiday designed to line the pockets of confectionery companies and dentists whose Easter-related workload has started to drop off. I wasn't expecting people in Scotland to make a big deal of it, but they certainly did. There were Halloween costumes and decorations on sale in almost every corner store, bright orange pumpkins suddenly appeared on supermarket shelves, and every pub or bar in town seemed to be hosting a Halloween costume event or at the very least offering 'spooky' drink specials to celebrate the occasion.

Walking down the street the last two nights I've encountered one blood-spattered doctor carrying a machete, two vampires (although one might have been a walking corpse), a gorilla, a Playboy bunny well on her way to frostbite, a zombie and a superhero who I couldn't quite place. My Scottish flatmate was really into it too, she carved the pictured jack-o-lantern, decorated the house in cobwebs and bats and made some yummy-looking toffee apples.

I've since learned that it was actually the Irish and Scottish who took the tradition of Halloween to North America, and its Celtic and pagan origins make very interesting reading. The jack-o-lanterns (originally turnips) were carved to resemble devil faces so as to scare off the spirits. Although trick-or-treating is American, it probably comes from the Scottish tradition of "guising", where children were disguised as spirits to help them blend in with the souls flying around that night and provide added protection. Sorcery, druidism, rituals, phantoms, pagan festivals: I don't know why I haven't gotten into this earlier!

I was merely an observer this year, so unfortunately I've missed my chance to predict the future through communing with the spirits on the one day that the line between the living and dead becomes blurred. Now that I've scrubbed away the cynical Australian conception of Halloween, you can bet I'm going to have a huge one next year. Of course I have no idea where in the world I'll be this time next year, if only I had asked the Halloween ghosties...

U R SOOO SMART

CARETAKER MODE

No I'm not talking about the state of the Australian public service now that the 24 November election has been called, I'm talking about my life in Edinburgh. When I was planning out my travels (as well as agreeing to pre-determined dates for travel) I didn't really think about how this would impact my life up here. I always intended to take my time settling in, enjoy the Edinburgh festivals and find somewhere permanent to live without putting too much pressure on myself to find a job immediately. So I spent the last two weeks in August walking around, exploring, watching shows, soaking up the festival vibe, relaxing back into a more stable life after five weeks of travelling around Eastern Europe on a pretty tight schedule.

By the time I found my fantastic new flatshare and settled in here, it was early September. At this stage, my Greece trip was only four weeks away. I registered with three recruitment agencies but they weren't having much luck finding me short-term jobs. With their assurance that they could find me work once I returned from my holiday, I accepted that I was looking at another few weeks of unemployment, shifted into "caretaker mode" and resolved to tighten the purse strings. Drawing on some more of my Aussie savings, I had a fantastic time entertaining the friends I had visiting from London, York and Aus during the rest of September.

Greece was amazing, and on arriving back in the UK the first thing I did was contact all my recruiters in addition to signing on with a new agency. Two weeks in and still no work has eventuated. Now they're complaining that it's difficult to find roles that end before 30 November, which is my last day in Edinburgh before travelling to London and on to Australia for the summer. And it's not like I'm being fussy here. Despite my work background and experience, I've told them I'll fill in on reception, be a filing monkey, type letters, anything!

So I don't know if this is typical of the Edinburgh job market, whether they just don't go in for short-term temping assignments, or whether the four recruitment agencies I've chosen are completely rubbish. Regardless, the thought of another five weeks in caretaker mode with no income is annoying me immensely. I'm now inquiring about working at an internet cafe with one of my flatmates. The money is abysmal, but it might just mean I get paid to play on Facebook and piss around online. Which, if you think about it, technically makes it my dream job :-)

GREECE

I've just come back from a week of sailing, napping, drinking, eating, swimming, climbing, laughing and motorbiking in Greece. It was so much fun. There were 11 of us on the trip sailing two yachts: Cloud Nine (aka The Sausage Boat) and Suki. We flew into Preveza and collected the boats at Perigiali, which is on the island of Lefkada, then embarked on seven days of adventures that took us to ports and bays in Meganisi, Kefalonia, Ithaca, Kalamos and probably other islands I've forgotten.

The mornings were spent finding secluded bays in which to swim and eat lunch, afternoons were spent sailing and once docked in the evening we were free to explore, drink, go out for dinner, drink, dance, drink and swim. And drink. It was the perfect holiday.

I was a bit nervous about spending a week on a yacht, because I'm not exactly a big fan of either the sun or the sea, but it turned out to be fantastic. I went swimming every day, learned how to sail a yacht (well, little bits anyway), and ate enormous amounts of food despite thinking beforehand that I don't even like Greek cuisine. I should have known I could find delicious food anywhere!

I've made a list of some special achievements, many of which happened under the influence of alcohol and most of which are going to sound completely random out of context. Here goes:

FUNNIEST QUOTE: Brendan
His comment about spraining a nose on the second night was gold, then he excelled himself with his call about French birds after the Kiwis lost the rugby to France. Don't even ask.

MOST INJURIES: Judy
Whilst I shot into an early lead by cracking myself on the head with a banana lounge and bruising my backside after falling down a hole on the first day, Judy raced ahead by injuring her thumb, getting stung by a jellyfish, developing a nasty sun rash and getting some seriously impressive bruises in places even more uncomfortable than mine.

BEST DUMMY SPIT: Andy
After six days of skippering a yacht full of non-sailors without even raising his voice, an unprovoked assault of ice cubes by some tossers on the table behind us during the All Blacks game flipped him over the edge and he pelted them with bread, baskets and souvlaki. It was too funny. They left pretty quickly after that.

MOST STRATEGIC USE OF A CAMERA: Benny
Who would have thought it would be so useful to take a camera to the little bar in Frikes (a village with only 23 inhabitants)? Benny Benny Benny Benny! Watching the two stars of those photos looking at them the next day with absolutely no recollection of the events they captured was priceless. The poor young Greek barman is probably in therapy.

MOST CONSISTENTLY DRUNK AND DISORDERLY:
I won't name names, but someone woke up one night with her knickers around her neck and peanuts strewn all over her cabin. If that's not damn fine drunken behaviour I don't know what is. That same person also came in second for most memorable quote: while seven of us were having a loud and boisterous swim off the yacht at around 2am on our last night, the poor Germans in the neighbouring boat dared to shush us and got sworn at in reply. The exact words were "who the f*ck are you?" Hehe. How dare they expect a good night's sleep moored alongside Cloud Nine anyway? I thought everyone would have radioed ahead and warned people about us by then!

There are too many funny, drunken stories to recount here, and I don't particularly want to embarrass people (least of all myself) so I'll leave it at that. It was a fantastic holiday, and I'm braced for a huge comedown when I return to real life. But it was definitely worth it for the week-long high of a great holiday with awesome people and beautiful scenery. Aaahhh, the serenity.

MYSPACE SHITS ME

Sorry about the language, folks. It is true though. I've just moved all the blog entries below from Myspace to this site, so if you're reading them and it refers to lack of photos or other Myspace-related gripes that's why.

Now that Myspace is out of the way I just need to remember to check and update Blogspot, Facebook, Friends Reunited, Linked In, Monsterboard and four email accounts. I've also unearthed and deleted accounts I didn't even know I had with Bebo and Ringo, and am positive there are other little bits of information on me floating out there somewhere, I probably have old CVs splashed all over the net (..shudder..).

Maintaining a web presence is a fulltime job. If only someone would pay me for it.

BEING A BURGHER

I love being an Edinburgher. I love that Edinburgh is small enough to walk around, but has lots of things happening because of the festival. I love that there's a castle and cobblestones and an old town and wynds and steps and alleyways. I love that rent is cheap. I love that there are wide open green spaces. I love that there's a mountain in the middle of town that peeks out from behind buildings when you least expect it. I love that the castle is sitting on an extinct volcano. It's cool.

I've seen some really interesting festival shows, and am a bit nervous about how quiet the town will be when the madness ends.

EDINBURGH

So here I am, officially living in Scotland as of today. Hooray! I had such a great time on my last weekend in London. The highlights were a drunken pub crawl in Smithfield, watching a Scottish band in Kentish town, seeing a play in the West End, enjoying the sun at a picnic in Regent's Park, a curry dinner with a table of drunken friends, drinking bottles and bottles of wine at Gordon's Wine Bar, and my "official" farewell dinner in Whitechapel. Jeez louise, no wonder I'm feeling a bit knackered.

I've organised a room in a house with three Aussie blokes and a Scot for the next few weeks, and am planning to take it easy for a while and enjoy the Edinburgh festival. Given that I've never even visited Scotland before, there should be enough to keep me occupied in this city for a good few weeks.

TRANSYLVANIA

I've always wanted to travel to Transylvania, and given the tricky logistics of travelling around Romiania independently it all seemed too difficult to organise myself so I decided to join a tour group. I was a tad nervous about it, because I don't really react well to being told when to wake up and what to do with my day, but luckily it was a really good group. There were only five of us, so it would have been beyond tragic if the other people sucked. In the end it turned out to be a really fun week (whew!).

We met up in Budapest, and began with a scary 8-hour bus ride into Romania. The mostly-appalling Romanian music was so loud that the driver was wearing earplugs. Not earphones, ear PLUGS. Bizarre. We started off with a walking tour in Cluj-Napoca. Despite being anti-tour group in general, I really enjoyed learning the history of the city and the story behind the statues etc that I would normally photograph on the basis of prettiness then walk away from. Our tour guide had an amazing memory for facts and dates, and there was also a Russian girl on the tour who could engage with him about historical events and how they affected her country as well. Amazing. I'm so completely clueless, and even now I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned on the tour.

We also travelled to Sighisoara, which was a gorgous old walled town, Brasov with its Hollywood-style sign up in the hills, Bran, home of Dracula's castle, Sibiu, this year's European Capital of Culture, and stayed overnight in a teeny village called Sibiel. It was a great week. I saw just the right amount of castles and cobblestones and also managed to have a few nights' worth of drunken adventures. It was the end of my trip, so I was quite tuckered out from skipping around Eastern Europe and was actually very well-behaved and tame. Seriously. I still managed to let myself get snapped looking like a drunken fool in several photos though. Will I never learn?

BRATISLAVA

Bratislava was the scene of my first (and hopefully only) bout of food poisoning on this trip. Actually, I don't even think it was food poisoning, even though the food I ate there was completely bizarre, I think it was just a stomach bug. Whatever it was, my second day there was spent lying on my hostel bunk and dashing to the loo frequently. Luckily I fit lots of adventures into my first day!

Bratislava was the crummiest-looking place I've visited, except of course Katowice in Poland but I didn't stay there so it doesn't count. But once I walked around I discovered there was a really nice vibe about it. There were loads of people in cafes and outdoor restaurants, the old centre was buzzing with activiy, there were lots of sculptures and outdoor art in the public space. I just liked it.

I hooked up with a girl from the hostel and we went out for traditional Slovakian food. Well it was probably the most bizarre meal I've had in all my travels. I ordered a pancake with cheese and some dumplings. What I got was, well I don't really know what it was. I wish I could post some photos here for you, perhaps if I move my blog to another site I can do that.

Anyway, I thought the pancakes were going to be made of potato, and I guess it's possible it actually was potato, but it didn't look much like potato, and it tasted rubbery and glutinous and odd. And the pancakes were topped with grated cheese and tartare sauce. Yes, cheese and tartare sauce. The dumplings were even more obscure. After my fabulous experiences with dumplings in Poland I was no longer expecting the Asian-style delicacies, but these ones were also different to the ravioli-type dumplings of Poland. They were made of some type of gluggy, gelatinous substance and looked like solid tubes of pasta about 5cm long. They tasted a bit like Clag glue would if it was solid (or was I the only one who used to eat Clag as a child?). This was a main course dish, but the "dumplings" were topped with crushed poppy seeds and icing sugar. It was a very strange and not entirely pleasant flavour sensation.

After dinner I wandered around the old town looking at the sites. Bratislava is so small that I managed to see everything of note from the tourist map in a couple of hours. Unfortunately there weren't any opera or music concerts being performed that night, I thought that would have been a cool thing to see, so I went back to the hostel to see what the plan was for our evening's entertainment.

We ended up with a diverse group of about 12 people - Norwegians, Finns, Americans, Brits, one Chinese guy and myself - and headed out to a cellar lounge bar with a crappy DJ but nice comfy seats.We were laughing, drinking beer, smoking shisha, then the bar guy came over and gave us a free round of shots. I love free shots.

Free shots were followed by free food: he brought over these massive slabs of bread topped with butter and raw onion and plonked them in front of us, then moments later was back wheeling a little cart with some sausage and onion concoction inside it. He had a long wooden spoon that he scooped into the cart then thrust under everyone's nose until they took what was offered. It really was bizarre.

After that we headed out to another pub for more drinking and I got into a deep discussion with the Finnish guy about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world. It was good fun. The next day, not so fun. I managed to keep my stomach bug at bay long enough to crawl into town in the afternoon and treat myself to a two-hour Thai massage. It was amazing, very possibly the best I've ever had anywhere in the world.

The next day I caught a train to Budapest.

VIENNA

Wow! I'm so glad I let a cute guy in my hostel in Poland convince me to travel to Slovakia via Vienna. This city is great. I thought I would be intimidated by the classy artiness but it's actually really cool and inspiring.

After lazing around and drinking beer in Cesky Krumlov for two days I thought I'd be a bit more motivated and actually check out some sites during my one and a half days here in Vienna. I arrived off the train late Thursday afternoon and was almost knocked out by the intense heat. It was 39 degrees and baking sunshine, plus when I got to the hostel after only minor dramas (involving me getting lost and being set back on track with the help of a woman giving me directions in German) I found out my room was about 5 degrees warmer than it was outside. Yuck.

So I went out and explored a bit to get my bearings. I checked out some of the cool buildings in the Innere stadt (inner city) and then wandered around the Museum Quartier until the sun cooled off a little. There were loads of groovy galleries and spaces inside the Museum Quartier - I spent ages playing with this high tech painting thing where you press a digital pen to a palette then paint onto a computer-screen canvas on a table. Then when I finished, the chick there pressed a button and my picture was projected up onto the wall. Once again I've become painfully aware that I'm severely lacking in artistic talent, but it was heaps of fun scribbling away anyway. Plus the gallery was air conditioned :-)

That night I went to an outdoor film festival at Rathaus Park. It was a really festive atmosphere with loads of people drinking and eating. The giant film screen was set up in front of this gorgeous old building (which might actually be called Rathaus), and I watched part of a bizarre musical comedy set in Greece but spoken in German. I couldn't understand a word of course, but the exaggerated acting, corny costumes and cheesy dance moves were universal.

Yesterday I was up and at it again for more touristing and spent the day visiting some famous sites, buildings and palaces that I should probably write down somewhere before I forget what they were. One of my favourites was the Belvedere Museum which is actually an art gallery inside a palace. I love wandering around inside opulent buildings, and this was sufficiently opulent for my tastes. The gallery houses the original of Gustav Klimt's The Kiss, which is one of my favourites (for the uninitiated, an image of it can be seen here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/image:Gustav_Klimt_016.jpg).

After calling back into the hostel yesterday evening for some food and my second shower of the day, I set off on a mission to spook myself with some night-time wandering around the cemetary where Beethoven, Brahms and Schonberg have memorial tombs. I got a little distracted, however, when the tram passed a huge neon sign advertising the Harry Potter movie "Original English Version". So with visions of air-conditioned comfort I ditched my plans for a graveyard stroll and went to the cinema for the first time in over 7 months. I had missed the first 8 minutes of the film (which I figured were unlikely to be integral to the plot) but the dude still gave me a discount on the ticket which ended up costing me only 4 pounds or so. Hooray! Securing a bargain almost made up for the fact that there was no air conditioning.

So today is another travel day. I'll be checking out of this hostel in an hour and then have to make my way to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. I don't actually know how to get there, but its quite close to Vienna so I'm sure if I just show up at one of the train stations I'll be able to work something out.

Travelling is fun!

CESKY KRUMLOV

Cesky Krumlov was so much fun. I successfully negotiated my way there using my trusty phrasebook: getting a train ticket from Prague to Ceske Budjeovice then finding a local bus to take me on to Cesky Krumlov.

It's a small town located in southern bohemia with an amazing historical old town centre that is on the UNESCO world heritage list. The guidebook tells me it has mediaeval, renaissance and baroque architecture. Whatever it is it's so pretty to look at. The old town is almost completed ringed by a river, which means the town is attractive, easy to walk around, and you can swim, raft or float down the river in a tyre tube to cool off after a hard day's touristing.

I chilled out my first night there, recovering from all the hard work of Prague :-) then went exploring the next day. I have a fair few pictures, which are sitting on Facebook at the moment. So anyone who wants to see them has to join Facebook - hehe. My hostel was pretty cool, and I ended up hanging out with a bunch of Canadian lads most evenings. On my second night there we had a big drinking session that involved a bottle of Absinthe, a special spoon, some sugar, a lighter, and more than one hangover the next day.

My last night there we were joined by some others and went out for a Bohemian Feast complete with pitchers of wine. My new hostel roommate came along too - she was a 19 year old, haemophiliac, reformed vegan from California. She also turned out to be quite a hardcore drinker and she was soon stumbling around needing assistance to stand. Our bohemian feast took place on a table beside the river, and after dinner we were all sitting around chatting and finishing the wine. Somehow my roommate managed to drop a 100kc note (worth less than 3 pounds) into the river, and rather than let it go she dived in after it to chase it. That might have been just a funny drunk thing to do, except that the river at that point was only about 2 feet deep and was full of rocks.

She was lucky to escape with minor injuries. Her knee was all sliced up and pretty grotesque really, especially on a full stomach, but we carried her back home and one of the Canadians bandaged her up. Did I mention the haemophilia? There was blood all over the place, very gross. Unfortunately she was too drunk to take the hint and call it a night, so she went back out bar-hopping in the rain. And when I left this morning she was refusing to cancel her rafting trip or to see a doctor for stitches. Ah, the kids these days.

So now I'm about to board a shuttle for Linz, Austria, and will have to buy a train ticket on to Vienna. And I don't even have German in my Trusty Phrasebook - whatever shall I do??

PRAGUE

I survived the overnight train from Krakow without getting gassed and robbed of all my possessions, so that was a good start to my trip! Prague is a very photogenic city. Beautiful old buildings, bridges, the colours are lovely. I met up with four other Aussie girls, only one of whom I already knew, for a birthday weekend. Coordinating travel among people with different interests is always very tricky, so I didn't actually get to do a lot of the things I would normally do in a new town. Namely wandering aimlessly and stopping at local pubs and food stalls to sample the delights.

We didn't venture outside the tourist traps, and I've since found out we were paying 3 times the going rate for alcohol, but it was still a nice sample of what the city has to offer. I wouldn't mind coming back one day, maybe for a weekend trip, and getting to know Prague a little better.

Now I'm in Cesky Krumlov, a small town deep in the south of bohemia. I LOVE it here, and will write a separate entry if I ever get around to it :-)

KRAKOW

Krakow is fantastic. I spent yesterday wandering around the Stare Miasto (Old Town) soaking up all the gorgeous old buildings and cobblestoned streets. The Rynek Glowny is a huge square in the middle of the old town and is apparently the largest medieval town square in Europe. Walking into the square and seeing the huge church, town hall tower and cloth hall opened out before me was just so amazing. I love the look of medieval cities, especialy walled cities. Krakow's old wall has been mostly pulled down and replaced with a 'green belt' which is pleasant to stroll along, but they've kept the main city gate and part of the wall as well as a very cool barbican out the front.

I also explored Wawel Castle, wandered along the river Wisla, had a snooze in the park until I was woken by an old man speaking Polish at me, then headed into Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter, where they have some very cool bars (as well as more historical stuff of course!).

I decided to be cultural last night, and started the evening by dragging some friends from my hostel along to a chamber music performance held in the 17th century baroque Church of St Peter and St Paul. It was so lovely. The program was perfect for my attention span - ie short - and consisted of 'popular', recognisable classics by Chopin, Bach and Pachelbel. It was very atmospheric, and not at all bad for the 4 pound ticket price.

After that we went into Kazimeirz and sampled some Polish cocktails in one of the cool bars I'd spotted earlier in the day. My favourite was Zubrowka vodka (which is infused with Bison grass) mixed with apple juice and cinnamon. Yum. I'm really enjoying the Polish food as well. I've had loads of dumplings, which I expected to be like Asian dumplings but are actually more like ravioli, and I've also had a delicious wild mushroom soup twice now. The last time it was served in a carved out cob loaf - mmmm.

Last night after a few drinks we decided to try a zapiekanka which appears to be the Polish equivalent of a kebab in that it is served out of tiny holes in the wall and eaten by young people in the wee hours. It's half a long bread roll with tomato, mushroom, cheese and other toppings with some very addictive sauces added to the mix. Part of me is hoping the food in the rest of the countries I'm visiting won't be as delicious, otherwise I'll head back to the UK looking like a dumpling.

I still have two days left here, but I'll spend most of tomorrow at Auschwitz. Can't say I'm really looking forward to that, but I feel like I have to go.

I'm very excited because I booked my overnight train trip to Prague yesterday by speaking phrasebook Polish. And from what I can understand on the ticket, I may even have got what I was trying to ask for. Ooh, hope I didn't just jinx myself. Will let you know in my next entry!

FARMS, FIELDS AND FORESTS

That was my first impression of Poland after flying in to land at Katowice airport. I'm very impressed that I've made it here to the hostel, as the journey today involved me having to leave the house at 7.30am which rarely works out well. I took a tram to Amsterdam Centraal station, a train to Eindhoven, a bus to Eindhoven airport, flew to Katowice, then caught a shuttle bus to Krakow. I'm now sitting in the hostel, having a bit of a rest and nursing my blisters before heading out later tonight.

I don't have anything exciting to write yet because I just arrived. My only observations to date are:

a) The airport guy guiding in the plane didn't have any of those ping-pong bats that other airplane waver people use. He must feel very sad about that, I know I do.

b) Katowice itself has some truly hideous buildings. I don't have the vocabulary to describe how ugly they are. However I did pass a humungous Ikea, so I presume the insides of those abominable buildings are full of clean and practical furnishings.

c) It appears as though many Polish men are attractive, although its possible I'm just hallucinating from lack of sleep.

That's it for now. I'll write again next time I can get access to the hostel internet machine.

I'm in Krakow!

NETHER-NETHER LAND

I'm really loving being in the Netherlands. I arrived Friday night and was collected at Eindhoven airport by an Australian mate who I haven't seen in way too many years. He lives in this little village called s'Hertegenbosch so we drove straight there past fields and cows and dykes. All very stereotypical - peaceful and quaint and lovely.

The next day was his wedding so I drove to Veght in a car with his mum, the best man (a Brazilian), another Aussie friend and her English partner. The five of us were the only foreigners invited, we were all left in a car alone together, so naturally we got lost on the way to the wedding. At one stage we received a frantic phone call from the bride, who must have been keeping an eye on us from the lead car, saying "What are you doing? You're heading towards Utrecht!". It was really quite amusing, mainly because we had the mother of the groom, the best man and the wedding rings with us so the wedding literally could not start until we got there. Hehe.

When we finally arrived at the wedding ceremony venue (which was a castle!) - impressively only 7 minutes late - we were treated to the largest collective glare I've ever been subjected to in my life. It was very amusing. The wedding ceremony itself was lovely. I was one of only 3 people in the room who didn't have a clue what was being said, but the celebrant seemed very nice and got a few laughs from the crowd so it all seemed to be good.

The next day I hitched a ride to Amsterdam with the other two Australian/English guests. It's really been so cool being driven around the countryside and seeing more than just the coffee houses in Amsterdam. I saw some windmills and a decent amount of grass and cows, and now imagine I have a rough idea of how the country is laid out. Seeing as I get lost driving around a roundabout, the idea that I know where I'm going is completely illusory but I'm enjoying it nonetheless.

I'm staying in Amsterdam the next two nights, crashing at the home of the Brazilian best man who I met for the first time yesterday. It's fabulous, he's about one block from the Heineken Brewery which I forsee will be quite handy. Tonight we wandered around the streets, ate dinner at a Peruvian restaurant, drank copious amounts of wine, and generally unwound. I drank half a bottle of Chardonnay by accident. I'm not exactly a chardy kind of girl, but somehow when my Brazilian friend spoke Dutch to order a Chilean sauvignon blanc from the Romanian waitress, a few wires got crossed. Perhaps I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was.

Tomorrow I'm going to head to the Heineken Brewery, maybe the Van Gough museum if I feel the urge to be cultural, and just wander around. Last time I was here I didn't go to any museums or sites, and now I remember why. It's such a beautiful city. I'd much rather walk around beside the canals, sit in the parks and people watch than pay however many Euros to walk inside a building filled with images and relics created and used by loads of dead chaps. Amsterdam is just so beautiful and there's so much going on that doesn't involve queueing up to part with loads of cash. As you can tell, I'm not really a museum type of person.

I'm here until Tuesday morning then heading on to Poland, which will be interesting because I've not been there before. Adventures, adventures.

I love being on holiday!!

HOMELESS AGAIN

I've moved out of my apartment in preparation for a month of travels around Eastern Europe and am now couch-surfing for a few days at the homes of some of my wonderful friends. I moved out of the house on the weekend, I'm still working every day until Thursday, then flying out Friday.

I've discovered that I am distinctly bereft of talent in the field of logistics. My entire life is basically 4 suitcases and a backpack which I'm leaving with various friends in London while I travel. I've been carting the bags all across town and dropping off ones that contain my non-work-clothes and non-holiday things while hanging onto everything else until I don't need it anymore. Can you imagine me last Saturday morning trying to decide what I needed to wear, read, write in, and generally have access to for the next five weeks in situations ranging from a professional meeting with a corporate sponsor today to sweltering in a Romanian heatwave this time next month? The only reason I show up looking semi-decent to work each day is because I only have five different outfits. Actually I only have four, but my job lets me wear jeans on Fridays so I'm hoping they haven't noticed. The point is, I'm not well know for my forward-planning ability.

I've been having mental conniptions trying to work out if I should leave my boots with my Monday-night luggage drop-off buddy, or whether I need to keep them with me until I get to my Wednesday-night friend's house. Whether it's worth hanging onto my favourite top in case I go out for dinner on Thursday or whether I should put it in the bag with the clothes I don't think I'll have occasion to wear in the next 4 days. I'm driving myself barmy. I've ended up with such a complex schedule of bag relocations and got myself so confused that at one point on Sunday, a mate carried my backpack all the way to his house only to receive a phone call from me twenty minutes later asking if he could bring it back because all my work clothes were in there.

And moving luggage around London is not very fun at all. Twice so far I've had to hop on the London Underground during peak hour while carting multiple suitcases. I've just had to barge my way into the sardine tin and deal with the glares as my mini suitcases take up a precious square foot that could have held two people squished in tightly. Tomorrow morning I'll be facing the peak hour tube with a backpack, daypack and shoulder bag. Wish me luck...

BUILDING COLLAPSE

I can never think of anything exciting to write on this site anymore, then when something super-exciting happened the other week I forgot to tell anyone about it.

The building across the road from my work office collapsed for no apparent reason. I should mention that I work about 200 metres away from Scotland Yard and just a few blocks from the Houses of Parliament, so there was a bit of a terrorist scare being fed by the media coverage of it.

I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday around 4.15pm, we were all working away in our fourth floor office, when suddenly there was this huge rumbling sound. It sounded like a mix between a landslide (which I haven't actually heard in real life) and a dumptruck tipping up its contents into the street. It went on for much longer than that would have taken though. We all looked at each other, and thought that maybe a truck ran into the building across the road.

When we peeked out the window there was black dust and smoke pouring out of the corner street. Seeing as I didn't hear a bomb-type noise and was relatively confident we weren't being lured out on the street in order to be blown up, I decided that it was ok to run outside the building and have a look at what was going on.

It was very cool: the whole top two floors of the building had slipped off into the street below, and parts of window and wall were dangling precariously out over the edge. We saw a few dust-covered people unhurriedly walking out of the street but didn't hear anyone calling out for help. There was this big pile of rubble in the middle of the road with huge blocks of concrete. The scariest part was that if the building had collapsed on a Friday, there would have been stacks of people out on that street drinking beers. There was no way anyone who was squashed under that rubble would have been walking home that night.

Eventually the police got there (200 metres - bit of a trek) and shooed us all away. The best part was watching the dodgy home video/mobile phone pictures and speculation start to pop up on Sky News and the BBC. It was about 30 minutes before the collapse appeared on the Sky ticker, then after that they were running stories about a possible bomb and quoting eyewitnesses who said they heard a bang. Hmm, whatever.

I didn't find out until the next day that there was one guy trapped up inside the building. He broke a few bones and had to sit under a collapsed building for the 9 hours it took to free him, but he didn't die so I figure I'm allowed to enjoy the whole building collapse incident without feeling guilty.

I don't think people know exactly why it collapsed. I hear that they were renovating inside and that might have caused it. The street has been blocked off ever since and I got to see them pull it all apart. The best bit was when they craned out all the motorbikes that had been parked on the street under the building. I was up on the fourth floor when I saw a motorbike flying past the window. You don't see that every day. The bikes were completely pummeled. I took some photos on my phone but don't know if they'll post online very well.

Anyway, that's it! That's my exciting post for this week/month/year!

FACEBOOK IS FUN

I've recently signed up to Facebook, which is much more fun than I expected it to be. Rumour has it that Orlando Bloom is on there under a false name. It's now my mission to find him

EUROVISION

I invited some people around to my house to watch the Eurovision final the other week. I've never seen Eurovision before, but have heard tales of gloriously tacky costumes and fabulously crap performances. I figured it sounded like my kind of thing, and it definitely was. There were 24 European countries competing, only one or two I had never heard of, and it was accompanied by the commentary of an Irish guy called Terry Wogan. He basically pays out everyone and everything the whole way through, it's hilarious.

For those who care about such things, my favourites were the groups from the Ukraine and Greece. The saddest, most pathetic entries were definitely those from Ireland and England. Scootch were total rubbish. Somehow I knew all the words to their song, though. Must be some type of cultural osmosis.

It was a really good night. In what I can only assume is typical of Eurovision parties the world over, I was drunk by the end of the program and couldn't even remember who won when asked the next day. I'm thinking of doing the Eurovision 2007 Finalists tour of European countries. Anyone else want to come along?

CLIMBING LADDERS AND SLIDING DOWN POLES

Just realised I didn't write the promised entry about my adventures in Bournemouth (FIVE weeks ago now, I really need to get online more often). Bournemouth is a seaside town about two and a half hours from London, renowned for its long sandy beaches. Bournemouth is apparently also popular for stag/hens nights; three people at work told me that while they couldn't actually remember much about when they were there, they knew that it was fun. I headed down to the seaside to spend time with a fabulous friend I met in Vietnam. Because she's equally as paranoid about internet psychos as me, perhaps even more so if that's possible, I'll just call her R.

I arrived on a Friday and night and thankfully, we had a quiet night in. This had followed the almost endless procession of boozy nights that I wrote about in my last entry, so I was a bit knackered. Saturday we were racing around madly buying costumes and party decorations for a 30^th birthday party that evening. The theme was 1960s/1970s, and oddly we were able to buy brand new dresses right off the rack that matched the 60s theme perfectly. Fashion is weird.

The reason we were so pressed for time on Saturday is because we spent the middle part of the day at the local fire station. Here's the story: the previous weekend, R and the birthday girl had been walking home during the wee hours of the morning having imbibed one too many alcoholic concoctions and decided it would be a good idea to ring the intercom at the local fire station and invite the firemen along to the upcoming party. After undoubtedly providing amusement for the sober fire-chaps, the gals were invited over for a tour of the fire station the next weekend. So when I arrived, I became one of five giggling girlies buzzing the intercom at the fire station at lunch time.

It was very cool. I think there were about seven firemen there: tall, well-built, the usual deal. They were cooking up a barbecue and had some seriously gourmet salad and pasta dishes as well. The lunch time conversation was suitably ribald, as you would expect with five single gals sitting around a table with seven somewhat star-struck firemen. The best part came after lunch, where we got a tour of the station and all had the chance to slide down the fireman pole. By the time it was my turn the firemen were all down the bottom, and I was picturing a Bridget Jones-type moment with my fat behind landing on someone's head. As it was I squeaked down the pole sooo slowly it was embarrassing. It looked much higher from the top than it actually was, I probably could have jumped down faster than I slid.

Next we all dressed up in fireman safety overalls, helmet, and harness in preparation for a trip on that huge extendable ladder thing that they use to fight fires that are ten floors up from the ground. It's like a cherry-picker, but it goes much much higher in the air. We were clipped on to the side of the 'basket' bit and went up for a look around. It was really cold that high up, and I got to see more of Bournemouth than I ever had before (or have since). I also got to peek at the neighbours who thought they were having a private barbie in their fully-enclosed back yard. Hehe.

After that it was time to bid farewell to our friendly fire-fighters. In the end a couple of them did actually turn up at the 30^th birthday party, which was a fabulous evening of drinking, daggy music and disco dancing. R tells me the party was filmed, and apparently I'm in pretty much every shot. Great.

LIVING IT UP IN THE BIG CITY

I've had a very crazy couple of weeks over here. Disco Steve had two friends visiting on their way home from a year in south america, and lo and behold they turned out to be as amazing, fun and fantastic as all the other friends I've made since moving to London. So naturally we went out every night of the week to celebrate that fact.

I literally went out every night for about 8 days straight, getting home after 2am and dragging my tired and sorry self out of bed at 7am to go to work. Then on the weekend I went down to Bournemouth for a 60s/70s themed 30th birthday and had enough adventures there to warrant a separate blog entry. Hopefully I'll get around to writing that memory down before the brain cells storing it are wiped out by a huge binge-fest.

I suspected that I might be pushing myself a bit hard when I fell asleep through the first half of a play. It was The Hound of the Baskervilles, a comedy at the Duchess Theatre, and it was actually really funny. The reason I know it was funny, apart from a vague recollection of laughter floating through my tired brain as I napped, was that they started the second half of the play with a 5-minute condensed version of the first half. That was very cool, I laughed so much that I stayed awake.

I've slowed down a little since those heady days of two weeks ago - I think I had one night home last week, and I've already had one this week too (see Mum, I'm looking after myself!).

Interestingly, I've become intimately acquainted with the effects of sleep deprivation on my mood and I think I've actually reduced the amount of hours I need to sleep each night. So really, you could say that what I've been doing over here is of scientific value. I could write a thesis on how the effects of sleep deprivation and alcohol consumption are moderated by social interaction across various environments.

Or I could just go to the pub.

PLAYING PIRATES IN PENZANCE

I have to preface this entry with the caveat that because it's been a number of weeks since Easter, I can't really remember exactly what we did, or if some of the things I think happened actually occured in real life or only in my imagination. I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, let alone some crazy adventures that happened weeks ago. Maybe I'll check my diary next time I'm home and remind myself of what we did - I remember it being much more exciting than it sounds below!

Easter long weekend: Adam, Sarah and I hired a car and drove to Cornwall. This trip is where all the new photos on my myspace page come from. As most of you know I'm occasionally known to be less than organised, so because I didn't arrange insurance in advance and Sarah is "between licences", Adam had to drive all the way to Cornwall himself. 5 hours. God bless him. The most energetic part for me was leaning over the driver to snap photos of Stonehenge as we whizzed past at [insert legal speed limit here] miles per hour. I can tick Stonehenge off the "things to see" list now...

We drove through five counties on the way there, and Cornwall was sooo pretty. We were staying in Newquay, which was a tacky seaside touristy place. Even so, it was a short stroll to the cliffs overlooking what appeared to be a surf beach, even though there weren't any waves. Those crazy British people.

The next day we went to St Ives and took some very nice photos. Couldn't be arsed climbing down the hill into the town and checking it out properly, but we got some pictures so that's all that matters, right? Then we went on to Penzance - yay! Strangely, we were the only adults walking around Penzance wearing an eye patch and skull-and-crossbones bandana while carrying swords and saying things like "yee-har me hearties". I was a bit surprised by that. I've tried to upload a couple of videos showing off our sword-fighting expertise, so check that out if you feel like a laugh.

We ended the day at Land's End, the westernmost point of the English mainland (I think). We were warned that it was tacky and disappointing because of the theme park built on top of the cliffs (hence the gigantic TARDIS in my photo) but we spent a couple of hours wandering south along the cliff tops and the views were just spectacular. It was a warm, sunny day. It was fantastic. I had a little nap on the mossy ground while the others took photos and gazed out across the ocean. So lovely. Topped off by watching a magnificent sunset. Living in Australia and Vietnam, I've hardly ever seen the sun set into the ocean, it was breathtaking.

On the way back to London the next day we stopped at The Eden Project (http://www.edenproject.com/). It's main features are these two huge bubbles/biomes which recreate a Humid Tropical and a Warm Temperate environment. The warm tropics one was incredible. When you walk in the humidity takes a little while to hit you, so it's not like stepping off the plane in Darwin or Bangkok, but after you've wandered around for a while it's a very genuine sweaty tropics experience. Being surrounded by the familiar dark green trees and leaves, warm air and almost-jungle smells made me feel a bit nostalgic for Bougainville or Thailand. I wasn't so keen on the warm temperate one, probably because I've never been to the Mediterranean or south america. And it wasn't warm in there. Pretty flowers though.

So that was it, we drove back into London and lived happily ever after. Adam and Sarah don't have myspace profiles, so they can't even add a comment here to remind me of all the things I forgot to say. If anything comes back to me in a blinding flash of inspiration I'll add it myself.

The internet cafe dude just said they're closing now, so I'll have to update you on the last two weeks next time I'm online. Cripes, maybe I'll write it down somewhere else first. Stay tuned!