midnight musings - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Awful visited Mar 26, 2006
I've been reorganising my blog. You can tell because it suddenly looks like I was last in Bulgaria. I wasn't. I have now uploaded all interesting photos I have for our Helsinki to Istanbul trip. I think. I haven't yet written anything about Hungary or Romania though, but I'll get there eventually. I suggest that if you want to see current posts, you click on the "date visited" link above, as the "date posted" order is misleading. To see past posts, the best way is by going to "trip itineraries" in the side bar to the right here, and pick the one you want. Brisbane's all a bit dull at the moment. It seems I've been away too long. Although I still know people here, I haven't met any new people for many years, and have lost contact with pretty much all my acquaintances. I still have a few good friends here, but they are all used to leading their lives without me, or we are now in different places, or something. Oh, and most of my friends seem to have moved to Sydney or Melbourne, which is also a problem! So, I spend my days doing uni work (or trying to avoid doing uni work) and hanging out at home. It's probably really good for me right? No distractions from my studies? argh!!!

Distracted... - Brisbane, Australia
visited Mar 20, 2006
Uni is turning out to be pretty busy. Turns out that at Masters level they're serious when they say "full-time". And, to make it even less likely that I will write much to this blog in the next few months, I've had to start a blogspot.com blog for one of my subjects. I'm doing a subject about technology in second language learning, and part of our assessment is to keep a blog where we reflect upon our teaching and learning experiences. It's interesting, but all my subjects seem to require me to be reflective. Perhaps we'll all end up qualified to be mirror balls as well as teachers... Anyway, the new blog is officially my "Serious Blog" and can be found here: www.nontravelblog.blogspot.com And, just for good measure, here is a photo of me in my new glasses. It seems I've been far too studious and wrecked my eyes. It isn't fun.

Cert. TESOL class of 2002 - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Great visited Mar 10, 2006
I discovered recently that over half of my Cert. TESOL classmates were in Brisbane, and decided to organise a dinner party so we could all meet up. Thanks to the wonderful Eileen for hosting and to everyone for coming. It was great to see Juz for the the first time since the course, I think, and to meet his wife Maggie. Another new face was Marlin, Mal and Dave's new baby.

Mardi Gras Again - Sydney, Australia
This place was Amazing visited Mar 4, 2006
Having been in Brisbane a total of 6 days, it was obviously time to leave again, so I spent Mardi Gras weekend with Kate in her fancy new house in Sydney. It was, of course, great to spend time with Kate again (after a whole 9 days of separation!!) and Mardi Gras was a great excuse for us to dust off our tail coats and top hats. It was all a bit of a re-run of last year, as we were with the same float which had the same theme (repeal the same-sex marriage ban) and the same props, pretty much, and we were in the same outfits, but it was still fun as always. Other floats were all quite different, with a couple of decent political ones, and some inexplicable ones (the Ikea float? The Lincraft float? huh?) and some impressive ones (the Ikea float, the lincraft float... hmmm). On Sunday afternoon Kate had organised some of her friends to come over for a houswarming/welcome home/meet the girlfriend party, so I got a chance to meet a few more people I had been hearing about for most of a year, and catch up again with those I had met before. It was really nice to sit around and listen to a bunch of highly educated australians disecting current affairs - something I don't exactly get a lot of overseas. It was very nice. We also went for a walk around Kate's scarily perfect "village living" created suburb. Thankfully she lives right on the edge of it, as the rest all gets a little bit too "Truman Show" with perfect lawns and matched (though all slightly different and "individual") houses and apartment blocks in shades of beige. The perfect blue sky added considerably to the impression, I suppose! Anyway, now I'm back in hot and very sticky Brisbane, I had better get on with catching up on the two lectures I missed while I was away! I'll post photos soon, I promise.