more from last weekend

More from my weekend in the Hakone region!
This isn't some google earth image, but a shot from the cable car over the valley at Owakudani. I don't know what they were doing, but it was something they were doing with the sulfuric gases and steam that shoots out of the ground all over this volcanic region. If anyone has any idea what exactly they are doing, do let me know!
And at Gora station, you can eat hot sands!

And at Chokoku mori station, you put your rubbish in a "dust port". It sounds so high-tech. Like something you would find in a spaceship.
The cable car that took us to Owakudani was keen for us not to open the door of the capsule and tumble to our deaths hundreds of metres below: "A door is automatic and opens and closes it. Please do not hit a handle here"

What a weekend

I had 4 days off this weekend, which means going back to school tomorrow is going to be quite a shock to the system! I spent my first day off doing testing for Cambridge (I'm an official Oral Examiner for the lower level Cambridge exams now!), and then two amazing days in the Hakone region, and then today I spent doing pretty much nothing, except, of course, going out for sushi with Gloria.

I collected a heap of photos of funny stuff this weekend, so I'll blog them in batches over this week. Here's the first lot:
First, another vending machine. This one serves cups of drink, either hot or cold. The reason for the photo though, is the tv screen on it. So many things here have tv screens. Even the price tags on the shelves in shops are sometimes tv screens bombarding you with little tinny advertising jingles. This TV screen has the words "Vendor Vision" under it. I found it amusing!

My first example of Itarian. This was not far from the vietnamese restaurant where I had dinner with a friend on Thursday night after the testing.

This was a sign outside a bar in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. My theory is that they are trying to be a "coconut disco". God knows why though.

Magnetic Island - Townsville, Australia
visited Nov 22, 2006
I forgot magnetic island! Which is a pity, because it was a nice place. We got into horseshoe bay after dark, and woke to find it was a nice bay with a good beach and plenty of other yachts, and well set up for yachties. We went ashore and explored the one street of civilisation (fresh milk! yay!) and had a real coffee (pity it was awful...), then caught a bus to the beginning of the track up to the old army forts and look outs and whatnot that are still there from WWII. It was nice to have a good walk after a few days of relative inactivity. In Horseshoe Bay we also discovered a great shop called Maroon'd, which said it sold "survival products for people". While at first glance this could be mistaken for a gift shop (it did sell candles, soaps, scented things and other trinkets) it also seemed to manage to stock at least one of nearly everything you can think of. There was a second book section, a pet section, a crocodile meat (with recipes!) section, they had pharmaceuticals, every type of spark plug ever made, bike gear, fishing gear, swimmming gear, boat parts, shoes, small gold anchors (for your small gold boat perhaps?) and even a boatswains whistle. And there was an internet computer. And it was all in a room about the size of my living room at home. Pretty amazing, really, and quite unexpected on the wrong side of a small island! (the main civilisation on magnetic is on the other side of the island). We ended up leaving later than planned (probably due to the hour spent in the shop!) and headed into Townsville proper to find the marina berth that had been booked.

Another hat gone...

Waa. I've lost my hat. I stopped at a bakery on my way to school this morning to buy something for breakfast, and shoved my hat in my jacket pocket as I went inside. As it was pretty warm, I didn't feel the need to put it back on when I came out, so didn't even think of it until I got to school 5 minutes later, and went to put it in my drawer in the teachers room. It wasn't in my pocket. And I don't know where it is! I've even retraced my steps, and asked at the bakery (in japanese!) but no luck. Grr. It wasn't a perfect hat. It was brown flat cap of the style I have been wearing for years now, but it had a tendency to slip upwards and sit too high, but I only bought it 3 months ago (in Edinburgh) and it was my current best hat. I do have one other, but it's sort of... fluffy. I don't do fluffy very well.
And thinking about it, I seem to have some sort of curse that means my hats are never allowed to last more than 3 months or so. I think my record might be 6 months or so for the one I bought in Brescia last april and left in a bulgarian supermarket in about november.
So let's have a moment of mourning for Yet Another Lost Hat. And for the fact that I will now have to wear a fluffy hat.

Today's crop

This is from my outing to Ueno in Tokyo today. My travel blog has more info. These green signs seem to be approaching the issues of smoking and littering from intersesting angles. In case you can't read them, the first one says "Cigarette smoke is wider than a human body" and the other one says "Some people throw trash in the street. Other people have to clean it up" The first person in the trash picture is labelled "Bad Smoker" and the other three are labelled "Street Cleaner", just in case you didn't get the message!


And this is a snack I bought at the 99yen shop that was slightly disappointing. They didn't provide nearly as much joy as promised!


And another one I couldn't get a picture of was a girl's shirt that said in large letters "ABSOLUTELY" and underneath it said "Be Pleased to Do". "Do what?" I ask!

Another shirt last week: "Orange Peel". No idea why. It was an orange shirt though.

And the Turkish restaurant I went to tonight had a tri-lingual menu, and the english was full of cuteness. For a main course we had a choice of, among others, "Lattatouille" or "Raviori". Other than that, they'd done a pretty good job, really, and the food was lovely - very authentic, I think.

Photos from my life lately

So here are a selection of photos from the last month or so that seem blog-worthy but never made it into a post at the appropriate time. They are in random order.
Halloween: I didn't see the makeup until I got home (thanks Gloria!). If you can't guess, I was a spider web. And I think Nami maky have been a pumpkin. I never really worked it out!

This was my lunch at school the other day. Pretty typical. I'm hooked on the Miso soup!


Gloria and I saw this band (I think they're called One Star) play in Shinjuku a few weeks ago. The lead guitarist is an old student of hers. They were really good, and the tiny little basement bar was a fantastic venue!
This is Okonomiyaki. Eggy pancakey omlettey thing. With sauce and mayonaise on top. Oh, and the girls who came over and made it, of course!

Later that night they gave me a birthday cake! With candles! (7 of them!)

And this is from a different night when we had Nabe, which is a sort of stew thing. It was utterly delicious. For some reason it made sense to have the lid of the Nabe pot on my head at this moment. I don't know why. We weren't even drunk!


This is the view from the corridor outside our teachers room at school I love gazing at the lines of mountains in the distance, and often the sunsets are beautiful!

And a different sunset from a different window in the same corridor.

And this, believe it or not, is a golf driving range. It's also visible on the other side of the same corridor.

I am utterly addicted to sushi. This is the 100yen sushi train that I have been to at least once a week since we discovered it. Before that we were going to one that was much further away. I will have to take a photo of some of the actual sushi at some point. It's such a pretty food!


And the train. I don't have to catch a train to work, which I am very grateful for. This picture was an evening train, with hardly any people on it, but you still never get a seat. In the worst of the rush hour you are lucky if you can even breathe.

There are more, so stay tuned, and I'll post them in the next few days sometime. I also put a heap of Harajuku photos on my travel blog, so check them out too!

More engrish pics.

Look a second post in a day! I've been sorting photos, and thought I'd better blog them while I knew which ones were which!

My favourite nut mix for my relax time:

And this (from Meiji Shrine in Harajuku) made me feel there was something lost in the translation. It's like the opposite of Chinese. I remember when I went to the Imperial City, there would be three chinese characters, and the english translation would be about a page long!

This isn't Engrish. The sausage-y thing just looked disgusting, somehow!

And this is the most elaborate pocky I've ever seen. I'm wondering if "decorer" has something to do with the french. Not with shampoo. Either way, they were yummy!

I like Japaneeeese

I've been going to Free Japanese Lessons at something called the Sagamihara International Lounge since about the first week I arrived here. It's a great system. They have 4 or 5 sessions each week of these free lessons, taught by volunteer teachers, and the only thing they ask is 200yen (about AU$2.30) per month as a photocopying fee. Well worth it. There mut be about 10 or 15 little groups all working at different levels each session, all in one room. I've been lucky enough to nearly always have a teacher to myself, as I was sort of adopted by one teacher on my first saturday session. Unfortunately I started finding saturdays too hard (there's too much else to do on the weekends!) and started coming on wednesdays, even though I'm permanently an hour late for the two hour session! I joined a group that was only slightly behind where I was, but, due to doing some extra work in my free time at school and going to this Saturday's session as well (not to mention my natural ability to pick up languages), I'm going to be way too far ahead for that group next time, so I'll have to ask to change, and that's going to be a pain! But it does show the fliexibility of the many-small-groups system. If one person progresses faster than the others they can be promoted to a group already working on the next chapter of the book (we all use the same book, which makes it easier to know exactly where you're up to). I wonder if this could be made to work in an english school at any point. hmm.

Oh, and the lessons are held in a building called the "Fuchinobe Promity Building" whatever that means!

And, because I can't do anything so boring as a post without a picture, here are a couple I took in Harajuku a couple of weeks ago. I had forgotten about them!

A Classy Jewelers:

And a 100yen belt:

Happy Birthday to me!

So, I have just (9 minutes ago) entered my late twenties. It's a little scary, really! But I'll get over it!
So I have (already) celebrated in style - I had some... er... japanese associates (we would *never* associate with students outside of the university!) over to cook me okonomiyaki. Which is basically a kind of eggy pancakey omelet with cabbage and pork or any of a variety of other ingredients in it. I've been hearing about it for a while now, so it was good to see what it actually was. The party was at my place, but we went shopping together first, so I didn't have to prepare anything (except the mad flat-tidying I did yesterday), and they cooked it all, and cleaned up after, so it was wonderful! The easiest sort of party to have. Of course, having 7 people over for dinner when you only have 2 chairs, 2 plates, one bowl, one glass etc. was interesting, but they all put up with it very well. My yoga mat makes a good place to sit, and Marcus and Gloria (who live in the same building) brought their own bowls and whatnot, so we managed!
I hadn't expected an actual birthday party, as we had been talking about an Okonomiyaki party for weeks, and it was just coincidence it was today. But the others got me a surprise birthday cake! It was lovely, although incredibly creamy and rich! I still have a piece left for tomorrow, when I've recovered from this party!

Trains, bars and arabian rock.

First of all, this from Enoshima last week (actually at Fujisawa station):

And a very popular platform it was too.


Then I noticed this at one of the stations on the odakyu line as I was coming home this evening.

Do you think they mean "REquest"? or seek? Is it an ad for a modelling agency? Or a salon that does scary things to you to try to expose your beauty within?

Then there was this. But I'm not so sure about it. It's either a hilarious instance of the oh so common l/r mixup, or someone actually thought they were being funny, in which case, er, it isn't.
This place isn't actually Engrish, but I think it fits here anyway. It really needs the audio, but I decided to save everyone and not record it. It's easy enough to imagine though. It was playing "Arabian" music. By which I mean Arabian Nights from the Disney Aladdin movie. Then it moved on to A Whole New World from the same film. I didn't hang around to see if it had the whole soundtrack going!

And this just sounds messy:

Engrish fix

So it has been pointed out to me that I haven't posted any engrish up here for a while. I have excuses. For a start, I was all fired up to put all this up on Saturday, but blogger was having problems and wouldn't do it for me. The next excuse is that these pics have all been sitting on my camera. One of the drawbacks to a 1gb card, is that there isn't quite the same level of motivation to get the pics off the camera as there was when I only had a 256mb card! And finally, I haven't posted any written engrishes because I've discovered I have an absolutely terrible memory for the exact wordings, and it often really matters.
Enough excuses: here they are:
I like the way my grapefruit juice orders me around. But nicely.

Huh?

Team and band names here get quite, er, creative.
Ok, so this one isn't engrish at all. I just wanted a record of the first box of Pocky I ate here. It was good!

Non-japanese ridiculousness!

Look what I found! A must for all the Monty Python fans and Holy Grail seekers! The Black Beast of Aaaaaargh or the rabbit with Nasty Big Sharp Pointy Teeth! If I could stand soft toys, I'd want them! Of course, I could always by the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch to destroy them when they began to irritate me!

In other news, I have a great backlog of japanese ridiculousnesses that also need uploading here. I've had to start ignoring some, to be honest, as I see about 5 or 6 noteworthy engrishes a day. It's all getting too much for me!

In other other news, I went to see Little Miss Sunshine at the Tokyo International Film Festival on saturday. IT was fantastic! Thanks to Sean for the blogged recommendation! The blurb I found in the program here nearly put me off entirely (I wasn't interested in a dysfunctional family driving to a kids beauty pageant) but it's actually a brilliant film. My friend Gloria and I were the only ones (in the enormous theatre comparable to the Lyric Opera in Brisbane) laughing for the first half. I can only assume the japanese subtitles didn't catch the subtle humour! They all caught up in the second half though, and the film won the audience award for the festival!

The rest of Saturday was spent at a university festival, eating slightly dodgy traditional japanese food, and then seeing an alternative rock band (performing for the first time) in a tiny basement bar in Shinjuku. It was a fantastic day, all up!

Now I just have to survive three more days at work, and then I get a three day weekend! Yay for the japanese and their ridiculous number of public holidays!

Flench and Flied Lice

I was back at the machida giant 100yen shop on saturday, and had another look at the frenc mug I mentioned a couple of posts ago. It actually says:
Le temps quand le lait est entierement mis dans le cafe et il boit est le plus heureux.
(The time when the milk is entirely put in the coffee and it drinks is the most happy)

I came home and mademyself fried rice tonight. It took under 5 minutes, and was rather nice. Here's the recipe, just because.

frozen vegies
ready-cooked rice
soy sauce
sesame oil
sesame sauce
an egg
mushrooms & ham (optional)

Method:
Throw all ingredients into a frypan (not necessarily in that order) and fry.

That's it.

It was yummy.

wstfgl

so I've discovered something very interesting. Imported fancy liqueurs are very cheap in japan. I've found an imported foods supermarket in Machida (2 trains stations away). Itwasvery exciting. Apart from Chai tea (to which I am fast becoming addicted) it had a whole aisle of alcohol, including kahlua, southern comfort, absolut vodka, bombay sapphire gin and cointreau - pretty much anything you could ever want - and most of it was at least half the price of the same thing in australia. My first thought looking at it was "I don't want to spend 2000 yen on anything today". Then I realised that the bottle of Benedictine that I was looking at for 2000 yen ($22.20 according to XE.com, costs about $50 in australia. I bought a bottle of Cointreau for about $18. I was in Machida with Gloria - we met after my japanese lesson at 4, went to Hachioji, which we thought was an even bigger town (but turned out to be very dispointing), so we went to Machida (tried and true) and spent hours in the huge hundred yen shop (again) then, starving, returned to Fuchinobe and found the 100yen sushi train Gloria had seen, which was wonderful, then went to an Even Bigger 99yen store (100yen stores are an addiction. We are addicted. It's a terrible affliction) and then came home, and drank large quantities of Cointreau interspersed with Chai ginger tea while talking about anything and everything and then suddenly it was 4am and we're just slightly very pissed and it's probably bed time. We did have plans to go to tokyo tomorrow, after an early visit to the international festival at the place where I have japanese lessons, but not now. The plan is festival, then Hashimoto, then probably machida again, and we'll go to tokyo next weekend. Really we will.
Head spinning. Bed time. mmm cointreau...

And another couple

Yes, that really does say "Happy Life Creator". It was on a full length raincoat. Naturally.

And on someone's tshirt at uni today:

Twinkling her jelly lip and your sparkling eyes.

I'm told that "jelly lip" might mean lip gloss, (rip gross) but it still doesn't seem to make any sense to me. It was a funky shirt though!

And on a related note, Sean pointed out this delightful little article on Chinglish in Beijing. The best is definitely "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty".

This blog is in danger of becoming nothing but a repository of engrish and flench. Ah well, there are worse fates, I suppose!

To prevent it, I will say something else about my current life. I'm doing housework. Isn't that ridiculous. I think it has something to do with moving into a brand new flat that hadn't been lived in before. Everything was so neat and clean that I sort of want to keep it that way. And it will make cleaning up when I move out (in a mere 9 weeks or something) that much easier, and thus I will keep my cleaning deposit. And of course I don't own much, so it isn't hard to keep it all tidy!
Even weirder is that I'm doing yoga regularly...
When I start voluntarily going to be early and waking up early, I'll know there's something wrong.

Flench

And here's one for the francophones. It was on a mug:

Le temps que le cafe est entierement mis dans la tasse avec du lait est le meilleur.

Translation: The time when the coffee is entirely put in the cup with the milk is the best.

I think that's what it said. I'll have to check when I go back to that shop.

Engrish

Here are the first of the wonderful Engrishes that I've collected so far. I realised within a few days of arriving here that living in Japan will certainly be amusing in some ways, because of the engrish that abound, and these examples are just the first I've remembered to remember, if you know what I mean.
The first was a t-shirt I saw a girl wearing today. Unfortunately I'm not really willing to stop people and ask to take a photo of their outfit so I can laugh at it later, so you'll just have to imagine it. It went like this:
Y O U
W E A R
comfortable
m a y p o l e

I just wonder where you're supposed to wear this maypole. I can't really think of anywhere that would be comfortable...

The other I did manage to get a photo of. And I will continue to post engrish that I see here. I might even submit some to engrish.com.

boredom...

You really know you're bored when you get pissed off because other people haven't updated their blogs and thus provided you with something to read. It's even worse when you get pissed off at others not updating their when you haven't updated your own...
So life in Japan isn't turning out to be non-stop fun and action. I'm slightly bored at work (see my serious blog for why) and then when I get home, I still have not much to do. I know. I need to go out and meet people. It's not so easy - we're not exactly in central Tokyo. I'm getting to know some of my students, who aren't much younger than me (6th year uni students in a country where they finish highschool at 18...) but they're all pretty busy, and likely to get busier, so I don't know how much of a social life I will have with them. (not that I'd ever associate with students outside the school, of course, that would be against westgate policy!)
Last weekend I went to Kawagoe, and discovered that their festivals (apparently one of the 4 biggest in japan) is on this weekend. So I was thinking of going back. I don't know if I will or not - I'd rather like to go with someone, cos I think I'd just wander around feeling very "outside" on my own.
Other than that my plans include a shopping trip to Machida (two stations away) and the 5 storey hundred yen store, and a japanese lesson. That's it. So Far.
Just remembered I hadn't looked at engrish.com for a while. That'll keep me occuupied...

Change of Address!

Look a little different? Well, not much different, but this is definitely the best template design!
I have finally moved my Serious Blog to www.katsseriousblog.blogspot.com which leaves this website free for an actualy non-travel blog. Although I love my travel blog and its functions for travelling (like the maps!) its lack of html and other things just irritates me too often, so I've finally created this blog for all those times when I'm not actively travelling, and just living somewhere.
Yes I realise I am developing a ridiculous number of blogs, but they are all for different purposes!

Civilisation - Bilbao, Spain
visited Aug 31, 2006
So now we´re sitting in a Subway sandwich shop, which just happens to also be an Easyinternetcafe (yes that is all one word, apparently) across the road from the guggenheim museum. We´ve been here since about 1pm, and have managed little other than walking over half the town (despite our day ticket for the metro), eating lunch at burger king (we must have been really hungry!), finding a tourist info place that didn´t help entirely, but a little, and about 4 hours of internet. Necessary, as I´m supposed to be doing a short online training course for my japan job! Better go find a bed for the night...

And stuck again - Logrono, Spain
visited Aug 30, 2006
Having given up on hitching and decided to get the bus to Logrono, we arrived at the bus station at about 8pm. It was still light, not at all late, but it seems that noone in spain travels after about 7, as we had missed the last busses and trains to Bilbao for the night. Grrr. So we ascertained the bus times for bilbao the next morning, lockered most of our stuff at the bus station, and set off with only a dodgy map from the bus station information person to tell us where there might be some cheap hostals or pensions. The first one we found didn´t answer their bell, the second wanted 60euro, and the third only 30. We took it, dumped our (little) bags, and went to find something to eat. The first thing we saw that looked recognisably like food we both knew and knew how to order and eat, was a doner place, complete with a sign out the front in German, strangely enough. After a rather excellent doner each, we felt a lot more human. We must learn to eat a little more regularly... The room was fine, the shower was wonderful 8any shower would be wonderful after three days on the road) and the loud neighbours and paper thin walls didn´t bother us too much. The dog barking insistantly in the minute courtyard (or light well, depending on your perspective) did though. At least that didn´t start til nearly 9am anyway, and we had a bus to catch at 11! A stroll through town on our way to the bus station found us breakfast, and, unexpectedly, a market that sold pomegranates! Haven´t eaten it yet, but we´re looking forward to it, after having become addicted to them in Turkey last year!

Stuck - La Poveda de Soria, Spain
visited Aug 30, 2006
Hitching was really hard today, and we ended up in a tiny village called "Almarza", a few kilometres south of La poveda de Soria. When we were told it was three hours to the bus to Logrono, we though "no, wel´ll stand on the road and get a lift before then, for sure!". But no. With only an hour left to the bus, we decided to go wait in the shade of the only pub (we had to walk past most of the town´s 10 houses to get there). We were lucky enough to get the front seat on the bus, which meant we could almost pretend we were in a truck, but one where we both got a comfortable seat, and I didn´t have to talk to the driver!

Night in a forest - El Burgo de Osma, Spain
visited Aug 29, 2006
ok, so it was a plantation forest, and we had some light all night from the town streetlights, but we were definitely outside the city limits. We could see the back of the "you are leaving El Burgo de Osma" sign from the tent, more or less (well the side of it, anyway). It was a nice little town, with a pretty main square and street that reminded me a lot of Italian small towns. And we had paella and pizza that we saw being taken out of the freezer in the restaurant we stopped in, but it was very good nonetheless. it probably helped that we hadn´t really eaten all day!

Whizz - Fraga, Spain
visited Aug 29, 2006
Didn´t see fraga at all. whizzed past at 150 km an hour in David and Hose´s car. that was a fun ride. Just don´t tell my mother I willingly got in a car with a couple of young guys who slowed down to 80km or so occasionally to take coke, but otherwise drove up to 170km/hr (excellent driving skills though - I never felt scared, strangely enough) (oh. hi mum.). The most fun we´ve had on a ride, though, and they drove us about 100km out of their way, just for the fun of it, I think! They left us a petrol station somewhere between Fraga and Zaragoza, and, before leaving, arranged with a truck driver to take us as far as zaragoza!

well, almost balaguer - Balaguer, Spain
visited Aug 28, 2006
we didn´t quite get to balaguer, but within a few kilometres. That´s where the strange and slightly scary moroccan man who picked us up in Tremp was going. He wanted to give us money to spend the night at his place. For food, showers, and sleeping, he said. hmm. we said a very firm no, strangely enough.

Almost out of the mountains - Sort, Spain
visited Aug 28, 2006
We didn´t want to be way up in the pyrenees for the night (it was chilly up there during the day, camping would have been quite cold, I think)so we managed to get to Sort, which is still in the foothills, but a much more pleasant temperature for mid summer! More to follow, as usual...

Ma Famille Francaise - Venerque, France
visited Aug 28, 2006
Im staying with my french family again in Venerque le vernet. but i still refuse to write about it using this ridiculous keyboard!

We made it to andorra! - Andorra La Vella, Andorra
visited Aug 27, 2006
I´ve wanted to go to andorra for a long time. And now I have! That´s yet another country for the country count! Photos and details to follow.

how did we end up here? - Narbonne, France
visited Aug 26, 2006
Youll have to wait to find out. I refuse to type my adventures on a french keyboard!

Back in Barcelona. - Barcelona, Spain
visited Aug 23, 2006
I like this city. Last time I was here I stayed at the squat the whole time (it was queeruption) and so I didn´t get the barcelona, funky laid back feeling. Were staying in hostel Kabul on placa reial.´This is the place Nathaniel, Kieran, Jen and I wanted to stay for new years a few years ago, but they were full. We´ve unded up here now because we arrived in barcelona at midnight last night, at sants station, which was closing in 10 mins, and so we didn´t ahve time to ring any of the numbers I had copied from the time-out barcelona in a glaswegian bookstore, but I looked at the metro map and saw liceu, recognised it as next to placa reial, and figured that here or the horrible place next door (where we ended up staying that new years!)might do us for at least one night. Turned up here, at about quarter to 1 in the morning, and low and behold, they had a bed for us. Two of them in fact. Though they made me sing before they´d tell me they had them. I sang the first thing that came into my head: "Show me the way to go home, I´m tired and I want to go to bed!". He said that that was very suitable and he could help. And now we´re meeting Diana (my teaching partner for 4 of the last 6 weeks) very shortly, and I did want to have a very short siesta before then! Might go and try that now.

grrr - Glasgow, United Kingdom
visited Aug 22, 2006
The plan was to get up early, get the bus to glasgow, out the bags in a locker, spend the day exploring and then get the train to the airport for our flight to barcelona. The reality was: getting to glasgow at least an hour and ahlaf later than planned, and the flight being an hour earlier than we thought, not to mention the current 2 hour check in time required for all flights. So we had an hour and a half in glasgow, which made it not worth putting the bags in a locker (at 6pounds each) so we spent most of the time in Borders bookstore. At least I got to write down a whole heap of phone numbers from a spanish lonely planet! Having bought the middle east guide book, I don´t have one for spain and portugal and morrocco... grr.

Yay! Edinburgh! - Edinburgh, United Kingdom
visited Aug 20, 2006
Abby is a wonderful person! We stayed with her for two nights. I like edinburgh. it´s the first place in the UK that I´ve seen where I think I could live. Got to meet up with Stephanie again as well, which was great! More later.

A tent in a "field" - Washington, United Kingdom
visited Aug 19, 2006
This post is yet to be written: suffice it to say that we ended up trying to hide under the only tree in a small patch of green around the corner from some guy´s house in the middle of a village on the edge of newcastle.

Finally leaving Cold Ash - Cold Ash, United Kingdom
visited Aug 18, 2006
We´re finished. finally. And tomorrow we set off for Edinburgh, travelling, once again, by thumb, which should be fun, in the UK. So this is the first entry of a New Itinerary. As the planned middle east trip is obviously not going ahead, we´re heading down through spain and portugal to morocco instead, flying from Glasgow to barcelona (we weren´t going to fly, but we found flights for a total of 27pounds each,which is pretty good). I realise I haven´t been updating this much, but I have put on all the cities I´ve been to on excursion I think (though only once each), and I´ve written a few posts on www.nontravelblog.blogspot.com and my whole class have been updating www.katsstudents.blogspot.com regularly, if you are lacking something to read... I will try to keep this updated while we´re travelling, but internet time is often rushed, and I don´t have time to do it properly. And this time, I´m NOT travelling with my laptop! So I can´t write posts offline. I thought it was unecessary, and I should learn to live without it for 4 weeks. I´m sure I´ll get withdrawals, but I´d rather that than lose it or ruin it by taking it hitching with me! I´ll write more when I can.

Another excursion - Oxford, United Kingdom
visited Jul 25, 2006
The excursion to oxford was similar to last year but not bad I think. We started by going punting, which was fun, even though we had 4 punts tied together, and my class just happened to have the kind of children who are attracted to the bottom of rivers... Still, no one actually fell in, and I got to do some punting, which wasn´t easy (probably cos of the 4 punts tied together), but fun nonetheless. At least I didn´t fall in! Then we walked past christchrch (look, that´s where harry potter was filmed!) and then up to the pitt rivers museum, which is a wonderland of quirky objects from all over the world, with the real live shrunken heads the prime exhibit. It is actually one room of the natural history museum, but one room that is crammed from floor to ceiling(and the ceiling is about 3 stories high) with display cases so close together you can barely walk between them, and each case is stuffed with bizarre things, and under the display cases are drawers, also stuffed with bizarre things. It´s fun really!

Boiling hot - Cold Ash, United Kingdom
visited Jul 22, 2006
England isn't supposed to boil. not even in mid-summer. It's been over 30 degrees every day this week, and the kids have been impossible in the hot classrooms - particularly in the afternoons. My room is on the corner on the top floor, which means that 2 walls are actually roof (I have to duck to get to the edge of my room). I'm also on the western side, which doesn't help. And my 2 windows only open about 3 centimetres each, presumably to prevent me throwing myself out of them when things get too much. It all adds up to quite an effective sauna. Not pleasant. Just as well I don't have any time to spend in there! Except now, on the weekend. And today, thankfully, it has been cool and rainy. Such a relief! Off now to either watch a quiet dvd, or to find someone who wants to wander down to the pub for a similarly quiet lemonade...

Another excursion - Bath, United Kingdom
visited Jul 16, 2006
I volunteered to go to bath with the Kids and Teens this week. Kate was going anyway, as the weekend excursions are run by the AOs, and I decided it would be nice to have a free trip to bath. We had a sightseeing bus ride around, but my headphones were so bad I didn't really here much of the pre-recorded commentary, which was sad, and then there was an hour of messing about before we went to the Roman Baths, which would have been lovely if they weren't so incredibly crowded. After that we finally got our promised shopping time, but we had about an hour in total, half of which Kate and I spent finding ourselves lunch, as they had run out of packed lunches. Luckily the school reimburses us for them! It was very hot and sunny, and I'm a bit sunburnt, despite the many layers of sunscreen. I can burn on this side of the world, it seems. It just takes a little longer!

Survived Week 1 - Cold Ash, United Kingdom
visited Jul 14, 2006
Very, Very grateful for fridays here. I have the whole weekend off, unless I volunteer for an excursion, which I do, as it's free travel and a free trip to the shops, which are hard to come by around here.

Week 1 Excursion - London, United Kingdom
visited Jul 12, 2006
Our first excursion for the summer was to London, where my teaching partner David and I first shepherded our 18 kids from Westminster Abbey to the London Eye, then waited the required hour to go up in that overgrown ferris wheel, before having a rather pleasant river cruise to the Tower Bridge and back (at least as pleasant as anything can be when accompanied by 112 kids aged 7-13). I still don't like london, but it is a nicer place when someone else pays for it all.

Downe House - Cold Ash, United Kingdom
visited Jul 7, 2006
Finally made it to the Lines summer school at Downe House. More about the lovely, long, frustrating journey later (thanks AGAIN british rail...) The program here is Intensive But Fun (as we are told everytime we walk past one of the million Lines Languages banners that are up all over the school), so I'm working 12-16 hour days mostly, but I get weekends sort of free, apart from sunday evening placement testing, and having to sit with kids if I turn up to meals, which I will, cos sitting with kids for the 10 mins they take to eat, then sitting with teachers for an hour over post-prandial coffee is preferable to starving! and, of course, I seem to have spent all of today either sorting out the displays in my classroom, or fiddling with my students' blog (www.katsstudents.blogspot.com - have a look!) or entering my test scores for the week, or something. And tomorrow I'm accompanying kids to Bath, but voluntarily, so I don't have to spend the whole day with them, and it's basically a free trip to a shop, with a tour of Bath and the Roman Baths thrown in. I'll write here when I can, but as I'm doing little but teaching, I will probably write more posts in the next month to my Serious Blog instead (www.nontravelblog.blogspot.com). Oh, and as you may have already surmised, the trip to israel syria and lebanon is currently on hold until we see whathappens to the region. More about our Plan B later.

Half an hour in Sweden - Malmo, Sweden
visited Jul 6, 2006
We were up at 7, and on the bus by 25 past. Then another bus (a Grahundbus)to the airport in Malmo for our cheap Ryanair flight to London. I realise that half an hour in a country barely counts, but I think it should, so I am. After all, I spent some swedish crowns (albeit some that Kate had from the last time she had been there) and did notice some things. For example: Denmark, both from the air, and from the sea (as we crossed the marvelous bridge/tunnel that goes from Denmark to Sweden) is as flat as a carpet. Quite amazingly flat. And barely above the water level. I'm surprised the whole place doesn't get swamped at high tide. Sweden, on the other hand, was immediately noticeably different, as it had some texture and small rolling hills. Nothing high, of course, but just enough to make it different. So that's 46 countries, I think. :)

Festival - Copenhagen, Denmark
visited Jul 5, 2006
After the last post, we spent most of Sunday wandering around the most famous bits of the city, including the Little Mermaid who sits on a rock near the port. We arrived back at the festival house to be told that there wouldn't be anyone to let us in at the squat where we were staying until about midnight. To our jetlagged selves, this sounded painful, but a nice woman showed us a mattress in the attic of the house here, and, despite the heat, we crashed for a few hours. When we finally got to the squat, we were shown a large concert room that was the designated sleeping area for festival people. It smelt of old beer and cigarettes, but the atmosphere was a little better up on the stage, so we set up there and crashed. As it turned out, we only had one night there, as the second day, we were told about two women who had offered their house for showers and maybe to sleep, but only to "nice" women (which we apparently are). As I was desperate for a shower (I hadn't had one since Korea, and this was our second day in compenhagen!), we turned up there quite late on monday evening, and ended up staying the night. It's a lovely little flat on the top floor, occupied by a Danish lesbian couple and their flatmate from Sweden. It's nice to be able to stay with and talk to some locals - the people at the squat didn't seem in the slightest interested in talking to us, and we sort of felt like intruders. It's much nicer in the flat, and we are very very grateful to the three women for hosting us! Our days have pretty much consisited of spending the morning wandering around Copenhagen, and the afternoon and evening at the festival. Kate has had fun showing me all her old haunts from her semester here in 2004, as well as the tourist sites of the city. Unfortunately it's been really hot, so our tolerance for wandering around is a little limited, but my overall impression is that Copenhagen is a very pleasant little city. As part of the festival we have been to workshops on Queer family, Queer Hair and a very exciting talk and film from Del LaGrace Volcano, which was unexpected. He is in the process of making another book of photos called "Femmes of Power" which sparked Kate's interest. After the workshop we spent some time talking to Del, along with some other people interested in being in the book. It looks like an exciting project! Also as part of the festival, we visited Christiania. This is a whole area of Copenhagen that was squatted about 30 years ago, that has declared itself an independent state. We visited the queer house there, which is actually just a theatre and organising space, but it's very nice to know it's there. We were also given a tour of christiana by one of the women from the house, which was nice, as we would never have seen all the intersting nooks and crannies of the area without it! On to England and Cold Ash tomorrow. I hope it is cooler there!

Made it! - Copenhagen, Denmark
visited Jul 2, 2006
I've been travelling for over 60 hours. I think itøs some sort of record for getting to europe. Of course, about 15 hours of it was spent in a 5 star luxury hotel, which seems to prevent too much sympathy coming my way. I think the night in Stansted airport more than makes up for that, even though I was lucky enough to score one of the very few sets of seats that didn't have arms to get in the way of lying down. I met kate in the baggage collection section of the airport here - our flights were so well timed! - and we negotiated our way by train to central, then, using my dodgy knowledge of a map I glanced at 4 days ago, plus a new map, we miraculously fonud our way to the Festival House, where we have been welcomed warmly, and offered a place to put our bags for the day, and some internet! Yay! Unfortunately, I managed to leave home without my European adaptor, so my computer is currently out of action, and I canøt get the several thousand words of blog entries I wrote while waiting in airports and on planes. They will be uploaded as soon as we find the adaptor Kate brought. We don't get to go to our accomodation until about 8pm tonight, by which time I think we will both be asleep on our feet, but we'll dig out the adaptor then. Korean airlines overall rates low on movies and entertainment (no individual tvs!), lowish on food, but absolutely top notch for the stopover. If I hadn't had that proper night's sleep, I would probably be a whole lot deader right now than I currently am. Have to go, Kate is dying to show me around Copenhagen! She's already at the markets that I can see out the window here, and I promised to catch up, after my internet fix. Oh, and this is the 45th country that I have visited in my life. Hey Dad: Beat you!

Incheon Stll - Seoul, South Korea
visited Jul 1, 2006
So no free internet at Incheon Airport. I could have paid 3000 won ($4ish) for an hour, but I only have about half an hour, and I can't be bothered changing any money for it. On first impressions, Korea seems to be somewhere in between China and Japan. And I'm not just talking geographically. I went for a walk last night, and decided that korea smells similar to China, and the shops were very much like some I'd seen in the richer areas there (remembering that these are shops within a 2 minute walk of the Hyatt Regency, that seems reasonable!). Bowing is important here, as in Japan. The hotel person who led us to our shuttle bus last night bowed deeply to it as it pulled away from the curb. I still prefer both chinese and japanese food, but I've worked out why now. I don't like Kim Chi. I picked up a whole book on this korean staple (it's pretty much pickled vegetables, I think) in an airport bookshop half an hour ago, and read "once you have acquired a taste for it, your dinner table will never be complete without it". I think I'll just skip the acquiring process and live happily without it! I meant to take a photo of me all pink cheeked after my bath and wrapped in the fluffy white terry toweling bathrobe, but I forgot, so you'll just have to imagine it. Here are some pics of my hotel and the view from it instead. As you can see, something else that reminds me of china is the thick soupy smog, although it is also overcast (I think) today, which might not be helping. Boarding now.

Leaving again... - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 30, 2006
Brisbane I know I keep leaving, but sometimes brisbane isn't such a bad place. During this last 4 months, I have discovered that I need to discover more about the nooks and crannies of the city (because I hadn't realised there were any) and have realised that I like water. I like the fact that Brisbane has a huge great river through it, and that in order to get just about anywhere, you need to cross it, or drive along it. The riverside expressway at sunset is a lovely sight (I promise that's not why I had the accident though), and from the air, the whole place is rather pretty. Flying to Hamilton last week, we did a loop right over the city, and, as there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was a wonderfully clear day, the river (and the skyscrapers) were all sparkling in the sun. It was fantastic! Pity I don't own a camera at the moment!

Incheon (The airport city next to Seoul) - Seoul, South Korea
visited Jun 30, 2006
I'm sitting in the Hyatt Regency Incheon, Not Using their internet. I'm too cheap to pay 20000won (whatever that means) for a day's access. Just as I was too cheap to pay US$10 an hour to use the inflight wireless internet (I had heard they had it now, but didn't really believe it!). So this will just have to wait until I next get a connection - hopefully in Stansted or Heathrow, where I think there might be free wireless. Finally got away from Brisbane - I should remember not to arrange such early flights when I don't have any family in town! The wonderful james came to my rescue, giving me half a lift to the airport. I still had to be on a train to Bowen Hills at 6am, but if I had caught the train the whole way, it would have been 5am. At the checkin, they told me their weren't any exit row seats left, and found my an aisle bulkhead instead - I wasn't looking forward to it. I was, however, directed to the reservations desk to make a reservation for an aisle seat for the next flight, and discovered a wonderful thing. Korean air reserves the exit row seats for people who go and specifically ask for them at a separate counter, and they easily changed my first flight to a window exit row. This system means that any spare seats on the plane end up in the exit rows, so there's extra space in all directions! I was most pleased, and the flight was rather pleasant. No individual tvs on this flight, and the drawback of the exit row seat was a small screen too far away to read subtitles, so I skipped the korean movie and read instead. I should have brought another book as carry on, as I've finished the first one. I hope I can find someone to swap with, as I dare say the next flight will have the same problems! I did get to watch the second movie - Failure to Launch. Yay. One moment of excitement - I happened to glance out the window just as we were flying over the chesterfields. I wouldn't have expected to see them, being just two small reefs and islands in the middle of the coral sea, inhabited only by birds, pretty much, but obviously we were in just the right spot. I last saw them in 1991 when we stopped there on praxis. I'm pretty sure it was the chesterfields, anyway! On arrival, I discovered that they don't make it too easy to work out where you are supposed to go for the Hyatt (I get free accomodation here because the flights don't meet up, which is nice), but managed anyway. I've explored the hotel, been for a walk down the street to a few shops that are nearby, had the set menu dinner (my opinion of korean food is improving slightly) and soaked in a deep hot bath. I'm now wrapped in the white terry bathrobe loungng in the armchair with my feet up, and I'm about to crawl into the king size bed and crash. get 10 hours sleep, have the buffet breakfast (which I've heard is very nice) and then take the free bus 2 minutes down the road to the airport at the nice civilised hour of 11.15 or so. Hopefully I'll feel relaxed and slept enough to survive the 24 hours after that - still dreading this night on the floor of stansted...

2.5 days in Brisbane - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 29, 2006
Day 1 was taken up getting Rhys and kieran away. I hadn't seen Rhys in a while, so it was good to catch up. We had Sandy and Celine and the kids over for a barbecue (would you like bleeding, or charcoal?) and otherwise spent the time madly rushing about getting things mum and dad wanted sent up, and making kieran tidy his room. They are joining mum and dad on the boat for 2 months of sailing in PNG, so they needed to leave the place respectable! They finally got away, and I had 1 day to sort myself out to leave. Now it's 2am, and I have to be on a train to the airport at 6. Argh. I had better go! his is the last of the Brisbane 2006 posts. Next post will be from Korea, London, or Copenhagen! I'll have to think of a name for the next itinerary!

South Molle Island - Hamilton Island, Australia
visited Jun 18, 2006
I know I should add these other islands to travel post, but I can't be bothered, so I'm just putting all the whitsunday adventures under hamilton island! Day two of my trip was the last day of the Seawind Rally, so we raced from Stonehaven to South Molle Island. Sailing puts me to sleep, so between that and my severe long term lack of sleep during assignment season, meant I don't remember much of the actual sail. The evening was taken up by the final celebrations for the rally, including the presentations, a seafood buffet, and a rather dreadful cruise-ship style floor show called "flames of polynesia". The next morning my mother decided exploring the tracks in the south molle national park would be a good idea. We did find some nice views, but I think and I did enjoy it, but I'm still glad we didn't climb the major hill! The next days turned out to be less than fine - we snorkelled in the brief moments of sunshine, and did not much when it rained. I read lots of books. It was nice. And the snorkelling was good - in Butterfly Bay we saw a whole herd of Maori Rass - great big gentle fish, each of them about a metre or more long! It was impressive. As was the coral - better than we saw at Keppel in April! We left the Whitsundays to head north, stopping in Gloucester passage (Monte's "resort" which was the most low-key resort I had ever seen!) and Shark Bay (Cape Upstart) where we went swimming at approximately shark feeding time (ok, pretty sill in hindsight, but we didn't see any sharks, so it was all good).

5 minutes on hamilton - Hamilton Island, Australia
visited Jun 16, 2006
Flew in to hamilton to meet my parents. Mum swore she saw elton john getting off the plane, but when she pointed him out (waiting for his luggage with the rest of us plebs) it really wasn't him, although she kept saying it was. Looked nothing like him. There weren't any buses back tot he marina, and everyone else on the plane had a resort bus to collect them, but us grotty yachties divided my luggage between us (I had 15kg of stuff mum and dad asked me to bring up, plus my stuff!) and trudged over the hill to the marina, where the boat was already overstaying the paid time in the marina, so we pretty much leapt aboard and left. A lovely sail to Nara inlet, where we met up with Joy and Chirs on Esprit, had dinner, and crashed. I think it was about 7.30 when I fell asleep! I think I really need this holiday!

Finished! - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 16, 2006
It nearly killed me, but I finished all my assignments. And a mere 6 hours or so before my flight north. Now I have two weeks of whitsundays and far north queensland to look forward to! And NO UNI WORK!!!! until next year that is...

The worlds seems to have survived... - Brisbane, Australia
visited Jun 7, 2006
So it's half an hour after the end of the 6/6/06, and we appear to still be here. Admittedly I haven't been out of the house since about 8pm, so it's possible the rest of the world has ceased to exist. Or that the world was sucked into hell, but they couldn't be bothered with australia. Or maybe I just didn't notice. I've had my head down doing assignments. At the end of Pirates, when life returned to something resembling normal, I had 5 to do. I've done 2 of them. I now have exactly a week until I leave for the whitsundays, and I'm halfway through assignment number 3. Will hopefully have it done before bed tomorrow night. That leaves me a whole 6 days to write the other 2 - only 4000 words worth. No problem. Just don't expect any updates between now and then. But then, there will be lots of exciting new updates. I have a wild plan. After my two weeks in the whitsundays, I have three days in Brisbane again, then I fly to Copenhagen (via a night on an airport floor in london) for 5 days of festival, then england for 4 weeks of work, then israel for more festival, then travelling around the middle east with Kate, ending up in Egypt, then flying to Morocco, and travelling up to portugal, then on, still overland, to Edinburgh. From there, I return to london to fly to korea, then on to Japan for 3 months more work (I have to do some occasionally), then back to Aus, via Korea again. I'll give a prize to anyone whocan come up with a decent name for the Itinerary for that trip!

A Pirate! Horror! - Brisbane, Australia
visited May 15, 2006
That's not "A Pirate Horror" either. Pirates of Penzance is shaping up to be very nice, now that we are in a real thatre, and not in some basketball court that happens to have a stage, as we were for the last performances in Scarborough. The Powerhouse Theatre is great, nice lighting, lots of space, excellent dressing rooms. It opens tomorrow night!

Crunch - Brisbane, Australia
visited May 9, 2006
I had my first ever car accident on the riverside expressway on my way to uni today. I was just thinking how the traffic was flowing pretty freely for 4pm on a tuesday afternoon, when, in precisely the milisecond I glanced down at the radio to eject a tape, the traffic stopped flowing. I didn't, at least, not quite fast enough, and managed to push the next car (which must have stopped very suddenly, and was probably very close to the ute in from of it, into said ute. Three car accident! we all managed to drive off the expressway, which was good, but my car had a cracked radiator, or something (as well as all the panel damage and a sticky driver's door) so it had to be towed. It's all covered on comprehensive insurance, with a really low excess, so I'm not overly worried about that. It does leave me carless for the time being,which would be annoying if my brother didn't decide he and his girlfriend could cope with one. He's gallantly offered me his car pretty much for the duration, which is wonderful. Especially as I have to drive to Scarborough three times in the next week, and the powerhouse every day for the week after that. And carry costumes and whatnot. I'm talking of course, of Pirates of Penzance, which opens in scarborough on friday, and then at the powerhouse on Tuesday. It's on for one week only, so email me for $20 tickets! --- end plug ----

A Young, Edgy Rock Opera - Brisbane, Australia
visited May 5, 2006
Rent! See Sean's blog for details: I'll write later. http://lettherebeblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/525600-minutes.html

Tropical Island - Great Keppel Island, Australia
visited May 1, 2006
After a rushed half day in Gladstone, we left at dawn (I'm told - I wasn't awake for it) to get through the Narrows with the tide. This is important, as there is a crossing about halfway through the Narrows that is used to get cattle from the mainland to curtis island. This means it dries out at low tide. completely. So leaving with the tide was important. We made it through ok, and into the open sea for the 4 hour crossing to Keppel. This was the only bit of actual sailing with actual waves that we encountered on the whole trip, and it was actually very calm, really. Enough to send Kate to bed after taking a sea-sickness tablet though! And Ihave to admit that I was having trouble concentrating on anything by the time we got to Keppel. It would have been nicer if we could have had the engines off, but the wind just wasn't with us. That first evening we were anchored at Long Beach, and decided to walk over the island to the resort for a sunset drink, and, after parking the dinghy on the beach, set off on a likely looking walking track. The track led to another beach, then disappeared. Undanted, we pressed on, climbing around the rocks of the next point, to discover.... more rocks. I think we clawed our way around 4 rocky, oystered points and along several beaches before we found the resort. We were just in time for a sunset drink, but as we hadn't brought a torch, there was a suggestion that we should go straight back while it was still a little light. A few inquiries told us that it was actually very easy to get to Long Beach. It was at the other end of the airstrip. So not only did we not have to climb over rocks, but there was an enormous paved road between the resort and the boat. Grrr. We drank our large and decadent cocktails (and mocktails) sitting on a bench overlooking the beach while watching the sun sink down behind Yeppoon on the mainland. It was very pleasant. Then we walked back along the airstrip in the dark (which was a great chance for some amazing star-gazing) and discovered that the beach wasn't at the end of the airstrip. There was a path to it though. A windy, sandy, treacherous footpath through the trees with several forks. I wished I gained a better understanding of the difficulties my blind friends face in getting around, and wished sincerely that I had a white cane. We survived though, and did end up at the beach. Then we just had to wander along it until we tripped over the dinghy (did I mention there wasn't even a moon to help us?) and pointed it towards Cutting Edge's masthead light (just as well Dad thought to put it on before we left!). Our two days on Keppel were lovely. I taught Kate to snorkel. Once she was given some extra flotation (a jet-ski jacket), she even stopped using me to keep herself up, which was nice. Lucky I'm a strong swimmer - and have positive boyancy! It was good to be in the water again - I hadn't snorkelled for about 10 years, which is sad. And really noticeable when I couldn't hold my breath for nearly as long as I used to be able to. I remember free-diving to 17 metres in Tonga once, and this time I was having trouble holding my breath very long at all. Ah well. I'll just have to practice more. When I have the chance...

Kelly - Gladstone, Australia
visited Apr 28, 2006
I managed to find Kelly's husband, Jack, at the marina, and got kelly's mobile number from him. It turns out she was working in Biloela for the day, which is why she hadn't been at home or at her usual work in Tank St. He said they had a doctor's appointment that night (because Kelly is pregnant!) but they could come to the Yacht club afterwards, where my family and assorted friends and I would be having dinner. It was rather weird meeting after 15 years, but very good to be in contact again. After dinner, Kelly and Jack came back to Cutting Edge (my parents' boat) and I showed them some photos that were on my computer of our childhood. It's strange but the collection I have, which consists of whatever Dad has scanned in, only includes about 2 of Kelly, although I recall spending nearly every day with her. She doesn't appear in any of the ones of my birthday parties or anything. Odd. The best one I have posted here. It's sweet! We've now exchanged email addresses, which means there is some chance we will stay in touch a little better now. And I know where she is now. She and Jack have bought a block of land in Benaraby, just near our old primary school, so I can imagine them being there for while to come.

Memory Lane - Benaraby, Australia
visited Apr 28, 2006
After an early start from Biloela, we arrived in Benaraby (via the occasional wrong turn) early enough for me to have a look around my old home town before having to get the car to my parents in Gladstone. We first drove past the old hall where I used to go on the ancient Sunday School bus every week from the age of 3 (my parents no doubt appreciated the quiet sunday mornings!). Apart from shrinking, and the service station next door changing brands, nothing seemed to have changed much. We then drove past my old school, and I was compelled to get out and have a closer look. At first the plan was just to look in the garden bed under the flag pole for the plaque over the time capsule that we planted there during the school's centenery celebrations in 1986. I had to check if it was to be opened this year, but it's not until July 12, 2011. Once I was that far into the school grounds, it seemed to make sense to go up to the office, and we were signed in to have a look around and see what had changed. Not much, though it's all now painted white instead of EdQLD yellow, and there's a new classroom and a new playground. They have 6 classes there now. There were three or four when I was there - about 60 to 80 kids, depending on the year. After the school, I went up to the house I grew up in. It was also still very recognisable, although there have been a few changes. I knocked on the door and was shown around but the current owner, which was nice. When we lived there the walls were all cream (I was 9 before I realised that walls were allowed to be colours other than cream). My room is now painted dark purple with a silver ceiling - colours chosen by the teenage boy who lives there! The woman who showed me around also told me that Kelly had moved back in next door. Her mother had always lived there, of course, but Kelly had left years ago. Kelly was my best friend throughout my childhood. We met when I was 2 (and she was 6!) and, living next door to each other, we more or less grew up together. After I left in 1989, we more or less lost contact, although I remember staying with her for a night in 1991 when we were back in Gladstone on the boat. I hadn't seen her since then, though, or had any contact. From the woman who lives in my old house, I discovered that she was married, and had moved back here with her husband, and that he worked at the marina! I resolved to track her down before we left the next morning.

Jess in Bilo - Biloela, Australia
visited Apr 28, 2006
Kate and I finally set off yesterday, about 14 hours later than planned, to drive to Gladstone, via Biloela, to deliver a car to my uncle, and meet my parents on their boat. The purpose of the Biloela detour was to see my childhood friend Jess, who lives there now. I hadn't see her since 1995. and that was only for a one short evening. We only had time for another rather short evening this time, too, as Kate and I didn't arrive until 8.30 last night. We had had a few adventures. We ran out of petrol. It was very embarrassing, but thankfully not that inconvenient, as we were about 100m from a petrol station at the time. The petrol station was closed, but there was one on the other side of the road, more or less, which was open, and lent us a fuel can. So all in all it was a good place to stop. And considering we had been stressing about it for 70km (ever since discovering the petrol station in Eidsvold was closed), we were very happy to stop there, and not in the middle of nowhere. Meeting up with Jess was seriously trippy, but wonderful to know she's still alive and surviving. Even if she is living in Biloela! Here's a pic of us, just to prove it. And one of us 20 years ago, for good measure.

Ex-traordinary. - Brisbane, Australia
visited Apr 21, 2006
Tonight I had arranged to meet Tony in town for the regular dinner-and-a-movie. Bizarrely, on my way there I ran into Sean and Michael in Pulp Fiction (the bookshop). They were staying in the hotel above the bookshop for the night. Michael gets married tomorrow. Weird. Kate arrives here on Monday! I'm not sleeping well. Grrr.

Hope Harbour - Upper Coomera, Australia
visited Apr 10, 2006
My parents, Kieran and I spent the night on the boat, and spent the morning doing lots of last minute things, and, eventually, having a cooked breakfast together. Sandy and Celine and the kids arrived, and, with surprisingly little last-minute ado, they left around lunchtime. While Sandy and Celine and the kids will be back in two weeks or so, my parents have no intention of returning Brisbane until, probably, late this year - after they've sailed up the Queensland coast and spent the two months their visas allow them in the Trobians, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea. I managed to get back to Brisbane in plenty of time for my evening class. Life should be a little less insane now. For the next week or two, at least.

5 minutes in Brisbane - Brisbane, Australia
visited Apr 9, 2006
I stepped off the plane at 4.25pm on monday afternoon (apr 10th, but this needs to be blogged as 9th to keep the order right). As I had no luggage to collect, I was able to be in the car (Kieran picked me up) by 4.29. Kieran teleported me to uni, and I was in class by 4.55. Pretty amazing really. After class, Kieran picked me up again (nice brother) and drove me home where I arrived just in time for a barbecue dinner with my family - my parents' last supper before leaving on their boat. At 10.30pm, all four of us piled into the car (fitting around all the last minute stuff they were taking) and drove down to the boatat sanctury cove, to spend the night and see everyone off on their sailing adventure the next day. So it was more than 5 minutes in Brisbane, but not by much!

Mad Rush - Sydney, Australia
visited Apr 9, 2006
Sydeny was, as always, a mad rush. That city runs so much faster than Brisbane. Whenever I'm down there it just all seems non stop. Now, I know you could say that is because when you only have 5 days in a place, everything is a rush, but when I lived down there last year I was there for months and it never stopped. Still, at least this time Kate and I managed to do everything essential that was on our list, which is a lot better than last time. There was some unexpected excitement. On thursday night, Kate's flatmate's cat got run over, and we all ended up dashing to an all night emergency vet hospital. The cat is still alive, and, once it has recovered from its $3000 leg reconstruction surgery, will no doubt continue to live a long and pampered life. But it did mean our dvd and gelati plan had to be postponed. Friday was spent running a dozen little errands, and pottering about, but saturday was non-stop socializing. We had brunch at the Chocolate Dog in Newtown with Nick and a bunch of people from Brisbane. Obviously. They were down for Nick's 30th birthday, which was also my flimsy excuse. The evening was spent celebrating Nick's birthday over dinner with the same brisbanites, and about 25 sydney people in a very fancy restaurant in Erskinville. Kate and I opted to share a meal (yes, we're cheapskates) and so had a very pleasant morsel of kangaroo each, followed by a small poached pear and molecule of very nice icecream. It was a very fancy restaurant. After dinner the party moved to a funciton room downstairs where we talked and some people danced to the CD compilation Nick had created for the occasion. I bet the pub had never played anything from the Oklahoma soundtrack before! The toughened party people went on to the imperial around midnight, but Kate and I took the going-home-and-crashing option instead, with a slight detour to drive our friends Eric and Peter home, as well as Oddur who was staying with them. Sunday was then a day of rest, except for going out to Victoria Park to meet a whole lot of queeruption type people who play anarchist soccer there on sunday afternoons. We arrived and sat down to talk to Eric and Peter while we watched to work out if there were any rules, and somehow never got around to the playing soccer part. It was fun to watch the others playing though. There were goals, and vague teams, but no boundaries, and it was played on a bit of a hill, so it was all interesting. Sunday night we finally managed the dvd and gelati plan that had been postponed, and Monday was spent in sleeping in, packing and getting to the airport. Sydney was fun. No idea when I'll be back there - no further flights are booked, and I leave Australia in less than 3 months. Might be next year before I get back there. Ah well. Kate is coming up here in a mere 2 weeks, so that's something.

Idyllic Weather, and a New Computer! - Sydney, Australia
visited Apr 6, 2006
I finally have my first ever brand new computer: a very small, white laptop with all the bells and whistles. It's very exciting. It also has a webcam permanently attached, so I can take pictures like this one! Now I just have to work out how to insure it internationally. It's the single most expensive thing I've ever owned, and just owning it has the potential to get stressful. Insurance will help though. It wasn't a mistake, I am indeed in Sydney. Being the jetsetter that I am, I have flown down for the "weekend" (wednesday to monday). The excuse was Nick's 30th birthday, and a relatively free weekend in terms of uni work, but I don't exactly need an excuse to visit Kate. And to get out of that awful Brisbane weather. It was so horribly humid the last 2 days, I was very, very grateful to be leaving. It was only a couple of degrees cooler in Sydney when I arrived, but the difference in humidity made my hair stand on end. Literally. I've had static problems since I got here. Last night Kate and I had cheap indian (indian food, something else I missed while in Turkey. I must do it again soon!) in Newtown on the way home from the airport, and today I have the house to myself while she and her flatmate are at work. I'm sitting in the doorway of her lovely ground floor unit, with an incredibly blue sky, a very cool wind blowing, looking out at a grassy, tree-ey area that I might go and sit in shortly. In the sun, because it is my favourite sort of weather - the sort where you appreciate sitting in the sun! I'd take a photo, but this camera seems to only be designed for indoors, and the outdoor ones just come out all overexposed. More on Sydney adventures later.

Queer Film Festival - Brisbane, Australia
This place was Average visited Apr 4, 2006
I very cleverly organised to go to Sydney during the Brisbane Queer Film Festival. It's a lesson in effective calendar use for me. However, all was not lost, as this year the BQFF is bigger and better than ever, and started on the Tuesday. My flight wasn't until Wednesday, so I was able to go to the opening night! Just as well. I have only missed one year since it started 6 years ago, and that was last year when I was living in Berlin. In fact, the year before that I came home (from Berlin, by coincidence) on the second last day of the festival, and still managed to see 3 films. The opening night film was called "50 ways of saying fabulous", which is a New Zealand film based on the book of the same name by NZ author Graeme Aitken. I had loved the book - we studied it in Quook, the queer book club at UQ, years ago, so was keen to see the film. It was lovely, and will hopefully get a wider release, and when it does I suggest you all go see it. Or catch the second screening at the Powerhouse sometime this weekend (www.brisbanepowerhouse.org for details). After the film there was the required drag show, accompanied by free drinks, nibblies and the most disturbing iceblocks I had ever seen. If anyone ever offers you a paddle pop "bender", say no. Just do. It was nice to be at a queer event in Brisbane again, but it was yet another reminder of how long I have been away (or possibly an indicator how the community has grown in the last few years). I only saw one person I knew! Apart from the people I was with, of course. Oh, and the guy handing out the free beer knew me, though I didn't remember him at all. Apparently he was my dancing partner in HMS Pinafore years ago. That was a rather Brisbane moment.

Pirates! - Gympie, Australia
This place was Poor visited Apr 2, 2006
I didn't go to Gympie by choice. Actually, I didn't go to Gympie at all, but to a camp site about 20km south of it. And why? For Pirates, of course. OK, so it had nothing to do with real pirates, and a lot to do with the Gilbert and Sullivan musical "Pirates of Penzance". I'm in the current Queensland Musical Theatre Company's producation of it, and it was a rehearsal camp. You'll be very glad to hear that we got lots of very good work done, and the whole first act is now blocked and looking good. And there are some very funny bits. Pirates is on at the Brisbane Powerhouse from the 16th to the 21st of May, and at some hall in Scarborough the weekend. Email me to get discounted tickets for only $20! Yes, this was a shameless plug.

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.

Home again - Brisbane, Australia
visited Feb 25, 2006
I'm home again! Jet lagged and still exhausted even though I've been back a day and a half already. I'm off to see if I can remember how to drive (nearly 12 months since I last did) and visit people.

Going home - Vienna, Austria
3 Stars This place was Average visited Feb 23, 2006
I was only in Vienna long enough to catch a bus to the airport this time. I had hours to wait though, but couldn't do much as I had all my luggage with me. I met another australian at the airport though - I sat down next to her on the only available seat in the whole place (apart from the expensive cafe, of course) and noticed her "Student Flights" travel agent wallet. Figured she had to be australian, and as it turned out, she was a UQ student. We checked in together so we would be next to each other on the flight to Dubai. We parted at Dubai airport, as she was spending a week there, while I waited for my connecting flight. This will be the last post in the "while living in Istanbul" itinerary. I'll be in Brisbane for 4 months studying, then off to again at the end of June to work a summer school in England, and then a 6 month contract somewhere else. I'll keep posting here though, even while I'm in Brisbane. It's not strictly travelling, but then neither was living in Istanbul, and I don't have any other blog site!

Leaving Istanbul - Istanbul, Turkey
3 Stars This place was Average visited Feb 20, 2006
Our last day in Istanbul was a serious of almost disasters. It actually started the day before when they wouldn't let me into Topkapi palace because it was *just* too late. I lived in Istanbul for 5 months and didn't get to see the best Ottoman palace there is. At least we saw Aga Sofya - on the day before we left! It was amazing, especially when you remember it was built in what was the dark ages in England - 6th century AD. It had the world's largest unsupported dome for a thousand years, until Michelangelo topped it with St Peter's in Rome. It would probably have seemed an even more amazingly enormous space and dome if it hadn't been half filled with scaffolding, but at least it is good to see they are working to keep it in decent condition. So having spent Sunday afternoon doing tourist things, we met all the teachers from school for a last meal at a Meyhane - a sort of restaurant where you eat lots of little dishes (like spanish tapas). My favourite kind of meal. We (well, some of us) drank Raki as well - the turkish version of Ouzo. I had managed to escape traying it until then, but I'm glad I did before I left Turkey. While it isn't something I would like to drink regularly, it was quite nice. After getting home much later than planned, we spent a few more hours packing and sorting things, then got up the next morning and continued packing and sorting. There was lots to do. We planned to post a box of stuff each (despite reservations about entrusting anything to the Turkish postal system ever again). Roger came over - I think he thought we could go for lunch, but we drafted him into helping - finding boxes from the supermarket, buying us packing tape and helping squeeze things into the boxes. We ended up with 5 different boxes of various sizes, which was more than we wanted, but there just weren't any big boxes around, it seemed. We decided to take them in a taxi to the post office (even though it was only a 5 minute walk away, it was all uphill, and time was beginning to be an issue!) At the post office the troubles really started. First, they told us we would need to open all our lovely packed and taped boxes so they could search them for dangerous things that couldn't be posted. Such as glass. It turns out that the Turkish postal system doesn't trust itself with anything remotely breakable, so they wouldn't accept glass or ceramics. the main reason I had decided to post stuff home was because my students had given me a beautiful glass and brass narghile (turkish water pipe/hookar) and a lovely ceramic plate. I also had a set of Turkish tea glasses. Everything else in the box I wanted to post was basically packing for those things. The next thing they told us what that it was illegal to post any boxes that had writing on them. As we had used supermarket boxes they said things like "dishwasher powder" on the side, and other things that would no doubt confuse the poor postal workers horribly. We were provided with plain A4 paper and told to cover all the writing. There was also a small mountain of forms that needed to be filled in. All three of us were working on this, and when the first box was finally ready, I took it to the man who was helping us, and he finally weighed it and gave us a price. Over AU$300, or $133 sea mail. And this was for one of the smaller of our 5 boxes. We had been at the post office an hour, had pulled all the breakables out of their nice safe packing and jumbled them into our backpacks, had used up miles of packing tape opening and closing boxes, and we were due at the airport in about an hour. And they wanted to charge us probably $500 to post everything. We decided that for that price, we would take taxis and pay excess baggage if required. It would work out cheaper. So we walked out of the post office, and carried all the boxes back home. There, we swept everything that was left into our backpacks, gave most of the contents of our fridge to Roger, as a completely inadequate thankyou, and ran out the door, still carrying 5 boxes, and my backpack was full of glass and ceramics. Just as another tiny wonderful moment of the day, as I bent down to pick up my backpack for the last time, my old jeans decided to split in the inner leg. Luckily it wasn't too serious or noticable and I was able to ignore it. Not that I had time to do anything else! We still hadn't bought our plane tickets (although they had been reserved) so we had to ask the taxi to stop in Taksim so I could run up to the Yugolsavian Airlines office and hand over large quantities of cash, and then come back and race to the airport to get there on time for the flight! The excitement didn't stop there. We arrived at the airport, found a trolley for the boxes, raced through the xray machines at the airport door, and arrived at the check-in desk. I think we were about the last to check-in as no one else was there. We loaded all our luggage onto the check-in scales, and breathed a sigh of relief that we had made it. Then the guy at the counter mentioned that we had 60kg of luggage between us, and that the limit was 20kg each, and as it was a propeller plane, and quite full, he couldn't let us not pay excess baggage charges. He was very nice and apologetic about it, and said we only had to pay for 10kg, at AU$5 per kilo. We asked if we could take the smallest box hand luggage instead, and he pointed out that that would put us over weight on the hand luggage, but he would let us not pay for it, bringing it down to only 6kg we had to pay for. We decided that was well worth it, and I reached for my wallet, which only had $10 in it. So I asked Kate to find hers. That's when the problems started. Her wallet wasn't in her pockets. Nor in her backpack. Nor in her big pack. We soon had every bag open looking for it, and Kate went back to the xray machines at the door to see if it was there. The poor guy behind the check-in desk was getting quite distressed for us, I think. I started telling him about our dreadful time at the post office, and in the end he said "I'm very sorry for you, and you don't have to pay anything, I just hope you find the wallet!" So if you ever want to get out of paying excess baggage, find a sweet check-on person, and be completely hopeless. Oh, in the end Kate found her wallet in her backpack. It had got itself in to some place at the bottom where both of us had missed it several times each. We made our plane, exhausted, hot and sticky (it had been the warmest day in Istanbul since about October) and still pretty stressed, with absolutely no plans for our arrival in Belgrade. The plane was indeed a propeller plane, with only about 50 seats, and it was much noisier and slower than other planes - it took over 2 hours to get to Belgrade.