bonjour!!!

Update

Below is an old post that didn't work, but I a reposting for the heck of it. Currently I am in Italy checking out some town. I have started to forget town names a little, which is slightly unamusing. Still, great fun is being had as measured largely by the amount of pasta I am eating. i have decided that Italy is ever so slightly better than France re : food, but it is truly splitting hairs. I am travelling with Mat at the moment. Once he flies out from Rome on the 2nd it will be solo again for another 8 days or so. Plan is to stay mostly in Italy doing the eastern coast and top bits plus Milan, then drop car in Nice and fly to Berlin. Most of this is being done by the seat of my pants which feels like it is wearing a little thin in places. It is a bit tricky to describe how it all is - each day is pretty packed with lots of stuff. I spend alot of time thinking stuff like, what is this place, who lived here, how am I different, what is travel anyway, and aren't tourists a bunch of irritating dip-shits? (answer generally is dunno, dunno, dunno, dunno, yes).

Looking forward to posting photos!

catcha

-old post-

Well ... i have finally got myself behind a computer again after what feels like an age, and probably is. I have driven in the order of 4500kms since I arrived. I am reminded of a rather sweet lyric from a pop77 song that goes - "... started off slow, but I'm in the fucking army now". But this is possibly because I have been listening to that track alot in the speed mobile.

OK list time

Best meal _ set menu at hotel in Gimmel nestled into the moutainside watching an impossibly pretty sunset over a ancient mossy valley complete with little ruins etc plus a bottle of bugandy wine. Bliss!!!

Best room - Spain near Bilboa tucked into the top of an attic on a bit of a clif face. The window opened up through the roof and I stuck my head out for ciggies and watched the light house thingy swirl around through the rain.

Best person met - the owner of the spanish clif hotel thing. He was awesome and we danced the dose-do at 9am in the morning and he gave me free breaky.

The most fucking lost I have been - Nice. I was a bit hungover and coundn't find the hotel for love nor money. I have developed a cranky hatred for Nice now.

Most amazingly not lost - the entirety of Spain trip without a guide book, visit to a tourist centre thingo or nuch in the way of a road map. I have found that lost is very subjective. If you don't have to be anywhere and you like your surrounds, then you are not really lost even if you cannot exactly say where inthe name of fuck you are.

Where i am now - sort of near Nice but in a coastal town. Pretty nice area, but it is all a little "gold-coast" in places. Picking up Mat tonight, and it will be fun to have a map reader in the car! Looking forward to ditching this piece of coast and heading where there are fewer people. Sorry - still no pics. Maybe Mat will be able to help with that.

bloody hell

just wrote a whole message then deleted it ;;; damn french keyboards qnd stuff!!


anyway = i m well but a bit rushy cause just running out of time ;;;

driving is fun!! b it crazy driving around paris day 1; but getting better = i have only swung out into on coming traffic one or two ti,es which is .. well not all that nice but could be worse§§

seeya

Unexpected happiness

I just got a nice surprise today. I dropped off a film canister yesterday that I had been dragging around in my little box of tricks. I didn’t expect there to be anything on it – but there was! It was full of photos from a solo day walk that I did along Razorback and Mt Feathertop nearly four years ago just after the bushfires decimated the area. Lots of photos of burnt trees and a few of them actually do justice to the crazy beauty and horror of the aftermath. This is also the last roll that I did on the camera, ‘cause I got confused and thought that the shoot didn’t work and blamed the camera… Maybe my SLR days are not done! Although, at $12.50 a pop to develop plus film costs the digital age does call.

In other news – I am SICK TO DEATH OF TALKING OR THINKING about furniture removal so I am not going to give you an update there. So I will focus forward. The excitement is starting to kick in (when it can get its head above the anxiety). Only two sleeps in Sydney, and neither of them in my house (bed goes today – DAMN! I said I wouldn’t mention it!). Last night was my last “sleep” in my bed. Quotes are because I couldn’t actually get to sleep for ages. I kept going out onto my balcony for one last evening look across the city. One last sit in my chair. One last trip downstairs for a glass of water, etc, etc.

Anyway – I will try to scan some of those photos at some point for y’all.

Have a good one! May the sun shine out of ALL of your eyeballs. That is, the eyeballs of you all. I am not implying that you are all a bunch of many-eyeballed freaks.

The poll bandwagon.

Sorry guys, but I really couldn't resist climbing aboard the poll bandwagon (look right). It just looked like too much fun. My little poll will assess the average mood of my readers. If you are all too glum, then I will have to post photocopies of my bottom or something to cheer you up. Actually, that might make things worse. I might have to give this some more thought…

...back from Melbourne (again)

Well, back from Melbourne. I am starting to feel like some sort of "traveling often between Melbourne and Sydney" type person. Today, I got off the plane all mentally prepared to be cold, ‘til I remembered that Sydney is the warm one.

Work went well in Melbourne, much to my relief and pride. I have to write a fair bit within the next 36 hours, but, after last week’s creative effort, I am not too scared.

I also got to catch up with Choco and the lovely Feebz, and had a nice Friday night watching “V for Vendetta”, which is just begging to have reviewers say, “… or should that be ‘B for Boring’, ‘C for Crappy’, or ‘T for Talk about setting up some really good themes and then abandoning them in favor of some half-bred cross between The Phantom of the Opera and The Third Reich”. No, that is actually unfair - it was neither boring nor crappy and I had a great time. I also enjoyed merrily bitching about the drizzly Melbourne weather, until I realized that my plans have me spanned between Melbourne and London. Hmmm. I think that the pot is calling the kettle cold and dank.

My working list of achievements and "To-Do"s

Done
* Sold couch to a crazy couple who would not know a "shifting spanner" if it was jammed firmly in their hand. To them I say, “Good freakin’ luck! You are going to need it!”

* Obtained international drivers permit. This lets me be a nut-job driver in many, many countries. To them I say, “Get outta my way! I’m’a comin’ through!”

* Sold my Sigur Ros tickets. This makes me sad. Very sad. But also happy, cause they sold for more than I paid, thanks to the angels of eBay.

Distinctly NOT done

* Sold bed. This is freakin’ me out a bit.

* Finished packing. However, that is what Thursday is for.

* Change all forwarding addresses.

* Offload the beautiful frangipani

* Get a freaking camera (this is proving a bit of a mental hurdle for me. Despite Choco’s moral support on Friday, I chickened out at the last moment and am still camera-less)

But for now, I am going to finish watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD!!! Ahhhh…. Saturday nights on the couch. God bless them.