Time for a change...

Miles in London Part 12 - NEW YORK NEW YORK!

2011-12-15T09:04:00.001+11:00

2011-12-15T09:03:00.001+11:00

Hey guys!

A few of you recently let me know, its been a while since my last email - 6 weeks in fact! It feels like things have been pretty busy, and I've been on two of the longest holidays since I got to London - New York for 10 days and literally just got off the plane from Marakech for the last 5 days.
So over the last 45 days, i've actually been on holidays for about 1/3 .. not a bad effort hey? Christmas is coming up, so there are more holidays soon.. life is hard :P

On the work side, things have been pretty busy as well, i've actually been on back to back projects for the last 6 weeks, which is a little unusual I guess. I was hoping that with all my holidays, I'd be able to dodge projects, but unfortunately this was not the case.. yep - I am completely on cruise control mode, and treating the next 1.5 years as a total holiday where work is an inconvenience that must be tolerated to fund my travel... Luckily, I have 6 weeks of annual leave + public holidays here, which gives me about 40 odd days off per year, and because you can't build up annual leave over here like you can in Australia, I intend to use them all.

So I might as well start off be writing a bit about New York - big thanks to Lee for letting me crash at his house for the whole time, and Alex for cooking Thanksgiving dinner (this was a feat in itself but when I put it into context it will be even more impressive..)!

The trip went off to a bad start as my flight was cancelled the night before - which meant I had to rebook it and seeing as I was originally going to arrive in NY abot 9, I took an earlier flight which meant I would arrive about 7. This meant that I was not going to go into work at all, which was awkward as of course I didn't take that day off as annual leave.. but I did it anyway, and actually managed to meet up with Marto for brunch during his 24 hrs in London which I was quite happy to have done.

I finally managed to get use out of my gold frequent flier status, but the British airways lounge was massively disappointing, pretty much the same as the qantas domestic lounge - crap food, and everyone is in there anyway.... business class check in was good - but there was no line cos it was quite an empty flight...

Flying Friday
I watched a few movies on the plane, he highlight being Friends wth Benefits - some of you already know I like my girly movies but with two good looking main characters which spend a significant part of the movie in their underpants the story is predictable but still suprisingly decent. I lande at JFK at about 5 - and get into a cab to NYC to meet Alex! To prevent this from being any longer than it needs to, i'll go to bullet point mode.

- I don't really like eating on planes and i think its a combination of 3 things
1. The food is questionable quality and here is too much of it
2. I don't move after I eat and it just sits in my stomach
3. There is probably too many meals for the length of flight its because I always feel the need to everything cos its in front of me, and that i dont get to move, but I always feel a bit sick and uncomfortable after a long flight...
- First meal: Lime Paneer Burrito - a pretty tasty fusion style 'fast food' that can be found in NY
- Lee lives in West Village, which a really cool area with lots of bars and restaurants nearby
- Wonzy's birthday so his wife cooks an great Korean meal, there were about 7 guys there from ruse/ baulko/ grammar and we spend about 3 hrs on his house discussing the the usefulness of an MBA and the Eurozone crisis - i'm sure Christina and Wonzy's wife were riveted.. i can't decide whether the conversation was smart or just a complete waste of time...
- We go to bar at about midnight and stay there about 12 and stay until about 2:30am, where we discuss Peter Choi's 'decision' to propose to his girlfriend of 2 months...
- And end up at Artichoke pizza at about 3am (8am London time) which serves a MASSIVE pizza - at this point this i like my 7th meal the last 24 hrs and am stuffed - a feeling that would become extremely familliar over the next 10 days..

Seedy Saturday
- I get to bed about 3:30am and get woken up at about 6:30am - when one of lee's housemates gets up to go to the gym - this girl is NUTS. shes goes to the gym like 6times a week before work and on weekends at random times and so i would never get a good nights sleep...
- Lee and I get up about 10am to get a coffee and a walk around the area
- Coffee in New York is actually pretty good - not the drip coffee stuff but proper coffee - but quite expensive 3USD+
- It was on this morning that I get my 'New York' experience: Lee and I are walking near East village, and get approached by an Asian couple, the girl never speaks but both appear well dressed and the guy speaks fluent american english.. and the conversation goes like this:
Random Guy: Hey do you guys live around here?
Lee: Yeah, I live in West Village
Random Guy: I have a strange question to ask you...
Miles: OK - what is it?
RG: This girl wants to shoot an ADULT FILM and he wants to go somewhere to STRIP in front of some people.. do you guys know a place?
MT and LEE: WHAT?
RG: Yeah - so do you guys know of a place?
Lee: Umm.. how about you go to a park, do it behind some trees or something (it is about 7C in NY)
RG: err.. I don't think thats going to work..
Lee: Well you aren't coming to MY HOUSE! Is this for some kind of school project or research or something?
RG: No....
MT: Sorry dude, doesnt look like we can help..
RG: Oh OK.. thanks anyway

We figure there are probably only a few realistically reasons this could have happened. 1. True story - girl was 'testing the waters' to see if she was cut out for a career in the business. 2. we were going to be robbed. 3. this was some kind of hidden camera show...

- Lunch was at Per Se my first 3 Michelin star restaurant and arguably the best restaurant in New York - (see photos on facebook) $295pp
- Meal was technically excellent, the restaurant was fantastic, very nicely spaced out, quiet but not overly so, fantastic view of central park and the city
- Service was fantastic, even though one waiter dropped a bedroll almost in my lap
- Wine list was on an IPad which was kinda cool
- Dishes were beautiful - really well presented
- Highlight of the meal was dessert which went on and on - Palate Cleanser, Caramel Cheesecake (actual dessert course), Cinnamon balls, blood orange sorbet coated with dark chocolate, macaroons, chocolate truffles, and fudge
- Overall it was a fantastic meal but there was no single dish that blew me away that I will remember for ever - people have talked about the beef but whilst it as excellent it wont stay with me forever...
- I think what I can say is that Sydney has international quality food - a 3 hat restaurant in Sydney is comparable to the best in the world but may only be lacking in certain technical aspects and presentation.

- I had a five guys double cheeseburger (one of the best I had in NY) for dinner and we went out that night to go clubbing - first at a rooftop bar, then tried to get into a Korean club, but it was packed so we went to a k town to eat korean, then went back to the club where only lee and I got in and then BACK to KTOWN to eat again - i fell asleep on the table .. this is typical of the number of meals I would have in a single day in New York

Sports Sunday
- Sunday was a sleep in
- Sports bar for hot wings, fries and football
- we went somewhere I had always wanted to go : WHITE CASTLE. Let me just say this. NEVER AGAIN. the burgers are actually TERRIBLE. The beef doesn't taste like beef and the buns get soggy quite quickly and the texture goes pasty. gross.
- The highlight of Sunday was gong to see Eli Manning and the giants play the eagles. The game itself had its good moments, even though michael vick wasn't playing due to a rib injury
- best part of an NFL game is the 'tailgating' which is basically when people get to the stadium really early in the day and have a massive bbq and drink up in the carpark even if they don't go into the game. They make a whole day of it. They play some funny game with tiny bean bags and they literally like wood fires on the ground. Guys rock up with trucks and bbqs on the back of them and its pretty cool. People just hang out all day and have a good time.
- Giants lose when Eli throws an intercept on the final drive...

- Monday morning brings another 6:00am wake up and then a Salmon and cream cheese bagel
- The highline is a old rail line that's been converted into a park - pretty cool to have a bit of a sanctuary in the middle of the city
- Natural History museum is MASSIVE
- Shake shack has great burgers but for about $15 bucks a meal, its not cheap
- Levain Bakery has really rich cookies - chocolate and hazelnut, triple chocolate and choc chip
- Momofuku crack pie is good too
- Ippudo NY with Lee, Alex and Miranda (Best ramen in NY, 1.5 hr wait on a MONDAY NIGHT) freaking outrageous.
- $18 ramen (24 with extras) and a total bill of about $50 a head
- Unfiltered sake looks like.... 's_men'
- Good Tonkotsu ramen tho, much better than anything in London for a similar price....

Training Day Tuesday
- Cafe havana with Dush, GREAT CORN! EVERYONE HAS THE CORN. GET THE CORN. its corn with cheese, lime, spices and basically the best corn i've ever had, but then agin i've only ever had normal corn...
- Columbia University
- 125th street - 'African American Broadway' says Dush. Not quite. Its pretty ghetto. Interesting thing about New York, 30 blocks away you have the upper east side with multi million dollar apartments but at 125th its a completely different socio-demographic and ethnic group. The shops are totally different, the way that people talk are different. People dropping n bombs on the street just like in the movies. It really is nothing like the rest of manhattan. I guess you kind of get that in London with the housing estates but this appeared more in NY cos i guess there is a much larger population in an area. In that way I guess the integration in London has worked to an extent - except for the riots...
- walked down 5th ave and broadway, its a long way to walk down to 30th st...
- got caught in TORRENTIAL rain - was late to meet dush and katy at Rub BBQ in Chelsea
- over ate again - burnt ends (win), pulled pork (good), brisket (bit dry), ribs (hurricanes is better), onion strings (addictive), chips (above average)

Wet Wednesday
- More Torrential rain
- World Trade Memorial
- Brooklyn for Grimaldis - better than Lombardis. The way they do their pizzas is that you get a magherita pizza and you add stuff to it.. Grimaldis usually has an hour line but i got lucky and got a seat straight away
- Tried to walk to Williamburg but got pretty lost and ended up in an area full of what i orignally thought were amish people, but were actually hisidic jews. These guys don't even speak english and they literally have like a 1km square area where its like being in israel or something but there are literally no one except hisidic jews there.. they must have wondered why the hell there was a random asian toursit walking around
- eventually get to williamsberg and have a coffee and wait for alex...
- pick up the the 14lb (6.5 kg) turkey for thanksgiving on Thursday
- Go back to Lee's place to drop off the turkey and they go to Blue hill farm for dinner with Alex
- BLue hill farm - the whole idea is great quality produce from the farm and cooked simply. at $80pp i think this was a good value meal which you can have once in a while in nice causal surroudings. There were kids here for dinner, and Alex made a good comment - i'm not taking kids to anywhere good/expensive until they are of an age to appreciate - at least 10-12! otherwise its a waste of money - they can just eat McDonalds :P
- Went home and out to the meatpacking district where we stayed till about 4am - then off to a some random cafe for.... breakfast? till about 5am... then we went home.. Alex to Brooklyn, lee and I across the road

Thanksgiving Thursday
- Alex turns up about 10am - at which point lee and I are still trying to sleep
- Despite the fact that Alex has had probably less than 5 hrs sleep, being the trooper she is turns up for a full day of cooking..
- Watched foot ball on tv all day.. while alex cooked. Any time you can find a woman who is willing to cook all day when you sit on your a$$ and watch sport on TV, you know you have found a real keeper!
- Turkey, Stuffing, mac and cheese, green been casserole, smooth mash potato - my first thanksgiving meal EVER and one that will be hard to top
- Football in some kind of concrete soccer court somewhere
- Alex's friend who works at Per Se turns up semi drunk and has interesting insights on the high end fine dining industry
- We play Cranium - I win.

Black Friday
- Apparently, this is not actually a public holiday so Lee and Miranda go to work
- I head out to SOHO to do some shopping and pick up some bits and pieces, nothing major
- Meet up wth Delinda and Danny for lunch at Lombardis - 45 min queue, Good pizza
- More shopping afterwards and go to a BBQ place up in Harlem with Yao and Kristiina , Lee and Dush
- THey have this 'squealer' challenge which is basically a pulled pork sub with super hot chilli. You can't drink water while you eat it and you cant drink water for like 10 mins after...
- I had a quater of a sub while drinking like 1L of water. It was brutal. The table next to us had a guy that did it, he was a machine. This sh!t was seriously HOT. I had stomach problems for the most of the next day and that was just eating 1/4 of it.
- Seinfeld restaurant and home

Sad Saturday
- Last day in Manhattan as I will meet up with relatives in Flushing later in the day
- Wander around manhattan a bit more as Lee studies, I actually dont eat much that day until...
- I take the train out to Flushing
- FLUSHING IS CHINA
- IT is like 80% Chinese out there, shops are all in Chinese and its like the hisidic jews, all over again but they are chinese and the speak English
- Meet my two young cousins for the first time and go to my cousins place in queens
- compared to my flat in London or Lees apartment in west village it is HUGE
- 3 stories with a korean family living on the ground and kitty and tat living on the 2nd and 3rd floors as well as having the basement as an entertainment area
- They said it was small, but maybe they were being modest but it was seriously spacious
- Korean BBQ for dinner IT WAS GREAT. Man I missed good KBBQ. I don't think they have good ones in London - if any of you guys know different let me know, New Malden was dissappointing.
- Slept in a bed and had my own room for the first time in a week whic was FANTASTIC.

Sunday
- Airport, business check in and the TERRIBLE lounge where not everything is free. American Airlines SUCKS
- Watched crazy stupid love and was inspired by Ryan Gosling's super hot body (no homo)
- Am inspired to get that cut for just one time in my life

Total weight gain in NY - 2.5kgs

This is already ridiculously long. Congratultions if you go this far.Its taken me about 3 hrs to write this, whilst watching nigella, eragon and aeon flux on TV...

Marrakech next time..

Hope you are all well and write back!

Miles in London Part 11 - What Winter?

2011-11-02T08:30:00.001+11:00

Hey Guys,

It has been about a month since my last update, I hope you are all well! Its now been about 7 months in London and I think its fair to say that things have settled pretty much into a routine now, especially when we aren't travelling. Over the last 4 weeks we have only travelled once, to Madrid - which is not as bad as some people would make out. People always say that Madrid is a bit of a letdown after Barcelona but I actually don't mind Madrid at all. I think it comes down to the fact that Barcelona is very much a party town, so if you want to have a bucks weekend or go somewhere just to party, Barcelona is probably your best bet. However, you also get the downsides of a touristy, party town - the crowds, the tourists, a lot of rip-off touristy food on las ramblas, multi language menus, more pick pockets etc. The other big advantage of Barcelona is that it has the beach, which Madrid doesn't have. The Gaudi stuff is pretty interesting but I was unimpressed by the park, and the other gaudi houses are super expensive.

Madrid on the other hand is more of a local's city. There is very little English around, and although there is still a lot of tourists, it doesn't feel overwhelming like it does in Barcelona. I actually found the food in Madrid to actually be better on average than my experience in Barcelona, in particular the Pinxos (small pieces of bread with various toppings - ranging from olives and pickles to seafood to black pudding and quails eggs) was really good. I also enjoyed the royal palace, which was actually an amazing example of the decadence that the royal family lived in. Amazing furniture, painted ceilings in every room, beautiful golden chandeliers. I have been to other palaces before but for some reason I don't remember them being as over the top as this one was. The throne room in particular as quite impressive, with carved lions on the sides of the thrones, and the dining room which had a long table which seats 100 also a highlight. The other cool thing was the armoury, where they had about 50 sets of armour. As some of you may know, i read a lot of fantasy, and it was pretty interesting to see what 'knights' would be wearing. The armour has a LOT of pieces and i imagine that it would have been pretty damn heavy and uncomfortable. Not sure that it would be the best thing to fight in. The length of a lance was also suprising, they were like 5m long.. which was a lot longer than i expected. Also, the suits of armour were really small which meant the spanish kings must have been quite short... (i just re-read that and realised how nerdy that sounded... but oh well ;P)

Anyway, so I ate a LOT in Madrid, every few hours in fact. The kind of went like this - Churros and hot chocolate in the morning, Jamon Boccadillo (Spanish Sandwich) for morning tea, markets for pinxos for lunch, pinxos for afternoon tea, and then restaurant for tapas/dishes for dinner. Yeah. So pretty intense food intake. Which brings me to my next point.. weight gain. Over the last 7 months, I've gained about 5 kgs. The slim fit shirts I bought when I first arrived - which fit perfectly are now too tight around the stomach, and on the weekend Nancy said I was too fat for my trenchcoat... I think the reason for this is twofold. Firstly, when I travel, I eat. A lot. I make the excuse that I need to try all the food in a certain place because if I don't have it then and there, i'll probably never have it again, so i just figure, screw it i'll just eat it. Secondly, the weekends used to by my exercise days, in Sydney, i'd play basketball twice on the weekend but here i'm travelling so it compounds the issue. so for the record, I am officially going on a diet - until New York. The plan is lose 2-3kg before i get to new york so I can gain it back in the week I'm there so at least i'll have a net gain of 0... amazing aspirations i know ...

The other things I wanted to cover quickly, the weather has been surprisingly (and unexpected i'm told) not freezing. This week, the weather is about 15 in the day, not unlike a sydney winter. Usually,the weather is in single digits in the day already so it has been unseasonably warm. This has meant a few things. I've been able to find some people to play basketball with, and play outdoors (this will have to move indoors soon im sure), and all the money i've spent on winter clothes so far has been a bit wasted.. which segways nicely into my final point for this update... shopping.

I've spent a LOT of money of clothes since I got here. I think since I've got here I've spent way too much on clothing. For those who know about my budgeting spreadsheets i can see that since being in London, I've spent WAY more on clothes than the last 2 years. Which links back to my weight loss point - I have to lose weight so that these clothes still fit. I think my sense of fashion has changed as well. Overall I think people in London arebetter dressed thanin Sydney and i guess subconciously you want to dress better to fit in. Also I think you have access to much better clothing here than in Sydney, i mean people went nuts at Zara, which is just a very average brand here as you guys know.

Work wise - things are bearable, i'm still basically in cruise control mode, just treating work as something I have to do to fund my travel and life in London. I admit that I'm not hating it as much as I was a few months ago though so thats something.

Other interesting things I did this month - go karting last weekend, first korean meal since i got to London and finally going to Bicester village (outlet shopping).

Next update will be post New York! I have literally 30 places to eat at while I'm there, i'm really looking forward to that, and seeing Lee, Alex, Dush and my family of course :)

Will and Anny drop in this month as well...

So what have you guys been up to?

My life does revolve around food doesnt it. 3/4 of this email is about food... haha but i guess thats just me..

Write back!

Miles

Miles in London Part 10 - 6 month anniversary

2011-11-02T08:29:00.001+11:00

Hi All,

Happy 6 month Anniversary! Amazingly, its been just over 6 months since I left Sydney, and in all honestly, for me at least it doesn't seem like 6 months ago. It all still feels really new here, i don't feel like this is my city at all. I don't feel like I am 'comfortable' with London at all. I really don't feel like i know the best places to eat, I dont feel like I know the best places to hang out and I certainly don't have a routine here like I have in Sydney. This is not a good or a bad thing, its just the way it is at the moment.

In general, I would consider 6 months a LONG time, but maybe its cos I'm getting old but the last 6 months have really gone by in a flash. I still vividly remember landing in London on that first cold morning, catching my 80 pound cab to canary wharf and wandering out into the city for the first time. All of sudden, I've been working 6 months, which means 25% of my secondment is already over! I know that I have travelled a lot over the last 6 months, and that i guess what I think about it and count everything off , it seems like a lot, but it all feels like its happened in a compressed time frame, and my life in Sydney doesn't feel that far away at all!

This means its been at least 6 months since i've seen most you, and I'm sure that means you all miss me heaps! :P I know most of you have written back at some point and I really do appreciate you guys writing back, it makes the time writing these long emails worth while. I hope you guy aren't bored of these emails yet, and if you want me to stop bothering you, just let me know and i'm more than happy to take you off..

So how do I feel, 6 months in? The short anwser is that I'm really enjoying London as a place to live. I thought that one of the biggest things about moving to London would be adjusting to living on my own, and that I would feel all grown up and stuff I had to look after myself. You know what, moving out is massively overated. I don't feel any more mature than I did back in Sydney. I mean, sure mum doesn't cook me breakfast every moring anymore, so I just have a glass of juice and get a croissant on the way to work... So she doesnt wash my clothes for me anymore... so i just throw it into the washing machine myself... (which reminds me.. i have to move the clothes to the dryer..... and im back..). I thought this whole moving out of home thing would make me feel more grown up but really it justs more annoying..and more expensive. Rent is annoying to pay.. it was so much better to live at home!

I know that guys who live at home are looked down on as some kind of incompetent moron, but honestly, its not that hard to move out, and it doesn't mean that any more of man/adult just cos i can do some chores.. its really not that hard.. I cook some, I clean some, and the stuff u don't do well the first time, you learn to do better by looking it up on google and you tube. I've been thinking about this and the biggest factor in my situation is that i'm fortunate enough in my financial situation that i'm not in the position where i can't afford essentials or can pay abit to make my life a bit easier if I need to. E.g. if i'm too lazy to responsible and buy supermarket food and cook food at home, I can afford to eat out. I was able to pay a bit more for my apartment so that I could have the convenience to live near the station and I've been lucky to be able to travel on the weekend too.

I'm not saving much at the moment but thats mostly due to the travel i'm doing, so you could argue thats definitely more of question about lifestyle..

The last few weeks have definitely been more quiet, we've cut back a lot on travel. Danny came to visit so I spent a few days in Amsterdam to chill out, and there actually hasn't been any weekend trips in the last few weeks. We also aren't travelling till mid October! So thats like 6 weekends in London in a row, a new record! The main reason is that Nancy is saving up to go to HK in Jan and I'm saving up to go to NYC and go nuts during the thanksgiving sales - Lee/Alex, its time to book me into Per Se and Momofuku!

Other highlights in the last few weeks have been Deb visiting from Cape Town, (can't believe its been a YEAR since Africa) and going to Yauatcha, going to my first 2 Michelin star restaurant @The Square with Danny, having my first Pho Tai tonight in 6 months - actually pretty good, about an average sydney standard - not as good as cabra or bankstown but definitely hit the spot for my pho craving, finally having my first good steak @Hawksmoore and the AMAZING weather we've been having here in London over the last week.

Everyone told me that it would get cold in September, but its just come October and we just had 28C in London, apparently UNHEARD OF. Its been fantastic, and we've spend the last 2 days doing what all Londoners do when its sunny, we went to park and had a picnic! Everyone is pretty sure this is the last sun we'll see for 6 months so everyone is enjoying it while they can. Every casual conversation you have in the street is commenting about how amazing the weather is. You guys don't understand how excited Londoners get when its sunny this late in the year, people can't believe their luck. You know, I haven't had a winter since July last year - it been 14 months of warm weather for me, Japan, Africam Australia and Europe, all during the summer.. this next 6 months of darkness/cold is going to really be a shock to the system, considering i've never lived in a cold weather city during winter in my life EVER.

Anyway, I think i'll let you guys go now. I'm really enjoying London at the moment, and I hope you guys have also had a great 6 months. Write back if you guys get a chance, and tell me whats you've noticed has changed over the last 6 months?

Hope to talk to you guys soon!

Miles

Miles in London - Part 8

2011-11-02T08:28:00.000+11:00

Hey guys!

I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..

Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.

I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.

Work

Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....

Scotland

Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!

It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...

Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.

We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...

The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.

Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.

London
We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....

To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!

Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!

Hope you all write back soon!

Take care

Miles

Miles in London - Part 9

2011-09-15T08:03:00.001+10:00

Hi All,

It hasnt been that long since I last wrote but I didn't get around to talking about Barcelona due to the length of my last email.. Let me address that now!

Let me start by saying this : Barcelona is a great city. Its realy chilled out, and Spain is probably one of my favourite cities in Europe. The weather is great, and I love the whole eat late, stay up late vibe, especially on holidays. Archiecture is really interesting in Barcelona with Gaudi's relgious/nature influences all throughout the city. The ONLY slight blemish to the city this time was that I wasn't blown away by the food there (it wasn't bad, just wasn't amazing!) and the month of August is not the ideal time to go due to the fact that a LOT of local shops/restaurants close for most of August as everyone goes on holidays!

Highlights of Barcelona:
- Relaxed atmosphere
- Great architecture: Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo (pronounced baiyo), las rambla
- Waking up late, eating late
- Jamon Iberico at the markets - so much better value than eating at a restaurant!
- Getting my tan on!
- Relatively cheap compared to London /Paris

The best food we had there was from markets, and the best things at the markets is of course Jamon Ibero! There are a lot of different varieties in terms of cut (shoulder vs leg), acorn vs non acorn, breed pf pig, time of aging (1-5 years) and the flavours do very drastically between them, I personally tried as many different types as possible, all in the name of science of course. Other meals in Barcelona were good, but not amazing - the other highlight being a squid ink paella at a relatively fancy restaurant.
I think food quality was limited by the afore mentioned closure of lots of local restaurants due to August. I'll give barcelona the benefit of the doubt just this once..

It just so happened that Viv, Miranda and Josh were also in Barcelona on the same weekend! Thanks for letting us tag along with you guys!

Just to go onto a tangent...After 5 months of 'low cost carrier' travelling I think I have now established several rules:

1. Saturday morning flights are generally not worth it. Getting up at 3:30am to get to the airport ruins your day, and you end up wiping out in the afternoon anyway so its not like you get to spend a full day anyway. Saving accomodation for a night sounds like a good idea, but the opporunity cost of losing half of saturday due to tiredness and extra expense to get there in the morning must be considered.
2. Location of the airport is important. Depending on when you live, the airport is really important. For example to get to Stansted Airport from Clapham early in the mornig or returning late at night is a NIGHTMARE. We got up at 3:30am for a 7am flight and only just made it and it cost us about 20 pounds to get there. While you may pay an extra 20 pounds to fly from a close airport, this is easily cancelled out by the size of the taxi bill at 12 midnight when you land..
3. Book in advance - plan 3 months ahead!

We also went to Berlin last weekend, organised by Linda... Friday night flight of course - the woman is a pro and learnt the before 3 rules a long ago... She booked us a MASSIVE 2 bedroom apartment in the Mitte district (east berlin).. We arrived on Friday night and immediately smashed a currywurst once we had dropped off our bags. Currywurst is fantastic, its just a sausage fried in oil and covered in tomato sauce which has curry powder in it. We had it at a place right under friedrichstrafe station and I have to say the chips here were amazing - really crunchy and went great with the curry sauce! We also had a few drinks a bar called Van Gogh, it was a really eccentric little place which specialised in cocktails and had a man playing a piano and singing in the corner. Really chilled out place and was absolutely packed from where we got there at about midnight to 2am when we left..... to have KEBABS! Great call by Linda to redirect our taxi driver to take us to a kebab shop instead of home!

This was probably the first kebab i've had since i left australia and this was pretty good! Not too fat, and had enough vegetables to make me feel healthy. The meat was cut really small so that was interesting too. Kebabs and currywurst are EVERYWHERE in Berlin, much more so than in Sydney. Unfortunately, food went downhill from that point, the rest of the meals we had were unmemorable, with a few average roast pork dishes and various sausages/wurst dishes were not impressive. I do remember having a few better meals last time I was in Berlin, but I think the south of Germany (e.g. bavaria) is more well known for food..

The highlight of the trip was definitely the Fat Tire Bike tour - which was 5 hr bike tour throughout berlin. Riding a bike is definitely a good way to see a city - i just dont think you cover enough ground on foot. We apparently covered 14kms on the tour, and although when you think about it, over 5 hrs its about 3 km/h we did have a 1 hr lunch break and stopped constantly to talk, take photos etc. Also we werent tired like we would have been after walking 14 kms..The tour covered most of the highlights, reichstag, berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, bradenburg gate, museum island etc. and the guide, a Kiwi named Francis was quite knowledgable.

Anyway, that more of less brings you up to date with my travels. London has been getting slightly colder but hasn't really turned the corner yet in terms of temperature, I dont have a coat, but its fine so far. It is getting dark earlier now, its dark by about 7:30 pm now,compared to almost 10pm in the hights of summer.. 6 months of darkness here we come!

Danny is coming to visit for a couple of months, arriving tomorow night! It gives me an excuse to go to my first 2 star restaurant in London - The Square in Mayfair. I hope its good!

Hope you are all well. Write back when you guys get a chance!

Take care!

Miles

Africa Day 3

2011-09-08T05:30:00.007+10:00

You know what, its been more than a year since my trip to Africa and I'm still on day 3. I could give up the blog here but that would be quitting! And I don't quit! Well not often - not unless im really getting flogged, in which case i just throw a tantrum and demand rematch... but thats not really quitting!

Anyway - Day 3...

You've probably forgotten the context of this now, but I'm still in Uganda, in the QE2 national park. We went on another game drive - and on this day we saw

- a whole famly of elephants crossing the road (i still remember this, it was my first closs sighting of a large group of elephants!)
- a hippo out of the water and about 5 m from the mutatu. This was the first and last time that I would see a hippo this close out of the water!

- Antelope, Warthogs (pumbas)
- A lion from a distance

We also went to an african village which is probably the first time i came close to a proper third world village. The kids were dirty, they didnt have running water, and i'm not even sure if they had electricity.

I don't think they had seen a lot of asians nor had they seen a lot of asians with hairy legs because they seem to be fascinated with the hair on my legs.. and they kept stroking it... weird i know...

We also went on a cruise of the the lake and on the cruise we saw
- Elephant in the water
- Maribu Storks - The ugliest birds in the world. Carrion eaters of course.
- Hippos in the water
- Crocodiles

A really cute kid!
who insisted we take multiple photos of him...

That afternoon - we went on a chimpanzee walk, where we went in search of chimps! Unfortunately we only managed to see glimpses of them as they were up in the trees. We had a cool guide though, who held my hand as i walked over a fallen over tree to cross a river. There is a 90% chance that I would have fallen in without her help..

Dinner was roast Goat! It was AMAZING. One of the best meals of the trip. To get a roast in the middle of africa was pretty special actually, I didn't expect to have that kind of food, i thought we were going to be eating really simple food throughout the trip but every once in a while we'd do something amazing like a roast side of goat and roast vegetables...

I believe this was the night wher Katie, Bahn and I had our first late night chat... :)

Good times...

Miles in London - Part 8

2011-09-01T09:05:00.002+10:00

Hey guys!

I had written about a page of this email which I somehow to lose out of gmail, even out of the drafts folder. I must have hit the perfect combination of shortcut keys which meant not only did it exit from this window but I also managed to discard the draft as well. Unbelievable.
Its REALLY annoying to have to literally rewrite which I had spent the previous 15 mins writing, so luckily for all of you who have complained that these emails are too long, this will become shortened..

Its been been a pretty crazy 2 weeks since I last emailed. Work has been really busy finishing up a project and I have been to Scotland for almost a week and then Barcelona for the best part of 4 days, so pretty action packed on this end. I hope you are all well where you are, I know that you guys have weddings to plan, new boyfriends to entertain, new cars to drive, your own holidays etc, so write back with all the exciting things that you guys are up to! Sometimes I send these emails out and not many of you reply sometimes, so it would be good to get an update on what you guys are all up to.

I'll break this email up into parts so hopefully it will be easy to read.

Work

Work has been really busy - i actually got put on a project I enjoyed and the partner on the project went on holidays for the first 3 weeks of a 5 week project, which meant I was left to my own devices. It was good to get back to doing something i actually found interesting and actually work at the level I'm used to back in Australia and not a level below, which was what had previously been happening. Unfortunately, my holidays were right in the last 2 weeks of the project which was not ideal. It was OK for me, but I think the team had to work harder in my absence which I feel slightly bad about, but in my defence I was taking calls from Scotland to make sure that they were on the right track and to answer any questions they had. So after several late nights in between Scotland and Barcelona, I think we managed to keep the client and the partner happy. So for the first time since I've been here, work isn't a source of major complaints. Besides the fact that I have to work at all, I'm still looking to be a househusband at some point in the near future....

Scotland

Our trip to Scotland was in two parts, firstly a 3 day tour of the Scottish highlands starting from Edinburgh (Edinburgh and Glasgow are in the lowlands) with haggis adventures - whose slogan is 'wild and sexy'. I know this is pure marketing but I was a bit surprised that they didn't try to play up to this at all during the tour. I mean even contiki does the whole traffic light thing (everyone gets 3 colors at the start of the tour green = available, yellow = maybe, red = not interested) but there was nothing to show that the big slogan on the side of the bright yellow bus was true.... The highlands are quite beautiful - think new zealand but less lush and more desolate. The Scottish moors are beautiful in a barren, eerie way and ever since watching 'highlander' i've wanted to go to scotland and see what it was really like, and yes it is just like in the movies!

It does rain a lot in scotland though and for the first few days we did get severely rained on. The highlights of the tour include general scenery, visiting a nice scottish castle on a lake, the isle of skye (great scenery) a interesting and informative talk about traditional scottish life (how to wear a kilt, weapons used etc) where 2 people on the tour were dressed in traditional scottish garb - this is not quite the same as the kilts you see today. The main thing that i don't understand about this as why the traditional scottish kilt does not appear to be very warming. For a place as cold as scotland - lots of snow in winter, teens in the summer - how could people go around wearing just some kilt? The loch ness was not particuarly a highlight, it is massively touristy, and gimicky with lots of models of fake nessies and where we took our boat tour, there were heaps of little midges which are really annoying and bite your face etc...

Overall, a good tour which i would recommend to get a taste of the scottish highlands.

We returned from the tour on Friday where we met up with Nancy V, Jean, Helen and Matty at our hostel. The hostel was managed by quite an eccentric guy (JonJo) who seemed to take a lof pleasure in showing us how the lights in the room were able to dim, and the admittedly nice recreation room with projector.. When we checked out on Monday morning at 10am (the prescribed checkout time) the manager was still completley drunk from the night before and answered the door with his sunglasses on and reeking of alcohol.. did I mention that he slept in the office as well? Im a little recess you access through a ladder...

The main reason we were in edinburgh was actually for the fringe festival and we saw some great shows while we were there. There are a lot of great 'free' shows there too, mostly late night stand up. It usually features 3-4 comedians doing 10-15 minute sets and you are asked to give donation at the end but you don't have to. Generally, these are all in pubs/clubs with rooms set aside for these shows and in general these are quite good. We saw a few duds, in particular one guy with the 'Richard Mercer' voice but he just wasn't very funny... he had one sketch where he was playing a washed up james bond and put a gun to head to kill himself... not funny.. The best thing we saw while we were there was by far 'baby loves candy' which is a group that does improv musicals - the crowd yells out names of random musicals, past musicals include 'Jersey Whore'. and our one was 'The Last of the Norweigans'. This was absolutely hilarious and quite clever! We also saw Margaret Cho - shes the bisexual american woman. Nancy didn't like her at all, shes quite crude, talks about her vagina, oral sex, and toilet humour, in other words right up my alley. I found her quite funny, but the most interesting thing was how polished she was compared to any other act we saw. She was just smooth and you could tell she knew exactly what she was doing. With almost all other stand up acts we saw, there would be moments of hesitation, or they would get put off by some heckler etc, but margaret cho to her credit, put on a very professional show.

Edinburgh as a city is quite nice, there is a lot of nice old architecture there, the royal mile is great to walk downand there are so many old pubs everywhere. My one regret is not being able to see the Royal Military Tattoo which is supposed to be amazing. I guess i'll have to go back for that.
I found food in general to be quite good and we had some nice meals there, in particular a nice fish and chips place called seadogs.

London

We got back to London at about 11pm on Monday night and I was up at 5am to go to birmingham for work, where we pulled a couple of 2am's and I got back to London on Thursday night at about 11pm. We got up at 3am for our bus to take us to the airport for our trip to Barcelona on Friday.....

To be continued - I can see eyes glazing over already so I'll tell you about Barcelona in the next email - pictures are already on facebook!

Coming up -
Berlin with Alby and Linda
Amsterdam with Danny
NYC for Thanksgiving!

Hope you all write back soon!

Take care

Miles

Miles in London Part 7 - Riots!

2011-08-15T09:08:00.000+10:00

Hey Guys,

Thanks to everyone who checked up on Nancy and I to see if I was OK during the riots.

It was all a bit surreal - I never really got close to any of it - Brixton is the next suburb from us, and was one of the first places post Tottenham to start rioting. It wasn't until Sunday night that Clapham Junction got hit quite bad, with Debenhams, a department store getting badly smashed and two buildings getting burnt (the first was a costume store, which got hit first so people could steal masks.. kinda smart actually).

As you can imagine there is a LOT of debate going on right now over here as to the cause of it and why it got so out of hand. I have watched a few things and read a few articles and for the record, here is my understanding of events:

Mark Duggan - a man from Tottenham was shot by police - and it is now clear that he never fired his gun at all. This was the cause of the initial riots in tottenham, where i'm sure the pictures have been broadcast around the world - I believe this was saturday night.
What is also clear is that the police were very slow to respond on Saturday and as mobs generally do, they started burning cars, buildings and looting. Now Mark Duggan is from a council estate (public housing). One thing to remember here is that there is a massive amount of community housing here in London, and they can be found in almost any suburb of greater london. Of course not everyone in these places are bad people but it seems that the vast majority of rioters were from these places. I guess you can imagine the aboringal boy that was killed running from police in Redfern last year and what happened there - but this was on a much larger scale.

Every other riot after Tottenham was pure copycat. I think that people saw how easy it was for those people in Tottenham to get away with looting and rioting and realised there was some quick money to be made. Also, it also seems that the 'gangs' that work in these various areas all actually called an truce and decided to work together to target certain stores and areas - all done via blackberry messenger - another controversial topic right now. None of the rioters that have been interviewed have even pretended that it was anything to do with Mark Duggan - it appear to be purely opportunistic greed. So basically, it just spread and while it was mostly London on Sat and Sunday night, on Monday night it had spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool etc, all places where people had never heard of Mark Duggan, but had seen on TV groups of people burning and looting, and no one getting arrested.

Btw - its good to point out that originally, the looters were mostly aged 15-17 - 'street gangs', but as the days moved on, it became much more organised with people in their late 20s getting involved and driving up in cars, loading up the boot etc, and it was much more planned.

So that's where it stands at the moment. Everyone here is trying to understand how this got out of hand, and why so many people feel that they needed to riot. All the usual suspects have been thrown out there:
- Social Divide
- 5% of people own 80% of wealth
- Education Cuts
- Police Cuts
- Lack of opportunity for the people in these housing estates

I'm sure you've all read the articles for yourselves.

Personally, I think it was a combination of all of these things but mostly just the nature of society these days. Everyone wants the get rich quick, no one wants to work hard anymore. I look at the generation before us - and I was taught by my parents that working hard will give you success. Nowadays i guess kids believe that there are shortcuts, and they don't care if its legal or not. Its probably a massive oversimplification but I think that a work ethic has really disappeared from our generation.

Feel free to email me back to discuss :)

Anyway - in other news, we went to Krakow a few weekends ago (it seems like AGES! and i've only spent the last 2 weekends in London), Krakow is a nice place,as with most European cities, it has an old town and boasts hundreds of years of history and culture. On the whole, Polish girls are pretty hot - on average, potentially the best looking girls i've seen in any country so far - but I haven't been yet (France, Belgium, Helsinki, Estonia and Portugal for those keeping count). There were no particular jaw dropping moments but just on average, the waitresses, people walking along the street, were well dressed and good looking.

Highlights of Krakow
- Auschwitz/Birkenau - you can't really call this a highlight but its something that I think is worth seeing. 1.1m million people were killed at these death camps - you don't even call then concentration camps because people literally got off trains from all around Europe at Birkenau and were promptly marched into the gas chambers and killed. In almost all cases they never knew what was coming, they all thought they were simply being relocated. Most people had brought luggage and they dearest belongings. The museum is intense, when you see the tens of thousands of shoes, toothbrushes, suit cases and even human hair (yes you read that right, the Nazis harvested hair from dead bodies to be used in factories to make carpet etc) you start to appreciate the scale of this tragedy. When you talk about 1m people - the number is so large that it almost becomes meaningless, but when you see the personal belongings (and these are only the things that were left behind, because when the soviets came, they had already marched all prisoners that could walk out) it really hits home.
The most harrowing experience was actually walking into one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. God only know how many people died in there. The nature of German efficiency meant that the furnaces to burn the bodies were simply located next door, 5 meters away and they made other Jewish prisoners collect the bodies and put them in the ovens.
Its hard to imagine cruelty and massacre on such a scale.

- The salt mines are a much more light hearted attraction that consist of an old salt mine - 130m deep into the ground. The amazing thing here is that they have been mining for salt for such depths since the 1300s and was one of the most profitable mines in the world for hundreds of years. Nowadays, they have amazing carvings out of salt and one chamber in particular that is now a church, where they have the last supper carved in salt on the walls, a salt pulpit, salt crystal chandeliers, salt crucifixes - simply stunning. The lines for this are pretty horrendous - it took us about an hour to get in - but i made the most of that time,i lined up about 30 mins to get a hot dog, potentially one of the most inefficient processes I have ever seen in my life - how could you back up a hot dog line for 30 mins ? Just put some more damn hot dogs on the barbecue....

- We also got some culture into us, attending a concert at Wawel castle where we both go in as students. I suspect that it was a fairly legit concert as people came in suits and nice dresses, Nancy and I were definitely the most under dressed people there, it was nice, in a small courtyard in the castle and consisted of a pianist, a clarinet player and a violinist.

Food - No Miles email would be complete without some mention of food!
Food in Krakow is great, they are a meat and potatoes kind of people and I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy.
The most common thing to eat there appears to be Perogi - basically a meat dumpling, either steamed or fried. Over the 3 days I must have eaten about 30 of them. Other highlights included Zurek, a sauerkraut soup, Beetroot soup and Duck with Apple. Servings were generally generous food was CHEAP - luckily the poles havent got the euro yet, and a 3 course meal at a decent restaurant was about 10 pounds for 2 people, or the price of a pizza in London.

We also went to St John on Friday - the master of nose to tail cooking. 1 Michelin star. I had been warned about this actually, with a large number of asian friends who had been before telling me that they were not impressed so my expectations weren't high. Also, service was supposedly dreadful according to several food bloggers so all in all , things weren't looking great. With the help of some friends, I managed to find 15 other people to share this meal with me as we had ordered the SUCKLING PIG FEAST - where you get an entire suckiling pig, and a selection of starters and desserts.

For starters we had snail and oakleaf (great salad!) and bone marrow and parsley (if you love marrow, you'd love this). The main was the pig and presentation wise, it certainly didnt disappoint - see facebook for photos. The main criticism from almost everyone I had spoken to was that the skin was not crackling. I guess due to the way that they cook it, the skin does not crisp up in that fantastic way you get with roast pork. I had been expecting this so my disappointment was tempered. The pig for me was a mixed bag.
I loved the meat - it was amazingly tender, you didn't need a knife at all, everything literally had fallen apart. I didn't like how something in it gave me asthma - I have no idea what it was but it was getting a bit ugly for a while because I didn't have my puffer but luckily logan came to the rescue. I liked the stuffing, it was quite tasty and complemented the texture of the meat. I didn't like the stuffing because there was too much and it was too fatty. Actually that is the main problem with the pig. It was amazingly fatty. I don't actually think I ate that much pig, but in the end, it sat in my stomach like a lead ball for hours. I daresay that I still felt that pig the next day at about 11am.

Desserts were Peach & Raspberry Pie, Vanilla Ice Cream and Eccles Cake and Lancashire cheese. Ice cream was by far the winner - the rest were too heavy. Dud picks on my part. I think with another meal they would have been fine, but after rich, heavy, fatty pig, it was all too much.

Overall, It was worth the experience, Service was actually quite good, and I liked the starkness of the decor all white. I actually enjoyed my first plate of pig a lot - it was the 2nd and 3rd that I really regret. At 50 pounds a head (including service and wine) I dont' feel like I got ripped off, i walked away full and I've paid more for worse. Would I do it again? Probably not for a few months...

Anyway - I think that catches you guys up on life in London. Hope you guys are all having fun.

Next Stop - Scotland and the Fringe festival!

Write back to let me know how you all are!

Miles

Africa Day 2 - QE2 National Park

2011-08-05T06:46:00.007+10:00

Finally - Day 2!

Day 1 went on for a while - in blog terms it was almost 6 months! But we got through and hopefully the rest of the diary won't be as dragged out. We woke up early on day 2, had breakfast - at this point I actually was getting up early enough to have breakfast (usually nutella on toast and milo) packed up our tent and got onto our big yellow truck 'Ben'.

We drove all day to a national park called the QE2 national park and stayed at camp site called Hippo Hills. This would be the first of many days where we wuold literally spend up to 12 hrs on the bus, stopping only to have lunch.

The highlight of the morning was having chicken on a stick - I suspect that these were semi cooked and simply reheated a little bit when people wanted to buy them. There were a lot of sellers of said wings along the dusty ugandan road.

I think only Katie, Bahn and I had chicken on a stick - not everyone was as keen to tempt food poisoning like the 3 of us. Katie was definitely one of my best friends on the trip. She always had a big smile, and the her Bahn and I really hit it off.

That's Rich in the background.

Let me take some time now to describe the lunch process:

The truck pulls over a nice spot which is open and a little way from the road so that we don't get too much road dust.

Each person would then move to various task and as creatures of habit, we always seemed to fall into a similar roles. Some of the boys would pull out the table, and the girls would set up two basins with truck water (Josh would fill out wherever he felt the water was clean, the truck held up to 100L i guess), one for vege washing and one for hand washing. We would then get various vegetables from the truck, depending on what we had bought recently, the vegetables we would have consisted of: Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onions, Carrots and tinned betroot. There were probably others but these were our staples. We would slice most of them, and grate the carrots.

At the same time, other members of the group would get out various condiments: butter, mayo, Mrs HS Balls Chutney (AMAZING - such a shame I haven't seen it since - they even have a chip flavoured for this!), and the meat would consist of various hams and usually canned tuna. If we had recently been to the shops we would also have cheese as well.

I think that a few weeks into the trip we had the lunch prep process down to 3 mins FLAT From the bus stopping to us eating..

All the food was kept cold in eski's or in the trucks freezer which help most of the food.

We would also have loaves of bread and crackers and it was pretty much buffet style.

My typical lunch would be tomatoes, carrots, tuna, mayo, MRs HS Balls Chutney and cheese. I actually these lunches were one of the main reasons I lost weight in Africa - these were relatively healthy compared to my normal lunches, and actually quite satisfying and filling.

Others (Deb and Sangee) would typically finish with some fruit also.

There was usually a made rush for the tuna, so you had to be quick for that :D

We wouldn't wash lunch dishes but put them in a bucket to be washed when we got to the campsite.We would then pack everything back into the eskis and wipe the table down, put the table away and get back on the truck. The total time would be approx 30 mins from start to finish.

I think that for the next 60 days I would have this type of lunch for at least 30 of days but i actually didnt get tired of it. If you had offered me this food now, i'm sure I would protest after 2-3 days but strangely I didn't mind. I guess I knew that I didn't have any other options so you just accept it, eat and move on. Strange how quickly you adapt.

Along the way, we also bought some freshly caught river fish which we would have for dinner one of the nights. At some point we had also bought some Goat.

On the way to the park after lunch we saw some Elephants! My FIRST African animal experience!

That night we feasted on river fish, roast chicken and roast pumpkin and potatoes. All we had was 2 small barbecue racks over coals, and we managed to cook that sort of meal. The food was fantastic, and cooked so simply, just a bit of seasoning, eating while watching a beautiful african sunset. We were really in the middle of nowhere now, even though this was an established campsite, it was empty except for us and the sense of being alone with nature was really overpowering.

I enjoyed my first night out of civilisation immensely and fell asleep content. Tomorrow would bring my first 'game drive' and also a river cruise so I was really looking forward to that.

PS. The camp site was named hippo hills because hippos were known to wander up to the campsite at night. Did you know that Hippos are the biggest killer in Africa? They basically charge people and trample them to death.. So we were warned to be careful when we got out of our tents at night.. TIA...

Lisbon

2011-08-05T06:42:00.000+10:00

Hey Guys,

Hope things are going well wherever you are in the world! Hopefully a short and sweet update on whats been happening here over the last 2 weeks... I keep falling behind with these updates and I know that if I don't get around to them, they will become like my Africa Journals (I'm still on day 1/70)...

'Normal' London weather has resumed for the last few weeks - Rainy and Cold and we're talking about Mid July - right in the middle of 'summer'. I am really appreciating the good weather we had in May/June now and can see why Londonders get excited when they get a sunny day on the weekend - it actually allows them to go outside and do stuff! Otherwise I guess you are restricted to the indoors and indoor activities... I hear that the hardest part about living in London from an Australian's point of view is the winters - cold, and dark when you leave the house in the morning for work and dark when you leave the office at night, apparently it takes a massive toll on you psychologically. I'm doing fine right now, (in the middle of summer) but it will be interesting to see how I go come wintertime.. i don't generally mind the cold too much, but i'm not a massive fan of rain...

The last update didn't include our adventures in Lisbon - which I think has so far become my favourite European city not named London. We only spent a weekend there, but really liked it and would definitely go back if we get the chance.. So whats so good about Lisbon? Better than Paris? Better than Bruge? How could this be?

On physical attributes, its hard to explain. Paris, in the right spots (looking over the seine, looking down to the Eiffel tower) is prettier, but in general it is also dirtier and reeks of urine. The food in Paris can be amazing, but you certainly pay for quality. In contrast, Lisbon does not have as many 'OMG this is beautiful' moments, although the view looking down to Plaza de marques de pompal is nice, but instead you get a lot of 'oh, this is a nice spot' moments. It is understated, and it can suprise you. Lisbon is built on seven (I think) hills, which means that you come across some really nice view points and they lisboans have built parks in the perfect places. Lisbon isn't too crowded, and whilst some places can be a bit dirty, it has the same cobblestone, narrow streets that give a lot of European cities its medieval charm.

Food in Lisbon is also generally of a high standard, and the cheapest western European city I've been to so far (probably because the whole country is broke but whatever). The iconic Portuguese food is of course the pateis de nata (portuguese tarts) and the best ones can be found at the Pasteis de Belém - apparently they use a secret recipe from the monastery of geronimos (also worth going to just to see the amazing cloister and main chapel) next door. I had 6 tarts from 6 different place over the weekend all in the name of science of course and these were BY FAR the best. This is definitely affected by the fact that they were warm, (they sell so many, there is always some coming out of the oven) but even then, the flavour was amazing ,the egg was not too runny or too firm and the pastry was amazing crispy, giving the contrast of textures. The other thing I loved is the fact that they have these pastelerias everywhere which all sell various sweet breads, pateis de nata, and espresso coffee, just like cafes everywhere else in the world you say, but the main thing is that a most of the time you STAND. So you feel a bit peckish, don't want to sit down for 30 mins and order stuff off a menu, so you just stand at the coutner, get a pastry and an espresso and eat it then and there and then get the hell out. I love it. I don't want to have to buy food if i'm hungry and then walk and eat - its not enjoyable. Nor do i want to sit down just to have a coffee all the time unless its to catch up with a friend, so this whole experience was revelation.

Other Lisbon food highlights included 100 Maneiras - fine dining for 40 euros (7 courses). This is situated in Barrio Alto which is one of the narrow cobblestone street areas I was talking about except evey second building is a mini bar which can hold approx 30 ppl. So you have dinner and wander into the bar area which doesnt really start pumping till about midnight to 1am. Caparinhas and alcohold in general is relatively cheap and the vibe is pretty good.
We also sought out a 'portuguese chicken' shop called Bonjardims which was fantastc - despite what we think in Australia, portugal is not really famous for roast chicken nor did any ohter places claim to serve this, but this place was the exception - a whole chicken (serves 2) for 12 euros. Good crispy skin, just the right amount of seasoning - always straight from the grill (we went twice).

I found that the city was relatively quiet - apparently all the locals go to the beach during the summer so that might have been the reason, but I found the space quite nice. They have an intersting tourist tram (no. 28) which takes you on a loop around the city that is worth a ride, its goes up and down hills and takes you right to the castle sao geoge which is worth visiting for the great views of the city. I wouldn't say I was suprised by how much I enjoyed it as a few friends had already mentioned that it was a great place, but it certainly lived up to its expectations. Next time I'll have to make sure I get to the beach.

Its already midnight.. writing has once again taken a lot longer than I expect it to and I have to get up at 5:45 tomorrow morning :(

I'll have to leave Krakow (The hottest girls in Europe so far) for another day..

Good night all, and write back so I know you guys are still reading!

Miles

Miles in London - Part 5

2011-07-12T10:26:00.000+10:00

In general, London has still been great, the weather is holding up for the most part, there have been patches of rain but enough blue skies that I would still call it summer. The temperature here never really gets about 25, so between 20-25 is a nice 'warm' day. Its weird to talk like that right, cos in Sydney if its not above 25, its definitely not summer. I guess you do adapt quite quickly...

I know I've said this before, but London when the weather is nice must be one of the best cities in the world. The parks here are quite nice, we have Hyde park, regents park, even clapham common is nice enough on a summers day. People really make the most of warm weather and the parks are full of people lying about 'sun tanning' or just having a picnic and a chat. It will be interesting to see how this all changes dramatically come the winter time. We've been to quite a few more places since my last update and had a few visitors as well, but i'll get to those in time.

I think the first thing that happened since my last update was I went to Royal Ascot - the Melbourne cup of London. Its quite the day out, with Ascot being about 1hr out of London by train and people really dressing up for the occasion. I've never been to the races in Sydney or Melbourne so it was a new experience for me. This is how it works here: There are 3 types of tickets you can buy:

Silver ring (30 pounds) : gets you into the grass area, pleasant enough in the dry, but when it rains, like it was on the day we went, it can get MESSY. Shoes were ruined, and gumboots were not an uncommon sight and I'm sure those girls wearing the gum boots were very glad they did. After a while, the smell of the churned up mud, the damp, and the portaloos starts to become unpleasant. The people here are dressed quite well, guys are in suits, girls are in dresses, but its a slightly more casual affair, with picnic mats where the ground was remotely dry, plastic chairs and tables under temporary pavilions and temporary stalls. Pimms is the drink of choice.What ticket did i get? The silver of course! Mostly BYO food here, with some food stalls also. Thanks to T for providing us with an amazing picnic spread!

Grandstand: (50 pounds): gets you into the actual facilities, through a proper ticket gate, into the grounds where there are gardens, a outdoor screen, and into the lower levels of the actual building - which is in line with the finish line. This is traditionally where you would imagine people to be when they go to the races, with the concrete steps where you stand and cheer for your horse, then throw you losing stub on the ground in disgust. Food here not that much better actually, there were pizza stalls, fish and chips but at least they provided tables and chairs (sometimes plastic also) but at least you were in a building. Thanks to NV, who snuck Ben and I into this area for the second part of the day, out of the mud and away from the commoners! Top hat and tails are sometimes seen here.

Funny incident: when we tried to get into the grandstand area using other peoples tickets that NV had smuggled out for us, they wouldn't work through the machines because she hadn't scanned them out when she took the extra 2 tickets so it said 'double entry'. At this point the ticket guy said accusingly 'Have you actually scanned these out?' To which i then said to him in my most outraged tone whilst waving the tickets that weren't ours: 'Mate we just came out of here before, we didn't scan out because you just let us out without scanning, LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE!' as i pointed at several people leaving by the gate. The ticket guy apologetically let us in through the gate :) My friends, it is all about the delivery.. you have to make him believe!

Royal Enclosure: This is in the upper levels of the buildings - unfortunately i couldnt find a way to talk myself into this one, you needed a badge and almost all the guys were in top hats and tails - hard to fake. I can only imagine the pure decadence that exists at this level...

So gamblingwise - let me just state that i hate horse racing, its pure lottery and I don't believe anyone knows what they are doing. So I win my first race, doubling up and lose the next 5, being down aboud 60 pounds for the day. Thats my first and last attempt at the races. In fact, I had one of those cliched races where the horse i randomly chose led, all the way from start tothe last 1/2 lap where everyone else overtook him and he came last....

Unfortunately Nancy as unwell and wasn't able to come to Ascot, so maybe i'll have to go next year anyway..

Stoney and Nara came to visit! Due to the South American volcano, they didnt make it to south america but did manage to come to London. I even scored a nice meal out of them! Thanks guys!

Viv Arrives in London - where she turnsup at our doorstep in a jacket and s scarf and asks 'this is summer?' and then goes straight to the much warmer greek islands! Shes back now and hopefully settling in nicely in her new pad!

Helsinki and Tallinn - Alby's birthday on the 25th, and Linda organises a trip to Helsinki and Tallinn to celebrate his and kind of my birthday! Quick observation about Helsinki:

- It doesnt get dark dark in Helsinki till about 11pm, and hten gets light again at about 3am
- We went during some kind of public holiday so it was very quiet lost of restaurants were closed
- I over ate during our first breakfast which basically affected my ability to eat for the rest of the trip... I know that just because its 'included' doesnt mean I have to over eat. I just can't help it.
- Soumellina was quite nice - its a fort that the russians/finnish/swedish occupied at various points - the walls seemed kind of low to me to be a 'fortress' and i believe the only time it came under attack, the commander surrendered anyway...
- Our guide at Soumellina was cute - and apparently her name was not Guida - i just say the first 4 letters of her 'Guide' tag and assumed....
- Doable in a day, maybe two if more things were open. Not as expensive as I thought it would be..
- Church in the rock was pretty cool - and there was a guy playing piano there - shame we couldnt stay longer to relax, but we had to go catch our...

Ferry
- First time on a proper cruise liner
- Couldnt feel any movement, the ship was massive
- Cheap booze and tobacco..
- Stayed over night in quite cramped sleeping arrangements and in the morning we got off at :

Tallinn
- Capital of Estonia where supposedly, the most beautiful women in the world are from
- Women were OK - not amazing
- Old town is nice, they play up the whole medieval thing a lot there, cobblestone streets
- There is some evidence of stag weekends here, with a few gentlemens clubs around the town
- Free walking tour by an enthusiastic uni student guide - recommended
- Food highlight - our meal at Olde Hansa, where we had Bear (Good), Elk (Very good), wild boar, sausages, duck and various other things. Novelty factors include roleplay by the staff - including the owners son, owners daughter, serving wenches and a menu written in 'ye olde english'
- Soviet bloc country until the 80s - visited a hotel the KGB had set up on a top floor that 'didnt exist' and had bugged all the rooms. Interesting insight into communist and soviet life, and how they wanted to be portrayed to the rest of the world.
- 1 day for the old town is OK, but 2 days allows you to do a few more things and take it easy...

Back in London for my birthday - thanks for all the birthday wishes on facebook - i know that if facebook hadn't told me,most of you (except Mindy) would have forgotten! Had a quiet night in - Nancy cooked despite not feeling great and spent the night watching come dine with me and just chilling out.

Went to L'entrcote (BIG fan of this place!) for Ming's birthday on the 29th and had my first karoke session in London - they use a touch screen to choose songs, but other than that its quite similar to Sydney, Had a good old sing, particularly for a school night! Went to Bar Boulud (of Daniel Boulud of 3 Star Daniel of NYC fame) to have one of his famous burgers - supposedly one of the best in London for my kind of birthday dinner on saturday, unforunately quite average. The 'porkie' burger that I had was 12 pounds (18 AUD) and had an overpowering horseradish taste, which drowned out everything else. The pattie was quite thick, and I ordered minemedium rare which didn't quite work in this context. The pattie WAS cooked correctly, but I don't know if having a rare burger really adds to the burger experience. I found the burger relatively flavourless, not like a steak tartare for example which is heavily seasoned and the only difference was the texture, which was interseting with the raw mince inside. I think I rated this burger a 4/10, not because it was bad tasting, but because it was so expensive for what it was, and the taste was average , and barely that when you factor in the horseradish...

Africa Day 1 Part 3

2011-07-07T07:25:00.006+10:00

Wow - part 3 just for day 1, I didn't think I'd have this much to write about, but I guess it was a very eventful day.

Finally, I want to make some final notes about Kampala, this is exactly what I wrote down in my diary on the night of day 1:
- Uganda is very dirty, rubbish everywhere, shacks
- Uncivilised!? Goats and Chickens in the street.

I want to draw your attention to these points as I don't feel that I have made clear what my impression was. The 'city' was a dump. Rubbis WAS everywhere, and even 1-2k from the city centre, it would be common to see a goat eating grass on the side of the dirt road, or chickens just walking around in the street. It really was a third world country, in hindsight, for a 'capital' it was one of the worst I came across..

I finally arrived back at the Red Chilli Hideaway - where my 70 day tour of Africa would start.

By the time I got there the bus had already arrived and the hostel was quite busy. The way the tour works is that there are several main areas that you can hop on and off e.g Nairobi, Kampala, Victoria falls, Dar Es Salaam and Capetown being the ones on our tour. The bus basically does continuous laps and people start and stop wherever they wish. At this point in Kampala, everyone on the tour had joined in Nairobi, except for Jaime who joined at Victoria falls and had come north.

I met Tanya our tour leader, an Aussie from northern Queensland who had been on the job for about a year. She had been a customer on a tucan tour herself and loved it so much that she decided to stay in Africa and be a tour leader.

Tanya was friendly and approachable, and the first few minutes were spent on logistics, handing over kitty money, filling our forms etc. Let me quickly talk about the people on the tour and my first impressions/thoughts - i'm sure you'll see how these perceptions evolve (or not!) throughout the next 70 days...

The people joining in Kampala:

David and Mary - an older couple from Australia, David was ex Telstra and retired, with adult children back in Australia - they told me about the need for a Rwandan visa

Katie Stirling - first impressions: tall, ranga, easy with a laugh, friendly. I didn't actually talk to katie much on the first night, I seem to remember her doing a lot of drinking with other people in the hostel...

James - Canadian, customs officer, middle aged. Seems quite conservative and a bit quiet. Stayed in a room (as opposed to a tent) on the first night

Bahn - at this point still MIA (Ruban is my mate from highschool who would be on the tour with me)

Me - What more do I have to say!?

The people who joined in Nairobi (about 5 days before):

Deb - Italian, but living in England. Slim, pretty, friendly. Honestly, on the first night I thought there might be something going on between here and....

Rich - from Liverpool, really nice, funny guy. I may have thought there was something going on between him and Deb.

Sangee - Aussie Indian from Canberra. Doctor. Hair in braids, pretty, ready with a laugh, popular with the african boys :)

Kelly and Judy - Couple from New Zealand. (Kelly is an asian guy, Judy is white - i'm not racial i just want to paint the right picture..) A bit older as well, probably in their 50s, have adult children

Chris and Ange - Couple from UK/Australia respectively. Really friendly, clearly very nice people. Really seemed to suit each other, even from the start.

From Vic Falls - Jaime, from Adelaide, also from customs. As the longest serving member of the bus, she seemed to be in charge, running the cooking, and packing up as she knew where everything went. A little bit more serious than the others but still friendly and helpful.

Our Driver was Joash, a Kenyan who had been driving tour groups for many years - first impressions was that he was very quiet, and kept mostly to himself, not really talking to many people on the tour. Joash almost always sleeps in the truck...

A lot of the future posts will be about these people so I won't go into them any more at this point.

The first task after admin, was to pitch our tent. This was the first time in my entire life that I had to put up a tent and suprisingly, it wasn't that hard. It works best if two people do it together and I think James helped me put mine up.

The tents basically look like this:

This is a photo I took the next day.

After setting up tents I helped a little to make dinner - it seemed very confusing at the time, I had no idea where anything was, cooking facilities were outdoor campsite style and our equipment was basic - just various sized pots and two pans, one large and one regular size...

Dinner tonight was Spaghetti Bolognaise with Garlic bread which was well underway by the time I wandered down to meet the guys who were already on the tour. Spag Bol was made in the expected way, sauce separate to the pasta, and garlic bread was bread rolls with butter and garlic seasoning, placed on a hand held grilling rack and held over a gas flame and regularly turned..

The meal was good, as you would expect spag bol and garlic bread to be. The pasta, that Deb was in charge of was 'al dente' of course, and there was plenty to go around. Afterdinner, everything is packed away - something that seemed amazingly complex, with Jaime the only person who seemed to go which boxes things went into and howthey were to be placed into the truck. There were about 7 large boxes that the kitchen equipment and ingredients were packed into, and they all had to be placed into the truck in a certain way - it was hard to remember... and there was a lot of 'where does this go' being asked of Jaime and Tanya

At some point after dinner, Bahn arrives and we make small talk with the rest the group, asking where everyone was from, what they'd seen so far (Rhinos - which us Kampala joiners wouldnt see for a while...). We catch up as I hadn't seen him in about a months as I was in Japan. Not realising that a tent actually does not do ANYTHING to block sound, you might as well all be sleepingin a large room in sleeping bags.

Mid conversation, we get a 'Can you guys keep it down!' from Kelly I think... and we learn our first lesson about tent and group sleeping etiquette....

We shut up and I lay in my tent, marveling at the fact that I actually was in Africa. I was in a tent, sleeping on bed roll n UGANDA, thousands of kilometers from home, from Nancy and about to start off on a great adventure. I think it was the first time all day that I had time to reflect , and it was at that point that it all really hit me. I had 70 days to experience a continent that was a whole differnt world. I had made it through the city and I was hoping to have a life changing experience. I was really looking forward to the weeks to come.. i was hoping the our slogan was true - that this would be the adventure of a lifetime..

Africa Day 1 - Part 2: Kampala, Uganda

2011-07-01T07:41:00.006+10:00

It's been a long time between blogs, but I feel like this should be finished, for my own sake if nothing else so that I have something to look back to in 10 years time and understand how I saw the world in 2010. Africa was a special place and I did actually write a physical diary for all of it so I might as well do this.

I'll probably put my england emails/updates on this as well which should be interesting..

Maybe someone will even read it!

So back to Uganda...

Day 1 - Kampala Continued...

Looking back, the trip to the hostel was completely uneventful, and perfectly safe in every way. It just didn't feel like it at the time. Arriving at the hostel, I still remember feeling out of my depth, the first time in a long time when travelling. I was alone, the people didn't really speak english, it was Africa and I had no idea where I was, i didn't even have a lonely planet!

I don't know if I have written much about the tour, but its time to give a bit of a plug - The tour was with Tucan - over 65 days from Kampala to Cape Town. Total costs was about $5800 for the tour and if you take the options I did, plus all the discretionary spending its probably another 2-3k on top. The tour is quite basic - some of the comparable tours have cooks - we didn't, and we spend about 60 of the 65 days camping in tents (as opposed to staying in a dorm).

The last time I had camped in a tent was probably in South America on the Inca trail.. now I don't consider myself a princess, but camping isnt my first choice option, and I had no idea how I would handle sleeping on the ground for the next 2 months..

I arrived quite early, about 9am and so I put my bag into the 'luggage room' which was basically like a small concrete recess - about 2m x 2m x 1m crammed full of bags and dirty, secured by a metal door with a padlock.. This Is Africa (from now on known as TIA.) I sat down for a 'big breakfast' very average eggs, beans toast and sausages... it wasn't exactly brunch at Bills :D but even though most of you think im a food snob, i actually eat pretty much anything so eat i did..

In the dining room was an older Couple - Dave and Mary who seemed quite nice and turned out to be on the same tour - i was a bit suprised cos these guys must have been at least 60 - they seed fairly fit, but I thought the tour was sposed to be for 18-45? Anyway, we get to talking and they explain their plans for the day, which involved going to some museum... but more importantly, Dave told me that to get into Rwanda I needed a Visa (yes Bahn, you did try to warn me to look more closely into this) which I didn't have.

So after about 2 hrs in Africa, I had my first major scare - if I couldn't get into Rwanda, I can't go to see the Gorilla's which was a major reason for coming to Africa in the first place.. So when Dave and Mary decide to hop into a cab (when I say cab, its more of the same, just a random guy with a car who turns up when someone gives him a call..) which turns up outside our guarded gates and takes us to the Rwandan embassy - I have no idea where we are, but I don;t remember going through the city... I get off and promise to pay Dave and Mary back (i actually never did ... oops!) and head into the embassy where I'm told I have to leave my passport there for a few days... now, i'm not that stupid so I asked if there was another option - they said there was a form I could fill out online and they could get me a reference number that I could use use to get a visa at the border...

So I walk out of the embassy - which is not in the city itself, in fact its just a large building next a dirt road.

I am now in an interesting situaton.. I need to get to somewhere with intenet (it wasnt working in the hostel - TIA). I have map, but there are no street signs and the embassy isnt marked, I have no idea which direction the city or the hostel is and there are no taxis. All I know is that you can catch these vans (toyota hiaces) which are called 'mutatus' which you just hail.. but they don't have signs as far as I can tell, don't runon a fixed route, have no preorganised stops, and don't speak English.. So.... I start walking... hoping I'll hit something useful.. a hotel, some shops, the city, a street sign.. anything...

So here I am, a random asian, clearly a tourist with a backpack, walking randomly in the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda... I head into a few shops/buildings, try to work out which direction the city is or where i can even get Internet.. I have no idea if people understood me, but I got some contradictory responses... I eventually end up in a kind of shanty market, where something resembles a street with small shops on both sides.

I walk into a phone shop (there are lot of these in Africa, and are the same as in Sydney, just a shop with phones, accesories etc, but obviously they arent selling iphones..) where I get the first useful information of the day.. there is a mutatu that comes up the street that goes into the city...

they look like this...

So I stand outside the shop for about 10 minutes and a mutatu comes by which I hail.. it pulls over and i say 'City?' to which the man nods and slides open the door for me... at this point there are already about 6 africans in the van - there are 7 seats, and I take the last one, right in the back right corner. There is no payment, I can only assume you pay when you get out..

As the bus lumbers down the street, I can only hope they are actually going into the city.. but after about 15mins it doesnt seem like it... I ask the passenger next to me - 'city?' to which he nods.. so i'm reassured.. slightly.... When it begins to get busier (more traffic) i am a bit more comfortable, at least I'm heading into town...

Along the way I've been trying to work out what people are paying to get out and what the process, and it looks like a 1000 shilling note, and someone says shouts something a minute or so before they want to stop, they pass the guy at the front some money and they may or may not get change...

When the mutatu stops in some pretty serious traffic, the guy next to me gets out, and i assume that this is close enough to the city (i have no idea what the city is supposed to be like). I hand the guy a note - and get a coin in return, I can only assume I haven't been ripped off .. the total trip cost 500 shillings. (25cents).

I'm not quite in the city but I'm fairly close... so after wandering around for a few minutes I get to an area that looks appropriately busy and after randomly asking people for the internet, actually manage to find an internet cafe... but the internet isnt working.. apparently the national ISP is down.. TIA.. and they arent sure when it will be back.. Its about midday at this point, and I don't have to be back at the hostel to start the tour until about 7pm.. so I wander around the main city.. and walk into a photo shop.. (because i realise that I don't even have spare passport photos for visa.. and i figure i should get some) i guess the best way to describe what they do is that they take photos and frame them.. mostly wedding shots i guess and they do photo passport photos. The most important thing about this place is that it was run by Chinese! The first Chinese I have seen in Africa.. They speak mandarin - which I don't really but we manage to communicate through a mixture of really poor cantonese on their part and really poor mandarin on my part.. They are a really friendly group - they invite me to have a lunch with them, which is rice with some sort of chinese style chicken stew and who am i to turn down a free meal from my fellow countrymen!

At this point i should mention that during our broken conversation, i gathered that they werent in Africa by choice.. and that some of then couldnt go back to China.. i'll let you guys work it out.. they gave me the combination

Several funny things happened here at this store...(besides our lack of understanding of each other often causign misunderstandings)..

1. They treat their customers badly - they kept telling these guys to wait saying they were busy but all they were doing was having lunch and chatting to me...
2. They had this safe which they couldnt get to work, it just wouldnt lock.. and they asked me to help.. - i promised that i would forget it..considering what I had assumed about their past...3
3. They had like a quasi receptionist, who was a local girl who made me write down the name of her baby and her phone number and promise to take her with me when I went back to Australia..Im pretty sure I was non commital.. but i still have her number in my diary if anyone wants to adopt an african child named 'brandy'.

I went back to the internet cafe and lo and behold, the internet was working, albiet extremely slowly. I managed to apply for my visa, and hoped that it would be enough..

I went back to the photoshop, hung out with the boys for a bit and took this photo... and made promises to drop by when I was next in Kampala.. or when they came to Sydney...

(actually, one of the guys - vincent - second from the right, emailed me yesterday! he's returned to China, and the shop is closed.. they are doing 'other business' whatever that means...)

The receptionist walked me to the area where the mutatus stopped and found me a mutatu that supposedly went in the right direction...I tried to explain where my hostel was.. I thought that the driver understood, and they even gave me the front seat.. At this point it had statarted to rain... so off we went... I was quite paranoid about being lost and going to the wrong place and crawling through traffic for about 30 mins I realised that I saw road sign that told me I was going in the wrong direction.. so I hopped off the mutatu at a biggish intersection and wandered towards the motorbike taxis, where you pay the rider and sit behind him and he takes to specifically where you need to go...

I walked up to a group of about 10 riders and told them where I wanted to go, and the price - I think it ended up being like 2000-4000 shillings.. i was in a rush after all.. and one guy accepted.. It was actually quite scary.. the pick was small - probably in the range of 125cc and it was raining, slippery and wet. Keep in mind the roads dont have tarmac on them so its just slippery mud and I was seriously concerned we would slip and fall off.

To his credit, we made it back in one piece to the hostel where i was extremely grateful and just in time for the Tucan tour meet up... where I would meet the rest of the group....

This has become way longer than I expected, it was quite the eventful first day.. So i'll continue this in the next post where I introduce the cast of characters that I would be spending time with over the next 2 months...

Stay tuned...

Africa - Day 1 - New Beginnings

2010-11-23T21:26:00.004+11:00

Day -1: Tokyo, Japan

The story pretty much begins where my Japan posts left off. My flight was in the morning and for my last meal in Japan, I had bought a 200g slab tuna toro (Toro = Belly, the Best part!) for about $12 AUD in a supermarket the night before and had it for breakfast. I left S, and caught the train to the airport with mixed feelings. It was sad to leave S, I knew I wouldn't be seeing her for at least 4 months, and although Japan had been an absolute sauna whilst I was there, I had a great time, with Shirakawago and My Fuji major highlights of this trip. On the other hand, I was off to see my cousins London who I hadn't seen in 6 years (since my last round the world trip) and then off to my African adventure.

The Narita Express is seamless and I arrive without incident at Narita airport. Check-in is a breeze and I am already missing my Gold Frequent Flyer status which would have given me access to the lounge. Life is tough. I board my BA flight to London and for the first time, my back hurts several hours into the 12 hour flight, it must be the BA seats or something. A few movies (I can't remember what I watched) and a nap later, I arrive in London in the afternoon.

Day 0: London

My cousin Thomas is there to pick me up, and I meet his girlfriend for the first time. We pick up Cynthia and Monica from their works and meet up with Aunty for dinner at an Italian place. The meal "feels" cheap, because we are paying in pounds and mains are like 10 pounds. The food is average to be honest, I order a steak for my main, which was forgettable.

I really like my family from my mother's side, every time I see them I feel really welcome, even though it has been many years between visits. At some point during my childhood they have all come to visit me, I guess when they were all my age and I remember really looking up to them, especially Thomas. They seemed so cool, travelling around the world, buying cool stuff and just generally living a lifestyle that I could only envy.

Its funny how things turn out because this time, they were the ones impressed and jealous of how much travel I had done over the years. I had been to South America, Europe, Japan, China, SE Asia, and now Africa. In some small way, I had been inspired to be like them, to be grown up and use my money to travel the world, and enjoy life and now they looked at me and the roles were reversed.. I'm sure that's just how tings work, one day i'll look at some kid and be really impressed by what they've achieved and probably be a bit disappointed that they have done more than I have.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to catch Bec or Logan, but will see them when I get there next year so not a big deal. By the time dinner is over, I'm wasted and have a great nights sleep, waking up about 9am - Notice how I don't get Jetlag? I think its to do with the fact that I can sleep anywhere, anytime, even if I've just woken up. I don't remember the last time I struggled to fall asleep under any circumstances...

I have an afternoon flight so Aunty makes me lunch and I take the tube to the Heathrow where my Turkish airlines flight to Kampala is slightly delayed. While I wander the airport, I end up buying "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and a baskin robbins choc fudge ice cream from a vending machine, purely because it was at the gate and I've never had baskin robbins from a vending machine before..

Funny thing at the gate : some Turkish guys trying to bring 2 massive duffel bags each on as hang luggage. They are pulled aside and after some heated discussions, they begin putting on as many clothes from the bag as they can to the point where the guy is wearing a t shirt, a 2 jumpers, a vest a coat and a overcoat at the same time, but the airline rep still doesn't seem to be satisfied that the bags are light enough, I'm not quite sure what happens to them.

I arrive at Istanbul at some ungodly hour, like 3am and have a 1.5hr stopover before I get on the plane to Kampala. I get on without incident and arrive at Kampala Airport at about 7:30am.

Day 0: Kampala, Uganda

Kampala Airport is fairly basic. We get off the plane via stairs, and the arrivals area is basically a warehouse. At this hour the airport is fairly empty and I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't nervous. You generally don't hear good things about Africa do you? You heard of war, of poverty, of disease of foreign aid being sent over. I guess it wouldn't be unfair to say that I pretty much expected to get robbed at some point over the next 2 months. When I'm trying to fill out my arrivals form, the PWC pen that I have brought with me decides to run out of ink and of course, there are no pens in the whole arrivals room - Welcome to Africa. I have to borrow a pen of an African guy who is just standing around there, I'm not even sure he even works for the airport. When I borrow the pen, he asks if I need a taxi, because if I do he can call his friend - this is great, i've been in the continent 30 seconds and I'm already being hustled - This is Africa. I politely decline, pretending that I've been here before and that my friend will meet me, I'm still in paranoid mode and want to make it seem like I'm the experienced traveller, not the uncertain asian guy who has no idea what he's gotten himself into.

Clearing immigration is a breeze, you give them 50 USD and they let you in. I change some money at the office 2200 Ugandan Shillings = 1 USD and look for a cab. There are a few guys out the front and I have a vague idea of how much a cab to my hostel (Red Chilli's Hideway) should cost - It was about 30km away. Of course they don't have metered taxi's here so you negotiate price in advance. The first guy approaches with a price about 20% higher than what I'm told to pay so I counter with the correct amount which he accepts -it was probably still too high.

I walk over to his car, and it wasn't your typical first world cab. It was an old Toyota I think, and the first thing I notice is that the windscreen has a large crack through it. The second thing I notice is that it is quite dirty and third thing I notice is that it smells funny. We set off, and I try to act relaxed, when in reality I have no idea where I'm going. We drive out of the airport and the immediate surroundings are quite rural the roads are dirt, and there seems to be farms on the side of the road. There is constant overtaking as there are trucks and buses that are simply slow and we cross to the otherside of the road to do that. Having said that he wasn't a dangerous driver or anything. The first thing you notice is the lack of infrastructure.

Even as we got closer to the Kampala, which is the capital city of Uganda, the roads did not improve. The only difference was that instead of houses made out of mud bricks on the side of the road, you get houses made out of concrete. And traffic started getting bad. At one point when we were crossing through the city, we were in a legitimate traffic jam. Kampala was dirty, smelly and poor, which pretty much sums up most of the country. There is garbage on the side of the road in the form of plastic bottles, cans, wrapping, newspapers etc. I dont think there was a garbage collection system and I think people actually burn their garbage to get rid of it. I drove past a few markets where there were people selling raw meat (covered in flies), lots of bananas, clothing, and various other necessities.

Its hard to put into words my first impressions of Kampala, it just hit me that this place was literally a world apart from the cleanliness, Shinkansens and skyscrapers of Tokyo. How could two places in the same planet be so different? It wasn't even the dirtiness of London, this was the dirtiness of poverty, of a people that are so behind in terms of living conditions to what I know that it was hard to comprehend. Unlike rural China, it was unclear to me whether or not these people were actually progressing, the farmers didn't even use the old crappy tractors they had in China, they were still farming completely by hand, and the fields were covered in weeds and the banana were not planted in straight rows - even agricultural techniques here were behind.

About an hour and a half later we arrive at Red Chilli Hideaway, which is out of the city centre. The gate is locked with a security guard behind, the fact that they need security to guard the camp is ... interesting.

To be continued...

Africa - The Retrospective Diary: An Introduction

2010-11-23T21:16:00.006+11:00

Over the next few weeks/months I will be attempting to retrospectively blog about my 65 day overland in Africa with Tucan Travel. As a disclaimer, all that I will write is MY version of the truth and MY view of situations as I see it. I apologise in advance to anyone this may offend on any secrets I may reveal.

It was always my intention to write a diary/blog of my experiences during my 3 month break. I was able to do it Japan, but this was not possible in Africa for several reasons:

1. Access to Internet was intermittent
2. When we did get access to the internet it was always slow, making writing a long blog almost impossible
3. Even when I did have reasonable connection we were limited in the amount of time that we had to spend on the internet

I realised quite early on that a blog would be impossible so I took to writing a diary (with like a pen, and like a notepad - amazing I know!). Using the diary, and my now foggy memories, I'll attempt to recreate all 65 days on this blog and promise not to pull any punches. Guys on the tour can relax, I'll be using pseudonyms to protect the innocent, and the not so innocent.

For an overview of the tour, I would have linked you to the Tucan Website, but it looks like my tour doesn't exist anymore, Tucan have completely revamped their website. In terms of the route that we took:

Kampala, Uganda -> Rwanda -> Uganda -> Kenya -> Tanzania -> Zanzibar -> Malawi -> Zambia -> Botswana -> Zambia -> Cape Town, South Africa

The closest thing to my tour would now be:

http://www.tucantravel.com/tour/overview/classic-africa/fca

Japan - Day 17-19

2010-08-22T20:50:00.008+10:00

It's hard to believe that I've been in Japan for 19 days, just short of 3 weeks. It's gone by really quickly. When I actually think back to what I've done this time around, its actually been quite a lot:
Hakone, Kamakura, Takayama, Shirakawago, Osaka, Nara, Fuji as well as many different places in Tokyo itself: Yokohama, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, Akihabara and all the other typical Tokyo attractions.

I'm happy that I've kept myself pretty busy, but have still managed to spend time with S and relax in my last few days here. In these last few days, I've completed my Japan burger review with a Maccas Benchmark (5/10) for those keeping score: Definitely the worst burger of the lot, but remarkably consistent in flavour, texture size etc to an Australian Big Mac, which I guess is the whole point of Maccas - the consistency no matter where you are in the world.

S and I caught up with the Chinese Heiress and her best friend on Friday night for dinner where we had Izakaya in Shinjuku - which was a little overpriced but whatever. The meal was a bit average, with the highlight being tofu with garlic chilli paste, a vego dish which tells you how average it really was..

Saturday night was spent with some of S's old hiking club friends where one of the guys bought a bunch of fireworks and we had dinner, got on a couple of subways to a random riverside and proceeded to combine alcohol and fireworks, always an intelligent combination..

This led to antics such as:

I'm pretty sure this is an advertisement of what NOT to do with fireworks. But all in all a really fun night with some chilled out guys and a very polite Japanese girl - sorry boys, shes taken.

Today S and I went to our one and only summer festival. We hadn't been to any others mostly because of the inevitable crowds that they attract and the current temperature in Tokyo (35c + humid) does not lend itself to wanting to rub my sweaty body against other people for several hours. It was the Azabu Juban Nouryo Festival which is famous for its food stalls.

As expected, the whole block was packed and hot as hell. It was compounded by the fact that all the food stalls emitted their own heat, with the worst being the roast fish stalls which literally had bonfire going...
It was a good experience however, with many girls dressed up in Yukata and whilst the food was not cheap, it was pretty good in general. The locals here must be used to the heat, because they were chowing down on baked/fried potatoes (slathered in mayonaise and butter), takoyaki, okonomiyaki, ramen burgers etc, as well as a variety of cold desserts and iced drinks.

Unlike Australia where the selling of alcohol is restricted to those with a license, every 5th stall here was selling alcohol of some sort, there was beer, spirts, sangria, cocktails, basically any alcohol you could want was available. If this was australia, I could see this quickly deteriorating into a drunken riot (see bulldogs games).

This was my last event here in Tokyo, and tomorrow I head to London for an overnight before I fly to Uganda. If I am able I'll continue to post pictures on facebook and write this blog whenever I can..

Until then, leave me some comments!

Miles

Day 14-15: Mt Fuji

2010-08-20T12:51:00.014+10:00

I was apprehensive about climbing Fuji. The last hike I did was Tiger Leaping Gorge in China almost 2 years ago when I thought I was about 6 kgs lighter and actually fitter, and i felt it was tough. I never actually worked out what the vertical climb on that hike was, but after a 6 hr climb I was absolutely wrecked. The descent to the gorge the next day was painful too and I arrived about 2-3 hrs after Paul, and he only hiked about 3 hours that day...

Fuji is a much more well known hike so I know for a fact that it is close enough to a 1400m vertical ascent, which to me sounded like a lot. The trip up was supposed to take 4-6 hours and the descent anywhere from 2-4 hours. I wanted to climb in time to summit for sunrise (my guess was about 4:30am) so I knew I had to start before 10 at the latest.

Due to the way things were scheduled on Wednesday I ended up at the bus station at 4:30, and the next bus to Mt Fuji was at 4:50pm so I decided to just hop onto that. Its a 2 hr bus ride to the 5th station, which is already 2.4km above sea level. I had checked the weather report which stated a chance of rain - I was not looking forward to hiking in the rain, and sure enough on the way to the 5th station, we drove through TORRENTIAL rain, with a lightning strike right next to the bus leaving the awake passengers gasping.

Fortunately when we got to the 5th station it was only very lightly raining, still not ideal but a much improved situation than I feared. I dawdled at the 5th station stop till about 7:45, not wanting to set off too early in fears of arriving at the summit at like 1am to wait in the cold (4C) for 4 hours waiting for the sunrise. But me being me, I got impatient and had to set off, i just couldn't stand sitting around any longer, I was bored.

This was the map at the start of the trail - I think my headlamp hides it a bit, but you get the idea. There were quite a large variety of people on the hike, which I got to observe at the 5th station. There are couple of German guys, a northern European looking couple, some Americans, some honkies, and quite a few Japanese with my bus having about 1/3 foreigners.

About 30 mins into the hike I came across the Americans, J and D who turn out to the siblings and not a "honeymooning couple" which most people assume they are (which disgusts the both of them immensely). They graciously allow me to tag along with them, which means I don't spend the next 12 hours with my own thoughts for company.

They are really nice, interesting people, evidence of this being how fast time passed as we chatted all the way up the summit. The other advantage for me of tagging along with these guys was that they allowed me to pace myself. In almost every hike I've ever done, I've always gone too hard too early and tired myself out. By going at their pace, I was able to conserve energy at the start so that I would make it to the top.

Knowing that we had a lot of time up our sleeves, we stopped for 30mins or so at each station, to rest and kill time at warmer temperatures, aware that it would get colder as we got to the top.

Aside: There were theses walking sticks sold at the 5th station, which I briefly flirted with the tea of getting but decided not to, but it turns out that at each station, you can get your stick branded, making it a pretty damn cool souvenir! Dennis had one - I was jealous!

As we slowly made our way to the top, I noticed that at each station, the Japanese hikers would all be taking naps, even if it they were only stopping for 15 minutes. (At this point, I would like to also note that some of these guys looked ultra prepared - hiking boots, really professional looking pants and jacket, gators, walking poles, those silver reflective blankets you see on TV when they rescue people lost in the mountains. ) I can sleep on trains with the best of them, but sweaty and slightly cold on a mountain? Respect.

We actually made great time between stations, easily beating the recommended times, but because we took our time at each station, we noticed the trail getting more and more crowded and looking back down the mountain we could see a trail of headlamps, like an army of glowing ants, snaking towards their nest... We decided to keep ahead of these main groups and by the time we reached the top at about 3am where once again, the people who got their before us were sleeping..

It was supposedly on 4C up at the top but it felt cold. I wore every piece of clothing I brought with me and I was barely enough, I think Jand D had less but I guess im just weak...

We had prime positions in the 2nd row for the sunrise and at this point words would not be able to do what we saw justice. All I will say is that we were extremely fortunate to get perfect conditions for the sunrise.

Pre-Dawn
Getting Lighter:
Sea of Clouds

The Sun Appears!

Simply Stunning.

The descent was tricky - it was very steep and ranged from dirt to medium sized gravel. There were dozens of times when I almost fell and I witnessed many people fall down, however we made good time, getting back to 5th station at 8am - where my legs were shaking even when I was just standing up. I had been warned about the damage to my knees, but even my dodgy broken knee seemed to hold up OK.

The attempt to get a bus ticket back to Tokyo was by far the biggest debacle of the very efficient and organised Japanese transport system I have seen. For some obscure reason, you are unable to buy a return ticket at Shinjuku, which means we had to get a ticket at the 5th station in the morning to return. Not surprisingly, quite a few people were in the same boat, and with the first bus arriving at 10am, and the ticket office only opening at 9:45am, there were people lining up outside the office by 9am. When the office did open, the lady seemed confused, which confused me, because all she did was sell tickets to either kawaguchi station or Shinjuku, and when someone says Shinjuku, 3 people - it should not be something that she hasn't heard before considering the number of people (every day in July and August) that would be trying to get back to Tokyo after watching the sunrise.

The 'line' to the ticket office soon degenerated into a Chinese style line (i.e a crowd trying to shove money under the window shouting numbers of people and destinations). There was a lot of confusion about the availability of seats for the 10am bus, I was told by the lady that there was only 1 seat on the 10am bus, so I asked for the 11am, but when she finally got me the tickets (after much faffing around) it was for 10am... I'm not complaining, I was just confused. One poor guy in front of me was trying to get 7 tickets, which he was told several times was not possible and then ignored. The thing is this - I bought 3, there were people behind me that bought another 3, and there were 4 empty seats on the bus. Those poor guys I think ended up on the 11am, but I am sure that there were 7 seats for them on our bus at the time that they asked...

Anyway we hop on the bus and I promptly fall into a much needed sleep. I met up with PF for Lunch where he took me to a tonkotsu restaurants - perfect after not eating for the past 18 hours. No blog entry of mine would be complete with a food picture right?

Day 12-13: Osaka and Nara

2010-08-18T12:29:00.010+10:00

There were several reasons I decided to go to Osaka:
1. I have never been before
2. I wanted to ensure I got my money's worth on my JR pass
3. S had to go back to work so I would have nothing to do anyway

So I set off on the Shinkansen to Osaka,, the bilingual and accurate timetables making this process quite easy. My companion today was a Tonkotsu Sando and "Straight Tea".

3 hours later, the train pulls into Shin-Osaka, on schedule. I'm headed to a Capsule hotel in Amemura, the "American" district in Osaka. I've written down the instructions to get there on a notepad (no printer) and whilst the directions get me into Amemura, I am unable to find the exact hotel. 30 minutes of wandering later, and after some helpful instructions from a Jigga shop owner, I walk into the hotel, only to be told that checkin is not till 3pm. It was 2pm.

I want to mention now that it was about 36C outside and pretty humid so it wasn't really pleasant walking around in general, never mind walking witha 7kg pack. But off I set to explore (again) Amemura. It's like a Harajuku of Tokyo, with lots of 'American' items. The Japanese, in their fashion have adopted a bastardised version of American culture, with baggy jeans, timberlands and baseball caps, whilst adding their own twist.

I have takoyaki for lunch, sitting in an open area under a tree (Osaka is famous for its Takoyaki)... it is pretty much the same as the Takoyaki in Tokyo to be honest, I don't really taste the difference.

I check out some shoe stores, but unfortunately due to exchange rate, the prices are pretty comparable to Sydney so I don't pick anything up (they do have a better selection).

By this time my shirt is drenched and my hand towel (best purchase of the trip so far) is wet so I head back to the hotel to drop off my pack and check in. This helps a little but once I walk out, I start sweating once more.

I decide to go to Osaka castle whilst the sun is still up and take a subway to Osaka Business Park, which seems to bea bit of a white elephant, there is NOONE at the station. Osaka Castle is very pretty, and probably in better condition than Himeji, but it is green where Himeji is Blue and white.

Inside, I am suprised to see it has been completely modernised with lifts and is a full 7 story museum with audio guides (which i use) inside. Himeji by contrast was just the original interiors. I prefer Himeji I think. It's cool to see how it would have looked all those years ago.

One of the cool things about Osaka Castle is they have figurines which replicate one of the screen paintings. The have reproduced each of the 150+ characters in the painting right down to facial features and pose.

I head back downtown and this time walk around Dotonburi and the associated shopping arcades. Instead of having shopping centres, they have covered streets which house long lines of shops ranging from high end fashion to one-offs and pachinko. It's busy, its hot and i'm sweating hard, having to take breaks in stores just to get a blast of ice cold air con.

I've been on my feet since 1pm, and its now 7pm - time for dinner and I find a likely okonomiyaki place in a side alley. It's monday night and its packed so it must be a good sign. The food is good, and the waitress was nice, drawing me mickey mouse in mayo...

After more wandering I head back to the Capsule hotel where I once again get naked in front of other men and soak in the bath. This time, the also have a cold pool which i hope into every few minutes after soaking in the hot bath. I like this.

After I am clean, I chill a bit reading and head to the capsule. It's not as as small as i thought, when you sit up, my head doesnt even come close to hitting the roof. There is a small TV, its well lit so you can read if you want and it looks pretty clean. The only problem is that you can hear the tv from the other capsules and you can also hear loud snorers, because you only have a thin read screen between you and the outside. Despite this, I like capsule hotels and wouldnt hesitate to do it again and at $35 AUD per night, its cheap.

The next day I get up late (10am) and walk out of the hotel.. to an empty street. Nothing is open, except... Freshness Burger! I decided it is now time to try this famous franchise and order the cheeseburger with onion rings. Now here is the thing. It's good. Not Mind blowing, but good.

The burger is better than the mosburger I had, but its more expensive. The sasebo burger TASTED better, but was more messy. I think i Have to rejig the scores.

Mosburger - 7/10, Freshness 7.5/10, Sasebo 7.5/10 (I may have been too harsh on the messiness department, but it still counts - this could have been an 8), Beat Diner 8/10.
Full of burger, I walk down to Nipponbashi, Osaka's anwser to Akihabara. It is HOT. Once again I am ducking into stores to cool down. At 12pm I call it quits and decide to head for Nara, which is kinda on the way back - not really, but only 50 mins away.

Nara is famous for its temples and wild deer roaming around the city. And so it was true. There are deer roaming around, and u can easily get close enough to touch them... in fact if u have food they come up to you..
They Also have a big park full of temples and a five story pagoda - like in Final Fantasy..

All deered out - I had back to the station and on the way I come across a barber and I hope to have more success with this one. I do and end up with a crew cut - (hey the guy didnt speak English at all give me a break) which S hates. But at least I have one less thing to worry about in Africa..

I've had some complaints that this blog has too much food, so here are some non food shots..
and..

and finally..

Im off to climb Fuji tonight - wish me luck..

Day 11: Tokyo

2010-08-16T01:12:00.006+10:00

Today was a rest day as S and I recovered from our trip to Shirakawago. On this day I experienced the extremes of the Japanese service culture.

I wanted to get a haircut before I went to Africa, and in Tsurumi there is a hairdresser that is significantly cheaper than the rest. I went into the store (which reeked of smoke) the barber was already shaving the head of a man covered in tattooes, and when I expressed my desire for a haircut, he rudely said, "yaranai" (I won't do it) and pointed at the door. On the other extreme, when I was grocery shopping I managed to drop my eggs onto the ground whilst packing them into the bag. When the cashier saw this she rushed over the help me with the eggs and went to get me a new pack of eggs, even though I had already paid for the ones I broke.

Nearly all Japanese people appear to have a layer of extreme politeness but when this layer is removed, the true nature of some people are not as nice as their politeness would lead you to believe. Some Japanese people react quite badly when they realise that someone isn't Japanese. They react with nervousness, rudeness and even a bit of fear. The core of the problem may be the very insular Japanese culture which leads to a xenophobic society overlaid with the requisite Japanese politeness. This is the concept of tatemae, which is one of the precepts of Japanese culture. Japanese society demands a certain behavoiur and those that do not conform are judged to be inadequate or inferior.

This is not to say that there are not many genuinely friendly and kindhearted people in Japan but to believe that all Japanese are as polite as they seem would be incorrect.

In addition to this, while i'm ranting babout Japanese people, I find it interesting and upsetting that Japanese people are not encouraged to have their own opinions and ask any questions has meant that generations of Japanese are unable to think for themselves or explore any concepts and ideas which have not been taught to them. For a culture that is considered advanced and sophisticated, it is strange to see how it is rotting from the inside.

On to more important matters. Today I also went to Zats Burger which makes Sasebo burger. This burger has all the makings of a potentially awesome burger: cheese, bacon, runny egg, mustard, mayo, tomato sauce, cold vegetables (lettuce, tomato, onion) and a grilled beef patty.

However. It seems that the amount of ingredients in this burger is its downfall. In the burger that I had, it was hard to hold, and the large amount of sauces/egg yolk made it a very messy proprosition.

I admit, the burger tasted great, but even with the paper wrapping I managed to get the juices onto my hand. Not only this, but the fact that there were so many flavours meant that the relatively thin beef patty was hard to taste amonst the rainbow of condiments. Score 7/10. Although it tasted better than Mos Burger, it loses marks for the mess.

Tonight, I met up with PF and his fiance and went to a yakitori place in Shinjuku. He told me his proposal story and his fiance exposed his greatest fear and how she would use it to prevent him from having a bucks night. Lets just say it involves black guys.

We talked about many things including Japan's farce of a banking system where credit cards are not accepted in a lot of shops and yet banks charge you for accessing ATMS after 5pm and on weekends. How does a cash-based society penalise their users for trying to access their cash? Also, we discussed how very few Japanese earn more than 100 000 000yen per year. Considering that things in Japan are not particularly cheap (eg. our trip to Shirakawago cost us $500AUD in transport alone per person) how do Japanese people afford to live? As Japanese companies do not pay dividends and their salaries are so low, where does the money go?

The answer may lie in one example provided by PF's fiance: for a sales team of 9 people they had 2million yen ($25 000AUD) in 'expenses' per month. This may include alcohol, food and hostesses. The amount spent on company perks may be where company profits are disappearing to. When hostesses can cost $500AUD an hour the $25 000 doesn't go very far.

Token food picture:

Tomorrow: 35C Osaka!

Day 8-10: Takayama and Shirakawago

2010-08-15T14:11:00.014+10:00

One of the big highlights of this trip to Japan was going to visit Shirakawago, a heritage listed village in the mountains of Japan near Takayama. It was heritage listed because it had been perfectly preserved since it was created with the villagers still working together to re-roof the houses with straw/branches.

To get there, we had to go through Nagoya and Takayama, which is another tourist destination due to the fact that there are several sections of the 'old town' that have been preserved and maintain the look from earlier times. We would stay the night in Takayama and then take a bus to Shirakawago to stay in one of the 'minshoku' or guesthouses.

Takayama is famous for a few things - a Spring festival which consists of several floats that parade across the town, and a doll called a Sarubobo which according to S is for protection of evil sprits. Wiki disagrees.

The other thing it is famous for is "mountain food" which consists of hida-beef, homebrew sake and mountain vegetables. The town is quite touristy with the 'old town' consisting primarily of souvenir shops (omiyage) and food (beef croquettes, various pickled vegetables, beef on a stick, buns, senbei - rice crackers, dango - grilled mochi being the most common). We wandered the old town before it started raining and was lucky enough to come across 'the best minced beef in Japan!'. This minced beef, crumbed and deep fried - much better than the other croquettes they were selling around the place.

We then went to our hostel - J Hoppers in Takayama - which was very clean with reasonables sized rooms. After a quick nap, we went out for dinner, which was in the rain. After wandering the streets for a bit, we ended up at 'Sakana' which means fish. This was a semi bar/restaurant and we proceeded to eat our way through the entire menu. We had some amazing Sashimi, Hida Beef...

Hoba Miso (a sweet miso paste, cooked over a hoba leaf with vegetables and beef)

stir fried eggplant and prawn with a chinese style sauce, an interesting pizza made of puff pastry and seafood and for dessert, incredibly sweet and juicy slices of local peach. The meal was Amazing, but lets just say, we could have fine dined in Sydney for the price of the meal. Having said that, the food was potentially of fine dining quality and we were paying for the experience also.

The next morning, we went to the morning markets where people sold fruits and vegetables as well as various other souvenirs and local products. S bought some pickled cucumber and nozawana (a pickled mountain vegetable). We then caught a bus to Shirakawago, where at the bus stop, we saw a guy collapse and get taken away by an ambulance...
Don't be mistaken, Shirakawago is a tourist hot spot with tens of buses full of tourists arriving every day. However, the fact that they have been able to maintain the guesthouses and original buildings in a state that is close to the original is impressive. From a lookout point, you can see the entire village as it might have looked hundreds of years ago.

We booked a nights stay at Magoemon, one of the guesthouses/original farmhouses.

These are run by families who rent out the ground level to tourists and live on the second floor. They cook local style meals using a firepit inside the house. They provide kaiseki style meals with many courses in a communal living area.

Highlights of the meal include: grilled tofu with sweet miso paste

and salted fish cooked over coals

As we were having dinner, the host family secretly set out our bedding, so that when we opened the door to our room (which was right behind where we sat to eat) this is what we saw after dinner!

The next morning, we were treated to breakfast, which was surprisingly good, even though it was vegetarian.

As it was raining heavily that day, we headed back to Tokyo.

I would highly recommend a stay at one of the guesthouses in Shirakawago. Due to the remoteness of the village (in the mountains, so the temperature is more moderate) and the lack the tourists at night after the last bus, it is extremely peaceful and we slept to the sound of the river rushing beneath us. The food was of excellent quality and I thoroughly enjoyed the break from the pace of the city.

Day 7 - Kamakura

2010-08-11T21:34:00.007+10:00

So I got up this morning to go to Takayama and I had a thought, I remember vaguely booking accomodation for Shirakawago for Friday - which was why I thought it was a bit expensive.. this would mean that Takayama would be for Thursday.. and sure enough I found my booking confirmation and it WAS Thursday.. so... lucky we didn't go to Takayama!

Instead S and I decided to go to Kamakura which is an old capital of Japan, famous for its many Zen and Shinto Shrines/Temples and its beach.

When I go on holidays, a lot of the "must see" attractions are usually old, and religously based. In Europe, it was churches, and in Japan its Temples and shrines. I don't have a problem with Churches and Temples as attractions, but I do notice that after a few, they all seem the same. Often, I'll hear that people are "all churched out" or in Japan "all templed out". For some reason we seem to force ourselves to go to these shrines and churches, knowing that after the first 2 or 3, we will quickly lose interest and are mostly going through the motions. At least thats what I find. It's only the really special ones tha seem to pull me out of my stupor, and in Kamakura, there weren't that many amazing incidents.

Part of the problem today was the fact that it was really hot and humid and sweating my way through various temples did not add to my enjoyment. I won't try and name all the temples we went to, but we crossed about 7 of the 'top 10' temples in Kamakura off the list.
Highlights included a temple with a really nice garden:

and a temple with an amazing mural on the roof:

The most interesting "legend" of the day was a temple where supposedly if you wash your money in the waters of the spring there, when you spend the money, you will get the money returned to you more than double! S and I being the high rollers we are, washed about 300 Yen, and are eagerly awaiting our profits. We saw a guy wash about 10 10,000 Yen bills and was drying them above a bunch of burning incense - apparently you have to let the money dry naturally... its amazing what people will believe isn't it?

Kamakura is also famous for Purple Sweet Potato, and every second shop sold sweet potato croquets and sweet potato ice cream, as well as a yellow 'baked sweet potato' version. As I waited in line for my ice-cream I noticed that each one was perfectly shaped and sized. This is compared to Macccas soft serves where you will occasionally have the lopsided ones or differing sizes... (They are a bit wonky at the top cos we took a bite each before remembering to take the photo)

We then bumped into some of S's friends and ended up going to the 'beach'. It really makes you appreciate what we have in Sydney with our beaches when this is what they call a good beach here..

I think we would call it dirt and muddy water. The most amusing thing about this experience was the LONG line of japanese girls waiting to get access to 4 mirrors and blowdryers in a large pavillion. They want to go to the beach but they are willing to go to the efforts of reapplying make-up before they leave. Respect.

The food highlight of the day was buying a large box of sushi from the local supermarket to take home for dinner for 590 Yen, or $9 AUD (The big box below)

Tomorrow: Takayama and Shirakawago!

Day 5-6: Hakone

2010-08-10T21:35:00.013+10:00

On days 5 and 6 of my time in Japan, S and I went to Hakone. Hakone is a tourist town that is famous for a few things. Hot Springs, outdoor activities and natural beauty.

Unfortunately, the day was overcast and a bit rainy so this ruled a few of the things out. This was the view from Hakone station...

Despite this, we headed towards the Hakone checkpoint, which was rebuilt using the original plans which were found a few years back. Due to the fact that all the signs were in Japanese, and the audio explanationswere also in Japanese, this was not the most educational of sites

We then headed to Lake Ashi for a sightseeing cruise on a boat was that built to look like a pirate ship of some sort but was actually just a normal boat. We should have been able to see Mt Fuji from the cruise, but because of the overcast conditions and fog, we could not see a thing...

We powered on, heading towards Owakudani, or "Great Boiling Valley" which is where the famous life increasing black eggs are found. The eggs are supposedly made by boiling them in the volcanic waters in this valley. For some reason its OK to eat to 2 and a bit eggs, but not OK to eat 3... The eggs are simply black on the outside but when the shell is peeled look like real eggs.

The area was very foggy, and there is steam and pools of boiling water everywhere, and the smell of sulfur is strong. I believe that the water here is pumped into the surrounding onsens.

Taking the ropeway and cable car, we ended up at our Ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese hotel. Our hotel was named Yusaka and had private and gender specific onsens. This was my first time in an onsen, and whilst I was slightly apprehensive, I found that the guys in there generally mind their own business and sit quietly in the corner of the onsen by themselves. I'd imagine it might be slightly more awkward with people I knew.

The onsen was extremely relaxing and enjoyed it. You can't stay in the water for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, but you can get out, rinse with cold water and then hop back in.

After Onsen, we had a kaiseki dinner, which is a Japanses style degaustation. The food was delicious and light. There wasnt a lot of butter/oil/spices, the flavours are from the food itself and the presentation was excellent.

Highlights:

The Salmon in the white bowl was amazing, and whilst I couldn't tell you what anything else on the plate was besides the prawn (i suspect some kind of shellfish is on the leaf and the cube is some kind of pressed pork) this plate was a delicious, with a mix of flavours and textures.

We did not leave anything behind. My first and hopefully not my last kaiseki dinner at a Ryokan!
Breakfast was a simlar affair, with an dip in the onsen with my new naked friends, and then a hearty breakfast, once again with light but with excellent presentation and variety.

Yes - that is confessions of an economic hitman in the corner.. some light conspiracy reading for S.

Overall rating for these two meals and experience 9.5/10. Excellent Service, Excellent food, uniquely Japanese experience and naked men. Whats not to like?

We reluctantly bid goodbye to our ryokan and headed back to Tokyo where we ate a small lunch of Takoyaki from Gindako, one of the best Takoyaki places. It only serves Takoyaki, it had a line of 10 people at 2pm so its definitely popular! I'm continuing to cross the list of Japanese foods off the list...

Dinner was a home cooked meal by S of Nikujaga
I'm off to Takayama and Shirakawago for the next 3 days - See you when I get back!

Days 4

2010-08-10T19:00:00.012+10:00

Hey everyone! It's been a pretty busy few days! Just got back from staying an amazing ryokan at Hakone, but firstly, back to Day 4...

Day 4 started off by heading to the Ramen Museum in Shin Yokohama. I know what you're thinking - is learning about ramen that interesting? The name of the place is deceiving. The museum is replica of a 1958 street, with everything built to look really old. The interesting thing about this street is that all they seemed to do back then is sell Ramen, because every building is
a Ramen shop!

The ramen is supposedly the most famous ramen from all around Japan and have been specially selected to demonstrate the quality and variety of Japanese ramen. Luckily, there were 'Mini' versions of these ramen so I was able to try several....

I had a Shoyu Ramen from Shinasobaya: May have jumped the gun on this one, it had no line and was the first shop I came across. The ramen was OK, nothing special. I think Shoyu is the least tasty soup anyway. 6/10.

Miso Ramen from Ryushanhai - Has been for 50 years, 3rd generation owner. I guess 50 years of experience counts for something cos this was really nice. It had a ball of chilli paste on top which gave it just the right amount of spiciness and the noodles were thicker here. 8.5/10.

Next was a Tsukemen, which is where the noodles and soup are separated and you dip the noodles into the soup. This was really yummy. It was not quite as good as Ryushantai, but definitely better than your average Sydney ramen, (e.g. Menya, ramenkan) 8/10.

Tonkotsu Ramen - As this was my 4th ramen, I was really starting to hit the limit. However, Tonkotsu being my favourite soup base, I had to power on. Besides the unique collagen goodness of a tonkotsu soup base, my lasting memory of this was the amazing fatty and smoky flavour of the chashu of this ramen. My state of fullness reduced the pleasure of this one slightly. 8/10 mostly cos i was so full..

At an average of 600 Yen per ramen, this was not a cheap meal by any means. I guess you can only justify the cost by considering the fact that otherwise you would have to travel t0 various regions of japan to get the same experience which could take days.

After this, I took my extremely full stomach on a walk to Yokohama Chinatown, one of the largest Chinatowns in the world.

On the way there, I went through Sakuragi-cho which is the "darling harbour of Tokyo". As it is Summer here, they had a swimming pool and a fake beach.

I continued onto Chinatown. It is definitely bigger than Sydney's chinatown, but there is a very different vibe here. In Sydney, Chinatown is full of Chinese people and the shops are full of Chinese waiters, cooks, shop assistants etc. In Japan, I'm told that while staff are all Chinese raised in Japan or FOBs, the clientele is predominantly Japanese. This means that the food is expensive and not authentic (they have altered traditional Chinese recipes for Japanese tastes) and expensive (Chinatown is quite the tourist trap). This is different to Sydney, where I would go to Chinatown for authentic Chinese food and a cheap meal...

Dinner was in Tsurumi, at the Soul Kitchen Sugar T - a "black music selection bar" and Okonomiyaki resturant!

For those who don't know, I love Okonomiyaki. Its the combination of egg, your choice of ingredient, the mayonnaise, the sweet okonomiyaki sauce, all in a pancake/pizza package. The best ones are where you are given the mix and cook yourself, which as far as I know, you can only find in Japan.

Inside, there are African American themed paintings/drawings/graffiti all over the walls.

The okonomiyaki came as a mix...

and then you cook it yourself...

we had three okonomiyakis there: mixed cheese, seafood and mochi.. all were very tasty! As the night went on, more and more regular customers entered, evidenced by the fact that they seemed to all know each other and the owner. The music was Mary J and other soul artists, which gave the bar/restaurant a very relaxed feeling. 8.5/10.

Next: Hakone!

Japan - Day 2 and 3

2010-08-07T11:25:00.011+10:00

Day 2 was spent wandering the streets of Akihabara. For those of you who haven't been there, let me give you two descriptions.

Firstly, Akihabara (Akiba) is known as the discount electronics capital of Tokyo. There are numerous electronics stores here (like 20+) and they all stock things such as laptops, cameras, computer parts, software, accessories gaming consoles, TV's blu-ray players... you get the idea. In terms of price, I couldn't work out if it was actually that much cheaper.. with the current poor conversion rate, I don't think there were too many bargains.

Secondly, Akihabara is the anime and "otaku" capital of Toyko. This means there are towers dedicated to anime and other more adult amusements. It's actually quite seedy and generally, the further up the tower you go, the more explicit the content. With the exception of this store - which was all adult - don't let the sign fool you, the first floor had adult content too...

After visiting Akihabara, I had a dinner of paella from an "award winning" restaurant in Ginza. This only reinforced one thing: when in Japan do not eat non-Japanese food. It will always be expensive and average at best. 5/10.

Day 3: A more promising start to the day with S taking me to Komaba, where "Curry House Lucy" is located. According to S, this is the best Curry in Japan!

I ordered the Seafood Curry + Butter + Boiled Egg + Chicken Katsu + Vegetables 1500 Yen.
I can't actually say that I've had a better curry than this. The curry had sufficient spiciness, butter makes everything better, the vegetables gave texture, the seafood was fresh. S believes that they make the curry from scratch daily, not from an instant powder. The texture of the curry leads me to believe this is true. This was one great curry. 9/10.

We then went to watch Inception, which many people have been raving about and I must say that I really enjoyed it. A dream within a dream within a dream within a dream.... trippy...

Dinner was a Kyoto style restaurant called Ohashi with Pretty Fly (PF) and his fiance. Unfortunately I only got photos of the dessert, but the meal was good, highlights being "Mochi Imo" which was basically the texture of gnocchi, gomoku agedashi tofu which had crabstick and vegetables mixed with the tofu before it was deep fried. Much better than the stupid agedashi at sake which was on masterchef...

Here were some of the desserts, Anmitsu

and Tofu and Green Tea Tiramisu

The night ended with the obligatory Karaoke session where Taylor Swift and Snoop DOGG was sung.

EDIT: Hot Girls found - Shibuya Department Stores.

Tomorrow: Ramen Museum and Yokohama Chinatown!

Tokyo - Day 1

2010-08-06T10:24:00.009+10:00

Like I mentioned in my previous post, it is HOT. And HUMID. Any of you who have seen me in Malaysia will know that humid is not my preferred climate. I am CONSTANTLY sweating here and because I've been walking around Tokyo a lot, it's been pretty bad.

Yesterday I walked around Ginza (shopping), went through the Tsukiji fish markets (in the middle of the day, i'll go back when in the morning for the auctions), Shimbashi (Horse meat restaurants) and went to Yurakucho (Izakaya with S and colleagues).
Ginza: Highlights were Zara - got a jacket discounted for 27,900 to 3,990 Yen! We really need a Zara in Sydney - i think there is one coming right? We also should get a Uni Qlo - a better version of Cotton On.

For the first time, I went into an Abercrombie and Fitch store and it was quite the experience. For those of you who haven't been before let me explain.
As you enter, you have some very good looking people at the door saying things "How're you goin?" in strong American on Japanese accents. Just inside, there is a very ripped guy with no shirt basically flexing non stop. and you can have a Polaroid with him! (no i didn't get one). You have a LOT of women lining to take photos with him.. and fair enough he was pretty good looking. If there was a girl equivalent I may have been tempted (isn't there usually a girl there too?) . The only girl there was the one taking the Polaroid. The store itself had many levels and it was DARK. I've seen the comedy skits where its all dark inside and its pretty gay and its ALL TRUE. The place is like a night club, and the staff are constantly dancing and instead of yelling "irashaimase" like in a Japaneses store, they are shouting things like, "flannel is back" and "how are you going?" WHILE dancing to the music. The staff there are all VERY good looking and the girls are in VERY short skirts. Also there is an overpowering fragrance of the cologne they are selling.

All in all a very distinctive brand. I'm not sure I like it tho. It was very pretentious and very camp inside. In some ways it intimidates you into not wanting to wear their clothes because you don't meet that standard. Things were really expensive though. I'm talking 10,500 for a flannel shirt and 15,000 for a similar hoodie to one that I have. I guess all those dancing staff have to be paid for somehow.
To ensure that I have a true Japanese dining experience while I'm here, the first two meals I had were burgers. I plan to do a bit of a comparison of burgers over the next few weeks that I'm here.

Mosburger
This was breakfast. The highlight of this burger was the mayonnaise. Very creamy and not too sour. The bun was very soft, and the lettuce was cold - always a plus. The burger itself was small and there were literally 9 chips and 2 onion rings that came with it. Total Cost: 650 Yen
Score 7/10For Lunch, S took me to "The Beat Diner" a one-off burger place situated underneath a railway bridge. Outside (and inside) it blasts "American" music like Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Simon and Garfunkel. Supposedly, this place rated as one of the top 10 burgers in Tokyo.

It's not fast food here, they make the burger to order. I had the cheeseburger with the large Pattie and it was good. The bun was toasted and burger held together by a skewer. The Pattie was thick and juicy and tasted of real mince, there was tendon and fat all the textures you expect from proper mince, not like your Maccas or Hungry Jacks patties. The fries were done with the skin on, which I liked. The burger was larger than at Mosburger, but it was no Fergburger that's for sure. Overall I rated this burger slightly above Mosburger. Score 8/10. Cost 900 Yen.

In other news, I visited Hibiya park (homeless people on benches) and the Imperial palace (closed). Here is the picture of the day from a park near the Imperial palace.

and some hedge animals..

Today - Akihabara

Coming Soon - Burger Reviews: Freshness Burger and Lotteria (The 10 stack!?!)

Japan!

2010-08-04T23:45:00.003+10:00

Arrived safely. First things that I have noticed...

- Girls here are very pale
- Public transport here is as great as you hear
- Mini skirts are not in fashion anymore?
- It is ridiculously humid here. 26-33C everyday for the next week.

I'm back, but I'm not..

2010-08-04T01:09:00.003+10:00

So i'm back from a busy five days skiing and driving the great ocean road.

Skiing was good. and bad. The first two days were fairly average..it rained and half the mountain (supertrail) was closed because there was so little cover. Then on Sunday, the heavens opened and it SNOWED. I've never skiied in such a blizzard before, which isnt saying that much, but it was heavy.. worst conditions i've ever skiied in.

Having said that, the blizzard meant that all the runs got cover and it actually became quite good conditions to ski in. The only other pro

blem was that it turns out my ski gear is not waterproof.. even the north face jacket I bought. TT has the same jacket and HIS one was waterproof.. dodgy online purchase. I'm definitely taking it back to north face and asking what the hell is going on.

I got back from the snow on Sunday night and then K and I went to drive the great ocean road in a Mini Cooper S - which was nice. The car is very comparable to the Clio, but the suspension was firmer. Handling was very good and the firmer suspension inspired confidence turning in. The throttle response was sharp in sports mode and the car was very fun to drive, especially on the Great Ocean Road Twisties.

Unfortunately it was mostly wet and I wasn't able to really push the car, for fear of running off a cliff into the ocean or a tree but when I was able to get a nice corner, the car held its ground well. Overally K and I agreed that it was a fun car, but not one we would buy, there are just too many better options for the same price...

It Begins!

2010-07-29T19:46:00.006+10:00

The last week has been good, catching up with people before I leave, doing Baroque for J's birthday and Guillaume for the return of DK and finally Lot Forty with MKL. Good food all around and I think thats something I'll miss, Sydney's variety and quality of food. I wish I could have caught up with more people but a lot of this has been very last minute, which has meant it's all crept up on me. I'll try and catch a few more people tonight, and I think the holiday mood is beginning to set in!

Here are some highlights from the meals this week:

Baroque: Chocolate Dome (Last one left!)

Guillaume: Deboned Ribeye of Mayura Wagyu Beef

I'm really looking forward to the holiday. Before I even leave the country, I'll be skiing in Thredbo for a couple of days before flying down to Melbourne to drive the Great Ocean Road with DK, which is something we've been talking about for a long time.

After that I'll be going to Japan to chill out for a few weeks with S before I head off on my African adventure (via London) where I hope to catch up with a few people in the 24 hrs that I am there!

I really don't know what to expect from Africa. Everyone I've spoken to has responded responded in one of two categories:

1. "Wow thats cool, I've always wanted to do/I've done that it will be awesome!"

2. "Wtf? Why would you want to go to Africa? It's so dangerous!"

Inevitably, I think it will be a blend of the two. There is no doubt that Africa is relatively dangerous compared to say, Japan. But on the other hand, it will undoubtedly be awesome. I don't want to overhype it to myself, but just quietly, I'm expecting this trip to be as amazing as the first round the world trip with (RTW:1).

The best laid plans...

2010-07-20T22:21:00.006+10:00

The last time I posted, I was about to go on a 6 month holiday which ended with me unemployed and looking for work. Now, only 5 days later, a lot has changed.

I now have the opportunity to transfer with work to London in November, I just have to work out the details (im in Africa and will out of contact for 2 months) and what I need to do to make sure it happens. Whilst there is no doubt that this is a good outcome, it does make me a little sad that I won't be able to make the trip of it that I would have liked, but I know that an extremely ungrateful attitude.

It's not all locked in stone yet, but lets see how it all pans out...

Joseph and Angeline got married on Saturday and I had the honour of being their MC! Angeline was beautiful and Joseph is a lucky man!

Planning

2010-07-15T00:29:00.004+10:00

So I'm really getting into the details of this big trip of mine. Interestingly, this blog contains notes from the previous round the world trip from 2004/2005.

Last time, the trip went NYC -> South America -> Western Europe -> Japan -> China/HK

This time, the original plan was Trans Siberian -> Eastern Europe -> Africa -> NYC -> Canada -> London

When Bahn and I sat down to plan this trip out last night, we realised a major flaw in this plan. Apparently, its the start of the rainy season in November and we were advised by the tour company not to go to East Africa in that period because game is harder to find! This means that the only way we could do it is to go to Africa in the Spring, Sept/Oct. This completely destroyed our originaly plan. To get to Africa by September we had several issues: firstly, there was no tour available for a lot of the companies at that time so we had limited options. secondly and more importantly it meant that we could not do the trans siberian or eastern europe before Africa, (as I would be in Japan in August).

We then came up with a new itenary that looked like this:

Syd -> Africa -> South America -> Latin America/Cuba -> Mexico -> USA

We would sacrifice Eastern Europe for South/Latin America. In some ways I think this is a better itenary. Travelling in South America is potentially cheaper, and it is a more "out of the way" destination than Eastern Europe, which is easily accessible from London.

I plan to go to all the countries that I didn't get to go to last time around so Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and then up thru panama, costa rica, cuba and mexico.

The next think we need to work out is how long we want to spend doing those places. I want to spend some time with Amos in the ATL and Kitty and her family in NYC. Ideally, I think spending the holiday season with them would be fantastic, so that leaves us "only" 7 weeks to do all the above which actually doesnt give us that much time.. we'll have to figure something out..

Mid Life Crisis

2010-07-08T00:30:00.002+10:00

A mid life crisis is defined by wikipedia as:

"a period of dramatic self-doubt that is felt by some individuals in the "middle years" or middle age of life, as a result of sensing the passing of their own youth and the imminence of their old age"

This pretty accurately reflects how I feel right now. There is definitely a lot of self doubt going on, and I'm already feeling the passing of youth and the imminence of old age. and I'm only 27.

Here are some characteristics of a mid life crisis:

Individuals experiencing a midlife crisis have some of these feelings:

search of an undefined dream or goal - Check
a deep sense of remorse for goals not accomplished - Check
desire to achieve a feeling of youthfulness - Check
need to spend more time alone or with certain peers - Check

What the hell am I going to do when I'm 47?

Superfreakonomics

2010-06-30T23:09:00.002+10:00

Dinner: Korean BBQ with Dre

Reading: Superfreakonomics

So I had the final decision from my boss today regarding my query. It wasn't the answer I wanted to hear and if nothing else it forces me into action. I have decide what I want to do next.

On a lighter note - I'm reading superfreakonomics, an awesome book. Really easy to read and very interesting. Definitely recommend to anyone who liked the original, and anyone who has been curious about what incentives human beings respond to, and how things are not always as they seem.

Short Sighted?

2010-06-29T21:43:00.009+10:00

Dinner: Scrambled Eggs with Black Truffle Salsa (Thanks S!) and Chicken Nuggets

Is taking a 6 months sabbatical short sighted? Is it foolish to take half a year from my career and putting a sizable dent on my savings good idea? I was told to put some pros and cons beneath each one so here goes...

6 Month Sabbatical -> Work overseas
Pros

Once in a lifetime (?) experience - see the world
Give myself a chance at working overseas
Can still come back to Australia for a job

Cons

6 months lost in my career
Lots of Money Spent
Europe is not a good place to find a job right now or maybe even in the future

Stay in Australia -> Explore Options
Pros

Continue to have an income
Continue to progress in my career
I have existing contacts/network I have not used
Save Money

Cons

Do not get to see the world
Do not get to work overseas (At least in the short term)
Nothing may eventuate - Waste time

27

2010-06-28T23:10:00.003+10:00

Today I turned 27.

Everyone has expectations for themselves right? I mean, in some way don't we all hope that we will be able to make something of ourselves, that we will be able to look back on our lives at any given point in time and be proud of how far we have come and what we've done?

Every once in a while, something happens that triggers that thought process in my mind. In the past, I have made excuses for myself about how I'm still, young, I've still got potential, It doesn't matter that I haven't achieved what I thought I would by this time because I can still make it if I just push that little bit harder the next year. In the past, I think I actually did believe it.

This year, turning 27, I'm not sure I believe it any more.

So much time has passed and so little has been achieved. I have had enough setbacks in the last 12 months that I am running out of excuses. Something must be done or the dream really will be over.

But what should I do? What is the best/right/smartest/highest probability option?
What is best for my career? What is best for myself? What is the best for my family, and for my relationships?

I need to prioritise. I need to be clear headed. I need to be logical. I need to make a decision.

I've Moved

2006-01-10T19:37:00.002+11:00

If you want to know where, ask me.

From Work.

2005-08-11T22:35:00.000+10:00

So.

Last night i was here till 3am. By here, I mean work. Sucks.
And now, i am still here, 10:37 pm and not leaving anytime soon.

Ross is upset. His fix doesnt work and he wants to go home.

Looking around, everyone seems to be intently working. I am impressed by the dedication of a lot of ppl here. Now everyone has found my blog. I am gonna follow in the tracks of that google guy and get sacked for all the bitching that i've done on this thing. Ah well.

Anyway. Enough of this. Back to surfing the net.

It's been a while

2005-08-09T00:25:00.000+10:00

While this site is still in use, i might as well make some use of it. Even if noone reads this except my parents :P.

Does anyone know how to restrict access to this? Or is it always viewable?

Anyway after working for 5 months, i'm getting pretty sick of work. I can't wait till the project is over and i can do some normal hours. Just a month to go.

City to Surf this weekend. Thats gonna be funny. I'm not even sure i can do the distance walking, these back problems are gonna have be looked at.

Anyway its late. I'll think i'll try and post before i sleep every night.

Countries i have visited

2005-05-02T21:20:00.000+10:00

Countries I have visited

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

The end... for now

2005-04-17T00:45:00.000+10:00

So, 2 weeks of craziness is over.

I pulled my first sleepover at work, and did about 60 hours in 4 days. Honestly tho, it wasnt all bad, the time coulda felt a lot worse. I am amazed at the skill of the developers, and have realised that i never wnat to do development at work.

The highlight of this week has been go karting. It has been everthing i expected and more. It was a lot more tiring but a hell of a lot of fun. I got my 4 wheel drift happening and multiple cautions for spinning out :D

Will try to organise a mini grand prix sometime in the near future. I think im addicted.

Tell me if u are intersted.

Week 1

2005-04-10T22:01:00.000+10:00

Hours worked: 70

It wasn't all bad tho. The hours didn't seem as bad as I thought they would be, nor is the work as boring. Generally the people there are cool, and i enjoy the work environment.

Karting today. A comedy of errors.
Went at 2pm. Corporate Day. Went back to Yao's. Went back to karting at 6. Both of Will's front tyres blew out.

Car is still 1 km from eastern creek karts as we speak.

Back to work.

The door slammed shut

2005-04-04T19:41:00.000+10:00

So. It begins.

Today was a strange day.

I started on project, and it turns out that I am chargable which is good.
There is a deadline on the 15th which is bad.
The work i do will be credited to me which is good.
I will work ridiculous hours, like 9-11's and also saturday, which is bad.
It's only until the 15th which is good.
The work is quite repetitive which is bad.
I will get to learn about the system, which is good.
I wont get to bludge on the bench which is bad.
I am not alone in testing, viv, luce and jen will join me which is good.
I'll miss karting on saturday, which is bad.

See I told you it was a strange day.

I spose I knew when i selected this job that times like this would happen. I guess its time to man up, and suck it in.

Bored

2005-04-02T16:56:00.000+10:00

So, for some obscure reason, i feel the need to blog again. Well, not so much a need, but more a desire. Why you ask? I think I feel my youth, freedom, independence, life etc all slipping by before my eyes.

I call the cause of this "Full time work". Yes. Those who have already spoken to me have already heard my bitching about this, but now that i have actually been assigned to a project, (and what are the chances of ONLY me, out of 18 other ppl being put on a project while everyone else gets to bludge?) that it all seems all too real. The last 3 weeks of training have been a bludge, but already im tired, and have slept a lot of the day away.

A few observations:

The more you earn the more you spend.

Weekends are too short.

Everyone is in a relationship.

It's time to lose weight.

20 gigs of music isn't that much after all.

Shanghai and Home

2005-02-22T23:14:00.000+11:00

So we arrived in Shanghai, and were given a room on the 25th floor by the great Jono Wang. He took care of us wonderfully in Shanghai, making sure we had everything we desired.

Shanghai is not much of a city for tourist attractions. We went up to the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt for Coffee, which was nice, and walked along The BUND and Nanjing road, which pretty much did it for the tourist bit. The highlight of shanghai is the fake stuff market. There is fake anything there.

Clothes, Watches, Sunnies, pretty much every designer label was faked there. I bought several items, invluding my omega speedmaster watch, which we had to go back and return cos it didnt show the correct time, and the actually exchagned it for another without a single word, and even apologised profusely!

Bought a stack of DVDs and headed home.

Sydney is Sydney. I walked around the CBD today, and noticed several new buildings have gone up, it seems like i have been away for so long, maccas has finished renovating and there are thigns i dont recognise.

Observations:

Sydney has the most number of asians out of any non asian country in the world.
Sydney is quite busy in the day, and not with that many tourists... i think. Tourists blend in a lot easier here, there isnt much diff between a FOB and a tourist.

My body is sore all over from ball. Knee hurts. Shoulder hurts.

Getting old.

Miles

The H.K.

2005-02-03T14:57:00.000+11:00

So here I am, back to the place of my birth.

HK has the most residential high rises of any place i have been in the whole world :D Isnt it cool that i can make grand statements like that now :D

Staying at Kels place atm, and havent really seen much of the city.

First Impressions:

The streets are dirty.
I wanna go ball.

Miles

Tokyo Again

2005-02-01T15:57:00.000+11:00

So I'm back in Tokyo, and about to hit HK. Japan has been one of the best countries that i have been to by far, be that because of my love of anime and miniskirts or for more rational reasons, it is hard for me to tell.

The fact is, I really wanna come back to this country and spend an extended period of time here, to really see what the culture is like, not just to scratch the surface like i have in this whirlwind week here.

Anyway, jsut a short post to let you all know im alive.

Also.

Lee call my mum, the computer is dead and she is going nuts.
Mum. What did you do to my computer. What exactly is wrong. You need to send more details if you want me to help. Just call Matthew.

Miles

Tokyo and Kyoto

2005-01-29T21:19:00.000+11:00

Ive been here a few days, but i havent had time to post anything cos its hard to find internet here. Anyway, Japan is AWESOME. I love this country. Tokyo is so packed full of people, its buildings as far as you can see. Neon lights abound, and the girls all wear miniskirts, even though its between 0 and 5 degrees.

Its a shame we dont have much time here, we are really rushing through everything, seeing what we can, and not really having a chance to sit back and just soak it in.

Kelvin made it here safely, for those of you who care...

So we hit shinkjuku, harajuku, Shibuya, Ginza and Akihabara, which is the electric city, you can get any electrical good there.

Japan is a BIT sleazy tho, those of you who have been here will understand why, but thats only at night. I got my haircut here, its pretty cool, i went to a classy hairdresser and the guy was cool.

my limited jap has got me prety much nowhere here, but its fun to try and speak anyway.

Jackson, I can get some Master Grade models here, do u want me to get one for you?

jono u loser. my email is the name of this blog at gmail.

in kyoto atm, saw nijo castle, was ok not that spectacular, will hit up the temples　tomorrow.

so far i have eaten, tonkatsu, tempura, unagi, sushi, sashimi, okonomiyaki, its ALL good

anyway gotta go

FC BARCALONA 3 REAL RACING CLUB 0

2005-01-24T01:49:00.000+11:00

BARÇA! BARÇÄ! BARÇA!

RONALDHINO!

well im not a huge soccer fan, but i admit that the atmosphere at the camp nou was electric. The crowd was awesome and to top it off, we moved from our original crap seats to be 2nd ROW FROM THE FIELD, ON THE SIDE.

Ronaldhino was about 5 meters from us at times.

The only complaint i have was that he ran away from us after he scored his goal. I think andrew was about to cry.

Alby creamed his pants at least 10 times that game and took about 100 photos.

Just taking it easy here.

Miles

SPQR

2005-01-22T07:48:00.000+11:00

What does SPQR stand for again? Its the letters that represent rome. Is it in latin or something? Someone tell me.

Anyway, Rome has been great, we have found new great places for food, great pizza and awesome gelato.

We have also hit all the major sites of Rome.

Ancient Rome was ordinary to be honest, the ruins didnt impress me that much, they are just broken bricks and columns. The colesseum was impressive from the outside, but inside was quite dissapointing.

The Vatican was impressive. St Peters Basilica is HUGE and the sculptures in there are unbelievable. Bernini's, Michaelangelo's, Raphaels...

The Vatican Museum is also amazing, with the Sistine Chapel the absolute highlight. The detail that is gone into by Michaelanglo is just stunning. The Raphael rooms are also stunning. You can easily tell the work of a master, it really stands out.

Without Naming any names, i thought id give an inventory of the items that we have acquired so far on this trip, naming only designer labels of course..

1 Giorgio Armani Suit
1 Saville Row Suit
1 Paul Smith Suit
1 Burberry Suit
2 Burberry Shirts
3 Emporio Armani Ties
1 Dior Tie
5 Versace Ties
2 YSL Shirts
1 Timberland Boots

HAHAHAHAHA

Miles

ROME

2005-01-19T21:47:00.000+11:00

Firstly, shout out to my sister, who got her International Studies/Law at UNSW.

6 more years of study! Yay!

Seriously thought its a great achievment and she sure hammered me.

Rome is great, weather a bit shit tho.

blog more later

Miles

Florence Day 2

2005-01-17T02:53:00.000+11:00

GO STEELERS! Watched the game at a bar with some Jets fans. I felt bad, he was so devastated. I only started following the steelers this year. Poor guy. I was the only happy guy on the whole table.

Woke up late.

Went to see the Uffizi Museum which is said to house some of the greatest renaissance and classical art pieces in the world.

There were indeed several standout works there, the highlights for me being the boticellis, leonardos, the sole michaelangleo, and the caravaggios. To my inexperienced eye, they are simply the ones taht stand out, and when I saw them i knew that i was looking a piece from a master.

The use of light, perspective, realism attention to detail easily surpass their peers. Im sure u have all heard of "The birth of Venus", "The Holy Family" by michaelanglo, "The Annunciation" by Leonardo. These were a few of the priceless masterpieces that were at the uffizi.

The second achievement of the day was stumbling upon a florentine market, about 1 km out from the city centre as i wandered aimlessly after the uffizi. (We split up today). This was a market where they sold homemade goods, such as bread cheese, jams, herbs etc, and of course there were free samples to be had. I even bought a jar of pesto to take home!

Keep me updated with things happening in sydney!

Miles

Venice -> Florence

2005-01-16T05:46:00.000+11:00

Venice was as tourist trap as you can get.

Gucci, Pucci, Amamni, Cavalli, Fendi, Zegna, you name it, there was several of each store in the city. The city itself is very small, the absolute hightlight of the city was Piazza San Marco (St Marks Square).

There is a large church at the end of a rectangular square, reminiscent of st peters square in vatican city im sure. In the square, there are thousands of pigeons who actually land on people who have food in their hands. You can buy bags of feed and have the pigeons swarm you.

We didnt get any real italian food there, the pasta and pizza we had was quite ordinary.

We are now in Florence, and this is a much more "Italian" city. One thing i notice here is that they love to wear flashy shoes. Red, Blue, Yellow, all of the puma casual type. There are not as many designer brands here that I can see.

We saw Michaelanglo's David in the Galleria D'Academia, and it was quite impressive. He is "The Man". Kinda like looking into a mirror for me tho :D

We havent done much here yet, im gonna try hit a bar 2nite to watch the Steelers, who are my adopted team since I saw them hammer the eagles at matty fosters house.

Miles

Venice

2005-01-14T21:31:00.000+11:00

Foggy. Slightly Smelly. Narrow Streets. Nice Renaisance Buildings.

Gonna hit up san marco now.

Miles

Salzburg

2005-01-12T01:18:00.000+11:00

So we took a daytrip to Salzburg, which is a lovely town aboue 300Km west of vienna. It has a population of only about 150K and its claim to fame is of course the most famous musical in the world

The Sound of Music

Highlights

A pricey tour of the lakes and mountains took us to some awesome places, which were absolutely serene and beautiful. Imagine the scene in Hero where they fight on the lake and you are getting the picture of what we saw yesterday.

Alby's literal 10 dollar handshake - As we shook hands with the guide, alby kept the 10 euro tip in his hand and shook hands with the guide. Think drug money payment in the ghettos of south central LA.

Alby asking the poor waitress to explain the ENTIRE MENU of a restaurant, which had about 15 odd items, the poor girl didnt know how to translate most of it and Alby's insistance on knowing what Pork aspiz was, by asking her 3 times, made me feel for the poor girl.

Seeing as we are on the topic, lets recap some alby highlights from this trip.

Alby running from ESPN girl in NYC.
Alby leaving "Suprises" in the toilet in Lima.
Alby playing poker with stomach cramps, hiking his shorts up to his chest and asking permission to fart. How can you take money from a guy like that?
The Rio Explosion
Alby getting escorted out of the Mona Lisa gallery at the lourve after repeatedly trying to take photos after being told not to. This caused him to lose our tour group and he wandered the louvre looking for us, trying to track us with the static from the headsets.
Alby constantly stopping to look at real important stuff, like starbucks and maccas.
Alby pretending to take a photo in prague while listening to another tour group guide giving explanations of the city.
Alby walking out into our Berlin room naked after a shower.
Alby showing us his "rash" caused by his jeans chafing his inner thighs.

i just had to write it down before i forgot...

Miles

Vienna - Korea Culture Centre

2005-01-10T08:19:00.000+11:00

Korea? Why do I have korea in my blog?

It all makes sense when I tell you that we are all currently staying at the Korea Culture Centre for Vienna. Otherwise known as THE KIMCHI HOUSE. I kid you not. Still weird?

Go to this link for the KimChi House -
http://myhome.hanafos.com/~kachine/

If anyone is in Vienna PLEASE GO TO THESE PEOPLE!!!!

It all started when we were approached by a korean couple in their 50s once we got out of the station at Sudbahnhof. They thought we were korean and talked to us in korean. They asked if we would like to stay at their house, which was actually in a really good position right next to the international station.

We felt that we could trust this couple and took them up on their offer. We then had to pile 9 people and all our luggage into a Chrysler Voyager. It was absolutely packed but it was a fun ride and Kim, the father, was very friendly.

It's strange cos it feels like we have been adopted in a way. It doesnt seem like we are staying at a hostel, its like we are staying at a friends parents house. Could be any of the parents of the korean guys at uni, its like that.

They serve breakfast, and thats right it is rice and kimchi! The koreans will know i have acquired a taste for kimchi, and it is awesome here.

My Culturification has also continued in Vienna in leaps and bounds. Let me describe the places I have been so far.

8-1 Modernized version of the Nutcraker - a bit strange but the orchestra was great
9-1 Vienna Boys Choir - Crap seats but great singing by a group of boys aged from 6-12.
9-1 Evening - A Concert in a Small Room in the Kursalon, one of the best places in Vienna, listening to Strauss and Mozart with dancer and opera singer on stage with the music. This is one of the highlights of the trip so far. The orchestra was excellent and the singers and dancers were great.

Tomorrow we will go to Salzburg, and I will run through the hills singing
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE, WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC. I'll even try get a photo.

Miles

Prague - More!

2005-01-08T19:25:00.000+11:00

Well Prague is quite nice, but i think it was overhyped for me personally.

The architecture here is amazing as everyone says, with a mix of baroque, gothic and renaissance architecture. (didnt that sound so cultured? :) )

The dissapointment tho, was Prague castle. From the city, you look up onto a hill where there is this fairy tale castle, and night its lit up with lights, but when you get in, its just a big tourist trap.

Undeniably, Prague is a pretty city, the gothic cathedrals and beautiful women make sure of that. But Prague is perhaps the most westernised and captilized of all the Eastern European cities. The main square here is filled with souvenir stores, Maccas and tag heuer shops and other touristy crap.

It seems safe tho, except for the random dog fights, drunk guys staggering around at 9pm and raged taxi drivers. No, Seriously, it is safe...

Off to Vienna now, where i will hopefully get to listen to some classical music and continue my culturification. Check it out, i made up a word!

In Germany we visited Sachenhausen, which is a concentration camp on the outskirts of berlin. Its quite a bleak place as to be expected, even tho it wasnt a death camp, like auschwitz or Dacau, thousands of people still died there from mistreatment, medical experiments, cold, and general abuse from prisoner and guard alike.

Its shocking to realise all those abominations that were carried out to jews, communists, other religous groups, homosexuals, and anyone the germans didnt like only happend 50 years ago. Now there is already a memorial, and to people of our generation, it seems like something that barely affects us and we learn about in high school.

Its a lot closer than we would like to know, and if things had gone differently, most of you guys wouldnt have the freedoms that you have today. Think about that.

Miles

Prague

2005-01-07T08:12:00.000+11:00

Prague is cool.

Its cheap and Buildings are awesome. Eastern Euro Chicks are so hot.

Internet is so expensive.

Miles

London -> Paris -> Amsterdam

2005-01-02T22:51:00.000+11:00

Yes loyal readers, it has been a packed couple of days.

We left London and caught the Eurostar to Paris, where we found out that our accomodation was quite far from the centre of Paris by the taxi driver asking us.

"So, why did you choose to stay so far out of Paris?". That and the 50 Euro taxi fare to get us there.

The hotel itself was fine, but it was a hassle to just get into paris, requiring us to catch a bus and a train. Its really hard to get around in a city you know nothing about, whose transport system you dont understand.

Having said that, it is one of the reasons that I went on this trip, to learn to be more independent, and experience differnt things.

Paris is beautiful, even more so than London, the buildings are amazing and it truly does deserve its reputation as a romantic city. Notre Dame was amazing, the Paris Opera house owns the Sydney one in terms of class and the Musee D'Orsay and the Lourve were unbelievable.

Like it or not, I am slowly being culturefied on this trip. I have discovered an appreciation for art, by looking at some beautiful works of art by the most celebrated artists that ever lived.

I am surprised at the liking that i took to the renoirs, sisleys, Monets and most of the impressionist movements at the d'Orsay. The Lourve Building itself is incredible, just walking into the area is an experience and the museum itself is the biggest in the world. The Mona Lisa is mysterious but overated in my very educated opinion :P The effect is spoilt by the 5 guards who are currently telling you to move along and the crowd of 100 other people who are pushing each other to see it.

Funny Story:

Alby got himself escorted out of the area after he tried to take a photo, got told off by a guard, assured him that it wouldnt happen again and then immediately tried to take another photo. This was during our guided tour, so of course we lost him for the rest of it.

Getting home after NYE was a struggle as we met got to our station and found Taxi drivers who had formed a conglomerate and were trying to ask for triple the price of a normal fare to get home. There was no way we were gonna pay them, so after a long struggle we got a bus and made it home, where alby and I sat with some polish, the highlight being the drunk polish who kept leaning on me and telling me about the ukraine and eating fish with vodka in very ver slurred speech....

The Eurail is easy to use and we arrived in Amsterdam with no problems. It should be noted tho that we have the crappest tickets available and are forced to sit in the luggage area, but thats ok, all part of the budget backpacking experience.

Our first meal in Amsterdam was "ALL YOU CAN EAT RIBS". Of course I was in heaven. The ribs came with 3 sauces, Honey Soy, Chilli and BBQ. Awesome. 15 Euros is a small price to pay for such extravagance. We got Fries and Salad also, (Unlimited of course). It is a decent competition for R and R.

We then walked around Amsterdam and let me just say, the stories are true and just leave it at that. We have family members reading this!

Amsterdam is a very nice city. It is much more relaxed and the people are much nicer than the French. Definitely Recommend.

Miles

More London

2004-12-28T13:02:00.000+11:00

My last post was actually on Christmas Eve, and that night we discovered that our les mis tickets were for a show that didnt exist.... we rocked up to the theatre and we were told that they told the sellers the wrong information and they sold 130 tickets to a show that doesnt exist.

That was dissapointing, but the Christmas Dinner the next day more than made up for it. It was my first traditional Christmas dinner and my family certainly delivered. We had roast ham, roast turkey, brussel sprouts with butter, roast potatoes, steamed vegies, yorkshire pudding and trifle. We all left the table absolutely stuffed, and Monica even bought christmas crackers which i lost 4 in a row.

The next day we took on the English Population and went shopping in the boxing day sales. It was like Pitt Street but worse, with a huge mob outside of selfridges and co, largely asian pushing and shoving to get in at 11:30 in the morning.

It was pretty crazy that day, with the whole city packed with shoppers. We all bought stuff except for Andrew, i got a few nice shirts, and im sure alicia and co will approve, i got a ysl shirt, some nice cufflinks, a few nice ties, including a dior which my cousin gave me. Also picked up a really nice suit, all presents from my cousins.

Today i saw the british museum, which was awesome, i spent about 6 hours in there, there was so much to see. It was awesome, the highlights are definitely the egyptian and greek sections, they have pieces of the parthenon and a lot of mummy and egyptian artifacts. I saw the rosetta stone, and the lindow man (peat bog).

There are also extensive european, celtic, near east, chinese, korean, african, american and there was a katana exhibition which i really enjoyed. The museum itself is beautiful, and huge, i definitely didnt see it all but it was amazing just to see all these thousand year old artifacts, the detail and quaility which is not available today. The british take entire rooms from other countries like a the palace walls from nineveh and the giant guardian statues from assyria.

Its weird to see all these things in a sterile environment, they seem slightly out of place.

London is great, best chicks to far in my opinion.
Enjoying myself immensely.

Miles

London - MERRY CHRISTMAS

2004-12-25T05:05:00.000+11:00

Firstly, Merry Christmas to all my loyal readers, even those losers who dont comment.

With that out of the way, more about me!

We left rio without incident, driven by a guy who called himself
"Speedy Gonzales" and "Rocketman". Hey but at least he spoke english and was an entertaining man. Nothing i have ever seen will every compare with south american driving but i hear its a latin thing, i'll see the same in spain and italy.

We arrived in London to discover we were almost reported as missing persons. My family here got my arrival date wrong and were expecting us to arrive the day before. Luckily they called my parents and sorted it out before the police were involved...

Its always great to see family and moreso family that you havent seen in such a long time. We were greeted very warmly by my Aunty,Uncle, Cynthia and Thomas. The cost of living in london is ridiculously expensive. You will not find a meal for less than £3 which is about 8 Aussie. A meal at a pub, such as the fish and chips we had today will cost you about £8 which is 20 Aussie.

Cars tho are cheap, walking past the lamborghini dealership, with the aston martin db7 parked outside, we sat that a murcielago was only £206,000. The cars here are cheap cos i think there is no luxury car tax, or very little. Just 2nite, i saw a Porsche GT2, Murcielago and DB7. Carrera 4s are everywhere.

Tonight we are going to Les Miserable, at the west end, and we quickly to harrods before it closed for the night. We also went on the London Eye, but couldnt go to any of the museums or galleries cos it is christmas eve.

Tomorrow will be a write off day interms of going out as everything is closed so we will spend the day bumming with my family.

Uncles Roast Pork was as good as the legends say and im sure the others would agree the hospitality has been spectacular.

Public Transport in London is so easy, especialy since we are able to ask for directions and understand them, unlike the entire south america. I really like London as a city, its not too crowded, transport is good and the city is pretty, with its old buildings and history poring out of every part of it.

The only complaint i have is the cost of living here, but i spose if you were to work here, it would be ok. The price of housing is ridiculous, think sydney prices but in pounds.

Let me now introduce my City Love Rankings
1. London - Culture, History and Class.
1. New York - So Modern, So Busy, So Alive
3. Santiago - A south america sydney
4. Cusco - Nice little city, cheap food, cheap everything
4. Rio - Potential beach chicks, crap climate
5. Lima - Ghetto, only safe areas are tourist ones and there u can get robbed by the shopkeepers who overcharge like crazy
6. Puerto Maldonaldo - Just a Jungle/Dirt Ghetto

Alby's Rio Explosion

2004-12-22T07:16:00.000+11:00

Day 2 in Rio:

we had an awesome brazilian bbq lunch buffet which only cost us 15 reals which is about 5 US dollars. Waiters come along with huge skewers of meat and cut it off for you. There is also a decent selection of salads and other food also. We all stuffed ourselves, but alby was weak, only managing a small amount of food. This was the first sign of things to come.

Went to the Chris the Redeemer Statue. 30 Reals. Worth every cent.
We could not even see the statue from the base of it, it was that foggy. Visibility was about 5 meters and tehre was a decent wind blowing. We had about 1 second glimpses of some parts of rio, but that was about all.

We then headed to ipanema, which seems to be a richer part of rio, more trendy boutiquey shops. After walking around for a while, we decided to catch a taxi home.
It was then that albys promises of explosions came to fruition. We got into the taxi and were in it for about 5 minutes, maybe 5 minutes from our hostel. The taxi had stopped in traffic and suddenly, alby said:

" hey guys u reckon maccas has a toilet?"

the next thing we know we heard the door of the taxi open and close and alby was running accross the street. The driver looked at us , we looked at the driver. Both as stunned as the other. We managed to explain to the driver that alby ran for a toilet, got him to pull over and we got out.

We went to maccas to look for him and calling into the toilet, we heard weak reply that he was in there. All i can say is, im glad he made it, before the explosion overcame him.

The driver must have thought we were gonna do a runner on him, alby just suddenly got up and ran for maccas. I guess u just had to be there.

Miles

The Santiago Intercontinental and Rio

2004-12-22T01:06:00.000+11:00

So, we got in at 3am in the morning to santiago airport, which is actually quite nice, and found noone there that knew our situation. We ended up talking to the lady incharge of lost and found, and with her broken english managed to tell us that lan customers stayed at the intercontinental.

So go to the intercontinental we did, with the airport taxi and slept a few shjort hours before getting up to breakfast. the rooms were awesome as was to be expected from a 5 star, huge king sized bed, aircom, huge tvs,hifi.. the works.

definitely recommend it to ppl going to santiago!

the city itself was quiet, but that can be partially attributed to the fat that it was a sunday, but apprently it is a more quiet city. the quality of chicks has also picked up here, but i didnt get a photo, sorry sandy, cos i didnt really have the change, only being there one day.

santiago was great, comparable to sydney in fact, with like a george st pitt street area, which we walked through. The city seemed quite safe and we climbed to several points of the city where we were able to get a nice view of teh landscape. there are very few tall buildings in santiago, and it is nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains, some of which are snow capped and can be seem from teh city centre if you go high enough. it was all very nice.

after we left santiago, we arrivedin rio, where I am writing this from.

Rio has its bad rep, with the highest rate of killings in the world, we walked down to the beach yesterday, but cos it was overcast, there wasnt much "people watching" to be done..... today also looks a bit overcast unfortunately...

we will be leaving for the airport 2morrow, to begin our european adventure, south america has been an eye opener, lima and santiago has been 2 sides ofa coin, i dont think i will ever go to lima again but santiago is a maybe and rio i havent made my mind up as of yet.

in santiago and rio, i have found that girls get inked quite a bit... and in rio u can see tanlines from the string bikinis from all the girls....

anyway this is cositng me quite a bit...

Im outta here

Miles

The Lima Sheraton

2004-12-19T06:40:00.000+11:00

Thats right boys and girls, i am currently on the net in the
'business centre' at the sheraton hotel in lima, peru. Yes i am a classy classy man.
Basically what happened is, lan peru screwed up and over booked the flight, kicked us off our plane and put us up in the sheraton for a day till our flight to santiago which is at 8pm.

They will also provide us with 2 nights acommodation in santiago, presumably in a hotel of at least 4 star standard, (this is 5 star btw). We will get a day to explore santiago, but we will lose a day in rio.

The rooms here are awesome, the bed is a king, the mattress is great, toilets are clean, and basically.. its a 5 star hotel room.. nothing to complain about really.

all meals are paid for, including a huge buffet breakfast, and the set menu lunch was also decent. we will leave here at 6pm 2nite so i have a few more hours to enjoy this indulgence.

we also got free tickets are compensation for this screwup. the problem is, the tickets are return from a american or south american city. Basically within the next year, i and a friend can travel say from new york to quito (equador, galapagos), for free, return.. so if any of you are interested in that, make sure u be nice to me next year, and hope that i can get a week or 2 off to use that flight...

but yeah, 5 star is great, i never thought when i started this trip that i would be spending 3 nights in a 5 star hotel... but i aint complaning...

keep in touch, tell me whats happening in sydney..

Miles

The Amazon

2004-12-18T01:45:00.000+11:00

There isnt that much to say about the amazon.

The boat ride was ridiculously long to get there, like 5 hours, and we go to the lodge in pretty much darkness. It was interesting for us to drive down the river, not knowing if we were going to hit any logs or anything that would sink our fibreglass motorized canoe...

It is so humid in the jungle, its likke 98% humidity and i hated it. you just sit there and sweat. not to mention you have to wear long pants to guard against the thousands of insects and constant insect repellant has to be worn when not at the lodge.

i think the highlight of the 2 days in the jungle was the quote from alby about his bowel movements...

´i´m pissing outta my ass.´´

gold.

we went on a few hikes and saw some cool trees and a tarantula.. which was friggim huge, a bit bigger than my hand... but besides that, it was a bit of a low light really, just because of the climate...

anyway off to rio 2morrow

i´ll hopefully update from there.

Miles

The Inca Trail Continued..

2004-12-14T02:26:00.000+11:00

So after making camp on night 1, with no shower, and not a real toilet in sight, i experienced my first real camping experience. However, it must be mentioned that the food was excellent, and the porters which carried our stuff for us were absolutely amazing. They carried at least 20-25 kgs on their backs, and pretty much ran all the way to each site.

Respect.

I found it hard to sleep on the ground and kept waking up in the middle of the night.

Day 2 brought us a 0530 wakeup call and at 0700 we left the campsite for dead womans pass, which would be the highest part of our hike, so for the next 2 hours, we climbed 400m to reach the pick where unfortunately the wind and fog picked up and we couldnt get a good view from the pass.

We took a quick snap on the pass, and headed down hill, where i discovered the joys of wet stone steps. Going up hill gives you burn in your muscles, but there is little mental concentration required. Going downhill however puts a lot of strain on your joints an requires you to concentrate intensely on each footstep. At this point i need to mention my trusty walking stick i bough for 3 soles. This stick saved me from serious injury on many occasions throughout theese 3 days and helped me pull my self up the steps on the uphill.

We have taken to naming our sticks 'excalibur', thats how good they were. Most likely they wont be able to come with us through customs, but we will carry them as long as we can, as they have now reached extreme sentimental value status.

So down the steps we went, slowly, painfully, slipping, getting rained on, really not a pleasant experience, and so it was for about 1.5 hours, not stop steps, it seemed taht the steps down would never end.

We reached camp for lunch and it was a 'easier' hike from that point on to the next camp site for the night, slight ups and downs, nothing as serious as the first day, but painful nonetheless. We reached camp for the 2nd night without incident, once again with me being the straggler at the end of the line. I learnt to not push as hard on this day, taking it slowly and trying to conserve my energy so that i would have something left at the end of the day and it seemed to work, i stopped much less to catch my breath and to ease the pain, and the rain cleared as the day went on, making for a much more pleasant hike.

At this point, i want to point out that at some points on this hike, the trail is usually about 1.5m wide with a sheer drop on the side and the mountain on the other. My fear of heights really didnt help in these situations. It wasnt a wide flat path, it was literally, a trail where if u were unlucky and slipped on something you could do some serious damage. Infact, a porter coming down to the lunch site on day 2 slipped and broke his kneee, and had to be carried back to the starting site on day 1.

Day 2 camp was also in a nice spot, when we arrived it was nice and warm, but the temperature quickly dropped and that night, not many people got much sleep due to the cold.

Day 3 was a more 'relaxing' day, with only about 6 hours of hiking and our group chose to take a more narrow flat path as opposed to another 2000 slippery stone steps. When the guide said narrow, i didnt realise that she actually meant NARROW. this path was like 1 m wider most of the time, and for parts it was barely a ditch in the ground. The path were a combinations of sections of mud and rock, and vegetation was barely cleared to form a walkway.

but we fought on, and even t hought it decided to rain as we approached lunch , which would also be the same place as dinner, we all made it without incident and prepared for our 0345 wake up call on day 4 and the sprint to the macchu pichu.

And so it was that on the 4th day, we woke up at night, and along with about 6 other groups waiting at the control point to be let through and pushed hard to the sun gate, which was of course at the top of the mountain. We set a blistering pace, a real powerwalk for the next 2 hours, where i really had to push my body to keep up, as our guide had said the night b4, 'dont let anyone pass you, do not stop, do not fall behind.' talk about pressure.

So at 0615 we reached teh sun gate, the and managed to not let anyone pass us, although io was practically dead when igot there. but macchu picchu was in sight and what a sight it was. The rest of the day was spent descending to the site and drinking the gatorade taht i had carried all the way from the starting point.

Heaps of pictures were taken, and macchu pichu was beautiful, but personally, more imporatnt was the achievment that i felt i had achieved in making it the whole 4 day 45 km inca trail. If you are reading this, you all know me, and you know im not the fittest person when i left, but somehow i made it, through the pain and with more than a littel help from above.

i am grateful for the experience, and i recommend anyone to do it, but i do suggest that some preparation is done before hand,just so you dont have to go through the pain and emabarassment of always being the last in line as i was. But i did make it there in the end and taht is what matters...

well that was a huge post, im signing off for now,

Miles

The Inca Trail (Long)

2004-12-14T01:50:00.000+11:00

So here i am, returned from 4 day hike from the inca trail.

There is so much to write about these last 4 days and yet, i am kinda lost for words, which you all should know is quite a rarity.

For this trip, it truly was the journey that was important and not just the destination. Machu Pichu was beautiful, of that there is no doubt, but i think the 4 days that it took to get there was much more important.

I knew before i left for this whole trip that i was horribly underprepared to go on a hike, much less one that goes uphill for long periods of time. But i didnt realise how unprepared i was until i actually started the hike.

I think the best way to go through this is to go through each day.

Day 1:
The day started early, at 0530, which would become normal for the next few days. We started off learning to chew coca leaves, whihc are sposed to help with altitude sickness, as we were at 2800m and rising to a peak of 4215m during this trek. Coca leaves are also the raw product used to make cocaine, but anyway...

On this day, I started my hike with my buddy arrogance, and took off at a quick pace for the first part of the day, even on the first 2 initial climbs, which came after about 2 hours of flat hiking. Needless to say, after each hill, i could barely breathe and my legs were burning. But my other friend stubborness insisted that i push on as hard as I could, and i did, right up to lunchtime on day 1.

By lunch time, i was buggered and already hitting the gatorade. Gatorade would become the symbol of success and glory as this trip went on.

After lunch, we began our proper accent to our campsite for the nite, which was at an altitude of 3800m. At this time, i met a new friend, Mr pain. 1 hour after we left the lunch site, i was really struggling. My legs had pretty much died and i had 3 hours of solid climbing to go.

As i dropped further and further behind the group, Ger, an amazing 54 year old woman jono, andrew and alby, all stayed with me to encourage me in my extremely slow progress up the mountain. Literally, i would need a 5 minute break after every 5 minutes of hiking. That day will prolly rank as the most strenuous physical day of my life. It was just a pure mindless ascent with no stop, everytime i looked up, it was more stairs, more steps and more pain.

Somehow, i made it to the campsite, and the sense of achievement and the breathtaking view from the campsite made all the pain worth it. There isnt really much point trying to describe the views taht i saw on these days, but i have to say that being in the middle of the mountains, looking down on the path that you came from, not being able to see where you started, really is a feeling that must be experienced to be understood.

ill post this now incase i lose it...

Cusco

2004-12-08T13:49:00.000+11:00

So we left lima, and flew 1 hour to a little city calle cusco which has about 300,000 people. I really like this place. This is the place that all the tourists go before they go off to macchu pichu.

You would think that this place would be a tourist ghetto, and it is to a degree, but there is less big chains here than in lima. No starbucks, pizza, maccas or burger king.

We hit the main plaza today, and it went from sunny to rain in about 1 hour, and i almost froze to death in my singlet. We then hit the markets and got some real nice bargains on some souvenirs, which ill bring back and share with some of you lucky people.

currently jono and andrew are shitting themselves cos it turns out the area for our hostel in rio is quite dangerous and they are desperately looking for alternate accomodation...

really looking forward to the start of the tour of the sacred valley 2morrow, and a mini 1.5 hour hike to test our fitness before we do the serious 8 hour a day 3 day hike.

comment u fools.
holla.

Lima Part 2

2004-12-07T09:29:00.000+11:00

Wow, yesterday was quite a day. We took it easy at first and went down to the local plaza/park place where it is quite touristy. After lunch tho, me alby and andrew decided to cab it down to the main cathedral in the main square of lima, and what a ride it was.

There was apparently some kinda parade on and so we ended up stuck in traffic, and the areas taht we went through were the poor areas of lima, which i think is the real lima. all the parks and neat hedges is all a facade by the government to show the tourists a "friendly" lima which can be used as photos on adds. The real lima is quite poor, and got up close and personal to these people in our ride downtown.

Its hard to describe what made it so threatening but i can liken it to driving through harlem. There were a lot of people just standing aroud, and it was obvious that if a tourist walked in that area, and you looked like you had money, it would be very danagerous. In fact, our hotel receptionist told us EXPLICITLY not to walk in these areas.

The taxi driver was quite good tho, he had nice car, a mazda 3, which is about 10000000 times better than any other car in the area. The driving here is worse than i originally thought, cars turn from across 2 lanes in heavy traffic, noone cars about lane markings, and noone has heard of indicating. we had at least 20 close calls by less than 10 cms on the way to the cathedral.

I feel a lot more comfortable in lima now, i realise taht our area here is the safest its gonna get, and although we stick out like sore thumbs here, i think its best to just take what precautions you can and prepare for the worst, ie, get robbed and lose your money.

so far, this trip has no dissapointed in the slightest, images of that poor area will stay with me my whole life, and the real tour of macchu pichy hasnt even started. I will be out of contact for a few days i think, so take care everyone..

New York - Lima

2004-12-06T01:33:00.000+11:00

Our last day in New York was spent doing different things, i went to woodberry common, which is a bigger better homebush factory outlet, alby and andrew going to the met and holding hands in central park, and jono going to a cuban cafe...

I went nuts at woodbery, spending about 300 bucks on timberland, CK, nike and polo... its all getting mailed as obviously i cant carry it around..

trip to the airport was uneventful, as was our flight to lima.

Lima is very different to anything i've seen before. Not soon after we left the airport, we passed the slum area, which is literally buildings made out of whatever is lying around. The 'city' itself was deserted, driving laws were non existant, and there are 3 metre high fences with spikes at the top for nearly every building that we could see. The cost of living here is quite low, andrew has decided we will measure everything against hte price of mangos, which is about 1.70 soles a kilo. 1 USD = 3.26 Soles from the money changer on the street. These guys literally carry wads of cash and stand on street corners changing money for anyone that comes past.

There were also a couple of guards standing at the entrance to a building carrying sub machine guns a block from our hotel. Our hotel is quite nice tho and the people are friendly.

It's a totally differnt world from both sydney and new york, but we are looking forward to the tour and the inca trail, especially macchu pichu.

New York Part 2

2004-12-04T01:08:00.000+11:00

Ha, judging by the lack of comments, noone checks this blog at all :D
Thats ok, cos this is mostly for my personal record anyway.

Funny Stories:
We enter espnzone in timesquare, and have a quick browse, and as we leave, one of the store attendents approaches us and says to alby "hey, my friend thinks you are really cute."
Problem was, this friend was shall we say, "no jessica alba" :P
Alby then looked at her in shock, then turned and ran outta the store like a school girl.

Yesterday, we went to see the statue of liberty, and did some major walking through the financial district and lower manhattan. Alby has started his "Hall of Fame" which is where he takes photos of all the best food places that we have eaten at so far.

We ate bagels for breakfast and giant pizza slices for lunch, all traditional New York fare. We met up with some of Jono's friends for dinner at like a hogs breath, kinda restaurant where we had burgers/ribs.

Was absolutely buggered by the end of teh day, and got home in time to see LBJ and the Cavs take Carmelo and the Nuggets to school, blowing out by about 30 points at one stage before i turned it off and went to bed.

Anyway today we hope to check out a American college and also go to empire state.

We also managed to see the WTC site, which was quite sad, such a huge gap where the towers used to be...

New York New York!

2004-12-02T23:13:00.000+11:00

So, Its 7am in the morning and i'm getting rorted as we speak, paying $1US for 10 minutes of internet time.

The flight was long, but not unbearably so, and it has really beed great so far.

Funny Stories:
Alby's Dad almost gets the information desk to page him at Sydney Airport.

I dont recognise my own bag at LAX, and tell the flight attendent its lost, only to realise that the bag we saw going around which looks strangely like mine is actually mine. Stuggle.

First impressions of New York:

The moment we collected our bags from JFK, we were approached by a guy of middle eastern appearance offering us a cab into manhattan. We followed for about 5 metres, realised he wasnt a yellow cab driver, and went back to teh cab queue.
It was pretty dodgy i spose, we were approached about 5 times by different people offering us rides to the city, the problem is, we had no idea if they were legit or not.

In the end, we ended up in the cab line behind a couple of other young aussies and was approached by a jamaican driving a limo offering us a ride for $110 US, which would work out cheaper than the yellow cabs. Seeing as there were 7 of us, we all piled into a WHITE STRETCH LIMO, and were dropped off at the door of our hostel.

To be honest, I was quite intimidated by New York. All these people approaching us, and really, it seemed like we were in a movie. You see people dressed like full homie style, baggy pants, the hats with the flat rims, so many african americans and latinos. We met up with my cousin Kitty and her husband Tat, and they took us out for dinner at a nice italian place and we went to see the big tree at the rockefeller centre, which is apparently a new york tradition to see.

They left us soon after, and we went around down 5th, saw trump tower and the playboy enterprises building and had some cheesecake for dessert.

Anyway thats all for now, running outta time. Will prolly blog more than email as this seems easier. Please let everyone know that i am blogging instead of emailing.

End of an Era

2004-11-08T21:14:00.000+11:00

On Friday, i had my last official day of classes at UNSW. It was such an anticlimax.
I think something must be wrong with me, because people put such emphasis on certain days, such as graduations, last days of whatever, anniversaries, birthdays... and like i think im sposed to feel like its a really special day or something, like when i turned 21, i woke up and thought.... i wanna go back to bed... or something along those lines.

Throughout that day, i just wondered if i should be feeling different? As the smses and phone calls came in, sure it felt nice to be loved, but besides that, i felt no particular specialness about the day... mmmm

From what i can tell, i think some ppl really do feel different on these kinds of days, can someone explain it to me? Rob, i think u mentioned having certain feelings/emotions on that day?

Anyway i thought that the last day of uni was worth a mention thats all, i mean 4 years of the highest level of institutionalised education, and honestly, its been so fast.. i can still remember first year clearly, sleeping in bucklands Comp 1A.

Also had another interesting conversation with joseph about aiming for our dreams. At what point do we draw the line and say hey, we arent gonna achieve it, we shouldnt go for it?

What if you arent happy with your job/course?
When is it too late to change? What price can u put on a dream?

mmmmmm

Rob turns Twenty One @ Forty One

2004-10-24T18:00:00.000+10:00

I havnet blogged in a long while, but last nights dinner deserves a post.
Rob took a small group of us out to Forty-One, which for all you "clarets" out there, is located on level 42 of Chifley Tower. It was truly an amazing experience, and for what Rob paid, it bloody better have been.

Where do i start?

Firstly, the view from the private room we had was AWESOME. Shame i couldnt get a photo of it, due to the reflection of the glass.

The food. Well what can i say? I admit that i am an uncultured swine and i really couldln't tell you why it was so good, in fact, i went home and googled several of the things that i ate.

The full menu can be found here. there were 7 courses in all, and each was spectacularly prepared.

Unfortunately, my camera skills are not up to scratch but there are photos of ...

Roast Boneless Rack Of Gippsland Lamb, Creamed Parsley & Leeks,

Sauteed Potato Gnocchi, Black Olive Infused Jus (1999)

Coconut and Vanilla Panna Cotta With Pineapple Sorbet

We got Rob some poker chips, which I hope to use soon :D

Me and the Birthday Boy

Erm. Why is it so hot?

2004-10-13T14:03:00.000+10:00

Wednesday
Refer to Fire Weather Warning for the latest Rural Fire Service Total Fire Ban Information. Dry and mainly sunny. Hot. Moderate to fresh northwest winds.
Current Temperature: 38 C
Forecast Max: 37C
Wind Direction & Speed: WNW at 13 knots
Humidity: 11%
Pressure: 1012.0 hPa

WHY? And that 38C is prolly out on the coast. Out in the friggin west.... Its prolly like 40+. RIDICULOUS. This better not be how hot its gonna be in Peru, or Rio for that matter.... Im tempted to go swim in my pool..

More about me!

2004-10-06T01:47:00.001+10:00

You are a WEDL--Wacky Emotional Destructive Leader. This makes you a Anarchist.

You don't give a damn. When push comes to shove, you just forget about it--it's just not worth the heartache. What this means for others is that dealing with you can be aggravating, because they find they can't get you motivated about things they care about. What this means for you is that you are happier, calmer, and saner then they are on their best days.

You are near-immune to criticism, and those who know you well acknowledge and respect that. You may come across as lazy, but the truth is that you find little to get worked up about. Regardless, you have slews of friends, because they are fascinated by your world view, jealous of your lifestyle, and drawn to the fact that you are hilarious to be around.

You are a pillar in a sea of hot-bloodedness. You have a sweet tooth.

Of the 37620 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 2.9 % are this type.

20 Questions to being a Better Person

Your score as a human being is 83.

You are close to ideal. So close, and yet so far. Amusing, really, to watch someone squirm so close to the vaunted ranks of perfection and still remain so very, very ordinary. It is all one can do to keep one's ingratiating smile from polluting one's perfect face.

Actually, one recommends you take the quiz again and lie a little.

Stolen from danny' site.

The GARDEN

2004-10-01T20:14:00.000+10:00

I cant wait.

You purchased 4 tickets to:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
New York Knicks Vs. Orlando Magic
Madison Square Garden, New York, NY

Friday December 03, 2004 7:30 pm

Seat location: section 312, row O, seats 4-1
Total Charge: $353.95

Nosebleeds... but the best i could do.

Me?

2004-09-12T17:47:00.000+10:00

miles, your career personality type is ESTP

That means that based on the standard measure of personality traits, at work, you're the one people come to when a crisis is at hand. Your unflappable demeanor in the face of even the most unanticipated situations makes you the kind of employee all organizations value highly. You thrive under pressure and seek situations involving unpredictability and quick thinking. You prefer to leave the planning to others so you can grab an assignment and run with it. This does not mean that you are incapable of deep thinking; it's just that you use your mental strength and apply it to practical solutions.

You take pride in your work and like tangible results. In other words, you like to see, touch, and feel what you create and how that work affects others. Your drive comes from within and once a task is accomplished, you're not looking back-you are on to the next sensation.

The reason employers and recruiters might be on the lookout for you is that only about 6% of the U.S. population shares the unique characteristics of your personality type. Research shows that businesses succeed when employers create a good balance of personality types in the office. And since only 6% of the U.S. population shares your type, that means employers are looking for you.

Is this the Miles you know?
Comment.

So Busy

2004-09-03T09:42:00.000+10:00

1. Routing Mid Sem
2. Graphics Assignment
3. Thesis
4. Thesis
5. Thesis
6. Routing Assignment

Matty Foster's Birthday

2004-08-08T13:43:00.000+10:00

Unfortunately i arrived late, and to my dismay, it appeared that the party was almost over, with Cho leaving as i arrived. Most of the honeez, had already gone, leaving only the attached women. I had told ken to stay sober for me, but that obviously was not the case. Matty Foster was completely wasted by the time i got there, pinching nipples, handing out his clothing, and asking people not to judge him.

I had never seen matty foster like this and the first thoughts were... "Man is he wasted? whats going on here? its only 10 pm!". Add that to the fact that there was no food to be seen, and ken, Lynzy and Kwok were already beet red.

Random memories from the night.

Ken Lee on Matt Lee (Who was asking grace to make him some tea) - "Man that guy is such a pretender to the throne!!"

Matty Foster to Matt Lee - "Can you please take my clothes off?"

Matty Foster pinching nipples.

Matty Foster giving lots of hugs that were perhaps a bit too intimate...

Matty Foster asking everyone not to steal his clothes.

Matty Foster to me - "Miles, you are good at basketball."

They say a picture says a thousand words:

For the complete list go to http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/
Apologies for the large amount of pwoider photos. He took the camera and started taking photos of himself.......

Here are some highlights

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0067%20(Large).JPG
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0069%20(Large).JPG
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0073%20(Large).JPG
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0093%20(Large).JPG
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0094%20(Large).JPG
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~tatustam/IMG_0100%20(Large).JPG

Get Ready.

2004-08-03T16:21:00.000+10:00

*EDIT* Photos of Raph's 21st http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cygk526/BdayPhotos/

In the very near future, I will begin a series of posts that will change this blog forever.
Soon I will bring you "Miles' 2004 Bachelor of the year awards".

I am accepting nominations for candidates now.

To nominate someone, leave a comment on this post.

Please inform all ladies that you know of this new ground breaking event.

Current nominees are: Raphael Chan, Chung Uk Lee, Jackson Yoon, Danny Kwok.
Note: Matt Lee was disqualified due to the obvious cyber relationship with this supposed "18 year old girl" Yvonne that we all know from his blog.

Raph's 21st

2004-07-31T15:14:00.000+10:00

After much convincing and cunningness all round, I managed to get Raph to finally hold his 21st. Not just any 21st, but a nice dinner at the Marigold in the city, and then drinks at the mandarin club and the pavillion after. More on those places later....

Dinner was great, good food, 13 guys just sitting around a table talking crap, King Way with his non-stop DOTA talk, and the rest of us just being ourselves. Thanks a suggestion from a source that shall remain unamed, we got him 2 major things for his present, a CK Crave pack, and also a soccer ball which we all used as a card and wrote on with my trusty permanent marker. Jason being the guy that he is insisted that as he was turning 21 and was now a "man", we should give him something that commemorates the occasion. Enter FHM, and Hustler Black Label Limited Edition. Raph, i know u love it. But the fun was just beginning....

After getting barred from pavilion and starbar due to inappropriate attire, we ended up at the mighty mandarin club, where we felt right in our element, hanging out with obvious pokie addicts, asians in their 40s and 50s, a Filipino Karaoke singer and some triad looking mainlander bosses who approached King Way and myself looking to recruit. (Ok maybe not, but doesnt it sound better that way?)

I started Raph off by immediately dragging him to the bar and taking a Cowboy with him straight away.
Says me: "We're gonna get u trashed tonight and you are going to throw up."
Says Raph: "Nah, i rarely throw up."
Says Me: "OK."

We then went upstairs where Raph had a beer (and some more?) and QF. The person with the wrong attire left, so we decided to proceed to Pavilion as we had had enough karaoke and middle aged asian craziness.

Upon reaching pavillion, i decided that Raph was not even close to the world of drunkeness and embarassment, so i decided to pull out the big guns, ordering him a shot of absinthe. Raph took it like a man, and we proceeded downstairs, where in sucession Raph took a bacardi, a malibu and pineapple, a tequila and a beer with 2 tequila shots inside, after which he decided to sit down. (Meanwhile, kingway, having his 3rd drink, a vodka and orange, got completely drunk for the rest of the night, turned as red as a beetroot, rambled about dota, and told us that 7 x 8 was 54).
At this point raph was starting to struggle. Really having to try hard to finish his beer + tequila. It was about now that he was struggling to walk straight and required constant supervision. Once again deciding a change of venue was in order, we went back upstairs, where i presented raph with his next drink, a red bull and vodka. Around this time, his mum called, and raph hands me the fone saying, "anwser it, i dont no who it is!". I look on the fone and it says "Mum mobile". Knowing that this was not a good thing, i tried to tell her that raph was "busy" and couldnt get to the fone right now, but she was quite insistant, saying, "WHERE IS RAPHAEL. I WANT TO SPEAK TO RAPHAEL CHAN." knowing that the game was up, i gave the fone back to raph saying "IT'S YOUR MUM." Raph takes the fone, says hello, listens for a few seconds and says "WHO IS THIS?". As King Way said, "Ah Ma doh um ying dak" ( a chinese phrase saying you don't even recognise your mum." Raph then hands me the fone back, and then i try to explain again that raph is busy. His mum, obviously frantic puts his DAD on the fone, and he then asks me "I WANT TO SPEAK TO RAPHAEL CHAN. WHERE IS RAPHAEL CHAN." Giving the fone back to raph who seemed to have more success explaining his situation and recognising this parent, we ended the conversation.
Note: At this point, raph was no longer using his hands to pick up his glass, he was simply moving his mouth to the cup on the table. Also, he coudlnt sit up straight in his chair, the constant swaying was a bit disconcerting and his reaction time was about 25 minutes.

As he nursed the redbull, he kept saying "f#$k im drunk man." Lots of photos were taken with Garricks fone at this point, i hope i can post them here soon. Seeing that Raph was close to the end, he couragously finished the redbull and vodka, upon which hearing the calls of ABSINTHE! Raph yelled "NO! NO! NO ABSINTHE. IM F#$Ked. IM GONNA SPEW." So Garrick, being the good man he is got him a gin and tonic instead.
Raph, nursing this drink for about 10 minutes, picks up the glass, which is 4/5 full and goes "F*&K! how come there is so much left?" He then goes to the toilet and returns but sits on another table with his other mates. The next thing I hear is. "OH SHIT RAPH'S GONNA CHUCK!".
True enough, raph had his hand over hismouth and was staggering to the bathroom. I followed him and Raph bravely held it in until he got into the toilet. He dashed into the nearest cubicle only to see that it was occupied by a guy taking a leap. Now desperate, and his self control at its limit, he valiantly tried to dash into the next cubicle but it was not to be. A spray of vomit erupted from the hand that was over his mouth as he ran intor the cubicle, aimed his mouth at the toilet bowl........ and missed. Spewing all over the ground. But unfortunately that isnt all. At the entrance of this cubicle stood a BIG TONGAN SECURITY GUARD. and that spray of vomit landed on his jacket. Let me tell you, the nice security guard was NOT HAPPY JAN.

"WHAT THE F*&K? F*&K YOU MAN! I'M GONNA F*&KING SMASH YOU YOU F*&K!!!!!!!" and then shoved raph int he back, which did not help his trying to get his spew into the toilet im sure. At this point im thinking "Oh shit. Miles, you cannot stop this guy. He is about twice your weight, and its not fat. How am i gonna stop him from killing raph." The best i could manage was a "Sorry man...." and tried to step in between them. Luckily, the guard was smarter than he looked and managed to calm himself down. Raph then turns around and goes, "Sorry man, don't worry i'll clean it up. Gimme some toilet paper." (Raph mentions that he thought he managed to get it all into the toilet and was talking about the kilo of spew on the ground. I thought he meant he was gonna wipe the guards jacket.) Thanking God that we were both uninjured, that guard goes "Get the F*&K out." So i motioned for the time to leave and escorted raph downstairs, where he was swaying on his feet. The other guys came out, and we thought that giving him a kebab would settle his stomach a bit, thinking that he woulda thrown up most of dinner in pavillion. So he bought a chicken kebab at ali babas, and at about 1/4 before he seemed to pass out sitting down. He was quiet. TOO QUIET. All of a suddent he bends over and spews all over the ground. But raph being the gentleman that he is, tried to catch it in his hand. Unfortunately raph ur hand isnt the size of a 10 litre bucket so u failed. All over the ground of alibabas, and impressing the group of aussies behind us, one of which patted him on the back saying "Good work champ, let it flow." We decided that it was time to beat a hasty retreat and headed to maccas where tried to clean himself up. Luckily after about 20 minutes his sister and MUM arrived to pick him up. I don't want to know what his mum thought.
I am also glad that i wasnt in the car with him. He would have reekd of alcohol and puke. Mmmm yum.

And that my friends is the story of Raph's 21st. And what a 21st it was, one im sure he doesnt remember half of but willbe talked about for years to come. Happy birthday bro.

Calling all MEN

2004-07-24T16:45:00.000+10:00

It's been a while since im posted and there are some issues that i feel need to be addressed.

1. Lee and Yvonne.
I'm not the first person to bring this up and in fact, a few other ppl have asked me, "Miles man, what is going on with Lee and Yvonne chick?" To which i anwser: "I have no idea mate. " I think its all a bit suss right now. Firstly Lee, online dating is bad. At least meet the girl in person before she tells the world she loves you on your own website. Secondly, shes a bit young isnt she? isnt that bordering on cradle snatching? To see what im talking about please visit the link to "Lee's Blog" on the right hand side column.

2. Karen (Mum) is now going out with some weak ass white boy.
There are 2 problems with that. Firstly, Karen is our(me, lee and alby) mum. We havent met this guy to give our approval and from all reports it seems like he is a weakass. Secondly, he is white. Not that i have problem with white ppl, but weak ass and white? (Sorry matty foster and hob. Its ok cos ur not weak ass) :D

3. Why isnt anyone up for go karting? http://www.easterncreekkarts.com.au/index.asp
Go Karting is the best. Period. I havent been but i've always wanted to go. 130 bucks aint that much for 2 heats, lap times lining up on a grid and racing on 95km/h karts, all at sydney's best track, eastern creek. At the moment, the only real men i know are Danny, Raph, Chung and Wong. Everyon else seems to have given me the lame excuse of: "I have no money". Please get back to me if you are interested in karting in the next week. Go to Kart Hire -> Reduced Mini Grand Prix.

4. 21st's
Why do people not wanna do something for their 21st? I mean, u dont have to do anything fantastic or huge, but at least something with ur close friends is called for? Especially since the people who are most likely to not have a 21st never have a party any other year either...

I think thats all the issues i have at the top of my head right now...

ME ME ME!

2004-07-16T01:52:00.000+10:00

Stole this off some guys xanga, while blog jumping...
Never done one of these b4. Shows how bored i am...

Listening to: Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
~~~~Basics~~~~

Full Name: Miles Tam

Age: 21

What school: UNSW
Righty or Lefty: Righty
Siblings: Younger Sister
Pets: Bobo, my Shih Tzu

~~~~~YOUR LOOKS~~~~~

Hair Color: Black
Eyes: Brown
Do you wear contacts or glasses: Glasses. Contacts when I'm out to impress.
Do you wear any rings: No.

~~~~~JUST LATELY~~~~~

How are you today: Mmm.. Obviously bored cos im doing this. Bit tired from washing window. Slightly reflective.
What pants are you wearing: Black Trackies from like Kmart.
What shirt are you wearing: Fitzroy Falls Conference Centre shirt.
What does your hair look like at the moment: Better than it does in the morning.. i havent slept on it yet.
What song are you listening to right now: Violin Concerto in E major "Primavera" Op.8/1, RV269
What was the last thing you ate? Dinner was Blade Steak, Medium. Just had some Smiths thin chicken chips.
How is the weather right now: Cold, but clear.
The last person you talked to on the phone: Danny
Who are you talking to right now?: Myself.
What time is it? 3:15pm

~~~~~MORE ABOUT YOU~~~~~

What are the last four digits of your phone?: 6400
If you were a crayon what color would you be?: Royal Blue.
Have you ever almost died: Well, I almost put me and Lee into a few ditch/trees back on year 12 formal night.. about 2 seconds of understeer away from death....
What makes you happy: Winning. Suceeding.
What's the next cd you are going to buy: 100 Blank TDK Golds.
Have you ever won any special awards: Special? No.
What sport do you like to watch the most? Basketball, Volleyball, Soccer, League/Union.
How many TV's do you have in your house: 1
Do you have your own phone line: Nope.
Do you sleep with stuffed animals: Yes. A little blonde doll in a blue dress.
Place for a dream house: Condo in SOHO
Have you ever sprained/broken/fractured a bone: Broke Patella in Year 6, Sprained both ankles multiple times, Broken right ankle in 2002.
Who do you tell your dreams to: Whoever's is in them.
Who is the loudest friend: Me! I'm the loudest.
What's your favourite drink? Coke? Milo? Some blue lychee drink at Musashi?
Who is the quietest friend: mm Raph?

~~~~~JUST QUESTIONS~~~~~

Is cheerleading a sport: Hell yeah. I'd watch that all day.
How many licks does it take to get to the center?: What a dumb question. It depends on what ur licking fool.
Which came first the chicken or the egg: Who knows? Who cares? God created the earth.

~~~~~YOU AND LOVE~~~~~

Do you believe in love? Yep.
Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend: Nope.
Do you have a crush: Kinda.
Who is your crush?: If you know, you know. If you don't, don't worry.
Did you send this to your crush: I cant send over blogspot.
Do you believe in love at first sight: Lust? Yes.
What song do you want played at your wedding: Who's gonna marry me?
Are you too shy to ask someone out: Nope.

~~~~~GUYS FILL OUT ONLY~~~~~

Painted nails or not: Not Black.
Cute and mysterious or wild and sexy: Cute and Mysterious.
Dressy or casual: Very Casual.
long or short hair: Long. Straight.
What color eyes: Any.
Long or short nails: Long.
Hat or no hat: Err.... Prolly not. Always exceptions to the rule though.
Hair up or down: Down
Accent or no accent: As long as I understand what she's saying, I don't care.
Pants or dress: Mini skirt. MMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Tan or fair: Don't care.

~~~~~PICK THIS OR THAT~~~~~

Lights on/off: On
MickeyDs or Burger King?: The burgers are better at hungry jacks.
Backstreet Boys or NSync: N-Sync. Did i just write that?
Summer or Winter: Winter. Summer.... when its only mildly warm.
tape or CD: iPod.
Mud or Jell-O wrestling: Any form of womens wrestling with hot chicks is fine by me.
Skiing or boarding: Snowboarding... if i had the chance.
Cake or pie: Some nice French Mud Cake never goes astray.
Diamond or pearl: Big Fat Diamond
Sunset or sunrise: Sunset. Being up at sunrise means something has gone wrong. Either I'm still up , or why did I get up so early?

~~~~~HAVE YOU EVER~~~~~

Loved someone so much it made you cry: Nope
Ran from the cops: I couldnt see the cops when i started running....
Drank: A bit.
Made yourself cry to get out of trouble??: Does that work?
Do you like filling these things out? This is my virgin one. Be Gentle.

Cleaning Windows! Please Give Advice.

2004-07-15T19:26:00.000+10:00

Just spent half the day cleaning windows of my house. I've never seen my windows look so clean before! and my room is semi clean too. Its amazing. Been kinda busy last few days, with my kids coming to sleep over on Monday - Wednesday and going Camera shopping/Bumming in the city on Wed. Still dont no what to get.

I'm split between:
Canon S60
Fujifilm Finepix F610
Sony DSC-W1

Any comments, suggestions insights, witty comments are appreciated to help me make my decision. The purpsoe of this camera is to take ur general happy snaps at parties etc, but also i want to be able to capture the memories of my trip with this camera too, so this may be scenery, landscapes etc. The price is quite similar, within 50 of each other i think, so i really don't know what to get. I need to make up my mind soon, Bahn is coming back from HK so I need to tell my aunty to buy it.

Also looking at working out how to finance the trip. I know that a bank loan is waht i need, but with my inability to get a credit card due to a lack of stable income atm, i dunno how i will get that to work exactly. Also, will travellers cheques be the go? Or just debit everything from an account through credit cards? Really not sure. Any experience travellers please give input. It'll be about 15K i have to play with, how should that money be split? In terms of Cash, Travellers Cheques and Credit Cards? What is the go with changing money overseas?

Thanks

Photogenicism?

2004-07-10T00:57:00.000+10:00

Why is it that some people are so photogenic? More importantly, why am I so unphotogenic? I look even worse in photos than i do in real life, and thats a quite an acheivement. In pretty much every photo, i look like someone i would bag out if i saw THEM in the photo. Man.

For example, was out with Helen, Raph and Jackson tonight, after we piked on jason's poker nite. Helen is ridiculously photogenic. Some of the photos i saw of her, i would have bet money it wasn't her. She looked really good! But then the real Helen is .... :P (Are you reading this Helen? I told you i'd rag on you!)

Mmm maybe i just cant face the reality that i am an unattractive mofo. Looks like i'll need the 3 C's to get the girls instead. Thanks to the girls who taught the 3 most important C's to girls.

Cash
Cars
Career

I spose thats the reality of it. Pretty much these days, if you arent a good looking boy, your gonna need other weapons in your arsenal to snag that woman of your dreams. I better get to it then. Those 3 C's won't be easy to attain.

"21... Again

2004-07-07T10:52:00.000+10:00

So it wasn't my official birthday last night. But damn it was a lot more exciting than dinner with the parents.

First of all, a HUGE Thank You one and all for coming and for making the the night a great time for me. Thank you for all your presents, comments and well wishes. Thank you for all the alcohol, a new PB of 8.5 drinks. An increase from my usual average of 1.5 :P

Thanks especially to Lee who gave a great speech, even though he was too trashed to remember any of it.

It was really great to see everyone there, and I really appreciate u all taking the time out to come and celebrate my "coming of age", as it were. Don't hold your breath for any big expressions of maturity or responsibility tho...

Here are some photos from lees camera.

Username: milesandalby
Password: milesandalby

Kelvin blows so the photos are all out of focus. Hopefully i can get better ones soon. Thanks again for coming, and I hope you all had a good a time as I've had.

UPDATE:
All photos can now be found here:

FREEDOM!!!

2004-07-05T13:52:00.000+10:00

The longest exam session of my life so far is over. And what a way to end it, a all nighter, wimbledom, motogp, f1, mtv, euro2004 nite, fueled by chips, party on mix and soft drink. I feel sick. The exam was hell. It was long, it was hard, and i hadnt read all the notes properly. I left after 40 mins, i looked around, and other ppl were half way through. By no means did i know my stuff, i just wrote whatever and left. Got home and went straight to bed. Slept a few hours, got few phone calls which i didnt no who it was for about 30 seconds, but it was cool, people calling to chat, which is always nice.

Its funny seeing people try to buy presents for you without you knowing, my friends basically told me piss off, they went to towers and im like, hey i'll come and danny's like... no... we'll CALL YOU LATER. lol barred.

but yeah that means im here at home, in this "virtual masturbation" as ken so insightfully calls it.

But. Most importantly, i am now FREE. FREE DAMMIT. NO more friggin exams for another semester! and i justhave to waut on the outcome of IW and my GENED, neither of which i expect particularly good marks for which is a shame, cos im sitting on a 80 average after COMP subjects, which is an achievement and a half for me. I believe my current COMP average over 3 years is 65. Its ironic... I'm not even trying this semester. I just dont care. I just want to pass and here i am doing the best i have ever done. Just goes to show, study doesnt actually pay off. Some poor guy out there has prolly studied hard, and got crap makrs to show for it, and here is me, all blase and with my 80 average.

Hey alright so 80 isnt THAT great. but if u look at my academic transcript,u would understand my amusement.

I can see the light....

2004-07-03T14:13:00.000+10:00

Man. So close. I'm almost done for this semester. The seemingly endless exam period i almost at an end. Monday is my last ridiculously late exam. But i have a problem. On Monday morning at 4:15 am, It is the EURO2004 Final, Greece vs home team Portugal. Greece is the Korea of 2002. What a suprise package. That header against czech literally came from nowhere. I think everyone was just stunned. So yeah, gotta watch that and then the 8:45 exam should be VERY interesting... hmmm...

Yesterday was a long day, Went to watch the soccer with Alby, Lee and Chung, then went to play ball with Daniel and his friends. Then scammed a free lunch from Daniel, then bummed at Will's place, me and lee taking turns to cane him in Q3A. Plans for Spiderman 2 fell thru, I blame danny, and then was up till the wee hours of the morning.

I realised, that i NEED to become rich cos i am not suited for manual labor. As i was brushing the cement render outside, i managed to scrape 6/10 knuckles on my hand half way to the bone. Yay.

Currently Listening to: Rage Against the Machine - The Battle of Los Angeles

I'm a Pioneer

2004-06-29T01:58:00.000+10:00

You're a Pioneer
You think about why people do what they do. By understanding the motivation of others, you seek to create a better world. Changing the world around you through personal achievements is your everyday challenge.

The passionate you generates creative ideas. You are an imaginative dreamer. Your preoccupation with the future gives you the mental discipline to stay on track and direct others to do the same.
The centered you can see how to direct your life toward a greater inner peace. You are able to discern exactly what you need. When all is quiet within you recognize just what you want.
The emotional you avoids asking what's missing. Novel adventures seem to appear. Honor your forbidden thoughts. They are merely signposts to exciting new paths you need to follow.

21

2004-06-28T00:19:00.000+10:00

Holy Crap. I'm 21.

I feel.... Nothing. I just feel kinda old. I see these kids in High School, and they seem so young. I swear it wasnt that long ago that i was in high school, and 21 was OLD. Like 21 year olds were like these old guys who did whatever they wanted, and were so independent. Now that i'm 21, either:

1. Those guys weren't as cool as i thought
2. I am just not cool.

Now that i'm 21, im an ADULT. I have responsibilities, and i'm meant to be contributing to society. In 21 years, what have a I really achieved? I look back at my 21 years and i can't really point any particular great achievments....

*sigh*

It hasn't really seemed that long, the last 21 years. I have yet to see the world, yet to become independent. Yet to move out of home, Yet to start working in a real job. Still unsure of my career, yet to find true love.

21. Whats so special about it anyway. 21 prolly isnt even the best time to be alive. I think the perfect age is 25. At 25, you are not too old, but u have money cos u work, so u can get chicks. At 20 u have no cash even if u are a bit more virile, and at 30, ur over the hill.

25. Thats going to be the one i look forward. Remember to come back here to see what the hell i've achieved when i'm 25.

Round and Round and Back Again

2004-06-27T20:42:00.000+10:00

Life.

What a strange thing it is. The last week or so, I have spent a lot of time in reflection. I am really suprised that even though I have secured a job before i have even finished uni, that I still feel strangely incomplete. Honestly, besides the initial feeling of euphoria that came with my first offer, I don't feel any different from how I felt beforehand. Do we ever achieve all that we aim for in life? After we achieve one goal, isn't there always another? Even as a christian, until every person in this world has been told the message of Christ, we still have a job to do.

Basically, what I am wondering, when do we ever get that feelings of completeness, of absolute satisfaction that we have achieved everything that we have set out to ahcieve? Or is life simply endlessly aiming at goals that will never be complete? What do you, my faithful readers think? Who the hell reads this anyway? Roll call please :P

Lee's blog questioned the purpose of blogs. I spose the reason for my blog is to just get stuff off my chest, and sometimes it feels better just to order things by writing it out. Also, i think its a good way of getting other ppls opinions on things.

Being the materialistic bastard that i am please check out my new Wish List.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

2004-06-26T12:06:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I had my dodgy Ethics exam, where we had to study 16 topics to only be test on 3 on them. The format was 3 5 minute responses. The first question was free choice, which is fine. That one i prepare earlier. The 2nd question you are to choose, 1/8 cards, the number being your question. I prepared question 1-7 and left out 8 so of course i got 8. Luckily I was allowed to decline, so i got something i liked. Question 3. Choose 3/7 cards and choose one of those 3. I had not prepared questions 1,5,6. And the 3 cards i got, 1,5,6. Gold. Anyway. a pass should not be too hard.

After that, Alby and I went to finalise the details of our 21st venue, For everyone thats coming the details are.

Date: 6th July 2004
Location: 433 Cleveland St. (Cnr of Bourke and Cleveland Street)
Time: 8pm till late
Dress: Smart Casual
Starter Drinks and Nibblers provided

Alby was then whipped and took off like a maniac to meet his woman.
I stood on a street corner and waited for Lee to pick me up. We then took a LONG detour to danny's house, where we suprised him, and demanded that we go out to eat. This led us to go to Gordon, where there is "Rump's and Ribs". Roger called us as we were deciding where to go, and he also joined us on our quest.

Upon arrival, I discovered "The professional Challenge". 3 500g Steaks in one sitting, the 3rd one becomes free, and u get a brick with ur name on the wall. IF you can do it. Ladies and Gentlemen. I tell you know. I will have a crack at this challenge. To warm up, I got one of these steaks. No problem. I wasn't even hungry and afterwards, i did not feel anything close to pain. This was after a HUGE lunch at 3:00 pm too.

Here are some photos of my endeavours on that night.

A close of the 500g beast.

This is before i take on 1/3 of "The Challenge"

Easy. The big lebo guy next to me is Roger. He's a Doctor.

After that we went for a cruise to Krispy Kreme where noone bought anything except Wendy. But it was a great night to catch up with a few of the lads. Definitely will go back to etch myself in history on those walls of Rumps and Ribs.

Sooo Bored

2004-06-23T15:48:00.000+10:00

I feel so unmotivated to do anything. I'm sposed to be studying ethics right now, and there is so much reading, all for 15 minutes of glory. They are only going to ask 2/14 topics and yeat i have to learn about 12 of the topics anyway. What a bloody waste. I've gotta make notes on the bloody lectures now.

bah. Turned down the bank today. Had a chat with a guy last night that has been in IT for a few years, and he gave me some good advice, hopefully everything will work out in the end. Also spoke to someone at the consulting firm which was quite helpful.

Well its too late togo back now.
Wish me luck!

Cos it feels right.

2004-06-19T19:34:00.000+10:00

Well, with regard to my choice, i've kinda decided. I'm leaning very much to the consulting company, pending the arrival of the contract. Thank you one and all for all your great advice, you've made a hard decision more easy to live with.

I think the decision came from me deciding to grow up a bit, and not take the easy option all the time. I'm not sure whats gonna happen, but i believe that if i don't give myself this opportunity, i'll regret it for the rest of my life. I want to make something of myself in this lifetime, and this is my first step towards that goal.
Maybe this is my first step towards maturity, becoming a person that is dependable, trustworthy and all that crap...

relationships are such a puzzle. I think as long as we live, we can never really say "i have relationships figured out." I mean. there are just too many variables with too much at stake. I mean there are 2 HUMAN BEINGS involved. It doesnt get any more random than that. Throw in some hormones, crazy emotions, mood swings, that time of the month, a dash of uncertainty, a pinch of insecurity and it all adds up to one big mess. But then there are moments of sheer clarity, when you know that the person you are with is the right one for you, and that all the crap that u have been thru or will go thru is worth it, just for moments like those. It's at these moments when you truly believe that it will all work out in the end...

Some people wonder how i can do things with such little regard for the world. Where is my regard for: hygiene, pride, dignity, self image, ettiquette, etc, etc,.... Why do i do things and say things that seem to so often cross the border into "err.. he shouldnt have done that" territory? I really dont know. I think partly its cos im a bastard who cares about noone but himself, partly cos i dont care bout the opinions of people i dont care about, and partly cos i just do what feels right.

there isnt really a point to this blog, just felt like writing about some of the things i've been thinking..

Choices.

2004-06-16T15:59:00.000+10:00

As some of you who read this already know, I am currently faced with a choice. It's a choice that, if i get wrong, may haunt me for the rest of my life. The question of career often comes up at some point, and how do you decide what is right for you? I mean, i've done IT for 4 years and im still not sure if this was the best option for me.. what if i had gone and done law at UTS or done some commerce degree?

I guess its something i'll never know, but i spose IT hasnt turned out that bad. I do count myself lucky that I even have the opportunity to choose. On one hand i have a job that promises a degree of stability, a good reputation, and a nice salary package. On the other hand, I have a job where the stability is less, the is global, harder work, longer hours and possibly a better chance for promotion.

In terms of the work environments, im really not sure, i spose thats one thing i'll have to look into, and i'm not even sure what i'll be doing exactly. Ideally, i think i would want to work a month in both places and then decide, but that obviously isnt possible. To make a choice now is a tough call, how do i decide something that may well affect the rest of my life?

Comments/Thoughts appreciated

Results! and Financial Wisdom?

2004-06-14T11:27:00.000+10:00

Unlike Lee, who seems to be able to find insightful things to write in his blog, my life seems to be a plain, boring affair, with not much to inspire controversy. I'm not exactly sure who reads this blog, as i've spammed this site to a lot of people, so i'm gonna have to be careful of what i say :P

The results of the last post were that most people were in favour of the GTR, by a ratio of about 4:1. The question now is, where do i find a GTR that is not dead, hell where am i gonna find one at all? and where am i gonna find 30K?
I'll prolly have a larger list of options somewhere in the future....

One point that was raised in my previous post by some people was the financial soundness of buying a car so early on and spending 20-30K on it. I'll tell you all now that i dont have 20-30K to my name, and infact i'll prolly be in debt about 10K after my world trip. This world trip debt i intend to pay back in a year, so that'll be ok. But to take out Another loan, this one im thinking more on the 5 year term, is that really a wise option? In my mind, i know that its not, i shouldnt lock myself into so much debt early on. BUT, once my sister starts driving, the fact of the matter is that i'll need A car, cos 2 cars between the 4 of us is prolly not enough. and seeing as i will need to get a car, i might as well get one that i want right, which means a hoon car, while im still young?

I don't really wanna get some jap hoon car when im 35, that just looks bad. When i'm 35 i want to get nice, expensive european hoon car. I spose also, cars are, and probably will be, something i'll always have a passion for, and why shouldnt i get something that i want?

In my perfect future, my perfect woman will have found me by 25 and by then i'll need to settle down, and all that comes with it. Such as a place to live that isnt my parents house, not doing stupid , life endangering things on old pacific or moony moony... I want to enjoy those things before i commit to a life that is more "mature" (boring). :P

I know that some of you are very against getting the car, and believe that a property is the way to go, and i've discussed this with u and definitely see the benefits of that.. but i've always been a man that has been ruled by his heart more than his mind so i guess we'll have to see what happens..

S13 VS GTR-32 VOTE

2004-06-11T16:26:00.000+10:00

Once again, i've managed to waste the entire day.
I woke up, rang some ppl, rang some places for my 21st, and played some war. Some weird movie called "Zero Effect" with Ben Stiller and ID4 President (Bill Pullman?) on it.
Played a bit of war, and now im thinking, where did my day go.

Other things i've been considering is the purchase of a car.
At this stage, I don't have a budget as such yet.
There are a few cars im considering atm.

Silvia S13

What im thinking of doing with this car, is taking out the stock s13 engine and replacing it with the current S15 engine. It'll be quick, but insurance? i dunno if thats going to be possible.

Prices: These are my rough guesses/estimates
S13 = 12,000
S15 Engine = 5000
Mechanic = 1000
Total = Approx 20,000

Nissan Skyline GTR-32
Thats right not some BS Gts-t but a full blown GTR.

Price: 30,000+

Thats all i've been thinking atm...
I spose the purpose of this car is so that i can be a hoon, before i decide to be mature and settle down and crap like that. It's a chance to lose my license and get myself killed, as well as blitzing some punks at the lights. Definitely looking for a RWD, or maybe an AWD, just something that handles, cos as you know, im more interested in the windy stuff than a straight road.

Currently, i am driving this :

suggestions/comments appreciated.

Blogspot

2004-06-09T18:20:00.000+10:00

Bloody hell. This blogspot thing is so hard to use. I am trying to make changes to it , but it seems to be too stupid to update properly. Where is lee when you need him. Someone explain how this thing works? I cant even get a links thing on the right hand side of my page, nor do i seem to be able to change the title.

Go here. Do it. Do it.

Virgin Post

2004-06-09T00:45:00.000+10:00

This is my first blog on this blogger thing. I have jumped ship from xanga, beacuse xanga blows. Who needs Eprops anyway. This is much nicer.

Man, Uni is really pissing me off. If I fail ecommerce cos i didn't do one bloody lab properly its really really gonna PISS ME OFF. It means i will have to do an extra subject next semester. The lectures are a joke, the labs are joke, the lecturer is a joke. What kind of course fails you for one completing one component of it?

I'm gonna see the LIC tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. Going to uni 2morrow for no classes sucks too. I havent even started studying for exams, and me n alby need to finalise the place for our 21st too. I thought life would be much easier after i got a job, but if anything things seem even more crazy. Who woulda thought GRADUATING would be so hard?

Add that to my mum being on my back cos her computer is dying, cos she did something to it and now demands a reformat.