headless blog

Europe 2010/11 final leg: Switzerland and ???

2011-10-26T13:45:00.015+11:00

If you know me in person or online, chances are you've already been subjected to my post-trip rants regarding a certain incident that happened after my final stop in Switzerland. If not, you can scroll down for spoilers as to what ??? in the title stands for, or just keep reading to find out.

In transit: Chamonix to Zurich

We waited in the freezing cold for our shuttle back to Geneva airport and thankfully it came early in the pick up window. From the airport we would need to catch a train to Zurich. This was good in theory, but does not take into account any unforeseen circumstances, such as, for example, the train breaking down and the replacement trains being a convoluted mess of routes that involved no less than four connections. So much for an efficient transport system. We ended up arriving in Zurich in the evening rather than the afternoon as was planned.

Pro tip: Zurich is dead on Sundays

Zurich is situated in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the largest city in the country. It is a major transport hub for the country as well as for Europe, and it is for this reason that we chose it as the last city in our respective trips.

A cold, overcast day in Zurich

When we arrived in Zurich, I proceeded to immediately lose Morgan at the train station. Excellent start. 10 minutes later, I found him waiting for me near the end of the train, both of us clueless as to how we got separated. Well, okay, I do have a clue as to what happened, and it has something to do with Morgan's awareness and sense of direction.

One important thing to know when visiting Switzerland is that the price of absolutely everything is higher than most other places. Even one night in a hostel dorm set us back more than what it would probably cost to stay a couple of nights in a similar establishment elsewhere in Europe. We mostly stuck to low-cost tourist activities and made meals from things we bought at a grocery store.

We did want to do a lot more sightseeing than we ended up doing, but it turned out that most places were closed on Sundays, possibly because a lot of people were at church. That's the other important thing of note - don't plan to go out on Sundays when you're in Zurich. Stay in, or partake in a sufficiently interesting outdoors activity not involving the services of other people.

St. Peter

Fortunately for us, we found a liquor store open that carried craft beers from Europe and around the world, aptly named Drinks of the World. We raided the place and hunkered down at the hostel to escape the cold and boredom. We even played a board game (the hostel had a copy of Pandemic, which is a great game (you should get it)) and chess while we were sampling some fine ales and lagers. Well, ok, not all of them were fine. We did, for laughs, buy a can of Duff Beer and it was as horrible as you can imagine.

In transit: Zurich to Sydney

On the final day of our respective trips, it was time for our paths to diverge. Morgan had a Singapore Airlines flight that didn't go through Heathrow, and I had a later Qantas/British Airways flight that did go through Heathrow (because I'm cheap like that). When Morgan left I stayed at the hotel attempting to finish the novel I was reading until it was time for me to head to the airport. A little bit later, I got a call from Morgan. It turned out he had left his passport on the train and was going to miss his flight. I was not in any way shocked at this news. He was on his way to pick up his passport from another train station and was calling to ask if I could check on available beds at the hostel. It would seem as if I would beat him back to Sydney.

Connecting via Heathrow was uneventful enough. I wasn't able to change my seats due to the type of ticket, but I was happy enough with what I got. The flight from Heathrow would make a stop at Bangkok before continuing to Sydney.

An hour or so into the Bangkok-Sydney leg, the pilot made an announcement. "As you may have noticed, we have turned around and are jettisoning fuel from the engines." Hmm. News to me, I was busy watching movies on the in-flight entertainment system. It turned out that one of the four engines had failed, and they were going back to Bangkok for safety reasons. Fair enough. I wouldn't want my life endangered just to make schedule. The jettisoning of fuel was to make the minimum landing weight. I could imagine it to be a disconcerting sight to look out the windows and see a stream of white coming from the wings, but I was oddly fascinated by the whole thing.

I would have thought that Qantas would have us wait for another flight when we got back to Bangkok, but things started to look bad when they sent everybody from the flight to a five star hotel halfway to the city.

One night in Bangkok

It was the middle of the night in Thailand, and hundreds of us were shepherded into the hotel reception area, being processed two at a time and sent to our luxurious rooms for the night. The poor overwhelmed staff handled themselves great. We were given a complimentary dinner and were told to wait until morning when there would be an airline representative to update us on our flight. Fair enough, I guess. I mean, I would have preferred it if there had been an airline representative at the hotel to meet us all when we arrived, but whatever. I could afford a twelve hour delay in my schedule - instead of arriving in the morning I'd be getting in in the evening, and I would just have to go straight from Sydney airport to the Opera House, where I had an Amanda Palmer concert to attend. No big deal at all, I thought. In retrospect, I was perhaps a little too optimistic at Qantas's attitude towards its customers.

My hotel room had a window in the bathroom

I woke up early in the morning, at the time specified by the hotel staff the night before, to check up on updates on our rescheduled flight. The piece of paper left in front of our hotel room doors carried terrible news. Not only would we not be flying out that morning, we would also not be flying out at all that day. Our rescheduled flight would be early the following morning. We'd be stuck in Bangkok for the entirety of what was Australia Day. Bugger.

Ok, let's stop there for a bit. A piece of paper? I mean, c'mon, you have to do better than that, Qantas. If you're telling people their flight has been held up for more than a whole day, at least send a human being to break the bad news. A piece of paper adds insult to injury.

As they had still not sent a representative to the hotel, I tried to contact Qantas using the hotel reception's phone. Unfortunately, they told me, they wouldn't be able to guarantee anybody a seat in an earlier flight due to them being full, and that if I wanted to I could go to the airport and go on standby. I decided not to partake in that stressful exercise, and instead made arrangements to have my mum take my place at the Amanda Palmer concert. (She enjoyed it, by the way. Go mum!) I had a day to spend in Bangkok, a place I'd never been, so I may as well make the most of it.

Armed with a wad of local currency acquired by exchanging unused British pounds from the start of the trip (because I was far too enthusiastic in withdrawing cash), I caught a taxi to the city so that I could check the place out. Seeing the driver weave through traffic was terrifying at first, but eventually it became kind of hypnotising. Despite the long cab ride, I didn't have to hand over very much cash. I could get used to this.

The first thing I noticed was the heat. Coming from Switzerland in the middle of winter, it was equally unpleasant in the other end of the spectrum in Thailand. Cheap and really hot, so I guess it was the complete opposite of Switzerland.

Bangkok

I wandered around in the sweltering heat, checking out temples and other tourist attractions and eating street food. Every once in a while a local would approach me, giving tips on what I should be checking out, before suggesting that they take me on their tuk-tuk to the place they just mentioned. I would politely decline, saying that I was perfectly happy to go on foot. "Why you stupid?" they would invariably say to me when I began to walk away from them. It was a bit insulting, really. I meant no offence to them, and wasn't sure if they were scammers or genuine, I simply enjoyed walking around to explore a city, despite my maligned sense of direction. In the end, I was still too pissed off at Qantas that I wasn't in the mood to do very much.

I wanted to go to a Muay Thai event that evening, but the time it took to get from the hotel to the city was too long, and I was worried I might miss the bus to the airport when I returned. Instead, I had a nap before getting up for the mass exodus of tired and angry passengers.

In transit: Let's try that again, shall we?

Sorting out the buses to go to the airport was a mess. Once again, it was mostly the hotel staff that had to deal with all of this. We got to the airport ahead of time, and I went to get a meal at the food court. I was impressed - even the airport food was cheap in Thailand. I had some money left over, and I would have had a hard time trying to get rid of it all before the flight.

The final insult of the whole debacle was that we were made to wait several more hours at the airport because the plane, which was meant to take us back to Sydney, was carrying a fifth engine - a replacement for the blown engine from the original flight - and this had to be removed before the plane could be boarded. You'd think they would have factored this in when they told us what time to wake up to be taken to the airport. It meant that I would have had plenty of time to watch Muay Thai in the city after all. It also meant I'd be cutting it very close to see Gotye on the evening of my arrival - I was now in danger of missing a second concert.

A full day and a half after our scheduled arrival time in Sydney, we finally landed. Morgan, who had missed his flight, had arrived well ahead of me. Karma, perhaps, for laughing at him misplacing his passport. Thankful that I had no checked baggage, I hurried out of the airport to meet my brother at the car park and collect my Gotye ticket - the gig was in less than an hour - before getting on the train to the city. I arrived at the concert after two and a half songs had been played. I guess I should have been happy that I didn't miss more than that.

As an apology for the incident, each passenger on that hyper-delayed flight was sent a voucher for credit to be spent on future Qantas flights. I've still got a bit of credit left on my voucher, but once that's done I plan to avoid flying with them again if I can help it. I can understand the turning back of the plane due to safety concerns, but I do not understand nor agree with the extended turnover time to schedule a new flight for the stranded passengers. I also felt that, by not having a representative of the airline present at all times, Qantas did not really care about its customers. 36 was a long delay for a flight that was not hindered by natural disasters or adverse weather, and to convey updates via printouts in the hotel lobby without having anybody on hand to answer questions was an added insult to an already stressful situation. In light of the recent employee disputes dominating headlines, I wonder if Qantas management care about anybody at all. My guess is that they only care about themselves.

Final leg overview

Cities: Zurich (2 nights), Bangkok (1 nights, 2 if you count time spent in the airport)
Weather: Ridiculously cold, ridiculously hot
Arrival time in Sydney: 36 hours later
Concerts missed: 1 (and 2.5 songs)

Flickr set: Switzerland, Thailand

Europe 2010/11 fourth leg: France (pt 2)

2011-10-25T12:51:00.001+11:00

In transit: Venice to Chamonix

My bus to Venice airport broke down halfway, which would have been concerning had I not been paranoid and left super early. I still ended up at the airport with time to spare.

To get to Chamonix, in France, I first had to fly to Geneva in Switzerland before completing the journey on the ground. Venice to Geneva is not a busy air corridor and most flights require a connection, so I was fortunate to time my stay so I could catch one of the few direct flights per week. I love small planes - you get a better sense of actually being in the air, as opposed to just sitting down for a few hours - so it was great to see that our plane for the day was a turboprop. Despite the size of the plane - probably towards the larger end of the scale in terms of commercial passenger turboprops, but still small compared to the many of the more common jets - I counted probably less than twenty other passengers on the flight. The majority of the seats in the plane were left empty.

I took a shuttle bus from the airport (which wasn't large, but was nevertheless very busy) to Chamonix, the ski resort town that would be my destination for the next week.

Chamonix: Open wallet policy

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc is one of the most well-known ski towns in France. It serves as a good base for several ski areas, including one in Italy. It can also boast to hosting the first ever Winter Olympics in 1924.

The sunset showcases several peaks surrounding Chamonix

I met up with Morgan at our hotel for the week - he was in Europe for a shorter period of time - and we set off to hiring some gear and me some clothing (as Morgan had packed heavier than I did and brought snow clothes). Being a shorter guy, it took me a bit longer to find everything that fit, but I eventually settled on an outfit, including women's snowboard boots and a helmet painted with silver reflective paint that would have fit in well in a ski-themed glam rock music video.

We tried to go to as many ski areas as we could so that we could make the most of the multi-area pass that we bought.

Le Tour was our first stop. There was no new snow on the ground, and it started off a bit icy, but did get softer as the snow melted away under the sunshine. I lost Morgan a couple of times, a result of his sense of direction, which was worse than mine. We went back there the next day and decided to take lessons since the conditions weren't really great for off-piste. As usual, I hurt myself during the lesson, I guess because I always push myself to try to improve whenever I take one.

We had a relaxed afternoon in Le Brevent and La Flegere, two connected ski areas, and the closest to Chamonix. In fact, you can walk from the bottom of one of the areas back into town, which is precisely what we did.

A few kilometres away from Chamonix is the small resort town of Les Houches, situated at the base of a more family-oriented ski area. It was the flattest, lowest altitude area covered by our multi pass, and also had the sparsest snow cover. Many of the runs were closed, and we mostly felt it worth the visit thanks to an oddly placed bathtub on one of the slopes.

Random bathtub in a ski run at Les Houches

Feeling optimistic about the AUD/Euro exchange rate, we decided to go on an off-piste tour of one of Les Grands Montets, one of the larger ski areas. The snow was icy and crusty at the top and the air was thin - I think it was the highest I've ever ridden before, and part of the route actually took place on a glacier. The beginning was very steep, too - it didn't seem like it when I was concentrating on sharp turns, but when I stopped to look at the horizon I was blown away at how vertical we were. The traverses were the hardest - very flat and at times uphill - and I wished, not for the first time, that I knew how to ski for tours like these (or, at the very least, knew how to snowboard really bloody well). It was tough work, but the views were worth it. Such a shame I didn't have my camera in tow.

The last ski area we visited was across the border, in the Italian town of Courmayeur. Its French-sounding name is likely a result of its proximity to France and/or due to past border disputes. I asked the guide but I've unfortunately forgotten his explanation for it. Chamonix and Courmayeur are connected via a tunnel that runs under Mont Blanc. The journey could take longer than the 11.6 km traverse through the Mont Blanc Tunnel due to strict border inspections at either end.

Courmayeur, the ski area, gave us the best ski conditions of the entire trip. We once again took a tour, and started off doing groomed runs. After lunch the group was split into two, with one taking on the easier off-pistes, while the other would tackle advanced terrain. I was feeling adventurous after the grappa we had had with our delicious meals, and I decided to join the advanced group. We did a lot of tree runs and hit a lot of soft patches of powder. It was tiring as hell but very fun. We ended the day with a long exit run - I suspect it was an out-of-bounds cat track, but I didn't question the guide, who seemed to know what he was doing - that led us all the way to the car park.

We spent our final ski day at Courmayeur, having enjoyed our time the previous day. Because we weren't with a tour this time, we had to take a large cable car the size of three small garages that connected the town to the ski resort. The icy path up to the lift was perhaps the most dangerous thing I encountered for the entire trip. The groomed runs were just that bit icier and the off-piste was just that bit more crusty that we didn't have as good of a time as the day before, and we ended up quitting early on, happy with the snowboarding on the trip overall.

Another thing covered by our multi-area pass was a cable car ride up to the top of Aiguille du Midi. The visitor centre at the summit gives some breathtaking (almost literally at an altitude of 3,842 m) panoramic views of the surrounding mountain ranges. In summer months, the Vallée Blanche Aerial Tramway crosses to the Italian side, and is an alternative way to get to Courmayeur. In winter, those skilled and brave enough can take on the infamous Vallée Blanche, a glacier route that is 20 km long with a vertical of about 2,700 m. It's something I'd like to do one day when I reach the skill level of awesome.

The view from Aiguille du Midi

A steep descent to get to the start of the Vallée Blanche

Being a ski town, it was not surprising that the night life in Chamonix was vibrant. However, being a couple of beer geeks, our main goal was to determine the best place to get some good, or at least decent, beer. Some Internet researched tipped us off to Micro Brasserie de Chamonix, more commonly referred to as MBC, a microbrewery started by some Canadian ex-pats. Sadly, the beers they made were mostly bland, probably so it would appeal to more people. On the other hand, we did end up going back there for the food, which was fantastic.

We stumbled upon another place called Berlucoquet, which stocked some French and Belgian beers as well as cheese and other goods. You could drink there or take away, and the owner was very hospitable, so it became our go-to for good beer.

As part of our extravagant spending, we also tried a couple of the town's fine dining establishments. The culinary highlight of the trip by far was dinner at La Maison Carrier. Our guide from the ski tours recommended it to us so I'm not sure if he was getting any commission from sending people their way, but it didn't really matter because the food was superb. My meal must have been the most perfect rack of lamb I've ever had. I can't even remember what Morgan had, but everything we ate and drank in that restaurant was amazing.

We went to another place our guide had recommended, but it was not nearly as good as La Maison Carrier. To be honest, we were more blown away by an appetiser from a Japanese place that consisted of green beans and what may have been peanut butter or sesame paste, or something similar. To this day I cannot figure out what that dish was, but I could have a main-sized serving of it any day of the week.

Of course, it wasn't all haute cuisine while we were in Chamonix. We'd found a central fast food place that served burgers and crêpes. The burgers were massive and the size of the galettes were almost equally impressive. I couldn't finish my burger, and Morgan was unable to get through his galette, but in a moment of glory I did manage to finish an identical galette along with some fries.

The most memorable thing from Chamonix happened when we were at the laundromat putting our clothes through a wash. We put the coins into the machine and as we were leaving to grab a bite while the clothes tumbled away, we couldn't seem to find the door handle. After several futile attempts to pull the door open in creative ways, we began to panic. There was a red button on a wall near the door that we thought may have controlled a mechanism to open it, but after pressing it we were still stuck. In the end, we only had our stupidity to blame. The side of the door, which looked like it was part of the door frame, was actually the handle, and we felt like idiots when we finally figured that out. I wonder what it must have looked like to passers by when they saw two guys by the door of the laundromat facing outwards and looking perplexed. That said, I'm probably more concerned that the red button I pressed set off some alarm in some guy's house and disturbed a nap or some sort of important task.

Fourth leg overview

Cities: Chamonix (7 nights), Courmayeur (2 day trips)
Weather: Ridiculously cold, mostly sunny
Times Morgan got lost in a ski resort: At least 3
Times stuck in a laundromat: 1

Flickr set: France

Europe 2010/11 third leg: Spain and Italy

2011-10-06T12:40:00.000+11:00

In transit: Montpellier to Barcelona

Possibly due to administrative issues, there was no direct train from Montpellier to Barcelona. Instead, one must catch a French-run train to Figueres, past the French-Spanish border, then transfer - literally metres away on the adjacent platform - to a Spanish-run train to Barcelona.

As the train sped towards Spanish territory some blue began to emerge from the gloomy skies, and looked more promising this time. When I changed trains at Figueres, the sun was well and truly out. I got excited about the prospect of finally spending at least an afternoon outside in well-lit conditions.

One thing I immediately noticed upon boarding the Spanish train was the number of different languages used for announcements - four instead of three. The French train had announcements read out three times, one each in French, Spanish, and English, while the connecting train had an extra repetition of announcements, this time in Catalan.

Barcelona: The city that never sleeps (except during siesta)

I had been to Europe twice before, but not once had I stepped foot on Spanish soil. It was a bit of an oversight, I will concede. One of my priorities for this trip was to finally tick it off the list.

In case you've never heard of the place, Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain (after Madrid) and is the capital of Catalonia. It's a very old city (over 2000 years old, supposedly) that is also very modern, thanks in part to the 1992 Olympics, which it hosted.

The weather was brilliant when I stepped out of the Metro - blue skies and warm enough to go around in a t-shirt, which is amazing for the middle of winter. Because of this, I picked up the pace on the way to my hostel so I could spend the rest of the afternoon exploring. I was staying in Barri Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter of Ciutat Vella, which is Barcelona's old town (the name translates to old city in Catalan). It was a nice area to be staying, with the Gothic architecture attracting many tourists. I had a good walk around to get a feel for the place then had a pretty ordinary dinner at a fast food place with a surprisingly decent beer list.

Blue skies!

Staying on the topic of beer for a little bit, Barcelona is not exactly renowned for its craft beer scene. Most places will sell you Estrella Damm, the local beer that has been brewed in the city since 1876. Thanks to BeerAdvocate, I found a place near my hostel called La Cerveteca that stocked a good range of bottled beers as well as a few on tap. The highlight for me was the Great Divide Yeti, which I had tried in London earlier in the trip and is still, to this day, one of my favourite stouts. Sadly, the place closed at 10:30pm, which is very early for Barcelona. And I do mean very early.

I don't know if this is a symptom of the siesta, but people in Barcelona seem to start their night very late and party hard and long well into the morning. When I got back to the hostel after my beer hunt, I tagged along with a group of people who headed to a club in another part of the city. The place was just starting to get busy when we arrived. Clubs not really being my thing, I must have left at around 1 or 2am, but I think some stayed until 5am or later.

I spent most of the next day checking out Gaudí architecture as part of a walking tour. Antoni Gaudí was a Catalan architect most famous for designing the Sagrada Família, a breathtaking church that is one of the main tourist draws of Barcelona. The church is so massive in scale and complexity that it was not completed in Gaudí's lifetime. In fact, it is still a work in progress, with the expected completion date being 2026, the centennial of Gaudí's death. The construction work did not deter the crowds and, because of this, none of us bothered to join the lengthy queue to go in.

One of the façades of the Sagrada Família

Apart from the Sagrada Família, where our tour ended (and a fitting end it was), Gaudí also designed many other buildings around Barcelona, and the tour took us to these places while talking a bit about the architect's life and work. One place the tour did not go, because it was too far away, was Park Güell, a garden complex designed by Gaudí. Three of us decided to make the trek there, which involved walking up a hill after taking the Metro. It was worth the effort as the place featured impressive architecture and had a festive atmosphere thanks to the favourable weather.

The main terrace of Park Güell

After a long morning and afternoon of walking around, I did as the locals do and had a siesta back at the hostel, waking up just in time for dinner. The same people who ran the walking tours during the day were meant to run a pub crawl that night, but interest was too low so it was cancelled. A few of us decided to go out with the pub crawl people anyway, although it didn't last too long, and I once again found myself heading off before anybody else.

I really should have known better than to walk home by myself, but soon enough after leaving the last pub I once again found myself lost in the streets of a foreign city. How did I get out of it this time, you ask? Well, I'd been walking around without any clear direction for the better part of an hour when I ran into the people from the hostel with whom I had gone to the club the night before. Lost themselves, they were once again on their way to a club and decided a taxi would be the easiest way to get there rather than just walking. One of them was less than enthused about continuing on and I ended up walking back to the hostel with him. The hostel, it turned out, was only a couple of blocks away from where I had run into them. Figures.

In transit: Barcelona to Florence

Having nothing to do for an entire morning, I arrived early at the airport for my afternoon flight to Florence. It was therefore no surprise at all that my flight was delayed. Twice. I wasn't overly concerned as I had a book to read, but there was also some sort of kerfuffle once the queue for boarding began to form. Were people being bumped from the flight? I couldn't really understand what was going on as it was all in Spanish (or maybe Italian), and when we all boarded there were still spare seats in the plane, so that is one mystery that will remain unsolved.

Florence: Gelato doom

Some past mistakes I never learn from. One of them is this: ice cream greatly increases my chances of catching a cold. But more on that later. First, a primer on the next stop of my trip.

From around the 14th century to the 16th century, Florence was one of the most important cities in the world. Florentine political influence was vast, coming in the form of the Medici family. Look them up on Wikipedia - some members of the family held important roles, such as pope, or regent of France. You know, small things like that. The word "Medici" doesn't even come up with a red squiggly line in my web browser indicating it's unknown or misspelt. (Gelato does, though. Madness.) Economically, Florentine money is said to have funded the development of industry all over Europe. And of course, you can't talk about the importance of Florence without mentioning its cultural history. There, I mentioned it.

Ponte Vecchio

After two nights out in Barcelona, my plan for the day was to have a quiet night. This plan was promptly thrown out the window when I ran into a workmate from Panorama at my hostel. Throughout my travels I've run into many people I know or people who know people I know, and I still find the whole experience fascinating. When you're travelling around, and especially when you're travelling alone, there's always this artificially inflated sense of camaraderie with familiar people - more so than strangers - that you may not necessarily get at home with the same people. Perhaps it's some sort of coping mechanism to deal with the loneliness and the distance from home. I'm sure there's been a study done on it. Speaking of which, at the same hostel, I also ran into a girl who went to my high school (albeit from many years below me, so I didn't know her prior). Small world.

What's that? You want me to elaborate on the cultural history of Florence? Oh, ok, if I must. But only in an oblique way. For example: How to get into the Uffizi without having to join a massive queue. The Galleria degli Uffizi, or Uffizi Gallery, is one of the world's most famous art museums, which means it can often have several-hour-long queues just to get into the place. The following is a check list on how to avoid the crowds.

Arrive early in the morning - before, at, or just after opening time
Inclement weather (e.g. rain, hail)
Visit in winter

Ok, the last one is killer. You really have to travel in the low season if you don't want to waste a lot of your time lining up for popular attractions like museums. I learnt as much on my first trip to Europe. It was cold, in the middle of winter much like this trip, and the fabled queues at the Louvre in Paris were almost non-existent. In contrast, just a few days earlier, the good weather in Barcelona meant entering the Sagrada Família was just not worth the time wasted.

So, once again, travelling in winter has worked to my advantage. Actually, the main reason I went to the Uffizi was to avoid the rain, but I did see some amazing art in there. I won't pretend to be any sort of expert on art or architecture or whatever, but seeing works like Botticelli's The Birth of Venus in person really is quite something.

After a bit of time at the Uffizi, the weather was a bit better, so I went to a few outdoor places. Worth visiting are the Boboli and Bardini gardens, which feature sculptures in a relaxed setting. You get a really good view of the city from Giardino Bardini, too. I even saw a double rainbow all the way across the sky, albeit briefly. One ticket gets you entry to both gardens.

One of the sculptures at Giardino di Boboli

Another place with a good view and does not cost any money to visit is Piazzale Michelangelo (signposted as Piazzale Michelangiolo). The trek up there is uphill and therefore a bit more difficult, but it's well worth it. There was a wedding party there at the time, and lots of photos were taken. I decided to take a few shots of my own.

Maybe I should be a wedding photographer

I'd completely neglected Spanish cuisine in Barcelona, so I wanted to make up for it in Italy with some Italian food, and make up for it I did. We'd ducked in for lunch at a random restaurant, and it began to hail outside just as we entered. Good omen or bad? I ordered freshly made pappardelle with a wild boar ragù which was certainly good, and I was told not to miss out on gelato while I was in the country, so we went for some afterwards. I can't fault the taste of the local equivalent of ice cream, but what I can fault is my judgement, which dictated that I consume a cold dessert in cold weather. Needless to say, I woke up with the sniffles the next day. Sigh.

Venice: Overrated tourist capital of Europe

Ok, perhaps I'm a bit harsh with the above subtitle, perhaps I could have visited under different circumstances (i.e. not winter), and perhaps I was unfairly biased due to being sick for most of my time there but I didn't really think much of Venice. (Let us also recall that the last time I was meant to go to Venice I got sick and couldn't go, but I digress.)

No doubt you know about Venice, the pedestrian city with a maze of canals and streets, and supposedly one of the most romantic cities in the world. I won't bore you with a spiel for this one. What I will bore you with is the reasons why I was decidedly underwhelmed by the place.

Let's start with the lurgy. Now, I'm not sure if my flu née cold was actually gelato-induced, or if it was because one of the people in my dorm appeared to be deathly ill. Either way, it made sure I wasn't feeling great when I arrived in Venice. My motivation to enjoy the place, therefore, was low. The weather didn't help either.

I didn't do much on my first day there. After the train trip from Florence, I met up with a friend I'd previously met in Japan who was studying in Venice, and with whom I was staying. I bought some disposable razors and finally shaved for the first time in the trip, leaving only a moustache (for laughs) and we had a cheap but tasty pasta lunch, which I guess is the Italian student's version of microwave noodle lunches. Because it was cloudy outside, I opted to have a quiet day to rest off my cold. Unfortunately, the weather didn't improve very much over the next couple of days, and what little time I spent wandering the streets of Venice was under clouds, sometimes rain, and often in fog.

My friend showed me pictures of acqua alta, literally "high waters", the occasional flooding Venetians have to deal with when there is high tide. The uneven nature of the city meant that some streets would be covered in water but would still be accessible for those keen or desperate enough (high rubber boots are essential for residents) while others are just too flooded for pedestrians. It was one of the really interesting things about the city, and I kind of wish I was there to experience it.

Canals and gondolas were everywhere

My flu was subsiding by my last day there, so I did have a bit of time to explore. A word of warning to the potential tourist: bring a map. A big map. You can get a good map of the city from the airport, which has most (if not all) of the streets on it. Thankfully my friend had got me one in advance, because I came by train. The reason I say this is because Venice is huge and discombobulated. This, combined with a lack of roads or clear signage (except on the way to major landmarks), means that the city is at times hard to navigate. Even the strategy sticking by a major canal for navigation purposes isn't completely sound as there is no one walkway that sticks completely to a canal - the buildings are the ones that usually hug the water.

Along one of the major canals

You've probably assumed by now that I got lost, and you'd be right. I got lost at least once. Maybe twice, or more. I can't really remember. I think much of my self-guided walking tour of Venice was just a long string of being lost, and that was with the big street map.

Nevertheless, I did see a couple of landmarks. A lot were churches, and many looked the same. One that I was on a lookout for was the Chiesa di San Barnaba, probably better known as the library from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - the real-life church's façade was used as the in-film library's exterior. Unfortunately, there was a lot of construction going on at San Marco, one of the main attractions of the city, so the effort I spent getting there didn't pay off.

The Indiana Jones theme was playing in my head

Ok, that probably made me sound like more of a cynic than I actually am. I wanted to like Venice, I really did, but for some reason I left feeling somewhat empty. You'll probably tell me that I did it completely wrong, and you may be right.

It wasn't all bad, I suppose. To focus on the positives, my hosts were great. My friend and her housemates were good company to have during a pretty boring few days of being miserable, and we shared Italian food and Italian wine. Sometimes it's the small things that get you through those times.

Third leg overview

Cities: Barcelona (2 nights), Florence (2 nights), Venice (3 nights)
Weather: Rain, hail, and shine
Days spent with a seedy moustache: 2
Times lost in the streets: At least 3, maybe 4 or 5 or more

Flickr sets: Spain, Italy

Europe 2010/11 second leg: France (pt 1)

2011-09-22T15:40:00.000+10:00

So much for making up for a lack of blogging. Looks like I completely neglected (read: forgot about/too lazy to update) my story even though I've been back in the country (i.e. Australia) for over half a year now. But hey, it's tradition to be so behind on blog posts, right? In an effort to hurry things up, I'll write up a little bit about my time in each city instead of the usual play-by-play commentary.

Oh, and before I begin, I'll point out that photos from my trip are now up on my Flickr page. I'll link to them as I go, but here are the ones from England and Belgium.

In transit: Brussels to Nantes

I had my fears about checking out early on New Year's Day, but the biggest hassle I had to go through was trying to get the attention of the hostel staff, who were still partying on from the night before.

The trip to Nantes, my next destination, would involve an inter-city train from Brussels to Paris, a Paris Metro to a train station across the city - Paris doesn't have a unified central train station (this comes into play later) - then another inter-city train to Nantes. As inconvenient as that sounds, the trip itself was unremarkable. I even got a few precious minutes of sleep on the Paris-Nantes leg.

Nantes: A case of food poisoning

The city of Nantes is the 6th largest in France and is situated on the Loire, the country's longest river. Because of its location, it used to be the slave trade capital of France. It is also the historical capital of Bretagne, more commonly known as Brittany to English speakers. I stayed with an ex-co-worker and her family at their home there, and I think it's always nice to get the local perspective on a place that you're visiting.

Fresh produce at the Sunday markets in Nantes

One of the places my hosts took me was Trentemoult, a former fishing village on the south bank of the Loire. I also got to see Les Machines de l’île, a cool exhibit of Jules Verne-inspired steampunk inventions with both mechanical and animal characteristics. It was a shame that the main attraction - a giant steampunk elephant that would walk around the grounds, taking people for a ride on it - was shut down for the winter months. Speaking of which, another thing I wanted to check out but was closed at the time was the Jules Verne museum. Verne, a seminal author in the science-fiction genre, was born in Nantes.

An abandoned boat in Trentemoult

Steampunk elephant!

The highlight of the visit for me was perhaps the food. I got to try galette bretonne, a savoury version of the crêpe traditionally served with cider. Unlike other crêpes, which are made from wheat flour and have sweet fillings, galettes are made from buckwheat flour and filled with savoury ingredients like meat and cheese. The one I had had classic galette fillings of ham, cheese, and egg. Delicious. Galettes originate from Brittany and while Nantes is no longer technically part of the region, there still remains a Breton cultural influence, and the galette is an institution.

Unfortunately, one of the more memorable things about my time in Nantes was giving myself food poisoning. Since my hosts were kind enough to show me a bit about culture in the region, I wanted to introduce them to something from my culture. In particular, I decided to cook them one of the most iconic dishes from Filipino cuisine, adobo. What went wrong, you ask? I messed up pretty badly is what went wrong. I'd say the error was caused by a bad mix of overconfidence and lack of recent practice. That and too much vinegar. Anyway, the dish ended up being far from my best, but my hosts seemed to like it (and didn't get sick from it like I did), or at least were nice enough to pretend they did. What a bad ambassador to the Philippines, eh? The whole ordeal left me sick and drained for the next day or so, which meant I didn't get to see as much of the city as I wanted.

Rennes and an unplanned trip to Mont Saint-Michel

Under two hours away from Nantes by train, Rennes is the modern capital of Brittany. It is somewhat of a university town, with over a quarter of its inhabitants being students. My friend was studying there at the time, and catching up was the main reason for this stop of the trip. (Predictably, we had humongous galettes.)

Apart from the Parc du Thabor, through which I took a relaxing stroll, there wasn't really much for tourists in Rennes. My friend tipped me off to Mont Saint-Michel, the third most visited national monument in France. Having a spare day in Rennes, I decided to do a day trip there.

Mont Saint-Michel is a town on a tidal island by the sea. The island is dominated by the Saint-Michel monastery, from which it gets its name. The monastery has been there since the 8th century, and is surrounded by smaller buildings such as shops, hotels, and homes. Very few people actually live on the island, and it is mostly a tourist destination. Interestingly, Mont Saint-Michel has a counterpart in Cornwall, across the English channel, called Saint Michael's Mount.

Mont Saint-Michel

There are buses from Rennes that go to the monument, and it takes about an hour and a half to get there. The place itself is beautiful, and it's easy to cover the entire place in a day. In fact, thanks to a mistimed visit to the monastery, I walked around the streets several times because I missed the bus back to Rennes and had to wait another two hours for the next one. The return trip isn't cheap and the monastery costs money to enter, but it's well worth the visit if you have the time.

One of the areas accessible at low tide

It was a really cold day and it got foggy as it went along, so I wanted to spend some time indoors. Apart from visiting the monastery, I had lunch at one of the overpriced restaurants. Sadly, it was cold in there as well. I was also served by a stereotypically rude French waiter, and the food wasn't that good. Perhaps I should've eaten at the more expensive place instead.

When I got back to my hotel, I cracked open the Cantillon Mamouche (yum) that I had picked up in Brussels then had an early night.

In transit: Rennes to Montpellier

I caught an early train from Rennes to head to my next destination. I armed myself with three pain au chocolat for breakfast on the go. Some of the inter-city trains in France, I have to mention, go very fast. It's fascinating to look out to the roads parallel to the tracks and see seemingly stationary cars that are in fact driving at normal speeds.

I mentioned earlier that Paris did not have a unified central train station, and that one often has to make a connection between stations via Metro (or otherwise) before catching a connecting train. This meant one would need to leave sufficient time between trains. My train from Rennes would arrive at Gare Montparnasse, which was the Paris station servicing the west of France, and I had an hour to get to Gare de Lyon, which serviced the south, to catch my train to Montpellier. When I got to Gare de Lyon it took me a while to figure out where the platform was, and as I boarded the train the doors behind me shut. Talk about cutting it close.

Montpellier: Guess what? More clouds!

Located in southern France, Montpellier is the fastest growing city in the country. Many old structures still remain but the city feels very modern, a result of developments prompted by a population boom in the latter half of the 20th century.

Aqueduct St-Clément, built in the 17th century

Despite teases of sunlight peeking out of the clouds during the train trip, the weather was still not great when I arrived in Montpellier. In fact, I had not seen consistent sunlight since arriving in Europe. It actually started to rain a bit, too.

I was in Montpellier to visit a French acquaintance I had very briefly met years ago in a hostel in Quebec City, Canada - he needed to send an email and asked to use my laptop for a few minutes. He kept in contact with me after that, and offered his couch to crash on when he heard I was coming to France. This is one of the reasons I love to travel.

Anyway, my friend was at work when I arrived in Montpellier and I wasn't in the mood to do too much sightseeing in the poor weather with backpack in tow, so after a bit of walking around to get my bearings, I went hunting for good beer. Unfortunately, the bar I had read about, Up and Down, was not yet open, so I ended up at this dingy bar run by a guy who supposedly raced in the Tour de France at one point. There were Tour de France memorabilia and newspaper articles all over the walls. The Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World ukulele cover by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole played on the radio - in fact, this was not the first time I heard this song in France. They love it for some reason.

It was still raining the next day but, despite spending hours in Musée Fabre, I did actually get to see a good chunk of the city. I got lost (again) trying to find a kebab place my friend had recommended, walked around the Jardin des plantes de Montpellier for a bit, and got accosted by a scam artist at the Promenade du Peyrou. On the second attempt, Up and Down was open and I went there with my friend for a drink before dinner. It was a cool little hole-in-the-wall bar that served a good range of mostly Belgian craft beers and had a cramped area downstairs for live music.

The tiny live music area at Up and Down

Apart from the aforementioned kebabs, I also had confit de canard courtesy of my friend. I love that dish. Drinks wise I tried a few different things while in Montpellier. I had some Belgian and French beer, Italian wine, French cider, and limoncello, a strong lemon liqueur from Italy that puts hairs on your chest.

After two nights in Montpellier the trip continued south. Next up: Spain!

Second leg overview

Cities: Nantes (3 nights), Rennes (2 nights), Mont Saint-Michel (day trip), Montpellier (2 nights)
Weather: Cold and overcast, some fog, some rain
Favourite dish: Confit de canard
Times lost in the streets: 1

Flickr set: France

Update: I'm experimenting with mobile templates for the blog. Expect slightly more exciting backgrounds in the future rather than the default boringness.

Europe 2010/11 first leg: England and Belgium

2011-01-13T04:39:00.003+11:00

I just had a look at the date of my last post. Here is an attempt to make up for the lack of blogging. In case you hadn't already guessed from the title, my latest travel adventure is, once again, Europe.

No sleep til London

Departure day began with me lacking sleep. I had had a coffee-based stout the night before and woke up feeling like I drank ten espressos just before trying to sleep. It was pre-jetlag jetlag. I didn't feel like doing anything even though I had a list of things I wanted to sort out (e.g. photos from the Muse and Gorillaz concerts) before leaving on holidays for a month. The ideal solution to my zombie-like state would have been to sit and watch the Ashes all day, but the Aussies were going so badly in the Boxing Day test match that I just couldn't be bothered. Vague plans to see a movie fell through as I moved too slowly to catch the bus into the city. I just sat in front of my computer, chatting away, waiting for the inevitable.

Things didn't get much better when I got to the airport. After checking in, my grand plan was to make a beeline to Pie Face and get a stack (a pie topped with mash potato, mushy peas and gravy), but the man behind the counter informed me that they weren't doing stacks. I ate a regular pie out of a cardboard pie-holder, designed for a cleaner experience, but in reality ended messier than the previous, simpler paper arrangement. By this point, I just wanted to board the plane and get it over with.

The odd anxiety I had been experiencing in the lead-up to the trip was allayed before the plane took off. There was a young couple next to me who spoke, I think, Italian. Not only did they speak it but they spoke it loudly, especially the man. He was so expressive - complete with hand gestures - when talking to his partner that even if it was an argument (I could not tell since I speak no word of Italian) it would have been the most beautiful argument I had ever witnessed. Despite the constant talking throughout the flight becoming more annoying than anything, it did reassure me that my passion for travel was completely justified - that I went to new places so that not only would I see beautiful sights, but would also experience those differences both major and idiosyncratic.

A good time, not a long time

I would have hit the ground running had I not arrived in London at 6:30 in the morning. Even though it took an hour and a half to get to the hostel from Heathrow airport, it was still too early for much to be open. I decided to have an English breakfast at a pub before starting the day.

I got to the Tower of London just before 10:30, and was glad that I did. The crowds were still slowly shuffling in so there were people there, but it wasn't too busy. The highlight for me was seeing the Crown Jewels on display. It was both impressive and also a disturbing example of the excess that the royals were/are involved in. When I exited the gallery the queue to get in to see the Crown Jewels was starting to build up. I explored more of the Tower of London and by the end of it - probably an hour or so after I had arrived - the queue to see the Crown Jewels had snaked well towards the entrance.

Pro tip: If you want to visit the Tower of London, get there as early as possible.

Next up for me was Greenwich. My two main goals were seeing the Prime Meridian and having a stopover at the Old Brewery, run by the Meantime brewing company. The former was easy enough.

Despite the small hike up the hill to the Royal Observatory, it was straightforward and not difficult to find. The crowd surrounding the the Prime Meridian was just getting busy as I got there as everybody wanted a photo at the point that marked 0°00′00″ longtitude. I managed to get a quick photo with no people there then decided I'd head back towards Greenwich for a pint before officially checking into the hostel.

The pint became a half pint. I had a walk around the old naval college that was now Greenwich University hoping I'd come across the Old Brewery, but I ended up straying far from the mark, completely missing the pub right next to where I was near the start of the stroll. And so, once I finally got to the bar, I was so exhausted from all the walking that I figured a half pint would do me before having a rest at the hostel.

The truth is I was so exhausted I could have slept for five days straight after the restless start of the trip, but I could only afford over an hour before heading out once more. I got lost a bit heading to my tube station, but eventually I caught up with Mark at the White Horse on Parsons Green, a pub that was a little out of the way but worth the trip for the impressive tap and bottle list.

Adrian vs European city planning

After a quick one day stopover in England, my next destination would be Brussels, where I would spend new year's eve (and a bit of new year's day). I had some time and British pounds to spare when I got to Heathrow so I popped into Plane Food, a Gordon Ramsay-owned restaurant. The steak there was delicious.

The thing about European cities is that they were planned differently to modern cities. Of particular importance in my case, many modern cities in the western world are built on a grid layout, making it easy for one to find locations by their address. Not so in old European cities. This adds to their charm, but also confuses the hell out of someone with a bad sense of direction, e.g. me. With that preamble, I launch into my adventures in mainland Europe.

My French training (I have been learning the language for one year) instantly failed as I forgot how to ask for a ticket from Brussels airport to the city. I had to resort to English. My morale was further dampened by two things. The first was the weather, which was more of the same as England, perhaps a bit colder (and with some snow still on the ground). The second was my sense of direction (or lack thereof) combined with an inability to follow written directions.

I spent almost an hour walking back and forth (sometimes backtracking to streets I hadn't actually come from) looking for my hostel before I realised that the directions that came with my hostel booking were actually very helpful. I checked in to find my room devoid of people, which was a shame because I was hoping to socialise a bit. The main lounge room was also empty, and the hostel bar had not yet opened.

I went to the city (I only got marginally lost this time!) to visit Delirium, a beer bar, and to get some food. Unfortunately, I remembered too late that I didn't really like Delirium that much. It was too much of a local youth hangout as opposed to a place where you would find a lot of craft beer lovers. A lot of the people were smoking, which killed my nose, and I only stayed for a drink before moving on. The only consolation is that I got a kebab with fries inside, one of my favourite fast food options in Europe.

The hostel bar was open when I got back, but it was still dead, so I decided to call it a night and hoped the next day would be better. Little did I know that my impressive streak of getting lost was to continue. Despite a shaky start to the day, it was by far more enjoyable than my first day in the city.

I woke up early and began the day with a self-guided tour of the city, which would lead to the Cantillon brewery. Most of the directions were easy enough to follow, and it was a nice and informative (albeit cold) tour of some of the city's history. Things went pear-shaped towards the end when I misread the instructions and map and went down one street instead of another. This lead me far from where I was meant to be going. Despite this, I arrived at the brewery when it was still pretty early.

Cantillon is the last remaining brewery in Brussels that still brew to traditional methods - that is, they still use the same brewing methods that were used when they first started in 1900. When I finally found the brewery, it was in an unassuming old warehouse in the Anderlecht municipality. They are one of few breweries in Belgium and, indeed, the world that brew a type of beer called Lambic, which are fermented spontaneously with wild yeast from the air as opposed to the controlled addition of yeast to begin fermentation. The resulting beer tends to be unfermented, and are most commonly used to produce their other commercial beers, such as the Geueze (a blend of Lambics from three different vintages), Kriek (Lambic blended with cherries), and Framboise (Lambic blended with raspberries). They are generally sour (some intensely so), a unique taste in the world of beer. I've recently begun to really appreciate the style, the sour acidity doubling as a palate cleanser, and it was a treat to see Cantillon's brewery much like it was more than a hundred years ago. I also tried a few of their beers on offer, and picked up a couple of bottles for later in the trip.

Foggy memory

Delirium the previous night was still in my mind, and I didn't want a repeat of the experience. I researched a bit on the Internet and read about a place named Chez Moeder Lambic. I had come across it as part of the walking tour to Cantillon (and, indeed, it was recommended as a half-way pit-stop in the tour notes) so I made it the venue for my late lunch.

I found the place to be fantastic, with 40 taps of beers I mostly hadn't even heard of, and 6 Lambics on hand pulled casks. A venue with so many beers on tap runs the risk of being quantity over quality, but the beers at Moeder Lambic delivered. The atmosphere was much more relaxed compared to Delirium - it wasn't packed, and they also had a no smoking policy, which was great. I also got to talking with an American couple at the bar, and we ended up wandering around the city for the rest of the day.

We had no idea what to do for dinner or for the new year countdown, but we had a lot of time on our hands. Dinner turned out to be kebabs. We were pushed into buying a dish instead of a traditional wrapped kebab, and the 7 euro portion was far too much for any of us. Each of us a bit fatter, we headed to another beer bar (Moeder Lambic closed early for the night). To kill time, we came up with the idea to play categories. After a few false starts, we settled on actors as a category. One actor was on the tip of our tongues for most of the rest of the night, the actor who played George Constanza in Seinfeld. We were afraid 2011 would roll around before we remembered his name. Mercifully, we collectively came up with Jason Alexander just over an hour before midnight.

It was nigh impossible to move around in the main square, so we went to another area to watch the fireworks. At around this time, the fog had rolled in and visibility was getting low. It was unfortunate that the sky was not clear when the fireworks finally went off at midnight, but the fog and cloud cover also resulted in the interesting effect of the entire sky flashing different colours as different fireworks exploded. There were also many people letting off their own fireworks in the area where we were watching the fireworks, which reminded me a lot of my childhood in the Philippines (albeit a lot more sedate).

As the fireworks were dying down, I parted ways with the Americans after exchanging the details and wishing each other a happy new year and an enjoyable trip. As if to signify an interesting year ahead, I came back to the hostel to find the room close to being trashed, with the two top bunk bed mattresses being inelegantly thrown onto the floor along with a few pieces of luggage. A couple of hours of sleep later, my (presumably drunk) dorm cohabitants came home making all manner of ruckus in a vain attempt to avoid waking the only person sleeping in the room. I lay there silently, not complaining - I had had a good day, and a good year.

First leg overview

Cities: London (1 night), Brussels (2 nights)
Weather: Cold and overcast, some fog
Impressive breweries/pubs visited: 3
Times lost in the streets: 5

I've also noticed some outstanding maintenance issues for the blog. I hope to get around to them when I return from my trip.

Catching up

2010-06-08T17:03:00.001+10:00

It's been almost half a year since I last blogged. I didn't even finish chronicling my North American adventures. Shameful. Here's a refresher course for that, which I hope to keep somewhat brief:

I felt dreadful all throughout my stay in Boston and missed out on seeing much of the city. It was Bologna all over again. Fortunately, I started to get better as soon as I got into Toronto (you rock, Canada!) and managed to catch up with Janna for a session of night boarding at Blue Mountain, which wasn't all that spectacular (you suck, Blue!).

Catching up with people was a recurring theme throughout the entire trip. When I got to Banff, I met up with Martyn from high school, James again - he was there for a mini vacation before he headed home - and Amanda, who I knew from online. Next stop was Panorama, where I caught up with Shelley and Anj (and missed Brad completely due to poor planning) and then Revelstoke where a whole bunch of the old Pano crew were living and/or working.

Vancouver provided a nice reprieve from the near-constant snowboarding. The snow on the mountains surrounding the city was sub-par (and I hear did not really get much better until after the Winter Olympics had finished) so I took it as a chance to kick back and relax for a few days. I watched a couple of Canucks games at the pub with Shaun (ex-Pano) and chanced a meeting with Ben, a Vancouverite I met when I was backpacking in St. John's - he was living and studying in Cork, Ireland at the time, but happened to be back in town at the same time I was there. I cannot finish a paragraph about Vancouver without mentioning the sushi, which was as delicious and ludicrously cheap as ever. It's one of the reasons I keep going back to the city.

Catching up continued back into the USA when I stayed in Seattle with Lee (from LISA '08) and boarded Stevens Pass with Jon (a tutor I had in uni). I spent New Year's there before flying to Colorado to spend some more time with my parents in Winter Park. I did a bit of snowboarding - not too much because slopes of Winter Park were notorious for their moguls and traverses - and we went dog-sledding on one of the days, which was a definite highlight of the entire trip.

The other highlight came in another part of Colorado. I went to Albuquerque to meet up with Dylan and Angela, loose acquaintances that I met briefly in Sydney, who were involved in organising a trip to Silverton, which was essentially a backcountry ski area with one lift that took you high enough to get started. There hadn't been some new snow so it was rough in parts, but there were some really sweet spots and for my final ski run of the entire trip I decided I'd go for a heli drop since it was one of the cheapest places I'd seen it offered. The sensation of the helicopter taking off, flying into the valley, and then rising up and finally landing on the top of the run was worth the price of admission so the powder the run had to offer was simply icing on the cake. It was the perfect end to the trip.

Hmm, that wasn't a short refresher after all. Oh well.

Hmmmm, it seems I was comment spammed when I wasn't paying attention to this blog. I think I shall turn on word verification...

We apologise for any inconvenience

2009-12-15T14:25:00.002+11:00

I'm in Boston. I met up earlier today with my mum and dad. We're staying with a good friend of my mum and her husband. After a hectic first three days of my trip, I've accumulated ten hours of transit delays and some kind of sore-throat-related infection. It's been a rough start to the holidays, but I'm hoping to fight through it.

Everything started off well enough. I was very impressed with V Australia. Firstly, automatic points for providing USB ports for charging (and, supposedly, for media playing, though I don't think iPhone/iPod was supported, not that it mattered). Secondly, great (free) on-demand movie selection on a decent-sized widescreen LCD monitor on the back of each seat. Thirdly... well, no thirdly. The food sucked as usual. But two out of three ain't bad. I watched a few movies and caught a few hours of sleep before making it into LAX.

After some unnecessary shenanigans at the Virgin America check-in at the airport, I made it to my gate early - very early. It turned out that the flight had been delayed due to fog at SFO, and the one-hour delay turned into two and then two and a half. I ended up getting to SFO almost three hours later than expected, and I missed my next connection.

I stayed at my aunt's place in San Francisco and booked an early morning flight to DC. When I got back to the airport I checked in and found out at the gate that, yes, my flight had been delayed once more. I did some scrambling around and made sure my connecting flight in Philadelphia was easier to catch and landed at a better airport in Washington (Ronald Reagan instead of Baltimore) and hoped the delay would not be too bad. I caught a break - the plane was helped by strong tail winds and got to Philadelphia earlier than expecting. I ended up getting into Ronald Reagan around six or so hours later than I had planned, and met up with James.

A short rest at James's later and we commenced the tour of the city. James gave me a tour of the Capitol. I got to see bits the building that was not normally covered in tours, which was pretty neat. And the fact that there was nobody else around there (i.e. no tourists) made all the statues and paintings and architecture much better/easier to look at. Afterwards, we headed to RFD's, a bar that had local and international beers, where we met up with a group of James's friends to bid him farewell as he's leaving for Australia soon. We had some beers and some good conversations and then made our way home.

"If it's anything the Americans can do well, it's making monuments." -James

I woke up with a sore throat - probably a result of all the stress of trying to make flights combined with going out straight after getting into DC - and noticed that it was raining outside. James and I were planning to do a Segway Tour of the city, but they had cancelled tours for the day because of the weather. We decided we'd walk instead.

We first got some food and then started to make our way from the Capitol down the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. James was right - the Americans did know how to do their monuments. The workmanship that must have gone into the monuments and memorials is impressive. It was a shame that the sun wasn't out because it would have made for some good photos.

We headed back home via the White House and relaxed for the rest of the day with poker, Japanese, and Sunday Night Football.

"We apologise for any inconvenience." -Airline staff

James and I woke up (actually, James woke up, I was awake from an interrupted sleep) at about 3:30 this morning to wait for the shuttle to pick me up and take me to Dulles airport. It was a foggy morning but everything was on time until about five or ten minutes before boarding time when the flight was suddenly announced as delayed. The plane that was coming in supposedly had some mechanical problems. The initial delay was one and a half hours. This became two. And then three and a half. At that point it would have made more sense for me to catch a bus or a train.

The airport had free wireless during the holiday season so that kept me occupied for a while, and one positive from the experience was that I discovered Five Guys - a burger chain that did really bloody good (and pretty affordable) burgers.

When I finally made it to Boston, my sore throat had taken a turn for the worse and my left eye was also hurting - I'm guessing a result of wearing nearly-expired contacts while sick. All we really saw of Boston today was Quincy Mall. After that, I was feeling too average to go on.

I'm meant to go snowboarding at Blue with Janna on Friday after I get into Toronto, so I'm going to sacrifice any sightseeing in Boston until I feel better. I'm hoping that my condition improves over the next few days. Although one thing I will do is see the Blue Man Group - our hosts have bought us tickets to the show tomorrow night and there's no way I can skip that.

(P.S. In reference to my last post, I didn't end up getting all of my photos up from Europe II - way to many from Belgium - but I did put up my England ones here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianpua/sets/72157622925057066/)

Thinking too much?

2009-11-06T16:13:00.005+11:00

I'm sleep deprived and on a caffeine high, so forgive me if this comes off as incoherent rambling, but this is probably the best state in which to write this particular post. See: Title. Let's call it a running theme.

This post is indredibly long and likely contains a lot of spelling and grammatical mistakes. You've been warned.

I haven't updated this blog in what seems like ages. I look at the date on the last post and it reads March 10, 2009. Yup, that was when I got back from Japan. Since then I've been to the Melbourne Comedy Festival for the third time, Europe for the second time (including the Edinburgh Fringe, which was incredible - I'll get onto that later), and am in the latter stages of planning (yet another) trip to the USA and Canada. I've been blaming a lot of this on my "busy schedule" but, really, I'm not actually that busy. I realise that the reason I probably haven't done any of this blogging stuff for so long is because I'm over-thinking it.

I look at the last draft that I saved and it had two very short paragraphs in it. I can remember what I was thinking at the time I started writing it, and I can remember clearly why I didn't post it - because I wasn't sure how to structure it to make it more readable. I was planning too much and not doing enough. (Again, this will be a recurring theme.) Even the start of this post was pre-planned. I hate that I do it so often.

Instead of thinking about what I'm going to say, I decided to look back at why I began blogging in the first place - because I liked writing about the things I do. Not necessarily because I think people will like reading what I write, but because I enjoy reading what I write as much as I enjoy the process of writing it.

So, without further ado (except for this particular ado), I present somewhat condensed versions of what I should have been blogging regularly about in the past few months.

Melbourne (again)

I... actually can't remember a whole lot about Melbourne. It was so far back and I didn't really keep close track of who I saw. I suspect I'll look at the ticket stubs one day and say to myself "oh yeah, that was pretty good".

I do remember that some of the highlights: Mark Watson and Jamie Kilstein to name a couple of the standout acts (and a lot of other funny-but-not-as-funny-as-those-two acts), seeing Wicked and Billy Elliot on stage, and hanging out with Matt, Bron, and a few of the locals. (Oh yeah, that was another thing that's happened since March - Matt and Bron got married. Congratulations! I was co-best-man. It was a fantastic wedding.)

A low-light was finding out through text message that an online friend of mine who I played video games with had committed suicide. That had me depressed for a few days. It's good to have a comedy festival around you when something like that happens. It's never, ever, a good thing to have happen, but comedy is an obvious way to try to make yourself feel better.

Europe (again)

The second trip to Europe (or Europe II as I've been calling it) was shorter than the first (three countries in two weeks as opposed to seven in six) but I won't dare say it was less enjoyable. Like the last, I went with Dave P again, and the whole thing spawned from a conversation one night at trivia.

Dave mentioned that Faith No More were reuniting to tour Europe. I half-jokingly suggested that we should go to see them. Dave half-jokingly agreed. The more that we thought about it the more it made sense. We had been talking up a beer-centric trip to Belgium for the longest time, and this was just the catalyst we needed to get us off our asses and plan it. I looked at the Faith No More tour dates on the Internet. One date stood out: headlining Pukkelpop, a music festival in Belgium. I fired off an email to Dave. Dave shot one back. Just like that, the trip was on.

To sweeten the deal, the proposed trip was to happen in August, while the Edinburgh Fringe was on. I'd always wanted to go and decided I had to work it into the plans. More things fell into place as the trip got closer. Scottie was in the UK the same time as us - he was there to visit relatives in Scotland and check out the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh. Marcus, working in Barcelona at the time, had friends in Edinburgh and decided to meet up with us there. Finally, Dave's then-soon-to-be-former-workmate and fellow beer lover, Mark, was also going to be floating about in Europe with his girlfriend, Helen. He ultimately became the designated driver for our Belgian beer trip.

We started off the trip in London. It was the cheapest place in Europe for us to fly into, and I wanted to see Les Misérables at the West End anyway (it was fantastic, and we spotted Shane Watson outside after the show (The Ashes was on at the time (we're glad we didn't stick around England for the final game, where Australia played horrendously))). Scottie had flown in before us and met us at the hotel. We decided to see some sights we missed the last time we were in England. In particular, we did a tour of Lord's, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and went up Tower Bridge. We had originally planned to see the Tower of London as well as we hadn't seen it last time, but overambitious planning for the day led to us missing it once more.

The next leg kicked off with a Eurostar train ride to Brussels. We met up with Mark and Helen and I ended up overdoing the Belgian beers a little bit on the first night there. Dave and I took a brief detour the next day to Kiewit, Hasselt for Pukkelpop. Unfortunately, we took the wrong train and ended up in a town named Asse (which we found amusing because we are easily amused). We had to catch the train back to Brussels and try again.

By the time we got there the later acts were starting off - Deftones were already on the main stage - and a fierce storm was brewing in the horizon. We managed to find cover before the horrible began, and drank overpriced and fairly stock standard Belgian beers while we waited for the rain to pass. It was good timing, actually, because the rain stopped with just enough spare time for us to get to the front of the side stage where Opeth were about to play. One thing we noticed about this particular European crowd was that there was not as much fanatical pushing towards the front as I've seen at gigs in Australia and North America. (On our way to Opeth we saw a small bit of Them Crooked Vultures, a superband consisting of Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, and John Paul Jones. I mistook them for the Queens of the Stone Age because they played in a slot listed as "surprise act".)

Next up was Faith No More on the main stage. Once again, the front section of the crowd wasn't too densely packed. We ended up pretty close up, a little to the side. This ended up being a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we were really close to the action. On the other hand, whenever a really good bass riff started our we'd get destroyed by our closeness to the speaker system that we were in front of. The set itself was epic (pun intended?) and I already have tickets to see them again when they play the Hordern in February. There was a particularly freaky incident near the end of the set where a fan stage dived in the middle of Midlife Crisis, fell a bit short, and smashed his head on the barriers. The band stopped playing and Mike Patton, visibly shaken by the incident, went down to see if the fan was ok. He apparently ended up with a lot of lost teeth and a big scar on his face. Ouch.

Video of that incident here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU3lX5Vj_G0) and embedded below (happens at about 2:40).

The night ended somewhat annoyingly. We decided to leave a few songs into the My Bloody Valentine set (I was majorly disappointed that their live show didn't live up to the beauty of their studio work - perhaps it was just me but there was far too much emphasis on raw noise). The main problem with leaving early was that the trains back to Brussels from Hasselt didn't start for another several hours, which is why most people camped at the festival grounds. (Side note: Speaking of the festival grounds, have these guys not heard of rubbish bins? Easily the dirtiest festival I've ever been to.) We caught some uncomfortable sleep at the station and ended up having to pay for the train trip back to Brussels when we woke up because we hadn't redeemed our tickets properly to get the free ride. We got little sleep in preparation for the road trip ahead.

Driving duties ended up being a lot simpler than we had intended. In the lead-up to the trip, we planned to take non-drinking shifts as we went counter-clockwise around the country in search of beer landmarks (mostly the beer-brewing Trappist monasteries). When we got to the rental car place, the options were: manual. Mark was the only one who could drive manual, so he became the designated driver. This was good for Dave and I because we didn't have to worry about not drinking, but it was obviously a little unfair for Mark. Regardless, there was no pulling out of the trip now. Armed with a foldout road map recommended to us by Andy from Bier Mania and lots of printed out Google Maps directions, we pushed on.

The round trip started from Brussels and went past the monasteries/beer cafes at Chimay, Orval, Westmalle, and Westvleteren (the latter reputed to brew the best beer in the world - the Westvleteren 12) with stops at Bouillon, Antwerp, and Bruges along the way. The road map ended up complementing the directions perfectly as we changed course a few times. Dave was a gun navigator so all I did was sit in the back of the car and listen to Australia lose the Ashes on long wave radio broadcast. I think Helen slept most of the time.

In terms of beauty, Bouillon was no doubt the one place I'd go to again. The town was nestled in the mountains near the French border (we had to go through France for about an hour to get there) and the hostel where we stayed was in a perfect location. The hostel even served Belgian beer! (And probably the best Orval I've ever had.) However, the highlight of the road trip came from something not overly planned (see, told you, recurring theme).

In my research for the road trip through Belgium, I read about two different beer cafes that a beer lover must visit: Delirium in Brussels and Kulminator in Antwerp. I had read a lot about Delirium (and we visited it on our first night in Brussels) mainly because it had its own website and was in the Guinness Book of World Records for having 2,004 beers available for sale in 2004. For some reason I had neglected to read much about Kulminator other than the fact that some rated it as the best beer bar in the world - most claimed that Delirium had nothing on Kulminator. Those claims couldn't be more right.

The bar was about a 15-minute walk away from where we were staying. The main problem was that streets weren't too clearly marked in a lot of places in Belgium, so it was easy to get lost. And we did, several times. We had arrived in Antwerp exhausted from the day's travels, and Dave and Mark were understandably reluctant to keep looking for the place, instead wanting to opt for a club of some sort. I was almost on the same boat. (Helen was sick and stayed back at the hostel.) However, the stubborn side of me kept us going.

We finally stumbled upon the place and at first glance it was a dive. Everywhere else nearby was closed and this place seemed like it was about to close as well. It was small and didn't exactly convey liveliness. I urged the boys to at least go in for one beer since we had already gone so far to get there. The first sign I got that this place was indeed the place it was hyped up to be was when I saw an empty bottle of 1999 Chimay Grande Reserve behind the bar. Impressive, I thought, but I was still trying to figure out just what was so special about the place.

We all found out when an old lady - who turned out to be Leem who, along with her partner, Dirk, had started the place 30 or so years ago - handed us the special beer menu. Our jaws didn't so much drop to the ground as gradually sink there as we slowly realised that we had hit the jackpot. I casually flicked through the list and was not overly impressed (hint: I suck at skim reading) until one item at the back stuck out - a La Trappe Amber from 1975. "Wait? What?!" I flicked back through the menu and was gobsmacked. This thing was jam packed full of old vintage beers that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

27 Euros bought the three of us a 750mL bottle of Gouden Carolus Cuvee Van De Keizer from 1999, one of the best beers I have ever tasted. We later found out that this was the first year they ever brewed this gem of a drop. 29 Euros bought me a bottle of 350mL bottle of Chimay Blue from... wait for it... 1982. Yes, I drank a beer two years older than me. Dave had the Blue from '84 and Mark had one from '85. They were so old that they were dusty and the bottle caps were covered in rust. The beer itself tasted amazing.

For beer lovers, no pilgrimage to Belgium would be complete without a visit to Kulminator. It truly is beer heaven.

I'll try not to drone on too much about Edinburgh other than to say that it can truly claim to hold the biggest and best arts festival in the world. We didn't end up seeing many shows because we wanted to see the city while we were there, but just being out on the streets during the festival was an experience in itself. Nowhere had I ever felt such a vibrant festival atmosphere. It was like being in Melbourne during the Comedy Festival but magnified by at least ten. The streets were littered with free performances and people dressed up in a wide variety of costumes vying for people's attentions as they promoted their shows. It's yet another thing from the trip that I'd love to see again.

We met up with Scottie and Marcus in Edinburgh and hung out a bit. We spent one of the days driving to Stirling to see the monument dedicated to William Wallace and that day spent on the road made me realise just what a beautiful place Scotland was. I was sad to leave after staying for such a short amount of time.

USA/Canada (again)

I'll keep this bit short so I actually have something to write about when I get back.

For what seems like the umpteenth time, I'm off to the USA and Canada at the end of the year. Outside of Australia and the Philippines, those two countries are where I've spent most of my life. "Adrian, why don't you go anywhere else?" is a common question I get asked. Answer: I have lots of friends and family I like to visit. That and there are lots of places I still want to see in that part of the world.

In fact, I've only had to book two hostel stays for the entire trip so far. Not counting the conference trip to San Diego last year, I think that's a record for me in any major trip. The down side is that visiting so many places in the space of a month (hint: I can't count all the stops using my fingers) costs a lot of money from all the transportation. The lots of snowboarding planned will also hurt the wallet. It's gearing up to be one of my most expensive odysseys yet, but at the same time I'm very much looking forward to it.

NaNoWriMo (again)

I'll save this one for last because it's actually the most relevant. I'm doing NaNoWriMo for the third year on the trot (side note: the performance of the website this year rocks). If you didn't know already, this is a month-long writing exercise that challenges would-be authors to complete at least 50,000 words of prose fiction.

I finished the first two times and one of the important lessons of the whole month is that if you think about your story too much instead of just writing what comes to your head then you will struggle. This happened to me the last two years and it's happening again to me now. I get too worried about what happens next that I actually end up writing very little at certain periods.

I'm confident of reaching the 50k milestone again this year, though. Just like I'm confident I can stop thinking too much about the other aspects of life, I predict that I will eventually put my faith in the story's ability to carry itself. (Wow, that came off as really corny.)

Final thought

Phew.

So there you go, some mildly refined not-overly-planned thoughts. For a while I was afraid of not being able to stick to a consistent structure in my blog posts. Oddly enough, thinking too much about it has led me to realise that I've been thinking too much about it. There need not be any structure. (As you may have noticed, there was some semblance of structure here, but not as much as the me of a few months ago would have liked. He can go to hell.)

I shall conclude this whole "I'm over-thinking it" babble by resolving to process my photos from Europe and post them up before I leave for the USA. I'll post them up when I have them done.

(Ironically, I probably won't blog much while overseas. I'll be bringing an iPhone (which I get next week) and doing any long form of blogging on a touch screen will drive me batty. I'll probably just tweet.)

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (conclusion)

2009-03-10T13:52:00.001+11:00

Finally, here's the last bit of my Japan journal.

Festival

We left off with me and Dave being stuck in a bus station for an hour. Snow still steadily falling on the way down to Yamagata, we eventually made it with time to spare for the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. There was a guy at Yamagata station selling bento boxes by chanting, in a very low voice, "BENTOOOOOOOOOOO!!" It was almost hypnotic. Dave decided to buy a box for the train trip.

We met up with Luke at the airport and headed to Sapporo. The flight was, at times, bumpy, and a contingent of passengers actually clapped when we landed in Sapporo surrounded by snow. It's a bit amusing having people clap at planes landing safely - they don't clap when buses park safely or when trains stop. (Mind you, this was shortly after that well-covered emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York.) But anyway, we were safe and sound at cold Sapporo.

It started to snow hard soon after we checked in at our hotel and we ended up freezing at the Sapporo Snow Festival. The festival itself was great to see at night because of all the lit-up ice sculptures that were on show - and there were some impressive ones. At one of the larger sculptures there was a woman in a large bubble playing music while the multi-coloured lights kept up with the beat.

When we'd had enough of the cold, we went looking for a place to drink and ended up at a place called Rad Sisters. It looked a bit suspect going by the name, but the place was actually a decent hangout. That, and they had all you can drink until close (6am) for 2000 Yen (roughly the equivalent of 40 Australian dollars at the time). Dave made sure he got his money's worth, which came back to bite him in the ass - I woke up and found him sleeping on the floor of our hotel room. Evidently, he made it as far as the room and decided he couldn't go any further onto his bed at the far side of the room.

We had a late start because of the night before, but we made good progress thanks to the clear skies that welcomed us outside. We went ice skating near the Sapporo TV Tower then had a look at the Snow Festival sculptures in the sunlight. I was briefly separated from Luke and Dave when I went around taking photos but we eventually ran into each other again and went on to do some cross-country skiing at a very short loop designed to give people a trial of the sport.

After it started snowing again, we walked around looking for things to do and eventually ended up at a shopping mall. We at at this place called Pepper Lunch where you order your meal from a vending machine (though the meal doesn't actually come from the vending machine - just a ticket) and they chuck the ingredients onto a hotplate for you to cook. It was good, although the hotplate's heat dissipated perhaps a bit too quickly.

There was a big air jump at the Snow Festival area that Luke and Dave went to check out but they either missed it or it wasn't on. Instead, they ran into some impromptu dancing in the streets. I, for one, was glad that I stayed back at the hotel instead of freezing to death for a second night in a row. Besides, the next day was Niseko.

Niseko - Japan's Australia

I'd heard that Niseko was a resort full of Australians. It wasn't surprising to hear, really - a lot of resorts I've been to around the world have been full of Australians (and foreigners in general) either working or visiting. Still, it was a bit disappointing to see that it was true. Because it was a popular resort, the hills were full of people and any new powder was ripped up by early afternoon. Despite that, it was a decent collection of ski hills (Niseko United consisted of four interconnected ski areas) and I got my money's worth for the time we were there.

The fog was a lot more prominent in Niseko than it was in our previous week of snowboarding and even when it cleared up for a small moment, it came back with a vengeance later on. A good example of this was on our third day. I decided to climb up to the peak of Niseko in search of some fresh lines. It was clear when I began the climb but as soon as I reached the peak a thick cover of fog rolled in. There was a little hut at the peak - empty but for a few benches and the ice building up on its walls - where all of the pilgrims of the peak huddled together and waited out the fog. Eventually, I tagged along with a group of other people (I didn't want to brave the bad visibility alone) and headed down. The climb, it turned out, was well worth it, but it was still not as untracked near the bottom as I would have hoped.

I went snowboarding at night for the first time at Annupuri, one of the ski areas, and it was an interesting experience. On the one hand, you had a lot of space to move around because of the lack of other people on the hill. On the other hand, your face froze because of the cold (and your eyes, too, if you wanted to see better and had your goggles off). It was a decent area to do night boarding due to its easy tree runs, but I had no desire to keep going for too long as the area that was lit up was repetitive.

Dave and Luke kept going until late and we ended up eating at a place (that was about to close) called Paul's that served good food and Belgian beers. It was sad that it was the best place we ate at in a Japanese town (in my opinion - Dave apparently had some good sushi at some other place the night before). The first place we ate at was an okonomiyaki place that was run by Australians (and didn't have very good amounts of batter), and the last place we ate was a steak place that charged too much.

We didn't really get a good taste of the night life, either. Because of the snowboarding and because of our hostel's lockout time of midnight, the most we experienced of Niseko's night life was watching the Australia vs Japan World Cup Qualifier at a bar two doors down from the hostel. (It was a match that Japan should have won but ended in a draw.) That, and random people outside in the early hours of the morning waking us up by yelling things like, "DO A BACKFLIP!"

Rusutsu

We had a spare day at Niseko and, because of money and weather concerns, we ended up forgoing plans to do cat skiing in favour of heading to Rusutsu, a resort roughly an hour away.

Stepping into the lobby of the building (which looked like a hotel) at the base of the resort was like stepping back in time. It was the '80s again. The first thing we saw was a merry-go-round that reminded me of a scene from American Gods. Nearby was a giant fake tree that resembled a face and talked when you pressed a button under it. There was also a penny arcade in the area and a frozen-over theme park outside. It was really bizarre. The resort even used paper lift tickets and actual ticket checkers instead of the magnetic cards and gates that we had gotten used to.

The resort had three ski areas (and three peaks) and a fairly reasonable amount of terrain. The mountain at the entrance seemed pretty bland and was filled with learners and competitors of some sort but the other two were pretty good. Despite the flat light, windy conditions, fog, and the rain at the end of the day, I had what was one of the best days of snowboarding of the trip. You could still find a good amount of powder if you went deep enough into the trees, and that's where I stayed for most of the day.

The day was topped off by going on the merry-go-round (for free) and seeing a crazy lady yelling at random people in the lobby as we waited for our bus back to Niseko.

Finale...?

Friday the 13th was interpreted as the bringer of doom and catalyst of bad luck. On that day, which was our day in Rusutsu, Luke almost broke his hand. The next day, Dave lost his camera. The day after that, our flight got cancelled. Bad things come in threes, after all. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The night of that Friday was a night that was much warmer than all the others that we had spent in the snow. When we woke up the next day, it was raining at Niseko. People went out to ski or snowboard but came back within an hour or two after realising that the conditions were atrocious. We went out for a short walk and Dave stepped into a cold puddle. I took that as a sign to go back and relax at the hostel while we waited for the bus to the airport.

Halfway through the bus ride, Dave realised that he didn't have his camera with him. He scrambled through his things but couldn't find it. He eventually conceded that he may have lost it at the hostel or it was stolen at the welcome centre where we waited for the bus, and did his best at filing a police report at the airport.

We landed in Tokyo and went to Roppongi for our last night out. We stayed out until about 5:30, mostly because it was when the clubs closed and when the trains began to run again. Luke and I went back to the hostel afterwards while Dave stumbled on and eventually got back at around 8, two hours before check-out time.

Our last day in Japan was spent taking random photos at the Imperial Palace, looking for souvenir samurai swords, revisiting Harajuku, and getting our flight cancelled.

We got to the airport after an hour or so of train travel only to find out that we needed to go back from whence we came (i.e. Tokyo station) to catch a Shinkansen to Osaka because our delayed flight had been redirected to Kansai airport thanks to Narita's curfew. On the plus side, the bus transfers were free, we will be (supposedly) refunded for our Shinkansen tickets, and the Shinkansen we rode on was the fastest one they made. It was pretty sweet speeding past sleeping towns on the way to Osaka. Alas, we didn't get a chance to see Osaka as we headed straight to the airport to catch our plane.

When we got to Cairns, we were told that we'd been put on the next Qantas flight to Sydney. Unfortunately, when we got to the Qantas counter, we were told that they hadn't been sent our names and that it was too late to put us on the flight. Angry at this, we decided to spend some time in Cairns instead of waiting around at the airport for a few hours to catch the next flight.

After more than 24 hours of being in transit, we eventually made it back to Sydney 8 hours later than we were meant to get back. It was a very long Friday the 13th.

Japan (part 3) overview

Days spent: Almost 9
Mountains climbed: 1
Cameras lost: 1
Planes missed: 3

Photos

Are now up here.

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (part 2)

2009-02-24T14:41:00.004+11:00

Yes, I'm back in Australia now. Have been for a week. Why haven't I posted parts 2 and 3 of my Japan report? Well, first of all, I'm lazy. You all know that. Secondly, Net access in Japan was a bit odd. The first hostel we stayed at had some not-so-cheap Internet terminals, which I mainly used for e-mail checking. We tried looking for an Internet cafe, but all we could find in the cities (namely Tokyo and Sapporo) were these places that charged per person, not per computer. They also had showers. It all seemed a bit suspect, so we stepped slowly away from these places and decided to make do without Internet for a few days. Other than that, a couple of the hotels we stayed at had really old laptops in the lobby. It's what I used to post my first Japan update, and I wasn't in the mood to do it a second time.

Here's part 2.

Disclaimer: This place is too good

I'd like to preface this part by saying that I will not directly name this ski resort that we visited for this leg of the journey (I will elaborate on the why later) but if you pay enough attention and do a small bit of research you can figure out where it is quite easily.

We got up too early. We only found this out when we got to the subway station at Asakusa on the morning of the first leg. We got to the entrance to the subway, and the shutters were still closed. We walked around a bit more and eventually found an entrance that was open, although it is equally likely that we simply walked around for long enough and the gates had opened by the time we got to that particular entrance.

Anyway, the important thing was that we caught the train we were meant to catch and we got to Ueno station with time to spare. We used this time to buy some onigiri (the stuff I incorrectly referred to as "rice buns" in the previous post) and other snacks for the Shinkansen ride to Yamagata. One of the items I purchased was a Kit Kat of unknown flavour. I couldn't really figure out what it was meant to taste like, nor could I figure out what the picture was meant to be on the package. All I know is that I was disappointed not to find any of the fabled soy sauce flavoured Kit Kats.

The snow cover got thicker and deeper as we traveled north. The Shinkansen split up when we got to Fukushima as the line forked. The train climbed through the mountains and I began to get genuinely excited for the week ahead. We caught a bus up from Yamagata to the ski resort and walked over to the hotel to check in. What we found out days later (when we were checking out) was that we could have rung ahead and gotten the hotel to pick us up from the bus station. This is what the language barrier does - it separates the normal people from the idiots (us). It was refreshing, though. Sure, there were language issues in Tokyo, but it was mostly manageable. Once we got far enough away it was truly a foreign experience.

Since we got there early, we had to leave our bags in the lobby (and get changed in the lobby) so that we could go snowboarding. I really liked the lift pass system in a lot of the places in Japan. It's similar to the one I saw in Innsbruck - you buy your pass and you get given a magnetic card. You use this card to get past gates, and since it's a proximity card you don't need to take it out every time. When you're done with it, you slip it into a machine and you get your card deposit back. It's a lot more convenient than having to show a lift pass to ticket checkers at the bottom of every lift. What's more is that you can buy cards that have points instead of hours or days. Each lift is worth a certain amount of points (usually 2 or 1) and you get that amount of points deducted from your card every time you pass the gate for that lift. It's a great alternative for those who perhaps plan to do backcountry and don't need to pass many lift gates, or for those who only plan to do a limited amount of runs.

The resort itself was amazing. I can confidently say that it's one of the best I've ever been to. We caught two gondolas up to the peak and watched as the trees got whiter and whiter until they were completely covered with snow and ice. Understandably, the top was full of Japanese tourists who were there not to ski or snowboard but to marvel at the beauty of these ice-covered trees. It certainly explained a lot of the traffic we saw at the first gondola, because the amount of people on the ski hill was pretty reasonable. Certainly more reasonable than an Australian resort.

What I was thrilled to discover was that barely any of the people who were actually on the ski hill had ridden anything in the trees. For some reason that I forget at the moment (I think it's some sort of cultural or religious belief), the Japanese seem to avoid the tree line as much as possible. This, compounded with the fact that barely any westerners visited this particular resort, meant that there was a lot of fresh powder to be ridden in the resort despite the fact that the last snowfall was half a week before we got there. It's almost surreal looking down from a chairlift and seeing only two tracks in the easily accessible trees - and they're both yours! This is the main reason I didn't want to name this resort. It's supposedly set to become a more popular international tourist destination in the coming years, but I do not want to contribute to its popularity. It's selfish, I know, but it's rare to find something this good and I'd like to come back some time in the next few years and experience something similar.

So I did a bit more of that then went back to the hotel to check in. The first thing we noticed was that the hotel room stank of cigarette smoke. I assumed this was from the air conditioning unit circulating air from other areas of the hotel where people were smoking - indeed, it was ok to smoke anywhere in the hotel, as is common in Japan. Other than that, it was a pretty good room. In the drawers were Japanese robes, which a lot of the guests wore all around the hotel. Dave and I tried them on but I don't think we wore them more than once. They looked cool, though.

We watched random programs on the television (some utterly baffling, others bafflingly hilarious) then headed off to find some dinner. On my way down, I ran into a Japanese couple who asked where I was from (in English - their English was better than my Japanese). I told them I was from Australia and their eyes lit up. "What's the weather there like at the moment?" one of them asked. "Around 40 degrees," I said. "40? That's great!" was the reply. I smiled and nodded. I didn't want to shatter their dreams and tell them that 40 is too bloody hot, thank you very much. I like my temperatures nice and cold.

Places seemed to close fairly early at this resort. We later found out that other places opened late. It was bizarre. We wanted to find a place to eat and could only find one that was open at the time. As we were walking home, we saw another place about to open. This was the place we ended up eating at for the next 3 nights. They served food and alcohol and the guy serving us overpoured the sake we ordered on purpose, telling us that it's ok to drink the overflow that went on the little glass holder (it was tasty sake, too).

The next few days on the hill were similar to the first. I went off and looked for some good tree runs while Dave slowly but surely improved on the easier runs (and sometimes, by accident, on the really hard runs). I fell a lot while practising my switch (and got really sore doing so) and on the third day almost fell into a tree. Yes, you heard right. It was bad visibility at the top of the mountain but it was good enough at where I wanted to go. Dave handed me his camera to film some footage, which I did for a while. The camera handling distracted me and I ended up going too slow. I went close to a tree and stopped, and some of the snow less than half a metre in front of me fell down towards the bottom of the tree (that's how deep the snow was). It was powder where I was sitting, and it took me a couple of minutes to get out of there. After this, I decided it was a good time to put away the camera and focus on the riding. It was a shame, too, because the rest of the run would have made for really good footage.

Après-ski?

The other thing we discovered about the more "traditional" Japanese ski resorts is that après-ski activities were a bit different. For one, we couldn't find any places resembling a pub or club anywhere on the resort (this could be partly because we couldn't read any of the signs). We ended up getting beer and sake from the convenience store and drinking at the hotel while watching wacky TV on most nights. One particular night we cracked open a local sake that was wrapped in newspaper. It tasted really good, and Dave got a bit too drunk from it. So drunk, in fact, that he couldn't pour himself any water afterwards.

One thing I found out much later from a random English-language publication advertising things to do in Japan was that après-ski in Japan was different to other places around the world. For example, going to an onsen is more common in traditional resorts than going out to a bar. This would probably explain why I was the only person at the hotel's nearby onsen when I decided to check it out. The natural hot spring baths are split up into male and female sections, and you go into them clothesless (in uncommon cases, onsens are mixed-sex and allow the use of towels in the bath). Onsens often have different naturally occurring minerals or chemicals that they claim to have medical benefits. This particular one was a sulphur onsen. I can't speak for the medical benefits, but I can say that this onsen certainly smelled like sulphur, and it was very very hot. Still, it was nice and relaxing. I smelled like a used matchstick afterwards.

The T

In our hotel room when we checked in was, amongst other things, a puzzle. It was a wooden shape puzzle called The T, and we had no idea what we were actually meant to do with it since the instructions were in Japanese. We theorised that we needed to make the shapes shown on the packaging out of the four shapes they gave us. However, it seemed impossible to do so thanks to the irregular shapes. I suggested that perhaps we only needed to make one of the shapes and the other ones were distractions. On the second day, I managed to get one of those shapes and declared victory over David for having solved the puzzle. Still, it bothered me why all these other shapes were there on the box. On the last night, we were packing and since I felt lazy and didn't want to pack yet, I decided to give the puzzle one last chance. After a few minutes a got one shape and gloated some more to Dave. So he had a look and told me to move a few pieces, which led to another shape. And another. And another. And another. A few more minutes later, we had made all the shapes that were displayed on the puzzle's packaging. It was one of the most fulfilling moments of our time away from the ski hill on that leg of the trip.

The next morning we got up and went to the lobby to check out. The lights were out and reception was empty. After ringing the bell for a while a guy eventually came out and checked us out. He asked if we were going to the bus station, and he took us there. This is when we found out they did free pick-ups and drop-offs (d'oh!). When we got there he talked to the station agent for a moment and then he told us that since it was a Sunday, the first bus of the day that headed down to Yamagata wasn't running, which meant we had to wait an hour at the station for our bus. We got up too early.

Japan (part 2) overview

Days spent: 4
Consecutive nights at the same restaurant: 3
Best vending machine location: Mid-mountain on the side of a run
Westerners spotted: 7

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (part 1)

2009-02-07T13:56:00.013+11:00

I'm currently sitting at a hotel lobby's laptop that's probably not meant to be for long use, but I can't understand what the signs say, so I'll use it anyway. I'll split up the Japan updates into three, one for each leg of the trip. We're currently on the eve of the third leg but this is the first time I've actually had time to sit down at a computer and write something comprehensive.

Bright lights, big city

It was raining when we arrived in Tokyo. The trip from Sydney was long as we had a layover of a few hours in Cairns where we met up with Luke's friend, Brendan. We also ran into a friend of Dave P's on the flight to Cairns - coincidentally taking the same route to Japan, and spending some time snowboarding while in the country.

After a long but uneventful line-up at customs and quarantine, we were met by a massive map of Tokyo's transit system and had no idea which buttons to press. Some kind Japanese girls helped us out and it turned out that it was actually quite easy to understand the whole ticket system. We briefly split up with Luke and Brendan because they decided to use the first day of the JR Pass and had to take a different line to Asakusa. I was quite impressed by Tokyo's trains. Not only were they impossibly efficient but they also had warm seats! Obviously the latter was important considering the weather.

From Asakusa station we made our way to our hostel through the rain and the seemingly lifeless streets - it turned out a lot of places close early in Asakusa even on a Friday. The room we got was tiny, which meant that we hung out at the lobby most of the time, drinking and socialising with the other backpackers. For dinner, we had food at some random 24 hour Japanese diner. I had some sort of katsu dish.

We had to take care of some formalities the next day, namely to pick up our JR East Pass and train reservations from the service centre in Ueno. It was still raining outside, and it was quite amusing seeing people riding bikes around with umbrellas.

We spent most of the day hanging around Akihabara. I was hunting down some Nintendo DS games and Dave was looking for an elusive Olympus camera. We had food at a yakitori place and inadvertently ordered some food we didn't particularly desire to eat. I had chicken gizzards and Dave had a chicken breast cooked rare. Dave looked far more uncomfortable eating raw chicken than I did eating chicken guts.

On my search for a games store that sold the games I was looking for, we came across many shops selling entertainment of a questionable nature. I wasn't surprised about the availability but at how openly they were displayed. Ironically, we went to a Maid Cafe, which we thought would be dodgy, but ended up being rather innocent (albeit expensive). After finding what we had been looking for, we had a snack at Mos Burger, a Japanese burger chain that had a few items that used rice instead of bread as buns.

After dinner at a sushi train (where we made quite a good mess of some green tea), we headed to Roppongi for a night out. Despite telling him that the Hard Rock Cafe was mostly a restaurant that happened to have a bar, Dave insisted we make that our first stop. After an expensive drink, we went to the Gas Panic, a bar that made sure you had a drink in your hand at all times. We met some Aussies and Kiwis there, and went with them to another bar, though we split suddenly to catch the last train back (trains stop running at about midnight). We made it as far as Ueno, but the connecting line had stopped running trains, so we had to walk from there to Asakusa.

Castle on a cloud

We had a flexible 4-day pass for JR East, two of which would be used to get to Yamagata and back. This meant that we would have two extra days of free rides on any JR East line. We decided to use the first of those to hop on the Shinkansen and head towards Aizu-Wakamatsu, whereupon we would find an old Japanese castle.

This was our first trip on a Shinkansen and it was very impressive. The trip was smooth and fast. We got off at Kōriyama to transfer to a conventional line. This leg of the trip was much shorter than the Shinkansen leg, but took a few minutes longer. The differences between the two types of trains was obvious.

The snow cover began to get thicker as we approached our final destination and we even passed a mini blizzard. Aizu-Wakamatsu was much colder than Tokyo, and I regretted not wearing my thermals. We decided to walk to the castle instead of catching the bus service, which was quite a bad idea due to the weather and the distance. My legs were killing me by the time we got there.

The castle was quite impressive, though perhaps not worth the walk. It was surrounded by a moat, and stood majestically atop a tiny incline of stone walls. It was surrounded by a few shrines and looked great with the thin scattering of clouds above it.

We got momentarily lost on the way back to the train station, and had to wait an hour and a bit for the next train. By this time we just wanted to get to the Shinkansen and have a rest. We missed the first train from Kōriyama and ended up staying at the station watching Shinkansen go past at crazy speeds. One thing I noticed on the Shinkansen was that they had normal toilets and male-only toilets. The male-only ones had a urinal, no lock on the door, and a little window on the door to see if there's anybody in there.

We had dinner at a ninja-themed restaurant in Akasaka, which I would equate to dinner theatre. The meals were expensive but it was worth trying it once for the experience. After speaking to the receptionist a ninja would come out of a trap-door wall and show you through a series of corridors with secret passageways. During dinner, a ninja would come along and do some magic tricks for you. It was entertaining but as I said, it's something I would not want to try again due to the cost.

Fish!

We woke up early the next morning to check out the fish market at Tsukiji. It took us a while to find it but once we got there we were greeted by a slew of trolleys driven with abandon by people looking to transport goods around. It was amazing how aware everybody was considering the lack of road rules in the fish market area. There certainly would have been many accidents had the drivers (and the pedestrians) not been on the ball.

Amongst fish and weird-looking seafood of many shapes and sizes, we managed to find a whale vendor. The kind man sliced us a piece to sample. It was kind of fatty. Instead of eating a proper meal at one of the restaurants at the market, we made the silly decision of getting grilled eel from a street vendor. It was cold and still had some bone in it (a bit of which was stuck to my mouth for most of the day).

The next stop was Harajuku, fad capital of Tokyo. One particular street, Takeshita Sreet, was lined with shops catering to every fashion fad you could think of. We bought novelty tees while we were there. Nearby was Yoyogi Park, but we were too tired from the early start and the constant walking to bother going through all of it.

Dave went on to the Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower style commications tower (that's slightly taller), while I looked for a bank to exchange some money. I found one but it was pretty extortionate. Not only did they want to charge me a ridiculous exchange rate, but they said that they couldn't change one of my notes due to the series of the serial number. I ended up not getting any money changed since taking money out from the ATM was more economical. We finally headed back to the hostel afterwards, ending 12 hours of exploring the city.

We had okonomiyaki for dinner, a Japanese type of pancake cooked on a hot plate at the table. We had no idea how to cook the things because we weren't given any instructions. Fortunately, the Japanese couple sitting next to us gave us some pointers.

We headed to Odaiba the next day, an artificial island off Tokyo Bay. It was very hazy, which we first thought was pollution, but which may have been related to the volcano that erupted elsewhere in the mainland.

Some highlights of the island was the miniature Statue of Liberty replica, the architecture of the Fuji TV building, and a shopping complex that copied the faux Roman atmosphere of the Forum Shops at Caesars in Las Vegas almost to a T. After checking out free exhibits by Toyota and Panasonic, we grabbed some rice buns and headed back to the port. The rice buns - filling covered in rice wrapped in seaweed - were incredible and inexpensive.

We hung out at the hostel lobby until 1 in the morning sharing photos and stories with other backpackers, perhaps a bit too late for our early morning start to head to Yamagata the next day.

Japan (part 1) overview

Days spent: 5
Maid Cafes visited: 1
Most outrageous food eaten: Chicken gizzards on a stick
Vending machines: Too many to count

2 weeks in, 2 weeks to go

2009-01-17T11:20:00.003+11:00

Things really creep up on you. I can still remember dreaming of a trip to Japan to go snowboarding all those months ago when the exchange rate was so attractive, and I remember being in disbelief at the fact that the trip we were planning had suddenly become almost a thousand dollars more expensive (and deciding to go through with it anyway). Now it's mid-way through the first month of a new year, and less than two weeks until we leave for Japan, and I still haven't given a lot of thought as to what I should be doing in preparation.

The best thing I can think of right now is making sure our bags are under the specified (and quite restrictive) weight limits for our flights. After that we need to triple check that all of our documents are in order and that we know exactly what to do when we get to the airports and train stations and hotels. Closer to the trip (which is a funny thing to say, because it's really close now, and we should probably already be worry about it) we'll also have to consider barriers of culture and language.

The process of preparation is something I've deliberately been avoiding so that I can have time to do other things like read books or play video games but it's time that I start forcing myself to do these things so that I won't have such a hard time during the trip. It'll be interesting, at least, brushing up on aspects of Japanese culture that I haven't bothered thinking about since doing Japanese in high school. I hope that I'm worrying over nothing.

All done

2008-11-26T14:13:00.004+11:00

The last couple of days in San Francisco was pretty cool. I had a chance to ride along the waterfront again, this time taking some photos, which I will upload soon enough. The flight was relatively smooth - I even managed to get some sleep. The only problem I had was after the flight, when I found out that the baggage handlers had left my skateboard at SFO. I had to wait until the next day to get it back, and it had some chips on the side. Fortunately, there wasn't any structural damage so it still performed the same.

I've also finished my NaNo novel since getting back. I managed to finish pass the 50,000 word mark just before midnight on November 20, and I finished the story after midnight. This means that I reached the target in two thirds of the allotted time, which is pretty satisfying. I'm thinking about setting a higher word count target for next year to keep things challenging but for the time being, I shall bask in my winnery goodness.

Writing Dangerously

2008-11-16T18:50:00.004+11:00

I just had the best day I've had this month, perhaps even this year.

But I'd like to fill in a few gaps.

I slowly got better and better as LISA went on, but I never fully recovered, and by the end of the conference I was resigned to my fate of being sick upon landing in San Francisco.

Despite that, I did have a great time at the conference. It was a huge learning experience hearing from experts in my particular profession, and I've taken a lot out of it. It was also good to meet different people in similar positions.

I arrived in San Francisco late on Friday and was picked up from the airport by my cousin Mike. After having some awesome chicken wings that I had experienced the pleasure of tasting the last time I was in San Francisco, we went out and partied all night.

I didn't sleep until 4am, which was not ideal for...

The Night of Writing Dangerously

It started off with a huge headache at 8am, woken up by the roadworks outside. I knew that things could only get better. (And they did.)

The day was unusually warm for this time of year. San Francisco must have known that I was coming. I decided to take advantage of this fact by skateboarding along the waterfront with my new longboard from San Diego. I made it all the way to the Bay Bridge before turning back. It was sweet.

After I got home, I prepared for the impending write-a-thon and then began the short (ok, 20 minutes, so not that short) walk over to the SomArts Center where the event was being held.

I was immediately impressed by the fact that Chris Baty, the man responsible for starting all of this insanity, greeted everybody at the door as they entered. I was a bit starstruck and fumbled my words, but managed to say a quick hi before grabbing my raffle tickets for the night.

The tables started filling (I had one person on my table with over 73000 words already) and the liquids (some alcoholic) started flowing, and people began writing.

Eventually it came time for Chris's speech about the history of NaNoWriMo and how it had come so far from being a small project between friends to being an international phenomenon. I did my hardest to hold back the tears. I'm such a softie when it comes to emotional or inspiration speeches, and this was both. Chris Baty is one of my heroes.

After Chris was done with his speech, everybody got back to writing. Prizes were drawn and photos were taken (mine were particularly awesome), and eventually it was time for the event to draw to a close. It was a sad moment because it was one of those things I felt I could have enjoyed had it gone for the whole day. Alas, it was not to be.

We all packed up and said our goodbyes to the new friends that we met, and I went and talked to Chris to say thanks to him for being crazy enough to start NaNoWriMo. He was a bit amazed that I was from Australia, but probably not as amazed as I was at being there.

That was it for the Night of Writing Dangerously. It was my first, and I sure hope it's not my last. I doubt I'll be able to go every year, but it's something that I'd love to do again some time in the future.

In terms of word count, I passed the 40k mark during the write-a-thon, which was a nice milestone to reach during such a cool event.

Time to put this thing on cruise control until the finish line. 50k is so close that I can taste it.

Still jetlagged

2008-11-11T08:32:00.003+11:00

So I'm in San Diego, and I still haven't entirely shaken off the jetlag from the flight. I wasn't able to get as much sleep as I usually do on international flights, and I got to LAX feeling pretty lousy. The flight to San Diego was in a small EMB120 plane, and it was loud; the engines could be heard above everything else. It was so loud, in fact, that they should provide anybody who flies in them with earmuffs for OHS reasons.

Much of my first half-day in San Diego was spent checking out the nearby Mission Valley shopping centre. I forgot how massive American malls are. They're more or less department stores the size of Australian malls spread out across a stretch of land. You almost want a car to get in between shops. Despite that, I didn't find anything I was looking for, and ended up going back to my hotel room and working on my NaNoWriMo novel (currently over 26,000 words!).

Sleep was very interrupted, and I woke up at 3:30 in the morning, surrendering to jetlag. I wrote some more shaky prose then had a greasy breakfast and some coffee before setting off on the day's adventures.

My first full day involved getting lost, much like my first day in most foreign cities. I started off with a very short stop of Old Town, which I found boring. I immediately went back to the light rail station and caught a connecting service to downtown San Diego, which seemed pretty dead for a Saturday. It was nowhere near as busy as the Sydney CBD would be late on a Saturday morning. I caught another connecting eastbound train and, after getting off at two stations I didn't mean to get off at, I ended up deciding to find a bus. I grossly underestimated the scale of transit maps I had briefly looked at, and ended up walking a long way until I eventually found one that would take me to North Park, where there was meant to be a couple of skate shops.

The first shop dealt mostly in standard skateboards and fashion, but I finally got around to purchasing a longboard at the second shop, Route 44. The guy there was really helpful and even gave me a discount because I bought a complete board as well as new shoes. It ended up costing me just over US$185 for both, which I thought was a pretty sweet deal. I tried it out later in the night and it seemed to go pretty smoothly. I still need to get used to the act of skateboarding, though.

A series of miscommunications regarding the billing of the room ended up spoiling my mood, but I'm hoping to have all of that resolved momentarily.

The first day of the conference was a struggle. The tutorial session itself was very interesting - it was about computer forensics - but I wasn't feeling the best, which wasn't helped by a lack of sleep the previous night. I skipped any attempt at socialising that night and decided to write a bit then go to sleep.

Right now I'm sitting in a workshop still feeling sick because the closest pharmacy is two train stops away. Yay!

Financial crisis of infinite Earths

2008-10-07T13:30:00.008+11:00

Dammit dammit dammit.

I'm fairly clueless about the economy, but I'm even more clueless about exchange rates. Today the Australian dollar dropped to about 72 US cents, and it looks like it may drop even more. Apparently this has to do with Australia and commodities or something like that. All I know is that it's not looking good for my two trips.

In the red corner (ok, they're not really competing with each other, so it's a terrible analogy, but I digress): USA trip for the LISA conference. I wanted to buy some things that would be cheaper to buy in the USA. While it may still be cheaper now (and when I get there), I kind of regret not ordering a few weeks ago when the dollar was a bit more reasonable. Could have saved a good 50-100 dollars (depending on how many things I end up getting). Oh well. The hard decision now is whether to cut my losses and order things now, or wait it out and hope the dollar improves closer to my travel date.

And in the blue corner: Japan. Should I have started booking hotels a lot earlier? Probably. Did I? No. Sapporo ended up being rather expensive, and now that the Aussie dollar is dropping, the others may end up hurting us more than we would have liked too.

The good news is that the USA trip is all booked, and flights to Japan were dirt cheap. I guess it could be worse.

(EDIT: And yes, I did make a mistake in that initial post. I said "less clueless". I should've said "more clueless". This is now corrected. The universe is safe once more.)

Is that when you confer with other people?

2008-09-11T16:31:00.003+10:00

So, thanks to a variety of favourable factors, I've found myself making arrangements to attend a conference called LISA '08. It's the short name for the 22nd Large Installation System Administration Conference, which sounds more geeky than impressive, but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, and it's in the USA, which is always cool to visit. I also get to put this on my blog which is incredibly geeky.

Anyway, I'm off to the conference (and hence the USA) on the 7th of November, and I land in San Diego (via LAX) about 2 hours before I leave, which is pretty sweet. The down side, of course, is that it takes a day and a half to get back to Sydney. Oh well. I'll be doing two or so days in San Francisco after the conference before flying back, which should be nice. I'm hoping to get some cheap shopping done because, despite the recent drop in the Australian dollar, it is still cheaper to get many things there than here.

Turning Japanese

Speaking of travel plans, it's looking like I'll also be going to Japan early next year. There are rough plans for doing a couple of weeks in Japan, and I'm hoping leave arrangements work in my favour to give me as much days off as I can get. However, I'd be more than happy with two weeks - a week and a bit snowboarding, and the rest sightseeing. More as it develops.

A weekend at the (somewhat) Snowy Mountains

2008-08-26T12:46:00.004+10:00

So, I caved and went to the snow again. I couldn't help it.

It was a weekend trip down to the NSW slopes with Phil and her friend, and Dave B and it was quite possibly the best time I've had in the snow in Australia. Sure, the snow wasn't as good compared to a couple of powder days in the past, but it just happened to be the first time I had spent in the snow when I could actually do blacks and off-piste with a moderate amount of competency. This meant that the whole mountain is opened up instead of just a select few runs. In fact, I think I rode mostly runs that I hadn't been to before, which was a definite plus.

It began late on Friday night when Phil picked me up and we embarked on a long journey (picking up more people on the way) to Berridale. The trip was (thankfully) incident-free, and we ended up getting to the room at around 1:30 in the morning. Sadly, the remote was missing from the room and so we couldn't get the snowboard DVDs that Dave had recently bought to play on the DVD player. We ended up watching a bit of the Olympics then sleeping.

We got to Thredbo a bit late the next day because we stopped at Jindabyne for breakfast and ended up being stuck in slow traffic going past a mobile RBT. The snow seemed very good at the start of the day (due to some overnight falls) but I didn't get a chance to ride anything new until after lunch since Dave's bindings broke and he had to buy some new ones. After lunch, we all went over to the top of Karel's and headed towards the Golf Course Bowl, where much fun was had. It was the first time I rode pretty comfortably along trees, possibly because it was pretty flat (but still lots of fun). What was not fun was the traverse out, complete with stumps sticking out from the ground. We went through some more trees at the end of the day before meeting up with Dave (who we lost during one of the runs) and heading back to the apartment.

The most notable thing about that night was that we had Bits & Pizzas. I love that place.

The second day we spent at Perisher Blue where the snow was significantly less nice than the previous day. The weather was really warm, so I rode without a jacket all day and ended up getting minor sunburn on my neck. It was, however, a very enjoyable day. The first thing we figured out was that anything off-piste was not worth doing in the morning, so we did some groomers and had lunch while waiting for the snow to melt a bit. We then proceeded to have an awesome time (or a bad one if you went with Phil) at the double-black area of the mountain called Double Trouble. It wasn't as menacing as it sounded, and was really only a hard blue or a black. It was probably made a double black due to the amount of trees that was in there, but I didn't have any trouble navigating my way through the area (I can't say the same for my friends). We followed that up with some more off-piste in Guthega, where we accidentally ended up out of bounds and headed towards the road. We had to walk back to Guthega at the end of it, but a good time was had by all (even David, who ended up further down the road than any of us). Sadly, the long way back to Smiggins (where we parked) meant that we didn't have time to do much else at the end of the day.

The drive back to Sydney was eventful, and involved stops at KFC and McDonald's, as well as some interesting overtaking, and a kangaroo in the middle of the road. I somehow managed to lose my phone (left it with Dave) AND my bag (left it with Phil) in the process, which was quite impressive, even by my standards.

Next snow trip: Japan (I hope)

Up in the sky

2008-07-29T16:09:00.003+10:00

Skydiving didn't eventuate. Dave and Luke were far too tired to bother with any type of exciting activity on the morning of our flight, and it was too cloudy (and slightly rainy) to do anything anyway. We ended up playing some giant chess at Cathedral Square. I was giving Dave some bad advice and his black side lost quite spectacularly to Luke's red side.

Afterwards, we caught the free bus around town because we had nothing else to do. Dave and I stopped at a sushi train for a quick lunch before heading to the airport. To my delight, there was a Timezone in the airport with some really old arcade machines. Dave and I played Sega Rally and I won a couple of times before we boarded our flight.

It was cloudy all the way to Sydney, and the weather conditions were almost as bad as the in-flight movie (21) when we approached the airport for landing. Being the thrill-seekers that we were, we were really excited when we went below the clouds and the plane was still shaky as it approached the ground. Some of the other passengers looked a bit worried, but despite everything the plane landed safely with the help of the reverse thrusters. It was really cool.

Sydney was warm compared to NZ, and it was nice to be able to complain about temperatures above 10 Celsius as being cold again.

New Zealand overview

Days spent: 9
Temperature: Cold
Days on the ski hill: 5
Crashes that would have looked very amusing to other people (but really hurt): 2

The long white cloud, continued

2008-07-27T18:36:00.002+10:00

So yes, the Internet cafes in Queenstown wasn't that great. It was 1 NZD per 15 minutes and damn slow, so I wasn't inclined to spend a lot of time on it. Back to the story...

The rest of the week brought some more bad visibility. We all woke up late on Thursday – on Wednesday night Dave and Luke went out on a pub crawl, while I stayed up to watch the final big mountain stage of Le Tour de France – so we caught the late bus to the Remarkables on Thursday. It was more or less the same experience as the previous day.

In contrast, we woke up really early on Friday so that we could catch the bus heading to Treble Cone. The day got off to an interesting start when we ended up at different places due to Dave and Luke taking the wrong fork (the resort's runs weren't clearly marked at all). We eventually all met up again at the cafe when visibility went down to almost zero (the worst we experienced all week). It was interesting getting back down when you were a few feet from a ledge and couldn't see more than a foot in front of you. Anyway, it eventually cleared up later in the day and we had a great time boarding for a few hours before heading back to the hotel.

Our last day on the snow was Saturday and we decided to catch the early bus once more. It was back to the Remarkables, in time for the opening of the new board park called the Burton Stash. I actually managed to get in there before it was officially open by accident. It was a very nicely set up park, but I wasn't game enough to try any of the features. The powder in between sections was nice, though not long enough to really count. I think we all managed to hurt ourselves, too. For me it was the old bailing out of a funbox routine. I tried to slow down too late and caught an edge on the box then fell off at the end landing on my back on the moderately hard landing. The only thing bruised was my ego (and my back). The weather eventually turned bad again and we ended up heading back to the hotel early.

Dave and I bought a book each for the 8-hour bus trip to Christchurch the next day (I had finished American Gods the previous day – one of the best books I have ever read) then we all had some dinner and watched the Bledisloe Cup match at a bar. We headed home at halftime and slowly packed for the trip the next day. I stayed up to watch the penultimate stage of Le Tour de France and was slightly disappointed that Cadel Evans couldn't get the Yellow Jersey back.

The bus we paid for to get from Queenstown to Christchurch today was cheap, and we got what we paid for. It was rickety at best, and Dave didn't have any room to move his legs. Luckily, it was a mostly empty bus, and we were able to take up as much room as we needed. I started reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and I lent Dave American Gods to read, but most of the trip was taken up by us trying to catch up on some sleep.

We're now in Christchurch on our last night in New Zealand. I've decided to stay in while the boys are going to try to have a big night out. Our plans for tomorrow still aren't clear. Our flight leaves at 3:40pm, so we have time to do some sort of adventure activity, but we have yet to decide what to do. We're contemplating some skydiving, or perhaps some paragliding.

My best guess is that the next update will come from back home.

Christchurch / Queenstown

2008-07-25T19:02:00.003+10:00

It was a long two days leading up to and leaving for my New Zealand trip. The night before involved Dave B haggling up a bouncer, as well as paying ludicrous amounts of money for cab rides (thanks, World Youth Day organizers!). Not having gotten much sleep that night, I groggily stuffed all my things into my snowboard bag and managed to get to the airport pretty early, though it was soon after the pope's speech at Randwick Racecourse so there were lots of people at the airport lining up to leave the country (and you could tell that they were there for World Youth Day because of their bags with the horrendous bright orange and yellow colour scheme. Anyway, we spent a lot of time lounging around in the airport waiting for our flight (which was slightly late).

After what was the shortest I have ever been on (and which had the best airline meal ever), we arrived in Christchurch late on Sunday night and managed to steal some sleep at the Base Backpackers hostel in the middle of town before heading back to the airport once more to fly to Queenstown. I was still half asleep during the flight but managed to catch the great landing, which was where the plane went through a narrow mountain range and put on the brakes really hard to land it in the short amount of runway.

Our first day in Queenstown was spent sorting out rentals for Dave and Luke, and buying our lift tickets. We finished a bit early, had a famous Fergburger, then went off to do our own separate adventure tourism activity. Luke did a bungy jump and Dave did a canyon swing, while I chose to do something a little less voluntary and went on the Shotover Jet - a high speed speedboat tour of the Shotover Canyon. I had a grin on my face the whole way through, partly because it was a hell of a lot of fun, and partly because the wind blowing on my face kind of forced it. My face only defrosted at around the time I made it back to town.

The long white cloud

Either we chose a bad time to come to Queenstown, or it's always really cloud here, because our first two days on the snow involved very poor visibility. The first day, at Coronet Peak, had fog at the top of the mountain and ice at the bottom. We eventually found the groomed runs after the fog cleared slightly, but even then it wasn't that exciting repeating that over and over again. After biting the ice a few times, Dave decided he needed to buy a helmet. Almost concurrently, I lost my gloves, and I had been meaning to buy a new pair anyway (my previous pair were horribly torn up) so Dave and I went shopping later that afternoon. Ironically enough, Dave managed to somehow injure his wrist the next day.

We were disappointed with Coronet Peak so we decided to check out The Remarkables for our second day, and for a moment, we thought we may have had a chance to get some decent runs in. Unfortunately, the sun disappeared above the clouds, which quickly came in a few hours after lifts opened. Flat light made runs very not-fun-at-all, and after Dave injured his wrist, we checked out the snow tubing - going down a short run with massive rubber doughnuts. That was enjoyable enough, but didn't provide enough entertainment, so Luke and I checked out the beginner terrain park while Dave nursed his injury.

(I would like to note that more things have happened since, but is being bogged down by slow and expensive Internet. I will attempt to update once more when we get back to Christchurch.)

Filmfest diary 3.0: Condensed edition

2008-07-02T16:36:00.001+10:00

The Sydney Film Festival has come and gone, and I haven't even gotten around to posting about it (I've noticed that I've only been updating once a month this year, but I digress), so consider this the obligatory film festival report.

Much to my disappointment, I was told that the Sydney Film Festival was not as huge as the other festivals I've been to in the past (namely Berlin, Toronto, and Vancouver), and didn't have the usual Q&A fare at the end of each session (with the exception of some of the competition movies as well as the gala movies). However, this did not take away from the quality (or lack thereof) of the films. I saw nine, and my reviews of the films can be read here.

My pick of the ones that I saw was The Square, which, to my surprise, was actually a red carpet world premiere. Anyway, it was a thoroughly enjoyable Australian noir that I could find very little wrong with. There was also the added bonus of having the cast and crew on hand to answer questions.

Apart from the film festival, not a whole lot has happened, though I suppose being at work full-time gives that perception whether there were things to do or not. Off the top of my head, I can remember that there was a party at David B's house where I caught up with a few people, I went and saw Mixmaster Mike, who has inhuman mixing/scratching skills, and I saw Holly Throsby and her band at the Factory theatre, where I was just as impressed with her stage presence as I was with her music.

I guess that's it for now. The next update will probably be a post-New Zealand report. All the details are finally sorted out, so now all I have to do is wait, and pray for snow.

Arbitrary May update

2008-05-20T12:01:00.005+10:00

Hmm, been a while since the last update, so I suppose I'll do a post.

What has been happening, you ask? Well "not much" always seems to come to mind. Apart from not much, here's a quick summary of things that has happened since last update:

Dave from England came to Sydney and we got perhaps a little too intoxicated for his birthday.
Saw Salmonella Dub at the Metro. Was good.
Saw Iron Man on opening day. A damn fine movie, in the same league as Batman Begins as far as superhero movies go.
I completed a (pretty bad) script for Script Frenzy.
Bought some hardbacks and got a lot of free stuff from Kings Comics on Free Comic Book Day.
I got The Absolute Sandman vol. 1 signed by Neil Gaiman, complete with a sketch of Morpheus.

(Somewhere in there, I also managed to get a better grip on my accuracy at the driving range. I still suck, but considerably less so now.)

Oh, and a ski trip to New Zealand is a go. Gonna be in Queenstown from July 21 to 28. Still gotta book the car, but apart from that it should be a blast.

Laughter: best medicine or elaborate placebo?

2008-04-15T11:51:00.002+10:00

A few weeks ago, during the Easter long weekend, I headed over to Melbourne to attend some gigs at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival as well as catch up with a few friends. Little did I know that when I left I was carrying the seeds of a potentially deadly illness. The sniffles that annoyed fellow passengers on the plane to Melbourne soon turned into a raging flu that put me out of action for much of the first couple of days of my stay. After trying various remedies for cold and flu, I eventually turned to laughter, the so-called "best medicine". So, how did I fare?

My first dose of laughter came in the form of Heath Franklin as Chopper Read. In Making Deadshits History, the satirical alter-ego of Chopper Read outlined in hilarious fashion what made people stupid and how we could eliminate these people from the world. I laughed hard, but I also coughed a whole lot, so this laughter technique didn't seem to be working.

I was feeling marginally better on day two, and after meeting some friends and consulting with a few Guitar Heroes, I continued with this potentially volatile experiment. That night we saw Arj Barker serve up some humour as only he could. I still wasn't feeling the best after the gig, but I was a bit more optimistic when I went to bed trying to cough my lungs out.

I looked less like a zombie the next morning and felt that this day may be the turning point in this illness. Perhaps the laughter was working after all. Kristen Schaal provided some incredibly awkward laughs and a ludicrously catchy tune, and it began to purge the sickness from my body. However, it was not enough. I needed just one more laugh-filled show.

This came in the form of comedy troupe called The Hound of the Baskervilles presenting Every Film Ever Made. It was easily the best show I saw in the entire festival, and was notable not only for the fact that it was consistently funny throughout the whole show, in which the trio performed famous scenes from as many films as they could think of, but also for the fact that there was a woman in the crowd who was laughing so hard you could swear she was on the brink of having a seizure. After the show, I felt revitalised. So much so that I decided to stay out and check out some comedians at the Hi-Fi Bar.

Sadly, most of the acts that went on stage were average to poor any my illness threatened to fight its way back. It was saved by the very last act, Canada's Glenn Wool, who made some clever quips about alcohol and religion. We also met some cool comedians who were just hanging around.

You would generally want to keep treating illnesses like this for a while after it has gone away to avoid it recurring, so I decided to continue my doses of laughter for the rest of my stay. On Easter Monday, we saw Mark Butler do a gig about Body Language, which was as entertaining as it was informative (infotainment, so to speak), and on my last day we saw Jason Byrne, who was worth seeing for the fact that he made fun of one of our friends.

All in all, I can report that I am now feeling (mostly) fine, and the flu has not come back to cause any further annoyance since the experimental treatment. However, is laughter the best medicine? Probably not, but it sure seemed to work for me.

Disclaimer: The author of this article does not endorse trying to use laughter as a cure for anything other than being emo. He especially does not recommend trying laughter to cure the following - AIDS, pancreatic cancer, heart disease, and Tom Cruise.

29 days of February (and a little bit of March)

2008-03-09T09:49:00.002+11:00

Random notes about Feburary:

I went to Tropfest. It rained. But it didn't get rained out like it did in 2005.
I saw Stars, Broken Social Scene, and Feist in the same week. They were incredible.
I had a game of golf. I shot a 74. From 9 holes. On a par 3. (I suck.)
February generally moved along pretty quickly.
Leap years are cool.

Coming up in March:

Session 1 at UNSW gets under way tomorrow.
I go to Melbourne for the Easter long weekend for the Comedy Festival and to meet up with some friends. (This is during the mid-session break, which happens after just two weeks of classes, which is very odd.)
At work, one person is leaving and two people are going part-time, which should generate more work for me.

Stuff that happened in January

2008-02-09T18:58:00.000+11:00

I suppose I should do a bit of a status update...

Two weeks after that last post, I began work at UNSW (again, albeit full-time and for a different faculty). I had actually gotten another job offer just before the offer from UNSW came in, and was stressed out or a couple of days while waiting for the UNSW job offer to become official so that I could reject the other one.

Work itself has been interesting enough. I've been reintroduced to Linux, and have been slowly learning the ropes of doing tech support for the network of computers and its users.

I went to four concerts in January, all of which were fantastic. The first was Sufjan Stevens and the Illinoisemakers during the Sydney Festival, then Arcade Fire (twice), and finally Joanna Newsom at the Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall. Joanna Newsom was easily the best of the lot. The first part of the set was performed with the help of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, followed by a more low-key session with some of her older songs as well as a few new ones. It was the first time I had seen anything at the Opera House, and the acoustics were, simply put, perfect. It helped that I was near the middle of the room, which was the "sweet spot" in terms of sound. The entire night was beautiful.

Outside of that, there hasn't really been anything exciting that has happened since the last update. Things have started to stabilize and hopefully will stay like that for a while.

2007 year in review

2008-01-04T20:58:00.000+11:00

Okay, not really... but I will address the issue of why there hasn't been an update in the past month and a half.

But first and foremost, I hope that everybody enjoyed their holiday period, and I wish everybody a good 2008.

Number 27: Write a novel

When last I updated, I was (not quite) halfway through a month-long project to cram in as many stupid or cheesy ideas that I could into one 50,000-word long novel. The title of the novel in question was Greatest Hits, it was being written for the month-long event called National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short), and it proved to be a lot tougher than anticipated.

Going into the thing, I was full of energy and excitement over writing a novel, and I thought I had it all planned out. Not so. While I had a pretty clear beginning and ending in mind, what I completely neglected was the tough task of writing the middle of the story. In my last update, I was only 16,000 words in when I was halfway through the month, and things were looking grim.

Because of my lack of ideas for how I was to get from point A to point B, the story took on a life of its own. The characters began to do things that I didn't expect, which started to create some interesting plot points. The general theme of the story changed fairly significantly from my initial intent, and made for some great moments as a result.

Eventually, when my slow progress was threatening to end the NaNoWriMo attempt in failure, I decided to simply keep writing and writing whenever I had any free time. Near the end, there were days when I would do in excess of 5,000 words in a single day. It wasn't pretty, but it did the job. Quantity was definitely the objective.

My almost exponential advancement in word count was displayed on my progress chart, which had a pretty healthy start but otherwise petered off with very slight increases until the last ten or so days, when it skyrocketed towards success. With three days to spare, I typed those final words of the story, several hundred words above the target of 50,000, and rejoiced in what I had just accomplished.

With that, I marked off the 27th item in a list entitled "30 things to do before you turn 30", making it the fourth goal that I had achieved since writing up the list on one sleepless night in May.

Work and play

Much of the rest of the next month consisted of me doing one of two things (not counting eating and sleeping): Going to work, or; playing a little MMORPG called Tabula Rasa. I also vaguely remember buying an Xbox 360 at a sale, but it has sadly been largely neglected due to the addictive nature of Tabula Rasa. I've clocked many hours on it so far.

Other things also transpired, such as endless amounts of Christmas parties, an engagement party, karaoke with the family, and a fun new year's eve at Dave's place in Stanwell Park.

Looking forward, looking back

And now it's 2008.

2007 was, simply put, the best year that I've ever had in my life, and I wouldn't take any of it back. But it's time for me to look forward to the year ahead. It'll be a year that will see me looking for a permanent job and trying to get fit, and no doubt will bring a bucket-load of surprises before the calendar ticks over to 2009. I'm excited to find out what this year will bring.

So, happy new year, everybody!

(Editor's note: Thus far in 2008, Adrian has recovered from two hangovers, attended two days of the cricket at the SCG, and has gotten an impressive t-shirt tan.)

Not quite halfway

2007-11-16T14:07:00.000+11:00

It is now just past the mid-way mark of the month of November, and I don't have a lot to report, though I feel like I should. I've been working manically to try to keep up to quota on my NaNoWriMo Novel (if I don't add to my word count today, I will be over ten thousand words behind) while also trying to get some recreation going (mainly video games), catching up with people both in Sydney and in Wollongong, and trying to get a job.

In terms of the novel, I really want to complete this cool little project (tentatively named Greatest Hits, for which Morgan has threatened to subpoena me) by the end of the month, but things just keep coming up (see below). I currently have 16,000 words or so committed to paper (well, a Word document, but close enough), and would like to get a lot of writing done over the weekend. On Sunday I will be going to a "write-in" which is an event where people get together and work on their NaNoWriMo novels. I think it will be pretty cool and a nice way to boost my word count.

Video games have been a large part of why I'm behind. I've been plowing through Guild Wars: Nightfall and, after about a week of solid play, I have four missions left. I also just bought an Xbox 360 yesterday (it was on sale), and am looking at a video card to get for a minor PC upgrade. It's really not a great idea to be doing so, as I am still in that massive travel debt, but my gaming addiction is strong.

The first Friday after I got back, I met up with a whole bunch of people from Sydney at the Bavarian Bier Cafe on York St. Dinner turned into drinks, drinks turned into a double shout of schnapps by Matt, and ended up at a club (robot dance included), followed by some late night karaoke. My throat was hating me the day after. On the following Friday, it was time for the Wollongong people. I arranged to have a party at the traditional location (i.e. James's house), and a good time was had by all that attended (except James at the end of the night, when he found out that Ashton's cousins had changed his laptop's password and his Facebook picture).

Finally, there's employment. I fired off an e-mail to an IT manager at UNSW on Thursday and got a reply immediately. I had an interview with him on the Friday, and got the job on the spot, starting straight away. It's a casual job doing IT support, and ends at the end of the year. I am hoping to apply for a similar job within the uni for next year but on a more permanent basis. The funny thing is that on the same day I had the interview, I was asked to do two more interviews for different people, which is crazy considering that this time of the year is kind of bad for job hunting.

No new photos, though I do plan to start messing around with my brother's Canon EOS 300D sometime soon. Maybe after everything else.

NaNoWriMoVember

2007-10-30T23:48:00.000+11:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out two cool month-long events for November - NaNoWriMo and Movember.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

The spiel: A challenge set out to anybody to write a 50,000-word (minimum) novel in the span of 30 days, starting on the first of November. The objective of this initiative is to encourage people to write, and inspire writers to finally get that long-gestating idea off the ground. The emphasis is on quantity, not quality, which, in a way, allows the writers a lot of freedom.

I will personally be taking part in this. I already have notes on rough plot points and such. I'm quite excited to write that first novel.

Movember
http://www.movember.com/

The spiel: All men are asked to grow a moustache - and just a moustache (that is, no connectors or hair underneath the lips) - for the entire duration of the month of November in the name of charity. The aim of the event is to raise awareness of male health issues, such as prostate cancer. Each participant can be sponsored, and the month ends with a Movember ball.

I probably won't get sponsored, as I am currently in job hunting mode (more on that later), meaning that I'll have to shave off the mo if I happen to get an interview, but it's a really fun way to help a good cause.

In other news...

Seeing as I have just recently returned to the country, I have not achieved a great deal. However, I feel like I've been running around just trying to get things done. There is the small matter of my large travel debt, which I would love to pay off as soon as possible. This implies that I should get a job fairly soon, which I'm (sort of) working on. This conflicts with my plan to have a bit of time to relax as I ease back into Australian life (and try to kick that damn jetlag).

Anyway, the other thing I'm trying to sort out is catching up with people. For some reason this involves a great deal of calling people and getting generally confused (due to myself being in a state of delirium). I'm sure NaNoWriMo will help in this matter. (See what I did there? I used sarcasm! Hah!)

I suppose I'll keep scant updates on the goings-on of the month ahead, as November should prove to be mighty interesting indeed. I'll also try to provide regular updates on my state of mind as I take on the process of novel-writing. Onward!

I am home (and so can you!)

2007-10-27T16:52:00.000+10:00

I landed in Sydney this morning. I am very tired. I will keep this short.

As I headed for the airport, there was a bit of a boo boo with the Airporter - it didn't stop where it was meant to - but apart from that, the whole trip went more or less without a hitch. Once I arrived at the airport, I checked in and got through US customs pretty expediently. I was actually surprised at how quiet the airport was, especially for an international airport.

As a result of my good luck (if that is what you'd call it), for most of the wait I sat opposite a television, watching game two of the MLB World Series. When I boarded the plane, I was once again reminded of the quality that Air Canada stood for. The seats were fairly spacious, and the entertainment was very flexible, with each passenger getting their own touch-sensitive screen, which they could use to select the program they wish to watch (or hear).

Once I arrived at Sydney International Airport, it was simply a matter of retrieving my snowboard bag at the oversized luggage claim area, and my backpack at one of the carousels. Of course, the trip couldn't finish without a bit of drama. Only a bit, though. I was stopped at customs for a random bag check, which was done with a lot more politeness than my last experience through customs.

After that, I met up with my mum outside of the gates, and knew that, finally, I was home.

North America trip overview

Trip dates
Nov 26, 2006 - Oct 27, 2007 (11 months and 1 day)

Highlights (off the top of my head, and in no particular order)
Epic snow; catching up with friends I knew and friends I've never met; road tripping; waiting in line for 10 hours; being in a train for almost 40 hours; getting soaked in the rain; seeing a movie on the side of warehouse at a pier; watching 23 movies in 15 days; hiking along a coastline; hiking up a mountain; picking fresh blueberries; ordering a double double; swimming in the Atlantic Ocean; seeing bears in the wild for the first time (they were having sex); inline skating around a Formula One circuit; discovering new hobbies; discovering Vietnamese food; cheap sushi; camping in the middle of the desert with nobody else in sight; riding The Cyclone; writing.

The playlist
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Green Day - Good Riddance
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name
Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild
Arcade Fire - Cold Wind
Simon and Garfunkel - The 59th Street Bridge Song
Infusion - What lies Ahead
Holly Throsby - The Shoulders and Bends
Regina Spektor - Summer in the City
Architecture in Helsinki - Vanishing
The Waifs - Lighthouse
Gogol Bordello - Start Wearing Purple
Feist - I Feel It All
Pearl Jam - Present Tense
Stars - Reunion
The Strokes - You Only Live Once
The Living End - 'Til the End
Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

Famous last words

2007-10-26T05:45:00.001+10:00

"It's raining once again today"

Typical. Right after I posted yesterday's entry, the sun comes back up. It actually turned out to be a beautiful day, though not as comfortably warm as the day before. I spent most of the day hanging out with my ad-hoc crew, consisting of Dave, Dom, and Charlene.

As a result of a hasty heads-or-tails decision, in which, incidentally, heads won out, I was on the verge of purchasing a Martin Backpacker at the nearby music store, but after much deliberation about transporting it to Australia, I did not end up buying the cool little thing.

"I don't think I'll go out tonight"

My plan was to pack my bags before too late in the night, then relax a bit before heading to bed. Alas, I was weak to the power of persuasion. We had a quick stop at Tim Hortons before going to the liquor store, where Charlene planned to buy some beer. The boys and I spotted a beer called Dude, and we bought a six-pack for the sheer novelty factor. The beer itself tasted like tin and is without a doubt the worst beer I've ever had, but its name produced endless jokes.

"I'll just have two beers" turned into "we'll buy you a drink because it's your last night" and eventually ended up in some escapades, including the obligatory sushi, and a particularly amusing incident involving a fire escape. Once we got back to the hostel, we hung out on the first floor for a bit. I eventually retired very late in the night, my bag still unpacked.

It's actually brought a huge two years full circle. I remember partying hard on the night before Dave and I left for that trip to Europe, which was, at the time, my biggest overseas trip to date. Now, what will probably remain my biggest overseas trip for a long time has now come to an end with another huge night with friends.

"I'm going to have that steak tomorrow"

I was also planning to drop by The Keg today, but a combination of tiredness, laziness, and shortness of funds led to a boycott. I suppose I could pay for the steak using credit, but that's where the laziness comes in. I think I shall opt for some Vietnamese instead. On the way to our daily Tim Hortons stop, we discovered that there's a Vietnamese restaurant just two blocks away from the hostel that had somehow flown under our collective radars for the past couple of weeks (and my personal one for about four). I'm also hoping to get one more B.C. roll into my stomach before I go without it until the next time I visit the country.

It's nice and sunny again today, but I don't think I'll be doing a whole lot. I'll probably head to the airport soon after all that food, most likely via the airport shuttle. After eleven months, it'll finally be time to say goodbye to Canada and North America. If all goes okay, I should land in Sydney very early on Saturday morning.

Vancouver overview

Days spent: 29
Sushi: Cheap and plentiful
Panhandlers: Cheap and plentiful
Theme song/s: The Living End - 'Til the End, Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye

One perfect day

2007-10-25T04:11:00.000+10:00

I wouldn't say that I've been inundated with stuff to do in the past week. In fact, it's been pretty relaxed. However, the rain has been stretching things out, forcing me to sit in waiting for the next sunny day. It's raining once again today, so I think I'll take it upon myself to update this blog.

Yesterday was perhaps only the third or fourth sunny day I've experienced in Vancouver in the four weeks that I have been here. I figured that it may be my last, so I fought off a hangover from the night before and decided to make a full day of it. It was not only a sunny day, but it was also the first day in which I found myself outside not wearing more than one layer. All the locals seemed to be rugged up in their winter clothes, but the sun and the fifteen-plus-degree temperature warranted a sleeveless approach.

I first headed over to Stanley Park, as I hadn't yet visited the famous urban park in my stay. I got there not really knowing how to go about seeing the park. I had heard that renting a bicycle was a good way to do it, but ten minutes in, I still hadn't seen a rental shop. I was told by the information booth that I actually had to back outside of the park for about fifteen minutes. After doing so, and renting a bike, I was on my way. I set a pretty leisurely pace for myself around the store, as I had the bike for two hours, and took in the sights of the park as I went along. It was pretty beautiful there, and the difference between the view of the sea and the view within the forested areas was quite large.

Afterwards, I headed back to the hostel for a bit of a rest before going to check out the UBC (University of British Columbia) campus. At the hostel, I ran into a few people who were interested in a bit of a trek, so I waited around and we all went together. The basic plan was to make our way to UBC, and then stop by Sophie's Cosmic Cafe (a famous cafe in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano). Before catching the bus (which took forever to arrive), we planned to get all the way to UBC then walk back to Sophie's. After realizing how far away UBC was from anything (it was basically past a small forest), we decided against this course of action.

UBC itself was pretty nice for a university campus, although we found not much else to do there apart from a quick stroll around. We went to the Museum of Anthropology, but the entrance fee was $9, which none of us wanted to pay. The campus was also surrounded by beaches, though, on the way to one of them, we took a wrong turn, and were too lazy to head back, so we ultimately gave the beaches a miss.

We caught the express bus on the way back towards Kitsilano, which turned out to be a fateful decision. When we saw Sophie's, we signaled for the bus to stop. Unfortunately, as it was an express, it went by several blocks before stopping. We were too lazy to walk back that much, so we just kept going, settling on trying out a Vietnamese place on Robson St.

We got to Robson St., and the Vietnamese place was nothing but an empty building, something I really should have taken a note of the last time I went past the area. We almost ate at a Korean place a little further down the road, but the prices seemed a bit extravagant, so we walked out soon after being seated and given menus. It was then that I suggested Phnom Penh, a Cambodian/Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. That of course meant walking all the way across town to Chinatown. The upside of this was that the food was absolutely incredible, and very affordable too, and everybody agreed that, despite the long journey to get to that point, it was well worth it.

We capped off the night with a bit of Tim Hortons and a stroll to Canada Place after buying things at (and hanging out in) HMV and Chapters. I had been out for a little over twelve hours, and so my legs were in absolute pain, but I somehow managed to survive the trip back to the hostel, where we all kicked back for a few beers and a whole lot of conversation.

These will probably be my final set of photos for the trip, unless I see something funny at the airport.

The rest of the last week has mostly consisted of wasting time by doing a variety of activities, such as watching movies, attending a hockey game (Canucks lost yet again), going to pubs, meeting up with various people (Luke, Shaun, and Debbie to name a few), getting wet in the rain, finishing Halo 3 at HMV, reading books at Chapters, and generally hanging out at the hostel like everybody else. It's been fun, but it's good to finally be going home tomorrow night.

Better be home soon

2007-10-18T11:31:00.000+10:00

I go home in eight days. I'm quite excited. Despite having enjoyed my time here in North America, I'll do the cliched thing and say that, after almost eleven months of work and travel, I quite miss home. While I have become accustomed to staying somewhere for less than a month at a time (at least, in the past five months), and living out of a suitcase, I am looking forward to finally being free of the need to think about the next place.

My last day in Tofino got progressively wetter as it went on. It began a bit cloudy, with patches of sunshine, and ended in a spectacular thunderstorm. A whole busload of people with a tour company showed up in the evening, making the quiet hostel busy again. Throughout all this, I ran into Pat, one of Mike's friends from the Banff Centre, with whom I snowboarded with. This made it three people that I had run into at the hostel, four if you count the German girl from the Vancouver hostel that I also ran into later in the day.

I was afraid of waking everybody up this morning when I was to get ready for my departure, but instead it turned out that everybody else woke me up. I was the last to get out of my bed, at around 8am. I ate some Pop Tarts and boiled an egg to take on the trip before heading over to the bus station. The weather was kind enough to clear up a bit while I walked the short distance to the station. That was about it for Tofino. It was a nice little place, and I can see myself making a return some time in the future.

Tofino overview

Days spent: 5
Familiar faces: 4
Fish and chips: $10 (minimum)
Theme song/s: The Strokes - You Only Live Once

My moderately good luck continued when I got back to Vancouver, as the rain stopped just as we pulled into the Greyhound station. Tonight, I'm meant to meet up with a few people at the pub downstairs. It should be good.

Island life

2007-10-16T07:42:00.000+10:00

Tofino is one of those strange places that has that unmistakable small-town feel while also having a healthy tourism industry. As a result of all the whale watching, surfing, and kayaking (to name a few of the things that you can do here), prices at food establishments are quite inflated. I've found myself cooking for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Since I was dead tired on the day that I arrived, I only really got one full clear day to enjoy the outdoor activities of Tofino. The original plan was to go kayaking, but I was tempted by some other people to go on a whale watching/hot springs tour, so that ended up being the activity of the day. It was almost worth it just being on that boat, going at high speeds while surrounded by beautiful scenery. After an hour or so, we got to see a bit of a gray whale and also spotted a few sea lions. However, the main point of the trip was to visit Hot Springs Cove.

We landed on the dock just past midday, and walked along a fairly long boardwalk onto the natural hot springs. On the way there, we were treated to a lush forest just by the sea. The boardwalk had carvings of the names of the various ships that had visited the cove. The smell of sulfur became evident the closer we got to the hot springs, and the steam was visible as we approached the little hut beside the hot pools.

The pools themselves were something else. The water was very hot right underneath the waterfalls, then got progressively cooler towards the ocean. If you lay at the right place, you would get a really warm current from the spring, interrupted by the waves crashing into the pool area. The hot-and-cold sensation was unbelievable and is something that has to be experienced. It was perhaps the most relaxing hour of my life.

Everybody was feeling rather lethargic afterwards, and there were a few people taking a nap on the boat ride back to Tofino (myself being one of them). Just before reaching land, we spotted a bald eagle sitting on a tree, which topped off the trip quite nicely.

Yesterday, it was considerably cloudier, leading up to the typical rainy weather that has returned today. Still, I did manage to catch a great movie at the Tofino Film Festival. Assuming I won't be going to any more for the next couple of months, this makes it film festival number five for the year (the others being the Tribeca Film Festival Drive-In in New York, the alFresco filmFesto in Halifax, TIFF, and VIFF).

Oh, and new photos are up.

Tofino

2007-10-13T09:40:00.000+10:00

I am so damn glad that I decided to go to Tofino despite the bad weather forecast. I woke up at 6 in the morning after very little sleep, and lugged my bags (including my now very heavy snowboard bag) downstairs for check-out. I once again stashed my snowboard bag in storage, then caught a cab to the bus station. The bastard driver decided to keep two dollars tip from an eight dollar fare, but being very sleepy, I was in no state to argue, and just let it go. It was a fairly clear morning, and I hoped that it would continue to be that way for the entire day.

I couldn't get any sleep on the bus ride to the ferry terminal, except for the short waiting period to board the ferry. I finally caught a bit of snooze on the actual ferry, which was a smooth ride. The view of the mountains over the sea was incredible. However, it was nothing compared to what awaited on the actual island. Vancouver Island, I had been told, was a really nice place. It was not until the bus ride to Tofino that I realized just how true this was. Autumn has really brought out the colours in full force, with the deciduous apple greens, yellows, oranges, and flame reds standing out in the sea of evergreen trees. This was especially prevalent through a stretch of forest, where the road narrowed to barely two lanes, and you could almost touch the woods.

I arrived in beautiful Tofino where it was slightly different. Evergreen trees dominate here, with barely a sign of falling leaves among the huge forested areas. I walked a few blocks to the hostel (getting lost once), then had a stroll around town, taking in the sights and the atmosphere. A nice town indeed.

It is absolutely gorgeous here.

Filmfest diary 2.05: I suppose this is goodbye

2007-10-12T17:50:00.000+10:00

After 15 days and 23 films, it's time for me to say goodbye to the Vancouver International Film Festival. I really enjoyed this one. I think the fact that I don't have to commute for every day of the festival really enhanced my experience.

My favourite film of the festival would have to be the very first that I saw, on that first morning. It was Jaghunde, or Hounds in English. I just loved how elegantly understated it was, being fun to watch without being too pretentious until the poetically beautiful ending, which hits you suddenly. Nothing I've seen since has been able to top it. Bravo.

Here are my final three reviews:

Taming Tammy

Director:

Country:

headless blog

Europe 2010/11 final leg: Switzerland and ???

Europe 2010/11 fourth leg: France (pt 2)

Europe 2010/11 third leg: Spain and Italy

Europe 2010/11 second leg: France (pt 1)

Europe 2010/11 first leg: England and Belgium

Catching up

We apologise for any inconvenience

Thinking too much?

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (conclusion)

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (part 2)

Crazy massive Japanese post of super awesome!! (part 1)

2 weeks in, 2 weeks to go

All done

Writing Dangerously

Still jetlagged

Financial crisis of infinite Earths

Is that when you confer with other people?

A weekend at the (somewhat) Snowy Mountains

Up in the sky

The long white cloud, continued

Christchurch / Queenstown

Filmfest diary 3.0: Condensed edition

Arbitrary May update

Laughter: best medicine or elaborate placebo?

29 days of February (and a little bit of March)

Stuff that happened in January

2007 year in review

Not quite halfway

NaNoWriMoVember

I am home (and so can you!)

Famous last words

One perfect day

Better be home soon

Island life

Tofino

Filmfest diary 2.05: I suppose this is goodbye

Filmfest diary 2.04: I'm still not getting tired of this

That's Grouse!

Filmfest diary 2.03: Now those are comfy seats

Grand final weekend

Filmfest diary 2.02: Let's do this again...

Harvest moon

Filmfest diary 2.01: Cheap, accessible, and friendly

Vancouver

Sleepful in Seattle

Seattle

Filmfest diary 1.08: Wrapping up

Filmfest diary 1.07: Chaos

Filmfest diary 1.06: Fusion

Filmfest diary 1.05: Extras

Filmfest diary 1.04: ...of the Dead

The "other" festival

Filmfest diary 1.03: Masters

Filmfest diary 1.02: Starting out

Filmfest diary 1.01: Sponsored by VISA

Cats and dogs

Salty Bear

The four seasons

Backtrack

Thieving rascals

The great outdoors

St. John's

The hostel of infinite sleep

Halifax

Hot in the city

Québec

The number 23

Some days are long

Burlington

Canada Day

Don't let the bedbugs bite

Heatwave

Montréal

The runaround

Coney Island

Random Toys"R"Us queue... of doom!

New York City

Chicago

Farewell to the city by the bay