Don’t mix that up with being in a bad mood.. per se. just means I don’t really feel like talking to people. Which of course, impeccably logically, means that I write a blog to be read by the many people out there.
I might not think about that, otherwise the whole computer may actually disappear in a puff of ill logic, that would be bad.
It’s the whole ‘family’ thing. What so and so is doing with so and so. How x lost his leg. Why German Motorcyclists are evil. Dyslexia rearing its omnipresent head, and deaths of course too. Talk about a party. Nah, im just doing my petty teenager thing again, and losing my patience. (me act like a teenager *looks innocent* never.. lol) and just not feeling like it.
It could be that combined with a sudden lack of confidence in my communication abilities.. especially those of an electronic persuasion. What is correct to write, how its correct to write it and how to adapt writing to different formats (the difference between this, myspace, email and facebook etc.) and my sudden adamant conviction that I will make a complete and utter fool of myself, unfixably (there is a better word for that.. but I have no recollection what it is). Its possible that this fear isn’t quite as misplaced as Id like to believe it is. Although im hoping people would forgive me for any social fax pas as such. What with you all being wonderful people and such. ;)
I think what happened was I thought about the medium and as such lost the ability to use it. –just to show.. thinking is dangerous- Happened once in band, in front of school I made the mistake of wondering how I could actually read music.. and as such aforementioned music had the gumption to turn into a pile of illegible dots and sticks.
So until the internet turns back into a legible pile of metaphorical dots and sticks you will just have to adapt, please? :D
All that said it has been an interesting day.
a) I discovered I have a half Kenyan cousin, who speaks with a Scottish accent, wandering around out there. That was a long story involving divorces, 6 children and some ‘cousin’ dating a lass 25yrs his junior. When I say cousin, it is technically speaking. Its along the lines of my (Maternal) Great Grandmother’s brother. So my Great Great Uncle? Its all really detailed and technical, and im really no good at keeping up. They all seem to have such British names that all just sound the same. :P Looking around the 8th cousin mark.
b) I learnt how a pottery workshop works. From the making of the clay (I thought it was dug up out of the ground.. not so) to the spinning, firing and all that jazz.. its kinda cool. They actually live off making pots. Also something I didn’t know was possible. But is seems to work for them..its a nice thought to keep in mind.. all goes wahoonie shaped ill fall back on the Poi and Devilsticks.
c) I found out that one of my old maths teachers (one of the nice ones, well one really.. hardly a plural) has actually read chunks of this.. talk about weird.. lol.. and there goes the blog about my past school teachers.. an hr and a half wasted.. (plus probably means I should be more careful with the spelling.. she might get past English teachers to bring out their red pens.. shudder..) lol
d) I also discovered that I cant speak Gaelic, Although that wasn’t really a surprise. And that half the town names have Norse influence, and as such local language does too. Those Vikings had control of quite a large part of Scotland. I heard a Norwegian declaiming that the reason that Norwegian women are so pretty is because they stole all the good looking Britons, this also suggested the reason why good looking Brits are so few and far between. Charming eh? Those norwegins really are sweet.. lol
e) And in a more survival sense, I learnt that it is VITAL not to interchange ‘England’ or ‘English’ and ‘Briton’ or ‘British’. England, Wales and Scotland are all different, well countries in a sense. And its rather akin to calling a New Zealander Australian, a Canadian American, or all Asians Chinese etc. otherwise known as a death wish.
Oh and I remembered to tell you what everyone thinks of us. In this case us is ‘Australians’. I have spent a lot of time being the only Australian, its been interesting. Tough as buggery sometimes, not only is there the kangaroo deal (or Steve Erwin), but you can just be sooo self conscious when you realise half the time you are the first Australian someone’s ever met. And I do try to make a good impression. I had one guy come up to me and just ask if he could shake my hand cause he had always wanted to meet an Australian. But that’s not the point. (I was also asked when we are going to change to driving on the Right, ummm.. yeah, I still think driving on the right is a phenomenon the rest of the world is just going to get over some day, lol)
What everyone thinks of us. (from my vast vast experiences of the world lol)
Well it really depends on Nationality and age especially.
When I first went to Europe I was worried that everyone would just know the “Where the bloody hell are you?” ad.. but you can sleep well now.. im yet to meet anyone whos heard of it. (we’re safe.. lol)
So, theres the Brits.. some think we’re cool.. everyones related to someone in Australia. Some, well quite a few, think it’s the edge of the world. And there is a little convict feeling around, but its mainly been overtaken by our habit of drinking, wearing Aussie flags on Australia day (*shudder* not after Cronulla people, and defiantly not in a foreign country) and generally acting like hooligans, bogans. So, like I have mentioned before there are times when you aren’t Australian, when you drop the accent, just cause we act like idiots, and sometimes its embarassing.
And then you have Europe. (all those different countries being banged together and totally over generalised, poor things..) We do seem to be somewhat.. foreign. Very foreign. (like I’ve said, I still remember the day I found out I was.. well.. foreign, my first day on Andøya, looking around after being asked who the Australian was, and mildly confused in my jetlagged state cause I couldn’t work out why anyone would ask that) we seem to a mildly unknown species. Not different enough to be a threat, but just different enough to be interesting. A very good mix.
Well there is one thing (aside from kangaroos) ‘young people’ know about Australia. There is a video on the net about a necular holocaust. A cartoon of various necular powers-france, England, India etc.- all threatening each other and blowing up the world (its actually more amusing than it sounds). But for some odd reason we appear in the video, maybe because we have 60% of the uranium, and we appear as a kangaroo. This is a very literate well spoken kangaroo, who declaims to the world in a horrible accent. ‘WTF Mate?’ Im afraid this may actually be how people think of us. Confused kangaroos, up to the elbows in necular holocaust snow, about 2 weeks behind the eight ball. I guess there are worse reputations. Tell me when you think of one..
But fore warned is for armed.
So I sit here. Type away, listen to the Waifs (I got the new album!! Sooo good.. wonderful song about goodbye) and generally hope.. well yeah.. just generally hope. Hope that I don’t offend people, don’t overly convince anyone I’m mad, or that im insecure-its hard to include disclaimers everywhere without sounding wet- (mildly deluded is ok.. could probably handle eccentric.. maybe) and hope I don’t say anything totally un PC that I don’t say deliberatly. Although worrying about that doesn’t really last long.. worring about what people think about me seems to have dissipated.. I think it was overtaken with worry about food, water quality and general survival. Self indulgent worry took somewhat of a flying jump. Isnt that nice? lol
So thoughts move to home. The abstract concept that is ‘the place of belonging’. And how when I left school, when friends changed, when my brother moved out, well that was leaving home. Getting on that plane had nothing to do with it, that was just relocation. Home has already changed to such a point that I can never go back there, it doesn’t exist. It is a concept that now belongs in the past, I will never go back to school every day, second period, as it was, will never be at 1050 ever again, I wont spend lunch on the hill being nagged by teachers to wear suncream. We wont watch the guys play footy-like I could passively watch any more-, gossip about bad fake tans, about the formal, about parents, teachers.. its all gone. I don’t come home and see my brother anymore, mum works so the house was always cold. The place, concept I lived in is gone. So being homesick.. well it just isn’t.
Theres stuff I miss, people from here and there, its just weird. And I cant help but feel I should be more hollow.. I should be more desperate to go home. But im not, and the world is yet to stop turning, North is still North no major dramas, so it cant be all that bad.
That said I listen to my Waifs and Triple J Unearthed music rather religiously. Theres something about the accents and we do sing about some stuff damn well, see I have a little national pride. About going to London, about our accent, about going to Europe and leaving the summer, about the distance. About what we give up, but also about how much is here too.
So, to sign off from such a irratic blog I shall elave you with some lyrics.
‘And I miss you like my left arm that’s been lost in a war, Today I dream of home and not of London any more..’
London Still, The Waifs
‘Baby theres no such thing as goodbye, just an interlude on a long wild ride.’
Goodbye, The Waifs
“Singing songs to myself on the way home, windows down on the freeway”
Whats with the weather, Unknown
(I do miss that..)
“When I wave you goodbye I get déjà vu.. and I know the worlds much smaller these days and you’re only a phone call away. But there are times when im alone and id give everything I own to have you back here for just one day”
Unknown, Triple J Unearthed
And that all did end up longer than I expected, but that’s what happens when you let me write.. don’t say I didn’t warn you ;)
Friday, 28 September 2007
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Tidying loose ends.. as best as i can
There are some little things covered in earlier blogs that im not sure I ever told you the ends of. (rather like the news in that way)
One being my glasses. It is world news now that I dropped them in a lake (details can be sought later for those who missed this) in Germany, on the first day of ISSC. I spent a week in lectures not being able to see a damn thing and relying on wonderful people to explain things, stop me from getting lost (specifically at night) and generally stop me from making a total fool of myself (they tried very hard, did a brilliant job considering the circumstances and I still think they are wonderful). So the rest of the story goes, I discovered glasses are not covered by travel insurance (I guess im not the first person to drop mine in a lake). But I did manage to procure some new ones, they are different, but cool in their own way.. and the most important thing is that I can see with them. I see this as a vital state of affairs.
Two, being the guide in Peru, details can be sought privately. (doenst that sound so pro.. maybe I should have stuck to law..lol) I have allsorts of advice relating to organised tours, guides (spec. ones where you have to get your own food.. and ones with ‘local’ guides..) but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to force opinions on everyone.
Three.. I should probably stop numbering them now cause it makes it sound like this blog is organised when it is most defiantly not. Oh, uni, that’s a good one. when I left aus it was going to be Law/arts. With two independent pieces of advice and persuasion from amazingly different sources (not, surprise surprise alex –simply saying someones writing is crap is NOT persuasion its just, well hollow really and I like to think untrue :P-) it has shifted back to Arts/Science in Queensland. Probably ill stick to this, the only foreseeable reason I can see to drop science is if I fail Maths, but we shall see.
What happening next? Always a slightly shifty question. Im currently spending two weeks exploring Britannia with my mother, Skye now (for many reasons), then going to Belgium (also for many reasons). Hopefully ill be staying in Belgium till I come home (with excursions to France and Denmark, all willing, a lot of my views on Paris changed after I got offered an apartment to borrow there.. and after people stopped referring to it with misty eyes and the idea of pure soppy romance.. lol) this is if I don’t freeze to death first or get fired again (although that’s probably less likely over here). This all puts me back to getting home after Christmas and my Birthday (lord knows where ill go for those). And getting summer again, and a good coffee.. and French Toast at the Boyz. (a café near where I live)
Hmm.. I can’t think of anything else, but then again they aren’t loose ends for me.. I lived them out.. and as such they got tied up in a little neat bow, well poetically speaking they did.
Ah.. when I was in Peru I thought id lost my Mp3 player. (panic.. that would have been bad with a capital B) I didn’t, it had been somehow put under the sheets etc. when my bed was made and as such only found when I sat on it. That probably wasn’t dire for you but it was looking bad for me. It would have been a 40hr trip to Norway sans Music, that I believe would have been bad, and left me arriving in Norway in an even worse mood than I did as was. Tired, stressed, delayed etc. I was tired enough from the whole Peru trip, and it took some bouncing back to get into anything resembling normal Amelia.
Oh, I have my laptop again. This is good.. I have limited wireless because the English don’t seem to have got round to installing it everywhere yet (and they have the gall to ask us if we even have electricity yet.. ha! Lol). My lap top also seems to have developed a habit of randomly crashing, running slowly then not and turning all my WMP files into some other music programmes files. I do not know why, but I think its categorised into ‘one of those things’, and perfectly normal for technology.
So.. what have I achieved? I managed to get a haircut, work out various postal systems (if anyone wants a post card please just email me with your address.. even if you’ve already had one.. just I figure they should go to people who want them.. not just randoms I managed to collect addresses off.. lol) even the bus systems in some places. Also the Tube (T, Underground) etc.a version of which ive been on in every country visited.. which has added to the adventure (spec as until this year they had always been a theoretical concept, we don’t really have undergrounds.. the city loop doesn’t really count..).
Oh, I managed to pick up some Portuguese, I was quite proud of that. But currently I am trying to work on my French (being brushed up from watching Madeline –a cartoon- when I was a kid) not doing too bad so far.. well by my standards..
That’s all I can think of for now.
Ask questions as you all desire.
One being my glasses. It is world news now that I dropped them in a lake (details can be sought later for those who missed this) in Germany, on the first day of ISSC. I spent a week in lectures not being able to see a damn thing and relying on wonderful people to explain things, stop me from getting lost (specifically at night) and generally stop me from making a total fool of myself (they tried very hard, did a brilliant job considering the circumstances and I still think they are wonderful). So the rest of the story goes, I discovered glasses are not covered by travel insurance (I guess im not the first person to drop mine in a lake). But I did manage to procure some new ones, they are different, but cool in their own way.. and the most important thing is that I can see with them. I see this as a vital state of affairs.
Two, being the guide in Peru, details can be sought privately. (doenst that sound so pro.. maybe I should have stuck to law..lol) I have allsorts of advice relating to organised tours, guides (spec. ones where you have to get your own food.. and ones with ‘local’ guides..) but somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to force opinions on everyone.
Three.. I should probably stop numbering them now cause it makes it sound like this blog is organised when it is most defiantly not. Oh, uni, that’s a good one. when I left aus it was going to be Law/arts. With two independent pieces of advice and persuasion from amazingly different sources (not, surprise surprise alex –simply saying someones writing is crap is NOT persuasion its just, well hollow really and I like to think untrue :P-) it has shifted back to Arts/Science in Queensland. Probably ill stick to this, the only foreseeable reason I can see to drop science is if I fail Maths, but we shall see.
What happening next? Always a slightly shifty question. Im currently spending two weeks exploring Britannia with my mother, Skye now (for many reasons), then going to Belgium (also for many reasons). Hopefully ill be staying in Belgium till I come home (with excursions to France and Denmark, all willing, a lot of my views on Paris changed after I got offered an apartment to borrow there.. and after people stopped referring to it with misty eyes and the idea of pure soppy romance.. lol) this is if I don’t freeze to death first or get fired again (although that’s probably less likely over here). This all puts me back to getting home after Christmas and my Birthday (lord knows where ill go for those). And getting summer again, and a good coffee.. and French Toast at the Boyz. (a café near where I live)
Hmm.. I can’t think of anything else, but then again they aren’t loose ends for me.. I lived them out.. and as such they got tied up in a little neat bow, well poetically speaking they did.
Ah.. when I was in Peru I thought id lost my Mp3 player. (panic.. that would have been bad with a capital B) I didn’t, it had been somehow put under the sheets etc. when my bed was made and as such only found when I sat on it. That probably wasn’t dire for you but it was looking bad for me. It would have been a 40hr trip to Norway sans Music, that I believe would have been bad, and left me arriving in Norway in an even worse mood than I did as was. Tired, stressed, delayed etc. I was tired enough from the whole Peru trip, and it took some bouncing back to get into anything resembling normal Amelia.
Oh, I have my laptop again. This is good.. I have limited wireless because the English don’t seem to have got round to installing it everywhere yet (and they have the gall to ask us if we even have electricity yet.. ha! Lol). My lap top also seems to have developed a habit of randomly crashing, running slowly then not and turning all my WMP files into some other music programmes files. I do not know why, but I think its categorised into ‘one of those things’, and perfectly normal for technology.
So.. what have I achieved? I managed to get a haircut, work out various postal systems (if anyone wants a post card please just email me with your address.. even if you’ve already had one.. just I figure they should go to people who want them.. not just randoms I managed to collect addresses off.. lol) even the bus systems in some places. Also the Tube (T, Underground) etc.a version of which ive been on in every country visited.. which has added to the adventure (spec as until this year they had always been a theoretical concept, we don’t really have undergrounds.. the city loop doesn’t really count..).
Oh, I managed to pick up some Portuguese, I was quite proud of that. But currently I am trying to work on my French (being brushed up from watching Madeline –a cartoon- when I was a kid) not doing too bad so far.. well by my standards..
That’s all I can think of for now.
Ask questions as you all desire.
Looking for a story.. although I doubt there is one
and if you have to look.. does that mean there was never one to find in the first place? ha, and should people be allowed to ask annoying questions like that?..ha (again)
So.. interesting ness.. since I last had internet, I have no idea whats happened really.. I passed over both the English/Welsh and English/Scottish Border.. leaving me in Scotland. We did plan on visiting the Lakes district but due to a ingrained lack of foreplanning on my half.. and a lack of desire for foreplanning on my mothers behalf (this is what happens when she gets into a holiday mood) we ended up in the Lakes district in high season on a Saturday sans accommodation. This was, as one possibly can imagine, a BAD thing, and a cause of some stress between both Mother and Daughter (daughter who in this case happened to be losing afore mentioned war with both navigation and accommodation.. it was not so pretty) but it all turned out well in the end. Despite all my vague wandering thoughts of stealing caravans, sleeping in the car, begging someone to let me sleep in their kitchen.. we ended up at a Youth Hostel, which althought being fully booked out happened to be manned by a wonderful gentleman. I use the word gentleman with some.. (that word which has slipped my mind.. thingo) Trepidation! S’the one ..because he was.. well the kind of bloke who at 40 something works at a Youth Hostel.. (note. Not the sad pathetic kind who is trying to get his life back by hanging out with youths) but the genuine hippy kind.. with the proper raggedy long hair in a pony tail, lanky disposition and green cords (a type of pants)
-explanations of various things are currently being put in because Im not 100% who my audience is and don’t really want to assume mountains of prior knowledge..-
And he was fantastic.. (so was this youth hostel actually.. forgotten where it is, but some town north west of the lakes district fantastic.) he was very apologetic for not having somewhere for us to sleep.. not that it was overly his fault.. so he rang around everywhere within 15miles (I have no idea how far that actually is..) to find us accommodation.. and did! More success! Go us.. lol and many thanks to afore mentioned nameless man.
But.. that’s not really a story.. or maybe it is.. whos to say? Probably not an interesting one.. so.. for the goss (as they say)
We walked into a tourist information centre.. (wow.. what a radical tourist activity I hear you say..just wait.. just wait I say) and the lady in there is laughing.. rather maniacally from my view.. and with a later phone conversation the cause of said maniacality (word doesn’t accept that as a word.. but it should be) soon becomes apparent. This lass had walked into her office to find shells (as in gun cartridges) on her desk, with a note underneath them detailing why they were there (they were found in the park) and that they were possibly, but not defiantly live, this had left the poor lady in hysterics. It later became apparent that she thought that a live shell meant that it was.. well live.. liable to go off at any point (and I imagine she thought it was suddenly going to explode the whole info centre). I gently tried to explain (hopefully truthfully.. please don’t someone come along and tell me the damn things are seriously dangerous on their robinson) basic combustion and the need for a confined space etc. for them to explode with any great meaning.. but she was still rather concerned and called the Army to take them away, she was amazingly adamant that they had left them behind.. it is quite possible that if I were in the situation I would have tried to sell them on Ebay.. which possibly shows a very warped sense of values.. and possibly lack of respect towards OH&S.. and military equipment (no surprise there).
The ammo also brought up another, mortally interesting topic. It is Deer Stalking season in the UK. (note that.. stalking.. not watching) I had rather forgotten they still hunt here –although its no different when we roo hunt, pig hunt, or kull (a nice word for massacre) kangaroos, its just they aren’t activites I have ever had much to do with- its quite different to discover that people are stalking within walking distance, and that its wise to wear bright colours so they don’t think you are a deer (this does rather bring up the question of what happens if you aren’t wearing bright colours). As far as I know no one has ever thought I resembled a deer before, but as of that day I have decided not to risk it, just in case I happen to be going through a deery phase (god willing this will not happen..) reassurance on this point is most welcome.
I had a rather odd realisation this morning. And the preface odd should truly be empasised, odd and totally unrelated to deer.. I realised I have no recollection as to what I normally eat for breakfast (not deer.. or shells for that matter). As in the normally when I was back in Aus. not the normally tramping round potato farms at 4000m in the Andes. Not the normally waking up after 4hrs sleep in the Artic circle. DEFINATLY not the normal of a plane breakfast, or cereal at Alex’s, or rushed in Portugal, or at a youth Hostel in Germany. But what I ate on the Peninsula, the place with the wine, rich and poor people, fantastic beaches and café virus. In what I can only describe as normal normality. It wasn’t toast, or cereal or.. well I can cross out a lot.. including Black Pudding and Bagels. (or beagles). Again one of those frustrating mysteries that hits you over tea in the morning. And that probably doenst really need to be shared with the world.. but you never know.. someone out there might remember…
Tea was, in this case, in what is described as a ‘Manor House’ (apparently its not a mansion although that’s what id, in my common convict tongue, call it). Its old and stunning.. and everything oozes OLD money. I really recommend a stay, it has views over a Loch (and sailing boats) and the Lady of said house is Sybil Ramsey (well not totally she breeds Rhodendendrons rather than things with scales.. but it’s the same casual messyness knowing that she doesn’t need to be perfectly presentable because she has the ‘breeding’ behind her, its fantastic.) (and sorry to people who don’t get the reference.. try googling Sybil Ramsey or Sybil Vimes and see what you get, N.B she is actually an entirely fictional character).
What else is of note? The sheep have tails (it looks Uber unco). There are old ‘ruins’ everywhere.. cairns (old burial mounds) standing stones etc. I cant say looking at them in the rain was wise.. it did just leave me with a feeling that all people from the ancient world were screwy buggers who just put these things here for show, to confuse archaeologists and force poor tourists to come look at them in the rain, so they can freeze to death and get frostbite on their noses.
I have since decided that this may have been a slightly irrational conclusion to reach, and that they probably are actually interesting..when you aren’t freezing and bitter about being freezing.
They are very old. I just cant work out WHY you would drag rocks into a field then stand them up. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time. (something I can rather too well empathise with..that would be how I ended up in Peru, Norway twice and Portugal, and germany.. and…)
But got to run.. hope some one managed to stick it through to the end..Take care.. and smile (still stolen.. I know.. ill ™ it next time..)
So.. interesting ness.. since I last had internet, I have no idea whats happened really.. I passed over both the English/Welsh and English/Scottish Border.. leaving me in Scotland. We did plan on visiting the Lakes district but due to a ingrained lack of foreplanning on my half.. and a lack of desire for foreplanning on my mothers behalf (this is what happens when she gets into a holiday mood) we ended up in the Lakes district in high season on a Saturday sans accommodation. This was, as one possibly can imagine, a BAD thing, and a cause of some stress between both Mother and Daughter (daughter who in this case happened to be losing afore mentioned war with both navigation and accommodation.. it was not so pretty) but it all turned out well in the end. Despite all my vague wandering thoughts of stealing caravans, sleeping in the car, begging someone to let me sleep in their kitchen.. we ended up at a Youth Hostel, which althought being fully booked out happened to be manned by a wonderful gentleman. I use the word gentleman with some.. (that word which has slipped my mind.. thingo) Trepidation! S’the one ..because he was.. well the kind of bloke who at 40 something works at a Youth Hostel.. (note. Not the sad pathetic kind who is trying to get his life back by hanging out with youths) but the genuine hippy kind.. with the proper raggedy long hair in a pony tail, lanky disposition and green cords (a type of pants)
-explanations of various things are currently being put in because Im not 100% who my audience is and don’t really want to assume mountains of prior knowledge..-
And he was fantastic.. (so was this youth hostel actually.. forgotten where it is, but some town north west of the lakes district fantastic.) he was very apologetic for not having somewhere for us to sleep.. not that it was overly his fault.. so he rang around everywhere within 15miles (I have no idea how far that actually is..) to find us accommodation.. and did! More success! Go us.. lol and many thanks to afore mentioned nameless man.
But.. that’s not really a story.. or maybe it is.. whos to say? Probably not an interesting one.. so.. for the goss (as they say)
We walked into a tourist information centre.. (wow.. what a radical tourist activity I hear you say..just wait.. just wait I say) and the lady in there is laughing.. rather maniacally from my view.. and with a later phone conversation the cause of said maniacality (word doesn’t accept that as a word.. but it should be) soon becomes apparent. This lass had walked into her office to find shells (as in gun cartridges) on her desk, with a note underneath them detailing why they were there (they were found in the park) and that they were possibly, but not defiantly live, this had left the poor lady in hysterics. It later became apparent that she thought that a live shell meant that it was.. well live.. liable to go off at any point (and I imagine she thought it was suddenly going to explode the whole info centre). I gently tried to explain (hopefully truthfully.. please don’t someone come along and tell me the damn things are seriously dangerous on their robinson) basic combustion and the need for a confined space etc. for them to explode with any great meaning.. but she was still rather concerned and called the Army to take them away, she was amazingly adamant that they had left them behind.. it is quite possible that if I were in the situation I would have tried to sell them on Ebay.. which possibly shows a very warped sense of values.. and possibly lack of respect towards OH&S.. and military equipment (no surprise there).
The ammo also brought up another, mortally interesting topic. It is Deer Stalking season in the UK. (note that.. stalking.. not watching) I had rather forgotten they still hunt here –although its no different when we roo hunt, pig hunt, or kull (a nice word for massacre) kangaroos, its just they aren’t activites I have ever had much to do with- its quite different to discover that people are stalking within walking distance, and that its wise to wear bright colours so they don’t think you are a deer (this does rather bring up the question of what happens if you aren’t wearing bright colours). As far as I know no one has ever thought I resembled a deer before, but as of that day I have decided not to risk it, just in case I happen to be going through a deery phase (god willing this will not happen..) reassurance on this point is most welcome.
I had a rather odd realisation this morning. And the preface odd should truly be empasised, odd and totally unrelated to deer.. I realised I have no recollection as to what I normally eat for breakfast (not deer.. or shells for that matter). As in the normally when I was back in Aus. not the normally tramping round potato farms at 4000m in the Andes. Not the normally waking up after 4hrs sleep in the Artic circle. DEFINATLY not the normal of a plane breakfast, or cereal at Alex’s, or rushed in Portugal, or at a youth Hostel in Germany. But what I ate on the Peninsula, the place with the wine, rich and poor people, fantastic beaches and café virus. In what I can only describe as normal normality. It wasn’t toast, or cereal or.. well I can cross out a lot.. including Black Pudding and Bagels. (or beagles). Again one of those frustrating mysteries that hits you over tea in the morning. And that probably doenst really need to be shared with the world.. but you never know.. someone out there might remember…
Tea was, in this case, in what is described as a ‘Manor House’ (apparently its not a mansion although that’s what id, in my common convict tongue, call it). Its old and stunning.. and everything oozes OLD money. I really recommend a stay, it has views over a Loch (and sailing boats) and the Lady of said house is Sybil Ramsey (well not totally she breeds Rhodendendrons rather than things with scales.. but it’s the same casual messyness knowing that she doesn’t need to be perfectly presentable because she has the ‘breeding’ behind her, its fantastic.) (and sorry to people who don’t get the reference.. try googling Sybil Ramsey or Sybil Vimes and see what you get, N.B she is actually an entirely fictional character).
What else is of note? The sheep have tails (it looks Uber unco). There are old ‘ruins’ everywhere.. cairns (old burial mounds) standing stones etc. I cant say looking at them in the rain was wise.. it did just leave me with a feeling that all people from the ancient world were screwy buggers who just put these things here for show, to confuse archaeologists and force poor tourists to come look at them in the rain, so they can freeze to death and get frostbite on their noses.
I have since decided that this may have been a slightly irrational conclusion to reach, and that they probably are actually interesting..when you aren’t freezing and bitter about being freezing.
They are very old. I just cant work out WHY you would drag rocks into a field then stand them up. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time. (something I can rather too well empathise with..that would be how I ended up in Peru, Norway twice and Portugal, and germany.. and…)
But got to run.. hope some one managed to stick it through to the end..Take care.. and smile (still stolen.. I know.. ill ™ it next time..)
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Introduction..ie. read this bit first
So.. copied below are all my blogs dating back to Germany (no idea what month that was.. maybe August ish?) and of course i forgot to copy the dates with them.. sooooo..well you can just guess..
why? because they were all on myspace and as such couldnt actually be viewed by anyone.. and it did occur to me that the whole point of actually typing a diary thingo is for it to be read.. (this is a thought in progress..) and the whole point of actually having an audience is because it improves the quality of my writing (which has been described as both absolutly crap and worth of a book-so think of it what you will.. what with my lack of spelling etc. and the fact that i proof read nothing)
who is this blog for.. i was just wondering this as i copied these accross.. mainly for myself of course as a thingo.. a reminder.. an insubstantial souvenier (unlike the pink Nessy -ie. Loch ness monster- which i just obtained.. i love the differnt souveniers in each country.. seeing what the 'country' thinks will sell.. in Scotland its tartan EVERYTHING, Nessy and short Bread. In Whales its is dragons and both have the Celtic -officially pronounced Sel-tic- stuff..) and just an excuse to type.. and an attempt to keep in touch with people, and to share randomness...
i was very dissapointed that the first person i spoke to in Scotland didnt have a scottish accent. It was south African, with english overlays, and the slight scot tang, ie. weirder than my accent. I cant quite do the scot one, various english ones are easy, but i still cant roll my 'r's to get the Scot. But we did meet someone who siad 'Nae Bother', couldnt quite work out if he was putting it on because we were foreigners though.. it was halarious..
and of course thats not in the slightest nessicary for an intro but there you go..
have fun, smile (as they say) and take care..
and sorry to the person i blasted on msn this morning.. look its a public apology it has to be legit :P
why? because they were all on myspace and as such couldnt actually be viewed by anyone.. and it did occur to me that the whole point of actually typing a diary thingo is for it to be read.. (this is a thought in progress..) and the whole point of actually having an audience is because it improves the quality of my writing (which has been described as both absolutly crap and worth of a book-so think of it what you will.. what with my lack of spelling etc. and the fact that i proof read nothing)
who is this blog for.. i was just wondering this as i copied these accross.. mainly for myself of course as a thingo.. a reminder.. an insubstantial souvenier (unlike the pink Nessy -ie. Loch ness monster- which i just obtained.. i love the differnt souveniers in each country.. seeing what the 'country' thinks will sell.. in Scotland its tartan EVERYTHING, Nessy and short Bread. In Whales its is dragons and both have the Celtic -officially pronounced Sel-tic- stuff..) and just an excuse to type.. and an attempt to keep in touch with people, and to share randomness...
i was very dissapointed that the first person i spoke to in Scotland didnt have a scottish accent. It was south African, with english overlays, and the slight scot tang, ie. weirder than my accent. I cant quite do the scot one, various english ones are easy, but i still cant roll my 'r's to get the Scot. But we did meet someone who siad 'Nae Bother', couldnt quite work out if he was putting it on because we were foreigners though.. it was halarious..
and of course thats not in the slightest nessicary for an intro but there you go..
have fun, smile (as they say) and take care..
and sorry to the person i blasted on msn this morning.. look its a public apology it has to be legit :P
Bala, the centre of the world
Bala.. ever heard of it? Well yes and no.. it commandes a paragraph or so in the Lonely planet book simply because it has the National Watersports centre.. and some rapids apparently. I am slowly building up the belief that once you get out of a capital the ‘interesting ness’ quality of a town is directly proportional to the amount coverage it gets in a Lonely Planet guide book.. the more coverage the less interesting.. the less.. or no coverage.. the better.. or as the case may be, the more interesting. Do not misunderstand me, interesting does not equal, under any circumstance, better. There is only one case as yet where this particular observation is wrong.. and that is for a manor house BnB in.. a very small village in Scotland..
Well Bala fits the category of interesting.. the town itself is quite nice. Its small, has a disproportionate number of pubs (amazing amount, like 5ish for 1600 people) is in Wale’s largest naturally formed lake (with its own fish.. which has a relative in some Norwegian Fijord). Oh and half the people talk Welsh to each other, and to us. That bit is quite nice actually, Welsh is an interesting sounding language. It is very, well its described as musical.. although id go for more.. lilting.. or uppy downy in normal language (ie. Not flat to listen to) and aside from the *mach* and *och* sounds well sort of northern Euro.. kinda scandanavian..maybe.. definatly not a romance language though..But its quite nice to sit and listen to in a Pub, although i will admit i am well and truly over Pub food.. there is a limit to the number of Pies and chips, fish and chips etc. one can ever eat.. i may have reached said limit.
But that’s not the exciting bit, well the “interesting” bit. The point of note is this Bed and Breakfast we are currently staying in(the joys of travelling with your mother). It is run by two old people (not to be derogative at all..no not me.. PC all the way..lol) in their decidedly non-Welsh looking house. (this is what happens when you book through the information centre instead of just rocking up and bumbling through yourself) and the lady is that weird creepy old, where they look at you as if they have just forgotten for a moment why you were standing in front of them. And the guy is that kind of overly friendly, helpful chatty bloke (who like everyone) has relatives in Australia and expects you, if you don’t know them personally, to know the very town that they come from. *shudders* I wasn’t in a social mood this afternoon, and wasn’t overly inspired by the idea of getting a lecture on the local town (where did you think that the very accurate figures about Bala came from? Not imagined this time my dear friends, WHY do people develop this desire to tell me things? soemtimes its good.. this time.. no no no) but I got it anyway’s.. and of course being me the little annoying figures fitted themselves nicely into my brain (not the one about where the internet café was.. nothing useful ever sinks in).
So here I am, tapping away on my laptop (yay for laptops!!!) wishing for wireless (can you believe it? Two towns with NO wireless within striking distance, that means NO ONE with in a fair diameter has wireless.. talk about weird) and drinking port to numb the pain. Pain? I hear you ask..what pain? *shudders and shoots the last of the port* joke.. this room.. this room that I’m staying in.. is the pure embodiment of Purple, it is called the lilac room, and looks like the place where the anthropomorphic realisation of Purple (ie. If Purple was turned into a person, like the idea of the Grim reaper for Purple.. horrible thought isn’t it?) if that lass found itself here on Earth, or in Wales more specifically she would be more than happy staying in this room. Possibly even she would feel purpled out (thank god we didn’t get the Peach room), it is Purple to the max, Purple gone hardcore, Purple on steroids. The Lightshades, walls, carpet, pillows, doona, curtains, clock, towels, PICTUREFRAMES are all purple. That cannot be legal. There should be missiles designed to sense such high densities of purple and then to DESTROY!!!!! I’m sure there are other elements of this place worthy of description.. but I cant get past the purple.. it’s a giant mental block that im not programmed to deal with. So.. moving on.
We stayed at a cool place the night before last. Admittedly if all had gone well we wouldn’t have been staying there. It was my first day of navigating (after going to the Dr Who exhibition, which was uber cool.. we saw daleks.. various aliens, cybermen of course, and some pretty cool props.. oh! And Torchwood!! We went to, well we went to the Cardiff Millenium Centre, which is Torchwood.. talk about nerdy and exciting) and well.. it didn’t go as well as I would have liked. See navigating in the UK is slightly different. They do many things differently, starting with road names. They either a) don’t have them (wtf?? Do you know how HARD that makes navigating?) or b) in the city they have 3 roads with the same name within one block, so its not actually possible to find yourself. (we weren’t the only people to have troubles.. some kids with a GPS and google maps decided that they would have a better chance of finding their destination if they blindfolded themselves and generally bumped their way around the city).
So.. there’s no names on the roads, and the highways are all numbered (yay, lets pick on the Dyslexics yet again..). And then theres the distance issue. I mean for us it takes about 10mins as a general approximation to get from one town to the next.. obviously there are variations.. but there is normally enough time to see one town sign and then work out how you are going to get to the next town. NOT SO, no such luck. There seems to be maybe 2-3 mins approx between towns, and in some cases towns that are marked as two separate ones aren’t. and of course I didn’t know that, did i? I just did my normal navigator thing, thus getting totally confused (because roads would woosh past that weren’t marked, the road we were supposed to turn onto never turned up and villages would pass at what seemed like lightening speed so I count actually reference), and just slightly lost. Part of the problem may also be in our map. It doesn’t mark any roads once you get into a town, only the ones outside the town. But I guess a good crafts men never blames his tools.. or some such. So basically we ended up in this town (after looking at a cool castle, there are a lot of them) called Nelson so I decided that we should just head away from that and Cardiff in the general idea that that would get us somewhere.. for some freaky geological reason I just CANT work out.. it didn’t. Without back tracking.. going in a circle, or doing any of the normal things we travelled along a ridge dipped into a different valley and.. da da da da da.. ended up in Nelson again.. no matter how much I imagine that over and over again.. I have no idea how we managed that.. the only logical conclustion is that there were two towns called nelson. By this time we were slightly tired, I was stressed and frazzled and mum was over driving so we pulled into the first BnB pub thing we could find.. and it was actually lovely, they were all very friendly, educational and generally nice. It was amusing at dinner though, and at breakkie for that matter too.. because everyone tried to help give us directions to go to wherever we said we wanted to go to.. I think we said Snowdonia. But this led to the most Bill Brysony scenario I have encountered. Every bloke in the pub gathered around to help us, at cross purposes of course, and in one case in such a thick accent all I could do was smile and nod. It was actually hilarious. One got out his little book of road maps and made me write down all the town names we ahd to go through, and once they were written down I had to try and say the names. Talk about amusing (well for them anywyas.. I was just trying to pronounce them in a way that didn’t lead to me spraying spit everywhere) ever tried pronouncing “Aberystwyth” or “Llangollen”? I don’t recommend it without coaching. But they were really friendly, and of course we just followed the directions that the breakkie lady gave us, and they worked. Breakkie was lovely, the place was new as a B&B which meant that EVERYTHING was new. Including all the breakkie stuff, which was all Ikea, there is something appealing about that, a kind of familiarity about it.
So we headed off from Nelson, successfully got out of the town. (yay! Success at long last I swear my navigation isnt normally that bad) and visited another castle. It was very very cool.. and then we.. well we took a bit of a detour.. remind me never to do this again. Which meant that we took about twice as long as necessary, but we navigated up the coast, and up past many towns that we couldn’t pronounce, and generally had a good drive. We stayed in the Black lion hotel which was quite cool. The less cool thing was that breakkie included Black Pudding, which is quite a horrible thing, dried blood made into a ‘pudding’ shudders.. you would think that after a guine pig that would be fine.. but there was somthing about the consistancy.. like it wasnt quite dead enough.. (you would htink after being bled and dried it would be pretty dead.. but it seemed to have developed a second life..vampire pudding..haha)
Well Bala fits the category of interesting.. the town itself is quite nice. Its small, has a disproportionate number of pubs (amazing amount, like 5ish for 1600 people) is in Wale’s largest naturally formed lake (with its own fish.. which has a relative in some Norwegian Fijord). Oh and half the people talk Welsh to each other, and to us. That bit is quite nice actually, Welsh is an interesting sounding language. It is very, well its described as musical.. although id go for more.. lilting.. or uppy downy in normal language (ie. Not flat to listen to) and aside from the *mach* and *och* sounds well sort of northern Euro.. kinda scandanavian..maybe.. definatly not a romance language though..But its quite nice to sit and listen to in a Pub, although i will admit i am well and truly over Pub food.. there is a limit to the number of Pies and chips, fish and chips etc. one can ever eat.. i may have reached said limit.
But that’s not the exciting bit, well the “interesting” bit. The point of note is this Bed and Breakfast we are currently staying in(the joys of travelling with your mother). It is run by two old people (not to be derogative at all..no not me.. PC all the way..lol) in their decidedly non-Welsh looking house. (this is what happens when you book through the information centre instead of just rocking up and bumbling through yourself) and the lady is that weird creepy old, where they look at you as if they have just forgotten for a moment why you were standing in front of them. And the guy is that kind of overly friendly, helpful chatty bloke (who like everyone) has relatives in Australia and expects you, if you don’t know them personally, to know the very town that they come from. *shudders* I wasn’t in a social mood this afternoon, and wasn’t overly inspired by the idea of getting a lecture on the local town (where did you think that the very accurate figures about Bala came from? Not imagined this time my dear friends, WHY do people develop this desire to tell me things? soemtimes its good.. this time.. no no no) but I got it anyway’s.. and of course being me the little annoying figures fitted themselves nicely into my brain (not the one about where the internet café was.. nothing useful ever sinks in).
So here I am, tapping away on my laptop (yay for laptops!!!) wishing for wireless (can you believe it? Two towns with NO wireless within striking distance, that means NO ONE with in a fair diameter has wireless.. talk about weird) and drinking port to numb the pain. Pain? I hear you ask..what pain? *shudders and shoots the last of the port* joke.. this room.. this room that I’m staying in.. is the pure embodiment of Purple, it is called the lilac room, and looks like the place where the anthropomorphic realisation of Purple (ie. If Purple was turned into a person, like the idea of the Grim reaper for Purple.. horrible thought isn’t it?) if that lass found itself here on Earth, or in Wales more specifically she would be more than happy staying in this room. Possibly even she would feel purpled out (thank god we didn’t get the Peach room), it is Purple to the max, Purple gone hardcore, Purple on steroids. The Lightshades, walls, carpet, pillows, doona, curtains, clock, towels, PICTUREFRAMES are all purple. That cannot be legal. There should be missiles designed to sense such high densities of purple and then to DESTROY!!!!! I’m sure there are other elements of this place worthy of description.. but I cant get past the purple.. it’s a giant mental block that im not programmed to deal with. So.. moving on.
We stayed at a cool place the night before last. Admittedly if all had gone well we wouldn’t have been staying there. It was my first day of navigating (after going to the Dr Who exhibition, which was uber cool.. we saw daleks.. various aliens, cybermen of course, and some pretty cool props.. oh! And Torchwood!! We went to, well we went to the Cardiff Millenium Centre, which is Torchwood.. talk about nerdy and exciting) and well.. it didn’t go as well as I would have liked. See navigating in the UK is slightly different. They do many things differently, starting with road names. They either a) don’t have them (wtf?? Do you know how HARD that makes navigating?) or b) in the city they have 3 roads with the same name within one block, so its not actually possible to find yourself. (we weren’t the only people to have troubles.. some kids with a GPS and google maps decided that they would have a better chance of finding their destination if they blindfolded themselves and generally bumped their way around the city).
So.. there’s no names on the roads, and the highways are all numbered (yay, lets pick on the Dyslexics yet again..). And then theres the distance issue. I mean for us it takes about 10mins as a general approximation to get from one town to the next.. obviously there are variations.. but there is normally enough time to see one town sign and then work out how you are going to get to the next town. NOT SO, no such luck. There seems to be maybe 2-3 mins approx between towns, and in some cases towns that are marked as two separate ones aren’t. and of course I didn’t know that, did i? I just did my normal navigator thing, thus getting totally confused (because roads would woosh past that weren’t marked, the road we were supposed to turn onto never turned up and villages would pass at what seemed like lightening speed so I count actually reference), and just slightly lost. Part of the problem may also be in our map. It doesn’t mark any roads once you get into a town, only the ones outside the town. But I guess a good crafts men never blames his tools.. or some such. So basically we ended up in this town (after looking at a cool castle, there are a lot of them) called Nelson so I decided that we should just head away from that and Cardiff in the general idea that that would get us somewhere.. for some freaky geological reason I just CANT work out.. it didn’t. Without back tracking.. going in a circle, or doing any of the normal things we travelled along a ridge dipped into a different valley and.. da da da da da.. ended up in Nelson again.. no matter how much I imagine that over and over again.. I have no idea how we managed that.. the only logical conclustion is that there were two towns called nelson. By this time we were slightly tired, I was stressed and frazzled and mum was over driving so we pulled into the first BnB pub thing we could find.. and it was actually lovely, they were all very friendly, educational and generally nice. It was amusing at dinner though, and at breakkie for that matter too.. because everyone tried to help give us directions to go to wherever we said we wanted to go to.. I think we said Snowdonia. But this led to the most Bill Brysony scenario I have encountered. Every bloke in the pub gathered around to help us, at cross purposes of course, and in one case in such a thick accent all I could do was smile and nod. It was actually hilarious. One got out his little book of road maps and made me write down all the town names we ahd to go through, and once they were written down I had to try and say the names. Talk about amusing (well for them anywyas.. I was just trying to pronounce them in a way that didn’t lead to me spraying spit everywhere) ever tried pronouncing “Aberystwyth” or “Llangollen”? I don’t recommend it without coaching. But they were really friendly, and of course we just followed the directions that the breakkie lady gave us, and they worked. Breakkie was lovely, the place was new as a B&B which meant that EVERYTHING was new. Including all the breakkie stuff, which was all Ikea, there is something appealing about that, a kind of familiarity about it.
So we headed off from Nelson, successfully got out of the town. (yay! Success at long last I swear my navigation isnt normally that bad) and visited another castle. It was very very cool.. and then we.. well we took a bit of a detour.. remind me never to do this again. Which meant that we took about twice as long as necessary, but we navigated up the coast, and up past many towns that we couldn’t pronounce, and generally had a good drive. We stayed in the Black lion hotel which was quite cool. The less cool thing was that breakkie included Black Pudding, which is quite a horrible thing, dried blood made into a ‘pudding’ shudders.. you would think that after a guine pig that would be fine.. but there was somthing about the consistancy.. like it wasnt quite dead enough.. (you would htink after being bled and dried it would be pretty dead.. but it seemed to have developed a second life..vampire pudding..haha)
Royal Britannia
Rule Britannia!Britannia rule the waves.Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
Yep, yep, that was defiantly the British view of the world, couldn’t really tell you if that is still their definitive view now, I don’t think they are that deluded to believe they are boss, but it was defiantly their view when they were designing their architecture.
So, in the last few days I have said goodbye to Richmond, rather sad as it is a stunning place, and then spent two nights in London itself. (after much confusion with the damn tube tickets.. and smiling nicely to get past the ticket barriers with invalid tickets.. we got good at that) But its cool. My mum arrived the other day, and after minimal jet lag we have begun our little tour of the so called United Kingdom. (don’t know how united Scotland is feeling with Britan, but it can stay the UK just for convenience sake) we spent the first days exploring Richmond, then set our sights a little higher. There is a lot of see and do in London. I’m sure there has to be hundreds of tourists who go round to each street from the Monopoly board and take a pic of themselves with it. (Ill admit this did occur to me, I just managed to refrain.) Theres lots of old stuff, and normal capital city stuff, like wax works museums etc. and shops to the max. Plus the most brilliant souveniers.. the brits know how to make seriously corny souveniers, you can get ANYTHING with the tube map on it (there is limited use to underwear with the tube map, simply because it don’t tell you the little details like ‘exit only on Sundays’ and then there is the the embarrassment of actually checking if you are on the right line) and red telephone boxes (I have been warned by Londoners, please do not go into a red telephone box, and if for whatever reason you are in one, please do not touch anything.. I write this as a public service announcement as tramps tend to sleep in them at night, and they are also the typical place to go if you want to call a girl who will tell you exactly what she is, or in this case, what she isn’t wearing, and as such they tend to be covered with not nice stuff) and all sorts of models of Big Ben etc.
We came to the conclusion that the easiest way to see everything was to do one of those really embarrassing ride on top buses, where you sit on top, take pictures and freeze to death.
Well I froze to death, we managed to pick the cold day of the week to go adventuring. But we did successfully go exploring, and saw everything we were supposed to. Buckingham palace (big lot of old bricks) Big Ben (uber uber cool), the Globe (also known as the Dysk in my head.. pretty stunning), the Tower of London (Beware people.. its not actually a tower, ie. Something tall, it is more.. well short and squat and looks like you couldn’t pry it off the ground with a crow bar.. but again cool and well defended) umm.. Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street.. etc. oh umm Hide Park and all that stuff. Pretty groovy. I recommend Big Ben and the Globe. And we took pictures and did everything, probably, that we were supposed to as tourists for a day. We even went to an English pub for dinner.. although I doubt Nachos is really classified as proper British food.. I think ill have to have Bangers and Mash at some point.. just because that is sooo English.. and Fish and Chips too when I can get over my issues with cod (they don’t use flake here), the Cod thing goes back to Portugal. They also make a Fishfinger sandwitch.. I also have the suspicion that this fits into the category of must trys simply cause it doesn’t sound like something that belongs on a menu.
So that was pretty cool.. having some time to explore London. Another exciting part of the day was getting new boots.. much as I love my old ones.. they had rather died.. worn on the toe (on the inside of the toe.. anyone who can explain that gets a prize) and through the heel to the metal holding up the back, so I got new exciting (Merryl) ones.. cool cool. And exciting
And today we went to Cardiff (the capital of Wales) by bus. Turns out that wasn’t the wisest move as the M4 (a road) had a major crash on it and all the traffic was delayed so we didn’t leave till much later. And bus stations are not exciting places to hang around.. although we did managed to make some friends (we managed to make a lot of friends over the day). So we waited.. I spent a lot of time looking at choloclate chip muffins and debating whether or not I should get one.. ultimately I didn’t (you will all be glad to know I resolved that issue) because I realised I had a packet of Frosties (the cereal) to eat as a snack (go light fingeredness at breakkie) and couldn’t justify the expense. Then there was the usual long boring drawn out busride.. made slightly more exciting by the fact that I had new music on my Mp3 but that wasn’t really enough to make the whole trip decent. (there is a reason my dear friends, why buses are cheap). We even managed to brave the Cardiff bus system and find the way to our BnB (we had about 3 people, and the bus driver trying to help us to find our way to the hotel, it was rather amusing and very friendly). Oh.. and they tell me (the Brits) that the Aussies won the last round of Rugby in the world cup thingo.. apparently that didn’t go down too well..
So Cardiff seems nice enough.. we are staying in one of those lovely really UK houses.. which in no way shape or form explains what im staying in.. but its lovely. Breakkie looks great hehehe.. and we even managed to start on the Port and Cheese.. there is a lot of port.. A LOT.. but I am doing my duty :P
Tommorow we really begin the adventures.. picking up a hire car and seeing if we can work out the maps.. we are also going to find the place where chunks of Torchwood are filmed (to those that that makes sense to) called the millennium centre..so that could also be amusingly touristy..
Oh.. and of course Welsh is everywhere.. which is hard to explain.. but welsh is one of the most amusing looking languages.. fantastic
Yep, yep, that was defiantly the British view of the world, couldn’t really tell you if that is still their definitive view now, I don’t think they are that deluded to believe they are boss, but it was defiantly their view when they were designing their architecture.
So, in the last few days I have said goodbye to Richmond, rather sad as it is a stunning place, and then spent two nights in London itself. (after much confusion with the damn tube tickets.. and smiling nicely to get past the ticket barriers with invalid tickets.. we got good at that) But its cool. My mum arrived the other day, and after minimal jet lag we have begun our little tour of the so called United Kingdom. (don’t know how united Scotland is feeling with Britan, but it can stay the UK just for convenience sake) we spent the first days exploring Richmond, then set our sights a little higher. There is a lot of see and do in London. I’m sure there has to be hundreds of tourists who go round to each street from the Monopoly board and take a pic of themselves with it. (Ill admit this did occur to me, I just managed to refrain.) Theres lots of old stuff, and normal capital city stuff, like wax works museums etc. and shops to the max. Plus the most brilliant souveniers.. the brits know how to make seriously corny souveniers, you can get ANYTHING with the tube map on it (there is limited use to underwear with the tube map, simply because it don’t tell you the little details like ‘exit only on Sundays’ and then there is the the embarrassment of actually checking if you are on the right line) and red telephone boxes (I have been warned by Londoners, please do not go into a red telephone box, and if for whatever reason you are in one, please do not touch anything.. I write this as a public service announcement as tramps tend to sleep in them at night, and they are also the typical place to go if you want to call a girl who will tell you exactly what she is, or in this case, what she isn’t wearing, and as such they tend to be covered with not nice stuff) and all sorts of models of Big Ben etc.
We came to the conclusion that the easiest way to see everything was to do one of those really embarrassing ride on top buses, where you sit on top, take pictures and freeze to death.
Well I froze to death, we managed to pick the cold day of the week to go adventuring. But we did successfully go exploring, and saw everything we were supposed to. Buckingham palace (big lot of old bricks) Big Ben (uber uber cool), the Globe (also known as the Dysk in my head.. pretty stunning), the Tower of London (Beware people.. its not actually a tower, ie. Something tall, it is more.. well short and squat and looks like you couldn’t pry it off the ground with a crow bar.. but again cool and well defended) umm.. Trafalgar Square, Oxford Street.. etc. oh umm Hide Park and all that stuff. Pretty groovy. I recommend Big Ben and the Globe. And we took pictures and did everything, probably, that we were supposed to as tourists for a day. We even went to an English pub for dinner.. although I doubt Nachos is really classified as proper British food.. I think ill have to have Bangers and Mash at some point.. just because that is sooo English.. and Fish and Chips too when I can get over my issues with cod (they don’t use flake here), the Cod thing goes back to Portugal. They also make a Fishfinger sandwitch.. I also have the suspicion that this fits into the category of must trys simply cause it doesn’t sound like something that belongs on a menu.
So that was pretty cool.. having some time to explore London. Another exciting part of the day was getting new boots.. much as I love my old ones.. they had rather died.. worn on the toe (on the inside of the toe.. anyone who can explain that gets a prize) and through the heel to the metal holding up the back, so I got new exciting (Merryl) ones.. cool cool. And exciting
And today we went to Cardiff (the capital of Wales) by bus. Turns out that wasn’t the wisest move as the M4 (a road) had a major crash on it and all the traffic was delayed so we didn’t leave till much later. And bus stations are not exciting places to hang around.. although we did managed to make some friends (we managed to make a lot of friends over the day). So we waited.. I spent a lot of time looking at choloclate chip muffins and debating whether or not I should get one.. ultimately I didn’t (you will all be glad to know I resolved that issue) because I realised I had a packet of Frosties (the cereal) to eat as a snack (go light fingeredness at breakkie) and couldn’t justify the expense. Then there was the usual long boring drawn out busride.. made slightly more exciting by the fact that I had new music on my Mp3 but that wasn’t really enough to make the whole trip decent. (there is a reason my dear friends, why buses are cheap). We even managed to brave the Cardiff bus system and find the way to our BnB (we had about 3 people, and the bus driver trying to help us to find our way to the hotel, it was rather amusing and very friendly). Oh.. and they tell me (the Brits) that the Aussies won the last round of Rugby in the world cup thingo.. apparently that didn’t go down too well..
So Cardiff seems nice enough.. we are staying in one of those lovely really UK houses.. which in no way shape or form explains what im staying in.. but its lovely. Breakkie looks great hehehe.. and we even managed to start on the Port and Cheese.. there is a lot of port.. A LOT.. but I am doing my duty :P
Tommorow we really begin the adventures.. picking up a hire car and seeing if we can work out the maps.. we are also going to find the place where chunks of Torchwood are filmed (to those that that makes sense to) called the millennium centre..so that could also be amusingly touristy..
Oh.. and of course Welsh is everywhere.. which is hard to explain.. but welsh is one of the most amusing looking languages.. fantastic
’Took the tube over to Camden, to wander around’
'I brought some funky records witht that old moe town sound' ok.. well i didnt do that bit. mainly because i dont know what moe town sounds like.. and i dont have a CD player, let alone a record player.BUT i did go to Camden to wander around, I even took the tube. Mainly because of this song, and my cousin said it was funky. (The song is London Still by the Waifs for those who dont know) and Funky it was, although Funky doesnt really cover it. It was intense, and.. an 'experience', it was one of those places that you would love to just sit at a cafe on the street and watch people passing by. The best I can do to explain it is to relate it to Moulin Rouge, at the beginning where they go into the Bohemian area, with all the mad looking people. It was like that. There were Rich people and poor people, and goths and punks and business men,and tourists, quite a few of them. It was pretty cool. After wandering around markets in Latin America I thought Id seen pretty much everything for sale. From chickens feet, to star fish (to be used in magic spells, and weird little dried lizards, poor critters) hippy clothing to the max, and piles of cows noses.. i still look a cows and feel sorry for them etc. and when you add that to markets in China, well i thought id seen a bit. But no, so so so wrong (as well all knew i had to be, he world always gets you beack when you get arrogant.. its probably healthy.. lol). I think I actually found THE place where Goths get their shoes. Strange though it may be I had often looked at the shoes goths wear (the hardcore ones) and wondered where on earth they got them, because you defiantly dont get them in Bayside shopping centre. And I was amazed to see these stunning (in their own way) shoes on sale. It never occured to me that you could go into a shop and try on these various shoes, in different sizes i guess too. (I wonder if they go on sale.. this idea is getting weirder) I had this suspicion that either a) they inherited said shoes or b) they grew magically in your closet, like a kind of fungi, when you decided to devote your life to black. I guess its a bit dissapointing to see shops filled with said shoes. But they do look cool, in a sense (rather like snow leopards look cool, nice at a distance but kinda dangerous up close) what with the buckles, and massive amounts of dead cow, and the platforms, and chains etc. etc. (I hope you all have an idea of what im talking about)But yes there were goth shoe shops, goth clothing shops, goth tatoo shops, that has got to be a multi million pound industry. But Goth clothes are pretty fun, people must love designing them, cause you can get away with anything, and you dont need to worry about the colour scheme, all the corsets, and flowy skirts,and bags and hats, in hair dye alone they must make a mint. oh, and make up too. But it was nice to see all these stores co existing nicely with the 'hello kitty' shops next door. I think they work so well because they know that they arent competing. Go capatilism again, we can co exist happily (maybe even share a curry) with anyone who isnt going to potentially nick our customers. There is also a huge market. Mainly selling groovy hats (soo wanted one), belts, headbands (mass produced and boring, and attempting to look genuinely hippy haha) and different pieces of jewlerry. I wandered around these shops for some time and started to realise a pattern, not something you overly expect in markets. But what my sleuthing actually discovered (go sherlock amelia.. haha) was that half the stores were chain stores. Pardon? i thought to myself. Chain market stalls? but yes indeed, i would say the market repeats itself about 3 times, witha few small variations. again go capatilism, but it was keeping some hippies in a job, and everyone who wasnt a hippy couldnt speak english, so i guess it suited everyone. Then there was the food. Proper food (by that I mean the majority was asian, so we are on the up and up from southern Europe) at a reasonable ish price. But the really interesting thing was how they tried to convince you to eat at theirs. There was alot of shouting and come eat here.. but also alot of waving pieces of chicken in the air and making you try it. I dont know how or who came up with the idea that a pice of chicken was going to convince people to eat at their shop. But i do know that if you are starving and protein deprived there is a fairly high chance that you could get your protine RDI by wandering around the siad market and sawpping hats or jackets now and again. So my trip to camden was quite enjoyable, and i would reccomend it to anyone who gets the chance, just for a bit of culture. I then battled the Tube back (split lines, sooo confusing) and half way decided to go to another market that had been reccomended to me (the advantages of being on your robinson, changing your mind doesnt afect anyone else). It was near London Bridge, and quite a nice place to wander around. Rather upper class, and the food wasnt cheap but it was quite good quality. I successfully navigated buying a pumpkin (later that night i also successfully cooked it.. go amelia and her microwaving skills lol) and various other bits of produce. The thing about the supermarket here is that everything is pre packaged, including mushrooms (I did not want to buy that many mushrooms people.. there is a limit to how many mushrooms one girl can eat, and 250g is WAAYY over that limit) and all other fruits and vegies. (this i hope is jsut at a chain called Tesco) so im going to try to go to markets from now. the packaging is just frustrating. But yes that market was nice.Actually this week has been brill. I spent a day in the sun lying in a park reading (and riding a bike and getting slightly geographically dislocated) and watching deer and a stag wander around a park and run away from dogs. another day i went to the science museum (pretty cool, they did a show of explosions which entertained me for a while) and had replicas of commande modules and the moon lander. So that was groovy. and now my mother is coming which will be intersting. I have ot leave in about an hr to go pick her up (hopefully with success, I have no idea how to meet someone at an airport) and then I imagine that will be the excitement of the day as she will have been travelling for about 2 days. actually only a day and a half, so thats not so bad (and emirates too! talk about spoilt..lol) so thats the goss.I realised something else on my little wander around the park the other day. In the whole 3 or somonths ive been away, it has NEVER occured to me that i might get lost. Like genuinely lost. I have wandered around all sorts of towns, often without a map per se, just wandering down whichever street looks most interesting. I was trying to work out if this was a bad thing, then I realised something even better. If i did get lost, all i need to do is call someone with internet access and get them to look at Google maps. Talk about Globalisation, thats it in a Nutshell. I can call up my dad from Lisbon, he can look at google maps with a street reference or soemthing and then tell me when and where to turn left. from the other side of the world. madness, lucky i havent had to do that yet, but its another nice safety net. loltake care
The Joys of a big city, and time
I remember specifically the person who told me that Manchester is probably the coolest city in the world. and they lived in london! my god.. madness..dont get me wrong, manchesters probably pretty cool, but this is one of the cross roads of the world. its fantastic. truly awesome.So, Ive been here for a few days, and its great. Im sitting here uploading pics, drinking tea with fresh milk and eating toasted bagles. how bland does that sound? but its wonderful. I had a decent coffee yesterday (had to atually go to a cafe run by an Aussie.. but it was worth it, they advertise it as 'Australian trained Baristas' we are a selling point people!)So I was staying with my cousin, but they ahve tootled off to France for a week to chill so i get to look after myself (and some very odd fish, with a story, they are orphaned fish their owner ran off to some island in the middle americas leaving them and his guitar here) for a few days till mum comes. Which is pretty exciting. But yes, My cousin is an Aussie who has worked here long enough to get UK citizenship (5 years it takes) and they have set up a flat, and a life, and its really good to see. And not only that but they have taken up so many opportunities to travel around Europe, Morroco etc. Its just very different to visiting Alexs, and its interesting to see the comparison. Australians have a very interesting reputation over here..especially those of us who come on Visas, I dont think the idea of Aussie tourists really exist to the average English Man. Basically people think of us as coming over here, working the crap jobs for minimum wage and getting pissed every night. We also, in some cases, tend to live all together, create towns of aussies and dont really mix with locals. And have a reputation for not making the most of the opportunity to travel in Europe (like flights can be £1 more commonly £10 plus maybe £16 in taxes, to France, Florence, Madrid where ever, the opportunities are fantastic) and i think its a shame that so many australians just work and go home. there are also these chain Pubs called Walkabout (im sure Alex has told some people about these) I went past one, but neither me nor my cousin could bear the thought of going in. I sort of feel I should at some point, but its, nah, its just embarassing, and its places like that I have a tendency to use my English accent to its full extent. There are times when Im not so proud to be Australian, and that has nothing to do with my country, but the people I meet who are representing it. (never forget when you are travelling you are representing your counrty, and you will be in at least one case the first Aussie someone will meet) And I think its a shame that you automatically get put into this box when you come here.. that we have created this stereotype for ourselves. On the whole though I am proud of my country, its a pretty groovoid place, but when you see things like Walkabout and the way we market ourselves sometimes *shudder*.But anywyas it was great seeing my cousin (hadnt seen him in like 2 years) meeting his GF and exploring here. Its actually really exciting, and it feels like ages since ive been genuinely excited, (happy, content, loving it.. but not excitied as such) this city is just so cool. (George! Alex! how can you have stayed so long in Manchester and not come here and explored!!) it buzzes with energy. Its like the other Part of Ankh Morpork, if LaPaz was the shades this is the rest. And you can see how it was the basis for so many good writers and inspiration to so many good stories. Oh yeah, and it is good shopping. I am going to end up even broker after this. lol. It is rather expensive, and I think if i do come back here to work it would be worth it to do it as a professional,because you can have a very decent lifestyle. Oh, and the FOOD!! Aside from the fact that I think ive lost weight since I got here, simply cause im eating healthier food, and less (about 2/3 of what i was in Portugal) its just soo good. I had Thai for the first time in 3 months, soooo worth it. and a latte. its good stuff, and i like to think i appreciate it more now after ive seen one of the alternatives. One Portugeuse girl I met was comparing Portugal and England in their method (so to speak) of conquoring differnet countries. And she was saying how the Portugese tend to mix (relationship wise) more with the locals, where as the English tend to keep themselves seperate. Obviously she thought the Portuguese way was better, but then i was thinking about this later, And its actually reallyintersting. Ill take her word that there were alot of mixing couples wise, but what they dont do is adapt from, or learn from the conqureesees (people who were conquored). So where as the English brought back Tea, Indian food, clothing, Chinese food, and have adapted elements of the cultures, traditions and food into their home culture and lifestyle, the Portuguese kept all that a long way away. They conqured various regions, discovered lots etc. but they keep it all very out of their home. They dont have multinational food (one or two average chinese restarunts), in the form of restaraunts or raw ingredients (you coulndt get teh stuff to make a curry even if you wanted to) and i think its intersting to see how two countries did it so differently.But anywyas, I was going to see if i could catch up with George and Alex but Manchester is a long (expensive) way to go for one day, and they didnt seem to be up for meeting halfway, which is a shame, but their call and I guess ill see them when we are all home. I was thinking again about all the people ive stayed with (and the places ive stayed) and the contrast. Like in Peru I was never relaxed, there was no chance of chilling for a bit, you had to be on your guard, and that even went for nighttimes at hotels and stuff. And then I went to Andoya which is one of the most amazing places. It just has a feeling of Pure safeness, and that is something ive never found anywhere else. Its the most fantastic vibe. I also spent a night at Eivinds, and Patricks. And both were nice places to stay. Then there was Brads which has always been a lovely place to stay. Theres something about staying with people you have known since you were a kid, its really nice. (maybe because you already know the boundaries adn how they will or wont react if you do soemthign wrong, and somehow you rarely tend to do anything 'wrong'). Then there was Alexs, which wasnt quite the same because I was paying to be there. Then the Matoss which was good but a bit stressful because i didnt know how anything worked. (ie. no drinking on the couch, no food outside the kitchen etc. and when you dont know that to start its nerve wracking when you get it wrong). Germany was also really nice. My room mates were great and pretty chilled about me getting up early. And now theres staying here. Its the first time ive stayed with family, and its really nice. Very chilled, relaxed, welcoming and there is a feeling of 'warnerness' to the place which is wonderful. But as always im in debt to people who have taken me in, fed me, and especially those who have treated me like an adult. So thats enough for today, Im planning on going shopping in the city and who knows what else. Also planing on going to Camden at some point (as in the Waifs song, 'I took the tube over to Camden to wander around, brought some funky records with that old moe town sound') apparently the market is really cool and funky. and i need to buy food.Anywyas take care my dears. Look after yourselves. and smile
Richmond England
Well.. hello world.. again (i do have a tendency to think this blog has a wider audience than it actualy does)
Today I find myself in Richmond, England, staying with an Aussie cousin and his GF. It is somewhat of a difference and a relief let me tell you. After an intersting morning.. I realised we left 'home' at the same time check in opened at the airport.. this is NOT a good thing to realise while sitting in the car half way there..angst angst angst.. lol.. but it all worked out.. chekc in worked.. my luggage got through without and evil overweight bit (that will be explained later) and i managed to do all the noraml thing like change my money to £ and spend all my change.. so it was all good..The reasons, I can now tell you -because we all know i wrte my blogs backwards..- basically i was relying on ebing able to post like half my stuff back to Aus.. then I ran out of cash and as the post ofices in Portugal dont take credit card I had to repack all the stuff i was planning to post. Nt such a big deal. Then i was being a good guest, minding my own business and my host 'dad' came in and asked me 'do you have room in your bag for a bottle' at this i think i must have looked slight pained. As it was my bags were bursting, I had way to much hand luggage and it was not looking good. Sure I say, who can pass up a portuguese bottle? So Bottle, I stil havent checked what it is.. i thin k its vintage port.. in box I sighed, looked at my pack again and ripped everything out agian. The reallyodd thing was that my gear fitted into my bag better when there was a bottle of grog, than whenthere wasnt. whacko. Phew i think to myself. Then i tried to lift my bag.. emphais on tried. So again i unpacked and took out the most dense of objects and put taht in my cabin baggage. THEN i was given a cheese (as in one of those round cheese that you see on TV, about 25cm in diameter.. i swear it weighs 2kg) so repacked again.. this timerepacking my cabin baggage to get everthing to fit.. i think my hand held luggage might have added up to about 10kg. All in all i was amazed that I could get everythign through customs.. the cheese went through the X-ray twice (i understood 'massa organica' and then explained that I had a cheese in my bag..) for soemreason i find this whole cheese thing rather amusing.. I keep thinking I must have seen an amusing cheese comic when i was young, maybe soemthing wallace and gromit related, because half flahes keep appearing in my mind and if anyone can help me work out WHY i find this amusing that would be fab.But yeah, all in all I have WAY to much crap, I need to post stuff or do something with it all. who kows what.. maybe give it to soem other homeless person so they can deal with it. what am i going to do with a CHEESE?!Hmm.. yep yep.. so i managed to get everything into and on to my pack, go carabinas, ribbons and straps, i seriously looked like a backpacker (devil sticks on the outside.. a peackock feather.. daypack clinging on).. it was cool,although i cant actually lift my pack, and if i make the mistake of bending down there is no way in hell i can get up.. i see this as a disadvantage..but i managed to survive the tube.. and found my way to here.. whihc is wonderful..I have had a nice meal of pesto and pasta, watched abit of scrubs and discovered that there are a million books here to read which is fab..thats all for now.. if you think of solutions to the cheese prob that would be rad.. i have the suspicion that if the UK actually operated their customs it wouldnt ahve been allowed through, but as there was no one to ask i jsut kept it.take care :)
Today I find myself in Richmond, England, staying with an Aussie cousin and his GF. It is somewhat of a difference and a relief let me tell you. After an intersting morning.. I realised we left 'home' at the same time check in opened at the airport.. this is NOT a good thing to realise while sitting in the car half way there..angst angst angst.. lol.. but it all worked out.. chekc in worked.. my luggage got through without and evil overweight bit (that will be explained later) and i managed to do all the noraml thing like change my money to £ and spend all my change.. so it was all good..The reasons, I can now tell you -because we all know i wrte my blogs backwards..- basically i was relying on ebing able to post like half my stuff back to Aus.. then I ran out of cash and as the post ofices in Portugal dont take credit card I had to repack all the stuff i was planning to post. Nt such a big deal. Then i was being a good guest, minding my own business and my host 'dad' came in and asked me 'do you have room in your bag for a bottle' at this i think i must have looked slight pained. As it was my bags were bursting, I had way to much hand luggage and it was not looking good. Sure I say, who can pass up a portuguese bottle? So Bottle, I stil havent checked what it is.. i thin k its vintage port.. in box I sighed, looked at my pack again and ripped everything out agian. The reallyodd thing was that my gear fitted into my bag better when there was a bottle of grog, than whenthere wasnt. whacko. Phew i think to myself. Then i tried to lift my bag.. emphais on tried. So again i unpacked and took out the most dense of objects and put taht in my cabin baggage. THEN i was given a cheese (as in one of those round cheese that you see on TV, about 25cm in diameter.. i swear it weighs 2kg) so repacked again.. this timerepacking my cabin baggage to get everthing to fit.. i think my hand held luggage might have added up to about 10kg. All in all i was amazed that I could get everythign through customs.. the cheese went through the X-ray twice (i understood 'massa organica' and then explained that I had a cheese in my bag..) for soemreason i find this whole cheese thing rather amusing.. I keep thinking I must have seen an amusing cheese comic when i was young, maybe soemthing wallace and gromit related, because half flahes keep appearing in my mind and if anyone can help me work out WHY i find this amusing that would be fab.But yeah, all in all I have WAY to much crap, I need to post stuff or do something with it all. who kows what.. maybe give it to soem other homeless person so they can deal with it. what am i going to do with a CHEESE?!Hmm.. yep yep.. so i managed to get everything into and on to my pack, go carabinas, ribbons and straps, i seriously looked like a backpacker (devil sticks on the outside.. a peackock feather.. daypack clinging on).. it was cool,although i cant actually lift my pack, and if i make the mistake of bending down there is no way in hell i can get up.. i see this as a disadvantage..but i managed to survive the tube.. and found my way to here.. whihc is wonderful..I have had a nice meal of pesto and pasta, watched abit of scrubs and discovered that there are a million books here to read which is fab..thats all for now.. if you think of solutions to the cheese prob that would be rad.. i have the suspicion that if the UK actually operated their customs it wouldnt ahve been allowed through, but as there was no one to ask i jsut kept it.take care :)
'thats the way it goes..'
'baby, i get angry at your words and alcohol' thankyou to Missy Higgins (Aussie singer) for that Title.. although i cant remember the rest of the lyrics.. and the content of this blog is rather not related to words or alcohol.. it is rather ranty though.. so ignor it as you wish..
so.. sometimes things work.. sometimes they dont.. this is one of the Plan B weeks (always have a Plan B my dear friends.. and ALWAYS have your passport within walking distance.. these are lessons you sometimes have to learn the hard way..-and probably a lesson that donesnt apply to those sans passport)so as you can probably guess.. things arent so flash hot here. and before i get into it all id like to put in place a disclaimer.. i was reminded that this blog will have power.. for many people reading it it will be the only 'experience' they have of various countries (thankyou Penny).. and as such it has the potential to bias people.. as everything does. So i would like to use this chance to remind people that this is my opinion. as of today. i am in asituation most tourists would never find themselves.. and i have seen a very different portugal to that which most people see. i dont believe ive seen a more 'real' portugal than anyone else. its just different.. and ithink id like to come back when im older, wiser, richer, and on holidays so i can see how differnt it can be. So please remember that this is just my opinion.. and you are more than welcome not to agree with it.. ok kiddoes? got that into your heads? (that was the lawyery bit) hahaha so.. where am i? or where was i?im currently sitting on the floor of a dorm for 12year olds (now imagine the beds.. and the portuguese arent tall in the first place let alone when they are 12), not in my room cause some chick is sleeping there.. but some other room..im using a girls lap top which has the grooviest little card thing that means she can get wireless broadband anywhere.. andits super duper cheap.. i just drank two (now three) UHT cholcolate milks (probably not wise.. but hey) and its about 1630.. I have skipped going to the beach.. mainly because im buggered, and would rather spend time on the net. This is partially because I dont want to have to deal with how ever many girls having a go at me for wearing boardies (its a bikini only world here.. ) and because i dont feel like getting sun burnt or being told how wonderful the beach is. yeah yeah pathetic i know.. but im very very tired. Im in a town called Gaia.. next to Porto in the north.. its bleeding hot.. and..... well im not having that much fun.. im sleep depived.. hot, sticky, porrly nourished (in the vitamin sense) and well and truly over it.. (and in the mood to complain somewhat.. so feel free not to read if you dont want to) so over it to the point that i ahve actually cracked it and am leaving tommorow.. (id like to think that the kids at home will read that and think.. wow.. must be prety average.. that lass sticks with everything..but who knows what you are thinking.. proably whining spoilt brat ;) ) oh.. and im on this science camp thing its about 12 days long and its about day 6 now.. and im trying to workout where to start.. ok.. a description of the camp..it seems to be 50 ish kids getting together for a week and a bit to do whatever.. I am the only non portuguese speaker (which is a big part of the problem, in my experience the portuguese really dont like speaking English, and when there is only one of me they just dont unless they have to.. so its pretty lonely) although there were two americans here for 2 days, which was good.. there was english for a while.. but as soon as they left the english went with them. up till this point i didnt realise how truly dependant i am on communication ( i guess thats a dumb thing to say.. but i have run out of things to think to myself.. well not entirely.. but close to) although it has been like this for the last month solid. And you dont realise how much you rely on eavesdropping to get an idea of people,and whats going on untill you cant eavesdrop. So theres that.. Theres also the lack of sleep thing.. I used to think of a late night on a camp as like 1 or 2 am.. these guys a normal time to go to bed is about 4am.. and its dorms so theres no chance of privacy.. or sleep.. So far the whole thing seems to be an excuse to party, get drunk, hook up (well kinda.. its very hard to tell whos with who.. they are touchy feely,kissy and give full body massages to everyone.. i cant say i really care about that..niether here nor there.. but ill get back to that later) and then sleep in the lectures.. (which i feel kinda bad about) and none of that really clicks with me atm.. i dont understand the culture enough to fully assymilate myself.. and i dont think id want to even if i did.. (think of that what you will) so it all just got a bit much.. one of the things we did was cool.. we went to a Port winery place.. an old old english one.. and they did a tour in English for me (and half the portuguese kids came along). the guy who took it had quite a thick english accent (whihc was kinda cool, but i didnt really take much notice of it) and he spoke about the differnt kinds of port and the prodouction etc. then we got to try some port.. and being me i just wandered along.. soaked up some of the stuff and will probably regurgitate it at some later date.. but it turned out that i was the only person in the group who could actually follow what he said. Everyone else was beyond lost. (I found his slightly amusing becuase I am consistantly being told how easy english is to learn, and yet very few portuguese can understnad each other when they talk in english let alone understand a native speaker -they also have trouble with the whole He..She thing.. they have one word for both and dont seem to adapt well to differentiating.. which is interesting.. and kinda confusing when someone refers to a 'him' and later they were talking about you) Just goes to show the difference of being a native speaker. That said my english has degraded somewhat whilst being here specifically. Mainly my grammer at times, i still know whats right, i jsut dont alwyas use the correct grammer, which is pretty bad. But the world goes on. I think the thing about this camp that really got to me and stood out was the fact that they ahve now lost me twice. That may sound odd, but they ahve actually left me behind twice. Once I was on the phone to mum and rather distracted so i didnt notice people leaving, hung up and kapoof! im on my robinson. The other time i needed a break, people saw me walk off a ways I came back and kazamm no-one. and the thing i really liked about it all both times, was no one noticed. Im the only english speaker, foreigner, anything on this camp, and they didnt notice i was gone. Sort of makes you feel loved, especially when you are told that you should have been paying attention and that it was your fault. (sooo not impressed) although in neither situation was it particularly dire.. i could quite happily lookafter myself for a few hrs and find my way back to the dorms.. so it wasnt actually a biggie.. it was just an education. (never assume that people have your back.. have it clarified first, wise words from Amelia lol)and then theres the culture (oh no you think.. not that rant again.. i thought that was out of your system, lol nope!)this is more general about the portuguese than this camp. But they have a facinating attitude. You could write thesi on it. There is underlying sexism which i doubt would be noticeable if you were just touring, but which is interesting to discover, i wont go into it though. Then there is the 'Portugal is the best', anything Portuguese is wonderful. Because its portuguese it has to be wonderful, and damnded be the man who suggests otherwise. I like abit of nationalism, its good. Holds a country together.. people stickupfor each other etc. What i have decided I dont like is extreme universal Jingoism where anything not Portuguese cant be good. (this also goes for nationals of other countries.. I was actually pitied for not being Portuguese.. amazingly that didnt go down well) I have come to my own conclusion that there is no such thing as a better country. Some countries are better for other people (ie. dictatorships tend to work for the dictator and not many other people) but ultimatly its not that they country is better as a whole, it might be better for some things, skiing, chocolate, milk for example (they dont have frecsh milk BTW its all UHT.. go weirdness.. and they do have dairy cows.. they just dont drink the milk from them). So im a little over being told how wonderful the coutry is (the beaches are ok.. busier than ours, the food is good sometimes but after a month it repeats and becomes just chunks of meat -they dont have indian, asian, turkish, mexican or anything-) oh and how good their culture is. e. how weird it is that australians..Americans (im going to call us anglos even though we arent all technically) dont touch each other (dont we? ok then) and that we like personal space.. weird..oh.. and i liked one of the girls telling the american girl that all american girls are just like 'i wanna show my tits, i wanna show my arse' that was amazing.. cause i really dont think she was joking.. oh i did realise something though. Our personal space system is much better (go anglo jingoism, lol), youll love the reason. If you are standing close to someone a) high probability of sharing germs but b) if there is a big height difference there are problems, one person gets to see how much dandruff the other has, and the shorter gets to see right up the others nose (dont you love my logic.. this is the thinking im reduced to..lol). But if you are further apart the height difference doesnt matter as much, and no one gets a crick neck lol. and i think thats enoughfor the day..so whats happening now? tommorow im getting a train out of here -run away!!!- and going somewhere.. that will all get sorted later.. ive been pretty down the last few days so im hoping getting out will help. Actually it was really odd, (like UBER odd) i was feeling very 'i wasnt anglo ness in my life' and realised what i actually wanted was a bottle of coke.. you know you have hit some weird weird point in your life when that startst to happen. Although I had drunk a little bit of coke on this trip (like 5 bottles.. thats alot for me ok? lol) because i decided that coke kills things right? its supposed to dissolve teeth, nails etc. so it probably kills bad bugs too right? so having drunk it when i feel a bit sick or when eating slightly dodgy food, and so far it seems to have worked. (it was a bit like my kill or cure soloution for my cold in norway, i went swimming and to the sauna toconvince the cold that it wasnt going to get treated well if it stayed around) although it is possible that its just the whole mental thing, ie. if you think it will make you better it will. hmmmmm..you can see i was sort of in the mood for a chat cant you? lolso.. its been intense.. and i did feel like i was woosing out (woosing, wosing? hopefully you get the idea) but then i decided 2.5 months of Latin culture was enough, and i wasnt being chicken leaving.. (dont you dare contradict me.. i had a hard enough time makingthe decision lol) but i have learnt a lot.. you will be glad to know..ive found out how far i can be pushed.. and to ditch just before i get to the swearing at people and abusing them point. ive learntthings about other cultures i never could have imagined. ive also learnt that there are very similar personalities scattered throughout many different cultures. and i think ultimately ive leant alot that will help with work as i get older. although i do think that its unlikely that i will ever do any kind of trade agreements with a latino culture and that i would never want to work anywhere like here. and ive learnt other stuff that will probably comeout of the wood work later..id also like, again, to thank my parents for putting up with my random out bursts, and helping me get out of here. And also again to Brad (parents friend in Stockholm) who is also helping out, and my cousin ben who is goin to put me up. For every negativeexperience there is a positive one, and its nice to have it shown so clearly that there are people you can rely on who are keeping your back even if they are a long way away.so thats life.. thats the way the cookie crumbles.. and we shall see what the world offers next. Heres hoping its a decent shower, clean clothes, a good coffee, a cup of tea and a curry.Take care, learn from everything, and smile every day :)
The Weather Continues fine
well.. im nearing the end of my time here at the Algarve.. and off to the next adventure..(sadly without clean clothes.. that really is the problem with only owning 2 pairs of pants and really only having access to a sink for washing) which i think will be 'educational'. This week has been pretty cool.. relaxing.. chilling.. generally getting my head together a bit.. note. that does not mean things in the next few months are any more planed than they was.. lol
my portuguese has imporved a little.. i can now say that we are going to the beach, adn that is a book shop.
the excitement of the otehr day was going to the beach and wathcing some supre groovy fireworks... and also watching Garfeild II with Portuguese dubbing. (something creepy about wathcing Billy Connoly speak portuguese with his accent.. does your head in) but it was fun all the same. go body language comedy..
i am just realising i started a blog with nothing much to say.. hmmm.. and that probably wont stop me finishing it.. i have managed to avoid fish for some time.. (yay!!!) and im getting along well mostly with the family im staying with.. havent quite worked out how im going to thank them for having me.. but we shall see.. so yeah.. i imgaine ill log off and then suddenly think of THE most important thibngs i should have shared witht he world. but thats the way it goes..
take care adn smile
my portuguese has imporved a little.. i can now say that we are going to the beach, adn that is a book shop.
the excitement of the otehr day was going to the beach and wathcing some supre groovy fireworks... and also watching Garfeild II with Portuguese dubbing. (something creepy about wathcing Billy Connoly speak portuguese with his accent.. does your head in) but it was fun all the same. go body language comedy..
i am just realising i started a blog with nothing much to say.. hmmm.. and that probably wont stop me finishing it.. i have managed to avoid fish for some time.. (yay!!!) and im getting along well mostly with the family im staying with.. havent quite worked out how im going to thank them for having me.. but we shall see.. so yeah.. i imgaine ill log off and then suddenly think of THE most important thibngs i should have shared witht he world. but thats the way it goes..
take care adn smile
The Algarve.. Portugal
Well im currently in a library in the Algarve portugal. Basically the Algarge is the GoldCoast of portugal, full of burnt English tourists wearing white socks and snadals..
its not that exciting.. Portugal sees thisplace as one of their selling points and its not really (well in comparison to Australian Beaches) they ahve alot of other cool stuff.. so if you come to portugal dont come just for the algarve..(and dont believe them when they say the water is warm...its not..its bloody cold..and this is summer!!) where i am is at a similar longitude to Tassi.. which explains the cold.. and why my ideas of hot/cold differ to those of europeans.
but yeah.. we went to see the most southerly point of Portugal.. aconcrete blockhouse.. well i think thats waht it was.. it was supposed to be cultural i think..(kinda in the way canberra iscultural).. but mainly we have been lazing around.. ive been looking for a book shop and trying to work out if $5 for the times is too much to pay to get updated on thenews (watching teh newsinportuguese iskinda frustrating.. i get justenogh to put together a story..but ill never know quite how far off the truth that sotry was.. )
more than tha not alot is haapening.. i spend my mornings by the pool.. getting a tan and possibly slightly roasted.. and then the afternoons reading.. (currently a book abdout the physics of society, an old Dr Who -foudna at junk fair- and the new harry potter -trust me it makes little sense when you skip the last 3) but yeah.. im jsut enjoying the peace.. next week things get hectic again.. im going to the portuguese meeting of young scientists (i will be the only non portuguese) and i ahve been warnded that these meetings can be pretty intense..
hmm.. i dont know what im doing next.. hopefully settling down with a job (not in the Uk if i can help it) come visit me if you want (when i know where i am) but it doesnt look like ill be able to visit anyone else soon (these things cost money, i have none.. so please dont be offended when i dont fork out a €100 ticket to visit soemone for a week, i dont ahve that luxury atm).. so. sorry guys..
thats really all for now.. as ever im in a rush.. and should be doing other things (damn..)
love and take care :)
its not that exciting.. Portugal sees thisplace as one of their selling points and its not really (well in comparison to Australian Beaches) they ahve alot of other cool stuff.. so if you come to portugal dont come just for the algarve..(and dont believe them when they say the water is warm...its not..its bloody cold..and this is summer!!) where i am is at a similar longitude to Tassi.. which explains the cold.. and why my ideas of hot/cold differ to those of europeans.
but yeah.. we went to see the most southerly point of Portugal.. aconcrete blockhouse.. well i think thats waht it was.. it was supposed to be cultural i think..(kinda in the way canberra iscultural).. but mainly we have been lazing around.. ive been looking for a book shop and trying to work out if $5 for the times is too much to pay to get updated on thenews (watching teh newsinportuguese iskinda frustrating.. i get justenogh to put together a story..but ill never know quite how far off the truth that sotry was.. )
more than tha not alot is haapening.. i spend my mornings by the pool.. getting a tan and possibly slightly roasted.. and then the afternoons reading.. (currently a book abdout the physics of society, an old Dr Who -foudna at junk fair- and the new harry potter -trust me it makes little sense when you skip the last 3) but yeah.. im jsut enjoying the peace.. next week things get hectic again.. im going to the portuguese meeting of young scientists (i will be the only non portuguese) and i ahve been warnded that these meetings can be pretty intense..
hmm.. i dont know what im doing next.. hopefully settling down with a job (not in the Uk if i can help it) come visit me if you want (when i know where i am) but it doesnt look like ill be able to visit anyone else soon (these things cost money, i have none.. so please dont be offended when i dont fork out a €100 ticket to visit soemone for a week, i dont ahve that luxury atm).. so. sorry guys..
thats really all for now.. as ever im in a rush.. and should be doing other things (damn..)
love and take care :)
Reasearch is Neutral, Application is political
That was the topic I picked to work in a group and present at the end of the week in Germany. Can you guess why i picked it? Might it be because it ha the word politics in it? and because the sci comm one was already full..
Basically we were given taht question and the instructions to come up with questions to ask the scientists during the week.. our questions:
Define Neutral.
Define Politics.
Why shoudl we put money into science when there is so much suffering in the world?
and... What are the limits of corporate responsibility?
I was incredibly lucky.. my group was the most awesome mix of people.. really there were only 3 of us that contributed alot (how much have i improved?! there are people out there who think im extroverted, and confidant in my opinions, this is jsut a comparison to eyar 7 when i blushed if people spoke to me.. its gone from taht to standing up infront of a group of people and saying taht consumerism ahs replaced religion..hahaha).. Myself, a norwegain-american with fantastic english adn a swede whos written english was totally awesome.. and another girl who found our cynicism a little overwhelaming at times.. but i think she managed to keep up mostly (we had a tendancy to speak fast.. the joys of using good english are just so hard to explain, but the people who actaully challenge your linguistic abilities are worth their wieight in gold)..
so.. we devised some rather mean questions.. im sure those who have given presentations amoungst my readers will be glad to know we didnt actaully ask anyone these questions.. we all wimped out.. we spent alot of the first workshop trying to work out waht the question meant.. mainly this meant defining Neutral (as having a pH of 7.. good answer but it wsnt really going to work, and that smels a bit of nerdy scarcasm) which we never actually did sucessfully.. then we defined politics.. problem was we had an economist in the group who defined everything taht was involved with money as being political (because the economy is a construct of politics).. moving on from that anything taht involves people has politics.. ergo its not possible for anything to be A-political (except we decided people who wanted to help out sick grandmothers). The main problem was that for every rule there was an exception.. and for every exception there was someone (such as myself) who would argue the opposite jsut for the hell of it.. funnily enoguht we didnt get very far.. although we did have alot of fun.. everything got more complicated when a hippy, who had given us a lecture on how it was bad that the camp was sponsored by a weapons manufacturer, decided to join us.. it was his claim that science adn politics are pretty much one and the same (he didnt manage to convince me.. as far as im concerned if you come up with a tehory and keep it in your head its still science and is unpolitical.. he claims taht its not science if its not shared..) and taht neutrality is when something benefits no one (and therefore is a useless pile of gloop)..
its at this point i can see soo manypeople sitting at their computer screens and going 'oh, my god..why?... why waste your time with that?' why?.. well partly cause it was fun.. partly cause it made us think... and partly because its nessicary..
if we are scientists we need tobe aware of waht effect we have on our surroundings (and the effect our surroundings have on us) -not only are we a product of society, but we also affect society-. if you write a book you need to decide who should read that book.. if its about bioweapons.. should everyone share the knowledge? or should it only be for the countries you like?
when we are taught about sicence in school it is as if science is static.. we learn some laws (particularly in physics) we learn that radioactive material decays etc. but the system forgets to remind us that science isnt (one could say) neutral, there are the facts but how those facts are implimented can mean life or death. Sub atomic research led to hiroshima.. how often is physics blamed for the death of millions? how often do we remind engineers that when they develop more efficient aircraft those craft may be used in war? throughtout our education scientists are not reminded that they are responsible for that which they study.. and thats why its important.. its importnat that people think about where thier funding comes from and where their research goes to. being responsible means being accountable.. and thinking ahead..
But yes.. we did actually end up writing a paper about application being political etc. it was quite good.. personally id say we used too many fancy words.. but it was fun either way..
so.. we discussed that its not possible for soemthig to be neutral.. adn that politics often gets in the way of research (either blocking it or putting money into the wrong things) we also suggested that corporations have more power than the government, especially when it comes to science ie. they ahve the money.. and this often leads to science being squewed.. either the results are made to do what they should (not waht they actually did) or the research is not alwyas applied in the way that will benefit most people, rather that it is applied in the way they will create most €€.. cynical, no?
we also said that people consume to be accepted.. naturally people dont want bigger flat screen TVs, (ther eis no evoloutionary benefit) BUT that is what society suggests is nessicary to be accepted.. ergo people purchase (this is where i suggested that religionhas left a hole in society and consumerism is rushing to fill that gap.. not surehow much of the audience got it.. but one german at masters level rather liked the idea.. ithink he saw i came up with it on the spot).. yeah.. i jsut think its a shame taht to be acceptd into society.. to hit the mean, you need to creat so much environmental damage..
hmm.. what else? oh, we had a talk from a guy at MERCK pharmaseuticals company etc. and he is part of the team that lowers merks impact on the envoronment, water recycling etc. and he siad soem interesting stuff (inadvertantly) he siad that he wanted to be able to face his childrent when he goes home at night.. and taht partially he does thte right thing by the environment because otherwise he would be jailed (i held back from asking if he didnt ahve a daughter and if there were no jails if he would do a better paying job that didnt help the environemnt).. sort of an interesting concetpt.. the incentives for the things we do..
he also alluded to family companies being more responsible than ones soley owned by shareholders (there ahve been cases of shareholders sueing the board of a company for spending too much on enviro stuff and not getting enough profit).. when this was picked up on by one of my companions he intelligently backed off..
we also came to the conculsion that because most corporations are run by shareholders.. and their consumers we rely on the public generally doing waht is right by the world as opposed to their hip pocket (ie. picking a product that is more expensive but more envio friendly).. at which point i said this was hardly a good system as it means poorer people are forced into decisions that may be against their willbecause they dont ahve €€ which is hardly thieir fault.. this was met with a rather pained expression.. which i appoligised for later..
but yes.. thats a taste of wht we talkd about.. lots of fun.. and i hope you enjoyed the read..
take care..
Basically we were given taht question and the instructions to come up with questions to ask the scientists during the week.. our questions:
Define Neutral.
Define Politics.
Why shoudl we put money into science when there is so much suffering in the world?
and... What are the limits of corporate responsibility?
I was incredibly lucky.. my group was the most awesome mix of people.. really there were only 3 of us that contributed alot (how much have i improved?! there are people out there who think im extroverted, and confidant in my opinions, this is jsut a comparison to eyar 7 when i blushed if people spoke to me.. its gone from taht to standing up infront of a group of people and saying taht consumerism ahs replaced religion..hahaha).. Myself, a norwegain-american with fantastic english adn a swede whos written english was totally awesome.. and another girl who found our cynicism a little overwhelaming at times.. but i think she managed to keep up mostly (we had a tendancy to speak fast.. the joys of using good english are just so hard to explain, but the people who actaully challenge your linguistic abilities are worth their wieight in gold)..
so.. we devised some rather mean questions.. im sure those who have given presentations amoungst my readers will be glad to know we didnt actaully ask anyone these questions.. we all wimped out.. we spent alot of the first workshop trying to work out waht the question meant.. mainly this meant defining Neutral (as having a pH of 7.. good answer but it wsnt really going to work, and that smels a bit of nerdy scarcasm) which we never actually did sucessfully.. then we defined politics.. problem was we had an economist in the group who defined everything taht was involved with money as being political (because the economy is a construct of politics).. moving on from that anything taht involves people has politics.. ergo its not possible for anything to be A-political (except we decided people who wanted to help out sick grandmothers). The main problem was that for every rule there was an exception.. and for every exception there was someone (such as myself) who would argue the opposite jsut for the hell of it.. funnily enoguht we didnt get very far.. although we did have alot of fun.. everything got more complicated when a hippy, who had given us a lecture on how it was bad that the camp was sponsored by a weapons manufacturer, decided to join us.. it was his claim that science adn politics are pretty much one and the same (he didnt manage to convince me.. as far as im concerned if you come up with a tehory and keep it in your head its still science and is unpolitical.. he claims taht its not science if its not shared..) and taht neutrality is when something benefits no one (and therefore is a useless pile of gloop)..
its at this point i can see soo manypeople sitting at their computer screens and going 'oh, my god..why?... why waste your time with that?' why?.. well partly cause it was fun.. partly cause it made us think... and partly because its nessicary..
if we are scientists we need tobe aware of waht effect we have on our surroundings (and the effect our surroundings have on us) -not only are we a product of society, but we also affect society-. if you write a book you need to decide who should read that book.. if its about bioweapons.. should everyone share the knowledge? or should it only be for the countries you like?
when we are taught about sicence in school it is as if science is static.. we learn some laws (particularly in physics) we learn that radioactive material decays etc. but the system forgets to remind us that science isnt (one could say) neutral, there are the facts but how those facts are implimented can mean life or death. Sub atomic research led to hiroshima.. how often is physics blamed for the death of millions? how often do we remind engineers that when they develop more efficient aircraft those craft may be used in war? throughtout our education scientists are not reminded that they are responsible for that which they study.. and thats why its important.. its importnat that people think about where thier funding comes from and where their research goes to. being responsible means being accountable.. and thinking ahead..
But yes.. we did actually end up writing a paper about application being political etc. it was quite good.. personally id say we used too many fancy words.. but it was fun either way..
so.. we discussed that its not possible for soemthig to be neutral.. adn that politics often gets in the way of research (either blocking it or putting money into the wrong things) we also suggested that corporations have more power than the government, especially when it comes to science ie. they ahve the money.. and this often leads to science being squewed.. either the results are made to do what they should (not waht they actually did) or the research is not alwyas applied in the way that will benefit most people, rather that it is applied in the way they will create most €€.. cynical, no?
we also said that people consume to be accepted.. naturally people dont want bigger flat screen TVs, (ther eis no evoloutionary benefit) BUT that is what society suggests is nessicary to be accepted.. ergo people purchase (this is where i suggested that religionhas left a hole in society and consumerism is rushing to fill that gap.. not surehow much of the audience got it.. but one german at masters level rather liked the idea.. ithink he saw i came up with it on the spot).. yeah.. i jsut think its a shame taht to be acceptd into society.. to hit the mean, you need to creat so much environmental damage..
hmm.. what else? oh, we had a talk from a guy at MERCK pharmaseuticals company etc. and he is part of the team that lowers merks impact on the envoronment, water recycling etc. and he siad soem interesting stuff (inadvertantly) he siad that he wanted to be able to face his childrent when he goes home at night.. and taht partially he does thte right thing by the environment because otherwise he would be jailed (i held back from asking if he didnt ahve a daughter and if there were no jails if he would do a better paying job that didnt help the environemnt).. sort of an interesting concetpt.. the incentives for the things we do..
he also alluded to family companies being more responsible than ones soley owned by shareholders (there ahve been cases of shareholders sueing the board of a company for spending too much on enviro stuff and not getting enough profit).. when this was picked up on by one of my companions he intelligently backed off..
we also came to the conculsion that because most corporations are run by shareholders.. and their consumers we rely on the public generally doing waht is right by the world as opposed to their hip pocket (ie. picking a product that is more expensive but more envio friendly).. at which point i said this was hardly a good system as it means poorer people are forced into decisions that may be against their willbecause they dont ahve €€ which is hardly thieir fault.. this was met with a rather pained expression.. which i appoligised for later..
but yes.. thats a taste of wht we talkd about.. lots of fun.. and i hope you enjoyed the read..
take care..
May the solitary scientist working remember the holes in the ground..
So.. I dont know that thats a positive start.. but well.. thats basically waht the last week focused on.. As many of you know I just had a week in Daramstad (Daram-shtad), Germany, at the International Summer Science Camp, with the topic being 'The responsibility of Science'. And suffice to say this made us think somewhat.. so for an attempt at simplicity and organisation this blog is in two parts.. the events of the camp, and then some of the debates we had.. feel free not to read the latter.. i just need to write this all up somewhere..
As you all know i dropped my glasses in the lake at the beginning of the camp.. but thats not quite the beginning of the story..
I, like many of you were led to believe that the germans are effiecient.. my first expereince of germany was rather.. well.. not efficient.. It was the moving our luggage belt 4 times that led to this breakdown of my earlier trust in steroetypes.. and the fact that no one knew what was going on.. or that i was actually in the country.. (imagine that! i didnt actually need ID to travel..mad) but yeah.. nothing seemed to really actually work..we managed to get a train into the city.. (Frankfurt) and then explored a bit, found our way to a supermarket.. and had our first experience of the germans not speaking english (the french are well known for this.. i wsnt expecting a lack of english from the germans though.. that was a surprise).. we spent (we being salomé and myself) the next day exploring frankfurt.. this mainly involved finding the coolest playground in the world and running around.. and being photographed by a random asian tourist.. weird..
The first day of ISSC wasnt taht exciting.. i had the joy of meeting 65 new people while not wearing glasses and as such not being able to see them.. but i did meet a guy (well.. not just any guy.. hes actually the head of an entire european organisation) who has the power to sponsor practially any science-youth related project.. so that was amazing.. so see how differntly science can be treated.. and that it can actualy be a feild for opportunities..
That night we had the 'introductions'.. funnily enough i ws the only aussie so i got to stand up infront of everyoe and intriduce myself.. and Australia.. it was along the lines of.. 'well.. ummm.. everyone knows we have kangaroos..and other stuff' people then helped me out by listing off a million other aussie animanls.. and i just siad some general things about australia.. then that i had lost my glasses and this is NOT a common australian thing to do.. but it had people laughing so thats all good.. i was also techincally the only native speaker.. kinda (there was a norwegain who had an american mother.. and his english was probably better than mine.. he also spoke ALOT faster than me.. i was rather amazed that anyone else could keep up.. and pretty much no one could follow when it was just us talking to each other.. which is always fun).. but yes.. there were lots of differnet countries.. ages rangimg from 14 (one of the coolest chicks in the world) to 28 i think.. there were people with PhDs, people jsut starting high school.. non students like me.. ecomonists, biochemists, physicists (lots of us) entrepenurees (people who had invented a new type of flying machine and built companies based on it..), members of Mensa, a guy who developed a binary watch when he was 14.. and me.. the austrailian..amazing group..
It was during this week that i was once again reminded of the first time i discovered i was 'foreign' and special.. and novel.. when i went to ESC 06 got off the plane and one of the Team came up to the group of us and said 'which one of you is the ausrtralian?' good question i thought to myself.. theres an australian? there was then a nice pause where it sunk in that i was the individual in question.. and after a suitably awkward time i managed to react.. but that was actually i think an important turning point.. when i realised you can be special just for coming a long way. And horrible though it is.. I think i have been capatilising on this rather..
But yes.. we introduced our countries.. drew flags of the countries represented (australia was a kangaroo saying 'ive lost my glasses') then we wandered back to our lodging (quite a nice youth hostel).
On the sunday we were split into groups and given treasure hunts around the city of daramstad.. quite fun.. of course they gave the map and navigation responsobility to me.. sooo logical.. we had to write pomes.. count bells and octaves of siad bells.. fish for lollies in a bowl of water and identify allsorts of weird plants.. and cound cycamore trees (i didnt know waht a sycamore tree was).. this was also the day that i got sunburtn -never occured to me you could get burnt in germany-.
The rest of the week is not goingto be written up in order.. but we visited some uber cool places..
ESOC (Euro Space Operations Centre)- basically werhe ESC runs all their launches from.. very cool to see.. its like the NASA launch control basically.. and its actually the room taht one ofthe rooms in VSSEC is modelled off.. It was here I got interrogated by the press, adn ahd alot of fun hehehe (what do uyou hope to get out of this week? 'I hope to have fun of course, but also to meet and work with differnet nationalieite s in a very unique environment, we will be working in a Global market and to do this effectively it is important to ahve a good understanding of the cultures that you will be working with, a camp like this is a fantastic opportunity to gain that understanding and insight. And also to see facilities taht we dont ahve at home') .
Hmm.. we also saw a place where they are truly developing state of the art computer programme tech.. it was amazing they had a programme that could take a 3D scan of a person, then a pattern for clotes and fit that to ther pserson..see how it would look, fit, where it would pinch, howit would flow in wind, and how it wopuld look wiht differnt fabrics.. all in real time..
they had also developed amazing VR.. we wnet into a 5sided cube with special 3D glasses taht wold make the room react.. ie. you turn left.. the image follows you.. awesomeness..
we saw the little soccer playing robots that actually communicate with each other when they play..we saw an ion accelerator that ahs led to one particular cancer therapy taht has 100% success with certain tumors..
We also went to MERCK, a chemical and pharmaseurtical company, wherewe had a tour of various plants, looked at the conveyor belts and final products.. and of everyone they did feed us the best.. the most amazing smogas board with salomn (for kids?!) and cream filled puffs.. and cool stuff..
And we had lots of other tours.. we also had a few lectures.. one on the responsibility of science, one on Corporate responsibility.. and on a few bio realted things..
That was the more sciency stuff..
We also ahd a trip to Heidleburg.. where you will see some awesome pics of the castle.. a group of the guys and i (reps from Denmark, Germany, Norway x2 and Aus) spent the day wandering aroudn in the rain.. we visited the castle and spent much time coming up with theories abdout how the castle was destroyed in the 2nd world war.. turns out it was actually destroyed longer agothan that.. but hey.. we had fun with allies bombing nazis..we also were really unimaginitive and ahd lunch at the HardRock Cafe..
The best part of the day, and you can see pics of this.. was playing 'I am' i the foyer of the university library.. we sat down in the middle and took up a nic e amount of space..basically 'I am' is a game to make you laugh.. I lost every single game.. -apparently i laugh too much- you go round i a circle and say 'i am' the first person to laugh gets a name to follow the 'i am' (the one that really got me was when soemone sai 'I was') and this goes up to five names..
my original one ended up being alone the lines of 'I am a hairy cholcolate bushtucker shoelace with eyes'.. we also had 'i am spider pig' it helps to see the video.. when its up on you tube ill tell you all.. but it was halarious.. and soo mcuh fun to be rediculose and not care and just laugh.. and the boys were awesome actors.. it was better when id lost cause you are allowed to laugh whenever.. adn then you can pick on certain people to make them laugh.. hehe
what else? i ahd some interesting questions relating to australia.. the most confusing one ws that one girl thought austrlia was like the god father.. iwas interrogated about the med edu system (sooo not qualified forthat) and also asked if i watch mcClouds daughters.. and if we are going ot start driving on the right any time soon..
the languag thing came up again.. its ahrd being in a room with 70 people and being the only person restricted to one langauge.. no one has ANY idea how frustrating it is.. you consistantly reach for soemthihng that isnt there.. knowledge that is just that little far away..
one evening we were in Frankfurt again.. and we were origianly going to go to the highest towere.. but it was a bit too foggy (ie. if we went upit would have been a lovely view of fog) so we ended up going o a train and a bus and other things to the suburbs to a church wehre they were having music recitals with a chello and a special kind of piano..it was again at this point that i wondered about my life.. and how in gods name i end upin such strange, yet awesome scenarios. the music was really lovely.. and id say we brough dwn the average age of the audiesnc eby about 20 years..
oh yes.. and we had, like so many camps, to build a contraption that woul dlset an egg survive a fall from a second sotrey window.. that was fun.. we made egg-spick and it survivedthe first floor.. not the second though..
and then we had the debates.. and thats where ill being the second blog.. so they can be nice and seperate..
This was really a fantstic camp.. better than the ones in aus mainly cause we wernt as restircted.. we were treated like adults.. we coul dmostly do waht we wanted.. and everyone was friendly and welcoming..
take care all
and take every opportunity that comes your way,smile and talk to everyone.. and remember not tojudge on appearaces..
As you all know i dropped my glasses in the lake at the beginning of the camp.. but thats not quite the beginning of the story..
I, like many of you were led to believe that the germans are effiecient.. my first expereince of germany was rather.. well.. not efficient.. It was the moving our luggage belt 4 times that led to this breakdown of my earlier trust in steroetypes.. and the fact that no one knew what was going on.. or that i was actually in the country.. (imagine that! i didnt actually need ID to travel..mad) but yeah.. nothing seemed to really actually work..we managed to get a train into the city.. (Frankfurt) and then explored a bit, found our way to a supermarket.. and had our first experience of the germans not speaking english (the french are well known for this.. i wsnt expecting a lack of english from the germans though.. that was a surprise).. we spent (we being salomé and myself) the next day exploring frankfurt.. this mainly involved finding the coolest playground in the world and running around.. and being photographed by a random asian tourist.. weird..
The first day of ISSC wasnt taht exciting.. i had the joy of meeting 65 new people while not wearing glasses and as such not being able to see them.. but i did meet a guy (well.. not just any guy.. hes actually the head of an entire european organisation) who has the power to sponsor practially any science-youth related project.. so that was amazing.. so see how differntly science can be treated.. and that it can actualy be a feild for opportunities..
That night we had the 'introductions'.. funnily enough i ws the only aussie so i got to stand up infront of everyoe and intriduce myself.. and Australia.. it was along the lines of.. 'well.. ummm.. everyone knows we have kangaroos..and other stuff' people then helped me out by listing off a million other aussie animanls.. and i just siad some general things about australia.. then that i had lost my glasses and this is NOT a common australian thing to do.. but it had people laughing so thats all good.. i was also techincally the only native speaker.. kinda (there was a norwegain who had an american mother.. and his english was probably better than mine.. he also spoke ALOT faster than me.. i was rather amazed that anyone else could keep up.. and pretty much no one could follow when it was just us talking to each other.. which is always fun).. but yes.. there were lots of differnet countries.. ages rangimg from 14 (one of the coolest chicks in the world) to 28 i think.. there were people with PhDs, people jsut starting high school.. non students like me.. ecomonists, biochemists, physicists (lots of us) entrepenurees (people who had invented a new type of flying machine and built companies based on it..), members of Mensa, a guy who developed a binary watch when he was 14.. and me.. the austrailian..amazing group..
It was during this week that i was once again reminded of the first time i discovered i was 'foreign' and special.. and novel.. when i went to ESC 06 got off the plane and one of the Team came up to the group of us and said 'which one of you is the ausrtralian?' good question i thought to myself.. theres an australian? there was then a nice pause where it sunk in that i was the individual in question.. and after a suitably awkward time i managed to react.. but that was actually i think an important turning point.. when i realised you can be special just for coming a long way. And horrible though it is.. I think i have been capatilising on this rather..
But yes.. we introduced our countries.. drew flags of the countries represented (australia was a kangaroo saying 'ive lost my glasses') then we wandered back to our lodging (quite a nice youth hostel).
On the sunday we were split into groups and given treasure hunts around the city of daramstad.. quite fun.. of course they gave the map and navigation responsobility to me.. sooo logical.. we had to write pomes.. count bells and octaves of siad bells.. fish for lollies in a bowl of water and identify allsorts of weird plants.. and cound cycamore trees (i didnt know waht a sycamore tree was).. this was also the day that i got sunburtn -never occured to me you could get burnt in germany-.
The rest of the week is not goingto be written up in order.. but we visited some uber cool places..
ESOC (Euro Space Operations Centre)- basically werhe ESC runs all their launches from.. very cool to see.. its like the NASA launch control basically.. and its actually the room taht one ofthe rooms in VSSEC is modelled off.. It was here I got interrogated by the press, adn ahd alot of fun hehehe (what do uyou hope to get out of this week? 'I hope to have fun of course, but also to meet and work with differnet nationalieite s in a very unique environment, we will be working in a Global market and to do this effectively it is important to ahve a good understanding of the cultures that you will be working with, a camp like this is a fantastic opportunity to gain that understanding and insight. And also to see facilities taht we dont ahve at home') .
Hmm.. we also saw a place where they are truly developing state of the art computer programme tech.. it was amazing they had a programme that could take a 3D scan of a person, then a pattern for clotes and fit that to ther pserson..see how it would look, fit, where it would pinch, howit would flow in wind, and how it wopuld look wiht differnt fabrics.. all in real time..
they had also developed amazing VR.. we wnet into a 5sided cube with special 3D glasses taht wold make the room react.. ie. you turn left.. the image follows you.. awesomeness..
we saw the little soccer playing robots that actually communicate with each other when they play..we saw an ion accelerator that ahs led to one particular cancer therapy taht has 100% success with certain tumors..
We also went to MERCK, a chemical and pharmaseurtical company, wherewe had a tour of various plants, looked at the conveyor belts and final products.. and of everyone they did feed us the best.. the most amazing smogas board with salomn (for kids?!) and cream filled puffs.. and cool stuff..
And we had lots of other tours.. we also had a few lectures.. one on the responsibility of science, one on Corporate responsibility.. and on a few bio realted things..
That was the more sciency stuff..
We also ahd a trip to Heidleburg.. where you will see some awesome pics of the castle.. a group of the guys and i (reps from Denmark, Germany, Norway x2 and Aus) spent the day wandering aroudn in the rain.. we visited the castle and spent much time coming up with theories abdout how the castle was destroyed in the 2nd world war.. turns out it was actually destroyed longer agothan that.. but hey.. we had fun with allies bombing nazis..we also were really unimaginitive and ahd lunch at the HardRock Cafe..
The best part of the day, and you can see pics of this.. was playing 'I am' i the foyer of the university library.. we sat down in the middle and took up a nic e amount of space..basically 'I am' is a game to make you laugh.. I lost every single game.. -apparently i laugh too much- you go round i a circle and say 'i am' the first person to laugh gets a name to follow the 'i am' (the one that really got me was when soemone sai 'I was') and this goes up to five names..
my original one ended up being alone the lines of 'I am a hairy cholcolate bushtucker shoelace with eyes'.. we also had 'i am spider pig' it helps to see the video.. when its up on you tube ill tell you all.. but it was halarious.. and soo mcuh fun to be rediculose and not care and just laugh.. and the boys were awesome actors.. it was better when id lost cause you are allowed to laugh whenever.. adn then you can pick on certain people to make them laugh.. hehe
what else? i ahd some interesting questions relating to australia.. the most confusing one ws that one girl thought austrlia was like the god father.. iwas interrogated about the med edu system (sooo not qualified forthat) and also asked if i watch mcClouds daughters.. and if we are going ot start driving on the right any time soon..
the languag thing came up again.. its ahrd being in a room with 70 people and being the only person restricted to one langauge.. no one has ANY idea how frustrating it is.. you consistantly reach for soemthihng that isnt there.. knowledge that is just that little far away..
one evening we were in Frankfurt again.. and we were origianly going to go to the highest towere.. but it was a bit too foggy (ie. if we went upit would have been a lovely view of fog) so we ended up going o a train and a bus and other things to the suburbs to a church wehre they were having music recitals with a chello and a special kind of piano..it was again at this point that i wondered about my life.. and how in gods name i end upin such strange, yet awesome scenarios. the music was really lovely.. and id say we brough dwn the average age of the audiesnc eby about 20 years..
oh yes.. and we had, like so many camps, to build a contraption that woul dlset an egg survive a fall from a second sotrey window.. that was fun.. we made egg-spick and it survivedthe first floor.. not the second though..
and then we had the debates.. and thats where ill being the second blog.. so they can be nice and seperate..
This was really a fantstic camp.. better than the ones in aus mainly cause we wernt as restircted.. we were treated like adults.. we coul dmostly do waht we wanted.. and everyone was friendly and welcoming..
take care all
and take every opportunity that comes your way,smile and talk to everyone.. and remember not tojudge on appearaces..
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