| Thus endeth the Triple J whirlwind tour of the UK 2009.
On Friday night we flew home and arrived on Saturday evening, watched LeMans 2009 until 9pm today.
Tomorrow is getting some work done, then driving to KL on Thursday, spend the night out with my sisters, then fly home Friday morning, arrive that night and then life resumes to some level of undefined normality. I will be fucked.
England, Scotland, Ireland, Malaysia and Australia in 5 weeks. Nearly 5000km covered apparently - TBC. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| 3 nights in Dublin and it is time to move onto Galway, down through Shannon, the cliffs of Moher, Ring of Kerry(?), Killearney, Dingle, Cork and then back to London.
The Guiness tour is worth the price of admission and the certification of pulling you own pint makes for good party conversation I suppose.
Only problem with Dublin so far is too many tourists, and too many Euro foreigners. Doesn't even feel like I'm in Ireland...more like some random Eastern European location...and with the kinds of girls around the place...that's a lot of Eastern European JZZzzz...
I think I have developed a taste for Guiness too... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Tonight I write from Dublin.
For once this trip, we are not paying to stay in a Travelodge, which is becoming a bit tiresome. The rooms we have all booked are carbon copies of each other, which is kinda weird given that the outside scenery has been changing every night as we're literally living out of our car. From ~8am, we are on the road to check out our overnight destination by day, then onto the next town for the next attraction. The sun doesn't set until nearly 9/10pm, so we're forced to do laps of the city at night to take shots/look around. Bedtime is therefore ~11pm after having been driving/walking/navigating for almost 15hrs daily. So I'm kinda fucked. So it's weird to go different paths to our room/reception everynight, but then it's like being at home and returning to your room. Which is not where it was last night.
Tonight we are in Maldron in Dublin, which is somehow a 4-star hotel for the cheapest price in Dublin. Lupe at reception is simply the most lovely and friendly receptionist yet and Dad has already chatted her up. The best thing about this place is the free complimentary Wifi, so for the next 3 days I will have free Internet access before we head to Galway, then down through the cliffs of Moher through Shannon to Limerick and Dingle and Cork over the next 10 days before returning to London.
We have so far spent today retracing Dad's historic youth spent in Dublin and meeting his old old friends, and awesomely enough, one of their girls, who is only a year younger, and just the loveliest girl. It makes all the difference to meet nice people along the way and making new friends when you're travelling for as long as I am. It's just so hammer/tong otherwise to just blast from one destination to another without a break. So I'm looking forward to meeting and old Unimate in London at the end, and now I have someone in Dublin too.
Tomorrow, the Ford Focus we've rented today needs to be returned. The wipers blur the windscreen more than clear it and the brakes are spongy and have fuckall braking power. The suspension squeaks and supposedly the tyre is vibrating the steering. Overall, a terrible car, worse than the Fiat Bravo we had for Stage 1 of JJJUK09.
Oh by the way. So far, I make no head/tail of claims of whinging poms. The English are the most well mannered people I've come across. The Scots are hilarious and I would love to have a drink with them, and the Irish are positively the funniest fuckers so far. No one swears, no one really horns unless you're doing something especially unreasonable, no one is really pushy. Truly outstanding. That cuntry should take more than a leaf out of this country and learn something about everything.
FOOken'ELL... | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| It is 20:30 on Tuesday night and I am writing from the most beautiful, serene and amazing nightstop in West Stowford, South Moulton, near Chittlehampton North of Torquay.
The first night we arrived and spent 2 days driving around Brighton which I have just about fallen in love with. Monday we picked up our hire car and have driven West to Torquay via Southampton which was a little disappointment, but Dorchester was amazing.
Today we've driven around the Torquay area and gone through Brixham which was also utterly beautiful. So far, I don't know who has been where, but of the places we've been, I don't think anyone else has, and if they haven't, then it's really something special to have been to the places that I have. None of the tours I can imagine will ever take anyone to any of these places. Torquay I can say reminds me a lot of the impressions I have of the Rivieras of Monaco in Monto Carlo.
Tonight we are staying with old travelling friends of my folks' who they apparently met in Cairo 30 years ago. Where I am now it's quintessentially the picturesque farmstay image you have in your mind of rolling hills of green patches with little farmhouses spotted around the place. In getting directions to our nightstop, we stopped at a farmstay and as navigator, I had to ask a local for directions. Said local was tending to a typical...English horse that stood probably 1-2 feet taller than me and was getting its hoofs clipped and the horseshoe changed. I wasn't really expecting that at all. Outside are 7 acres of government-reserved natural greenery that includes a little lake with its own mother goose. All I can say is, it's unbelievable. Every image I've had over 25yrs of an English forest area surrounds me and I haven't believed it until now that it truly exists anywhere but in my mind and the books I've read. This is the kind of place that tourists pay $100s per head to spend a few nights to play with farm animals and shed their city slicker image. We took a walk earlier before dinner and all I can see are green, green, and more green. A farcry from Aus and M'sia. Now, I'm sitting in a centuries-old typical English cottage facing a traditional fireplace sipping from a glass of Old Pulteney single malt. God it's smooth going down...next in line will be the Talisker, probably followed by Glenfiddich. Yes. I swallow. Dad and I are supposedly under orders to sample all the house Whiskeys and compare them. So I have now also sampled the local Strongbow, Devon mead (14% alc/vol at 2.75/175mL), can-pints of Carling (8 cans for 7 pounds) and Bulmers and have had 2 homecooked meals of tradional curry, a 5 pound (currency, not weight) steak & chips and a 4.95 bangers & mash.
My observations/findings so far? Frankly, it's getting very difficult not to criticise Australia. The food, the cost, the people, the driving, the facilities...I understand perfectly well now why everyone is falling in love with this country and running from that cuntry. I felt the same for Eastern Europe in 2005 when we drove between Austria, Budapest, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, nearly Italy and did Oktoberfest. The standard of living here is unbelievable compared to Australia. For the kinds of meals I can get here, dollar-to-dollar, Australia would cost the equivalent of serving 3 heads here. In terms of converting what it's actually costing me, it's even cheaper than Aus for better quality. A Cornish pastie here puts a Brumby's pastie to shame. But I will not spend my evening criticising Australia. I will spend my evening soaking up this dream atmosphere that I have been promised exists and will fall in love with the country and its people. The promised land indeed.
Oh...and what is it with English girls...or at least locals...something special.
I'll stop making you jealous now ;)
Talisker now I think... | | comments: 15 comments or Leave a comment |
| I am currently writing from the VIP lounge in KLIA en route to Heathrow Airport.
Some of you may have known this was happening, most I imagine didn't. But the reality is that I've been so busy this past month that I haven't had time to do much else but work and plan.
Anyway, to whom it may concern, after MAS brought my flight forward by 24hrs, I've now spent 2 days in my hometown and am now officially on my way to England where I will spend 5 weeks driving around England, clockwise up through Scotland and back down to England via Stirling. Then I'll fly to Ireland and drive counter-clockwise over to Galway and back to Dublin. I will then spend a further 10 days around the London area and then return to M'sia and spend a further week at home before flying back to Brisbane in mid/late-June.
See you upon my return. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| ( So I went to Soundwave on Saturday for the first time ever... )
In other news, following from my previous post, I've changed the password on my MSN in an effort to have the spammers nasally-rape themselves with stale Woolworths mini bun crust edges as a means to substitute whatever feelings they thought they were trying to achieve by logging me off my account every few minutes to send you shit. Let's see what happens.
Finally, Dylan Moran has a show at the end of March at QPAC. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| If you get ANY MSN messages from me that doesn't come with an actual note telling you what it's about, please just ignore it.
I hope that the faecal-mental-cavity-infested-bitches that consider spamming to be a justifiably time-passing activity (or wrote the algorithm accordingly) get retinally raped with multi-angled poison fish fins, and sub-atomically fail from severe, chronic, anally non-conducive anaphylactic bio-degenerative herpes of undefinable origins.
If that didn't make any sense: Die.
This one however for example, EVERYONE should follow:
Funniest shit ever. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| To Whom It May Concern.
If you get a MSN msg from me. Ignore it. I got MSN fucked. Sorry. Pls just ignore it. Don't MSN me about it.
My apologies. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Availability for an AO3 have again arisen at work.
This is phone support work at the AO3 level for a 1-month contract with extension on the IT Service Desk.
If you are interested, please leave a message here and I will be in contact with you.
This is a no-BS offer.
The only requirement is that you are able to hit the ground running technically and the hours are between 8am-5pm weekdays with rotating shifts.
If you are serious and want to be paid to provide purely phone support for at least a month, please let me know. If you do well, you may be extended.
This is particularly good for anyone who is interested to get a foot into the door of government or IT work.
Let me know ASAP. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, I'm back.
5 weeks off, maybe 12 months hard work.
New clothes, PC, outlook, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome...
Happy New Year to all. | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| | In other news, to whom it may concern, I'm going home from 13 December until 17 January. 5 weeks. Things have been very busy and tiring for me, so while I know I've missed a lot of gatherings and social events, I'm sure you understand and I do apologise. But as I've said in the past, I haven't forgotten any of you. I'm really looking forward to the time off in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| Well, last night was remarkably enjoyable.
It is always a strange feeling to rock up to a party for someone who you don't know particularly well, or even less - their friends. For this reason I was unsure how it would go for me, but the only things I knew I was going to do were have dinner, have a few drinks, return ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jilder's CDs and eventually drive home. I had no preconception of what to expect, except for plenty of people I didn't know. Either that, or people I did know, but don't really have much to do with.
Surprisingly, this wasn't quite the case. Aside from seeing many old friends, I met a few new people who actually appeared to be easy to get along with on a social basis. I half expected to be confined to one area sitting there being bored or talking exclusively to a set of people, but actually meeting a few new people was quite a surprise which made the evening quite enjoyable.
I look at this from the perspective of my experience with the goth/metal scene. I find that some people can almost come across as 'holier than thou' (or 'unholy' depending on your perspective) and/or just never actually want/care to engage you socially for whatever reason. They may know who you are, or make eye-contact if they have to, but that being the brick wall, means you'll constantly see them around, but never actually have anything to do with them. Certainly, I've got no real problem with that. Not everyone will want to interact with everyone else, I'm no different there, but sometimes, awkwardness is a bitch. But the difference last night is meeting no less than 6 new people I've never either encountered before, or engaged in interaction with socially. It was quite impressive, and enjoyable no less. Perhaps it's just a change in my interactivity with strangers over the past 9 months as a result of exposure at work...
For this reason, I have ikiller to thank for a great night of festivities. I really didn't think I was going to stay long. I most certainly enjoyed it. I think that while it is improbable given the occasion that I'll ever cross paths with 1/2 the people I met and actually didn't mind interacting with, I am left with a sense of curiosity as to who some of the people were. Especially the visually familiar like Honey, Lauren and Julian (sp?), but I have no idea where I might have seen them before.
It's also worth noting that this is the first major post I've done in (insert time here)...
Happy Birthday again ikiller! An absolutely enjoyable high-tone and fancy to-do up at the forte... | | comments: Leave a comment |
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tearful