Stray Mailer - 27Nov03

While I was thinking about possible plot devices for a screenplay I accidentally discovered the meaning of life.
If you want me to mail it out to you (it's illustrated) let me know.

Right! Enough sitting around on my ass waxing philosophic, time for some good god damn - balls n all TRAVELLING.

Me and Tony's trip to Turkey, and most of the way back. This mailer is really, really long.

It was actually good travelling with someone else, I haven't done it before. Handy having someone round to keep watch and give me footies up walls.
Especially as Tony was amazingly game for my own patented brand of Sifting (tm)(pat pend.), which mostly involves jumping fences, legging it and sleeping on trash incinerators.
In her own words, she's just 'too easily led'. I'm quickly tallying up where my quoteunquote leadership almost got us over those five weeks; it includes but is not limited to: arrested, shot, dropped off a cliff, actually that's arrested twice, wait... three times, blown up, heavily fined and did get half my gear stolen.

And it was good traveling with someone else who thinks that running up to tourist attractions, making a big check in the air and yelling Tick! Then running off again, and speaking French and Italian with a rully thuck Nuw Zulund accent just _never_ stops being funny.

I guess the trip officially started with our goodbye party, photos of which are currently flying round the web. The theme was Alice in Wonderland and I'm still just so impressed by people's costumes. I was the Cheshire cat, and, well, just so you don't hear it from anyone else, yes I did get a little bit drunk.
On, including but not limited to: half a bottle of white whine, three possibly four bottles of beer, three large vodkas, (was there something else? Christ...) and was halfway through a vodka jelly before I realised that I might have overdone it and was staring down the barrel of being the second drunkest I've ever been.
I hadn't wanted it.
I'm proud to say it's been seven whole years between saying 'I'm never doing that again' and having now proven myself wrong.
I do remember climbing into the hot water cupboard above the bathroom door and grinning evilly down at people, I just don't remember getting down again. For all I know I'm still up there.
I maintain that I was being in cat character: socially unresponsive, emotionally unavailable and only moving to curl up in a different corner or somebody else's bed.
So woke up the next day and couldn't move. Luckily I had Raquel to look after me. Thanks Raquel.

The second bit was getting to the John Lennon airport in Liverpool for our flight to Brussels.
Halfway to the airport the shuttle bus driver suddenly stopped in the middle of street, jumped out and disappeared into a shop. She emerged a few minutes later, sat down in her driver's seat and calmly applied the new lip gloss she'd just bought, before tearing off and driving like an absolute maniac to get us there in time. Which we did.

Belgium is the most boring place on earth.

Even if you do spend the night sleeping under a cathedral on a plank over a hole in the ground. Paris - tick, Eiffel tower - tick, Louvre - tick. Nice to catch up with Eloise again, shame about missing Jean.
Headed out east to Nantes (like that town) to try and track down Flo, but not manage to. Worked on my fence jumping technique sleeping in a park.

It just goes on like this. This was only sightseeing. Waiting for trains, waiting on trains, eating, talking about eating, waiting to eat. But I was holding out for Turkey. And not just for the food.
We didn't have a single croissant. Didn't see a single French poodle, or even a beret. No one was rude to us. Nobody! I kept hoping someone would so I could see what it was like, but they wouldn't. Even when they where telling us for the third time to get off the damn grass they were still friendly and helpful.
This was after not having any chocolate in Belgium or even a single waffle.
At least I had haggis in Edinburgh.

Trains to Marseilles, what a shithole, Monaco, Milan and back up to Bolzano where I spent a bit of time last year and had some friends to visit. Here I left all my winter clothes and heavier electronic equipment.

Venice, nice town, tried to get a ferry to Greece but ended up having to go down to Ancona. Our Interrail passes got us 'deck' tickets on the nineteen hour trip to Greece, and when they say deck they're not kidding. Unenclosed and storm tossed would've made the description even more accurate. Forced to choose between pitching my tent on deck or paying thirtyseven euro each for a bed, and after some thought on the matter, I broke into the bunk area.
Well, broke is such a strong word. Got into.

Getting anywhere in winter is annoying. The days are too short. Rather than arrive into Athens in the dark and have to find a hostel, we jumped off the train in what I think you'd pronounce as Xilocastros (flash back to Greek alphabet in high school). And slept in a park. Greek people are really nice. We'd go into a restaurant and complain how expensive it was and they'd help us find somewhere cheaper. A homeless guy kept grinning at us and yelling ME BIG CRAZY! Then offered to buy me a beer. There are confectioners on every corner and we got so _god_damn_high_ on sugar that the rest of the evening was spent wide eyed and giggling.

I'd always been told Athens wasn't that great. It isn't. Half of it is rubble. In preparation for the Olympic games they're knocking down a lot of the buildings and rebuilding them, giving the same cosmetic affect as shaving your eyebrows off and painting them back on.
Even the parthenon's full of scaffolding and prefab workers buildings. And they still wanted twelve euro to see it. So we just skulked off and grizzled about it for a few days.

Now, I had to think about whether I was going to include this next bit. For the main reason that when my parents read it they're going to have kittens.
And mum's in the next room. But it all turned out fine. To the rest of you it's just going to sound naff, but, well, it's amusing and I'm short of material.

We jumped the fence of an open air museum and it took them about a minute and a half to bust us. Marched off and sat down, took my passport. You'll have to buy tickets. We don't have any money. (Luckily they didn't take Tony's passport because about fifty Euro would've fallen out of it.) Then why did you jump the fence? Well, we wanted to see the stuff. Where are you from? New Zealand. I think in New Zealand if you jumped into a museum they would shoot first and ask questions later, no?
Aaaahhmm...
Me and Tony just sort of glance at each other at this point and she starts saying how they don't have guns and I'm wondering how loudly I can hiss at her not to wind the armed gentleman up without them hearing me.
But if pressed for an answer I'd have to agree that, no, in NZ museum custodians don't have the right to summarily execute nonpaying customers.
Now even the other guys are fidgeting and looking a bit embarrassed and eventually leave us with one guy who takes us to the front gate, apologizes and wanders off.

It might be ironic, given my life style, how much I hate getting caught. I hate it. Feel like I'm back in primary school. Not that those bastards ever pinned much on me.
The only thing my parents ever pressured me into was not getting caught. You could say it's my life's work.

But there was a very important lesson in this, one that may have saved my life a few weeks later.
Don't jump into a dodgy situation unless you can see the whole way through.

We had to camp overnight in Pithio, just before the Turkish border, waiting for the train to Istanbul. We were adopted by a dog who's name, a Greek shepherd told me in Italian, was SKHSW.
Anyway, I was taking SKHSW for a walk early the next day, and to cut a long story short I spent some time detained at the disposal of the Greek military.
This one wasn't my fault. There wasn't a single sign saying Don't go down this track as it'll land you smack in the middle of a military border post.
My first sign of impending doom was the sudden guard dog growling at my right ankle, but SKHSW quickly made friends with him. I very calmly did a tight one eighty and sauntered back the way I'd come, but too late. A couple of soldiers came out and motioned for me to approach. Nobody actually pointed a gun at me but it was always on the cards.
They were ok, I showed them I wasn't carrying a camera or anything more offensive than a pair of pliers, but I also wasn't carrying my passport. They called the police to escort me back to the train station and then sat chatting about New Zealand and rock climbing. Commanding officer, taking great pains to be extra friendly, informed me that across the rail bridge to our immediate left was the border, and if you'd wandered over there you'd've been shot by the Turks. Enjoy the view. I don't think that's true, although they have a lot more guns. I couldn't've crossed the river anyway.

A guy we talked to on the train there, who was on his way to his compulsory military service, had told us 'where common sense stops, the Greek army begins.' It's an old Greek saying.
Like a lot of European countries they have to give up their eighteenth year to the army, but unlike most places you can't get all conscientious and do social service instead, and they pay you a grand total of eight Euro a month. Which they give to your parents.
This is the same guy who took one look at Tony, turned to me and said 'she should cover her face.'

When I got back Tony was mostly concerned that I'd left the dog behind.
The train we caught a few hours later went over that bridge and through the border post. I was leaning out the window returning waves. Yessir, they know me there.
There weren't many guns on the Greek side. Not compared with the Turks. Jesus Christ. All smiles and waves as they point their twenty mil mounted machineguns at the train.
It's a tense border, even now. The Turks repelled a Greek invasion a few centuries ago and the Greeks still haven't forgiven them.

I'd just been saying to Tony how I'd never had one of those times when you randomly run into someone on the other side of the world who you went to school with or is your brother or something.
We checked into a hostel in Istanbul and in the dorm were two Kiwis and an Australian. Dude was from Nelson. Oh yeah, I used to live around Nelson. Oh yeah, whereabouts? Dovedale. Oh yeah, I used to live in Dovedal. Yeah? Whereabouts? Sunday Creek. Yeah? I've got some mates in Sunday Creek, you know David Solsby? Yep. You know Alan Gotlieb? Yep. Well I'm his son. Oh, you must be Daniel.
One of life's aspirations realised.
Tick.
His name was Andy something and I last met him twenty years ago. He'd just been saying to his friend how he'd never had one of those times when you randomly run into someone on the other side of the world who you went to school with or is your brother or something.
Istanbul's a pretty cool city. It affects you a lot more when you hear about things like what's been happening there, happening in a place where you've spent some time.

Because so many people advised us to do so, we actually forked out some cash and went into the Ayasofia cathedral, currently being restored.
Me and Tony by now consider ourselves some authorities of scaffolding. We've taken in some of the best scaffolds Europe has to offer. I spose it's a nice sidepoint knowing there's some crumbling masonry under all that somewhere, but we mostly attend for the mess of steel tubes and poly netting. Very nice scaffold in the Ayasofia, very nice. Huge.
I'm serious, it was nice. There were all these fresco restorers somewhere at the top of it, but only ever as flitting shadows and distant tappings. Some sort of creatures lurking in the unreachable heights.
This place was enormous. Almost the whole thing is just one big inner chamber and it just kept going.

It's getting obvious to me that everything I do is wrong.

I lay back on the floor near where some others were sitting and looked at the ceiling, and a security guard marched up and waved me off. I looked through a small window to nowhere and got shooed away. If I stand on grass its wrong. I cross roads in wrong places. My hair is wrong, I make the wrong facial expressions and articulate inappropriately. Lucky I'm not paranoid.

One of the guards who'd bothered me approached as I was walking from one place to the other and nods at me. You are ANZAC? I'm New Zealander, yeah. You know ANZAC, Galipoli?
I make a bang bang gesture.
No, no war. ANZAC and Turk brothers. He shakes my hand and grins. No war. Brothers.

Right on.

Sixteen hours south to Fethiye, on a train so packed if you fell asleep the crush would keep you upright. We were extremely lucky to get seats. I felt a little guilty since some of the people not having seats were kids and old women, and we hadn't exactly paid. But giving up my seat would've meant standing for at least ten hours instead of sleeping.
What we discovered though is the part of the compartment which goes over the corridor, meant for luggage, makes a perfect bed. If you can pull off some basic gymnastics getting up there and you don't roll over. We took turns.

We shared the compartment for most of the trip with a couple of (ex?)career soldiers who tried to teach me Turkish songs, bought us food and kept calling Tony Fatima. They didn't speak English. They fought Kurds. The older one, who now makes kebabs, kept getting into loud arguments with other people in the carriage. I think it was something political.
I was talking to another guy who thought I looked exactly like Kurt Cobain (?!), I was saying the Turks are generally pretty damn nice, but he disagreed. He said most of his people were violent, fundamentalist and ignorant. Especially, he whispered and nodded to the older (ex?)soldier, this man.

The Turks _are_ nice, very friendly and hospitable and about as religious as anyone else. I.e. they practice but don't try to convert you unless you show an interest in being converted. Maybe it's different in the east, but I got more than halfway across the country and it seemed much the same.

And they told America where they could strategically insert their ground troops. Respect.

The Istanbul bombings are stupid, even by terrorist terms. But when officials start on about how it shows the random and arbitrary nature of terrorism they're deliberately missing the obvious, in the same way that no one here in Australia caught the obviousness of why the Bali bombs went off in clubs full of Australians. (We support the u.s.)
Four bombs went off in Istanbul shortly after I left Turkey. Two in synagogues and a British consulate and bank. It was mostly Turks who got killed but the intended targets were Israel and Britain.

Its not a war on terrorism, its a war _with_ terrorism. The terrorists get to do their thing too.

Turkey is safe as houses. In that houses only rarely go kaboom. We missed the last bus from Fethiye to Faralya (butterfly valley) so tried our hand at hitching through rural Turkey at night. The guy who eventually picked us up, and it didn't take that long considering, was eager to tell us how safe Turkey is. As he wove wildly through oncoming traffic on blind corners and triple overtakes. But everyone there drives like that and they seem to get away with it.
Pulled into Oludinitz shortly after, pitched tent behind a sandbank and had a really nice evening on the beach, swimming in the warm Mediterranean and picnicking.
A bunch of loud and unfriendly Germans on a package tour walked past and ignored us, but aroused the security guards and their alsations, and were asked to leave. We were on the fringe and the guards said it might not be safe with the guard dogs. We were like, here doggy doggy doggy, doggy wanna play? Get the stick get the stick!
Doggy care less.

Oludunitz is a strange place. Nice beach, lagoon, a whole mess of restaurants and hotels, and so many paragliders paraponters and microlites that the sky is more silk and two-stroke engines than sky. Some guy ripped me off for over a million Turkish Lira. But that's like forty pence so I didn't attack him or anything.
If I have one recommendation for Turkey its to go to Oldunitz, keep going straight through and end up half an hour later in Faralya.
Butterfly valley was maybe the first place I was told to go on arriving in Europe two years ago. I was expecting, well, a valley, and its not. More of a chasm, and once a year it apparently fills (fills!) with breeding butterflies. If you run through them they will inundate the air, but then they die from the effort and it all turns into just another example of environmentalism spoiling everybody's fun.

It wasn't that time of year when we arrived, but we'd been instructed in no uncertain terms that if we were going to be in Turkey we had to go to Faralya and stay in George's House pension. We'd planned on staying there two nights and left a week later.
For twelve million lira a night (eight Euro) you get a little cabin and all your meals. It's run by an extended family who just spend all day cooking the best damn Turkish food I've had since leaving New Zealand.
Incidentally, while I'm doing free adverts, for those of you in Christchurch get to the Turkish kebab house on Hereford street. Its better Turkish food than the food you actually get in Turkey.
I'd had my expectations raised by it and although your general Turkish food is very good, its just not nearly as good as that place.

On the second day there we dropped down the cliff track (which has claimed lives) into the valley (but not many) and headed down to the beach. Met a couple of Turkish guys on the way making a boat. They didn't know how, and thought they might have been working on it for a week so far, but it was definitely fiftyfive spliffs. We were there for fiftysix through eight, during which Tony showed them how to use a skill saw properly and I debated the finer design points of articulated hydroplanes and fishtail turbulence rudders. Dude had some pretty good ideas.
The trimaran was called Tutanmanok, which in Turkish means 'our smoky canoe', and they wanted to sail it to New Zealand though acknowledged they probably wouldn't get past Morocco.
Got two beers and a sunburn on the beach, then headed back up the valley to the waterfall at its far end. Getting drenched scrabbling up a trail marked in blue dots got us to the effective base of the waterfall, where it pours down a sheer cliff from the gully above. Immediately to the right was what looked like a doable hundred meter climb back up to the pension. We were a bit of the way up it when I had a flash of notsuchagoodideaness.
I think it was the Greek museum that did it, as I've said before my continued survival on this planet casts serious doubts on Darwinian evolutionary theory.
I couldn't see the top of the cliff. What I could see went most of the way up and didn't look too bad, but it only takes ten bad feet to stop you, and I'm not built for climbing down. So much so that after Tony and me agreed to go back it took me about ten minutes to cover twenty meters. I was mewing and looking balefully at her to go fetch a ladder.
When we got back to the pension, Hassan, the manager type guy, had apparently been really worried that we would try to climb up that way as last year a Swiss man got stuck for five hours before they could get a rope. He had a friend who went for help, if both me and Tony had gotten stuck we'd've been buggered.

After a week of overeating and chess we were about ready to leave. Getting up early we promptly missed the only bus back into Fethiye, which meant we got to ride on the back of a ute instead and was much better.
Tony and I parted ways in Fethiye. She had to dash back to Austria to catch her flight to London so she could get the train to Edinburgh and back through Manchester to London for her stopover in L.A. on the way back to New Zealand before leaving for Australia and a wee lie down.
I went to Olympas. Stayed in a tree house, saw the Chimera where natural gas on fire comes out of the ground, declined to pay for rock climbing, ruins or going to the beach.
Things were swinging back to the sightsee. This trip for me was really all about the week in Faralya. I'd missed that type of life so much since leaving my perfect house in NZ. It was almost silent in the gully above the valley, and very still. There was nothing needing doing. Il dolce vitae e facendo niente.
The sweet life is doing nothing. It's not the same doing nothing in a city, I should know. There were maybe four houses in Faralya, and a car an hour. At night you could see the stars very clearly and the sun set over the sea. It was good.
For a week.

I hooked up with a kiwi couple on leaving Olympas who were also going to Goreme. They were taking the bus. The bus company guy in Antalia told me I should definitely take the bus.
But I had my Interrail and was damned if I'd pay twentyfive million when I could get there for free.

Quote: "Don't piss around. If saving a little bit of cash is going to cost in you in aggravation, spend the cash. The cosmos is kind to people who don't piss around and money will take care of itself."
- Daniel Pagan Connell.

Daniel practicing what he preaches? No.
I really should have taken that bus.

The first leg was a bus from Antalia to Isparta where I luckily arrived in time to miss the only train that day, but only by a few hours so I'd have to wait till eight o'clock the next night.
I spent that night in the cast iron coal tray of an old display steam engine in front of the train station. Bad idea that, spending a cold night on a huge iron heat sink with no ground mat.
I was woken by a drum at two in the morning, being beaten very loudly by an old man who was just walking around, up and down every street, letting off fire crackers and beating his big drum at two in the morning.
Spent the next day reading National Geographics and eating. Got the train and the next (two days?) are confused. The only thing worse than trying to sleep on trains is trying to sleep in train stations. Connections were late, we came up against some bad tracks and were going to have to wait three hours to fix them, but then didn't. I arrived in the second to last town before Goreme and had to spend the night, couldn't tent.
Some guys practically sprinted out of a hotel as I passed and offered me a deal, I said I had a better price from a place down the road. Oh no, they said, that very bad place. They come in your room in middle of night and sleep with you.
Well... that doesn't sound so bad.
Cultural exchange.

Stayed there but no one bothered me more than making me try to communicate in German.
Next morning to Urgup, where started the Capadocian landscape of cliffs and rock spires with tombs and villages carved into them. Talking to the guy in the tourist info office about how he was born there, in one of the caves. There were no modern buildings then, he said, just the river and trees and homes in the rocks, before the tourists came.
And finally, seventy hours after turning down the ten hour bus, I arrived in Goreme. Doing it that way saved me over three Euro.
The nights I spent there were the only two spent in the same place in the seventeen between Faralya and Australia. Apart from Bolzano.
Goreme's pretty quiet that time of year, but it was still mostly full of Australians. I ran into a Canadian trio who'd passed through George's House. Hung out with a Japanese girl, the only other person staying in my hostel.
I actually went on a tour, paid twentyfive American dollars and everything. There was a bunch of things I wanted to see and the best way to get around all of them was on a tour bus.

First stop was the biggest underground city in Capadocia. Eight levels, eightyfive meters deep and four square kilometer spread. Though only one square is safe.
Tour leader stood us under a small hole in the ceiling and said we had a choice, either to go down the passage to our left, or up the hole in the ceiling. I was like, oh hell yeah, give me a foot up.
Ahh, I was kidding.
Screw that, can I borrow that headlamp?

I didn't get to do it. The city was hell cool nonetheless.
Next stop was the valley I was convinced was where they filmed that bit with the temple in Indiana Jones and the last crusade, but turns out that was Petra in Jordan. This was nice too. Camel stop, more fairy chimneys. They call the stone spires that. Final stop was a ceramics factory shop to wring out the last of our money. I volunteered to make something on the traditional potter's wheel after the master did a demonstration and asked if anyone wanted a go. My ashtray had certain fundamental flaws but I haven't pottered before and it was fun. I was amazed when no one else put their hand up for tasting local wine.
Fun, all in all. Recommended.

God, this thing is getting long. We're almost there. Geographically halfway, but that's as far as I went into Turkey, now I was officially going home.

Bus back to Ancona and caught the last train by five minutes after taking a taxi. They had some effort talking me into that. Lucky they did. Back into and straight through Istanbul. The train to Bulgaria didn't leave for fifteen hours, but the one to Athens was mercifully running half an hour late and I was able to catch it instead.
I'd planned to go back to northern Italy via eastern Europe, but couldn't go through Romania, Bosnia or Serbia. I could get automatic visas for Montenegro and Croatia, but they're separated by five measly kilometers where Bosnia comes down between them to the sea. Maybe they'd let me though those five kays, maybe I'd have to hire a boat. Maybe I'd have to swim. I didn't have a lot of time to play with and decided to be boring and go back the way I'd come, through Greece.

Killed a few hours in Athens between trains. Wasn't supposed to get on the first train because it was full, got on anyway. Got to Patras and had to tent as the ferry wasn't until six the next evening. Almost had an incident concerning my Interrail but was saved by a random stroke of luck that did however see me paying thirty something Euro for a slow ferry back to Brindisi rather than a six Euro fast one to Ancona, which is ten hours further north. Still, I was lucky.
Ferry, killed the day in Brindisi with some French Canadians, overnight train to Bolzano. Italian trains are really good to sleep on, they're not usually crowded and all the seats fold down into one big bed.

Stayed two days with the good good people in Bolzano, then darted off on what I had assumed would be an easy eight hour sprint into Frankfurt for my flight that night.
Only two things went completely spastically wrong, but I think it would've been many more if I hadn't responded quickly and entered into high level negotiations with life in general.
I'd checked out trains when I first arrived in Bolzano, and they gave me a list of departures to Frankfurt via Munich. Then night before I left I confirmed them. The next morning I trustingly got on the train with little signs saying Munich.
When we pulled into the last town before the Austrian border the train stopped and sat and everyone vanished. Eventually I got off and asked a conductor who informed me that Austria was three days into a rail and bus strike, if I wanted to get to Germany I'd have to get a taxi across the country or fly.

I have no problem with industrial action, I'm sure they were justified in striking but wHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELLLLL MEEEEE?!?!?

Why put little signs on a train saying Munich when the train _doesn't _actually _go _to _FREAKING _MUNICH?_

Own fault. I stumbled out of the station suffering infra traumatic stress syndrome, stood there and quivered, thinking quickly. It was now half twelve and my flight left at ten that night. Getting to Frankfurt airport was going to, in the best scenario, take me seven hours. Looking at my current scenario the odds of good looking scenarios weren't looking good. Sidled up to a guy looking at the trains like they owed him something and asked what he was up to. Turns out he had been told about the strike in Verona and had arranged for his father to pop down from Munich and drive him back. I was like, dude, I will pay you cash money to get in on that. That car filled up pretty fast, when it eventually arrived.
Back in the train station I overheard a group of international travelers, brought together by the tragedy, weighing up their options. They eventually agreed on catching a vastly overpriced taxi to the nearest town, finding somewhere to hire a car and driving it into Germany, then catching another train to Munich. Poor bastards. That could've been me and I still would've considered myself lucky.
Arrived in Munich and got dropped at a little train stop to get into the city center. Asked two Brits if this train went to the central station and they said kind of, they thought the station was closed today. Nup. It might think it's closed, but it isn't.

It wasn't. My mantra at this point was pop pop pop pop pop, referring to the kind of timing I needed, when everything just lines up and clicks into place, pop pop pop. I jumped off the subway and straight onto a train to Frankfurt, which if hadn't left at the unlikely time it did would've screwed me.
Four hours later got into Frankfurt and straight to the police station because amid all this, someone walked off with my pack.
Thank god my laptop and camera hadn't been in it, but my beloved tent, my sleeping bag, some clothes and a roll of film with my photos from the year went bye bye. That's ok, in fact if the insurance comes through it'll be fantastic because the tent leaked, the sleeping bag wasn't warm enough and the pack could've been better.

Got ticket inspected on the subway to the airport, which of course I didn't have. I passed over my Interrail smiling innocently and knowing full well it wasn't valid for that train but he just thanked me and went past. I guess it was valid. Funny when you see someone and know you're about to have a disagreement and see him angry, and then he thanks you and wanders off.

I didn't have any luggage to check in, so my Leatherman (tm) tool had to be checked in on its own. Speedy eleven hour flight to Singapore, slept for five or six. Watched The Italian Job (remake, triumph of style over content, seriously, its very stylish. You should watch it) and Charlie's Angles 2 (sequel of a remake, the most fascinating work in modern surrealism I ever watched for two minutes, so crap and yet I can't look awa- oh wait never mind).

I took a quick look around the movies in a cinema recently. Out of a dozen, maybe three weren't sequels or remakes. There were twentytwo sequels released this year (no I didn't sit down and count them, I heard that somewhere), and that doesn't include rehashes like Peter Pan or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. At the same time we've got every song on the radio a cover. I actually heard someone redo the theme to The Monkies, and that was a while ago so I've no idea how far through the barrel's bottom they've punched since then.
This is a serious problem. I think we've finally completely run out of ideas. This isn't just Hollywood and pop music, I haven't seen anything new for years. The last new musical genre was triphop in the mid nineties.
Something has to break.

In Singapore my Leatherman of course didn't show up, and I was just thinking sweet, I wouldn't mind a new one of those too, when I found where they'd put it. Stayed put in a hostel for the night and read some more of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, caught another plane. Plane was held up a little when we landed in Perth because they couldn't send any ground crew out into the lightning storm to dock us.
Arriving into Australia is a nightmare these days. They're so paranoid about biosecurity they search and x-ray every single person in case they're in possession of insects or mud or something. Most people had nothing to declare but were searched anyway, so it was faster to declare something.
I said I'd been in a rural area, which was true, but since everything I'd had with me at the time was now stolen all they had to do was check the soles of my shoes, which took two seconds.

So that's it. Back into the usual regime of Zen vegetation and watching videos, except now it's madly confused with insurance claims, Canadian work permits and plane tickets. The days are so much shorter now, when you're on the road weeks feel like months.
I read through the mailer I sent out this time last year and comparing my plans with the way things actually turned out was a joke. It came out so much better, it always does.
So much better.
But I'll do this anyway; my plans are these. I'd really like to get to the Woodford festival in Queensland for new years, but it'll mean forking out heaps for the flight. I'll be getting a round the world ticket, but that won't count for Australian domestic. Damn Ansett. But those of you who are going, I want to see you again that much.
I'm going to have to wait til mid February for the work permit to come through, if it does at all but it'd better, so I can either spend that time in Oz, or New Zealand or a pacific island. Then when it does arrive I go off to work in ski fields for the remainder of the season and film for the rest of the year.
I'd wanted to go back to Edinburgh for Beltane, but it's a long way to go for a short amount of time, so I'll probably pass through on my way back here at the end of the year.
I don't know. I really really want to get into film this year. I want a career. Screw the house and the car and pulling my weight in society, I'm just completely in love with the idea of making films.
I can feel I'm getting old if I want, but now I've done the school thing and the flatting thing and traveled a bit, life seems to be just now opening up.

I can do anything.

Daniel.

Remember the meaning of life.