I blog when I go abroad, and occasionally when I do stuff in the UK too. There's a nicer interface over here.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

couple of walks

We've done two walks here so far:

Bondi beach
Nielsen Park

Can't tot up the distance properly because I've failed to get the GPS working, and because on the second one everytrail.com seems to think it was only a mile long. I reckon it was about 3. In fact fuck it, let's assume roughly 7 miles, roughly 2 miles for the walk into Kingston recently, cheat a bit by rounding up and make the running total 40 miles.

Weather in Sydney seems better today so we might get some more done, maybe even the harbour bridge!

Friday, April 18, 2008

Sydney, days 1 and 1.5

Just about to nod off but thought I'd write something here first. It's coming up to 1530 on Friday afternoon and we're knackered.

Not exactly stereotypical Australian weather here, it must be said. We arrived yesterday morning to torrential rain at 6am when Kevin and Sally met us at the airport. 45 minutes from landing to airside despite not using the Express Arrival lanes. The rain stayed pouring until we got to their house, and after the tour and dumping our bags Sal went to work. Kevin took Ruth and I to our first box-ticking venture, a mostly dry affair at Bondi Beach. We parked almost in Bronte and walked the coastal path to Bondi itself, heading inland when the heavens re-opened for some breakfast at Paris Go(?). Back to and along the beach afterwards, we spent a little while watching a nutter swimming around the rocks at the northern edge. It was windy and the ocean was pretty mean.

Walked back along the same coastal path and to the car, then came back to Willoughby for 3 hours kip while Kevin took Rowlf out for a swim. The evening was a BIG box-ticker for Ruth, as she went to a ballet at the Sydney Opera House. Prior to the performance the 4 of us had beer and chips at a bar; and ... OK I'm fading here, so this is the end of the post. I'm just dryly and dully listing what we did in linear fashion and it's not fun to write which means it's probably even less fun to read than normal. Maybe I'll write something better before tonight's pub crawl. Not likely though.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

oh, and while I'm here

What happens to men of a certain age, disposition, wealth, and status within their company that makes them think white jeans are ever a good idea? They're not.

I wish there was a shit-hot chess player whose surname was "Flash".

Don't wanna be like common people

Shock! A post to my blog. Double shock! Not a post about walking. Although we did walk into and around Kingston the other day, so I should add another couple of miles or so to the running total, but I can't be arsed. It'll get added to properly over the next few weeks because Ruth and I are off on holiday, and our holidays always tend to involve lots of walking; this holiday in particular does because we've planned it that way. We're off to Sydney, Tasmania, Sydney again, and Ho Chi Minh City.

As I type, however, we're still in Blighty. Specifically we're in the BA FIRST lounge in Heathrow's Terminal 4 (no T5 chaos for us) near gate 10. One of the very few times we're able to take advantage of my for-one-year-only Gold status with BA and we're larging it to the full. Well, as full as possible -- Ruth tried to get an Elemis spa treatment and was told they're fully booked for the evening. This despite us being pretty much the first people to check in for the flight (10pm last night), and to drop our bags off (7pm this evening) and having made a beeline straight here (left the house at 1815; in the lounge at 1925). Oh well.

Quick aside: Ruth's reading the New Statesman. Not the most popular periodical in a place like this, I'd wager (and I really would, capitalist pig that I am. Though the odds would be shocking).

Anyway, having left a genuinely fat feline at home we are, spa notwithstanding, living la vida fat-feline. A bunch of cheese and strudels and sarnies and bagels already washed down with some champers, I'm now tucking into the sweets with relish (NB: not actually eating sugary goods covered in hamburger condiment) with a glass -- a glass, no less! -- of lager, while Ruth has a coffee and some kettle chips. All this is taking place 2 hours before we take off for Australia, ensconced in the best business class seats the upper-deck of a BA 747 has to offer.

I'm so glad and, despite my tone, somewhat humbled bordering on embarrassed, that I was lucky enough to have had the fiscal and temporal opportunity to take those 2 months off in 2006 and flit around the world. It's that which kick-started this holiday because, combined with a bit of help from my previous employers, is how I earnt enough miles that Ruth and I can now do what we're doing. Come November I'll be on the outside of these lounges, wistfully remembering what it was like to be a scruffy Morden pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with salmon and cream cheese bagels, in amongst the power suits and blackberries and people asking "which risottos do you have this evening?". Granted, for a further year I'll be that self-same pikey drinking himself daft and stuffing his fat face with whatever fare the business class lounges serve, but after that... well from this distance, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Right. Enough of that. This holiday will have to try very hard not to rule. Look out bro, we're on our way. See you in 24 hours or so.