Matts Meanderings

Just recently my laptop has been a bit odd, and blue-screened a few times on me.

Today, I found out why. When I turned it on this morning, it popped up with “SMART Disk Drive: Imminent Disk Failure”. That explains why it hasn't been too happy lately. At least its telling me that its about to happen, not that it has happened. I can get all my important stuff of it now.

I just get the fun of reinstalling everything. Yay.

[Edit - 25th Jan - I've now heard from everyone that I know that was in the affected areas - everyone and their families are safe. ]

One of the things I like about travelling around is meeting and getting to know people from all parts of the world. You make friends, increase your 'network', learn about different places and cultures. You dont necessarily have to even go overseas to do this - Melbourne's mismatch of cultures lets you do this. Everyone benefits - its all good.

Until something like this earthquake / tsunami happens. Then, you realise that you have friends in that area. You realise that you've got friends with family in that area. Things get bad about that point.

You see, I've spent the last few days watching way too much on the news about this disaster. Which means that I've got too involved and worried about the situation. Worried about things i couldn't change.

I've just had an email from Holly (who I met in Scotland), saying that she was in Chennai, but on the other side of town, away from the beach. She was fast asleep at the time, seeing it was about 9.30am. But, they had had plans to go to the beach that afternoon... I'd been kinda worried about her.

I still haven't heard from a friend that I used to work with at Infosys. She's got family in Indonesia, and also has kept in contact with some of the people we met in India - some of whom have family on the east coast of India.

I also haven't heard from another friend who's got family in Sri Lanka.

I s'pose there's not much you can do, except hope and pray. Oh, you can also donate to the relief fund - amazon makes it really easy.

1st Contact is a company that helps backpackers/visitors/whoever get setup when they head over to London. They've got a KickStart package, which helps you get setup with a bank account (harder than it sounds), work out the banking system (why does the word archaic spring to mind?), sort out the employment situation, find housing, and general stuff like that. They can also put you in touch with recruitment agencies - some of whom can give you a job starting the next day (if you dont mind retail).

They're very helpful, and make life lots easier for those who've just arrived and want to find out how to get things done. If I'd done it when I first got here, it would've made my life a lot easier. As it was, it wasn't too hard, as Paul and Lyds told me almost everything I needed. But it was quite fun seeing the slide show of pictures at the end of the talk, and saying “been there, been there, been there too“... .

They also give you lots of vouchers and stuff like that for tourist sites and a free phone card, and a voucher for the pub - just to get you in the London swing of things.

So, the long and short of it - those of you who are heading over this way to do the work/live in London thing, go and get one of the KickStart packages. Get in from Oz, cos its cheaper there than here.

A few weeks back (or maybe more, I cant remember), Biscuit and I went to see the premiere of “Remember the Secret Policeman's Ball?” at the Prince Charles Theatre. The Secret Policeman's Ball's are comedy shows put on by Amnesty International to promote itself. Lots of comedians joined in, and give their time to perform, to raise money and promote awareness of Amnesty International. The premier was of a documentary that reviewed the history of the ball's, and interviewed a whole lot of the people involved. At the premiere, Rowan Atkinson and a few others participated in a Q & A session with the audience.

Firstly, I'd never even heard of the Secret Policeman's Ball, so it was quite interesting to hear about it, but, to be truthful, I nearly fell asleep during the documentary part.

But the really interesting part was when Rowan Atkinson was talking about the comedy, and where it crosses the line from being funny to being offensive. His main view was that pretty much anything goes, and it really depends on whether your audience finds it amusing as to whether you continue down that line. He was also concerned with how some topics are becoming taboo for comedians to joke about. The general line was that comedians (and the rest of us) need free speech to work, and they should be allowed to talk/joke about anything they want to (as long as the audience at the time finds it funny).

I'm kind of in two minds about it all. On one side, free speech is decidedly necessary. Without it, well, we'd all be stuffed. But, on the other hand, I find it bad when people make a joke about something I hold dear, and I'm sure that a lot of people feel that way. So, if a minority of the audience finds it offensive, and the majority find it funny, the comedian will keep going. Going by Rowan's logic - this doesn't cross the line, but a chunk of the audience will be put out to some degree.

However, that begs the thought - there will always be something that offends someone, so you cant win. But that is also another possibility - is there joke material that doesn't offend people? Yes, I think there is, but (and here's the catch) its only about 5-10% of the existing joke material out there (not that there's a limited supply of jokes, but you get the idea). It comes down to consideration for others, and trying not to offend. 

With me - I don't mind if people disagree with me, or even argue civilly with me about various things, but when it crosses the line into mocking or jokes at my expense, I'm not the happiest. I'm sure I'm not alone with this. With comedians, there's only one microphone, so you cant even argue back (well, you can heckle, but that doesn't count).

Its also a wider thing that just comedy - society is supposed to be accepting of all things, but rarely is. There's always something or someone thats the butt of the jokes.

I'm kind of not making a lot of sense here, but hopefully you get the idea.

One example of the comedians “crossing the line“ is when Billy Connelly made a joke about Kenneth Bigley (the guy who was kidnapped and executed in Iraq not long back). I wasn't there, and I don't know the situation of the joke - apparently it wasn't quite as tasteless as it sounds. But. With a topic like that, its obvious that there will be some people who find it offensive. So, should he have said it? Apparently most of the audience found it amusing. So, I don't know.

Another interesting point is the recent play Bezhti that was cancelled after threats of violence by Sikh Muslims. Apparently it goes a bit far, and depicts rape and murder in a Sikh temple. So, I can understand them being not too happy about the whole thing. But, a lot of people were up in arms and saying that theatre needs to be able to controversial like this. The thing is, was it really necessary to get the playwrights ideas across in this fashion? Could he/she not have picked a non-offensive method of delivery?

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but hopefully I've started you thinking about it. I'm not sure if there is a 'solution' to this, or even if it needs a solution.

Have a think about it all, and write a comment. I'd like to hear what people have to say, and think about this kind of thing.

Well, its 3am, I should be heading to bed, and so, seeing I've just been asked (again) why its called OneRoundPebble, I thought I might espouse my views on this most pertinent of topics.

As I'm sure you can see, I'm in full possession of my faculties, and make this deposition of my own free will.

Or Something Like That^TM.

Anyway, Paul and I used to have a website, called fishandmatt.com. This worked for a while, and let us do all sorts of things that non-computer nerds wouldn't even dream of doing. And, before you ask, no, it didn't involve any of this, this, that, the other thing, nor any hamster rituals.

Moving right along. Seeing I was going to go overseas, and I wanted somewhere to put my blog (this thing that you're reading now), and my photos, and I wanted to tell everyone where to find it, and also that I'd been thinking for a while that fishandmatt.com just sounded dodgy, I made the earth shattering decision to do something about it. Oh, and there was the vague possibility that Andrew/Biscuit was going to put some stuff up there, so it wouldn't have made much sense.

So, after many coffees, many sleepless nights, many domain name searches, and the occasional considered thought, I came up with OneRoundPebble. Its got that kind of ring to it that makes it memorable, different, and just the right level of coolness that I was looking for.

So that, my friends is why its called OneRoundPebble.com.

PS - anybody who wishes to complain about the content of this post, and the slanderous possibility that it doesn't actually answer the question, should get their lawyer to contact mine.

Okay, seeing I'm getting bored about writing about Greece, and I'm going to pretend/assume that you're bored hearing about Greece, I think we're all glad that this is going to be the last post about Greece.

Anyway, after heading back from Meteora, and staying in our lovely HI hostel in Athens (cheap, but not the nicest - apparently the Athens Backpackers is better), we managed to meet up with some random strangers, who invited us out on a bit of the touristy thing the next day. We ended up seeing the changing of the guard at Parliament House (they march funny, and look funny ). Actually found it was more interesting than the one at Buckingham palace. The guy that took us down there had lived in Greece for a long time, and knew a lot of background about it - for example, they wear "skirts" that have 400 folds, one for each of the 400 years of Turkish occupation, and the fluffy pompoms on their feet used to hide knives.

After that, we headed to the Olympic stadium, and saw the end of a 42km marathon, which had people in it that were staying in our hostel. Cool bit was when superman turned up - he was a real sporting type, and not using his super-human abilities. We also met with Daranee and Kent, some Adelaide kids that coincidentally enough, I caught up with last Friday.

Then, we bundled off on the bus to the airport, fretting that we were going to be late, then realised that we had the wrong time, and were two hours early... Jumped on a plane to Berlin, and slept in the deserted Schoenefeld airport, which was an "interesting" experience... One more "odd location I've slept while travelling" that I can add to the list.

How's this for a promotional shot for easyJet?

And then, it was on to France, which is a whole new topic for a whole series of posts. Oh, and i think this makes the date the 7th of November.

Meteora is a small place in the north west of Greece, one that I'd never heard of until I'd arrived there. Its famous (relatively) for its monasteries. The thing is, the monasteries themselves aren't that exciting, its more the location - they're stuck up on the top of big rocky towers. There used to be 24 of them, but they've slowly closed down, and so now there's only 6 remaining.

Varlaam Monastery, Meteora

In recent years, they've made them lots more accessible, but in the good ol' days, the only way you could get up there was via a rope basket, hauled up by the monks. A hand-woven rope basket... Some travel writer, who wrote his travel book roughly a thousand years ago (I cant remember who, or when exactly), wrote that he'd heard a rumour that they only replaced the rope basket when it broke...

But generally, it was a pretty cool place to go - the monasteries weren't that exciting, but it was still worthwhile. The biggest monastery, Megalou Meteorou, had a charnel house in it, full of skulls, which was somewhat disconcerting, especially in a monastery. Was interesting to see some of how the monks lived (and some still live). But, its turned into a bit of a tourist thing now, so the monks go off and do their stuff separately, and ignore the tourists. Its a stop on the Japanese bus tour, so it got kinda crowded at times. Oh, and ladies weren't allowed to wear pantaloons, shorts or short sleeve dresses. So, Amy had to put on a wraparound skirt over her jeans... He he he...

So, all in all, a pretty cool place to go visit, but not really worth staying very long. Oh, and just to put this in the wrong order, back to the start, about the train ride to Meteora (Kalambaka to be precise): It was about a 5 and a half hour trip, and it was a overnight train, so not much sleep, then arriving in a new town, with no accommodation, at 5.30am... Pretty painful. We ended up laying down on the floor in the station waiting room, and sleeping for a few extra hours - remarkably good sleep on such a hard floor, in such an odd location.

From Meteora, we were planning on hiring a car, and heading up to the Vikos Gorge, which is supposed to be pretty darn cool. Only problem was that we had a bit of trouble trying to find a place to hire said car. We eventually found one in a nearby town, and after haggling a bit, headed on over there to hire it. All well and good, until I pulled out my Australian license, and then it all went downhill. Apparently thats not valid in Greece. I needed an international license. Doh! Seeing places were pretty expensive in this other town (the cheapest place to stay was A) a 'pay by the hour' hotel, and B) more than we wanted to pay anyway), we headed back to Kalambaka, which turned out to be a good idea, as we managed to run into four girls (3 Germans and a Canadian) who were in learning Greek, and had headed over to Meteora for the weekend. Went out to dinner with them, and then ended up having a few drinks back at the hotel. Pretty fun .

And then, once again, it was back to our friendly HI hostel in Athens. The getting there was a bit more exciting this time, as we got kicked off the train for having the wrong tickets... At least we didn't get a fine .

Headed off, and caught a bus to Nafplia at a time that was waaay too early... (Grrr - travel buddies that are morning people...)

Nafplia is a kinda central town in the Peloponnese area, which is sort of a really big attached island, down in the south west of Greece. The plan was to use it as a base to explore the rest of the area. On the bus, we met a pretty cool American - Kevin, who was heading to the same place.

Due to one of the lovely curses I live with, I ended up with a lovely migraine, and slept the day away. Apparently I missed out on a good day of exploring the town, but, well, thems the breaks.

But, Nafplia is a pretty cool place. Its sort of on a point, between a couple of bays. Quite a nice place, with quite a few nice restaurants there. Its also got a pretty cool fortress on a hill above the town, which they light up at night. Looks pretty cool.

The fortress at Nafplia, which they light up every night. Pretty darn cool.

So, we headed up, and climbed lots of steps up to this fortress, and spent the morning exploring. Pretty cool. Quite sad, but I spent the time while I was exploring listening to the DotNetRocks internet radio talk show. But, well, I’m a computer nerd, so what can you expect?

We also headed out to a place called Epiduras, which has a really cool, pretty well preserved amphitheatre. The cool thing is the acoustics. There’s a round stone, about a foot across, in the dead centre of the amphitheatre, and if you stand there, and talk normally, you get an echo of yourself, so, it’s a natural fold-back setup. Move a foot to the right, and it stops. Very freaky, but cool. Those builders knew what they were doing.

Other than the cool amphitheatre, there was lots and lots and lots and lots and lots (et al) ruins. They weren’t even buildings. Just ruins. Big blocks of stone, being quite lazy, sitting back, and enjoying the sun. Apparently the site used to be a “health spa”, where they practiced all sorts of healing type things. Kinda interesting.

But, after wandering around all those terribly exciting ruins, in the hot sun, we went and found some dinner, and a pretty cool bar – it had some very weird stuff in it, from old tv’s (still displaying logos), to things on wires and motors that ran around the roof. Was very cool. He even had a visitors book that we all got to write in. Only slightly disconcerting thing was when the Ajax was sitting up on the shelf with the alcohol…

Other than that, I was planning on heading down to Olympia, as its got the Temple of Zeus, which was one of the ancient wonders of the world. But, the whole thing seemed like too much effort, so I thought stuff it, and slept in instead. Then, once again, it was back to Athens, stopping briefly in our friendly HI hostel to say hi, before heading off to catch the midnight train to Meteora, which is definitely a topic for another blog entry (cos it was way cool).

Just found an article about how you get get affordable kit-robots that you can build at home!

They are “capable of speech synthesis, speech recognition, motion sensing, obstacle avoidance, and more”. Pity it looks like a printer on wheels...

Okay, I've been pretty damn slack lately, and I haven't written much on the whole travel thing much at all. So, before I completely forget what I got up to, I should probably get something down. I don’t know how detailed its going to be, but I'll endeavour to make it understandable at least.

But, right now, I'm sitting on a train, heading into London again, for the second time in two days, heading to a pub. Again. Ahhh, but I'm having a good sociable time though, so I can’t complain too much. /Matt suppresses the tiny whimper of complaint that comes from his liver.

Announcement over the train PA: Customers are requested not to smoke in the toilets on this train, as the smoke detector alarm applies the brakes on this train, causing delays to your service. Ahhh - that explains why we were sitting at that station for so long...

Anyway, I'm supposed to be writing about travels in Greece, not travels into London.

So, I'm pretty sure that the last thing I wrote about was Santorini, so, that means its about time to write about Paros.

Paros is a pretty quiet and small place, and didn't grab me too much. Could've had something to do with the fact that we caught a 6.30am ferry there... But, once again, we managed to find some cheap accommodation - a little kid was waiting at the ferry, trying to convince people to go to his dads hotel - Amy got sucked in, but it turned out to be okay. Not really a place where it was easy to meet other people though.

Once again, we did the scooter hire thing, and went off to explore the island. Was very cool to ride solo. And, once again, they didn't have a helmet that fitted comfortably, so went without. Pretty cool to be riding along with the wind in your hair at about 60 or 70 kays, but every now and then, you realise how insane you're being and slow down a bit...

There were some absolutely cool views up at the north end of the island, and we managed to find some some dirt roads to have a bit of fun with . But then daylight savings sodded off to sunnier climes, and it got dark pretty early - pretty disconcerting, and annoying to. So, ended up having a quiet evening, and didn't do a heck of a lot. Not that there was much to do, as it was past the end of the season, so not much open.

The following day we headed off on the bikes again, and explored the rest of the island. We'd heard there were some ancient quarries that were pretty cool, but, they'd also seemed to have taken a holiday, and joined daylight savings on its cruise in the south Pacific. We did however, find a monastery at the top of a hill, which really wasn't that exciting, and also a few cool small villages, but really, they weren't that exciting either. We found a small village with a cool harbour, and sat on the pier and ate lunch.

But then we had to take the bikes back, so it was back to the main town (not that I can remember what it was called). Went in and checked out the 'church of a thousand windows' (I think it was called that at least), which is apparently pretty famous. Was pretty cool, but had that 'overdone' look that Greek Orthodox churches seem to go for.

Did a bit of random wandering through the backstreets, which was quite enjoyable. Some pretty cool houses there. Found the public toilets, which were those lovely squat toilets - not good . I point-blank refuse to use them - I don’t know how anyone can.

Other than that, the only other thing of note was Amy getting chatted up by this Romanian guy, which was quite a laugh from my point of view, but not quite from hers...

Then, it was onto the ferry, heading back to Athens, where we stayed again in our friendly HI hostel - a hostel that we saw waaay to many times on this trip. Which I believe, leaves us on November 1st.

Okay, for some reason at the pub last night, we got talking about that Fosters advert that they showed during the last Olympics. Just went looking for it, and couldn't find the video, but i managed to find a transcript of it, and a few interesting comments about it...

---

I don't have a kangaroo for a pet
I don't wrestle with crocodiles
And I don't wear a cork hat
I fight wars
But never start wars
I would rather make peace
I can wear my country's flag with pride
I am a rock
I am the island continent
My brothers are the Smiths, the Wilson's, the Santerellis, the De Costis,
The Wong's and the Jagamarras
I play football without a helmet
I like beetroot on my hamburger
I ride in the front seat of the taxi
I believe it's a prawn not a shrimp
I believe the world is round and down under is on top
I believe Australia is the best address on Earth
And Australians brew the best beer.

---

A few things about this:

• We cant say that we “never start wars“ anymore, after our lovely governments decision to invade Iraq.
• http://www.effect.net.au/lukastan/humour/Alcohol/Fosters-Ad.htm has another version of it, which is definitely not PC, but fairly accurate
• Hmmm... would kill for a real hamburger

As I was searching for a video version of this, I ran across a reference to the I Am Canadian clip, which is fairly similar. It was on a survey site, with the text of the advert, and a question - “Is this anti-American?“. Very scary how many people said it was - over a third of the people responding. Gah. Next they'll decide that Canada is hiding weapons of mass descruction and decide to invade...

Howdy all.

Seeing its approaching Christmas, and the whole New Year thing, and seeing that I'm too slack to actually send individual emails, or heaven forbid, actually send cards, I'm going to do it all from here.

So, I wish you all an amazing Christmas, and a New Year that surpasses all expactations.

Its definitely been an interesting year, and for lots of people, some pretty weird and (interesting/crazy/bad/insert appropriate word here) stuff has gone down. Life has changed in lots of ways for a lot of us, but then again, for some, it hasn't changed enough. So, based on that, I hope that the new year brings you a much brighter year, where things are a heck of a lot less confusing, and a great deal more enjoyable.

Its been interesting being over on the other side of the world. It really helps you to realise what you have back home. So, to all those back home, I do miss you, and I definitely appreciate the thoughts/emails/phone calls/whatevers that you've sent my way. Its going to be an odd Christmas being over here, away from the family and friends. But, I've got some good friends here, so its not going to be too bad.

Anyway, my apologies for the deep and kinda soppy content of this post - I shall have myself taken down to the back field and shot immediately .

But, just to reiterate - have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. And, as always, keep flying.

Matt

Just a short one to let you know that I've finally got all of my photos uploaded from the last batch of travelling.

Be warned - there's lots of them. And I mean lots. I mean, like a 175 photos of and from the Eiffel tower (I got all arty, and all excited about how industrial and mechanical it was, and couldn't help myself). There's also lots of photos from Santorini - that was another place that I couldn't take a step without seeing something new and exciting that i just had to photograph.

But, there's some pretty cool ones in there. Go check 'em out.

I know this has been around for a while, but I thought I'd share it again.

A very very funny take on the "superiority" of macs - from a mac user - mac.wmv

(I've started branching out with the topics I'm blogging about. If you only want to hear about travel stories, feel free to use the categories to just see entries “On Travel”, or if you're using a blog reader, using the rss feed. Either that, or just ignore them )

The boy has finally jumped on the bandwagon and got a blog going...

Not that he's written anything exciting on it yet, but, well, we can hope...

If you've got a vague idea of who he is, go check it out. Its under the “Paul and Lyds” bit in the menu on the left there. Or, if you're doing the blog reader thing, its at www.oneroundpebble.com/paulsblog. Even if you dont know who he is, feel free to read about his exciting life and his exciting travels...

Oh, and Paul - Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging... You're going to regret it

Even though I really should be going to bed about now, I'm writing a blog entry, just to let you know I'm still alive. That is, if you care, which I'm sure at least 1 or 2 of you do. The rest of you, well, go stick your head in a chicken .

I've been really slack lately, and haven't posted anything for absolutely ages. I've still got to write about the rest of my time in Greece, then the time I spent travelling through the south of France, and the amazing time that I had in Paris. Then, there's the vague things that I want to write about for the meantime. Also, there's other non-travel topics I want to write about. Share my deep and meaningful (yeah right) thoughts about various things from software, to 1st contact (the mob that helps travellers get setup in london), to amnesty international comedy shows, the future of movies and building for the future. Not much, but hopefully at some point i'll get something down.

But, generally, I've been slacking off, doing not a lot. I've just got organised and started looking for work - just started talking to agents today, and its already sounding promising. I told him how much i was after (ie lots), and he said that the figure I named was about right, so cool - they work on a percentage commission, so its in their best interests to get me lots of money . I've got a coffee meeting with an agent on monday, so, fingers crossed.

Other than that, I've just started looking for somewhere to live. Living in London goes hand in hand with getting a job there, as I refuse to pay £13 (about AU$32) per day to get into London. Suprisingly. But, finding a place to live is painful - there's a lot available, but they go pretty damn quick. And, there's the whole thing about moving in with complete strangers - am I going to get along with them, are they axe murderers, that sort of thing. But, I've got three places to check out on Sunday, so we'll see how it goes. I'll spend a bit more time in the morning looking at Gumtree.com as well, as see if i can find anything else...

Anyway, just saw Blade Trinity tonight - not that you care. But, I enjoyed it, nothing terribly exciting, but alright. A lot more one-liners in this one, with the new side-kick. But, generally, turn off the brain and enjoy. And no, mother, you wont enjoy it .

Anyway, thats about enough babble for now. Its definitely past bedtime.