Matts Meanderings

One of the things I like about London is the random bits of strangeness you get.

For example, on the side of a van near where I used to live (in Morden), it has this:

The mind boggles. It really does.

I love the feeling that changing to daylight savings gives you. Makes you feel like you've got an extra hour or more in the day.

Especially in England, where the sun goes down very early in winter, it makes you want to head home and hibernate. Give you an extra hour, and it feels great! Add that to the slowly lengthening day, and its even better. The sun is checking out at about 7.30 now - great!

About time I thought I'd share the fact that I finally got around to finding a place, and have now moved in. I now live right near Canning Town station, in the docklands.

And now, for your general edification, here's some pics:

Have to start planning the house warming now...

Finally managed to get a pic of my new newphew, Isaiah Kai Carnell:

Now... To start the diabolical scheming to corrupt him . Ahh... There are some good points about being an uncle .

Woohoo!

I now officially have a nephew, born 11.15pm, on the 14th of March, 2006. Congratulations Sherry and Steve!

According to reports, his name is "Dunno".

Update: Newer reports claim that his name is 'Isaiah Kai Carnell'. Welcome to the world, Isaiah!

Just in case anyone has a bit of spare time one Sunday afternoon, and they're pottering around, trying to find some little job that will get them through the long dark tea-time of the soul*, or even if someone is getting the feeling that they dont like the neighbourhood anymore, and have decided its time to move to a much nicer locale, here's a bit of a guide as to how to move the earth.

No, really. Go check it out.

* Yes, I stole that blatently from Douglas Adams. Go read the book. I mean it.

In some ways life is pretty good right now, but in others, it ain't so good. I'm keeping fairly busy - got a social life that’s pretty hectic, but partially because of that, I'm dead tired all the time. Cos I'm tired all the time, I'm not handling situations the best way possible. And seeing the place where I'm facing most of these situations is work, I'm not being the most professional there...

So much so that my boss had a word with me the other day. So, really trying to get to bed earlier, and will try to turn over a new leaf at work. There's a lot of things wrong with the way things work there, but that doesn't really give me an excuse - I should act professionally regardless.

But other than that depressing topic, all's pretty good actually - just applied for a place to live - a 1 bedroom apartment in the docklands - really nice, just have to wait and see if I pass the reference check. Will show you pics if and when I get it. (I'm currently living with Andrea and Mark, and its just too far out from town for me, and I'm also just thinking that I want a place of my very own...)

Slowly getting some things sorted out that I've been meaning to do for a long time, trying to reply to emails for a change, and a lot of other little things that prey on your mind. Been listening to some podcasts that I've been meaning to listen to, and bought some books I've wanted for a while. Just stuff, you know?

Also done a bit of catching up with friends since I've got back - is all good.

Went to the National History Museum today with the Franster, and saw the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award - once again, some really amazing photographs - gotta remember to buy a calendar or something...

Anyway, I think that’s enough rambling for now - I don’t think any of this really had a point, but good to share (or so I've heard).

Think I'm going a bit too hard on the life side, and not enough on the work side...

Damn, this balance thing is hard to find...

Gah... Working at this place makes me fume! Drives me up the wall! I just wanna scream!

Or go postal... Hmmm... Now there's an idea...

Here's (a slightly cleaned up version of) some notes I made about strange things I noticed along the way:

• Cars have no rear indicator - the taillight flashes (red)
• You can legally turn right on a red light
• The cars are huge! (I thought Toorak Tractors were bad...)
• Fuel costs about $2.30 or so per gallon
• US is 34p a litre
• Aus is 52p a litre
• UK is 90p a litre
• (sorry - I work in pounds now )
• There's lots of homeless people and beggars - they're everywhere. Quite disturbing for this bastion of democracy...
• The toilets use lots of water - 6 litres per flush. They have a different design where you can definitely see the swirl (which kinda explains why they care so much about whether southern hemisphere toilets swirl the other way), and most have no half flush.
• Its almost impossible to get news of the outside world - there's one page in the USA Today newspaper (the major national newspaper) - all focusing on Iraq and Afghanistan etc (they missed the 1100 people that died in the ferry disaster in Egypt). No international news on telly, but there's three channels of college basketball though.
• A lot of hotels have free wifi - yay!
• Very little milk, but lots of coffee creamer - erk!
• Macdonald's sizing was very scary - medium is the same as large everywhere else in the world (which begs the question of how big did super-size used to be?)
• Sir and Ma'am is very common - strange.
• Freedom Ave, Freedom Plaza, Constitution Ave, Liberty Ave, etc,etc,etc  - very patriotic country (one could almost read it as propaganda...)
• The rye bread has wheat in it! Here I am trying to avoid wheat, so i can enjoy my holiday without migraines, but the best bread i could come up with was corn tortillas.
• Its an extremely paranoid country - I lost yet another pocket knife while going out to the statue of liberty... What am i going to do with a blunt pocket knife, for crying out loud...
• The Empire State Building was excessively commercialised - took a lot of the excitement out of it.

Anyway, hopefully it wont be too long before I get around to writing the last post(s) about the trip (then, I've got to get around to uploading photos... item 73 on my list... *sigh*)

Now, this one is going to be a bit harder - I have to write it all here and now, rather than just dishing up a pre-prepared one...

So, its probably a good idea to head back to the start, and tell you about it proper like... So:

I headed off to travel from Los Angeles, through to New York, over a sum total of 19 days... It might be easier with a bit of a picture:

Unfortunately, New Orleans (pronounced “norlans” apparently) had that bugger of a hurricane a while back, so its a little “disorganised” at the moment (feel free to let your mind ponder on what kind of disorganisation a hurricane can do to a city...). But, its a complete mess, and they were still finding bodies, so we ended up going to Memphis instead. General itinerary looked something like this:

• Los Angeles
• Death Valley
• Las Vegas
• Grand Canyon
• Monument Valley (aka Navajo Nation)
• Texas (El Paso, Big Bend National park)
• San Antonio
• Dallas
• Memphis
• Atlanta
• Washington DC
• New York

I do believe there were a few more places we stopped, and a few that we stayed a few nights at, but that was the general gist of it all. I just posted about the first 6 days of the tour, which covered up to Monument Valley or so. There's probably more detail that i can add about that, but I might stop this one about now, and continue in another post...

Thought it was about time to pull the proverbial finger out of the proverbial whatever, and write something about the trek i went on, before it all escapes from my head in a cloud of coloured smoke... Or something.

Anyway, here's one i prepared earlier. (Quite a bit earlier, actually... Just trim off the moldy bits and it'll be fine...)

Its day 6 of the trek, and I'm sitting in the tour bus, heading from Monument Valley, towards somewhere in Texas. We spent last night in Hogain - a traditional Navajo house, which was cool.

Anyway, going back to the start. So far, we've:
* camped in Death Valley
* stayed in Las Vegas (not as in-your-face as I was expecting - pretty interesting place actually; also did a limo tour around),
* seen the Grand Canyon (at sunset and sunrise and hiked into it and did a helicopter flight over it - and its *big*)
* did a jeep tour of Monument Valley, with a Navajo guide
* stayed in a traditional Navajo house
* ate Navajo tacos - yum

And, surprise, surprise, I've taken about a gazillion photos. Think there's some pretty cool ones in there - I'll have to wait and see...

On the way to somewhere in Texas, to stay at a cowboy camp tonight - should be interesting.

So far, not that excited about America, and American food - not really doing it for me. But, I'm getting to see a big swathe of the country and seeing a lot of the major sites, so its good.

Anyway, time for some shut-eye - its a 6 hour drive today