Matts Meanderings

Sometimes, I'm crap.

Sorry

Sue crashed at my place over the weekend, and then was heading over to Otto's place for the rest of the week. Otto's a Finnish friend that she knew from a while back.

Was talking to Sue the night before she headed over, and gave her my business card. She did a double take at the company name - turned out that Otto works at mergermarket as well!

Out of all the people in London, she's going to stay at one of my colleagues houses. Freaky!

Been a busy couple of weeks... I really need to take some time out, and kick back and relax for a change.

Quick catch up:

• Went up country the other weekend to some places that I'd never heard of. Really enjoyed visiting Birkhamsted - the cutest English village I've seen in a long time. Coming back to Canning Town, made me realise how ugly it really is here... Birkhamsted - beautiful houses beside the canal, canal boats, great pubs, great little place. Unfortunately, costs an arm and a leg to live there, and costs even more to get a train ticket into London.
• Got my electricity bill in the mail - it's enormous! Really think there's something wrong with that. Been fighting with stupid call centre staff for a while - painful. Still gonna dispute it. £110 for three months, especially with the heaters off for 3/4 of the time? Crazy
• Caught up with Lindsay, who was over from Melbourne for a few days - unfortunately, I couldn't get up to Scotland for a bit of travel with her and Fran - would've loved to wander round my second favourite country (after Aus, of course)
• Caught up with Monica, who's over to check out London and possibly work here for a while - ended up at the Big Chill Bar, where she showed us that even with seven weeks backpacking around Europe, she still needs practise holding her booze .
• Sue came over to visit - crashed on my lounge floor for a few days. Landed 5.30am Saturday, and managed to survive all day, and even talk intelligibly at a BBQ... That said, she crashed out on the train home . She's here for a few more weeks, so will get to see her more. She's not enjoying London much so far, but its good to catch up with her.
• Watched the Australia - Croatia game last Thursday, while catching up with Amy (fellow backpacker who I wandered round Europe with a while back)
• Watched the England - Ecuador game on Sunday - got a good crowd there, and also managed to catch up with Nick.
• Watched the Australia - Italy game today - and wasn't happy about it.
• Finally uploaded a gazillion and one photos from the start of the year - round about 6 gig or so of photos from Aus, New Zealand and USA... So, if you're really patient, you can check them out (I do have a plan to fix the speed, but be patient, I'll get there eventually). There's some good ones there, at some point, will collect some of them into a decent album...

There's probably more, but I cant think of it. Need to settle down a bit, and give my liver a bit of a chance to recover. I think I've worked myself into the ground a bit - got a bit of a throat infection or something I think - not good.

And on that note, I think its time for bed. G'nite.

... that Australia lost that world cup game. I can understand when its hard fought, but when its won on a (very dodgy) penalty, right at the extreme end of the game - well, its just not cricket, really!

I could be biased, but I reckon we played much better than Italy. Shame it doesn't work that way...

Thems the breaks.

Since some people wanted some more pics of little Isaiah, here you go:

Isaiah and Tony (my dad):

Isaiah and Denise (my mum):

Isaiah and Matt (me (duh)):

Enjoy

Saw these books in the bookshop in an airport in New Zealand...

Sorry, really couldn't resist sharing this...

Saw this out the front of a café in New Zealand (finally getting around to sorting out my photos...):

From the latest Non Sequitur, by Wiley:

At the pub the other night:

Even the dogs are getting into it!

Saw this as I wondered down Kingsway, near Holburn Station a while back...

The notice on the right is below:

I'm guessing that when this notice was put up, they didn't actually mean that the cashpoints themselves were gonna get stolen!

A quote I found from Benjamin Franklin, from a cool blog I read:

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

So true...

Just rang the British Consulate again, and found out that it was processed this morning (over a week after submission), and its gone for final approval, after which, it goes to the visa room (where they stick the visa in the passport), and then to dispatch (which is next day delivery).

So, looks like I'm not flying on Sunday - the best estimate I could get from the woman was next Wednesday or Thursday, but no guarantees.

The thing is, there's absolutely no way they can expediate it.

They go by the theory that there's no problems with making someone fly from the UK to Australia to apply for the visa, and then forcing them to sit and twiddle their thumbs while they process the application in their own sweet time...

Gah! Damn bureaucracy!

If you go to your home town, you're not going to do any of the touristy things, as you already know your town, so that knocks out a lot of the daytime activities.

Then, all the people you know there are stuck in the normal rut of life (yoga on Tuesday nights, netball on Thursday nights, roast on Sunday nights, etc, and their calendars are booked up months in advance), so trying to fit in with their schedules is hard.

And when you do catch up with them, there's nothing really exciting thats happened that can answer the question “so, what have you been up to in the last six months?”. I mean, you could see them once a week, and you could talk for ages about the little stuff, like the nice restaurant you went to last weekend, and so on, but nothing thats worth talking about on a slightly longer timescale.

Oh, and staying with your parents is also not a good idea. Makes you remember why you moved out originally. Or start looking for the shovel.

Yep, I'm not really enjoying this trip. Is it that obvious?

“See you in some city, in some country, sometime..”

Kinda sums it up, really. The whole bit that you can just pick up friendships even after a long gap, and just catch up with people from all over, in all sorts of random places round the world. Is good.