About Bloody Time :)

Its soooo hard not to get by obsessed by the weather over here - especially if you are as foolish as me to have to have the weather from Adelaide, Perth & London on your google homepage for daily comparison !! 

3 Years, 11 Months Ago ...

... I was sitting in Singapore Airport starting a new adventure - waiting for a flight to Beijing that would take me to the start of the Trans Mongolian Express before travelling across to Europe and then finally to London.  3 years 11 months later I am waiting in Singapore Airport waiting for a flight to London to take me to, well, work.  How times change :(

Sadly my 3 weeks of holiday are over in Oz are over.  Has been a great trip.  The highlight of the trip was definitely managing to  catch up with a lot of people - family and friends - some of which I havent seen for years.  Unfortunately with only three weeks on my hands I didnt get to catch up with everyone I would have liked too - next time - I promise.

Feels strange going back to London this time.  Little less sure its really where I want to be right now ... but we'll see.

Half Way

In keeping up with tradition , I am posting from Singapore Changi Airport.  Got to fly on the new A380, that thing is huge.  Sadly I didnt splurge out on one of the suites, instead settling for the  character building cattle class.   The inflight entertainment has had a bit of a revamp - you can now take your own usb stick on board, plug it into the seat in front of you and watch your own movies, or even more exciting, read your very own pdfs.  Unfortunately I didnt know this ahead of time so instead got to choose from the selection of TV/movies they already had which, luckily, is pretty decent. I settled for a various episodes of House, Inbetweeners (missing the new series back in the UK :( ), Peep Show and Flight of the Conchords in between random bouts of sleep.

I think the reason I go home to Oz every year and a half or so is that it is just long enough to forget how painful the flight is.  12 hours sitting still is a lot more tiring than it sounds.  And I am saying that with half the flight left !!  Luckily I have managed to score an emergency exit seat on the way to Melbourne so that should make things a bit less painful.  

Below is a picture of my faithful chariot - courtesy of the wonders of digital cameras, laptops and free wifi.  Aint modern life grand.

Airport Bound

Just about to head to the airport to catch my flight to Oz.

Stopping off in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth so I'll hopefully be catching up with a few you.

:)

Berlin

A couple of weeks ago I took a long weekend and spent 4 days in Berlin. I stayed in Penzlauer Berg, a suburb in former Eastern Germany.  It was a really interesting area - lots of cool little bars and places to eat.  It was a pain not being able to speak German - I really hate trying to order things in English :( All I really mastered in the way of German was "zvei becks" - but hey,  it went a long way !!! Anyway, the trip is old news now, but I had an awesome time and I definitely want to go back there some time soon (at least not leave it for another 12 years). I only took my point&shoot camera but I still managed to get some shots to pad out the blog ....

Sibiu, Romania

After my previous foiled attempt to fly to Romania for work a month ago, I succeeded getting there last week for three days. It was a fair hike getting there - about 7 hours airport (Heathrow) to airport (Sibiu), via Munich - so I was pretty tired by the time I got back home Friday night. It almost snowed the whole time I was there. Fortunately it was only light snow or I would have been snowed in !! I didn't get much of a chance to explore as I was either working or out drinking (£1 pints!)/eating with the guys I was working with! Looking at the photos now I wish I had made a bit more of an effort to make the most of some of the Old Town scenery.





More information about Sibiu here.

And a map for those wondering where exactly this place is ....


View Larger Map

Snow Snow and More Snow

What an awesome day. My commute was largely unaffected - managed to catch a train in after about 1/2 hour delay - nothing too serious. I really wanted to go in to work so I could take some photos on the way rather than work from home !!

Here is a selection of photos from today. For the rest check out my snow set on flickr here.







Here is a selection of photos from today. For the rest check out my snow set on flickr here.

More Snow

The snow kept on falling during the night. All the buses have been cancelled and quite a few of the trains too ! Its going to be an interesting day. More snow forecast too ... will have to get some more photos. Shame I have to work, although I might end up having to work from home.

Snow!

Happy Australia Day

Yes its a day late for Australia day - but hey - it seems apt considering I just booked flights (ouch!) to Oz for Easter :). If you live in Perth, Adelaide or Melbourne then hopefully I'll be able to catch up with you.

The Kerouac Scroll

Just got back from my day trip up to Birmingham to see the scroll of "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac. The scroll was, well, a scroll - but it was really cool to see it after reading so much about it a few years ago. Crazy to think it was last bought by some football club owner in America for US$2.4 million dollars.   What was probably more interesting than the scroll itself was an interactive display of one of Kerouacs' journals that he wrote when preparing for writing "On The Road". Contained some really interesting musings.
Anyway - no photos of the scroll itself. There was no photography allowed and I try not to get into the whole "trophy" photography thing (i.e. been there done that snapshots). Here you can find a far better shot than I could have got anyway (linked from this article.)

Birmingham

On The Road ...

Booked my train tickets this morning for a day trip to Birmingham on Saturday. Why ? To see the original manuscript of On The Road by Jack Kerouac - a book I was more than a little obsessed with for a while !! The cool thing about this manuscript is that the entire novel was written on one continuous roll of paper so he wouldn't need to change pages and interrupt his stream of conciousness writing.

Photo by Thomas Hawk

Couple of interesting links for those interested in this kind of thing ...
http://www.barber.org.uk/ontheroad.html
http://www.ontheroad.org/

I'll let you know if it was worth the trip !

Please Don't Rain This Year

If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes ...

Tonight I went to see Bladerunner at the IMAX cinema. Very impressive on the huge IMAX screen.  To be honest, I don't think I have really appreciated Bladerunner that much before. But tonight, for some reason - maybe the big screen, the composition and lighting of some of the scenes really struck me.  Made me want to take more photos.  But then again : I always say that.

Brrrr to Grrrr

I got to Heathrow this morning with plenty of time to spare before my flight.  It was scheduled to leave at 9:30am.   Note the emphasis on "scheduled".  It didnt turn out that way.  My flight had been delayed an hour due to fog.  Not such a bad delay - an hour - if it wasn't for the fact it meant I was going to miss my connecting flight out of Munich.  After waiting in the reticketing line for an hour my only choices ended up being either fly to Bucharest, spend the night there and fly to my final destination 7:30am the next morning or cancel the whole thing.  I opted for the latter as it was going to mess around too much with my schedule or perhaps, more importantly, my sanity.

Out Of The Fridge ...

... into the freezer.  The cold snap which saw daytime temperatures of about -4 degrees in London has finally come to an end, leaving us with balmy days of 10 degrees forecast.  Now that things are warming up here in London I am off on a work trip on Wednesday to Romania.  As I write this entry it is currently -13 degrees C where I am heading.  Brrrrrr.  I've updated my weather feed (to the right above my profile picture) to let you share my pain !!

Jumping On The Twitter Bandwagon

Better late than never - I've joined Twitter . I'm hoping it might make for more frequent, albeit small, updates. What is Twitter - well according to their website it is

"... a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

Why ? Well, the thing I like most about facebook is the status updates, and Twitter is kind of like that. Check out the "Twitter Updates" section on the right hand side of my blog for my latest inane updates :).

Happy New Year Y'All

Whoops .... there goes another year. It was a bit of a strange year that one - nothing much really changed. Not much ventured. Not much gained. I have a good feeling about this one though. Not sure why.

Fotos Desde Espana

(1) Office buildings in Madrid at Puerta de Europa.
(2) Horse statue in Puerta del Sol in Madrid
(3) View of the alcazar in Toledo