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

Autumn

Unoriginal Underground

+3

I got home from work last night to find a Royal Mail parcel collection notice on the floor just inside the front door. The only thing that I could think it could be was my Working Visa extension application, including passport, that I had sent off about 3 1/2 weeks ago. But, and this was a big BUT, that wasnt due for another couple of weeks. It couldn't be .... The collection notice had all the right boxes ticked - "Special Delivery", "Signature Required","Small Packet". "Small Packet" ruled out the occasional gig tickets that gets sent to my house instead of work. I didnt want to get my hopes up though. Why did I care so much ? For a start it costs £750 to apply, so failing to get the extension would be a costly exercise. Not to mention I would have to stop working. But, more importantly, my company weekend away is the last weekend of September and I had been more than a bit worried that I wouldnt get my passport back in time. I had been running scenarios through my mind in which I ran to the Post Office the morning of my flight for the weekend away to collect my passport before heading to the airport - and that was the "happy day" scenario. Cruelly I had to wait until this morning to find out what the parcel was. After getting out of bed like a kid at Christmas time and dashing down to the post office this morning I was relieved to find it was indeed my Working Visa extension reply - complete with a new stamp in my passport allowing me work until September 2011 ! What a relief ...

Last.fm

Considering I am so slack at updating this blog it is nice that some parts update themselves.  Check out my last.fm chart on the right hand side.  It is a pretty neat little widget that shows you the music i am currently listening to.  You can also check out my last.fm profile here to see what gigs I have coming up.  Nice.

Momentum

I started this blog to keep people up to date with my travels.  This year has been pretty sparse on the travel front - Oz in January and Italy for a weekend in June.  Correspondingly the blog has been pretty quiet - laying dormant waiting for something to happen.  Well not much is planned on the travel front but I am going to make more of an effort (again!) to update the blog.  It is easy to take life in London for granted - settling into the work/weekend routine - and I really dont want to fall into that trap.  I have been here over 3 years now and at the end of September I will have been in my current job for 3 years too.  Almost as long as I was in Perth.  Well, okay, another year, but at the speed this year has gone that wont take too long.  Anyway, this entry is really just an effort to start building up some momentum again.  It seems that inertia is not just for mass. 

Midnight 28

the wimbledon dogs

Why I Live Here ...

Just got to see these guys play an outdoor gig two nights in a row .... sweeet. (Yes it was taken with my mobile and cropped something fierce :( - can you tell who it is ???)

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