0Melbourne, Australia
4th September 2008
Anniversaries
This time two years ago, I was waiting at Melbourne airport for my flight to Madrid. As far as I was concerned, I was leaving Australia for the better part of a decade, if not longer. I said goodbye to my life here and boarded the plane with a note of sadness in a concerto of excitement and anticipation. Now, the anniversary of that event passes me in a cloud of bitterness for a second time, and I find myself wondering if it really was only two years ago.
0Melbourne, Australia
15th January 2008
George Burns was right
The new academic year is away once more, with thousands of new first year students descending on Melbourne to commence a year of learning (both in and out of the lecture hall). Tonight I went to collect Edgard from a function he was attending for new starters at La Trobe, and found I’d left behind my student days and not even realised it.
0Melbourne, Australia
6th December 2007
The Black Sheep is Pink
Had I written this in the present when events were unfolding, I’d almost certainly have had a different perspective. So I am writing to you from the future, when the most distressing parts of this are dispensed with and a degree of calm and normalcy has returned. We’ve moved to the stage I’d always imagined we’d be at. If only I’d foreseen the aftershocks, we may have got there a little sooner.
0Canberra, Australia
1st November 2007
Back to reality
I woke up this morning and found myself back in Canberra. As much as I like Canberra, I really don’t want to be here right now. I have vague memories of the hum from the engines of the Dash-8 that brought me back from Sydney, and an impression that the flight west across the Pacific had been much faster than the one flying east. A month was enough to leave an indelible mark on my memory, but not enough for me to feel my absence.
0Melbourne, Australia
17th September 2007
A search for the intangible
There's nothing more likely to motivate me to write, and by that I mean plunging headlong into my fiction writing rather than my journal, than a sudden crush of job interviews. As I sit at the airport and wait for my flight back to Canberra, I am watching a giant orange sun sink beneath the horizon. I've found myself thinking about the past several days and what I've done in that time, I find myself facing two inescapable truths: I am not doing all with my life that I could or should; and I am experiencing something of a disconnect from my profession.
0Warrnambool, Australia
16th September 2007
...and the word was Preparation
I am back at my parents’ place for the weekend for a final catch up with family before I head off overseas again. In two weeks I fly out of the country, bound for Peru. I spent several years in Melbourne and then in Canberra, researching the places in Latin America that sounded interesting enough for my planned three year sojourn and plotting a course of travels and activities to the nearest day. It’s been over a year since I looked at any of that information, and as my departure for at least part of that journey becomes imminent, I am feeling totally unprepared for the trip.
0Canberra, Australia
6th September 2007
A year to forget
In a few hours, it will be exactly twelve months since I flew in across the dry plains of Spain to land in Madrid. As this date has approached, I've become increasingly aware that my memories of the place are fading, even though I revisit somewhere from my trip on an almost daily basis. As my Spanish experience fades into the background, and a new Peruvian one draws closer, I still have the same burning desire to return to Spain as I did on the day I left.
0Canberra, Australia
1st September 2007
Spring has sprung
When I lived in Melbourne, I was never especially conscious of the shifts in season. There was a marked difference between Summer (hot and windy) and Winter (Wet, cloudy and windy), but Spring and Autumn were largely forgotten seasons. I'm not sure if it was because I'd been there for so long I'd become immune, or if the changes were not so dramatic as in Canberra. I think probably the latter.
1Canberra, Australia
19th July 2007
Ignition sequence started
After 18 months of tinkering with Symphony and never having enough time to fully apply myself to learning the details of the technologies behind it, I came to the conclusion it would be best to hire someone to do that heavy lifting for me. Today, after almost another year of back and forth, I’ve been able to flick the switch.
0Canberra, Australia
22nd June 2007
The rule for making a wish
In the years when I used to have birthday cakes, or more to the point, birthday cakes with candles, I was always told to make a wish before blowing out the candles, but to never tell anyone what the wish was. Indeed in every case where we were granted an opportunity to make a wish, the standard rule of thumb was to never tell anyone about it, or it won't come true.