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I got persuaded by P and some friends that going up to Mt Buller was a good idea. I don’t know why I said yes because:
- We had to be up at 4.30AM. Yes. In the morning. And I did it. Really. I was very proud of myself. Especially since it was freezing.
- I hate the cold.
So up the mountain we go, with me whingeing all the way..
“No, I didn’t want to go skiing.”
“Yes, I think toboggans are for little kids and I’m not going to be caught dead in one.” etc.
Anyhow I surprised myself by having fun. Thanks to P, Linc & Jay for getting me up to the mountain! You guys are great! I’m even thinking about doing it again!
Here are some photos.
Sorry about the lack of personal posts recently. In the past weeks, I’ve been up to my ears in travellers: hanging out with them, showing them around, giving them a hand. I love doing it, so rewarding and fun, and it’s a great excuse to procrastinate (as if I needed one in the first place!).
The best thing about having visitors is:
- You see your neighbourhood in a new light every time.
- Instead of sitting on your arse at home:
- You get to do fun stuff like sit on the beach eating fish & chips.
- You get to visit your favourite places with new people.
- You now have a place to stay in Timbuktu (or wherever).
- You learn new stuff: language, skill, etc
- You get cool travel ideas and recommendations.
- The house stays clean because you have visitors.
In general, life is more pleasant and interesting. I highly recommend it.
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| Friends & CouchSurfers, Australia Day |
I hosted some CouchSurfers a while back, and showed them around the CBD. We wandered around the famous laneways, and took lots of photos of the graffiti. Check out my dphoto album.
Also, a quick Google Search found these graffiti links:
- SHIFT | PLACE | MELBOURNE – GRAFFITI ART, an excellent summary of the scene, with some great photos.
- There are also some photo examples in this photo gallery on About.com
- The writing on the wall | Guardian Unlimited Arts has scathing political commentary about the state of the art.
Enjoy!
Sometimes I love being the wife of a scientist. Aside from the low pay, you get some cool benefits, like flexible work hours. One of the best perks is scientific conferences. This is when a bunch of certifiable nerds gather and attempt to network. (Actually it’s just an excuse to travel, eat free food, and maybe talk about your most recent research…). Usually in some exotic locale: if they hold it somewhere boring, who’d attend? 
P was being sent to attend one of these junkets in Christchurch, New Zealand. So I hurriedly bought a plane ticket and headed off to join him. I left a week early, taking advantage of cheap tickets, and landed in Christchurch on 4 Dec.
D, my CouchSurfing host, took me straight to C1 Espresso for a pick me up. I had fun playing with the funky water dispenser:
I ate a giant sausage roll which was absolutely yummy!
When P joined me in Christchurch, and I took him around my favourite bits of the city. We wandered around High St and Tuam, and found some cool spots, like these buildings which reminded me of East Berlin:
There is a fountain nearby which for some mysterious reason was churning out large chunks of bubbly foam. I spent a happy 5 mins flinging foam in the air, laughing in glee. Sometimes I forget I’m 31 (which is a good thing).
Then we stopped off at Alice in Videoland, where they have the best video collection I’ve ever seen!
If you wander down Tuam St, you’ll come to this corner.
Where you’ll find some interesting shops to browse your way through, including 2 2nd hand bookstores and a chocolate shop!
We also ate at Sala Sala, where the food was top notch and not much more expensive than the other run-of-the-mill touristy Japanese joints. I would gladly have paid the extra $1 or $2 for that sort of quality. Here’s my yummy tempura soba lunch.
I also spent time communing with ducks near the Avon river.
The next day, I wandered around Cathedral Square watching people watching a chess game.
Then I stayed for evensong at the ChristChurch cathedral, which was absolutely divine, highly recommended and best of all, free!
Today I hung out with a Melbourne CSer (CS= CouchSurfing) who was a member of BookCrossing, and we went on a book hunt through Christchurch. Under her guidance, I found Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune and now I can’t wait to get back to Melbourne and release or hunt some more books. She also managed to influence another CSer I was hanging out with to try it! Cool… Let’s see how many people I can convert by blogging and talking about it.
Here’s some info from their homepage:
BookCrossing provides a whole new chapter to traditional book clubs. Best of all, membership is free. BookCrossing helps people share books through our unique release program — leaving books around for others to find and enjoy. Look for books on park benches, coffee shops, vacation spots or tucked in a bookshelf at the gym – anywhere a new reader might be found! What happens next is up to fate.
Everyday, world-wide, people come to BookCrossing to register books they own, add volumes to their online library, and explore book reviews. Previous readers can follow a book as it travels, by way of an online journal, or our live Google Book Tracking Map. Join multitudes of BookCrossers in our forums to discuss your favorite authors, characters and books of every genre throughout history right up through current releases. Discover opportunities for get-togethers with other BookCrossers, local meet-ups, and book swaps.
Help make the whole world a library and share the joy of literacy. Reading becomes an adventure when you BookCross! Become part of the BookCrossing movement today.
Also, tonight will be my 5th night with my CS hosts in Christchurch, and they are still SO cool. I am going to go home and be a better host now! And no, surfers have never stolen any of my stuff, they are too busy traveling light. And yes, sometimes I give them my keys if I trust them. If you’re at all curious about CouchSurfing and have some questions, send me your comments!
…an outdoor bathtub!
I am staying in Christchurch with a CouchSurfer and they have an absolutely lovely outdoor tub in the garden! I filled it with the garden hose and we turned on the gas burners under it (perfect for cooking Asian in..) We also dropped in about 3 bath bombs. It got all lovely and warm, and I got in for a read and a very long soak. It was nice having the cool breeze on my skin, and hearing the wind though the trees and the birds singing. Now I smell lovely (thanks to all the fizzy bath bombs), feel absolutely relaxed and am ready for bed! Ahhhh this is the life. Thank goodness there are no water restrictions in New Zealand!
First, I quit work. The day after that, I celebrated my birthday. And the day after that, I flew to Christchurch, which is where I am right now!
If this is the first you hear about me quitting, it’s been a long time coming and I’m so glad I’m not working anymore. I’ve never been this happy about leaving a job, but it’s a long story and you can ask me via phone, email or IM if you really want to know!
I also had a wonderful birthday dinner, with very yummy tiramisu from Madonna’s Pizzeria for a birthday cake and had an unexpectedly large amount of presents so THANK YOU to everyone who brought me something. And thanks for making my birthday absolutely brilliant.
I barely had time to enjoy being old before I was off again, first thing the next morning! I flew to Christchurch yesterday and have been relaxing with my CouchSurfing hosts here all day yesterday. I was just too buggered to do anything else.
Today, after a good night’s sleep, adventure awaits! More news, and photos, when I get organised! Stay tuned!
I have been a fairly active CouchSurfer recently. Right now we have a very delightful guest J (who is sitting next to me drying her hair) from Germany. It’s very nice coming home to nice cooking smells (she cooks beautifully) and a clean kitchen (she also does the dishes) in exchange for a room and bed (or in our case, carpeted floor or 3 seater sofa).
We had a great time hanging out yesterday, and having a wonderful dinner hosted by fellow CouchSurfer B. (Thanks for the yummy food!) I guess I’m overdue for another party of some sort… but let’s wait till I’m more organised.
We’re also going to a fantastic event organised by B. It’s called Death By Chocolate, an interactive murder mystery installation that is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival: It will be “The best murder you’ve ever tasted.” Imagine… You’re at a party, a chocolate party to be exact. You walk around, the aftertaste of your favourite block melting in your mouth. You hear a scream from the other room…
Yum. Chocolate, and gore. What a wonderful combination!
It will be held at Koko Black, where everything on the menu has chocolate in it. Check out all the wonderful Flickr photos here.We’ve got tickets for 11 October, and according to B they will sell fast once the show starts. If you want to join us, it is free seating, and tickets are still available when I checked last week.
Hope to see you there!
I joined Couchsurfing last week as part of an attempt to repay the kindness of strangers who let me stay with them at a moment’s notice when I was travelling.
This week we hosted a very nice Israeli for 3 days and it has been very rewarding and wonderful. I got to travel vicariously through him, and at the same time learn more about the situation in Israel from a very personal perspective. His mother’s house had been bombed and she had just walked out of the living room when the bomb smashed it to bits. Yikes.
Sometimes we forget how lucky we are, and we forget to treasure what we have. We forget that everyone has the same basic goal – to be loved and happy. That everyone is the same, deep down. That’s the whole point of traveling.
When you travel you stop and take stock of what you have, what you miss when you are away from home, etc. But the funny thing is, when you go home, you slowly forget all of it! Which is when you start traveling again!
I hope to host more couchsurfers, although P won’t let me host too many. I just want to make sure I host the right sort of people. And of course, let’s not forget the value of alone time!
For security reasons, you will have to join up to see my Couchsurfing profile. If you’re interested in lending a hand (and a couch or spare bed), please email me and I’ll set you up from my end.
