Happy New Year!

Well I was awake for midnight in New Zealand, all the Aussie time zones, all through Asia, part of Europe, the UK and all the Americas.   

 

I had a quiet new years with friends on the beach with a bonfire.  It was quiet, chilly and entirely lovely.  I got to commiserate with another sad person who was not at Rockin' Rockies New Year this year.  We talked all night and watched the sun rise from the top of Mt Eden.  Met some great randoms and realised what a crazy amount of trees there are in Auckland.

 

Why was the Edinburgh street party cancelled?

 

I've had 7 hours of sleep in the last 50 hours.  I think I'll go to bed soon.

2006 Recap

[Insert more lame apologies about being a slacker here]

I guess I can use surprising my family and friends at home as a good excuse for not keeping this up to date. Of course they all knew I was leaving Edinburgh and going to Hong Kong but nevermind. It's been a hectic few months and I worked and partied myself silly in Edinburgh before I left. No excuses but a healthy social life and lack of motivation and/or time for writing.

Congratulations to my cousin and her husband on having another healthy girl. She was born on her grandfather's birthday, which happens to be Christmas as well. Poor kid will have a future full of slashie presents (Christmas-slash-birthday). I know the feeling.

This is an excerpt from the Christmas email I did this year, so you may have read it already. It will probably be my last post for the year. At time of writing I didn't realise 2006 was quite as crappy for some people as it was, so here's cheers to 2007.

[ ... it's been a year of travel, experience, challenge and emotional ups and downs. I've been literally and figuratively all over the place, but it has been a great year all in all.

For the first time that I can remember, it was really hard to leave home to flit away overseas. I had made some very close friends last year and actually felt comfortable being at home for a little over a year. I had to miss my grandmother's funeral to go to China and Hong Kong, where I found some closure upon meeting her family that I didn't even know existed until last year.

I had some bad moments in Thailand (the most trivial of all being having to ride a night bus on my birthday), but these were more than balanced out by some amazing times around Thailand, Cambodia and Laos (thanks so much everyone I was there with).

From there I spent a little while in the UK - saw snow settle in Edinburgh, experienced the Norfolk seaside and the Welsh - before heading out to Turkey for the total solar eclipse. Some spectacular scenery, great company (old and new friends), six days of psy trance and a rare and amazing natural phenomenon later, I found myself living in a small town in central Turkey. The culture was fascinating from the inside, although sometimes challenging and occasionally I found myself really quite lonely. I did meet some excellent people though and they made the time go by quickly with great company and a lot of food! I saw more of the country to the east and thoroughly loved it. Two months later I was winging my way back to the UK with a planeload of English white trash (remind me not to fly the lowest budget airlines anymore!).

After the most awful immigration interrogation I've ever experienced (who wouldn't trust my face? Honestly!) I paid another visit to Wales and spent a bit of time in the Lake District before heading up to Edinburgh for yet another amazing summer and my best festival so far. I worked in a venue bar which allowed me to see as many free shows as I could fit into my schedule, socialised a lot and barely saw my very understanding and wonderful flatmates and their cats. I was also really happy to have friends come up and visit me several times, which is unusual but I so loved showing people around the city I love so much.

I moved back into High Street and worked on reception as well as doing a stint as (dun dun dun) Head Cleaner, which I never thought I'd do, but it came with its perks. I felt like I was more involved with everything there this time, and met pretty much everyone that came through. As always, but especially this time, a fantastic little tribe of people were gathered there, and leaving them was the hardest it's ever been. I am still wishing I could be there.

Meanwhile, I flew back to Auckland via Hong Kong and surprised my mum. That was nice. I've been home for a couple of weeks and my time has been split between catching up with family and friends, and doing family-related trips up to the Bay of Islands and down to Taranaki (both beautiful)... ]

Here's to a possibly more structured but always as fun 2007 ...

I'm so behind on everything

With no excuses except for greater responsibility, more work and more socialising.

I'm behind on my blog, my emails, my crochet and organising my life.

I need to write another to do list ...

On the upside, I went to a place last night where the cocktails cost more than the wicked cool shoes I'm currently wearing (cocktails = £7.50- 9.50, shoes = £7.49) and then my lovely friends paid cause they know I'm waay below the poverty line ... Thanks T and Warren!

This never happens to me!

Through a combination of poverty and bad planning, I went over my overdraft limit by £3.30. 

Through trying to rectify this, spending more money and then rectifying that, I managed to be charged not only the interest on the overdraft (fair enough), but three charges of £28.00 each! 

What the hell?!

How much money is that back where I made the money? 

I don't even like to think about it ...

And

Also, my new room to be is haunted.

And my roommate has the pox (fowl kind).

I haven't had them.

Or ghosts.

Aaargh.

Yo yo yo it's Movember!

In case you've had your head stuck in the sand in recent weeks, you may not know that Movember has officially started.

It's a fantastic fundraiser for men's health - prostate cancer research and men's depression awareness. 

So guys - shave your faces and register with the website, collect donations and grow the best mo you can folliculate (is that a word?).

Girls - support your Mo Bros!

And everyone donate something, it's a good cause!

http://www.movember.com

If you're lacking in mo's to sponsor - try the Aussie team 2290 - a bunch of engineering students in Melbourne!

Costume Karma

Has anyone ever noticed how Asian (generic, not specific) tourists are everywhere, yet none of them seem to die in western zombie films? 

I noticed.

Hence, I dressed in drab but cute clothes, straightened my hair, carried a guidebook, slung a camera around my neck, rustled a lot of plastic bags, wore socks and jandals (aka flip flops) and did peace signs a lot for photos.  And had a bloody head wound and death makeup, of course.

It was all fun and games and everyone thought my outfit was hilarious.  Until I noticed the small Asian (Chinese, but we'll stick with the generic term) girl with the scarf over her head staring at me.  She didn't stop for ages.  I mostly avoided eye contact, it was extremely uncomfortable.  She was drinking the sangria and was apparently nice, but I was totally unnerved.  Then she started playing Jenga by herself in the middle of a hectic party.  I had my suspicions that she was more Asian than even I was pretending to be.

Later on we went to the pub for ScaryOke and she came along.  It was only then that I realised that she was wearing white Wilson tennis socks with pink and clear plastic slides with octopi on them.

Totally out-Asianed.  Gutted.

Ghosties and ghoulies

I took a few minutes out at midnight on All Hallow's Eve as I always do to commune a little with the general world around me.  Unlike last year where I got to see stars forever in the outback desert, I was amongst the dodgy schemies on the dirty streets of Edinburgh.  At least I was alone and could still see the sky. 

I love this place though, and I love these people.  I went through some old photos here and reclaimed all the ones that belong to me.  Ahh, the memories.

In other news, the interview for the job fell through, I am permanently busy at the hostel with work and with crochet - I am currently occupied with outfitting Edinburgh with my designs.  Success!

Oh yeah, that was my point ...

I've actually motivated myself enough to apply for a job ...

So fingers crossed I hear back from them this week and can go back down to London for an interview ...

Off the radar

A million apologies yet again for not keeping anything up to date on here.  I managed to write a daily journal all year (asides from two excruciatingly uneventful weeks in Turkey), but haven't managed to do it for the last couple of weeks I've been so busy.

I've been working flat out (like a lizard drinking) at the hostel which included having to go to London to do some PR type work (my first expense paid trip ever, woohoo) for a few days last week.  I've also had a couple of days up on the Isle of Skye with some friends from home and the huge responsibility of being "in charge" at the hostel.

I've also totally upped my nerd status by relearning how to crochet.  I used to do it when I was little, but only involved boring things that my mum started and finished for me.  I was inspired by one of the girls making a baby blanket for her nephew-to-be and got her to show me a few tricks before she left.  Since then I've basically learned to read patterns on my own and am scarily addicted to handicrafts.  It's also becoming somewhat of a sideline income for me and people are seriously going to give me money for hats with their names on them.  It all started as a joke - my friend wanted a hat with WENDY on it, but me thinking this was too scary made him one with his own name on it.  I thought it'd make him look "special", but apparently this is the new geek chic item and everyone wants one.  I have a backlog of about 8 hats to make now ... photos to come soon (internet shopping anyone?).  I now need to employ some cheap overseas labour, but as a friend pointed out, I AM the cheap overseas labour.  Le sigh.