Mrs Robinson

I just had settled into my new hostel I had moved there on the promise of free Internet access, well the official kind of free Internet access not the kind I could normally persuade out of the hostels computers. Unfortunately there was only 4 computers with Internet for a whole hostel so there was a big queue. When I finally got to one I found out why everyone was taking so long. This computer was not a healthy bunny and was talking to the Internet at a stonking 159 bytes a second!

I already didn't really like this new hostel there where to many pointless rules, for example they have a roof top balcony, for no real reason you are allowed drinks in some parts of the balcony but not others with benches marking the boundary. No drinks of any kind are allowed out there after 10 o'clock. Also there were lots of posters around decreeing things like if you haven't payed for your bed by 10 in the morning your leaving and we are replacing you. (photos of some signs coming soon)

I've not posted any photos for a while so here are some of my favourite recent ones.

I was meeting Heather this evening, since the Australian resistance had disbanded their communications black out embargo we had been conversing a few times every day. We went to this really nice bar, it was high up in a building with a great night view of the entire of Brisbane skyline. If I was a better tourist I would have taken my camera and got a photo. I know I should be getting more photos of things like breath taking skylines and less of me with giant purple skittles. But I'm sure you have plenty of other blogs for that.

Me and Heather got on really well, we joked our way through a very pleasant evening, but there was one nagging doubt in my mind. Something about her was different enough to set off an alarm somewhere in my mind. I inquired and found out she was just over half a decade older than me, you really couldn't tell by looking at her unless you looked really closely. Maybe this is what I needed, here was someone I liked ... but maybe ... just maybe because of the Mrs Robinson factor was still interesting enough for the blog.

About 10'O clockish she left for a work do and I went back to my hostel and started my NLP show, I was determined to get really good at the NLP thing and sharpen up my hypnosis skills that I had let rust in my last year in England. The backpackers in the hostel bar made idea guinea pigs candidates, I was getting much better and starting to developing my own show man style. I was also starting to get small audiences of a few people joining in and watching. Because of the way your mind works you react to your internal representation of the world instead of 'reality'. Most of the time these two things are quite strongly related but it's surprising how different they can get. With a few questions and paying careful attention you can very quickly work out how they tick under the hood and use this for all kinds of cold reading or mock psychic stuff. This mixed with a few jokes and the actually helpful basics change work that I was grounding myself in seemed to be a crowd pleaser. I Wonder if I could make money as an NLP busker.

Brisvegas

The winter weather here in Brisbane is absolutely great! Most days its in the low 20's so its lovely and warm. That nice pleasant feeling of warmth you feel on your skin, now without getting to hot.

I was heading to town to feed my Internet blogging and food addictions and on the way a very attractive woman stopped me and tried to get me to donate some money to Charity, it was a very interesting negotiation. We struggled to find common ground, given that she wanted me to give money to charity and I wanted to have sex with her. I was getting a strong feeling of deja vu. We talked for a few minutes and she offered me a job, maybe I was being given a second chance maybe the universe wanted me to be a charity mugger. It might be my destiny!

I decided if that was my destiny then I wasn't going to accept it, I had only just stopped feeling bad about the last bunch of people I had conned. I left.

The Internet cafe I've been using is called the Bunker, its one of those cool gaming Internet cafes and there's a lot of people here 24/7 playing World of Warcraft. I was up early one morning and got here about 06:30 and there were still 6-7 people playing World of Warcraft. It is like a modern opium den.

'Hello, I'm feeling really seedy this morning'

Heather had just phoned, and she had picked a really interesting opening.

'So put on a rain coat with nothing underneath and hang out in a park'

I liked my reply a lot but in Australia seedy means hung over, very different to the English meaning, we had both just hit the language barrier at full speed but Heather was cool, we joked a bit and arranged to meet the following day.

That day I pottered round town for a bit, rang some more recruitment consultants and hung out in the botanic gardens (not wearing a rain coat!). I found a nice quiet spot listened to some hypnosis stuff on my ipod. I also got lost in thought and pondered, I think at some point I actually felt at one with the universe. It was very nice and relaxing.

That evening I headed out to meet Sarah from yesterday. I didn't recognise her! She had transformed into the most flawlessly beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her breasts so pert and well shaped, I should probably stop looking at them, no it just wasn't possible no matter how much I tried my eyes just ended up there. How could I not have noticed that she was the most attractive woman in the world yesterday. I said to myself

'I wonder how I'm going to mess this one up'

Now this is a very interesting statement to give yourself, from a hypnosis NLP point of view I had just given myself a conversational postulate, an embedded command and a presupposition all in one sentence. I know about positive thinking etc. etc. and quickly caught it and fixed my mind up and got back into my dating state.

Other things had changed in Sarah's transformation, she had become really boring, really really boring, really really really boring. I tried everything I could to enjoy our conversation but it just wasn't working. I think she most have sold her soul to the devil last night in exchange for become the most perfect womanly creature.

Two guys across the table where having a heated philosophical debate, I felt like I was talking to cardboard. I really tried to talk to Sarah really I did. She was so pretty I really wanted to enjoy her company. But there was just nothing there and the other guys across the table where both wrong! They where talking about perception's of reality and I was talking about Sarah's cat. Eventually my mind snapped I charged into the guys conversation. Stringing as many big words as possible into a sentence to establish my creditability. This obviously impressed them and we preceded to have a very lively and interesting debate. I positioned myself so my ear was towards them so I could hear them but still look at Sarah. All was right with the world, I think I felt at one with the universe again, that's nice achieving Zen twice in one day.

Sarah would occasionally try and join in the conversation, but she was out of her depth this was the World Wresting Federation of conversation, I say that because it looked and sounded really impressive but I'm fairly confident we where just taking it in turns to talk. After a couple more drinks Sarah left she returned about half an hour later with another guy. At the same moment a girl with red wine danced into me spilling it all over my favourite white shirt. I reacted to both events simultaneously I took Sarah to one side and for some reason said:

'I can't believe how rude you've just been I'm not putting up with that' She looked confused and I found myself in the interesting position of storming off because I had been rude. Anyway I was enjoying the storming and headed home for the night.

Now I realize the past few blog entries have been slightly darker (they get happier on the next one, I'm a bit behind on the blogging at the moment so its a bit laggy) . But I really think that moment when I first saw the new Sarah and said to myself

'I wonder how I'm going to mess this one up'

I really hit on something important. I don't think I want a happy ending, at least not for a while. I've been really enjoying the roller coaster adventure I'm on. For some reason I absolutely love writing a blog. I feel I owe it to you my loyal readers to keep this interesting and entertaining. I don't want this to end yet. How boring would this blog become if I got together with the most beautiful woman in the world, feel in love blah blah blah. Obviously I'm a non fiction writer so with no narrative or characters to play with I need to actually do crazy things in order to write about them. Well not actually do crazy things deliberately(that would be crazy) but to be truly myself and see what comes out on my adventures.

Have fun!

Mosty Moistly

I think in my travels I have set off some kind of karmic alarm. It was like Australian's where uniting, acting as one in a kind of immune system response to get me to leave the country. For some reason no Australian person would return my calls or messages. It was very odd, all my English and foreign friends would reply but not a single Australian would. This ranged from mildly annoying that people I meet in bars the previous nights not replying, to Irritating blond nurse (I actually can't remember her name she is on my phone as blond nurse) not replying. To extremely annoying as my old company hadn't payed me yet and refused to contact me!

This was a very clever response on the Australian's part, my main achilles heel is that I really need human contact. I thrive on it! I really don't like my own company that much and find being on my own for any lenght of time very difficult. If someone wanted to extract information from me all they would need to do was leave me on my own for a few hours and I would be ready to tell them everything. This was really starting to drive me nuts, till I finally got a text message. It was from Heather saying that she could no longer make our date tonight, that really didn't help.

There where three reasons I decided to head to Brisbane,

1. I know someone here named Cheryl, but she had been here a while and was obviously becoming part of the resistance movement. She would text me arrange to meet then text me just before saying she couldn't make it. This happened more than once!

2. The Weather was warmer

3. Heather, I liked here when I meet her in a bar Melbourne and she said to contact her if I ever was over Brisbane way where she lived.

To be completely honest these reasons where probably placed in reverse order of importance. I had just flown across a county for a date and she had just canceled. Am I crazy? (well more crazy than I previously thought) what the hell am I playing at?

I felt myself teetering on the abyss, the hostel I was in was pretty unfriendly and there was no space to hang out and talk to people. There was a bar but the music was just a little to loud for a proper conversation. Somehow they had also got to Claire all the way over in England, she stopped talking to me too we normally exchanged emails almost daily but I had heard nothing in nearly a week!

Luckily this reaction stopped, almost all at once everyone started replying to me again. Maybe they where just giving me a warning. I meet an interesting girl named Sarah she was just having a quiet drink after work and she arranged to take me on a tour of the pubs in town tomorrow (she even turned up, continued in the next post). She left and I was on my own my own in the pub enjoying a quite drink when trouble found me.

If you learn one thing from this blog learn this, Norwegians are crazy, don't under any circumstances start drinking with them especially if they are female. After being force feed a few more shots than I am comfortable drinking it was decided we where going to play dare or dare. A variation of truth of dare but without that all so easy way out truth option.

Things started off light hearted and fun I got one of the girls to go up to a guy on the dance floor and comment that his dancing reminded her of John Travolta. But things rapidly got worse, I was made to go up to a woman and say

'Are you sucking that lolly pop because you don't have a penis to suck on'

Her boyfriends eyes burned a whole in my face with the look he shoot me as those words left my mouth. I moved away ... fast. For my revenge I sent one girl off to ask an Asian guy is it true that you have small penises, and the other I sent off to go and give the really creepy bald guy a head massage. This is where things got even more out of hand, the creepy bald guy starting following around the Norwegian girl and nothing could persuade him to stop. There revenge was swift and brutal:

' I have a big penis, would you like to have sex?'

Not the normal kind of thing I would say to a girl, the main problem was it wasn't a girl I was talking to. Things must be so much easier on the gay scene, as the guy held my hand and said yes. Red Alert ... I instantly sobered up, I had crossed the line enough times by now to know that it had just been overstepped again. I knew this was bad and was causing much hilarity from my Norwegian "friends". I simply ran (it worked before) as no words could possibly justify what I had just done. It was here that I stopped playing, unfortunately the guy I had just spoken to didn't know the game was over and was heading in our direction.

But their revenge wasn't complete without missing a heart beat one of the girls instantly dared the other one to go over to the guy I had just spoken to and tell him about how I really liked him but was just coming out of the closet and not fully confident yet.

I got my coat and I ran. All in all a very fun night.

Flight Night

Well the time had come to leave Melbourne. I had my bags packed and started walking the short walk to the train station. My mind drifted back to my first day in Australia, that morning I had checked out of a rather rubbish hostel the Danish Geneticists had taken me to. Heading off into the unknown exploring this new country carrying with me all my worldly possessions. It sounds like a romantic idea, maybe it was the lack of a sunset but in reality there is nothing romantic about walking around carrying something really heavy and being lost.

I was booked on a Jetstar flight, Jetstar are the kind of airline that make even Easy Jet look luxurious I could imagine the advert on telly:

"Are you tired of having room to put your legs between the seats?
Do you wish the person sitting in front of was so close you could smell the them?"

My 1000 mile flight only cost me £40! How good is that? It was actually cheaper to fly up north than it was to get the Train or the Bus and they both took more than one day to get there. I've spent more money getting to London and back in a weekend. For this kind of price I was willing to put up with a lot.

The plane was leaving from Avalon Airport, a more accurate name for that establishment would be shack in the middle of nowhere with a run way next to it. I loved this place, admittedly I had seen more impressive bus stations than this airport. But it was just well ... cute, I was a little early so they wouldn't let me in as they only have space for two planes worth of passengers. The check in desk was literally just a desk, they only had one x-ray machine and you would be able to comfortably walk from one side of the airport to the other while holding your breath.

When I got on the flight I played the normal game of looking at the people coming in and hoping that person does/doesn't sit next to you. I hit gold! A blond 24 year old nurse was mine to talk to for the next couple of hours. Obviously at the time I didn't know she was a nurse it wasn't like she was wearing her nurses outfit with a badge saying 24 on it, that would be silly. All I had to do was not say anything to stupid or offensive for the next couple of hours, it was tough but I managed to pull it off. We exchanged numbers and were planning to meet again on Friday.

The flight was really rough it was raining and stormy so the plane was almost constantly buffeting and would occasionally feel like it was falling for a few seconds. I started to wonder why I was trusting my life to the cheapest possible airline. We had life jackets under the seats but as we where flying over land I couldn't see how they would be helpful.

Another one bites the dust

For Saturday night I was meeting Ms X again. We went to a great bar it was called 'The Sanctuary' It was in a maze of alley ways in Melbourne in fact a lot of the bar actually was alley ways with improvised plastic sheeting and heaters to keep the weather off. This may sound terrible but this place had atmosphere and was really nice. Imagine the kind of bar you would get after a post in a post apocalyptic world where a new civilisation was being rebuilt in the ruins of the old. I loved it here and best of all there wasn't a single trace of a punk or punk music anywhere.

I was having a very nice evening, me and Ms X shared some nice conversation and some beer, at one point in the conversation she mentioned:

'I would rather know the truth and it kills me then be lied to'

An interesting thing for her to say I made note of it, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to say to me as I'm painfully honest at the best (well worst) of times. On its own this was OK thing to say but then she said something else that really didn't help:

'How attractive do you think I am?'

I knew this was a trap, I knew how to skillfully sidestep said trap but given her earlier comment about honesty I thought why not give it a try.

'I think your attractive, but not attractive enough for me to ever marry you'

A few seconds of painful silence followed.

She wasn't impressed with my honesty and a long awkward conversation ensued. I could have talked my way out of it, but to be honest I agreed with her when she said (may not have been her exact words but the sentiment is their):

'I want to be with someone that really liked me, not someone that kind of likes me'

She was right she deserved someone that did really like her and I only kind of liked her. I left without putting up any real fight. She already knew and seemed OK with the fact I was flying to Brisbane on Monday and already had a couple of dates lined up their, but I had overstepped the mark again in quite gloriously horrible style, I really should stop doing this. I'm don't feel good about it but still have a kind of pride and sense of humor about my life that seems to protect me from accepting full responsibility for my actions. I again returned to the hostel with a heavy heart.

I then had a stonking good night in the hostel, I hadn't been round the hostel much recently so most of the people their where shiny and new to me, some still even had their wrappers on (I have no idea what that means either).

I was invigorated by all the fun, I love that pretty much all over the world there are fun people that enjoy having a few drinks and conversation. Good people, people like us that enjoy talking about both the trivial and the world changing. This fact especially pleased me there really is an inexhaustible supply of possible friends out here. There are so many great people on this planet that even if I continued to offend them at the rate I had been doing this weekend I couldn't possibly offend them all :o)

Sweaty

Well it had to happen sooner or latter I had my first bad night out. It started well that day a couple of people had texted me inviting me out. I felt all warm and fuzzy that these people I hardly knew had gone to the small effort and invited me out. Sadly that's pretty much the last warm and fuzzy feeling I would experience for the rest of the evening. I was being invited to a gig. I hadn't been to a gig since my days of playing them well over 5 years ago. I wanted to decline but as I was on this travelling experiment doing stuff that I normally wouldn't do ...

I was being taken to the The Espy on St Kilda beech, it was your typical music venue bar, rough around the edges but it had more than enough charm and personality to compensate. Apart from one thing ... it was punk night. I've always hated punk, this was compounded by the fact that I really used to like heavy metal. Because there was never enough Metal Heads or Punks to have a club night each we where forced to co-exist. It was an uneasy alliance with each side visible reeling when the other sides music was being played. You could literally see the shift change on the dance floor as the music switched genre, only to switch back again a few songs later.

Every fibre of my body was telling me to run and get out while I still could.

'I'm already pretty drunk and I don't have any ID'

I told the bouncers in a vein attempt for them not to let me in, well, with the last straw clutched and not holding I payed entry and things got worse. I saw a big poster advertising a band named 'Bastard Squad' and the date looked horribly similar to today's date. But before I was allowed to witness the glory of 'the squad' I had 4 local punk support bands to get through. Oh no! Support bands I had been blissfully not thinking about them for years and now they had caught me again.

I should probably explain that my own band in the past had done fairly well and we had got to the point where more often than not we were at the head liners. This was great but it had one problem, there was nearly always at least one band on the bill that for some reason decided to look up to us. This was usually expressed in the form of them asking us to watch their set. Now being fairly friendly people that wanted to encourage the younger guys and keep the rock and roll spirit going we had no choice but to accept.

This normally meant about 30-45 minutes of torture as these musical contortionists bombarded us with sounds so horrible it still pains me to even think about them. To stay sane we used to have a sport where we would try and find ways of complementing said support band as much as possible. We had to stop doing this as it was damaging our faith in humanity, due to far to many follow up gigs being organized and us having to watch them again!

Anyway, when we arrived the first support band 'Sewercider' where playing, luckily these guys where so bad that even the people I was with (who liked punk) couldn't stand them and they let us move to a different venue. We had lost money but saved our hearing and souls.

We went to the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, a chain of English pubs here, a few beers later the guys and girls I was with started dancing. I am completely unable to dance, I don't want to dance, the dance floor is completely off limits to me. I like drinking and talking. I waited for a couple of drinks and apart from them periodically coming to try and tempt me on the dance floor I wasn't having any contact with my friends. I went for my back up plan of talking to the other drinkers.

'Are you religious, or just scared of vampire attacks?'

To my drunken mind this was a witty thing to say to someone wearing a big cross round their neck and maybe sober I could of pulled it off, but any witt I possessed had been drowned by now and I had just really offended someone with no comic escape.

I sleeted them (Sleeted - verb to leave a night out early without telling your comrades), this offended them and through the power of text when I explained that I left because I wasn't having much fun this seem to upset them even more.

Quiet Asian, Sleeping American

Well well well, I've been very happy the past couple of days, firstly in order to atone for my charity sins I have just founded a new and honest charity http://www.sponsorabackpacker.com/. I've adjusted my various profiles and signatures on web pages I frequent to link to it. I ask that you please do the same and also email all your friends lets launch this great charity and start an Internet phenomena together!

The past couple of days I've been on a date, its been great! Sadly Ms X wishes to remain anonymous which is reasonable considering the undue pressure that would be caused by having her life read about by literally ten's of readers everyday. I am completely happy to share all the personal details of my life, but feel I don't have the right to share anthers especially (well to be honest mainly) when she knows about the blog and can read it and get annoyed. I will keep this blog more secret in future to protect its integrity.

All I can say that early one morning round her house (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) she made me Vegemite on toast. Don't eat it - dispute its name the closest thing to a vegetable it contains is yeast extract and it tastes suspiciously similar to Marmite.

Being the accomplished blogger that I have become I'm not going to let the fact I'm not allowed to write about the past couple of days stop me from making a great entry. Where would we be if Shakespeare had decided not to write just because he had nothing to write about?


Room mate update:

One of the things I love most about hostels is the people you meet and share a room with, here's an update about the people I share with.



Quiet Asian - I woke up one morning to find out he had left without saying a word. Who'd have thought it? However I did hear him talk once, he was asleep and said a few angry random Japanese words. Well I assume they where random as he was asleep. I don't speak Japanese so they may have made perfect sense.



Dreads - Dreads has been in my room for a while, when I first spoke to him he said he had just been on holiday to Fuji and would I like to see his photos. Having never seen Fuji before I jumped at the chance, now this is where me and Dreads started to part ways. I always had to repeat everything I said to him, he was Spanish and was trying to make me feel like my English was bad. I spoke slowly and clearly using simple words and tenses, but he always without fail made me repeat the same thing twice. Maybe he learned English of a tape where they always said everything at least twice. The more worrying thing about him was that nearly every photo of him in Fuji was a close up shot of him with his top off. You could barley see any of Fuji at all and after about 10 photos like this I put the camera down. This angered Dreads who would pick up the camera every time I put it down and give it back to me until I had seen all 117 calender shots of him in Fuji.


The Sleeper - The sleeper was American I knew this from the one time I bumped into him at the bar. A pleasant chap I was happy to finally have a normal room mate. In his first few days here he was jet lagged like the best of us when we arrive. Instead of adjusting like normal people do, he just started sleeping more and more. To the point you could now almost guarantee that whenever you enter the room he would be there to grown at you. Lunch time, after work, evening or late at night now no longer mattered to him for he was the Sleeper!


Shavo - My new room mate, I have only two bits of information about him on file at present, one that it takes him an inordinately long time to shave his head. the first time I bumped into him in the bathroom and hes head was already looking completely shaven. I went to the toilet, brushed my teeth, had a shower and even a shave and left with him still shaving his head. I was tempted to shave my own head and race him, I was confident of my victory despite his head start of already being finished. I have shaved my own head a few times and I admit it is an awkward situation but he had all the tools he needed, a shaver and two mirrors, and he just seemed to be shaving the same bits over and over again.

This made a lot more sense when I found the next bit of information about Shavo came to light, his locker looks like the suitcase from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This guy did a lot of drunks, the smell of skunk escaped his locker and give our room that final University halls of residence touch that it had been missing up to this point.

What goes up ...

Well in another first for me I quit my job just now because I was making to much money. This morning I buckled under the pressure and asked how much I was getting payed. I was shocked by how much I was making. On one day were I was just trying out a few NLP things for fun I made $400 and this was without even really trying. Upon finding this out I asked a few more questions and found out that between my cut and my Company's cut the first year of a persons donations basically wouldn't get to the charity. If you really want to make an ongoing donation to charity do it on the charities website that way they get all he money.

Once I found this out I quit on the spot, I had no choice. I felt absolutely terrible about all the people that I had gotten to sign up and generally felt really shitty. I had mislead people, because I had got carried away and gone with the flow instead of doing some basic homework. I had convinced quite a few people to donate money under false pretenses. I'm not really sure what to do about this, so any advice you guys have is welcome.

Its interesting how easy I was flourishing here, I already had a (to) well payed job, friends and was well on my way to finding a girl. Strange how little this seems to matter, maybe I should be looking for something else? (again ideas welcome)

I've decided to fly to Brisbane to make the most of the sunny weather, and get a nice honest job like picking fruit or working in a bar.

I'll post a happy entry about something amusing as soon as it happens so this one isn't at the top for long.

Through the looking glass

I had amassed rather a large collection of phone numbers on my various expeditions, maybe it was the accent or maybe the fact that I was on my own and therefore much more prone to talking to people. I believe it may have been a nexus of causal pathways. I had a lot of new numbers on my phone, with no idea who most of them were. So I started picking random ones and messaging them and arranging dates. It was kind of like a blind date but with people I had already briefly meet.

Wednesdays and Thursdays dates where fairly normal, I don't spend more than half an hour on the first date, its just nice to meet quickly and check that the woman isn't crazy (well crazy for a woman) and have some light conversation. I find this works really well, you can quickly qualify people and decide what to do next without investing to much time. Also this works really well with attractive women, they are just to guys trying to spend as much time with them as possible, then one turns up has a coffee and leaves surprisingly. You really are best off making a good impression then getting the hell out of there.

One crime most salesmen make is overselling things, I think most daters make the same mistake. There also seems to be a lot of psychological evaluation that goes on the first time you meet someone from both sides, I find that the less time spent in that awkward phase the better. Should you wish to continue the date move to a knew location and for some reason it seems to count as a second date and things get strangely easier. Obviously this is aimed for people that want to start regally dating people or starting a relationship. If you just want to sleep with someone then have a long first date but change locations as often as possible. This distorts their perception of time and makes it feel like they have known you for longer.

Friday was when things started to get interesting I had a date to see the football with Emma. Yeah I was already breaking my own rules, in the next paragraph no less. I was here for new experiences and to try new things after all. It turned out Emma was Em the lesbian from last week and she had brought her girl friend with her. She was late so we missed the start of the football and the massive queue outside the ground put us off from even trying to get in. It was a strange date, but with the outside chance of a threesome I committed to it with every fiber of my soul. After a few drinks in some really rather awful bars we headed to a pub named the The lounge. It was a nice place, music loud enough to dance to but quiet enough to talk to.

About midnight we started to head for home, through all the recent dating I found my thoughts were increasingly introspecting on the past. It was like the more women I was meeting the more I was longing for past women, maybe this was some kind of home sickness? It's not really something I have encountered before. I had meet some ok people but no one that I shared a chemistry or spark with. As I got back from the hostel I typed out a drunken email to Claire, she was the one I was mainly thinking about (and also the only x-girlfriend that would reply). To those of you that have received a drunken email from me, yes I am aware of the spelling check function while drunk. Its just drunken Mike believes that spelling and grammar checking somehow take away from the potency of the message.

Almost as soon as I sent the email to Claire, I got 2 text messages, I assumed it was Claire replying ... but no ... I had two text messages from girls I meet last week inviting me into town. I was tired from a weeks work (my first in a while). But I hatched a cunningly plan. I went to meet Bell (the first text girl) at Cookie while sending texts to the other girl pretending to be lost. I shall be shallow again! I think by the time I first met Bell my beer googlies where well and truly attached, misted up and it must have been a foggy night. I needed to drink fast, make my excuses and go try the next girl.

On the way out I noticed the best thing about Cookie, there is what looks like a mirror behind the bar. However on closer inspection it was actually another bar! It was like peering into a parallel bar universe, but with no means of reaching the other side. Me and some girls around me attempted to make contact by throwing beer mats through but this just really annoyed the bar staff. They didn't seem to understand the importance of what we where trying to achieve and insisted we stopped.

The first contact girls then held me prisoner till I told them the whole story of Alice in wonderland. Reality really is a lot strange than fiction. I wish I could explain how this situation had happened but I can't. One of the women was Tasmanian, I couldn't for the life of me understand her so one of her friends translated for me. Also one of women wasn't to bright and kept asking me when do I get then bit about the yellow brick road.

Once out the pub I started texting number two pretending that I now knew where I was, it turned out girl number 2 was Bell's friend. Yeah that's right, the person I had been texting saying I was lost had been sitting next to Bell and me the whole time. Now when I had literally just left her and her friend, I was now sending her a text message saying I had found my bearings and was ready to meet her. I got a very angry text back, I had overstepped the mark in quite glorious style. I felt bad (but strangely proud) and started to head for home.

I was just walking down the road when I got a text from Monique text blaming me for the bad weather. I was rather proud of my reply as it talked of a butter fly flapping its wing in Brazil. Citing Chaos Theory (aka the butterfly effect) while this intoxicated filled my drunken mind with joy. Anyway I met Monique we headed to the Lounge again, she was interesting and we shared a pleasant few beers.

'Dam I have to be at work in 3 hours'

My heart felt for her, it was already 6 in the morning and her rapidly approaching requirement to attend work while she was still drunk reminded me of my own past. I headed home again, and in and sent Claire an even more drunken email then went to bed.

The word on the street

I've made an editorial decision to keep this a light hearted non political blog, I really don't want to preach all the stuff I'm learning at the moment about the darker side of the world. I feel however it is OK to discuss my reactions to it, without changing the direction of the blog.


Firstly to save the charity money I'm starting my own business so they are not obliged to pay any National Insurance or any benefits. I'm working on a 100% commission so I only get payed when the charity makes money. On my first day, my training day I was shown a video of some of the things that are happening in the developing world.

I normally never really paid attention to those kind of charity videos on TV before and having to study it really changed how I feel. Never before had I actually put myself in their position and tried to imagine what its actually like. I'm guessing the video was designed to get us caring and impassioned about the cause, it worked very well.

The rest of the sales training was very basic and in a lot of places actually wrong, I made a decision not to use any of my NLP/Hypnosis skills to start with. I would play it by the book first then gradually introduce things so I could see what worked. I think Ideally I would be best used training the other collectors, but first I would have to prove myself on the streets.

I'm actually trying to sign up myself on the grounds that if I want someone else to do its dangerously hypocritical if I'm not donating myself. Unfortunately I'm actually not allowed to as I'm not staying in the country for 2 years and have an English credit card, we're trying to work out a way around this at the moment.


The people I work with are great, well to be more accurate the campaigners I work with are great, the people on the street vary some what. They say works only as good as the people you work with, I'm not quite sure how to apply that to this job. Also there was a small matter of that I didn't know how much I was getting paid yet, the pub interview was very fun but in all the excitement we missed a lot of things normally discussed in an interview. I had been working there for a few days now and it would kind of be embarrassing to ask now. What kind of idiot starts a job without knowing how much they are getting paid? I've been spending a lot of money since I arrived here and I might be living beyond my means, or under them I have no way of knowing.


Several interesting trends I've noticed from people that donate, the poorer they seem the more likely they are to stop and talk to you and give, they also give more when they do donate. Kind of the opposite to what I was expecting. The second trend was that Melbourne winter had degenerated into something very similar to English winter. Working inside on a computer all day had really taught me the value of being outside, this job was definitely teaching me the value of being inside! I'm strongly considering migrating north for the winter.

Joinee Bain

Today is the queens birthday and obviously the people in the Australia get the day off while the poor hardworking English bankers still have to work. A girl once asked me.

'Do you think the bank will be open on a bank holiday?'

Anyway today was to be a simple day, I had only three things to do.

Join Danny Wallace

Take a photo for Russ.

Say farewell to the capitalist evil multi national fast food corporations

1. Joining Danny - Although long overdue it was far to easy all I needed was a passport photo and to send it with a nice letter to him. I mentioned that if he ever happened to be in Australia and would like a beer and chicken dansak, he should give me a call.

2. Photo for Russ - This is where it gets a little more interesting. My Friend Russ had been giving me a lot of pointers on my rather dodgy photography. To thank him I thought it would be nice to take a picture just for him with people holding up a sign saying 'Hello Russ!'. Persuading people I've never meet before to stand holding letters for a photo was difficult to start with even for a man with my skills. Till I found the magic formula ... Once I explained that what I was asking them to do was utterly pointless this seemed to reassure people somehow and very quickly 10 signed up.

3. Say farewell to the capitalist evil multi national fast food corporations
Fairly soon I would be a political activist, a good person fighting the good fight, before I could fully embrace this Big Issue reading existence there where a few things I had to do. Firstly actually buying the Big Issue would help (still not read it yet but I own one). Secondly to live an ethical life I decided to in an accidental 30 days tribute to every meal today at a different evil fast food company. As from tomorrow I could never again be a patron again.

Breakfast was at Burger King, horrible food but there was a one legged pigeon hopping around inside being feed by everyone. It may had only one leg but it was very well feed indeed- I took this as a sign about the inherent charitable nature of people.

Lunch I went to Starbucks, with an American guy from the hostel who surprised me by out of the blue saying

'Should I get a Prince Albert?'

I explained to him very clearly my views about penises and sharp objects.

Dinner was at the Golden M, the most evil of them all. My last ever Big Mac and judging by how it looked it wasn't going to taste very nice.

All in all the food in these place is both horrible and expensive I wasn't going to miss them. Now to complete my transition I just had to buy a Che Guevara T-shirt

Watch out for Charlie!

Random fact: English people are forbidden from donating blood in Australia, this is an outrage! link.

So after all the fun I had on challenge day I was really up for a good night out. When drinking in Melbourne expect to pay 3-4 pounds a pint (there's no bloody pound sign on a us keyboard which they use here) . This can go up to as much as 4-5 pounds a bottle in the classy places.

Also there is a kind of weird beer league reversal with a lot of the cheap beers in England ending up as the expensive ones over here. In several nights out I have only found one pub that sells 4x, and none that sell Fosters. I've not been able to find any bitter either, but apparently there are a few British pubs around that sell it.

I had spotted a bar near the station that looked promising on my various walks across the city during the day. Bar E Fifty Five was a friendly place with a strict no chairs policy, only sofas where allowed in here making it a very comfortable place indeed. While here I meet Tom, Tom was upset he had just come out of a 8 year relationship and his first date since had just stood him up.

I took Tom under my wing, well figuratively speaking he was about a foot taller than me.
After a couple of beers and a you can't base your self esteem on women because there crazy talk he was back in the game. In fact a little to back in the game for my tastes, he was embarrassing me! As we walked to the next pub he called out to groups of women in the street saying,

'Hello Ladies!'

As I cringed, I made a mental note that next chance we get I will give him a little bit of an anti-pep talk when we arrived at the next bar. At first me and Tom made a very good team charming people with friendly banter, till the beer started to kick in. At some point one of us decided it would be fun to try and pretend we were brothers (I'm pretty sure it wasn't me). This lead to a few amusing conversations trying to justify this outrageous claim to the natives who frequent the various bars around Melbourne.

Then the beer really started to show, the nice brother talk moved to the comedy low of pretending we where in Nam together (probably my idea). You think that me telling people about how Tom had saved the whole platoon by jumping on a grenade would have been enough but ... as more beer was consumed we ended up just going up to people and telling them to

'Watch out for Charlie!'

We found this historical I didn't have enough sensory acuity left to tell if other people felt the same. I do however remember at one point saying

'hes in the trees'

As a way of explaining what we had just said to some very confused people, to my drunken mind that was obviously the information they needed to complete the puzzle. One of the bars tried to charge us $10 each to get in, but luckily someone had opened a side door to get some air so we walked in there instead.

Tom ran out of the pub!
I ran after Tom! - wow this is sounding like one of those books they made you read at primary school. He had pulled a relatively nice girl, sorry I mean Tom pulled Jane. I tired to explain to him that it was 02:00 in the morning and she was nice, and easily the best he was going to get tonight. There was no reasoning with him. Tom ran from Jane. The beer had turned him into a man possessed, he needed a strip club. Sensing that I would be holding him back we parted ways and I returned to my hostel to sleep. We didn't get each other contact details both of us understood that this was a one off.

My blogs going to be a little quiet for the next couple of days as I have a lot of reading to do to prepare for my new job.

Challenge day

A few of you had sent in some things for me to do, I thought It would be fun to try and do them all on the same day. My to do list was looking good:

• Buy some provisions (not recommended by anyone, just had some things I had to buy)
• Go the Greek quarter of the city and eat.
• Drink Bubble tea from Bimbos in Brunswick
• Watch the Dalai Lama
• Go to the Belgian Beer Cafe
• Go to the Indonesian quarter and eat
• Then mission accomplished I could go and have a night out.

Once I started to look these places up on the Internet I realised the scope of what I had agreed to, its like you guys anticipating that I was going to see them all in one day. Hatched a plan to find things from the farthest reaches of Melbourne that had no direct public transport routes between them. But that can't be true? Can it?

OK , so I walked to town and did some shopping, I then walked all the way across town to the Greek quarter and had a Souvlaki. If your after a Souvlaki I can recommend the Souvlaki King the owner is really friendly, and has a signed photo of Rocky on the wall as well as a lot of pictures of Angelina Jolie. Then I walked back across town to get the tram to Brunswick.

Bimbo's is really nice pub/cafe place unfortunately they had never heard of bubble tea, upset by this I did the best I could and ordered a cocktail that had tea in the name, it was very alcoholic costing over 10 bucks. That's right I was getting drinking before seeing the Dalai Lama, I didn't notice it at the time but if you look at the top right of the inside picture of Bimbo's bar you can see a picture of the Dalai Lama pointing at me disapprovingly. Spooky!

Time was already running short, after my drink I caught a tram back to town then another to the arena where the Dalai Lama was gigging. The Dalai Lama is a very interesting guy, I was skeptical about going but he opened with a few jokes and I felt my heart warming to him as he used a lot of science in his brief explanation of how he thought we had got to where we are. For example he mentioned we think that the universe was 15 billion years old and talked about how we evolved. I was pleasantly surprised. He talked a lot about environmental problems like dwindling natural resources and dangerously rising population rates.

He reminded me a lot from Yoda from the Star Wars movies, very funny yet insightful. He mentioned a few things like whenever we decide love or hate an object/person after that decision 90% odd of the feelings we felt from then on was just mental projection based on our beliefs about how we shoud feel. He had a lot of good points, like when he went to Iraq recently he told all the waring fractions

'you may hate each other, but you no choice but to live togther, do you want to make it better or worse?'

He also provided me with the best quote ever (warning this is a dangeriously out of context quote)

'all religion is bad' - Dalai Lama -June 2007, Melbourne

Next stop was the Belgian Beer Cafe, in an effort to get away from the massive crowd I thought I would walk a few blocks across and get a different tram line into town. On the way I saw Melbourne Cemetery it was massive, it looked like a good short cut and no one else seemed to be walking there, this was my chance to distance myself from the crowd. After about 30 minutes walking around this place I had come to the unfortunate realisation that there was only one way in/out and that was the way I had come in. Logic dictated that a place that big should have more than one exit, but sadly that wasn't the case, worst short cut ever.

Anyway I got the tram into town, it was staring to get late between the Lama and my shortcut I had lost a lot of time. Once in town I got another tram to St Kilda for the Belgian Beer Cafe, on my tourist map it looked like the last stop on the tram was only a short walk away from it. Easy I thought just get on a tram wait till it stops at the end then get off and have a few beers. Sadly the journey wouldn't be that easy.

It wasn't that the tram had its final stop as indicated on the map, it was that the people who made my map had got bored and simply stopped drawing the tram route at that point. This possibility started to dawn on my when I had reached the coast! So I got another tram back then walked around looking for the cafe. You can tell from the lighting difference in the photos how long this had taken.

The Belgian Beer Cafe was a really nice pub, I order a very welcome Leffe beer. This bar was great I would have to come here again when I had more time. I finished my beer got the tram back to town, walked across town to my hostel to drop of my shopping and stuff and get changed for a night out.

I really can't describe how disappointed I am at my self I couldn't find the Indonesian quarter as I had dropped my notes off with the rest of my stuff, so I was travelling blind. I walked around town for over an hour even asking taxi drivers to take me there but no luck. I had failed my first mission, I ended up compromising and eating in an Indonesian restraint. It was nice.

I had enjoyed challange day, if you guys send me more stuff to do I will have another go at it. It was more than past time for a night out but that's a different story ...

Leaving the Nest

Tonight is going to be my first night out, leaving the safety of the hostel.

Crossing the road in Melbourne is a very different to London. A typical road here is two/three lanes wide each way and will quite often have a couple of tram lines in the middle. The trams move a lot slower than the cars giving the whole road crossing experience much more of a frogger feel. Nothing tricky here, you say ... but the main difference between here and London is due to the less traffic and extra lanes the car are moving pretty fast. Almost as fast as cars are supposed to go instead of just basically being parked on the road. I was not looking forward to negotiating my way across a motorway multiple times while drunk.

I was finding it very hard to navigate the streets of Melbourne due to the extremely logical layout using the grind system. I yearned for the twisted windy road layout of London, I got lost there all the time as well but at least it felt familiar.

Going out on your own is really fun, I can heartily recommend it, Looking back I wish I did it more in England now. Being free of the responsibility of looking after people and ensuring they have a good time. Means you can be a lot more experimental and just see where the night takes you. Be ready to run because not all the places it can take you are good.

I've been working on two main techniques for talking to people:

The Mouse Trap

This works best early in the night, find an area where you know a group of people are going to want to sit, e.g two sofas by a table. Park yourself there and hang out, I find having a book/magazine to read helps the hanging a lot. If you can find something with an interesting cover it helps as people will come and talk to you about it. There is a danger that a group of guys will set off the mouse trap, in this case you either need to move the trap to a new location or clean the trap by scaring them off. This hasn't happened to me yet but I'm sure it will. One of the nicest things about the mouse trap is that people are moving into your territory making you in charge of the situation. Its a kind of un-conscious, ancient way but if you recognise it you can use it.

In a variation on the mouse trap, you can hang out at the bar and engaged people as they come to buy drinks.

The Cuckoo

This works better in a crowded bar later in the evening, its kind of the opposite to the mouse trap. You find a group of people move near them and start talking, first impressions really count here, you have a very limited window to ingratiate yourself into their collective. You are invading their space, its a high risk maneuver and rapid/brutal rejection are a distinct possibility. Entertaining a group is fun but very rarely seems to get you hooked up with anyone, you pretty quickly need to focus on one/two people once the group as a whole has accepted you. One thing I have found that seems to make entry easier is to smile a lot. People will react to you smiling and smile themselves more times than not. This is your best time to strike the moment one of the group has smiled at you head in! People seem to understand this and it makes the conversation a little easier, like you've been invited and already done the hello part.

The night was an interesting one, I ended up hanging out with a couple of lesbian and three gay guys. As I was walking past one of the girls was talking about her phobia of spiders, probably the best in I could have possibly had. She was a very good hypnotic subject and less than 10 minutes (my personal best) the phobia was gone. I think being a mysterious foreign person acts as an amplifier with the NLP thing. The conversation was interesting with me even giving the women tips on how to pick up women at one point.

Before the end of the night I had a marriage proposal from Em (one of the lesbians) so that I could stay in the country and so that she could pretend to be striaght to her parents to make them happier. I got here number but said I would have to think about the marriage thing as even a pretend one was a pretty big commitment. One that I was not willing to make the same night I had met someone (it really didn't work out last time I tried).

Back to normal

A couple of days ago I entered a Pool competition it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I wasn't expecting much, just maybe potting a few balls before I got knocked out in the first round. Sadly this wasn't to be so, the first guy I played also couldn't play pool to save his life.

Round 1

The tournament had two tables but our game was lasting so long that the whole tournament had to stop and watch us finish it. I could feel the eyes of the real pool players burning into the back of my head as I fumbled around the table missing almost every shot. I think I was stretching the very limit of Australian hospitality people where starting to openly make noises when we missed. To make matters worse nearly every guy in the pub was in the pool tournament leaving a whole pub full of women frolicking unattended over the other side. I wanted out, I hatched a brilliant plan I would try and pot the black ball, lose and get myself knocked out. My opponent quickly noticed what I was doing and then started to do the same. It was a very strange game, sadly due to my opponents slightly superior pool playing skills I Won.

Round 2

Now here was a guy that could play, before I even had a shot he had potted 3 balls, this made me happy I was going to lose and lose fast. He even did a jump shot over one of my many balls remaining on the table. I had just one ball potted when he was on the black, with a mighty shot he slammed it into the corner pocket, this was great, I was out and most the guys where still hanging around the table ... but ... then ... the white ball ... oh my god ... no ... the white ball still had a lot of momentum left from his shot and had just potted itself.

'good game'

He said while giving me the most resentful hand shake of my life.

Round 3 (Quarter final)

I was finally beaten ... oh yes! Most the guys had lost interested so the ratio over the other side was back to normal, but to be honest I was just happy to finally lose.

The next day the hostel had a drag act on I found this out when I happened to be in a lift with them, I was expecting the lift to go down I had pressed the down button after all but instead it was heading up.

'I thought we were going down'

I said this very innocently, but let me tell you if you are ever in this situation it is probably one of the worst things you could say. Drag queens are not the kind of people to let this kind of opportunity to mock you pass by.

I was heading to town to find a free hot spot so I could help someone with their java code, serves me right for being nosy and looking for what they where doing on their lap top I guess.

On the way a very attractive woman stopped us and tried to get us to donate some money to Charity, it was a very interesting negotiation. We struggled to find common ground, given that she wanted me to give money to charity and I wanted to have sex with her. It ended up with me and her boss sitting in a pub having a few pints and him offering me a job raising money. I accepted I was toying with going into sales anyway as I had never done anything like it. As I was collecting money for a good cause it freed me from certain moral obligations about using some of the very sneaky NLP/hypnotic sales things I knew.

I know some of you thinking that this isn't a proper job and your probably right, its pretty dodgy I'll be working on a 100% commission basis its exactly the kind of job I would never normally dream of doing. But it kind of felt like fate, the universe seemed to be pushing me in this direction so I'm quite happy to run with it for a bit. Also how many job interviews have you had where you got to drink 3 pints? (reading that back now the 3 pint thing makes it sound even dodgier)

I'm now fighting the good fight, starting Tuesday collecting money for good causes, my life finally has a purpose. (well for at least the next couple of weeks)

By the way I'm in Melbourne Australia

D'oh not quite sure how I had made it to the 5th entry of my travel blog without mentioning where I actually was.

I guess I'm more self absorbed that I realized ... I haven't started actually looking for work yet but I've had a shave and opened a bank account which where two good steps on the ... sorry started again, enough about me here's the low down on Melbourne Australia.

You can see all my photos at http://www.mbain.net/

Melbourne was founded on the 30th August 1835, it has a population of about 3.7 Million people and takes up about 7700 km² giving it a population density of 480 people per square kilometer (London has 3172 per square kilometer). What this basically means is that there is a lot of people here but its not very crowded. The main upshots of that being that being that's its easier to move around as your not constantly bumping into people and its a lot quicker to get a drink in a bar (about 6.60833 time quicker)!

Now being English I have no choice but to talk other than to talk about the weather. Australian Winter here is pretty much like English Spring/early Summer. Also in Australia as a backpacker you can adjust your temperature by just moving up or down the country.

Australia seems to have good relations with the Irish, you can tell by the large number of Irish pubs and that there are still lots of rubbish bins littered throughout the city even in the train stations.

Another thing that seemed odd to me, was that in the super market nearly all the produce was from Australia. It looked very slightly more beaten up here than produce you would see in a UK super market but it tasted better.

I'm sure if I was a better travel writer I would tell you about how I had travelled off the beaten track and discovered the real Melbourne. But I'm not. I'm me ... all I've done is wonder around a bit find a few bars and talk to people. If any of you guys know stuff I should be doing seeing here please let me know. I'm here as a social experiment more then a travelling trip and really appreciate any tips.

Somewhere in time

I was awoke a few times in the night, once by a big crash then a girl shouting I'm sorry several times. But by the time I had got dressed in the dark to go and investigate they had moved on. From this point on I vowed to wear pyjamas so that would never happen again.

I was also woken up at some point by my Asians room mates, that's right there where now two Asians in my room not talking to me. This is starting to concern me for I'm only in a 4 bed doom and if they want to double in size again they would need me out of the picture.

When I awoke properly I really didn't know what time it was, this was made worst by all 3 of my time keeping devices telling me radically different times. After getting dressed I found out that I had been asleep for 14 hours and it was the mid-afternoon already. I was concerned - even though this was a great way to save money as I would only need to eat one meal today this was a bad omen. Given the power vacuum due to most of my mind being disorientated and truly not knowing the time.

The Unemployed part of my brain made a blatant grab for power, for it was confident what ever the time or what ever country I resided in I was presently without employment. I could already feel the procrastination about looking for work kicking in. I would have to do something about this. I'll do it tomorrow.

Anyway I've entered a pool tournament tonight and for me to stand any chance of ... well potting some balls I need to drink 2 and a half points to get in my pool playing zone before the start.

Young Peoples Home

After a restless night spent trying to get to sleep with my body adamantly telling me that it wasn't bed time. I woke up and had a look around the hostel, I was a small place and seemed pretty empty and dull. Luckily the power of www.hostelworld.com is absolute and wherever you are in the world it can find you a good place to stay.

I moved to Urban Central voted the 3rd best hostel in the whole of Australia! Its a utopian place here cheap food/beer, lots going on and best of all free shaving foam! I was stuck by how similar this was to an old peoples home, not in terms actual similarity, but in terms of how this place was truly designed for the people that occupied it. I loved the hostel life and started to wonder how much of my youth had I wasted not living in a Hostel and how much I had spent unnecessarily on shaving foam.

There where downsides of course, my room looked like a prison and the view from my window wasn't exactly inspiring.

Also I had to share my room with an Asian guy who simply refused to talk to me.

I went to the new comer's meeting, they gave us a free drink and played us probably the most unhelpful video about Melbourne. The video showed us that Melbourne had shops, museums and lots of things to do, which to be honest I had already assumed. Where the video fell short was that it didn't tell us things we needed to know like for example how to find said attractions, or what they where called so we could look them up.

After the meeting there was a Pub Quiz, normally I am apprehensive about pub quizzes as ... well ... to be honest (probably more hopeful than honest) I think I'm to intelligent for them. For them to ask the kind of questions I know the answers to simply wouldn't be fair on your normal average pub attending guy. Well I hope this explanation is accurate over wise I would have to ask myself some awkward questions as to why someone that's read as many books as me fails to answer so many questions.

So anyway I started to assemble my team basically from the people that weren't already in a team. The all star line up consisted of:

Ben - A surprisingly intelligent guy considering that he believed in Intelligent Design.
Mary - An X stripper with a very good sense of direction.
Girl - Who was borne in London moved to island and liked the movie 'The Commitments' a lot
and of course myself.

I have always found it funny how important pub quizzes become, they start out as fun but by the end of round one the competition spirit has really kicked in. By the third round its normally one of the biggest crimes against humanity to answer any of the questions louder than a hushed whisper in case the others teams hear.

We did very well considering coming third even though most the teams where double our size, well this isn't quite true. My team was in a celebratory mood, they stooped listening as soon as they called us out in third and started to celebrate. Not wanting to destroy moral I didn't point out to them that we had in fact come join third, and that three other teams where joint second. so we had pretty much come last.

Happy Landings

Freedom! It was so nice not to finally not be on a plane!

But there was more to it, I wasn't just free form the plane, it was the fascinating feeling of being alive and having no plans of any kind for your future. I was free ... I was not a number ... I had escaped the rage of the machine! So obviously I need a place to stay tonight ...

NO!

I had only just escaped moments ago and already the race of rats had caught up with me, I was already making new plans. I guess the man really knows his stuff if I was to truly escape him I would need some further though and a lot more cunning.

By a stoke of luck the people ahead of me in the immigration queue where both young and female, this meant I could talk to them, they looked organized and I can't imagine a woman being silly enough to fly to a foreign country and not organise a place to stay.

"We are going to work in a genetics lab but we can not talk about it here as we won't be allowed in the country if one of the immigration people overhear"

This was one of the most intriguing things anyone had ever whispered to me ... but with all the subtly of a child who really wanted to go to the toilet I would have to wait. Anyway for reasons I don't really understand they agreed to share a taxi with me into town so I could stay at their hostel. I was a complete stranger and they where trusting me, basically at that point the only conversation we shared was them telling me they can't talk about what they where going to do me being rude to them in joke form. Women ... ???

Once clear of the airport I was free to interrogate them about their secret genetics lab, they where still not being very forth coming, but they seemed to know enough about genes to not be completely making it up.

When we got to the hostel I decided it was best to stay in another room, so I didn't get captured and used as some genetic guinea pig.

My weekend in the sky

I arrived at Hearthrow nice and early, what ever happened I didn't what to miss this flight. After so many leaving do's to still be in the country tomorrow would be deeply embarrassing.

I got to the check in desk and the nice woman at the desk took my passport and e-ticket then typed for about 5 minutes. She then looked up at me and said "Your Early", I replied with an enthusiastic nod and a thank you. Unfortunately my assumption that this was a compliment about my good punctuality was about to be shattered.

"Your flight isn't till tomorrow"

These words took a while to sink in, for the rest of my life I only had one plan, one simple thing I needed to do and that was to catch this flight. How could I have done this? How could I have been stupid enough to mess this up? It was written on my ticket the date of the flight, how had I assumed it was today for so long? Maybe I had over planned.

"are you sure?"

I was playing for time neither of us had said anything for a while the silence was getting uncomfortable, I also wanted to try and seem like I wasn't the kind of person stupid enough to turn up a day early for a flight.

"Yes!"

Dam that didn't buy me much time, I could tell from the sureness in her yes ( it needed capitalisation and an exclamation mark to express it in written form) that this approach would be fool hardy, she had a computer and my ticket that quite clearly stated tomorrows date after all.

"Would you like to fly today instead?"

Salvation! I could forget this embarrassing mistake and carry on as normal, no-one need ever know.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful, we had a stop over in Hong Knog which was nice. Though I couldn't understand why so many people seemed so eager to go and queue to sit on that plane again for what would seem like a eternity.