All Nations Comedy

Again what I did during the day escapes me, I'm assuming it can't have been very interesting or I'm sure I would remember it.

This evening I went to the All Nations Backpackers stand up comedy night, it was a very tough night for the comics the bar was tiny but still managed to look completely empty. The yokels that where present seemed to have the attention span of ... well ... in future I will always say the attention span of an Ozzie Yokel, so I might as well start now.

The comics had a novel solution to this, they phoned their friends and very soon a small contingent of comics arrived to watch, laugh and be merry. My friend from last Sunday Anna Joy (I'm assuming that's a stage name) introduced me to them. They where a really great bunch of guys, the bar was supplying the comics that where gigging with free drinks all night which they Robin Hooded around the other comics and myself. We watched comedy, joked and philosophized and joked some more I was making friends, male friends at that, my first since I had arrived in Australia.

The show ended, but the free drinks kept coming, as we got later into the night people started to leave eventually there only three of us remained. Me, Andrew and a guy that looked very much like Steve the Pirate from Dodge ball after he cleaned up. It got to about three o'clock and the bar closed, we pondered where to go next. They seem pretty set on going to a strip club, I told them that I wasn't to sure I've never been to one before and I didn't much feel like being exploited.

They explained to me that a strip club was just like this bar we were just in except that the beer costs more (well I assumed it wouldn't be free) and that naked women dance around. They had twisted my arm, admittedly it was somewhat rubbery on this issue. We headed to Kings Street, Melbourne being the very organized town that it is contains all the Strip bars on one street. Starting with the most expensive at the top working its way down rapidly as you move towards the bottom. On our travel we meet a crazy guy, who wasn't allowed in either but was laying siege to the place sating 'I know pretty women will be coming out soon'. We wished him all the best and moved on.

None of the gorillas on the door would let us in, not even the cheap places! This was strange we where obviously intoxicated, but the nice intelligent and funny intoxicated. We took this as a sign that we looked so bad ass that the bouncers knew they wouldn't be able to handle us if we started some trouble. Then I did something I wasn't very proud of, but in my defence it was four in the morning and by this point and I was very drunk. I went to McDonald's. It was full of very drunk 18 year old girls, all carrying their shoes by this point. They swarmed like locusts around us either trying to eat our food, or grab it and throw it over the balcony.

It the drunken McDonald's conversation I agreed to write a five minute stand up set and do a comedy gig with them. I've been looking for another creative outlet and this seemed like a good idea ... besides sink or swim the blogortunities would flow.

I see dead people

During the day I went to see The Amazing Human Body Exhibition, it was created by a Chinese guy that used to work for that German guy that plastifies bodies. I was going with 'Pretty but Odd' -I'm getting tired of re-asking people there names so I'm just going with descriptions these days if I forget. We had arranged to go to this last night, I'm not sure how the conversation got to wanting to see disected dead people, but it did. By some coincidence I was on her as 'English Guy' we made an agreement to go as long as we could without knowing each others names.

The exhibition was really interesting, luckily the plastification process made most the bodies look like really good models rather than the real life cadavers that they actually where. I think my brain processed the exhibition strangely, in much the same way that when you are on a plane your so high up your brain doesn't really know that your up high. I just don't think our brain has evolved to know to be scared when your that high up or disgusted when you are seeing plastified internal organs.

This was apart from one body where they had dissected it to various depths to show the muscle system worked, this one had squares of skin on it. There was something about it having skin that made me sick to the core, and I moved away very quickly. Overall a very interesting experience but don't bring your children, as a lot of parents at the exhibition where finding out the hard way.

Saturday Night on a recommendation from 'Pretty but Odd' I headed to the Cherry Bar. Melbourne follows the bar law that the harder a bar is to find the cooler it is. I'm fairly sure it must be one of the coolest bars in town. It was in a small dark alleyway slightly out of town, with no sign about the door or any indication that there is a bar there apart from the bouncer hanging around outside who to be honest just looks like your typical alleyway resident.

The linked website description lied, don't get there early it doesn't even open till 9:30, I arrived at about 8ish and found a couple of girls standing in the alley way trying to work out if there was a bar here. As the bouncer wasn't around yet. They adopted me and we went and had a couple of drinks, while they made some calls to see what was going on. They had both lived in Melbourne for over a decade, but I seemed to know my way around better than they did.

They where meeting their friends there later for a leaving do. Over the drinks I got them to clue me up on their friend, so I could arrive separately later and pretend to be psychic. It's a fun joke I really recommend doing it if you get the opportunity.

I normally avoid talking about hypnotism and NLP these days as it makes conversation far to easy and I was getting bored of saying the same things, but my new adopters we both psychologists and arguing with them is just to much fun. One of there boyfriends wanted to get me in to interview for a Test/Project manager position at his company. I'm always pleasantly surprised by how much the universe seems to pretty much always provide me what I need. Thank you Universe. Apart from that it was a pretty normal night out in a great rock bar.

Night Live

I'm sure I did something during the day on Friday but for the life of me I can't remember what it was maybe I've been overdosing on the hypnosis tapes.

That evening I was to meet Caroline, her friends and her friends softball team. Caroline invited me and when I was already on route pulled out. I decided to continue anyway and meet a bunch of people that I either had seen once briefly or didn't know without the protective presence of my introductory friend. I was told to arrive at five but they got stuck at work so didn't they arrive till about 6ish. I only had Caroline's number and she wasn't there so we communicated via indirect sms.

I found another group of people and asked them to adopt me till my (using the term loosely) friends showed up. Me and one of the girls got on incredible well it was liked we had known each other for years. But for some reason she didn't reply to my text today :o(

Once they arrived we shared a few drinks and moved to a very hip and trendy club in Melbourne named CQ, the downstairs bar was nice, but as the group was nearly completely comprised of females the inevitable edge to dance took them upstairs. As soon as we moved upstairs I was instantly demoted ... I had gone from someone that could captivate several of them at a time, to ... well ... the most boring person in the place. I even tried to dance ... it didn't work. It was about midnight by then and I already had a healthy crop of new phone number so I headed back to my hostel with a smile on my face.

I'm not sure which numbers to call, as these girls all know each other. Especially as two of the numbers from girls I have sit next to each other at work in reception and are sisters that live together. Part of me is really tempted ... thinking of the possible blogortunities to just date them all in what will inevitable be some blaze of glory scenario. The other part of me is thinking maybe I should actually focus on making my life better for a change. Guess we will see what happens.

Do you really think so?

During the day I went to the Pixar exhibition unfortunately no photos where allowed inside, which is a shame is it was jam packed full of really amazing stuff. There was surprising little computer stuff there, all of the Pixar animation starts of as hand drawn art, then sculpture which is then finally scanned into a computer.

The quality of the art was second to none, I can honestly say there artists where on a level with any the great artists even the renaissance ones that I had ever seen. They also had a zoetrope that was really interesting to watch. I was almost constantly amazed by just amazing artistic these people were, if you get a chance to see it do.



Reinvigorated by the exhibition I promised myself to have a go at drawing again, but now I had more important things to do. I was meeting Emi a Japanese girl that looked very much like an Asian version of Angelina Jolie! Her English was just about passable ... kinda ... maybe sometimes, you could almost speak to her but there where times I was honestly unsure if she was speaking English or Japanese. Several times she would talk to me in Japanese slowly and repeat herself several times but it didn't help. She reminded me a lot of my previous Turkish girl friend Ozlem, very attractive but conversation was limited to the basics.

Dinner was really funny, we had pizza and she was barely able to use a knife and fork, I know you don't need a knife and fork for pizza but I insisted that she used them claiming it was the height of rudeness in England to eat with your hands. It was nice to see this the other way round after all the people I've seen struggle with chop sticks. But then again I think eating pizza with chop sticks would be even harder. You would need to cut the pizza into small pieces by pushing the chop stick down into the pizza repeatedly in a line then pick up the chunks and eat them, I'm sure that will be messy.

I find it interesting how well you can get on with someone even with a language fence (like a barrier but not as high) we seemed to somehow get on well and made each other laugh quite a lot without the aid of actually understanding each other most of the time. It was very much like a slap stick date, mostly concentrating on physical comedy like hiding her drink when she went to the toilet. She had a computer that could translate words and I had a lot of fun using words like 'dichotomy' completely out of context and watching her translate them just to get even more confused.



At one point in the evening she drew a fake Japanese tattoo on my arm in pen, I don't know what it says but it seemed to amuse her greatly so I assume it says something bad, this is made worse by the way that it won't wash off. Sadly Emi was leaving Melbourne tomorrow morning at seven, that's a shame I would really like to see her again. I have her email so I might do a traveling thing and actually go and visit another part of Australia that shes might just happen to be in.

The Divine Comedy

I headed out at to Robarta in St Kilda to meet Caroline and friends, it was a great pub, there was this really good jazz band playing in the background, and every few minutes someone would bring a tray of food out to pass around the bar. It was exactly the kind of cool relaxed place that Brisbane wasn't, Caroline was late but by another coincidence I had sat on the table with her friends while I was waiting for her. They where fun and I got invited out to see them again on Friday. Caroline asked me which one I was going for I said 'all of them' but she knew me to well enough by now to hear that I wasn't really joking. I had to leave early as it was stand up comedy night at my hostel and I wasn't going to miss that for anything.

The comedy nights at my hostel where always a winner, one of the comedians was named Anna, she said in her bit that she was single and guys always seemed to scared to approach her because she was a comedian. Well I decided to go talk to her, I was absolutely terrified! I've never spoken to a comedian before and was really expecting to get completely embarrassed. As I walked up time seemed to slow down and my head started to run lots of scenarios none of them particularly pleasant. Every foot step seemed to take an eternity, to make things even worse she was standing with a group of the other comedians that had gigged tonight. It was to late to back out now I had been spotted, I think this is how Christians felt when they where being thrown to the lions.

To my surprise it went very well, comedians are not as funny as you would expect when they are off stage. She was funny, but not really any more so than a normal funny person. This was strange as her half hour on stage was so funny it almost hurt to continue to laugh, I guess that's a very well rehearsed and practiced half hour. The conversation was going pretty well, very different to the boat smashing on the rocks scenario I had been imagining. In fact she was very easy to talk to and to be honest pretty easily amused, even with strange jokes that wouldn't normally work seemed to have her in stitches. So the moral of the story is don't be afraid of comics they are easier to talk to than normal people. Shes putting me on the guest list for her next show, it was free entry but she insisted on putting me on the guest list anyway.

Return of the mac

It was so nice to be in Melbourne again, by returning to somewhere familiar I've fooled my brain into not being home sick at all anymore. By some amazing coincidence as my bus arrived at the train station from the airport so did my friends Caroline's bus from the great ocean road tour. Then literally a couple of seconds after we bumped into each other my other friend Bret walked past. It was very odd my two best friends from Melbourne spontaneously appearing but that nice friendly welcoming odd. I took it as a sign that I had made the right decision. A few beverages where drunk, we caught up and Caroline invited me out to meet her friends from work and her softball team the next day.

After Caroline left me and Bret found some nice girls playing a very intricate drinking tapping game, where everyone placed there hands in the middle of the table and tapped out different things. It was really fun, and every round a new rule was added just to make sure everyone was drinking a healthy amount.

One of the girls tried to recruit me to collect money for charity on the street again. I explained to here in great detail why I would never do it again EVER! She really didn't want to take no for an answer claiming that I would be great at it, and they would pay me to train them up. I get the feeling there is some kind of pyramid charity worker collection thing running, that means they get some money for every dollar you raise if they recruit you, its the only reason I can think of to explain how zealous they are at recruiting.

My Physics unification theory

I had a long flight today so had time for a bit of thinking and here's the result. Which I am submitting to you for peer review before I send it off to be published and collect my Nobel prise.

Highlander or H Theory.

The ideal solution to a problem is the most elegant one, many philosophical and logical devices like Occam's Razor support this. Simplicity is a beautiful thing, any fool can solve a problem in a complex manner but it takes an artist to solve one simply. The more we unify the equations from the different fields of physics the more we can describe greater proportions of the universe with progressively less and simpler equations.

In 1861 when Maxwell's unified the forces of electricity and magnetism to form electromagnetism a force that could be fully explained in a set of four simple equations, physics suddenly leached propelled by this new perspective. Imagine ... all things to do with either electricity or magnetism could be expressed in just four equations. It was wonderful but unfortunately physics has been moving in the wrong direction of late and there are now 'loads' of equations for 'everything'.

I feel the sciences tendency to a top down approach is directly responsible for this unwanted complexity and will now steer science correctly back to its correct direction. The direction of explaining as many things as possible using as fewer rules as possible. In this bottom up approach we just have to find the simplest solution that fits all problems and this must be the ultimate unification equation. Because the unification equation is just one of all possible equations.

Lets start with:
x = 1/y

This may seem like a random place to start but as will be proved later the initial equation is irrelevant. This is a fairly simple and elegant equation you might say, now I think this is made unnecessarily complex by containing a 'y' in a small jump from traditional maths lets simplify it to:

x = 1/x

Now the solution to this is x = 1

Or even more simply put 1 = 1, now we can even further simplify this by getting rid of the unnecessary equals sign and one of the 1's.

1

Any equation when fully computed can be expressed in terms of 1, so the initial starting point is completely irrelevant. For example we will use Newtons 2nd law of motion - Force (F) = Mass (M) x Acceleration (A).

If the car has a mass of 700kg and a driver pushes the car with an acceleration of 0.05m/s/s

Then:
F = MA
F = 700kg x 0.05m/s/s
F = 35kN (kiloNewtons)

Now simply divide both sides by 35kN and you get:
F/35kN = 1

or more simply put 1 = 1 or 1.

Now some of the intermediate solutions to equations can be useful for things like sending spacecraft to the furthest reaches or our solar system or building computers. So these other fields of physics should continue, hopefully reinvigorated by a new directions and knowing where all their equations will ultimately lead them.

Now no scientific theory is worth its salt unless it can be used to make some predictions, so here are mine.

There is one universe.
Every particle in the universe is unique.

NB Notice how this theory works on both the galactic and atomic levels.

Inbetween the lines

One of the interesting things about hostels is that you normally have no personal space, your bedroom is shared with people. Your kitchen is always busy and your bathroom is full of naked Asians. Now this normally isn't to much of a problem, I like talking to people but there are certain situations where it can be a real pain in the ass. This was one of them.

Me and Lauren had returned to my room after a good date, luckily the Swedish girls weren't in, but after some fooling around Lauren suddenly froze and said they might come back at any minute. This proved most annoying and pretty soon I found myself down at reception saying.

'OK, I already have a room but could I book another private room please'

'Sure $100 please'

'Sorry, we can't book a room the hostels full' - Now you may notice that something was lost in translation from the Australian hostel desk guy to Lauren but I have only been here a couple of months and wasn't completely fluent in Australian yet. Besides one hundred bloody dollars! For that kind of money I could hire a professional with their own room.

After some more fooling around I attempted to use my powers of persuasion.

'It's OK they are Swedish, think of all the porn they've seen, they would probably just join in' -She didn't budge, my normal tactic of shockingly honest congruently delivered truth didn't work time for plan B.

'There is a picture of a wolf on my sheets and the spirit of the wolf will protect us from being discovered' -If in doubt try and take the conversation to a weird abstract metaphorical place where my mind normally has a distinct advantage. No good.

After some more fooling around I hatched a plan, we could send the Swedish girls a text message explaining the situation.

'Don't come in I'm having sex (unless you want to join in)' - apparently this message was to blatant and had to be redrafted to

'You guys are obviously having fun on a good night out, best not come back till I text you' -I liked the first message more.

Anyway fun was had, I sent the all clear ... seconds later heard a phone bleep outside the door and the Swedish girls entered the room just as if they had been waiting outside the door. Every one was embarrassed apart from me, because ... well if you know you are going to look back and laugh one day ... why wait.

Washing day

An interesting thing happened to me this morning, one of the things you are initially shocked by in an Australian hostel is that in the Men's shower rooms/toilets for some reason a lot of the Asian guys walk around completely butt naked while doing tasks that really don't require nakedness like brushing their teeth or shaving. What shocked me this morning is that I didn't even really notice that I was shaving next to a naked Asian guy! It had just become so normal that my brain barley felt the need to pass the thought into consciousness. I should get my own place soon, I have a feeling I'm becoming hostitutionalized.

Today I had to do my washing again, this is an emotional time for me. By mistake I had brought a lot of my old clothes to Australia with the idea that I could abandon them easily for new clothes when the mood took me. This was a big mistake I was very emotionally attached to my old clothes and I knew that each wash took them one step closer to death.

This was especially true of my lucky boxer shorts, I loved them most of all, but the inevitable disintegration had set in and I knew they only had a short number of washes left before they completely melted away just leaving the lonely white elasticated waist band.

Also when it costs you $6 for a wash any concept of separate colour and white washes fades away. All washing is equal in the eyes of the Laundromat.

Conversations

I have meet some special people over here.

AFL Football guy.

You see him about 25% of the times you go out, he wears a complete Aussie rules football outfit complete with ball and comes into a pub throwing the ball to people. He gets really upset if people don't catch the ball or fail to throw it back intermediately. It puzzles me how well he is accepted by the other pub patrons ... you don't get people with other hobbies going out and doing such displays. For example you don't get joggers run into the pub in full jogging gear then running round in circles. He is yet to throw the ball to me but when he does I'm sure something interesting will happen.

The six million dollar feminist.

She was an absolute joy to talk to, she like a lot of feminists had long given up on the whole equality idea and was gunning for world domination. Talking to her was really hard because of how funny most of her arguments where. She really didn't even want to concede that men had a physiological advantage over women. Claiming unfair training practices and traditions where the real reasons.

On one point I did agree with her, this annoyed her even more. She claimed that men and women should compete equally in sports and not be separated. I agreed, but for the wrong reasons. I'm not a sports guy but I would probably watch mixed men and women competing in sports because ... well ... it would be really funny. We argued for about two hours, but where strangely taking it in turns to buy each other drinks for the whole duration. I would say something really outrageously sexist then see if I could recover using intelligent debate and some minor Jedi mind tricks. I was having a lot of fun but she was starting to get pretty upset, so I started to concede a few points to cheer her up then went on my way to go talk to the girl that looked like Kyle that had just entered the bar.

Khaleel

Khaleel was a strict no drinking, no pork eating, pray five times a day Muslim. He had grown up in Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure how or why but we get on really well, he even calls me brother now, which I like a lot. I don't think we have ever agreed on a single point but we have a lot of fun talking about it. He was having quite a few problems adapting to Australian life. Everyday backpacker things would be happening to him and he really felt like he was living in hell sometimes, I found myself talking him down quite a lot. For instance he saw a girl kissing one guy and then an hour later kissing another guy. For a guy that pretty much believes in no kissing before marriage (yeah that's right not even kissing) this really shocked him.

It was really interesting listening to him as his belief system was just so alien to me that I found it and the reasons behind it absolutely fascinating. I held a great respect for him and his principals and put my points across accordingly. I felt really jealous of this guys perspective hes got so many wonderful experiences and surprises coming his way in his travels around Australia, I was going to do my best to make sure he was in a position to enjoy them.

Spider Pig

Sleeping in the same room as three Swedish girls can be a lot harder than it sounds, especially due to my new identity as an English gentleman. To start with I was having to go outside to fart which was becoming most inconvenient especially after a curry. Last night was especially difficult to sleep, it was about two or three in the morning. They returned shortly after myself obviously been to the cinema and then out for a lot of drinks.

I was awoken by them coming in then almost intermediately falling out the door again. I love how loud drunk people are when they are trying to be quiet. I took the opportunity to quickly stand up and hide behind the door to jump out on them when they returned. Judging by the screams and other people coming to the room to check what had just transpired this scared them a little to well. Things settled down and we went to bed.

There would be a few minutes of silence, then just as you would start to drift off to sleep one of them would start singing.

'Spider pig, Spider pig'

This would be followed for a few minutes of school girl giggles then a few minutes more silence ... just long enough for you to almost be asleep again before another would take her turn to sing. It was hard to be angry because well, to be honest it was really funny. After about an hour of this they had obviously had there fun and where drifting off to sleep.

'Look out here comes the spider pig' -It was my turn and the whole cycle began again.

For those unfamiliar with the Simpson's trailer here is the reference:

Welcome to the Zoo

The Australian winter had taken a savage turn for the worse, the temperature last night dropped to a biting 11 degrees and some days it was only just reaching 23 degrees. Here's me enduring another inhospitable winters day over here. Hows the rain guys?



By the way that wasn't the ice cream I ordered but I didn't really mind. I was looking at that one when I ordered thinking what the hell kind of flavour is that.

Today I was going to Australia Zoo, it was set up and run by Steve Irwin's family. In death Steve had transformed from national embarrassment to the Australian answer to John Lennon. For those of you unfamiliar with his work here is him doing a very tame show (for him) at the zoo.



It was by far the best Zoo I had ever been to, but the tour left us there for 6 hours which is a very long time to stay at the zoo, here are my photos. I'm all proud of myself now, having actually done a tourist thing.

Australia Zoo

I have been offered the job, but have decided not to take it, I really preferred Melbourne so as the worst traveller in the world ever I am going to return next week to the only other place in Australia that I have been to. I've given myself a week here to tie up a few lose ends and maximise my return on dating time invested.

A New Hope

Things have been looking up the past few days, having survived the plague and finally found a good hostel in Brisbane. If your ever backpacking around these parts I recommend Brisbane Palace Backpackers its a really nice place. For the first time since I arrived I unpacked and it felt good, my mind breathed a sigh of relief that if had found somewhere that it felt comfortable to call home for the next few weeks.

Yesterday I talked to Claire on the phone for a while. Shes been lucky enough to find her dream guy complete with cottage, white picket fence and his own horse. She seemed very happy and almost ready to settle down. I'm happy for her and wish her all the best. I'm starting to wonder just how many amazing women I was going to let slip through my fingers - I'm estimating at least another couple ;o) . As much as I have enjoyed my perpetual search I was starting to feel starting to feel the loss as another of my X's settles down/gets married with someone else.

I had a job interview today with a young and very big profit making company wotif.com they seemed like a really good bunch of guys. The had a sense of humour and where very smart. I loved that their stock symbol was WTF! I had a phone interview yesterday with them and they where bringing me in today for the real one. It looked like it would be a really good job, the recruitment consultant was going crazy that I had managed to get an interview with them, saying things like they are very picky about who they employ so be careful what you say. The interview went very smoothly here's my favourite extract:

'So we noticed on your CV that the last time you worked was over a year ago, what have you been doing?'

'Nothing'

'So what have you been doing to keep your IT Skills up to scratch?'

'Nothing'

There we go, with two perfectly congruent and amazingly honest answers I had just explained the year gap in my job history to the panels satisfaction.

Later that day they asked me back for a second and final interview tomorrow, I explained that I couldn't make it as I was going to the Zoo tomorrow so we scheduled it for Thursday afternoon instead.

After the interview I had a shopping trip come date with Lauren, not wanting to be late I turned up in my suit and jokingly scorned her for turning up somewhat under dressed. One of the best things about my hostel is that It's only one block from the center of town so I could quickly pop back after we meet and slip into something more comfortable.

The shopping, then drinks, then lunch, then drinks, then dinner then more drinks with Lauren was very enjoyable. We found two great pubs that actually sold nice tasting beer! One was a micro brewery place and the other specialized in Belgian beer It was so nice not to be drinking XXXX or Victoria Bitter for a change. Near the end of the evening talk turned to whose place we should head to. Since I had my room all to myself it was the natural choice. Things where starting to get interesting when ...well ... here's a sentence that I never thought I would say:

'Unfortunately that's the moment when three Swedish girls decided to move into my room'



Sadly that's where all similarities with porn films ended rather abruptly. Shame :o(

It's been pointed out to me by Gabe that as this trip is a social experiment that I shouldn't be showing the people I interacted with in Australia this blog as I would corrupting the experiment. I work on the idea that you should just tell everyone possible the truth, but showing people a blog containing entries about them and some of my recent explots was proving increasingly unpopular with the ladies.

So in a debate between scientific method and ethics I have picked this compromise, I will reveal the blog to them in it entirety but only after my interaction with them has come to an end. This seems a good balance.

Just think of the blogortunities!

Outbreak

A couple of days ago an Asian guy stayed in our room coughing all night. By the morning the plague bearer had left but everyone else in the room was coughing and feeling like death. I'm not sure if it's bird flu or sars or some horrible new mutation of the two.

I'm spending all my time in bed, normal blogging service will resume shortly.

Stalag 17

I was rapidly growing to dislike the hostel I was staying in it was full or rules and quirks to make life more difficult. The only explanation I had for the state of affairs was that it was run by someone that really hated backpackers. Maybe they had there heart broken by one when they where younger. The place was full of signs like this one I found on my door one morning.

The kitchen was closed between the hours of 12 and 1 for cleaning, that's right they closed the kitchen for lunch. They tended to wash the showers and bathrooms between around 9 and 10, this seemed to be as a measure to make it awkward for people waking up wanting a shower. The water was always just hot enough to have a shower but definitely cold enough to stop you getting any enjoyment from the experience.

I was missing my relatively harmless crazy room mates, I was sharing a room with two very nice normal chatty guys and two complete yobs from England. These guys where just terrible, they where so bad they didn't even like each other! A couple of nights in a row now our room has been woken up by those two coming back and starting to fight each other in the room. These are the kind of people I probably should be helping, but to honest I think they deserve to be themselves I can't really think of a better punishment for them.

Luckily I was a clear foot taller than both of them so I felt confident telling them things like to shut up or go and kill each other, preferably the latter. He responded by saying something along the lines

'I'll do what ever I want when ever I want'

I just stood up and stared at him till he went to bed.

I will escape, work has already started on the tunnel.

Welcome to the world of Tomorrow!

I had been feeling different recently, and today it had grown to a whole new level. I was feeling so much more alive. My vision had sharpened up bringing even distant objects into crisp focus. Thousands of small back ground sounds where emerging into my consciousness. I felt a kind of musical beat in my body and sauntered around almost dancing to it.

I felt younger and if I didn't know better I would say that I looked younger. My skin tingled again just like it did when you are younger. I was sleeping less, I woke up this morning just after eight o'clock feeling great which was quite surprising considering I had gone to bed sometime after three o'clock in the morning very drunk. Five or six hours a night and a small half hour nap in the afternoon seemed to be all the sleep I needed.

Maybe the film Sleeper was correct, the real secret to good health was in fact drinking nearly every day, eating rubbish and doing no exercise apart from walking about a bit?

I had a lot to do today, I had a pile of blog notes wanting to be written up, a job to find, a Charity to publicize and a CV to tweak. But I just felt to good to do any work, my mind was buzzing so I went to the park and lay there for hours pondering in the warm winter. It was great, I was growing to really appreciate thinking and contrary to all the evidence in the posts bellow I am very good at it.

One word of advice is don't feed the birds in Australia they are very brave, very smart and unlike the English birds they work in teams. I threw a bit of bread to one of them, it chirped and within seconds about ten of its friends arrived looking at me expectantly.



To keep myself busy today I've set myself the little mini project today and that was to compliment everyone I interacted today. It's harder than it sounds, especially if your buying a sandwich from subway and there are five people serving you production line style standing next to each other. By the third compliment they knew something was up and collectively gave me a weird look, like being nice to people is something dirty and wrong.

I am looking for a new project to work on, something on the scope of my old project of using a magic 8 ball to make all my decisions but hopefully not as destructive. The idea behind that project was that in life your decisions are half chance or expressed mathematically (its OK,relax, its very simple entertaining maths):

   choice     = result
random factor

Or rearranged slightly by multiplying both side by random factor (in maths you can do whatever you like to an equation as long as you do it to both sides).

choice = result x random factor

My theory was that by adding a another random factor to the choice side like using my magic 8 ball. Would allow me to divide the whole equation through by random factor and effectively remove it from the equation. Unfortunately it actually worked out like this as the random factor was actually subtracting from choice rather than multiplying it. My Result:

choice - random factor = result x random factor

or in another way

choice = result x random factor + random factor.

That's the mathematical way of proving that my life got a lot more random.

Anyway as always I'm always open for ideas and suggestions.

Running with scissors.

I was meeting Lara today, I had meet her on the okcupid website and we where due to meet today in town just after lunch. I was looking forward to this date (sorry meeting) because I was really anticipating it being very interesting. Her first message to me was one suggesting that we meet and we had exchanged a couple of texts since. Once in a text conversation we got to arranging a meeting time and place I stopped texting and phoned her.

'Why are you phoning me?'

An interesting question that I really wasn't prepared for. I waffled something about it takes me ages to wite text messages and commented that I would bring a paper and pen with me when we meet, so that we could write to each other rather than talk. Later that day she sent me a message apologizing for being rude(Hello Lara by the way, isn't it a bit weird your about to read my review of our date on the Internet?)

We got on really well, she was a little nervous to start with but we very quickly became at ease and where enjoying a really interesting and effortless conversation. She was somewhat quirky for example she would occasionally say things like.

'Do you have scissors?'

I must of looked bewildered as unprompted she explained further

'Not here but in your hostel'

'yes' I replied and the conversation paused for a while.

But I really liked this! It may sound very random but I found it most endearing plus she had a beautiful face, she kind of reminded me of Kate Winslet. We had a great time. As often happens one drink quickly turned into two drinks, then two drinks turned into me going to watch her play netball in the semi finals for some local netball competition.

That's not quite true but sounded so good I had to write it, in between the second drink and the netball game we went to two art galleries looking for the mirror room that looked like it went on forever (it did) and had a coffee in the museum cafe.

Anyway back to the netball, she was filling in for a missing person on but even with her the team was still one person short, I wanted to make my netball debut but sadly I wasn't allowed.

Netball is basically a gay version of basketball.

We went and had some dinner.

Then 30 minutes after dinner a couple more drinks.

Then went back to her house to play Dead or Alive 4on her x-box 360. She prided herself on her DoA4 skills, I had played DoA 3 a little bit, the last girl I played with I beat them playing with my feet with the controller in a different room so I couldn't see the screen. The trash talk was building up nicely and I got to say one of my favourite things to say in the world.

'Your egos writing cheques your body can't cash'

For a girl she was very good, the first couple of games she creamed me while I learnt to play. Once I had mastered the basics I started to win more than I was losing, she visibly started to get upset that I was beating her. In fact she started to get really upset, so I backed off, went easy on her and let her win 10 games to 9.

It was a great first date I really enjoyed myself, around ten o'clock I got a taxi back to the hostel. Cheryl and a few of her friends were there partying they invited me to join. It would have been rude for me not to accept. At about 1 a clock the hostel bar kicked us out. It was a shame I was enjoying breaking the hostel rules and hardly concealing my fragrant disregard for there drinking outside after 10 rule, we moved to some other pub somewhere.

Obviously as a guys that's just had two first class dates first dates this weekend I hooked up with one of Cheryl's friends. Name presently unknown, we got on really well. Around two o'clock it was her round and for some reason she got me a raspberry vodka drink and decided to spill hers on my new favourite shirt (after my old favourite was ruined by red white yesterday).

She dragged me to the girls toilets took my shirt off and spent about 10 minutes cleaning my shirt in the sink. Then drying it under the hand drier. I got some very strange looks, as the other women we not accustomed to half naked men standing in their toilet. But generally they reacted pretty positively considering the circumstances.

About 3 o'clock that pub turfed us out and as the most compos mentis person I was silently and suddenly elected as Sheppard for the drunk. At one point a strange guy who had been jumping on people and wrestling them throughout the evening ran into the road and started freaking out. I sobered up instantly I was on red alert again, there as a car coming towards him pretty fast. I had time for one shot at this I ran into the road grabbed him and somehow moved out out of the road without him being able to resist. This probably wasn't quite as dramatic as it sounded he was removed from the road with several seconds spare and the car probably would have stopped or swerved.

This guy took my moving him out of the road as an act of aggression and he tried to hit me. I cut him a look, that either explained things fully or convinced him he was about to make a very unwise decision. I wish I knew what that look was, it would be most useful in the future. After what seemed like an age my new flock reached the hostel intact, by this time was straight as an arrow and unable to commune with my heard. I went to bed.

*Washing tip if you really want to remove a red wine stain from a shirt, let it dry for a few days then just put it in a normal wash with all your other cloths.