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.