Tales of a Scorched Earth: January 2007

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

They're under starters orders! - Good news/Bad News

Just a quick note to let you know that we've finally booked our tickets... yes we're actually leaving!
That's the good news...

The bad news... it's not for another 2 weeks!!! boo hisss...
I know, I know... it's been 2 weeks for months now but it really is this time! The date is set for Feb 6th. That's a tuesday.

It seems that for some reason all the flights out to India are booked up for some time... earliest we could get was 6th Feb - and that's flying into Mumbai! If we wanted to do Delhi first then we'd have had to have waited till the end of feb!!! And that will have really thrown a spanner in the ongoing plans for the far east, oz and beyond... so, its South India will be our first port of call - then up to the north it seems...

The other news is that we're finally out of simon (and lou's) place in Leamington... and are living (more or less) out of rucksacks... bearing this in mind I feel our journey has begun already... albeit in some luxury and comfort (temporary lodging courtesy of simons mum). We spent yesterday packing a large wooden crate and waved it goodbye around tea time, tidied up the place and left late yesterday evening to stay our first night at Suzanne and Rogers in deepest darkest leamington... :)

I guess the other good news (or bad news dependant on your point of view) is that I think there will have to be another leaving doo... this time we'll try and make it a friday or saturday for those that like to work the following day... :P

L8rs!

Take it easy people - over and out! :)

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Cars a go go!

I've just got rid of the car. (sorry Ant - :S time and pressure and all that)

Sold via ebay for £671 to a nice couple from stoke - they seemed happy with it anyway... I figured out we'd spent over 10k in buying it and keeping it on the road over the last 5 years... cars eh... damn expensive... still best without it - considering - and the cash should keep us in digs for a while... or at least pay for a "few" meals...

Kind of sad to see it go, lump in throat time... but hey... It's only a THING... something else to tie you down... and it's gone now so no regrets.

So that's it, last of our major possessions, (if you don't count the bikes - we need something to get around on whilst we're waiting to leave)

with only a week and a bit before we shoot off... I've been getting rather anxious recently about it all, quite worried and concerned about what's going to happen over the next 12 months... apparently this is normal and it should ease as soon as we touch down at the first destination... we'll see...

over and out - until next time...

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Exchanged contracts...

Simon got confirmation today that the contracts have been exchanged on his (and Lou's) property - Finally...

So, they complete the sale next friday and then we're set for the off - we're moving out of Simon's house early next week and going to stay with simon's mum for a few days... which is nice. :)

Getting closer...!!

My knees feeling better too - so things are looking up!
:D
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Friday, January 19, 2007

I hate my knee! That organic cider has a lot to answer for...

Thanks to everyone who came out last night on what hopefully will be our (last*) leaving doo...

The big news is that an incident involving consumption of aforementioned cider, a rogue marks&spencers shopping trolly and a little over exuburance on my behalf - I appear to have bust my knee up again.

D'oh!

Just in time for our departure.... Typical.

Considering I've spent the best part of a year getting it back up to strength too... oops... :S

I'm sure it'll be fine.*

Leaving date set to some time around my birthday - That's the 30th January folks! Don't worry about cards and stuff - no seriously... it's ok... we don't have a mantlepiece to put them on anymore. :)

Still - at least we didn't have to get up for work today, 3am to bed on a week night! With work in the morning... what a disgrace! lol :)

*Yeah right - If you believe that you'll believe anything! ;)

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

STILL in Leamington!!

Hmmm... one week on and we're still here!?

Waiting to exchange contracts on simon's house sale and ultimately the completion date. Then (and only then) can we finally start the ball rolling for getting the tickets finalised and our actual leaving date... it's frustrating as it seems we've been leaving "in two weeks" now for months...!?

Hey ho! Regardless of this minor hiccup we are now officially living out of our backpacks - having almost completed packing the last remnants of our 'normal' clothes that we've had left over from our intial storage push - the final storage crate arrives on Thursday (the day after tomorrow) and then all we should have is our backpacks and the belongings we'll be spending our year travelling with...

So close, and yet so far.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

LEAMINGTON SPA - 2 WEEKS LEFT

The time is near. It's Early January 2007.

Flat - Sold
Worldly Goods - In Storage
Money - In the bank
Career - On Hold
Tickets - Booked
Bags - Packed (countless times)
Departure date - Round about Jan 18th

Not long now...

For those who don't know, we're off on a global trip - for a year or so.

Leamington has finally lost its sheen, after 16 long years (for me anyway) it's time for me (us) to say goodbye. Goodbye to the midlands, Goodbye to the video game industry, Goodbye to the UK, Goodbye to Europe...

Hello world here we come!

Guest Starring yours truly, my good wife Sarah and our good friend Simon.

Rough itinarary so far being:- India, Thailand, Borneo, Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands, LA, Central America and South America.

In preparation for the trip, Sarah and I have now passed our Open Water Certification which means we can dive, we'll be hitting those reefs in Thailand, Borneo, Australia, Mexico, etc. no doubt swimming with turtles, rays, clownfish and er... possibly the odd shark or two :S !

Personally speaking I have every intention to ride down something as soon as possible on a bike - whenever the opportunity presents itself... currently eyeing up potentail in Bolivia. But hopefully sooner than that in Oz or NZ hopefully.

We should be hitting New Zealand bang on snowboarding season so spend a bit of time doing that...

Can't wait.

Last day at work today for me... then a few more weeks and we're off.

RTW Reading Club 2007 -

1. Andrew Collins - "Where did it all go right - Growing up in the 70's" - Biographic story of growing up in a 70's provincial town england (northampton as it happens), I enjoyed it - Sarah discarded it after a few pages... It's a boy thing maybe, talking about Action Men, Nutty Bars, Walnut Whips, Beezer, Dandy, Punk Rock and the Poseidon Adventure - As my mum always used to say "You know you're getting old when you start to reminisce" and this book (for me anyway) certainly pushed those buttons. 2. Louis de Berniers - "Senior Vivo and the Coca Lord" - Third in the trilogy set in a fictitious South American Country. Superb book. I loved the first one, didn't quite manage to finish the second but it enjoyed it anyway and this one rounds of the series nicely. Follows the progress of a College Lecturer (Senior Vivo) who manages to stir the wrath of one of the biggest cocaine barons in South America by just writing letters to a newspaper... It manages to be humorous all the way through whilst simultaneously dealing with gangster violence, retribution and so on... Funny, Sad, Whimsical, Lovely, Horrific, Magical are all words suited to describe this book. If you haven't read it... then read the others first - you won't regret it. 3. Gregory David Roberts - "Shantaram" - Just over Halfway and thanks to Andy (west') for the tip... excellent read so far... perfect location to read it too... particularly as it's set in Bombay and mentions all the places we've seen and been to... with the exception of the Prison... we didn't go there, thankfully. I'll be sad to finish it. Apparently it's been turned into a film... possibly with Johnny Depp (Sarah will be pleased) Finished it now and I have to say it was really rather good... made me laugh, made me cry and made my think too... excellent holiday read - especially whilst in India. 4. PADI - Adventure diver - yeah... not exactly the most thrilling of books but necessary to pass the advanced diving course... 12 different fields of diving to choose from, pick 5, learn them, do the exams, do the practicles... and hey presto you're advanced... all seems a little too easy. But seriously folks, must reading if you want to go deep. 5. Stephen Hawkings universe - This is brain expanding stuff - not that I'm willing to say I understand it all, but certainly puts a different perspective on things. Dealing with everything from relativity, Black holes, Mini Black holes, Event Horizons, Singularities, Exploding Black holes, Bubble Universe Theories, Quantum mechanics, quarks, neutrinos, and all those other iddy biddy particle things... oh and a bit on God too! Downside being is that it's 20 years old now and more than likely to be outdated in current thinking... or maybe not. If you like having your brain twisted inside out then this is the one for you. Otherwise steer well clear. 6. Jung Chang "Wild Swans" - Historical, thought provoking account of the traumatic upheaval of China throughout the 20th century. Seen through the eyes of one family across 3 generations of it's women; the book is a stunning insight into a country in crisis - the ridiculousness of the political crusade of Chairman Mao and the struggle the society had with him and each other leading ultimately to a total breakdown of millennial old social structures, traditions and values and on to a state sponsored anarchic regime. An insight into a Social Suicide which should be a lesson for us all. It was certainly an eye opener. 7. David Mitchell "Black Swan Green" - Sentimental and often nostalgic story of a young boy heading into those awkward teenage years, set in a small village to the Malvern Hills at the start of the 80's... sounds familiar? Well, seeing that he credits Andrew Collins in his list at the back suggest he may have got some influence from the first book I read from this trip... difference being this is a novel, not reality - however, Sarah hated this and I sort of enjoyed it... probably for the same reasons I liked growing up in the 70's - the nostalgia - but Sarah loathed what she referred to as constant "Era dropping" - she may have a point - but maybe she's just a little too young to remember? :P 8. Patrick Suskind "Perfume" - Subtitled "The Story of a Murderer", may give away the contents of this aromatic read. I really enjoyed this, very flowery, pungent language as befitting a book about smells. Great story, if perhaps a little far fetched at some points - fatalistic to the extreme and quite disturbing too. I'd be interested to see how they did it as a movie... 9. David Mitchell "Number 9 Dream" - ooh how bizarre, my ninth book is called number 9 dream.. how peculiar? This is one of David attempts at being clever, whilst enjoyable to a point it ultimately fails to deliver. Which was a shame as I enjoyed reading it but felt after a while it got a little lost, with a but too many sub plots that became a little self indulgent... I can certainly see where he was going with this, but I feel "Cloud Atlas" was more accomplished. 10. "The Damage Done" - I forget who wrote this, but essentially it's a true story about an Ozzy guy who gets caught running class A drugs to and from Thailand to Oz and suffers a great deal whilst in various penal establishments in Thailand. Sold to the many young and naive backpackers in Thailand as a warning perhaps... which is bizarre because it highlights in extreme detail the atrocious conditions prisoners are kept in. Certainly a showcase perhaps for human rights campaigners... 11. DBP Pierre "Vernon God Little" - A really good read, a well written modern satirical take on the US legal system and TV media and how they behave during a tragedy involving school kids and guns... similar in essence to the topics dealt with in Natural Born Killers but without the blood and random violence. Thumbs Up. 12. Philip Reeve "Mortal Engines" - Award winning teenage fiction. First part in a series of four books. Set x-many years into the future after man nearly destroyed itself in some big war that left the world ravaged... yadda yadda yadda... yeah, it's the same old derivative backstory but then it IS kids fiction so we can excuse that... it's what comes next that's great imaginative stuff - humanity broken down into a pot rivetted collection of nomadic steam powered cities that have an almost animalistic life in themselves using the "Municipal Darwinism" principle - lol - quality! Anyway... falling firmly between the potter books and the dark material trilogy (in terms of writing style) a must read for those who like that sort of thing... oh... and the cover arts nice too... :) 13. James Joyce "Dubliners" - Not quite finished this yet but I'm getting there... bit of a departure from 21st century teen fiction I know - but, well you've gotta stretch yourself - I was expecting to be flummoxed by this TBH and whilst occasionally the language, rhythm and style does lose me, on the whole it's a really nice read... kind of like, Van Morrison reading Alan Bennett to Father Ted. "Hoy dare... Luk Father! therez a cracker under your sofa... so there is. Would ye loik a cup o tea? go awn...!" ... I'm sure Joyce is rolling in his grave... and no... I haven't got Ulysses lined up for me 14th choice...

Tales of a Scorched Earth