The Blog - The Archive

   A few techincal difficulties...

Okay, so there’s going to be an overhaul of the site when I get back from Hawaii. I’ve finally hit the 5Mb limit on my disc quota at register4less, so as well as doing the long-awaited changes to the template I might be moving servers. Hitting the limit is especially annoying when you consider that I have a complete new story to post here (it’s a Domus Prime one, but that’s better than nothing and there are plans to start on an original novel with the Heidi in november/december).

Cross-posted to the front page

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   *bouncing off the walls*...

It’s morning it’s morning it’s morning!

Or so my body keeps telling me. In reality, it’s morning, but it’s way too early to be up. I suppose this is what happens when you’re 12 hours out from where you were last week. It was only exhaustion that had me sleep the night through last night, I suspect. And getting up two hours early isn’t that bad...

Aiya...

So anyway, here we are, me tired but unable to sleep, and you reading this because it happens to be there. How are you anyway?

Okay, so where was I up to in my stories from Germany? I don’t have the ineternet here, so I can’t check. So I’ll pick up with a rant about German food, since that is always fun.

I like German food in principle. Goulash is nice and frankfurts are yummy, and I actually like the idea of having a big lunch and a small dinner, but for every meal it is a bit much. I would have liked some variation in the dishes. And maybe a nice vegi green curry.

The vegetarians seemed to have some trouble too, which makes sense when the main ingrediant of any dish is sausage.

Meh, that rant didn’t go anywhere, I guess I’m still tired, even if I am awake. I hope I don’t fall asleep in the lectures again today. It was very funny when that happened yesterday although it was a pity as I had wanted to listen to that particular talk, but I just couldn’t go on any longer, I guess. Anyway, I will do better today, I promise!

What else do I have to tell about? I saw the most gorgeous jacket ever in Heathrow airport on my way to L.A. It was black suede with a a butterfly embroidered on the back and decorated with pretty gemstones, and it was only 400pounds, which is only a little less than my quarterly income... *sighs*

I stayed in the red light district in Frankfurt, which was a lot of fun, ooh, and I had the yummiest chocolate icecream! Ooh, and I decided that since I don’t have time to shop, I’m not giving out individual presents, but rather things that can be shared between everyone. Now all I have to do is figure out when I can get everyone together again.

Then I had the longest weekend in history as I had to get up at 3am to make it to the airport in time for my 7am flight. Well, I probably got there a little too early, given that the check-in desk was not even open yet, but it was all for the best. I made it on the plane, and we got safely to London, which is a beautiful city from the air. I saw all sorts of recognisable landmarks, which was good fun, and then I did a little shopping in the airport. I ought to have bought the Doctor Who DVDs, but I decided against it as the price was much the same as in Sydney, once you worked out the conversion rate.

Then I caught the plane to L.A., which was the worst flight ever in terms of customer service. If you have a choice, don’t ever fly American airlines. They offered crappy food, made you pay for drinks other than water or juice, and the sound on the in-flight movie cracked and popped like the worst of bad mp3s. Oh, and the next day I flew with them to Hawaii, and you had to pay for all food on that flight.

However, I did meet a very nice teacher at a community college, who talked to me and kept me sane. We had a nice whinge about the way education is going and how the universities are more after money than intelligence in their students. And that made up for a few things. She also warned me about the security measures that I would have to endure visiting the united states, which were a pain. I really don’t like that the fbi now has my fingerprints and photo on record.

Hey, the sun is coming up. This has been a good way to kill time after all. Well, actually, I’ve been watching anime too, which has been fun. I was about ten episodes behind with Kyou Kara Maou, so it’s been good catching up. I love this series.

Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah. After security in Los Angeles, I caught a shuttle bus to the youth hostel in Hollywood, which has all my recommendations and will be properly linked when I have a chance to look up the url. The people there were the nicest, and the facilities were great. And it was just off Hollywood Boulevard, which was so much fun!

Hollywood was nothing like I’d expected. It was a bigger tourist trap than Surfer’s Paradise, which is saying something. Every second shop was selling tacky souveniers, and the others were selling expensive clothes and costumes, and these were doing a roaring trade this close to Halloween. I bought something, but I’ll keep that as a surprise. Heh, it didn’t fit in my suitcase either, so it became my other carry on luggage. *grins*

Let’s see, I visited Garumann’s Chinese Theatre and found out that my hands are very much smaller than Arnold Swartzenegger’s, and I found Kermit the Frog’s star on the walk of fame. I had a yummy fruitsalad at the disney soda fountain, and I had breakfast at Hollywood and Vine! (ten points for the cultural reference, I even gave a hint above.)

So now I’m in Hawaii, which is beautiful, and the sky here is so dark, despite all the people about here. This is another tourist trap, albeit a much more classy one than Hollywood, which just seems to rest on the laurels of fame past and tradition. Our condo (though I’d rather call it a flat - *grins*) is very nice, and so cheap for what it is. Sure, I’m not sleeping, and it is rather stuffy in the lot where Beth and I are sleeping, but but aside from that, I could happily live in a place like this. The golf decor would have to go, but that is what you get for staying in a place called “Fairway Villas”. And the golf course outside is very nice, and there are lots of birds about, which is so cool.

I like all the volcanic soil too. There is something very cool about such things. We might be going to the volcano park on friday, but apparently the road degraded recently, so we might not be able to see the lava flows, which would make it an expensive trip for so little. I don’t know, I still want to go, kinda. I also want to hear the final talks on planet formation though, so I have no idea. I guess we’ll wait and see.

Tomorrow we’re going snorkling during our one afternoon off. I’m looking forward to it, a bit, but I wish we didn’t have to rush back to the conference dinner. I wonder if we get to dress up here, or if it will be like germany and everyone will just wear what they did all day. I’d find it a shame if that were the case, as I have the cutest little dress to wear.

Anyway, time to get dressed and all that. Talk to you soon!

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   Snippets of news (apologies to James who has seen this)...

I´ve decided there will be a new regime of present giving for this trip, given that I really had no time to shop: There will be a big pile of presents for the sharing, and everyone will be invited to dinner at my house one night and the presents shall be consumed. Fortunately I made it to a supermakt this evening in the seconds before it closed, so I actually have something fun from germany to share with everyone. I just hope I remembered your favourite flavour correctly. *shrugs* It is all good.

I am now in Frankfurt again, and this hostel is very scary. In the red light district (which is actually a lot of fun to walk around), next to "world of sex" (a department store for all things sex) and I´m sharing the room with a married couple, who bloody well better be sleeping in separate beds. Ah well, I shall have my revenge come 4am when my alarm goes off.

Oh, and people who pick up on my rss feed, I´ve decided do give away a fabulous prize to the 10,000th visitor to my blog (or nearest offer). Simply send me a screenshot of the hit counter at the bottom of my page when it hits the magic number, and I will find something amazing to send you. Given that most of my visitors will probably forget, send me the number you get if you are withing +/- 10 of the target and if you are closest, you win. No photoshop cheating, and no spamming my access logs by hitting refresh a thousand times. This is meant to be fun, not an actual competition.

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   I hate belly aches...

Getting back to things in the few minutes remaining of morning tea (I got back a little early to write this, but the person I was talking to had to run and get something warmer to wear - it’s very cold here). So, I was going to write about tuesday’s excursion, as that was the most fun we’ve had during this schule (although some of the talks have been fun, the excursion was most fun).

On Tuesday we went to Drachenfels. If you’re like me, you immediately latch onto the “Drachen” part of the word and think, “There’s a dragon?!? I love Europe!” And sure enough, there had been a dragon there, but Siegfried killed him and built a castle on the mountain where the dragon’s cave had been. The only dragon I saw was a puppet, but he did speak German (upon the application of money) and told a story about Siegfried that I did not understand at all.

Of course, the dragon’s ghost must have gotten his revenge, as all that remained of the castle were a few walls that were slowly crumbling with age. Still, I liked the castle, and still want one of my own, even though it would be a very cold place to live and I don’t like the cold.

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   As always happens when I set myself a task of writing frequently...

I quickly get distracted by real life and forget all about my little project. Actually, it’s more been the case that I’ve been too tired to write or post to my blog, preferring instead to fall asleep at an unhealthily early hour and then stay asleep until the last possible moment. Ah well... I feel good today though, so I might even make it to the last night of social interaction.

But the lesson I’ve learned for next week is to just ignore the constant desire to sleep, as you miss out on too much if you do sleep as much as I have been. I didn’t get to go to Bonn on tuesday night, for example, and given that I decided not to play hooky today and go to Cologne again, I’ve missed out on a day of sightseeing with actual German people to show me around and talk for me to shopkeepers and other people.

Does not matter. Tonight is the conference dinner, and I am going to stay up to an unholy hour with my friends... Well, I’ll stay out for a little while anyway, until we all remember that we have to be out of our room by 9am tomorrow and rush back to pack.

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   The danish word for ‘handbag’ is the sweedish word for ‘hooker’...

When you get a bunch of people together who only share one common language that they use for work, they either talk shop or find someone who speaks their language to gossip in. Which makes it hard when you’re the only person there who just speaks English.

So, I’m doing a lot of listening to foreign tongues, and occasionally I catch a word here or there. If I’m lucky I’ll find some people willing to talk about their languages in English, which means I had a nice discussion at lunch about the differences between French-French and Quebec-French.

And more often than not, I end up in a group of people who all forget that I don’t speak *language* and just talk around me until such time as they realise that I’m not laughing at their jokes.

*sighs* It would be okay if I didn’t keep catching the few sentence fragments that I do know.

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   The minions love the secret passages...

The reason for that is simple. It’s so easy to be silent there. In the rest of the palace (and in manors and other large houses in general) every floorboard squeaks, every door creaks, every pipe bangs and generally it’s a very noisy place. You certainly couldn’t just use the Force to sneak. You would have to use the Force to block out the noise of you walking around from every other brain in the palace, which is no mean feat (though I’m sure they could do it).

The sun rises very late around here. I’m pretty certain it’s not up yet, and it’s past 8am. That makes it nice for sleepy Catherines who crashed last night around 9pm again. Hopefully I’ll be able to stay up to a more normal hour tonight. I’d hate to think that I will miss all the social activities by being too sleepy for them.

Anyway, breakfast beckons, so I better get up.

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   Hanging out at the Physikzentrum...

Okay, so I'm not sure if it's true what they say about the second day being worse for jetlag or if I was just having a bad day but this morning sucked. It started out reasonable, even though I couldn't find anyone to sit with me at breakfast in the youth hostel because both my roomies disappeared not long after I woke up.

Oh, I should mention the youth hostel. It was the Koeln-Rhiel (*check this spelling, Catherine*) youth hostel, which was about ten minutes by train from the city centre. It was surprisingly hard to find, given that it was signposted, but I didn't walk in the wrong direction, it just took a lot of peering through the trees to find it. I took some photos, so I will upload them at some point or maybe just point Wikitravel in the right direction.

Anyway, it was very pretty, and the staff all spoke english, which was pleasant. I find that when I've heard nothing but other people speaking another language all day I start talking out loud to myself, which is no fun as I always know what I'm about to say. I found an internet terminal in the hostel, which boasted 5euro/min, but the last thirty seconds are dominated by a large countdown clock in the middle of the screen, so I put in a large coin rather than suffer that again. The keyboard was a shocker, though, which is why I didn't blog. My poor friends had to put up with that in emails though, but they love me, so it's all good.

What else happened...? I went to the Dom (Cathedral) treasury in Koeln yesterday and gawked at all the shiny pretty gold things in the glass cases, and admired the big box which apparently has the bones of the three kings of the bible story in it. I'm glad I did this yesterday, as today when I went to go to mass in the church proper this morning they wouldn't let me in. Apparently Jesus is allergic to suitcases. Whatever, I don't need their stinking religion anyway...

Okay, so I sat in a corner and cried for an hour pathetically because I'd never heard of a church that didn't let people in before, even if I get special travellers 'get out of church free' cards. And I did want to see the inside, and I wanted to go to mass and had been feeling nicely righteous because I had looked up the mass times beforehand so I would be there on time and everything. *grumbles*

So then I went for a wander around the shops, but they were all closed because it's sunday. Fair enough, I guess. I found a few souvenier places that were open, and got Heidi a present, but for the most part I wandered the streets with a bunch of other people looking in all the windows. I found two antikmarkts (and I know that's spelled wrong, but not by much and I can look it up later) which were fun to look around... but I didn't buy anything because it was all junk. One of the markets was set up inside a normal mall, but instead of the shops being open, in the walkways between the shops there were lots of tressle tables with random collections of necklaces, knick-knacks, and elvis presley records.

I had a slice of pizza for lunch (and wow was it the best thing I've ever eaten, for some reason) and then I went on a grand adventure on the german train system. I learned many important things, such as "aussen Sa" means "but not on sunday, because you don't need more than one train an hour" and that all the trains arrive at remote stops at the same time, so you have to wait an hour for the next one because without teleportation you can't get to the other platform.

But now I'm here, at the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef and I'm about to run to dinner. Will be back later (possibly tomorrow, given how tired I am).

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   Not that Jetlagged...

Having just sent James an email declaring myself to not be feeling the effects of not sleeping much last week or at all since way back before the 22hour plane trip, I'm suddenly very tired. How typical. I think it's more that I'm sitting down relaxing, and so the adrenaline has had a chance to wear off.

Frankfurt is a nice city, from the little bit I've sampled. The markets are fun, the river is cold, the sunrise is pretty (if very late - I didn't realise quite how long the twilight lasted for. If I had known I might have sat inside somewhere for an hour instead of waiting in the 6 degree wind) and the people are friendly enough and most are able to switch to acceptible english when you tell them you just don't speak German.

It's more cold than I was expecting (and I had looked up the weather here before packing), so I might go and buy some long-sleeved shirts to wear over the next week. I did buy a nice wool jumper to keep me going this morning, and I saw the nicest velvet wristbands at the markets. I can so make some of those when I get back.

I'm now sitting in the old part of town, which is very atmospheric, but mostly full of tourists. That's a little sad, actually. Still, the frankfurts are nice and cheap too. And the apfelwein is yummy (and may have contributed to my sudden tiredness)! Oh, and I love roasted chestnuts. How can we not have these in Australia?

I was thinking that I might just go crazy with my train pass if I decide not to bother sleeping in Frankfurt on my last night in Germany. After all, I might as well get my money's worth. The only problem is that travelling at night is no fun as you can't see the fun things you are travelling past.

Ah well, I'll be on the move again soon, and then it will be all fun and adventures until I get to Koln (grr, I can never remember how to type umlauts). I'm looking forward to my day there. Tomorrow morning I'll be going to church at the big cathedral (hooray for mass on the hour, which Catherine can certainly manage) before heading out to the conference centre. As usual when travelling, I have no idea when or where I'll next be online, but I imagine that the youth hostel I'm staying at will have something... Oh, and I might play the flickr game a little too. I haven't taken many photos yet, but I'm sure I will.

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   Going away again...

Eeps, I never got around to telling you all about the reporter, or my trip to japan for that matter. I'll put both stories off once again, as I'm out of time (when do I ever have time?), but for more about the Japan trip, visit my flickr page, which is just about the full story (I haven't put up the photos from Tokyo yet).

I don't think I mentioned it yet, but I've been posting "When Duty Calls" over at the forums. I'm four chapters in, which is a two chapters more than I had written when I started posting. Unfortunately, this whole trip thing came up and ate my free time, so I haven't even thought about chapter five yet, although I was thinking that I could get a lot of it done during this trip.

Which brings us to this adventure. I'm going away to Germany for a week for one conference, and then heading out to Hawaii for another. I don't really have any sightseeing time while there, but it should be fun nonetheless. I'm not sure about blogging, but then again I haven't been blogging regularly for months now. I'll be back on the 30th, so send me emails if you want to contact me, and feel free to nag me about writing.

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