Managed to finally drag my chilly arse out of bed this morning after ten or so hits of the snooze button. Not sure why I was being so lazy after yesterday's laziest of lazy days. Wandered into town and checked out the Design Museum where they're showing a web design "retrospective". Lots of interesting things, including Tomato's C_I logo for Sony. This is an interactive logo that people can actually affect in real-time through a variety of interfaces. Sony use a real-time grab of the interactive logo for their product adverts and the like. Here's hoping you can get swearwords up there....

Wow. The sun actually shined today, amazing. I celebrated this momentous occaision by going out for a run along the Thames. It was dark by the time I got out there and the bridge lights reflecting against the low tide water made for some beautiful views. Now I'm achy and continuing my relaxing day of going through all Stephen's DVDs that I haven't yet seen (Hannibal is turning out to be the best so far).

Meanwhile another random act of synchronicity happened yesterday. I went along to the Victoria and Albert museum to check out the photo still life exhibition and spend a happy time perusing their online archive. Good exhibition and I found out that most of the photography I do is classed as 'givens', finding views on things that already exist in real life rather than set-up shoots. On the way into town I decided to walk rather than take the tube and wandered straight into George, who used to work at PGL in 1991! This was pretty bizarre as I was just wondering how I was going to get in touch with everyone I knew down in Australia and New Zealand and, guess what, she's still in touch with them all. Gor' blimey guv'nor.

On the subject of spending time wisely mine has mostly been spent catching up with friends in London and watching grey skies. I miss sunny Williamsburg! I miss tubes (subways) that don't stop at midnight and only cost $17 a week rather than £22 for just offpeak! I miss being able to walk everywhere! I miss the skyline! I miss my apartment! Well, it's only been a week - I'm sure this will wear off soon.

Having a good time though. Lots of parties this weekend - bit of a birthday season amongst people of my aquaintance (sic), and thank heaven for the proliferation of text messaging on this side of the Atlantic. Also randomly bumped into some folk I haven't seen in many years. Very strange indeed where you see people. I'm still trying to get my head back onto sorting out travel plans and combining this with developing art/graphic design skills to trigger a change in direction. A few more folk interested in travelling are coming out of the woodwork and that's cool. Not sure that I would deal at all well with travelling on my own. Go stir crazy after a day by myself sometimes.

Oh, and though I never thought I'd say this, but England needs to ban drinking on the streets. I was going into town last night around 7pm and everyone had a can of lager in their hands. Do we really need to get that drunk before we get down to the bar? Will those few extra minutes of drunkeness make us all achieve nirvana more easily? Or maybe I'm just getting old. Nyah.

Great article in Vice this month about how to be a gold digger. Apparently you can make heaploads of cash each year without putting out. Oh, unfortunately this only works for women, otherwise this would be my dream job. The question becomes though, how near is this to prostitution? If you definately put out purely with the intention of getting stuff then I'd say it was, but if you just hang out with married guys to get their stuff with no fun(ny) stuff then that's probably just a non-taxable escort service.

Gah! I hate those frikkin' keyboards which are split down the middle with cunningly placed backspace buttons for when you mistype... Just one of the many differences I'm getting to grips with now that I'm back in England, staying at my old house in Camberley (a small commuter town south west of London). Yep, I have actually left new York now.

For those of you who didn't catch this bit of news I didn't actually leave on Friday night. Virgin offered my a large pile of airmiles to bump my flight so I took them up on that. This meant I had a pretty chilled out couple of days in Williamsburg having sorted out everything that needed sorting already. Sweet. Finally flew out on Sunday and Virgin decided to upgrade me to Upper Class! This was too wonderful for words, and the only downpoint of the entire journey was that when I finally decided to go to sleep on the totally flat, wide seat I got woken up for my massage. It's a tough life. This of course means I'm now seriously considering paying double money to get a business cass round the world ticket rather than a coach class... Serious 'traveller'? Me? Yeah right!

I'm pretty much over my jet lag now and planning to head up to London on Thursday night for a weekend of partying. In the meantime I've re-arranged my old room (again) and am trying to get better at throwing old, un-useful things out of my life. Never have been very good at letting go as I think I mentioned a few entries ago. Getting better now though.

On a more random note saw a program on obesity in America last night. Kids who are scarily overweight and either really unhappy or have parents who tell them it's OK to be fat. Don't worry about the heart disease you already have. It's all well and good being happy with the way you look, but you take your own choices on chosing to die young from fat related illnesses. Of course, if only exercise was as easy as taking that next beer and slumping in front of the TV for a few hours.

Well, Frank was talking about coming to New York, so it's a bad reference I know. Au revoir you wonderful city and the people who live in you. I'm sure we'll meet again some sunny day.

I'm in such a weird mood today. My advice to all and sundry is never mix your last day in a country with Valentine's Day, a good double whammy on the emotional scale. I've also come down with a throaty, achey malaise of some description. I'm glad I've had such a good last few weeks otherwise feeling so emotionally loopy and physically unwell on my last full day in New York would definately be getting to me.

Happy Valentines Day to everyone that I love. Hope you're all getting the hugs you need.

My apartment is now completely bare. Well, when I say "completely bare" I mean it only has a TV/VCR, Replay-TV, stereo, mattress, computer, DSL, fridge, phone, rug and piles of crap that's coming back to Britland with me prior to jetting off towards Australia. So it's a lot more echo-y than it was. People are often accusing me of exaggeration and romanticising situations and that was no exception. Just wish I hadn't packed my roller blades...

My travel plans are fermenting nicely in my brain now. I'm pretty much going to start in China, then head down towards Australia by an overland (or water) route. This may include a jaunt over to India and many other places off the direct route depending on what I feel like at the time and what my friends (old and new) want to do at the time. I'm still finding it pretty hard to deal with the thought of constantly being in flux but I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.

I've also started to buy some travel related toys. First off is a Rio Volt SP90. This should let me burn CDs of MP3s rather than carry entire collections of albums along. So, not the original albums and up to 14 on each CD! Thanks to Dave for the first opinion on that one. I'm also looking to buying some new lenses and filters for my camera having just read up on travel photography techniques. Good thing I got money from selling all my old crap...

Had a smashingly luverley Moroccan dinner last night down at Mamlouk. Wow! This little gem serves a prix fixe menu of six courses, much like the mezze in Cyprus. Totally delicious and I was too bloaty to move afterwards. Also succumbed to trying out a hoopah with strawberry flavored 'rocks' on the top. Another first and something I've always wanted to try out after my sister described them after a trip to Egypt. Suspect the $15 we paid for that was a bit more than it costs in Egypt - and that was the only downpoint on the evening as we'd had the impression that it was complementary. All good fun though and heartily recommend a trip.

Just spent the afternoon helping Lisa move her new sofa (aka my old sofa, aka Stephen's old sofa) into her small West Village duplex. Everything went pretty smoothly, even after we found the sofa wouldn't fit into the elevator, mostly thanks to Kevin, a porter who came to help. There was a point when we flowed rapidly up three flights of stairs having got into the right sequence of movements. This exuberance was briefly crushed as we reached the last fire exit before Lisa's apartment, but after some twisting and turning (and dropping and tilting) the curvey purple bulk got through, accompanied by the yapping of a neighbourly dog. Both sofa and armchair are doing well and their mother is very proud.

On returning to my apartment huge wastes of empty space awaited me. Very emotionally wrenching. It's not been anywhere near this empty since I first moved in two years ago. On Monday the shippers come to take the remainder of the boxes and furniture, leaving me with a TV (until Sara picks it up), a mattress (to be thrown out due to accumulated stainage - I will miss it though, I've had nary a back twinge in the years I've had it) and two bags of crap that will come on the plane back next Friday.

This period of my life here is coming gracefully to an end. Some days I want to cry when I think about how much I'll miss everyone and the life here. Other days I'm so excited about the random wonders that await me around the world. Things are all falling into place though. Synchronicity is flowing, and maybe when it doesn't flow then that's for a good reason, I've just yet to work out what that is. In retrospect many things become clear. Fuck me, I'm starting to sound like Buddha. Ommm......

Y'know you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. So mine's a shot of tequila, please. Preferably Patron.

Today I are mostly be thinking about Barbarella, Philip K Dick and whether to understand life is to live it (or vice versa).

While Stephen's off shopping (aka, going to Bloomingdales for a few hours) I've started to pack my New York life into 1.5 cu. ft. boxes. This has given me the chance to throw out a lot of the crap I've accumulated over the years I've been here, and it's also thrown up a few gems. I've never been good at letting go of anything, my whole family is hoarders, and when you're moving all this crap seems like a curse. Then I came across my old World Trade Center pass from when I worked for Marsh back in 1999.

The Marsh offices were situated on the entire 96th floor of the Northern World Trade Tower, they also had a few other floors around there having moved from 120 Broad Street in mid-1999. From our cubicals we used to have amazing views down onto the Hudson river as cruise ships and light planes passed by. The building would sway very slightly to allow for the wind and one of the most terrifying and wonderful sights I saw was being in the middle of a thunderstorm one day. The sky lobby around the 60th floor used to catch the most amazing light as the sun set.

On September 11th the 96th floor was the first office to get hit, and I've since found out that four people I used to work with were caught in the attack, all of whom had families. Luckily it wasn't many more, so many people who I knew were late into work that day. Timing is everything in life, and finding that pass just reminded me that we only have an alloted span to enjoy on this planet and we never truely know when it will end. The only truth is that it does end and you will have lived your life and no-one else's. Seize the day.

Stephen's just come in from Brit-land for the weekend so to celebrate his arrival (and lack of jet-laggedness) we went out on a bit of a Billyburg bar crawl. Started off at Union Pool where the usual eclectic music (think David Holmes) was playing and we sat watching everyone dancing. Then over to Abbey, a dive bar I've never tried before which is classic dark pool playing paradise. Next venue was supposed to be the classic Galapagos but for some reason it was already closed at 1.30am! So we ended up going to Level X instead which was playing some great dance music, not that we were supposed to be dancing to it, sigh. Finally we ended up in the Blu Lounge where Ann very kindly let us stay long after everyone had gone to regale us with tales of the Irish mafia in the area. A smashing night all round.