Location, location, location

My first antipodean post for a few months – yep, now I’m back down in Melbourne getting myself together for the next seven months or so down in Australia. This constant changing of towns leads to some quite weird emotional roller coasters, not helped by a lack of sleep on fourteen hour plane journies and timezone confusion. I also have no concept of when I should be eating lunch/dinner/whatever, so I just end up eating the whole time. Thank heaven for Melbourne’s proliferation of shops selling sushi rolls for A$2, as well as the amazing A$3 pizza offer at Bimbo’s on Brunswick for which you get a sublime pizza.

Back to the subject of location though. I’ve been noticing that whenever I arrive back in a town that I’ve been to before I feel like I’ve never actually left. So though it’s been almost three months since I was in Melbourne, and then only for three weeks, it feels like one lump of continuous time. This can be quite dis-orientating. If I stop and consider my memories of the last few months back in London they are there, but seem a lot less fresh than memories of time spent in Melbourne. How strange is that? I guess it’s to do with all the immediate associations I have around me pushing certain memories forward.

Another thing I’ve noticed is how air flight affects me. I’m not a great fan of flying as I’m sure many of you know, but seem to end up doing a lot anyway. The recent fourteen hour flight between San Francisco and Sydney is now my longest plane journey, although thankfully I managed to get a few hours sleep. As soon as I the plane starts to take off all memory of time outside of this flight seems to disappear, and all I can remember is this flight. Similarly the future gets very hard to focus on, other than that I’ll be in a plane. This leads to a feeling not unlike an eternity of hell, especially when the movie’s bad. Conversely as soon as I step off the plane at my destination the whole memory of the flight is pretty much completely gone.

Any pyschologists out there please feel free to offer explanations of this to the usual address.

In the meantime though big thanks to Alicia for the lift to the airport (as well as all the free wine tours), to Nam for a great party and to Dave for lending me his apartment in SF complete with addictive ‘Enter the Matrix’ game.