Category: Musings

Come on lucky 27…

Damn casinos. Managed to break quite a few of my rules for frequenting casinos last night and consequently paid the cost. Oopsy. Managed to add a new guideline for playing blackjack though – never sit as first person next to the shoe, always sit furthest away so you see as many cards as possible before it gets to you. Hope that’s helpful to someone ‘cos I certainly ain’t goin’ near a table anytime soon.

One feature of casinos around the world are the floaters. These guys, and they are always guys, just seem to hang back watching everything and nothing. Then suddenly they will go up to a table, put a few hundred on a number, seemingly always win then walk off to hover again. Very strange. One joined in for a single hand on the blackjack last night and got dealt a blackjack then walked off. Cushty.

Meanwhile back in reality the Cairns weather is still less than sunny so my tan is failing to darken at any appreciable rate. All the scuba trips seem to be fully booked up anyway which is a shame as quite fancied going out to watch a shark feed – maybe next week. What would be really cool is if I got to see the albino whale that’s swimming about at the moment. Beautiful animal.

Swim wid da fishes

Just got back from another trip with those lovely ProDive folks – so now I’m a fully qualified Advanced Open Water diver. This gives me new gnarly powers like being able to leap tall coral in a single breath, find small teaspoons lost in sand and wrestle naked with turtles. Oh no wait. That was naturalist. Oops, sorry Mr Turtle.

Weather was a smidge different from last week’s perfect conditions – that is to say wind at 30+ knots, swells up to 4 metres and visibility less than 10m in general due to disturbed sediment. The swells down the thin coral corridors were something to experience and don’t make me feel like rapidly going in for cave diving. Oh, and it was bloody cold! So no sitting around roasting on the back deck or sitting outside at night watching the stars. On the other hand met some loverly new people again and got loads more experience in different dive conditions. I can now happily snort sea water to clear my congested nose and other such ‘pro’ diver tricks. Also saw loads of turtles and got even closer to a shark, plus watched all the sleepy little fishes wake up at dawn and embark on a feeding frenzy of coral, floating plants and each other. Again, all very awesome and hopefully I’ll have some piccies up tomorrow for you to enjoy.

Plus I’m now only one dive away from my 20th. Sweet.

Smiley, happy people

Had a great day out in the tropical rainforests with Uncle Brian yesterday, and his new helper Cousin Merissa. Heartily recommend this day of madcap singing, laughing, hiding from passers by and occaisional tropical rainforest visits. Oh, and saw a platypus in the wild! This came hot on the heels of my first day out horse riding at Springmount farm where I proved I’m not very good at horse riding but there was a cool semi-tame kangaroo. Photos up for both of these in the usual place.

Tomorrow off to do some more scuba diving, although the weather is not going to be anywhere near the perfect conditions of last week. Get to do my first deep dive down to 30m though which will be cool.

Choke – chuck palahniuk. A great story along similar lines to Fight Club. The main protoganist is a sex addict doctor this time but the insights are just as fascinating. Good read.

I’m stepping out of the pod

Wow. Just come back from learning to scuba dive on the Barrier Reef. Wow. It’s the most amazing thing ever. Just floating above everything almost completely weightless – controlling your height by your breath. It’s incredibly wonderful and surreal at the same time, combined with an immediate sense of reality because if you forget to breath you might well die in a painful manner. Wow.

It’s very hard to find the words to express how it feels. The simplicity of everything once you get past the initial apprehension. The colours of the sea – a blue stretching off in all directions, the fish flashing silver, or any colour of the rainbow, or the slate grey of sharks and rays. Turtles flying above you as they flap their flippers. The way sound changes – your breathing intense and visible as well as bubbling around you, the munch of parrot fish as they scour the reef, the low murmur of boat motors and a complete lack of ability to call out to your dive buddy if something happens. Schools of fish looking like a giant organism as they seem to move together, shimmering and glittering in the early morning sun. Fish everywhere, ignoring you completely. Hovering metres above the seabed, with metres of water above you – the sun shimmering through its rays visible in the particles suspended in the water.

Then there was the night dive.

I suspect that the surreal nature of looking behind me and seeing six divers suspended and lit only my small torches shining down is something that has to be seen to be believed. So astonishing and beautiful. Black silhouettes seemingly suspended on lights flittering below and across the reef. The glitter of bubbles returning to the surface, and nothing visible around you outside of the light’s beam. Then to come up, dry off and sit on the top deck and see the cloudless sky covered in stars from horizon to horizon like a light cloud, with pure black only showing up in the middle of the milky way. So beautiful and something you rarely see with the ambient light spilling out from cities.

Wow.

Here I need to give a few thanks. To Arek for his fine teaching. Ryan for support teaching and amazing light stick twirling skills post-night dive. To Jeremy for being a fine and steadfast first ever dive buddy. To everyone else in the class who were so much fun in the restful, happy moments between dives. To Lemon Jelly for providing my mental soundtrack – and of course to nature for just being so amazing.

Memoirs of a geisha – arthur golden. Wow. This is an amazing book. Presented as the account of an actual geisha who lived in New York it is in fact completely fictional, but based on a lot of research into how geishas actually lived. The story centers around a young girl who is taken away from her family at an early age, to grow up as a geisha in gion. The okiya she grows up in has its share of hardships, centered around an antagonistic older geisha, but eventually the main character prevails. Central to the story is a thread of unrequited love, the trigger for why our heroine settles down to the life of a geisha. It’s a complete page turner, and the saddest part of the book is when its finished.

Way oop north (down south)

Just arrived in tropical Queensland, Cairns to be precise. The home of most northern backpacker style antics, and recently the drunken antics of thousands of Aussie marines returning from the Gulf. Ostensibly this is the dry season of the year, but I’ve yet to experience anything but rain so my tan’s still as pale as ever. Ah well, start scuba diving in a few days so that will be a bit of a moot point anyway once I get underwater. Cairns does have the most amazingly huge outdoor pool called the lagoon, which is filled with water directly from the sea. It was also completely empty when I got to swim in it due to the crappy weather, which was wonderful.

In other exciting news the old family home is up for sale. Get it while it’s hot!

What just happened – james gleick. This is a collection of essays written by the author of the books chaos and genius (both big favourites of mine). What’s interesting about this book is that the essays are written in the past with a view to how new internet developments will affect us. Sometimes the views expressed are still valid, but other times things have changed significantly which just reminds us how quickly things have progressed. Overall an interesting read, especially if you’re involved in the Internet field.

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.

The last continent – terry pratchett. Bit of a mind relaxing re-read this one, as I have to admit to owning all the Terry Pratchett discworld novels. The basic pastiche this time is set around Australia, or the Discworld equivalent, with Rincewind wandering around causing some mischief but generally escaping with his hat intact. Some amusing observations on Aussie habits and fauna, but overall the story doesn’t really flow – more a collection of events tied together around putting familiar characters in new situations. Definately not one of his best – for that I’d recommend Pyramids, which is still my favourite, or anything else in the first ten or so of the series!