Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit (5 Jan '08)

G'day all,

It's that time again. I've been back on the road since just before Christmas so things are happening again. Still, better start with London...

So in the last email in late October I mentioned about the job I was pretty sure I was going to get in Brighton. Well, I got it, and I told the guy I'd have to think about it, because I didn't really want to move to Brighton for just the 2 months given the problems I'd have with travel and finding a lease that short. Two days later got offered an interview for a job paying twice as much in the city, went in, got told "we think you can do this" and then told them I was only looking for a short contract when we got down to business. They told me they'd get back to me and they eventually did, in mid-December when I simply couldn't leave RDP without getting sued or at the very least knowing I was a complete bastard. (I might be a sucker, I probably am, but at least I'm a sucker who doesn't fuck people over!) They were only offering a job up to the end of January anyway, because they'd found a permanent person to do the real work and just wanted someone in to "get the ball rolling".

Anyway, back in late October, I took the job, knowing full well it would be an hour's commute either way under ideal circumstances, and sometimes possibly up to twice that. Oh how wrong I was. Enter British Rail.

Now, on the day I'd gone down for the interview it had been a perfectly easy process. Get the train to East Croydon from East Dulwich, change and get the Brighton train, get off at Burgess Hill. However, on that occasion, I'd been told, "Just show up some time in the middle of the day. Give me a ring from the station and I'll pick you up."

This had afforded me the luxury of just asking the national rail web site what time it felt like getting me to Burgess Hill and following the appropriate instructions. However, in the mornings, the train timetable is different. Because of the added traffic they are far more likely to cancel a train that's running late, rather than just let it run its course, or at least cancel some stops. They had a particular trick at East Croydon of cancelling two stops in particular on the Brighton line: my one and the one after it. There are also some highly irregular train frequencies between stations like East Dulwich and East Croydon because the southern rail newtork in London looks from the sky like something you'd pull out of your plughole. I was never on time once and rarely arrived much before 10. (So, yes, same as Sydney, but for different reasons. :) )

Anyway, four days into working at Rugged Display Products in Burgess Hill, on the Tuesday (I started on a Thursday), I dilligently got the train at 7.30 to Tulse Hill to get the Brighton train, which is one of the irregular trains in the mornings that will take you direct to Burgess Hill. That was cancelled. There is one more Brighton train but it's not until 8:47 and it doesn't stop at Burgess Hill anyway, and the next train to East Croydon was 20 minutes later, so I had to wait for that and then get off and change. They cancelled my stops on the next Brighton train so I waited, then they cancelled them again on the next one, so I decided to get it to the closest station I could which was Haywards Heath. When I got there I got off and waited 20 minutes for the next train, which I walked onto before being informed that because this train was now so late it wouldn't stop at Burgess Hill and I had to get off again. 25 minutes later I had my train. At 10:45 I walked into the boss's office and informed him that it had taken me 4 hours to get there that morning and that I wanted to finish the first, week-long project and then quit. He said "Why don't you just work from home? You just need to come in one or two days a week and be finished by Christmas." So I did.

Now, I was doing database design 5 years ago, so this weren't exactly a challenge, and it's not the best paid job I've applied for (but it's still pretty good), but it was nice and cruisy and paid the bills. It also made it so some days I could just bugger off into the city and do my own stuff. I wanted something nice and short so I could go travelling again sooner rather than later. I was hoping for February, but Christmas suited me fine. The guy is full of ideas though I'm sure I'll get a few more calls from him.

So, when I wasn't in the office, which was most days, I was sitting on the couch at Justin's with no shoes on in front of the fireplace, with my guitar and juggling balls close at hand for when I got bored every 10 minutes, clicking away at my laptop while it dutifully checked my Gmail or Facebook or smh.com.au, or, very occasionally, did some work. Since it was a nice easy database project it didn't take me nearly 8 hours a day to get it all done, and one week I just took Thursday and Friday off completely to go and hang out with Centine when she came to London.

I ended up staying with Justin and Meredith for the whole time. I looked at lots of other places but every time I found one I could get enthusiastic about it wasn't given to me. The same thing happened in Sydney. There's a lot of competition. Justin and Meredith were supremely kind to me and I can't thank them enough, but I still wish I'd done the whole share-house thing. I'll have another crack at it when I get back.

Various people came and visited London while I was there, and I visited a few people I've met along the way and some I knew from Sydney. I had bangers and mash with Laura from Sydney, watched the Guy Fawke's Day fireworks with Fergal from Ireland (whom I met in Spain), went up the tower of London and on the London Eye with Centine of previously emailed fame, saw the finals of the UK World Breakdancing competition with Justin and Meredith, and repeatedly got drunk with the girls from the old Gladesville posse. Andrea, with whom I went to uni, found me on Facebook and I've done a couple of cool things with her. Namely salsa dancing and going to a tiny little jazz pub in Covent Garden where a bunch of men from the 40s played a bunch of awesome jazz music from the 40s while a girl from the 40s sang extremely well.

Now, frankly, the salsa club was full of people who knew what they were doing and that intimidated the hell out of me. They had lessons at the beginning to combat this understandably common issue, so I signed up for that. When the time came to partner up, Andrea had very helpfully found two attractive young ladies who didn't have partners for me and her friend Gareth, and while Gareth was clever enough to notice Andrea telling us to get the hell over there and act swiftly, I somehow ended up with a fat old lady. Go me. Anyway after the lesson was over the intimidating people who could dance got on the floor and me and Gareth, barring a few breaks to dance with Andrea, got on the booze. I feel I must rise to the challenge though, and shall try again at a later date.

In early November I got an email from the hostel I'd stayed at in Amsterdam saying they'd give me a free night if I stayed over Christmas, and given that I had no other plans I thought that was a pretty good idea. I put the deposit down and when the 22nd of December rolled around, off I went for a week in the 'Dam. When Centine came a week or so later (in November) she graciously offered for me to stay at her place and do New Year's Eve there as well.

Now, the hostel in Amsterdam at Christmas was not like I'd thought. I had had visions of a bunch of interesting lone travellers from all over the world who were so far away from their families that they weren't seeing them, and long conversations about the significance of Christmas and religion and such over the odd spliff and a few beers at the bar. What I found was a bunch of couples speaking foreign languages to nobody but themselves, small groups of fresh-out-of-high-school Americans who went all deer-in-the-headlights when a stranger appeared within 3 metres of them, and a guy from Melbourne called Adam and a yank called Keith sitting in the corner doing power bongs in between games of pool. You can guess which group I attached myself to. The hostel put on Christmas dinner for us but apart from that it was a blurry, fairly boring week in which I did a lot of reading and sleeping (which I really didn't mind at all).

After three nights in Utrecht with Centine it was New Year's Eve - "Oud en Nieuw", and Centine had found a nice house party for us to go to. We spent the afternoon with some people in her building who were going to Amsterdam for the night. All was well, and we were just about to head off when we figured out it was going to be quite a long way to go, and we had only one bike. We actually organised another one but for some reason I said "hey we could just go to Amsterdam with them".

Now, New Year's Eve is a tricky thing. In my experience it is a choice between going to a club party, getting overcharged and completely blind and then waking up the following afternoon wondering if it was all worth it, or going to a house party, chilling out with music you choose at a volume you choose, drinking cheap booze but rarely to great excess, in the company of people of reasonably similar temperament, and waking up in the following afternoon thinking "my head hurts a bit and I didn't score but that was pretty cool". For this reason I invariably favour the house party. On the odd occasion, like when it's the year 2000 or I'm in an unfamiliar hemisphere, I feel the need to go out and "do something". This was an odd occasion.

Every street in Amsterdam is filled with people on New Year's Eve. The roads are like the Harbour Bridge at 6 o'clock and the footpaths - all the footpaths - are like Olympic Park station just after the Big Day Out has finished. Moving is not fun and the best idea is to get inside. Where do you think the Americans we were with wanted to go inside to? A coffee shop. Ahem.

Three hours later we decided it was nearly midnight so we'd better go to the Dam square to watch the show. This was when we encountered our first transit problems involving fireworks. You see, in Amsterdam there are state-organised fireworks for midnight but there are hooligan-organised fireworks all night long. You're walking along and suddenly see sparks at your feet and the hooligan Moses sits back and chuckles while the sea of people parts before his usually quite big firework goes off. There were proper loud, big fireworks they were setting off, not just little showers or bungers or wimpy little ball throwers. I've got video which I'll YouTube when I get a decent net connection. It was amazing, I'll give it that, but it was amazing like a car crash, not amazing like a supernova or say, Thriller. That's a night I won't forget in a hurry, so I guess mission accomplished, but I wouldn't recommend Amsterdam on NYE to anyone who's not planning to drop acid and run around with a lighter and a backpack full of bombs. To top it all off, Tineke, who was supposed to be going to Amsterdam but got stuck at the station in Utrecht, had a fantastic night and could have shared it with us, had we followed our original plans. I pretty much wore my not happy face all the way to Dublin after that.

So now to current events. I arrived here in Dublin yesterday afternoon and did a little pub crawl on my own. The first pub, the one attached to the hostel (Gogarty's), charged me €5 for a Guiness. It was a decent Guiness though and there were live musicians playing some good Irish tunes so I happily downed it and moved on. The second place, down the road, charged me €5.50 for a Guniess and something like €9 for a mixed grill which consisted of many lovely foodstuffs. It was a nice little bar and I got to watch the tourists, and the odd Dubliner, in Temple Bar going about their business through the window while I munched and imbibed. (Temple Bar is the name of the district in which me and a goodly portion of the night-life are stationed.)

The sun wasn't quite down yet so I thought I'd go for an explore and got a map back at the hostel. After a bit of a walk and a Kilkenny for €5.75 I ended up back in Temple Bar at the Temple Bar where it was €5.50 for a Guiness again but it was full of interesting looking people. I met some youngish Northern Irelander lads while attempting to bum a ciggy with which to accompany my Guiness. The Alpha lad, pretending to be drunker than he was, led us around the bar striking up conversations with most anyone, but particularly the groups of ladies. We had a few good chats but most of them ended when Alpha Lad went a bit too far with his suggestiveness and scared them off. I'm pretty satisfied with last night. It seems like a fitting intro to Ireland.

Yesterday morning I rose late, as is my wont, and breakfasted in a nice little sandwich shop near the River Liffey, which runs through Dublin. After a bit of a wander around I took a tour bus to Malahide Castle, where the Talbot family lived for 800 years before something or other happened and Esther moved to Tasmania (truly) and sold the place to the goverment. The bus took the leisurely route back down the North coast and various photographs were taken as per the modus operandi for tour busses. Had a few beers with some American girls from the hostel and then in the morning, after possibly the best toasted sandwich in the world*, I flew back to London.

I'm staying with Andrea for the weekend. We're going to Zoe's birthday tonight and I've got a few other things to do before I set off again. (For instance, get my flaky laptop fixed or replaced.) Next intended destination is Edinburgh, and then, hopefully skiing in Chamonix in France. I'm really looking forward to that as I'm sure you can imagine. I want to go back to Ireland and see some of the other cities like Galway and Cork and I think I'm gonna tag along with Andrea when she goes skiing in Slovenia in February. (I like skiing. :) )

I bought an Asus EeePC today, but I don't think I can keep it. It was £278 with the 1Gb RAM upgrade. It's the coolest thing you've ever seen but it's just not what I should be spending my money on right now... so I'm thinking I'll get a Nokia internet phone with GPS... because it has Bluetooth and GPS and is therefore a more justifiable expense.

I'm admittedly a little bit homesick. I want to be able to wear a T-shirt at 3 in the morning and be forced out of bed at 9 because it's so damn hot. I want to know that all I have to do to have a fun night is ring 3 people and find a pack of cards. I want to know where the bacon and Milo are kept in the supermarket and I want the supermarkets to stock proper bacon and Milo. But that's after two months of replenishing cash supplies in London and then a weird-ass week in Holland. Things are already looking up, so it's due to pass any day now.

I hope you're all well. I'm vaguely aware that the rubbish weather is gone (?) in Sydney and I hope that continues (... you bastards). I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Year's and that 2008 turns out great for you all.

If there's anyone I've left off the mailing list that anyone thinks should be there, feel free to forward this and if you send me their email I'll add them.

Stan out!

* Bread, bacon, coleslaw, tomato, bread, mayo, chicken, bread.