Though a straight line appears to be the shortest distance between 2 points, life has a way of confounding geography. Often it is the dalliances and the detours that define us. There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition and a willingness to be surprised.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Time to break the silence!

(Melbourne skyline - taken on a tripod with a 30-second exposure time (usual exposure time for hand-held shots is 1/90th of a second or less), this shot actually looks much brighter than it was at the time - it was almost pitch-black. The long exposure time gives a great effect with the motion of the ferris wheel. It also makes the lights of the buildings and the fun-fair look hyper-real. I've been working on this technique recently and I'm really pleased with this result.)

Ok, shorter, more regular and less well written updates coming up! As usual, it's not lack of things to talk about that have seen the latest silence, but a lack of time to do the blogging.

I haven't taken many photos recently but the one at the top of this update is one of the photos I'm happiest with from my travels. I took this a few weeks ago when i was visiting Melbourne with Adrienne. (Thanks for sending this on Addy)

In the few weeks since then I've been keeping really busy. Hard to believe, but despite all my efforts - including my chest x-ray - I still haven't got word on extending my visa. My original visa ran out last Thursday... Theoretically I'm on a bridging visa in the meantime, though i haven't even had that confirmed.

Social life here is still great, even now that summer is over and the light evenings have gone. Thursday nights out have been eventful as usual. Plus a number of other big nights out which have been fun, frantic or feverish...



Caroline had her baby-shower at the weekend. Chris had a similar event, which we 'christened' the babyshambles, or as Ed liked to call it, the 'afternoon delight'. We started at 2pm and it ended somewhere around 7am. Red Bull really does give you wings. Well done to all involved. There were many talking points, none of which need to be expanded on in too much detail here!

I've been ticking off some last few places from my 'must see in Sydney' list. I think I've now been on every ferry and most train lines. It's been interesting to be here in autumn. The weather is pretty mixed - four days of heavy rain in the past week and then today was bright sunshine. I've still only worn my fleese on two days since I arrived in Oz. I can now confirm that it's t-shirt weather for seven months of the year in Sydney.

Went to see 'Paris Je t'aime' last night though and it really had me pining for Europe. I'll be back all too soon, but it'll be great to again have the chance to take cheap flights to such amazing cities.


Getting quite into the salsa scene in Sydney. It's a great night out. Despite formerly having two left feet, i've now graduated into level 2 at my weekly nightclasses. You have to try everything once...

Hope everyone who's interested is still keeping up with Adam's website: www.clanblack.blogspot.com. I'll also be sticking a link on soon for Fraser's new website - watch this space. Plus I've been teaching myself website design and hope to have my own professional looking (and blogspot free) website in the next month. And media exposure news will follow eventually!

I was delighted to find that the Melbourne arts centre has a section dedicated to the history of the computer game. I was even more delighted to find that they have a section where you can try out old games. I was positively hyperactive when i discovered that you could play Horace Goes Skiing.

(After muscling some smaller children out of the way (they were rubbish and I'm sure they'd never seen a rubber-keyed computer in their lives) our hero is at the controls. LEFT - he dodges between 7 motorbikes and 2 ambulances... RIGHT ...and makes it on to the slopes!)

Later I had a go on classic spectrum adventure game 'The Hobbit'. Typing ASK GANDALF TO KISS LEGOLAS and getting the response: GANDALF TRIES TO 'KISS LEGOLAS' BUT FINDS HE DOESN'T HAVE SUFFICIENT EQUIPMENT, PLEASE TRY LATER. is just as amusing as it was in 1984...