Having described myself as a travel tragic, I need to be honest and say that, well, some things about travelling just suck. Here's my list of pet hates about travel:
1. Transit days
Sure the journey is supposed to be more important than the destination, but in my mind the journey has a start and an end point, and that point isn't when I walk outside my house with a packed bag and head to the airport. No matter how hard I try, I just can't build up enthusiasm for the drudgery of multiple airport transfers, overnight stopovers, bad airplane food and sleeping overnight in airport lounges to get to my destination. I do my research, I know which airports have what facilities, where the best spots to sleep are, and where to get the bus into town from, but those days are just grim. It's only when I get to my budget room with fan and shared bathroom in some flea-pit in the city of my destination that I can breathe a huge sigh of relief, relax, and head out on the street to start my adventure.
Maybe I just hate airports.
2. The crying poor
When I travel I like to see and experience what life might be like in the countries in which I travel. So I travel cheap, take local transport, sleep in basic accommodation, eat at street stalls and walk everywhere (you find so many more treasures round hidden corners when you walk). I totally acknowledge that I am perceived as rich by those people in developing countries who live on a few dollars a day and never in their lifetime will have the chance to have leisure time, like a few weeks holiday or the opportunity to travel overseas. Sure some of them treat me like a walking ATM, but far more of them show me what real hospitality is. I've been invited to share meals, stay the night, driven around sightseeing, bought presents, all by people materially so much poorer than me, yet so much richer in their hearts.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
A makeover
Thought I'd play around a bit with the blog's appearance. This is mainly influenced by me doing some serious trawling through other people's blogs and thinking mine could be a bit easier to navigate. Like a better link to my photo page on Picasa, and a more interactive way of linking to older posts.
I'm a slow learner on the tech stuff. I'm not stupid, just lazy. Anyone with a good looking website has either paid a professional to do it or has spent alot of time making it look good. Sometimes I wander over to Blogger Help but mostly I find their advice a bit scary, especially when it suggests adding code in somewhere. That stuff looks like it could blow up my OS, yeah I know it won't but what if it does? OMG I've got a phobia to computer code!! Wonder whether that's got a name yet? Luddite and technophobia are too broad, I'm just scared of the funny language with the << and >> all over the place. I've mastered emoticons though ;) And a few weeks ago I learnt how to SMS using interpretive text. OK, maybe I am stupid....
Anyway, I did pop over there yesterday and discovered Dynamic View. This was after I discovered I could put page links at the top of the blog and could then post the photos link there as well. I'd also spent about 2 hours trying to make something interactive on the pages through some rather tiresome cut and pasting of web links, when I finally discovered Dynamic View. If you haven't noticed, I like Dynamic View. I hope you do too.
Go on. Click on the link above and see what happens.
No, your computer will not explode, I promise.
I'm a slow learner on the tech stuff. I'm not stupid, just lazy. Anyone with a good looking website has either paid a professional to do it or has spent alot of time making it look good. Sometimes I wander over to Blogger Help but mostly I find their advice a bit scary, especially when it suggests adding code in somewhere. That stuff looks like it could blow up my OS, yeah I know it won't but what if it does? OMG I've got a phobia to computer code!! Wonder whether that's got a name yet? Luddite and technophobia are too broad, I'm just scared of the funny language with the << and >> all over the place. I've mastered emoticons though ;) And a few weeks ago I learnt how to SMS using interpretive text. OK, maybe I am stupid....
Anyway, I did pop over there yesterday and discovered Dynamic View. This was after I discovered I could put page links at the top of the blog and could then post the photos link there as well. I'd also spent about 2 hours trying to make something interactive on the pages through some rather tiresome cut and pasting of web links, when I finally discovered Dynamic View. If you haven't noticed, I like Dynamic View. I hope you do too.
Go on. Click on the link above and see what happens.
No, your computer will not explode, I promise.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Impatience
There's been a bit of soul searching going on this week for me. About 2 years ago I made the decision to retire when I hit 50, which is still a while away, and go travelling. Although my job is challenging and fulfilling, I'm also totally over spending my working life having to make what are often quite stressful decisions about
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Wading through the jungle
6 weeks away from home. My meteorological predictions were completely disproven this year, because whilst we weren't getting much precipitation over in NZ, it's been raining regularly back in Geraldton and the plants have been growing. Alot. So much rain that the driveway is covered in 2 foot high weeds!! And the vege patch? It's a jungle!!
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