Getting excited

Just like the countdown to leaving Australia I am starting to become a bit bi-polar. If anything the factors contributing to the emotional see-saw are more forceful than those when I was first leaving on this adventure. The forces holding me back from travelling are mainly the fact that I will be starting the homeward journey and I will be leaving Heather for an extended period of time.

When I think of Australia, especially my imagined future lifestyle in Brisbane, I envisage waking slowly to warm sunny days with no pressure to be somewhere unless I actually want to be, studying a course that I'm interested in, eating the freshest fruit and vegetables and my super-human home made muesli, warm afternoons on the verandah at Central Avenue, weekends (and weekdays) at Gold Coast or lifting rocks, digging holes and building things with my dad on the farm, then lying on the cool kitchen floor talking to Mum. All the while zipping about in my first child - the Honda. But I also see Australians, a vast generic sea of caucasian Australians, dotted with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese students. I don't see the daily mix of many cultures in a tiny space. Access to other cultures, particularly people who still hold onto their culture will be in very short supply. I'm not one to go to multi-cultural fests, as I said to Lucas to Tracy the other day - those festivals are generally a romanticised exaggerated display of a small part a culture has to offer. I prefer the opportunities to observe people from other countries who aren't advertising their culture. For example, going to the gym Lucas and I are quite often the only white guys in the place, occaisionally there a giant Russian, but generally we are working out with big black guys. Having never known or been around anyone of African descent in Australia - I had never realised what a naturally expressive talkative and extroverted personality so many of them have. Obviously that is a big generalisation, just like the ones that could be made about white English people - plenty of accurate stereotypes there. The people who love to dress themselves up the most and take huge amounts of care with their appearance are more often than not the black British. How this compares to people in African countries I would like to see. Anyway, that was one instance among many in a city like London that people in Australia don't get to observe in daily life and is something I will find difficult to deal with when I am back. One of my favourite things in London is watching how the black women dress, I think it is great, sometimes tacky, but not subtle and boring at least.

As I said, the other thing making me want to not disappear into the Hindu Kush asap is Heather. I won't bore people with mush, suffice to say that she is my girlfriend and appears to be a reincarnation of Mother Theresa.

Enough of why I don't want to leave just yet! The Hindu Kush has been calling my name for far too long and I am desperate to get on the road. Living the life of a traveller again where everything you own can be carried on your back - sounds cliched but it was a lifestyle that I adored in South America and I still haven't adjusted to the repitition of the same place every day. Nest building and putting down roots is still something far off in my future and I dread the day when I'll spend more than 12 months in the same place without a good six month adventure in between. Quickly other reasons why I can't wait to get going:
- London - sh!thole
- English people (except the ones I like) - sh!t
- Working - sh!t
- English weather - sh!t
- Persia - exciting/cheap/different/unknown to me/possibly dangerous

With my array of audiovisual equipment that I'll be travelling with I'll be sure to take a lot of really bad photos and film quite a lot of my right foot as I walk along, hopefully having no battery in either camera when I need them most. Ideally it'll all get stolen in the first week and I'll break a leg after stepping on a hypodermic needle whilst running to the toilet with amoebic dysentery.

But until then I have three very intense weeks left of work - typing furiously until the clock strikes 5:20pm on Friday 30th June when I will once more be a free man. Today is the calm before the storm - a meeting in one hour will be the first event in a series of meetings and seminars that will occupy me until the last minute. That is assuming of course that the motivation levels stay at a reasonable level - day dreaming of the blue mosque of Mazar-i-sharif is not proving fruitful in this project.

I just hope that I maintain sanity as the competing pressures mount, the final night in Canberra could be repeated - doesn't matter, as long as I make to Chinese at 3am on the 1st July.