25ish hours on a plane, over.
Being in Melbourne again, hurts. There are people here I really really love and don’t want to leave behind again. I hear it’s common to get culture shock when you get back home. I think I skipped that, because firstly I’ve had that before after returning from months of hitchhiking and hanging out with yogis, and secondly I know I’m not staying.
But, I had pretty high expectations of being here. I thought every day I’d be hanging out with friends drinking beer, drinking coffee, having brunch etc etc etc… For the most part that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing, but I really do get exhausted by people and organizing meeting them. I need to be able to take it for granted that they’ll be there for another day we can hang out. If only everything could just be done on a whim.
I feel like having a midnight picnic on a warm night, but I just know it’ll be only me if I try to round people up at the last minute. Ah well, I refuse to plan it in advance or even think about it. I will whimsically buy wine and drink myself to sleep in a park on my own if I have to.
In some ways it’s great to be working from home now for the last of my stay here. It gives me a something to do other then mope about time and everyones busy schedules. I do like moping though.
It’ll be a good next week and a half.
I like tokyo. It’s busy and different and exciting. The traffic seems a little more civilized then London so far.
I think I’m still getting over the jet lag. Today I walked around Shinjuku all day. It made me want to play The World is not Enough again. Unfortunately I left my DS in london.
The first thing I did was go to a mega book store next to Takashimaya Times Square. They have half a floor for foreign language books. Weirdly they’ve pretty good mathematics text book section. I bought an Atlas of Tokyo.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around various record shops (as well as an anarchist book shop) recommended by Tokyo Damage Report. Also found a couple of Punk clubs. I nearly went to one but was tired and too cheap to pay the 1700 yen door charge.
Tags: tokyo
Final belated post.
My last day in Prague I got up super early, had a long breakfast.
Packed and took the tram / train PT to the old square. Each day has been colder.
Spend an hour in the Dali exhibit at Rebecca’s recommendation, it was great. Lots of water colours and suitably weird things.
Bumped into one of the Americans from last night on the way out, Ken, traded mobile numbers. That was good, I didn’t feel so guilty for leaving them at the stairs up to Swan Lake.
Took the metro to the end of the line. Wandered around in the frost for a while wondering where the airport shuttle left from. Consulted my lonely planet. I found it. There was a big mass of people with lots of luggage and a big sign with a plane on it. Ran for the bus.
At the airport I was over 2 hours early.. Blast, I could have gone to the other exhibit. Had a hot chocolate at starbucks. It was rather poor. I wonder what the coffee was like.
I tried to check into the wrong airline by mistake. They were confused by me.
Waited around a lot, I realised my lips were really sore. I think all this cold air and beer has me dehydrated. Or maybe it was the cold wind.
The plane trips were uneventful, I can barely remember them. Oh I think on one of the trips there was a New Zealand girl with a half English accent next to me. She was speaking about irritatingly trivial things in a loud whisper. It was very annoying. I usually really like New Zealand accents.
At Zurich airport I found a meditation room. It was really just a room, with some chairs in it.
When I finally got home I think I watched some torrents then slept till lunch the next day.
The end. Now I can go back to never updating this blog. 
(sorry for the delayed posting, figured this would happen if I didn’t post right away. One more to go.)
Got up slightly earlier today, long breakfast again. Took a tram to the base of the big park and too the cable car to hill. It was really really cold again, at the top of the hill last nights frost was still frozen across the grassy lawns. like a thin layer of snow. The was a big crowed of tourists jammed into the cable car. I went with the flow of people and ended up at the mini Eiffel tower lookalike. Went up and took photos. Beautiful view across all of Prague in all directions.
Walked around the top of the park, sat on a bench and looked out through the winter trees. It’s still odd to me to see a hill full of trees and no leaves. Sucked in the frozen air a while.
Walked over to the Castle via the monastery. Bells started ringing at 12 and went for around 15 minutes. Paid for a matinee concert. It was kind of sleepy, maybe because one of the people in my room last night was snoring a lot. It wasn’t nearly as good as the chamber group the other day.
Took a tram down the hill again. I was trying to find an ATM, which took me about an hour or so. Wandered around for a while, found a nice park, it was dead quiet, there was a fountain that was in the process of freezing up. The top of it was mostly ice, I poked a hole in it with my foot. I’ve always wanted to do that.
Found a couple of marionette shops. Some really cool puppets there. I thought about buying one, but the good ones were really expensive.
Finally found an ATM and wandered back to the metro at the bottom of the hill, had some take away crepes and hot chocolate from a hole in the wall type place, then took the metro back to the town centre.
Went for a late lunch at the thai place again. Had noodle, beer, cappuccino.
It was still too early for the ballet I’d booked. So I went into one of those grand cafe places and had pancakes and ice chocolate. Really great pancakes, berries, sour/lemon cream, that sweet butter stuff. Yumm.
Went across the road to the theatre and waited out the front with a milling crowd. I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t open yet, but the crowd made me think it was just running late. I met a couple of Americans that are studying in London, they wanted to buy tickets and had a brochure of all the stuff on. We checked my performance and discovered I was totally in the wrong place, Swan Lake started in 5 minutes.
There was no direct way to get there, so I had to take a tram then walk a while. Gah. Waiting for the tram the americans caught up and decided they’d try to get late tickets with me. I felt slightly less silly having people with me.
When I got there I showed a woman my eTicket and she escorted me up, but told the others it’s too late to buy tickets and waved them away. I felt kinda bad for them after all that, but was being escorted away.
I had to sit on the floor at the very top until the intermission. I hadn’t missed too much though, and besides it’s not like I didn’t know what happened. During the intermission I got loads of dirty looks off people for wearing jeans and a tshirt. People dress up a lot more here. I wandered around with a big smile refusing to bow to their superiority complexes. How dare I seek to get past them in their fancy gowns and impressive suits. Hah! The second half was great. I was really close, just 6 rows in. I liked the company, but I think the Australian ballet is just as good.
After the show I had a dilemma, there’s this punk rock gig I found on last.fm I was thinking of going to, but it’s really long tram ride, then a long walk, and it started hours ago. Hmm.
I decided to toss a coin between going to the gig, or going to the hostel and drinking beer. I had one coin. Tossed it then discovered it didn’t have a head on it. Hmm. Walked to the tram stop and decided to let whichever direction the tram came first from decide for me. They both turned up at exactly the same time… At the last minute I decided to choose between action and inaction, I chose action and crossed the road to go back to the hostel.
Back at the hostel, beer and laptop in action, met a new friend Rebecca. We drank more Pilsner.
Bar closed went to sleep.
