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 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.

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.

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.

Started the day at the National Museum. saw fake animals. It was pretty underwhelming. Very traditional kind of museum, smelly and bland. Lots of rocks.

In contrast my next stop was the cubist museum. It was amazing. I like cubism. it gives the sense that everything can be deconstructed into base elements. Yet more then it’s parts bla bla. There was 3 floors of it. Small floors admittedly, but all great. I especially liked the cubist furniture.

Went and briefly stopped at the decorative arts museum. Thought about buying stuff from the store as gifts, but it was too expensive. Had coffee in the cafe, the guy there was cute.

Thought about map/reduce code. I realised I was thinking about it while half asleep last night.

Wandered over the river and when to the Kampa museum, modern stuff. Pretty cool. Nice park outside.

Next I went walking in the big park up the hill. Sat on a bench overlooking Prague for half an hour. Thought about Kakfa. What a myth he his. How impossible it is to imagine him living today. People are such a product of their time, whether or not their work transcends it or not.

There was a lot of people walking dogs in the park. Beagles everywhere. Labradors also popular. There was one beagle I kept seeing around after I’d walked back down. There was guy there throwing a stick down the hill, the dog would leap down the hill, then labour back up with his stick. I thought it was going to trip and roll all the way down.

Dropped into the Kafka museum’s cafe again. Had another really good double macchiato. Although it had a bit too much of the milk. It was sort of in between a small strong capaccino and a double macchiato. The cute girl wasn’t there this time which must be why.

Found some great Thai noodles. Beer. Cake. Elvis music. It wasn’t at all tacky from the Elvis though. I liked it.

Went to the Kino hoping to see Tokio!, but it only had czech subtitles. Which makes sense. I guess only the czech movies have english subtitles. English speakers have it so easy. There are tourists here from all over the world. The fallback language is always english. I’ve have french people asking me in english for directions. I watched Tokyo, in Japanese with Czech subtitles anyway. It was great. Occasionally confusing, but I got the gist of things. It was three separate shorts.

The first one was the best. I think it was about a girl that moved to Tokyo. Things didn’t go that great. Especially had trouble finding a flat. I liked the ending most, her boyfriend started doing ok in his work, but she was left behind sort of. No purpose. She started slowly turning into a wooden chair. Starting with the ribs. Eventually she could still be human briefly, but for the most part became a chair. Got herself taken home by a musician who ended up using her around his flat. She roamed around the flat doing stuff when he wasn’t in. He’d come home and find the chair sitting in the bath and such. She played around with his banjo. The end was him and 2 friend playing some great music together, with him sitting on the chair playing the banjo.

Back to the hostel, a few beers. I figured out how to make ssh work properly. Apparently some routers die with certain kinds of packets, or something. Anyway, if ssh stalls on you after it looks like it logged in properly, especially if you’re using public wifi, or at a hotel/hostel or something, try using:

ssh -o “ProxyCommand nc %h %p” <hostname>

To force a different kind of connection.

Settled on starting at the castle. As soon as I stepped out the door I realised I should have worn tights underneath my jeans. It’s really cold here. You need gloves and a beanie all day. I walked along the tram route trying to find a place that sells transport tickets. Everything was eerily closed. Either they are still hungover from christmas or they’re just closed for holidays. Finally found a train station with staff (so they can take notes), the friendly guy at the counter advised me 3 single day passes are cheaper than a three day pass for some reason. Jumped on the next tram to the castle. I was reminded how much I like trams. At least when it isn’t peak hour and I’m trying to get to work or something.

Got to the castle. It was beautiful. Huge cathedral thing. I took some photos of tourists taking photos. I’ll develop them when I get home. I didn’t look at too much stuff since I’d probably spend the day there if I bought an all access pass. Just wandered around. I did go into the toy museum and Lobkovicz Palace though.

The toy museum was great. Lot of youthful reminders. I was most attracted the the steam trains. Not that I had any, but I’d always wanted some. Real steam trains! They didn’t go or anything, just in display cases, but cool nonetheless. There was also some meccano like stuff. I wished the whole floor was maccano instead of one tiny cabinet. I started thinking.. Steam trains and mecanno? I was a geek early on. There was also a whole floor of barbie dolls. Very disturbing. There was celebrity themed dolls amongst them, Mc Hammer and Michael Jackson were the highlights.

Lobkovicz Palace displays the private collection of the Lobkovicz family. A very wealthy noble family that was in exiled in America during communism. At least they said they were in exhile and he had an American accent. The audio tour was really great, presented by one of the Lobkovicz’s. I think I actually passed the same guy in the foyer, he was talking with someone as if he was the owner of it all, and he sounded the same. It was a really good museum basically. Lots of fancy things. For example.. Lots of family portraits. They had a few original scores by Beethoven and Mozart, some commissioned by and dedicated to the family. Weird. I liked how there was some things scribbled out. They were all very thick and heavy looking. There was also an impressive armory room, which apparently only represents a small part of their collection. The rest is in castle north of Prague. It was slightly disturbing to be talked at by someone who was proud of all his “estates” though… A very different world.

After that I went walking, trying to find a toy shop in my guide book. I found take-away cinnemon crepes on the way, they were amazing. Many tourists were in the way of where I wanted to walk… The toy store had the same meccano like stuff and some tradition Czech toys. It was smaller then I’d hoped, but nice. My feet complained from all the walking (and still are). I didn’t buy anything.

Caught the tram to the Kafka museum. It was actually really good. I expected it to be a bit of a cash in (I walked past Kafka Cafe today). It had interesting art inspired by Kafka. Mostly though it’s purpose was to take you through Kafka’s life and stories relatively chronologically and remind you. They had some cool stuff, like extracts from letters amoungst a wall of filing cabinets labeled with Kafka’s characters and pseudonyms. It was an interesting contrast to the Lobkovicz museum, during Kafka’s time they would have been one of the families everyone in Prague was living in the shadow of.

The was a great room which was full of examples of the paper work Kafka did at his job as a lawer with the insurance/legal bureaucracy. On the lower level there is a series of sections related to each of his novels. There was a really cool room for The Castle with mirrors on each side narrowing towards a full walled projection of a movie inspired by it. Carefully chosen excepts came up every now and then. I went and stood in the projection and watched my reflections in the walls. No matter which one I watched I could always see a mirror image watching me watch myself. It was great.

Just outside the museum there’s a sculpture of two men pissing in a pool. The hips move left and right, and the penis’ move up and down. I liked it. I passed some giggling British tourists on the way out.

I stopped at the Museum cafe and had a coffee. There was a very cute girl working there. She custom made me a machiatto. She asked me if I meant a milk and a bit of coffee or a coffee with a bit of milk. I guess a lot of americans can confuse the issue. She made me a double expresso with a tiny bit of steamed milk. It was wonderful. The best coffee I’ve had in Prague so far. It was even better because she has a wonderful smile. There was free wifi too, but it was so slow I couldn’t load anything. I might have been on the neighbours wifi though.

Crossed the river and walked through the main square, there’s a giant christmas tree that looks like it was dripping lights. It’s surrounded by lots and lots of little stands selling food and bracelets. People packed in amongst it all.

Wandered some more. Bought some tickets for a classical chamber concert at the Rudolfinum. It was pretty great. They played lots of famous stuff.  Every church seemed to have billboards for concerts at 6pm. There are more tomorrow. I like how in Prague they can just round up some tourists to fill things out at classical music performances. I guess it’s regarded as a thing to do in Prague.. get cultured. It wasn’t all tourists of course, a few locals.

Some girls here have a thing for tights with warm looking boots. I like it.

I wanted to visit the cubist museum, but it was closed when I got there. The cubist cafe was open though so I went there to get cake. Also know as Grand Cafe Orient. I ended up getting an Irish whiskey, goats cheese salad, bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a beer (Corona), soup of the day and cheesecake. I spent way more then I’d meant to, but it was great.

Timezones confused me so I missed the last indie movie at the Kino. I’ll try again tomorrow. Hopefully they have English subtitles, I read somewhere they do that.

Caught the tram back to the hostel, showered, passed a cute girl near the elevator. We smiled. Came down for beers just in time to witness a goal… Discovered West Ham was winning on sky sports. Yay. They won 1-4. It must be a sign somehow.

Btw, I’ve discovered some weird problem with ssh, I can’t login to any ssh service from my laptop, it just stalls when it’s about to setup the interactive environment. This means I can’t login into work and run my map/reduce bootstrapping jobs. I guess this is good because it means I can’t be working while I’m holidays, but it would be handy to run these long jobs when I’m not in a hurry for them to finish. Bleh. I’m going to have to research how to fix this ssh problem. It’ll be a pain when I’m visiting Australia. I wont be able to work from cafes!

Oh, I bought The Castle. I haven’t read it before so it seemed appropriate.

I just booked tickets to Prague for 4 nights. 25th to the 29th of December. Staying at a funky hostel. I also booked a ticket to see Swan Lake while I’m there.

I want be there for new years eve unfortunately, it was booked out. Maybe I can find a gig on here?

And some from Paris.

my generous Parisian friend:

Real coffee in London exists:

I’ll be living in West Hampstead. I work near Old St Station, it looks quite a way on the map, but it’s actually no more then half an hour taking the tube (including the walking). That’s London for you. I kept getting confused, it took me 50 minutes to commute from Coburg to the city in Melbourne. Not only is London more compact, but there is less waiting around for the transport to turn up.

To celebrate, I’ll go to the natural history museum tomorrow, and see if I can find somewhere that sells coffee plungers.

Maybe I’ll actually feel like I live here after my first night sleep in my own bed.

I still haven’t developed any film, so no photos from HK, but I put some of Fi’s on flickr.

The second night I was there, all the Paris museums were open for free at late night. We went to the modern art museum. It was free from 9pm to 1am, and there was long lines of people queuing up till after 12 to be let in. The whole place was completely packed.

There was an amazing vibe, everyone was going around thinking, “that’s a bit crap”, “that’s pretty cool”, “oh wow that’s awesome”. I think heaps of people starting off being skeptical of the whole modern art thing and were completely converted by the end.

The highlight of the museum was a movie about the architecture design of Harvard (I think it was Harvard). It was done entirely with marionettes. I can’t really convey how awesome it was. There was vice chancellor like character that looked like death.

For the first time in a museum I got a sense that there was some kind of interaction between the art and the people/audience (very different to the Louvre). It was challenging, engaging, sometimes emotional (I can be a bit squishy). No wonder it’s the most visited museum in Paris.

The other highlights of Paris, was of course the wine and the cheese. But especially playing Gin Rummy while watching ‘Peggy Sue got married’ in French, and drinking wine till late while listening to a free jazz band in a cosy bar. Basically just hanging out. Thanks Fi.

Tsim Sha Tsui is packed full of Indian tailors trying to make me custom shirts and suits. So I usually just walk on past people trying to hand me pamphlets. But I was starving..

I thought it was just another restuarant, but it turned out to be a really expensive japanese restuarant. I asked where the restuarant was and the girl took me up an elevator. I was way underdressed. I was thinking of spending maybe $40 HKD, but it ended up at $256 HKD, but it was so worth it. Oh yummmmmm.. ahhh

It was one of those dinners where they give you all the bits and a hot pot and you cook it yourself. Since I had no clue how much to cook anything, the hostess basically cooked it all for me.

Expensive in Hong Kong is relative though. If I went somewhere like that in Melbourne it’d be something like $80-90 AUD. Just for me.

I’ve got blisters on my feet from walking around the city all day, and going up and down way too many steps. I went to the zoological and botanical gardens. Pretty cool.

I haven’t got much time here, so I’m not really bothering to plan it too much. I’d just be frustrated with what I can’t fit in.

People still smoke indoors some places here, which just occurred to me because the guy next to me is.. Cough cough..

The building I’m staying in is very old and shabby. I really like it. The bottom few floors smell like burnt and/or boiled cabbage. I’m on the 17th though so it’s just quite and cosy. For the price I’m paying I’m impressed. The location is great.

It’s right next to a train station (underground) and just down the road to all the ferries. I took one to HK central and got lost. It’s mostly lots of shiny bank buildings and stuff.

Tsim sha tsui is far dirtier, so lots of bars and shops. It’s weird it’s seems to be the thing to do here to go shopping for trendy clothes late at night. All the clothes shops are full and busy till 10 or so.

No photos yet, gotta get them developed.