Planet Nectarius

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.

(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.

Today I remembered to wear extra layers, 4 up top, 2 for the legs. I was still cold though. I think today was colder. I saw ice puddles. I also somehow managed to forget my gloves, so I walked around with my hands jammed into my coat pockets.

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.

I’m so excited

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?

I finally got my film developed from Hong Kong and Paris. Here are my two favourite from HK.

And some from Paris.

my generous Parisian friend:

Real coffee in London exists: