A bit late but for those of you who wanted to see what a bungy jump looks and sounds like, I've put mine on the gallery of New Zealand...
Have fun!
Murf
And with the title of this stereophonics album I will put down the last entry on this website about my trip to Australia, New Zealand and Bali.
My trip home was easy and even slept all the way over Russia. The only custums who really was annoying was the dutch one. But just talked myself out of that one. (yes if they would've checked me they would have seen I was lying.) On the airport (most of) my friends and all my family was there. It was so cool to see everybody again. To talk and hug everybody. So a big THANX for everybody who came to pick me up.
Today I am starting my 3rd week of working in a laundryservice. Work is boring and heavy. Money is not much. But I'll have to start somewhere. Wednesday signing papers for my second job. November I will hopefully move on my own to Utrecht. Will be glad to do so, because living in by my parents does bring some uncomfterble situations after living on my own for so long.
For the rest is Holland feeling still strangely formilliar. But it's different. Like a skin that is too tight and still has to be worn a bit longer to get a good fitting. But I will survive. As soon as I live on my own and start my educationn on the end of August. I'll have my own place and life to live again.
Also a short look over where I've been.
New Zealand: Owesome! I'll be back. To much exciting sports, the best view ever and a gourgious culture.
Australia: Interesting culture, lots of different vegetation (that's why I will be back at some places, but others not really necessairly) So a bit a double feeling about it. Culture is very interesting though. Desert is very empty. (although not so sandy as i expected) But I loved Tassy and the north rainforest. (except for the mozzys)
Bali: Nice for 2 weeks, but never longer. Don't get any rest over there. But nice to party, drink and hang in the sun/pool.
Here also the little line that all the fotos are also online. From New Zealand to bali. Nothing else will follow.
And off cours I won't forget my ozzy family who helped me through. I thank you so much for your support, help and that bed that I slept in. I owe you guys more than I can ever give back.
Lot's of love
And hope to see you back
as soon as I go again
Somewheresouth
Nicky
Writing somewheresouth exactly one week after I returned to my own home. A lot changed, a lot stayed the same. It was incredibly busy last week and I did have to arrange soo many things that my mind was buzzing all week but with succes. In this week I found a job as a 1st line helpdesk employee at a big internet provider (2 actually so I had to choose) so I can start paying of the debts straight away. I also bought 3 big closets to store my stuff (2nd hand off course) and to work as a room-divider, found a big curtain to serve as door and as a room-divider as well so I finally have my own private space again. Tiny but very very comfortable with view over the balcony and a massive room-wide window. I got all my stuff from Nicky's parents and from a friend of mine where it was stored for 6 months and next to all that I bought myself a cheap but very good 2nd hand laserprinter (HP Laserjet 4Plus, 25 EUR) with a free nice Pentium III system and a desklamp. (I had to buy a monitor though but 20 EUR for a nice Dell 17" with 4 weeks warranty is not bad.) That means that I not only have a nice bedroom now (with a massive 180x120 poster of the movie "Constantine" on the wall) but I also have a very nice office / study place next to my bed so that I can improve my skills in private.
So it seems that all looks pretty ok for now. There is still an awfull lot I have to do, making the place nice and tidy, arranging lot of financial stuff, getting insight in my finances and paying off the debts but at least I made a good start and begin with a fairly tidy bedroom/office. (I basically stashed all my stuff in my closets to sort out later.) And that does feel like a good start. It's been a bit of a rush last week and the rush won't be over the next weeks but the rest I can at least do on an easier pace so that I can concentrate on my new job. The job might be a bit below my level, I'm still really looking forward to it as it has very hard parts. The big problem with the job is that most of the customers calling don't have ANY clue about computers and/or internet and are using windows. The main question you'll hear will be "The internet is broken. Can you fix it?" while 99,9999% of the time the internet isn't broken (really, that won't happen, it's too big and to spiderweb-like to be able to totally) but it's their computer and/or their internet connection and/or just their email/MSN/browsing which doesn't work. And without too much knowledge of Windows from my side and no experience in a big commercial callcenter like this (I've always worked for small companies as 1st/2nd line helpdesk, systems administrator, hardware-engineer and technical consultant) this will be a challenge for me. Not because I don't have all the knowledge but because I have to talk in THEIR language, not mine. (And because the ISP is on the low-end of the market deal with very upset customers who really don't have a clue what's going on but are still totally pissed off when it's broken because off course it's alwas YOUR fault.)
Anyway, there won't be to many updates from my side anymore. I will write a general overview off my/our trip later and maybe an incidental update about how life starts to run again after the big trip but as Somewheresouth is about travelling I think I should mainly stick to that and pull it out of the closet when I (or Nicky) start travelling to the southern hemisphere again. And for our trips on the northern hemisphere? Well, you could've guessed that a long time ago I already registered somewherenorth.net. In fact, that website existed BEFORE Somewheresouth because I heard a song of AudioTransparent with "Somewhere north is where I belong" in it and couldn't resist registering the domainname. It was later when I met Nicky and wanted a website for our travels when I registered somewheresouth. Somewherenorth was a bit unappropriate for travels on the southern hemisphere so somewheresouth became allive...
Murf
Well, as promised here the last bit of my journey. Somehow I managed to get to the airport at Christchurch and got to the checking where I more or less ran into trouble with my overweight. My checkin luggage being 28Kg and my cabin luggage beeing 14Kg the girl behind the counter wouldn't allow my cabin luggage beeing that heavy and wanted to charge for my overweight as well. I tried to convince her that I was just going home after 6 months and that therefore it was quite normal beeing a bit overweighted but no, the limits where 20Kg and 7kg and that's how it was. So I ended up loading 7Kg in my pockets and plastic bags to drop the 14Kg down to less than 7Kg, checkin my cabin luggage as checkin luggage and carrying not more than 7Kg in plastic bags into the cabin. (Cheating a bit my pockets where stuffed with heavy items like my photocamera and my coat must 've been 7Kg on it's own already but hey...) I paid the $110,- and finally went on. So I flew to Sydney, sleeping half the time as I was still kinda sick, had a nice talk with a girl who this time I *do* regret I didn't got her email addy (you meet 100,000's of lovely people so normally you just don't ask and don't regret as it would be impossible to keep in touch anyway) and after a smooth flight got out at Sydney airport for a 22 hour stopover. Got out, locked my big backpack away in a secure storage at the airport, got to Central and dragged myself into the YHA hostel where I went for a quit 4-bed dorm as I really did need the sleep that night. Well, aparently I did, I sat down on my bed feeling a bit sleepy so layd down for a while only to wake up 3 hours later, making up my bed, undressing, getting in and sleeping 'till 8am the next morning. So I skipped my partynight in Sydney, no sense, I had a great time the last night in Christchurch and was feeling not too well to have a big night out anyway so hey, why bother. I did however go shopping the next morning in Sydney. Instead of 1 there where 3 $10,- cd shops and even knowing I couln't entirely afford spending money on luxury stuff I still came out with in total round about 18 cd's waisting more than $250,- as some of 'm where in the $15,- category for beeing just released. Ah well, I did get some cd's which I wanted for years already so it's not much of a waiste. And then back for the big flight home, this time I didn't have any trouble with my overweight, they didn't weigh my cabin luggage at all and the 28Kg was suddenly no problem anymore when I pollitely answered "Home!" to the question "Where are you going?". He grinned, the lady next to him joked "Hey, that's a very popular destination!" and checked let the massive bag through. Thanx m'te! He even looked surprised when I told him that I did have to pay for it at Christchurch. Cool stuff. Anyway, I hopped onto the aircraft and only there I wasn't too pleased. I should have a window seat and got seat F which is is a Boeing 747-400 one of the 2 center seats. If you look at the seats and _ beeing the aisle it looks like this: (xxx_xfxx_xxx) But nevertheless I had a quite pleasant flight with a quick strech of the legs at Hongkong and I really slept a lot while flying all the way to London. I finally felt like using my discman a lot and listened to almost all cd's I bought in Sydney. After we landed in Heathrow I got from T4 to T1 to fix a new boarding pass, then from T1 to T4 because there where no showers at T1, got a nice hot shower after searching for it for half an hour (it was thouroughly hidden), bough some small souvenirs, went back to T1 and ran into the lady of the security check again who regocnized me and asked if I got lost. But no, just a shower and she smiled realizing that indeed after 22 hours of flying a shower is definetely a thing you need. So no further trouble there and after another couple of hours of waiting I got into flight BA105 to take me home! Sitting next to the emergency exit I had even more legspace than in the aircraft from Sydney to London... Anyway, smooth flight and landing nicely on time. I almost ran through customs, to the baggage claim, grabbed my bag (which was there right when I got myself a trolley, very very fast) and made it for the "nothing to declare" gate where they stopped me for a second asking where I came from and how long I've been away. I saw the guy doubting if he'd question me more and/or search my bag but after 3 seconds (who felt like ages) hey said "Welcome home!" and let me through. And there I was, the door opened and suddenly I saw familiar faces which I haven't seen in 6 months. Mom, Nicky, Nicky's parents and Chantal. Gave 'm all a big hug before we went for some espresso. The rest of the gang was a bit delayed, they ran out of petrol on the highway... But after a quick phonecall they decided to run to Leiderdorp (where Nicky lives) instead of the airport so we'd meet 'm there. Chantal jumped on the train back home quite soon and off we went, me seeing how it feels to drive on the right side of the road again.
As soon as I got out of the car I got squashed by the rest of the whole gang, Abieg, Maarten, Sabine en Jeroen. What a welcome! They had covered my car with a "Welcome home" banner and really almost squashing me, finally beeing able to hold me and talk to me again. It felt soo good to be back, hearing familiar voices I haven't heard in 6 months, hearing all the latest gossip of who did it with who and who broke up with who and, well, you know the works. Dinner was nothing less than a "patatje speciaal" for me, I missed that for like 6 months as you can't get it. And after dinner the whole gang went home again leaving me for a quiet evening at Nicky's place. The heat got me a little though, I got nauseus after beeing on the attick for 10 minutes and had to go out for a walk outside after which it dropped a bit. Found my bed at 0:00 and then unfortunately woke up at 5am thanx to the wonderfull thunderstorm. But hey, at least I was awake and surprisingly I did feel fit enough to drive back home at the planned 10:00am so I did, with my mom sitting next to me. Yes I messed up the controls the first couple of Km's (grabbing with my left hand to my gears and switchin on my blinkers while I only wanted to whipe my screen) but I really got home without too much trouble. For the first time in 6 months I drove on the right side in my own little car, all the way back home and I truly liked it having my car-stereo softly pumping good vibes into the car with that warm and nice bass underneath it where my car is so famous for. ETA was 1pm but we didn't make that, we had too much stuff to arrange so dropped my X-ray off at the dentist and went shopping for a bed and closets and such. We did find a nice bed, new even, for as little as EUR 135,- but we decided not to buy it. Maybe a bit stupid afterwards as at that time I still had my mom with me and my bank card denied any service in the supermarket later on because of insufficient funds. Aparently my creditcard bill had kicked in and I had dropped below my limits. *AUTCH!* Anyway, after dropping my mom off at the train station to get her home I dropped in at the CWI to apply for gouvernment support for the first couple of days where I won't have any job and then went home after buying some groceries and a couple of fliptop-bottles of Grolsch.
And then I was home! I quietly opened the door to find no-one around so I stashed my stuff in the hallway, said hi to the neighbours and tried to switch on my laptop to realize that you DO need a network-cable for hooking it up to the internet and that the only ones I had where in the basement where I don't have a key off anymore. SHIT! So I rang a friend of mine if he'd have some cable and he agreed to come over for dinner and I had internet on my laptop at 7pm or so. Meanwhile my roommate came in, I almost forgot Hepp and my dinner talking to her just to realize at 9:15pm that we really where getting hungry. Well, late dinner then. Hepp went and just as he left my other roommate came in so the place was full again. I wanted to go to bed at 0:00 but I was too awake so it got 1:30am and then it's a bit sad if you wake up at 5am again. So aparently I do have little of a jetlag. And that's where I started this story, sitting on my own couch with my own laptop on my lap writing one of the last stories on somewheresouth! Today will be a very busy day for me, calling loads of people and visiting loads of places to make sure all that need to be done is done as soon as possible. So finding a job, make sure that I can use my bank-card again so I can buy the neccecairy stuff like a bed, a room-divider, a printer and those kinda things. Tomorrow Nicky's parents will bring back all my stuff which is still there and probably saturday or sunday I'll retrieve all from jnieuwen's place so that all is where it should be and nothing left at other people's places. I want those things fixed this week as hopefully next week I'll have at least some temporary job to provide me with some income.
We'll see, at least I'm home. It does feel funny, it's a bit nasty that I have to plunge into the stressfull stuff straight away but still it feels good to sit behind my own laptop at my own couch again. Home. There's nothing like it!
The rest of the story will follow but as it is 5:36am now and I just got woken up by a true dutch thunderstorm I won't do that right now. Anyway, after a long but safe and actually fairly smooth flight (as well as in the air as well as customs) I'm almost home. Safely.
Still 200Km to drive but that's just because right now I'm ad Nicky's place and will go to my own hometown within just a couple of hours.
Oh, and as I've off course seen, spoken to and hugged Nicky (after all, she lives here and was there to pick me up at the airport) I can assure you that she's safe and at home as well. ;-P
TTYL!
Murf