Life the universe and everything in between

This song i remember very distinctly in my childhood, ever since my mum choreographed  an aerobics routine to it for the thursday night areobics sessions in Russell town hall when i was 7 or 8 years of age. But perhaps more recently its come to mind because of the road trip we did together up to Russell before i took off and we sang it at the top of our lungs whilst driving the desert road. 

Good song! Goodtimes!

Well im bordering the two 2month barrier since being submersed in the Netherlands and Europe now.  How does one feel at this point in time? Well with 4 weeks remaining before some considerable decisions and directions that need to be clarified, I must say im feeling rather relaxed and at easy with life’s pace, direction and abiguity at the moment.

There have been a considerable amount of challenges since my first day here but some thoroughly unique experiences and times spent traveling and meeting new people and countries. One of the biggest hurdles was at quite a primitive simplistic level really. My diet. Okay so ive always had a choice in what to eat while here, But imagine for a moment Ninas food pyrimid. Being vegeterian and rather health conscious of what i put into my body i can confidently say that 70% of my daily intake was fresh fruit and veges. The other 30% was in the form of  pulses, yoghurt, eggs, of soya products. Evidently not much of a Dairy or processed/complex carbohydrates fiend. So picturing that lovely pyrimid of mine …  now throw it upside down, shake it around a little and drop kick it :P  and (bluntly put) you have Bread Cheese and Potatoes. :P   So prior to taking off to Spain and Portugal i made a conscious decision to happily return to my own pallete.

An exciting discovery i made today whilst on my run was that Spring is litterally about to spring! All the disiduous trees i passsed had the inklings of tiny tiny green shoots peaking out from the tips of their limbs. I actually felt genuinely uplifted with anticipation for a season which is something ive never really felt before, in that way.  …On second thought maybe it was all the endorphins pumping through my viens :)  Hmmmm on that note another positively wonderful thing that fights homesickness and the lonely kiwi syndrome is 2hour phone calls with mums, acompanied by 1 & 0.5 hour calls to dads and to brothers.

Oh yeah and this Monday i am bound for Amsterdamn with an agency interview at 1400hours and contacts to cross paths with. Every one seems to say ‘theres Holland and then theres Amsterdamn’….  i am yet to experience and decided upon that myself

Anyways thats my  2 euro cents for today, Hope your all safe and well out there.

A passage some of you out there might have read before. It might be a bit “hippy-ish” for some but love it and just wanted to share it.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Returning to Spain and heading toward Madrid for our flight home we had a few days in Sevilla.  I’ll let the roll over captions do most of the explaining.

Evidence here that we crossed paths with Rachel for a few hours before heading to the airport. Rach shared all her  crazy loose travel adventures with us. Shes off to Brazil now to see where her feet take her it was so enjoyable to see her.

So heres a little pictorial report on our time in Lisbao/lisbon Portugal. While here we made a point of making it to the Maritime Museum as requested by my dad which was well worth the visit. The capital is riddled with trams that climb the steep narrow streets of the city. Lisbon’s first impression on me was a little rough and grummby but it grew on us both by the second day when we ventured out and explored the city via its trams discovering its most stunning and charming qualities were simply in the streets and building that make the city. 

Hi all

Heres a bit of a pictorial story again… A Coruna is on the very north west point of Spain and a stunning sea side city with delicious fresh seafood everywhere you look. We wined and dined both nights we were here and it such good food here and such a variety of seafood too. A Coruna`s speciality in Octopus.

We went on the Portugal after that as you can see, to Porto which has been a really nice city to experience. we have had lovely warm weather and have now gathered anappcreciation for traveling at this time of the year, the crowd and mass holiday-ers would change your experience of theres beautifull places an incredible amount.

 On to Lisbao now… take care everyone, miss ya.

Ive been in contact with Rach since she left our flat & spontaniously took off globe trotting to satisfy a bad case of itchy feet. She writes beautifully on every eventful and non eventful situation life throws at her and i always find her stories so facinating and inspiring to read.

“My lasting impression of Paris I think will be that everyone is lost, Parisians and foreigners alike, not figuratively, but physically. Nonetheless, I do like to ask myself, what exactly it means to be lost, because this implies not being able to find what you are looking for or unfulfilled aim or desire and excludes any positive connotations.

I guess everything comes down to the means/ends debate. If you are not really aiming to get somewhere, does getting lost lose all significance? Is the means an ends in itself?

A couple of weeks ago Gibbo and I spent several hours looking for the favourite Parisian street to have a beer, and upon arrival only decided may as well have a beer given we had been looking for so long. Although I can’t speak for Gibbo, for me, the enjoyment of having a beer and looking for a beer were pretty much equal, and so the question is, were we really lost?
I thought this feeling might merely have been the result of the overwhelming “old(ness), big(ness), and cool(ness)” (Gibbo, pont something, 200 of Paris, but meeting Bran and subsequently Kathleen and Duncan, confirmed that yes, we were little fish in a big grey pond, and that getting lost, but not lost, is perhaps the defining characteristic of Paris.

Despite this, or maybe as a result, I have been able to create a picture upon this grey Parisian canvas. I like to call it “Melancholy and the Infinite Happiness”, and it goes something like this: No matter how lost you feel, physically or figuratively, friendship and solidarity are the magnetic north of life that sandpaper away the rough edges, and create a pastel blue background upon which the greys lose their power.

I went out in the world to get lost, and I think rather than travelling round, I should have cut straight to Paris, where, according to one drunk, bet-up, and amnesic Peruvian, it is naïve to try one’s luck.
Trying one’s luck clashes with the light blue. When we are completely content with the melancholy, is there any point trying to strike it lucky?, because, luck may just be misfortune.“

Hi all

Ive decided to post as i go, the thought of a the task at the end of two weeks sounds like a mamoth effort so heres some pictures of what we have been up to, Temperatures have been 18-20 degrees in the day which is nice. I”ll let the captions say the rest.

Nins

Yeah so this is the “Melborne Shuffle” apparently…

got shown it a while ago… pretty wacky but pretty fricken cool at the same time.

Heres some fast facts to get you up to speed with what “Carnaval” is in the Netherlands. A Huge massive party in the whole of the riegions south of the rivers, People dress up crazy, act even crazier and listen to super crazier spastic hyper carnival/circus like music. Drinking and mass craziness continues for four whole days including street parades in every town, the “Polonasia” (congo line). Some song titles, litterally translated for you include : - Pancake in my undies - Everything has an end and a sausage has two - Theres a horse in the hall - A little bus full of pola (polish people) - Beer and titties - Two people have to go to the toilet and theres only room for one. Some of the outfits i saw included, a brocoli, a toaster, a “Talking poll” (highway phone booth), playing cards, mimes., elephants, thuderbirds.. the list goes on….

EDIT-

Pieter and i are off to Spain tomorrow for a 7-10 day venture including Portugal too. After that the serious work hunt begins and assessing of my options

hope your all safe and well