chromatica

Here lies everything
The world I wanted at my feet
My victory's complete
So hail to the king
(Everything you ever)
Arise and sing

Well, it appears Colin Barnett is now premier of this State. Great.

So your world's benign
So you think justice has a voice
And we all have a choice
Well, now your world is mine
(Everything you ever)
And I am fine

This is a man who is opposed to same-sex marriage; in fact, he has indicated in the past a desire to roll back gay and lesbian law reforms, including equal age of consent, adoption rights, access to IVF and so on. He's opposed to legalised, regulated prostitution, preferring that the industry go back underground. He intends to repeal WA's cannabis laws, returning to a zero-tolerance stance. In opposition, he simply opposed everything put forward by the government, irrespective of its merit. He's proved himself an opportunistic ideologue in the past.

Oh, and he closed my high school back when he was education minister.

Now the nightmare's real
Now Dr Horrible is here
To make you quake with fear
To make the whole world kneel
(Everything you ever)

By the way, if you haven't yet seen Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I urge you to. It's brilliant. (It's what Joss Whedon was doing during the writers' strike.) A sci-fi comedic-tragedic musical starring Doogie Howser is just what the world needed.

And I won't feel
A thing

Just remember, you elected him. No, hang on, wait — you didn't…

Wow. I haven't posted here since I signed the lease. Five busy months later, and I suppose it's time for an update. Where to start?

Well, riverstar and I live here, which is technically in Dulwich Hill, although we're closer to Lewisham and Summer Hill than to Dulwich Hill shops. Mouse is here with us; Ollie was, but we last saw him nearly two weeks ago, so we don't know if we'll see him again. :( I probably let him out too soon, and he felt that with the neighbours' cats around, this place wasn't big enough for him too, so he left to find his old home. He's tagged and microchipped, so if he ever turns up somewhere, I expect we'll hear about it.

Work is always busy, and is getting busier for the meantime. The workflow management system I was hired to implement is going live a month from now, and there's lots of setup still to do, not to mention training. The staff intranet website is up already, and people seem to have well received it. I flew to Perth shortly before Christmas to demonstrate that to staff, but one weekend doesn't give you much time to see people - I only got to see family.

I miss Perth. My memories of Sydney are fonder than my feelings for the place today. Probably because I was a different person back then, with different priorities in life. I'm closer to my family than I was then, and while bushwalking in Sydney is nice, it's just not the same — it doesn't quite feel like home without the jarrah and the laterite. And besides, who has time to go bushwalking? Especially when it's an hour's drive to get out of the city.

I also miss my old job. It paid less and was less challenging, but it gave me the time, the head space and the flexibility to pursue other interests. I didn't have to deal with lots of people and I didn't have to be responsible for fixing things when they went wrong.

And our old house was positively palatial compared to this place. It's a little larger than the unit I shared with crypticgirl in Epping, if you were familiar with that place; but it's only a two-bedroom house with a small backyard and an even smaller front yard. No garage, no spacious living room, no separate studies for each of us, and certainly no pool. And the rent costs 50% more than our old house's did.

So while I'm appreciative of the opportunity to stretch myself in terms of experience and skills — and I think it's fair to say I've developed both — I honestly can't wait 'til I'll have the money to return to Perth. Which, given the steep cost of living here and the debts incurred in getting over here in the first place, might be a while yet. Even though I earn more than I used to, it'll be months before I find myself at a financial advantage.

And so I'm pressing ahead with my environmental science degree, which, after deferring for six months to accommodate the move, I'm starting in two weeks. It's going to be tough to juggle study and work, but I think I can do it; after all, I've done it before. It'll be an extra challenge going fully external, but on the other hand, it does mean I won't be always out. I'll have to fly back for a prac week sometime during the semester, but I don't know the details yet.

In the meantime, I have to go get ready for work. This database system ain't gonna implement itself, ya know…

Well, we got the Dulwich Hill place, in case you haven't seen riverstar's journal. W00t, as they say in the classics. Hopefully the lease will be signed tomorrow and I shall be significantly poorer.

So the flight home is booked; I'll be returning to Perth next Tuesday, and we'll be around for a week or so before we set off on our long cross-country jaunt.

Work is also picking up. I've actually been doing something productive for the last couple of days, basically overhauling the way one of the senior managers does her timesheets. It should reduce three days of work a fortnight for her down to no more than half a day. I've already worked on one of her invoicing systems, and she was chuffed enough about that to invite me and Kitty over for dinner once we've moved. Looks like I've earned myself a friend already.

I'm connecting at this hotel via an Unwired card lent to me by the tech services department at work, which is working very nicely; but I think I may have just exceeded whatever download cap there is, because it seems to be throttling me back to dialup speeds. I also don't have a PCMCIA slot in my computer (it being a Mac), so I'm having to lug the work laptop back to the hotel every night to give me something to plug it into. The hotel has wired Internet available, but it's horrendously expensive — $27.50 buys you 24 hours of access with a 50MB download limit, and it's 10 cents per megabyte over that.

The hotel is also noisy at night; the nearby buildings seem to be very good at funnelling the hum of the traffic on the Western Distributor straight into the bedroom window. What's more, the exhaust fans in the laundry and bathroom don't actually turn off, so the place is never quiet.

Needless to say, I shall be very happy to check out.

I've been in Sydney a week now, and it's been an exhausting experience thus far. The company has put me up in a flat just a stone's throw from Railway Square, but it's noisy and a bit lonely. They've also loaned me a very nice company car, but I hate it — it's an automatic and there are buttons everywhere. It took me five minutes to get it out of the garage because I couldn't find the park brake; turned out it was a weird little pedal above my foot. I used it once to get to a house inspection; as it happened, it would have been faster to take the train anyway, so I haven't used it since.

The house-hunting experience has been stressful and tiring, but it looks like I'm now in the final stretch. After inspecting two or three properties last week and inquiring about many more, I spent Saturday walking around the Inner West looking at several houses. The trains weren't running, which nearly scotched my inspection plans, but fortunately didn't. Two terraces in Newtown and Annandale was poky and old. A unit in Summer Hill was nice, but the owner was unlikely to accept pets. A house in Leichhardt was OK but overpriced.

I got to a house in Dulwich Hill — actually, it was closer to Summer Hill and Lewisham than Dulwich Hill station — to find the owner standing out the front. He was still moving out, and the agent was running late, so we got chatting about our situations. He said he empathised with my situation, having migrated from India 12 years ago, and the reason he was moving was because he and his family had outgrown the house.

The house was nice — homely rather than flashy — so I put an application in. It turns out it's the only one, so hopefully the approval process will be a mere formality. I shall be immeasurably relieved when (if?) it comes through.

In the meantime, there is work. It seems to be going fairly well in these early stages, even though I've had to devote the bulk of my time to finding somewhere to live. The sheer volume of information the company deals with makes the job somewhat daunting, but I'm sure I'll get my head around it in due course.

The highlight thus far has probably been catching up with Carolyn and Chris, a couple of old and very good friends from my PhD days. They were very happy to see me again, and Chris cooked us a very nice range of vegetarian Indian dishes, washed down with the obligatory couple of bottles of red. They also offered me a place to stay if I needed one; work only promised me two weeks in this flat, so it's a distinct possibility.

Once the tenancy is approved, I can sign the lease, pay the money, then book a flight back to Perth probably early next week. Finish packing, get the removalists in, deal with the cats, clean the house, hand over the keys — and then we can set off on our cross-country drive. Which, after all this work, I'm very much looking forward to. As I am getting to see loved ones again — including the cats.

Big news brings the first post in some time.

Just to fill in the gap:

A few months ago, I moved in with riverstar, and we’ve been cohabiting quite happily for a few months.

The approach of my thirtieth birthday this year has also kept me ruminating on the direction of my life. After much thought on where I want to take my career, I enrolled in a degree in environmental science at Murdoch Uni, the first day of which is today. In fact, as I write, the first lecture is under way. But I’m not there. Instead, I’m at home, with a million and one things buzzing through my head.

A few weeks ago, someone in my company’s Sydney office asked me if I could update some management spreadsheet for the new financial year. I was happy to do so, but I couldn’t help but think that the spreadsheet was a huge waste of time: it was just one of many systems that users and managers had to collate information in. So after some thought, I wrote an email to senior management, telling them that I thought they needed a CIO — a chief information officer. Someone who could design, implement and maintain a unified system that would mean managers didn’t need to enter the same data ten times across the company for every single job.

Then a couple of weeks ago, the CEO of the company called me up and asked me if I wanted to move to Sydney and take up a newly created position in management.

Um.

My initial reaction was no; I was getting excited about the plans I’d just made, and saw myself five or ten years down the track working in country WA as an environmental officer or something. But I thought about it some more, and it sounded more and more appealing. Especially after I found out the pay…

So the big news is that riverstar and I are moving to Sydney. I’ll probably be starting in a month or so; but in the meantime, there’s obviously an awful lot to do. I have to fly over, probably in the next few days, find somewhere to live, then fly back. We have to call the landlord and tell him we need to break the lease. We have to pack and organise a removalist. We have to get Ollie and Mouse sent over. And we’re going to drive the car over, which will take about seven to ten days.

With regard to finding a house, I’m leaning towards moving to the area I used to live in with crypticgirl, i.e. somewhere around Ryde, Epping, Marsfield, Pennant Hills. Near a train would be good, ‘cause riverstar doesn’t drive. Work is in the city, but it’ll be moving later this year, and we don’t know where yet — two possibilities that have been touted are Redfern and Gore Hill.

I’ve never really ventured south, but the Hurstville area isn’t too expensive. The Inner West could also be good, but I hear it’s a mixed bag — expensive and small near the city, but a bit grim further out near Burwood or Strathfield. I’ve no experience with what the Canterbury-Bankstown area is like, but most are aware of its reputation. The North Shore is probably too dear, the Northern Beaches are too far and too dear, and the West is…well, the West.

So any advice anyone can give on where to move would be much appreciated. And watch this space (or riverstar’s journal) for more information — I’m sure we’ll have a going-away party sometime.

Oh, and if you want to take over our current house, let us know. Three and a half bedrooms in Rivervale, with a pool (not heated, unfortunately), close to buses, no dogs allowed, rent currently $280/wk.

Admittedly, I didn’t make this — riverstar did. It’s relatively simple, but there’s a bit of baking and chilling involved.

---

1¼ cups (185g) plain flour
1/3 cup (55g) icing sugar mix
¼ cup (30g) almond meal
125g butter, chopped coarsely

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon lemon zest
½ cup (125ml) lemon juice (the juice of about three lemons)
5 eggs
¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
1 cup (250ml) thickened cream

---

Combine flour, icing sugar mix, almond meal and butter into crumbs. Add egg yolk; mix until just combined. Knead on a floured surface until smooth. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes.

Roll dough out between sheets of baking paper; use it to line a 24cm flan tin. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.

Blind-bake case at 200°C for 15 minutes. Remove baking beans and bake a further 10 minutes, or until pastry is lightly browned. Cool.

Whisk lemon zest and juice, eggs, sugar and cream; stand 5 minutes. Pour into pastry case and bake at 180°C for about 30 minutes, or until filling has set slightly. Cool, then cover and refrigerate until cold.

If desired, to decorate, cook some thin lemon slices in sugar syrup until translucent.

More or less pilfered from a cookbook. I made it with red lentils only, but the original recipe calls for a mixture of red lentils, yellow split peas and mung beans. Use whatever legumes you see fit to, but remember to soak if necessary. The original recipe also called for cream, but yoghurt is better.

---

2 tbsp ghee
3 tsp black mustard seeds

2 brown onions (300g), finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger

1 tbsp ground cumin
3 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp chilli flakes*

½ cup (100g) yellow split peas
½ cup (100g) red lentils
½ cup (100g) split mung beans
800g tinned tomatoes
2½ cups vegetable stock
½ tsp cracked black pepper

Greek-style yoghurt and fresh coriander to garnish

---

Rinse peas, lentils and beans separately in cold water. Soak the peas for 30 minutes in cold water.

Heat the ghee in a big saucepan. Fry off the mustard seeds until they start to pop. Add the onion, garlic and ginger; cook until the onion starts to brown.

Add the spices and cook for a minute or so.

Add the legumes, tomatoes (undrained), stock and pepper. Simmer until the lentils are tender — about half an hour or so.

Stir through some coriander and serve with a generous dollop of yoghurt. Serves 4.

---

*This recipe makes quite a lot, so this will provide a relatively mild heat. It made a nice contrast to the vindaloo I served alongside it…

Sleep escapes me for the present.

Driving home this evening, I noticed as I was entering the tunnel that the 60 km/h speed limit signs mounted above the tunnel portal were being turned on. I slowed down, curious as to what lay ahead, and watched as several drivers sped past me in the right-hand lane, oblivious (or indifferent) to the new speed limit. It wasn't until I emerged at the other end that I saw the reason.

Ambulances, tow trucks and police cars littered the hard shoulder, where men in retro-reflective coats stood engaged in solemn, unhurried conversation; and several police officers had been posted to keep the traffic out of the left-hand lane, where what I originally thought was a car's bumper, but which turned out to be a sickeningly crumpled motorcycle, lay abandoned.

It didn't occur to me until shortly afterwards that if it hadn't been moved already, then it was because the major crash investigators had been called in and were yet to arrive. Which itself would imply that the rider was either dead or clinging to life somewhere.

What could be worse than killing yourself sitting on a lump of overexcitable metal?

Then I thought about the man who's been in the news here in Perth the last few days. An intellectually disabled 42-year-old man was bushwalking with his mother along the Munda Biddi Trail, a cycle trail that runs a roughly similar course to the Bibbulmun Track, near Mundaring Weir. Trouble was, he kept going on ahead of his mother, farther and farther in front, until he disappeared entirely.

Six days later, he still hasn't been found.

Apparently, this man relies on medication to control his behaviour and mood swings; moreover, he is unable to speak. I can only imagine that if he's still alive — and to be honest, I'm gravely dubious — he's in a bad way. I don't know who to feel more for right now: him or his family.

But the setting is apt to my current train of thought, for it was very close by that I gave up on my walk two months ago. Of late, I must admit that I have started to feel some regret that I pulled out. In hindsight, I don't think I was quite ready to do it, but it's a shame that the opportunity was lost. I think of the experiences, the sights, the challenges that went begging.

I have been somewhat heartened, though, that lately my feelings of wanderlust have been starting to return. I haven't bushwalked since pulling out, and to my delight, my feet are getting restless once more. I just have to find the time to get out and give them what they want.

I'm even starting to think of trying the end-to-end walk again. At this stage, I don't know when it would be; or whether I'd be alone or with a group. The best times to go are autumn and spring — it's just a matter of finding the opportunity; which in my case means obtaining leave from work, saving up, and making sure life doesn't get in the way otherwise.

Getting his arse in the way of my life lately, though, has been the black dog (in case you hadn't guessed from my morose tone). He's been hanging around again these past few days, but it's beyond me why. I've observed no obvious triggers. I guess it's just those old neurochemicals playing silly buggers with each other again.

But thinking about the motorcyclist and the lost bushwalker, tragically sad though such thoughts may be, reminds me that my situation could be a lot worse. After all, I have my health. And I can't ride a motorbike. From these, I can only take heart.

I'm not a religious man, but if I were, those two would be in my prayers. As it stands, they're certainly in my thoughts. May they find their way back to us soon.

And maybe now I can get some sleep.

A week ago, I picked up the new laptop I've wanted since…well, since before I knew what Linux was, I imagine. It's a 17" Apple MacBook Pro; much to the chagrin of riverstar, who can't mention the word ‘Mac’ in a sentence that doesn't also contain the word ‘evil’.

I imagine if I had owned a laptop before, it would seem large; but it being the first one I've ever owned, I don't really notice it being so. Indeed, my old Windoze box, callisto, seems like a lumbering behemoth in comparison. And a much uglier machine, to boot — beige plastic doesn't glisten in quite the same way as aluminium.

Most people who administer a number of machines or devices employ some naming theme or other; khoath uses the names of girlfriends past (and present), and Jo and I used to go with characters from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles when we were back at college. I still remember the trouble Jo and I had trying to convince the principal's husband that khayman was a better name for the student file server than fileserver. Mind you, he didn't know what Linux was, either.

These days, I go with moons, and accordingly, my shiny new box — for 'tis indeed shiny — is called ariel, after Uranus I. I very nearly named it charon, after the Plutonian moon, but I suppose it's just as well I didn't, because a couple of days later Pluto was stripped of its planetary status. And then I would have had egg all over my face.

Anyway, the job of migrating all my old data from callisto to ariel is ongoing. The fact that they're different platforms just makes things more complicated; for instance, it took me nearly a day to migrate eight years' worth of email from Microsoft Outlook to Apple Mail, and I'm still yet to sort through it, reorganise it and set up some new mail filters.

I've also discovered (or perhaps just received confirmation) that my old Netgear wireless router is naff. Over Wi-Fi, it doesn't support DHCP properly or SMB at all (for those less technically inclined: that's bad), its speed seems a bit temperamental, and sometimes it just drops connections for no apparent reason. I thought my PDA's Wi-Fi was dodgy, but I guess it was the router's fault — which is a relief, 'cause routers are cheaper than PDAs. So I'll probably replace that at some point.

Plus, I've got to trim down my music collection; 47 GB of music files doesn't leave much room for anything else on a 100 GB hard drive, after all the software is installed. There's a lot of crap in there that I've never even heard, and I dare say there's quite a bit there that I wouldn't even like very much.

But I'd better go. It's late, and our batteries need charging.

My computer reminds me that today is crypticgirl's and my fourth wedding anniversary. I don't know if I would actually have remembered, to be honest; but knowing my memory, I doubt it. To save me having to remember an extra date, we got married on our engagement anniversary, thus making the two anniversaries coincide (why else would anyone get married on a Monday?); but it seems the fates are trying to relieve my poor memory of having to remember another date.

I've received my copy of the divorce application back from the Family Court, with a note that the court date is scheduled for September 18. Given that this is a joint application and no children are involved, one expects that the hearing will be merely a formality and the decree nisi will be granted that day. A decree nisi becomes absolute one month and one day later. Which would be October 19. Which is my birthday, of course.

I wasn't sure what to make of that; but all I can do is laugh, really. Not with glee at the prospect of being divorced, of course, but merely because fate has once again enlisted me as her straight man (her whipping boy?) upon whom to demonstrate her weird sense of humour.

In other news, my Bibbulmun Track journal is now off and running (well, walking, I guess) at bibbtrack06. It's separate from this one for reasons previously mentioned. Suggestions from others to hide the list of those who have befriended the new journal have been noted.

I'm still waiting for my watch to come back from the good people at Seiko in Sydney. (Must say nice things about them, in case they are wont to join the hordes of millions who queue up to read these missives of wit and wonderment.) Hope it gets returned soon; I set off in only ten days from now.

I caught up with Jo yesterday, for the first time since I broke up with crypticgirl. He seemed surprised it had been so long — over 18 months, as it happens. And apart from having an awful lot of news to impart to him, I suppose it didn't seem like it had been so long, either. That's the nice thing about old friends — it always seems easy to pick up where you left off, no matter how long it's been. I'd like to catch up with a few others before I head off, so hopefully that can be arranged over the next week or so.

Perth's weather has been extraordinarily dry this year. Which in winter, of course, translates to warm days with freezing-cold nights. The bedroom in which I sit and type this entry being as poorly insulated as it is, I'm now at the point of shivering, so I think now would be a good time to sign off and get my arse into bed. Goodnight.

Yes, that's Ollie in the new userpic, in case you haven't seen him before.

The last three weeks have taken a bit of a toll on me physically. Six-day weeks and ten-hour days do not a happy camper make, so to speak: I've been more or less living on takeaways; I've had no time to get into training for the walk — which is only three weeks away now! — and now I'm having trouble getting out of bed in the mornings. I was hoping to walk to work today, but getting out of bed at 7:30 for an 8:15 shift, that simply wasn't an option. I had to drive in the end, and I was still late.

It doesn't help my motivation to get to work that the manager is on leave at the moment, meaning muggins here gets the job of running the office. Four and a half hours of my day today were spent doing so — reports, forms, spreadsheets. Which, for an office currently at a staffing level of 2.4 FTE, is somewhat ridiculous.

I've now set up a separate journal for my walk at bibbtrack06, should anyone care to follow my descent into madness. It's largely for my parents' sake, whom I didn't really want trawling through old posts in here (and whether or not they would have the wherewithal to manage that, I don't care to bet on). I won't be able to update it, of course, while I'm between towns, so expect me not to post for a number of days before suddenly posting several entries at once.

I think I'll treat myself after the walk to that new Mac laptop I've been promising myself since my undergraduate days. OK, not the PowerBook 1400cs I lusted after back in 1997, but a new 17" MacBook Pro. Drool. I suppose I could think of it as a reward; maybe it'll help when morale is low. But I don't think I'll have much problem with morale after the first couple of weeks, by which time the soreness will have worn off and I shall have settled into it. Well, that's the plan, at least.

Things I still have to do:

• Pack. Very important, this one; also very obvious. This includes both the backpack and the town box. I've checked the latter for size, and everything fits comfortably.
• Book accommodation. Particularly at the first stop, which is Dwellingup; but ringing all the places I intend to stop at would probably be well advised.
• Buy last-minute things. This includes the EPIRB and one more SD card for the camera, as well as another set of socks (thick outer socks and thin liners).
• Buy food and fuel for the first two weeks. I've found that I tend to overestimate food requirements; I guess I have to remember that I'll have a lot of ‘stores’ to draw upon (ahem). This has to be portioned up into the stuff I'll take from Kalamunda, and the stuff I'll take from the rendezvous with my parents at the Brookton Highway on the first Friday.
• Buy freeze-dried dinners. These things come in camping shops for about $9 a whiz. I'll probably get a few for treats and put them in the town box; the rest of the time, it'll mostly be Continental pasta-and-sauce surprise for tea.
• Leave money with my parents to look after Ollie. I hope he doesn't fret, but I don't think he will — he likes my parents.

I think that's it. Doesn't seem like much, does it?

I bought a new watch a couple of months ago, and to my annoyance, it seems somewhat careless with time, for it seems to keep losing it. Quite a lot of time, relatively speaking — about eight seconds a day. Which amounts to a minute a week, or four minutes a month. I noticed it was slowing down when I started wondering why the buses were getting earlier and earlier. They don't service Seiko watches in Perth anymore, so I shall have to send it over to Sydney next week for repair.

Ollie went missing earlier this week. He was here to eat dinner on Monday night, then just up and disappeared for two days. I was somewhat worried about him by the time he came back, rueing my failure to have him microchipped almost as much as my failure to replace his ID tag for the third time. It should go without saying that he now sports a brand-new tag and can expect a trip to the vet in the next couple of days. We don't know where he went; he seemed hungry but otherwise well on his return, so we can only speculate.

I finally found the time to submit the divorce application yesterday. There was a bit of a run-around in getting it sorted, firstly because of crypticgirl's invalid witness, and then because my signature on the form she sent back was a photocopy. It would have perhaps surprised me a year ago to hear that I wouldn't really feel sad after the fact; if anything, I was glad to have got another task out of the way, to have tied up another loose end. Not that the relationship that was now means little more than a ‘loose end’ to me; but I'm now somewhat more philosophical about it all than I once was. Anyway, now it's just a matter of waiting for the decree nisi to show up in the post.

Today marks one month until I set off on the walk, which I approach with a mix of trepidation and excitement, of course. The three-day walk I did a few weeks ago was good, but for a few days afterward, I was sore enough not to be able to walk properly — and that was after I'd been walking with poles. I also learned that sun-dried tomatoes in oil are a bad idea, because the oil can leak out of almost anything — I lost half my tea on the first day because of it, and the smell of the oil pervading my food bag got a bit tiresome after a couple of days. I met a lovely couple, Bruce and Rohani, who were in the last days of an end-to-end from Albany to Kalamunda, and with whom I kept pace for the whole weekend.

I'm working day shifts for much of this month, so I'll take the opportunity to walk to and/or from work a few times a week to build my legs up before I go. I'm also yet to get a couple of items, most notably the EPIRB; but I think I may also invest in a lightweight tripod.

It's time I went to bed, methinks. Because of a larger than usual workload at the moment, I've been working six shifts a week this last couple of weeks, with two hours of overtime most days, and consequently I'm a bit knackered. (Having to stay up to watch the football doesn't help either.) Ollie has taken up residence on my usual side, so I'll have to sleep on the other side; but I can't say I'm unhappy he's there.

OK, maybe I'll wait to see whether Germany or Argentina wins first…

My cat has a strange attitude to water. To my dismay, he utterly refuses to drink from the water bowl I dutifully yet vainly fill for him every so often, yet he will happily drink from the toilet bowl. Thankfully, it's not his preferred water source; that mantle goes to the dripping tap, which he will try (and succeed in) goading me into turning on if I'm around.

Silly boy.

Things have been busy of late. The walk is now just two months away, and the preparations are as ongoing as ever. I must admit, I didn't initially envisage that the logistics of the whole affair would be quite so complicated. And I suppose they wouldn't be if it weren't for the town box: because of it, I need to know where and when I'll be staying in the next town, how much the postage will be (in case the post office isn't open when I leave), the weight of its contents (so I can calculate said postage), as well as what to put in it and how big the box itself consequently needs to be. I bought a Postpak box and covered it with Contact inside and out, for water resistance and added structural integrity; hopefully that will stand me in good stead.

Then there's the weight of my pack, the calculation of which involves detailed lists of items and weights; how much food I'll need; what clothes to take; at which towns to take rest days — the list goes on. Knowing what I need to take also means procuring such accoutrements, which involves many hours in camping stores agonising over whether Brand X™ or Brand Y™ is the more prudent investment — as well as the accompanying slow haemorrhage of cash from my bank account, of course.

Oh, and then there's the physical preparation — the training. Not much is happening there yet; as the time gets closer, I'll start walking around with my pack on. I've already walked home from work a few times, which is two hours and 9.5 kilometres of blistering excitement (thanks to my forgetting to take decent shoes). Next weekend is a long weekend here in WA, and I'll be using it to walk about 50 kilometres along the Bibbulmun from Brookton Highway north to Mundaring Weir, taking what is probably the last opportunity I'll have to test out my gear.

Perhaps you can understand why I've been so preoccupied with all this. In a way, I'll be relieved to set off; all this planning and preparation will be over and I can start enjoying myself.

They say that living on the Bib Track takes a while to get over. You kind of get used to the daily routine and the basic lifestyle — no cars, no telly, no Internet, no supermarkets; indeed, practically no artefacts of modern society at all (well, except the camera and Sudoku, without which life is not worth living). Apparently the adjustment when you return to the Real World (a paradox, perhaps?) afterwards can take weeks. Obviously it's too early to tell now how I'll be changed by the experience; but I think it's safe to say that I shall be changed in some way — it's just a question of how and to what extent.

I think my attitude to ‘stuff’ has already changed. I don't think I've ever been an overly material person (ahem), but I think I'm now starting to see much of the things I own as liabilities rather than assets — dead weight rather than items of genuine worth. I mean, who needs boxes and boxes of old Commodore 64 gear lying around to moulder? And the article I read recently about how film photography is dying a much faster death than I had thitherto appreciated makes me wonder if the second-hand Bronica gear I recently ‘invested’ in was a less than well advised acquisition.

I kind of like the idea of having a small ‘footprint’, so to speak; of carrying experiences around with me rather than luggage; of having what I need and little more. So I shall have to take the time (and I know I left some lying around here some place) to photograph my extraneous bits (oo-er) and do some research into postage costs, so I can stick them up my arse on eBay.

Even a car can seem like a bit of a liability at times. I don't actually do a lot of driving these days; I generally catch the bus and train to work, and I'd prefer to use my bike for short trips rather than get the car out (a goal hampered somewhat after I recently rode my bike into the guard rail of a bridge). I imagine most people regard a car as something that grants a greater sense of freedom upon its owner; but I realised lately that, given the time, I can walk almost anywhere I need to go, and realising that made me somehow feel more free than before. Which sounds kind of ironic, I know.

So, who knows what the post-walk future may hold? Maybe I'll never want to see an inch of walking track again; but somehow I doubt that. Maybe I'll start looking for a new path to take — be it elsewhere in Australia, such as the Australian Alps Walking Track (650 km); or overseas, like Offa's Dyke Path (I saw a movie about that one once — 283 km) or the Pennine Way (429 km) in the UK, the Wicklow Way (132 km) in Ireland, or even something longer, such as the venerable American Appalachian Trail (3,500 km) or one of the ridiculously long trans-European trails (e.g. the UK stretch of the E2 — 2,297 km from the Scottish Borders to Dover).

But I might be getting ahead of myself there. I probably ought to take things one megametre at a time.

For now, as I eagerly await my journey's beginning, I continue to dutifully fill young Ollie's water bowl, and continue to watch as his footprints (or pawprints, perhaps I should say) gather around the toilet seat.

I wonder how much a cat bowl goes for on eBay…

I have a tendency to lose track of people. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least eight people, whom I once regarded as close friends, whom I haven't spoken to for around a year or more — in some cases, more than ten years.

I'm not sure exactly why his happens. I know I have a tendency to develop tunnel vision sometimes, and perhaps this is a related thing: we all move on from one place to another at various times, enter new social spheres, and old friendships simply fall from our everyday consciousness. Or you forget to catch up with someone for a while, and then start to feel bad that you haven't, which, tragically, acts as a disincentive to do so, and you just end up perpetually putting it off.

So I think I'd like to track several people down and get in touch. As I see it, the worst that can come of it is that someone might no longer wish to have anything to do with me; which is possible, I guess, but would probably be better than the status quo.

In other news, riverstar is coming up to Perth on Monday, and won't be going back. Personally, I like it down there, and I'll be a bit sad to no longer have an excuse to go down (or a place to stay for free!), but I'd much rather have her back here in Perth. Long-distance relationships aren't as nice as in-the-flesh ones. (Oo-er.) My dad has been kind enough to offer to help bring her stuff back up; he has a few errands to run in various spots through the South-West anyway, and seems to like having an excuse to get them all sorted. So over the Easter long weekend, we'll be heading back down to pick up her belongings and bring them back here.

And lastly, after weighing much of my gear for the walk, it's become clear that I've got to cut the weight down a bit. So I've decided that a good compact digital camera is the way to go. I initially thought battery life and storage would make it unfeasible, but not so: a set of four rechargeable NiMHs should provide for a few hundred shots, as should a 1GB storage card; and a total weight of around 500g is maybe a third of what I'd carry if I used film.

I've decided to plump for the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, which Canon are saying will be on the shelves sometime in May. It seems to cover just about all the bases: 6.0 megapixels, good optics, big zoom, flippy screen, manual control. It also records CD-quality audio and good-quality video (30fps VGA or 60fps QVGA), which might be useful: maybe after the walk I'll put together a DVD or something.

Spot the geek…

Here we go with another (long overdue) instalment of the life of me.

Things have been fairly slow of late. A few weeks ago I got a bit hooked on eBay and bought a load of gear for my Bronica medium-format camera — another lens, a couple more film backs and the like. Now I just have to get out there and start using it.

Preparations for the Bibbulmun walk are in hand. I've booked my leave from work: the plan is to leave Kalamunda on 1 August, which will see me arrive in Albany around 29 September, just before the school hols. I've got pretty much all the gear I need now, except for an EPIRB (an emergency radio beacon). The next task now will be to weigh everything to see just how excessive the contents of my pack will be. I'd like to take some lightweight camera gear, but I'm yet to see what I'll have to leave behind as a consequence; I'm not yet sure whether to take my film SLR with a couple of lenses or get a lightweight digital camera.

I went to a talk at the local library a few weeks ago about the Bib Track, and the speaker gave me the idea of using a ‘town box’. The plan is that the stuff I'll only need in the towns — like a phone charger, a change of clothes while I do my washing, spare and exposed film and batteries, and the like, plus anything I've chosen to offload — can go in the town box, which I simply post on from town to town. Of course, it means the post office has to be open (unless I guess the weight and use stamps — mental note), and I'll have to tee it up with accommodation spots along the way.

I went for a day walk on Sunday up a mountain called Boonering Hill, just west of North Bannister (which is about 90 km south-east of Perth). I parked on the highway and walked in; four or five quite flat kilometres, followed by a couple of very steep ones up to the summit, which is about 530m above sea level and probably the highest point I've ever stood upon in WA. 360-degree views across forested valleys and farmland. Brilliant. Along the way I saw several roos, a few red-tailed black cockatoos (listed as threatened) and a number of golden orb weavers — including one whose web I didn't see until it was about a foot from my face! — but no other walkers, though. The walking stick I made from a fallen branch I found near Kitty's shack at Christmas proved a worthy companion, especially up and down the hill. I walked about 13 km in total, and I've still got the stiff leg muscles to remind me. It took two hours from the highway to the summit, and an hour and a half back.

Those of you who are reading Kitty's journal will no doubt know that she's coming up for a few days before Easter, which will be nice. I haven't seen much of her since Christmas, and I miss her. She'll be here until Good Friday, when I'll take her back down south and stay for the long weekend.

It was my father's 60th birthday yesterday, so we all went out for Chinese. He seemed pleased with his haul. My mum gave him a Sheffield United T-shirt and cap, which he loves — he doesn't follow the FA Cup (well, not yet), but his grandfather played for them around the turn of the century. I bought him a nice watch; in spite of his protestations beforehand that he only wanted a cheap one to wear around the yard, I get the feeling he's glad he got something better. I think I want a new watch now…

Anyway, I'd better go and cook the sausages in my fridge before they turn and attack.

The family's eldest cat, Puss, who would have been 18 this year, is no more.

We got her when I was only about 10, which would have made my sister bikkie about 8. I forget whether it was for a particular occasion, such as a birthday, but I recall that the new cat was for my sister. I can still remember going over to some stranger's house and picking a kitten out of a cardboard box. It probably wasn't a great choice — I think she might have been the last kitten left, or something — because she turned out to be a right handful.

Initially, the cat — who had been temporarily dubbed ‘Puss’ until we thought of something more profound — proved rather vicious. She wanted nothing to do with anybody, and attempts to pick her up usually resulted in bloodshed. Thankfully, she calmed down after she was spayed.

It would seem that my rapport with cats is somewhat legendary, if people other than I are to be believed, and over time, Puss warmed to me. (We never really settled on another name, although my parents often called her ‘Blackie’ to differentiate her from the ‘new’ cat, Pepe, who is now about 14 and getting on in years herself.) Many was the night I awoke to find Puss curled up between my legs, me contorted into an unnatural position to accommodate it, and my back aching as a consequence. Over the years, she became more friendly towards others, especially when I moved to Sydney for three and a half years; indeed, she eventually became a downright ‘people cat’, often seeking out human company.

She still clung on tenaciously to life right to the end, but her mind had been going for a while. Often she'd be found staring blankly at the walls; if she was fed in a different spot from usual, she wouldn't notice; she kept pissing in the same spot in the house regularly. She had been little more than skin and bone for a while, emaciated to the point that if you ran your hand down her back you could feel the spinous process of each vertebra poking up. This was in spite of the fact that she ate and drank copiously, so perhaps she had diabetes to boot. Her coat was dishevelled and mangy, she had cataracts in each eye, and she walked with a stiffness that betrayed arthritis.

In the end, it was from a combination of pity for her condition and frustration at constantly having to clean up after her that we all agreed her time had come. My mother took her up to the vet this morning to have her put to sleep; now, after years of happy memories, she lies at rest beneath the back garden.

I haven't had very many brushes with mortality in my life thus far, and consequently, each time, I've dealt with it as a different person. I'm not upset that Puss is gone, and I'm not overly sad; more than anything else, I feel sorry for her. She had been around for most of my life, and she didn't deserve to die by anybody's hand, really. I honestly don't know if she's in a better place now, or if she merely is no more; but whatever the case may be, I feel strongly that the least I can do for her now is not forget her.

And forget her I shall not. May she rest in peace.

The report on the weekend walk, that I meant to make Sunday afternoon, is finally here. I suppose I could lj-cut it, but…frankly, if scrolling down were beyond your abilities, you wouldn't be here. So here it is.

Of course, there were bits that I really enjoyed and bits that I didn't like very much at all, but on the whole, it was good fun; and now that the blisters I sustained have healed and the aching muscles have recovered, I can say that I'm looking forward to my next foolish jaunt into the wilderness.

Anyway, on with the plot. I set off from the Hills Forest Discovery Centre, near Mundaring Weir (SCAdians in the audience may know it as the site of the Anealan Championship last year), at about 10:15 Saturday morning, after my parents were kind enough to give me a lift up there. I set off eastwards on the Bibbulmun Track towards Ball Creek campsite, 2.6km away.

It wasn't long before I ran across a small snake on the track, not much thicker than the width of a pencil and not much more than about 30cm long. He (or she) slithered off and hid, while I peered down at it and wondered if its mother was waiting nearby to flick out and fell me but swift and sure with was would inevitably prove to be the world's most deadly venom. In fact, I haven't the faintest if it was venomous or not; it had a brown head and tan body, and its head was the same width as its body. So I trundled on, and eventually reached Ball Creek at 11:00, whereupon I rested for about 10 minutes. This was as far as I had previously come; henceforth, I was venturing into what was for me unknown territory. I continued east.

Things were initially easy, as I descended for several kilometres into a valley. I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of the landscape: one minute I was trekking along an old vehicle track through jarrah and marri, the next I was walking over a flat rock outcrop surrounded by grasses and low scrub, and the next I was winding my way amongst grasstrees beneath a high blackbutt canopy. At other times I found myself in the midst of old pine plantations and stands of prickly dryandras. I had expected little more than an endless expanse of jarrah forest, and was pleased that my preconceptions turned out to be wrong.

But what goes down must come up, and beyond Manns Creek at the foot of the valley, the track indeed went up. And up. And up. Slowly my 18-kilo pack got heavier. Slowly the 35-degree day got hotter. And slowly the two litres of water I had lugged from Hills Forest dwindled. I learned my first lesson of the day: water disappears fast when it's hot. I resolved to drink more the next time I set out from somewhere, and ration what I had more carefully. (Or, better yet, take more.)

Around this time I came across a couple resting on the track and consulting their map. I said hello and the first thing they asked was, “Do you happen to know where we are?”

Oh, boy. “I believe we're on the Bib Track,” I said, proffering what I thought was an obvious answer, and was a little taken aback when they seemed relieved to hear it. It emerged that they were on their way eastwards from Hills Forest too, but had gotten lost somewhere between there and where we were. So I pointed out our location on the map, and said I was on my way to Helena campsite, about another four or five more kilometres away. After a few minutes' rest, I left them there, trying to tie a stupidly large and heavy-looking double swag to the man's shoulders, and continued east.

I stopped a short while afterwards for another drink and a quick snack, and five minutes later they hove into view, so they stopped briefly as I got up and put my pack back on. It transpired that their names were Brendan and Clare (sp?), from South Lake, and that this was their first jaunt on the Bib Track. And it showed, looking at Brendan with that unfeasibly large swag weighing him down and Clare with a small day pack. We walked together for a while, until partway up a particularly long ascent I had to stop for water and they chose not to.

As the water slowly ran out I started feeling tired, sore and dehydrated. It was around this time that I knew I wouldn't be going any farther than Helena. I couldn't wait to reach the campsite and stop walking, and it was with more than a little joy and relief that my eyes fell upon the sign marking the spur down to camp.

It was about 2:00 when I limped into the shelter and rejoined Brendan and Clare, who were scoffing oranges. They told me they had brought loads of fresh fruit with them, but the oranges were the last of it. I wondered why they would want to lug all that heavy fruit with them. They had also brought things like eggs, sausages and bacon, and it then emerged that they were expecting to cook it all on a campfire.

Great, I thought. We're in the middle of a 4-month-long total fire ban and they want to play silly buggers with the matches. I don't really want to camp with these…good people, but do I have a choice? They were even talking about bush-bashing their way down to the weir for a swim, of all things (for those not in the know, Mundaring Weir is the major water source for WA's Wheatbelt and Goldfields).

I was surprised at how little I wanted to do anything at this point. I didn't feel like I had the energy to even think. So I sat and rested awhile; I took off my shoes and socks to reveal the prunes that someone had replaced my feet with and failed to inform me about. I downed the rest of my water in slavering thirst, then took some more from the tank and ate while I waited for the iodine pills to do their stuff.

Eventually a pair of women, whose names turned out to be Mar and Jennifer, came into camp, and from the off looked vastly more experienced than my erstwhile campmates. Both had hiked all over the world, with Mar having done an end-to-end walk of the Bibbulmun back in autumn 2003. It was shortly hereafter that Brendon and Clare decided to set off for Hills Forest again; I think they came to realise that lighting a fire wouldn't be an option with all these people around, and with no food, there wasn't much point in staying. I wasn't surprised to see that Brendon decided to abandon the mattress from inside his swag.

But Mar and Jennifer turned out to be delightful company. They were Canadian émigrées who had both ended up working at BHP Billiton somehow. We ate together, we chatted and swapped histories, Mar talked about her end-to-end experiences. They gave me lots of advice, from the big things (“Watch for snakes in spring — they're mating around that time, and they can be aggressive”) to the small things (“A Chux weighs far less than a tea towel and dries the dishes just as effectively”) to the things that should have been obvious (“You'll be eaten alive without a mosquito net”). And I also learned a lot just by observing.

But night eventually fell, and before long Mar and Jennifer headed off to their tent, leaving me alone in the shelter, under the stars.

In the eastern United States, the venerable Appalachian Trail, probably the world's most famous hiking trail, runs for 3,500km along the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to Maine. Hikers of the ‘AT’, as it's known, sometimes refer to something known as ‘trail magic’: sometimes they'll come across a hut and find some generous local has left piping-hot pizzas and beer there for them, or perhaps a bag of lollies or freshly baked brownies, or even a jerry can of water in a particularly dry stretch.

The Bibbulmun seems to have its own brand of ‘track magic’. The camp toilet contained six rolls of toilet paper where I expected to find none. And at every campsite there is a box with the log book and camp register in it, as well as leaflets for local backpackers hostels and the like; and in every box I have come across thus far, I have found at least one book. Helena's box (oo-er) was no exception, this one containing a small anthology of Inspector Morse stories. I read one by torchlight before deciding that at that time, sleep was more important to me than murder mysteries, and I went to bed.

Sleep proved elusive and fitful. Rather than lugging a pillow, I took just a pillowslip and stuffed it with clothes, apparently a common practice. But it proved too lumpy for my money. I must have slept no more than two hours or so all night. And Mar was right: the mosquitoes had a feast. I think they had had their fill after an hour or so, because they seemed to bugger off in the end.

But eventually first light broke over the horizon, and what a sight to behold! The verdant, sylvan valley falling away beneath the camp, bathed in blue and yellow light. I arose and prepared breakfast — cereal and coffee — as the sun came up, before beginning the slow process of breaking camp, which I eventually did at 7:30 after bidding Mar and Jennifer farewell.

Walking early in the morning before it got hot proved to be noticeably more comfortable than the day before. I was getting used to my pack, I was managing my water a little more thoughtfully (I also drank a litre before leaving camp, which helped), the air was cooler, and I suppose psychologically it was easier, because I was returning home along a now familiar path. It was just over four hours before I arrived back at Hills Forest, at 10:45, my feet by now aching to buggery and desperate for some relief.

Pity my mum got lost on the way and I ended up waiting until 12:30 for my lift home…

I learned more than I expected to on my trip, at least partly because of the informative company I was fortunate enough to have kept. Above all else, I learned to pack lighter (I took a little too much gear and way too much food), to drink more (and maybe get a bladder to store extra water), and to avoid the heat.

I was also a little surprised that in the midst of new and interesting experiences, I missed riverstar more than ever. Lying beneath the stars, I felt both touched by something magical and perhaps a little out of my comfort zone, and I suddenly longed for her to be there with me. But I suppose that's love. Tomorrow I head down south once more to spend the weekend with her, and I'm very much looking forward to being in her arms again.

My new belle, riverstar, has been twisting my arm to update, so here I am once more.

Things between us are motoring along nicely at the moment. I got to spend about a week with her last week; she came up on the bus for an appointment in the city, then I drove her back down and stayed a couple of nights. Was a bit annoyed when I got back, though, and found the message from Sue, my boss, that work was short and she wanted me to take two more days off. If only I'd got it while I was down south…

Still, it's nice to have someone to love again, even if we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like. Things feel good.

Indeed, I'm surprised at how good things have felt of late. The black dog has gone walkies for now, and indeed, he's been away for a while. I can't say I miss him.

Speaking of dogs, my parents came home the other day with another cocker spaniel, a new mate for Rusty. Her name is indeterminate at this stage; it used to be ‘Katie’, but they weren't thrilled by that, so the poor creature is getting called all sorts of random names for now. My dad seems to have this idea of breeding from them and selling the pups to raise some cash. I'm not certain it'll prove to be a prudent investment, but the new dog seems nice enough to have around. Rusty may not agree, though — she's already taken over his bed.

I've been going for bushwalks most weekends, and my keenness has not waned, I'm glad to say. I'll be spending this weekend on a short section of the Bib Track: tomorrow I'll be heading east from Mundaring Weir to a campsite, staying there overnight, then walking back the next day. How far I walk will depend largely on how I'm feeling on the day and how fast I end up walking, but there are campsites after 2.5km (Ball Creek), 11km (Helena) and 20.5km (Waalegh), so there's a bit of room to be flexible. Hope I've remembered to pack everything.

I've been feeling a bit off-colour these last couple of days. Tired and lethargic, with recurrent indigestion thrown in to boot, for some reason. I'm not sure why; all I know is that I don't feel like doing anything much, and work is even more tiresome than usual.

My iPAQ decided to start playing silly buggers a couple of days ago — it would boot, then reboot, then reboot, then reboot, then reboot, ad nauseam. Unlike Windoze for desktops, Windoze Mobile 2003 SE has no safe mode, so there's no way to break the cycle (unless you install some third-party software, which I hadn't). The only solution was a hard reset. It turned out the scheduled backups I thought I'd set up hadn't been working; so, in a nutshell, I have lost data and need to rebuild the machine yet again. Needless to say, the temptation to switch to a real OS (i.e. Linux) grows…

In other news, I don't go to the movies often enough (if this counts as news); so this evening, I'm off to indulge in the latest Harry Potter flick. Too often do I intend to see films, only to discover weeks later that they've stopped showing and I've missed my opportunity. I haven't been to see something on my own in a very long time — possibly since I saw Babe 2: Pig in the City in Sydney. While waiting for a flight to Perth. No, honestly. Which must have been in 1998. I can still hear the throngs of children ringing in my ears to this day: the screaming; the laughing at unfunny moments; the loud, obvious questions they ask their mothers, such as “Is that a pig?” and “Where's my Maltesers?”.

The other day, dormant_dragon and I played a game of composing limericks line by line; one of us would make up a first line, then the other would write the second, and so on back and forth. We composed several; at least two of them kind of sucked, but for the reader's edification and disappointment, the two most promising ones are reproduced here. The one Sarah started off:

(S) I know of a young man from Dover
(C) Who doesn't know how to bend over
(S) He's straight as a rod
(S) But there's many a sod
(S) Who would take him face down in the clover.

And the one I started — and note how by this stage I couldn't be bothered with mere allusion:

(C) Young Mary was fulsome of breast
(S) All the men said, “By God, how she's blessed!”
(C) Those rolling pink hills
(S) Were guaranteed thrills
(C) But the valley below was the best.

Well, I did tell you I was unwell.

I think all this typing and being unclean of mind has worn me out. Perhaps Harry can wait for another day; I think I'll stay in and practise burping and using my Trangia instead.

Today I commemorate the first anniversary of the end of my marriage to crypticgirl. Not something I observe with any semblance of joy, by any measure; but as I see it, it's a milestone from which I can look back and reflect on my solo journey.

Just after the break-up, I envisaged that 2005 would be my annus horribilis, if you'll pardon the apt but by now somewhat hackneyed cliché. I predicted that getting over Leah and readjusting to singlehood would be a process occasionally tortuous and oftentimes torturous; and it fills me with no inkling of pride to say that I was right. I also foresaw that although in the short term it would be easier for me to deal with it than it would be for her, it would be she who would eventually move on sooner; and though I haven't had much knowledge of Leah's own path of grief and acceptance, it seems to me that I was probably right there also.

I wasn't able to say as recently as two months ago that I had fully accepted the circumstances. I was still haunted on occasion by feelings of guilt, loss, fear, angst — in short, grief, I suppose one could say. But when something (or, in this case, someone) so deeply entwined with one's soul is ripped away, the wound is bound to be grievous, and slow to heal; and while scars and memories remain — and doubtless will forevermore — I feel that my healing process is, if not complete, then almost as complete as it is wont to be. I finally feel ready to move forward with my life, with my own goals and dreams. I think I may just have even found someone to fall in love with, which is a wonderful thing.

2005 wasn't an easy year for me. It was a year of manifold lows and few highs; and to those who were constant and faithful to me, at times even in spite of me, my thanks extend beyond words. I tread into 2006 less sure-footed than before, and perhaps a little more humble, having exceeded my quota of cock-ups for a calendar year in the last. Indeed, if making mistakes are the means by which one learns, then I should imagine I've learned a lot in the last twelve months; in which case I have at least something I can say was good about the year.

I'm not generally taken to making new year's resolutions, because I don't usually see the time of year as being particularly special. But this time around, the moment seems particularly cathartic, so I must admit to having given some consideration to the notion. The two areas of my life that immediately sprang to mind as ones that need addressing are my self-discipline and direction; or, more to the point, my lack of either and want for both.

As to improving my self-discipline, I find myself trying to exert my own will upon myself, baby step by baby step — cutting down on buying chocolate, eating much less junk food, catching the train to work more often, getting to bed earlier; in all of these, in fact, trying to overcome probably my greatest enemy: my natural inertia. Which leads me to the question of direction: the fact is, in the course of my life to date, I haven't made very many conscious decisions to break the status quo, to get out and do something different, to take a risk rather than preserve the norm. When I have tried to do so, it's sometimes worked, but more often than not, it hasn't.

So to address both of those ends, I'm re-exploring something that whenever I've tried, I've enjoyed immensely, but for some reason I've never actively decided to undertake: bushwalking and camping. Again, struggling against inertia, I'm taking baby steps — I've started to go for regular day walks in and around Perth, and I'm kind of building up to overnight walks; then perhaps a couple of walks of several days. My goal is that come August or September, I'll be keen enough and experienced enough to undertake the Bibbulmun Track — eight weeks and 965 kilometres of tramping through the jarrah and marri forests of the Darling Scarp, the rolling hills of the Blackwood, the karri of the Warren, the tingle forests of Walpole, and the coastal heath and white sands of the south coast. As I see it, it's a goal that I can reach, but not without a lot of discipline and hard work; and achieving it (or even coming close) would provide immense amounts of personal growth and satisfaction.

So the journey metaphor I began with was perhaps apt. To all, may your 2006 be better than your 2005. Happy travels.