hey all. updates are few and far between but its a hectic life i lead you know.

friday didnt exactly go to plan, basically took it easy all day and then headed out. first up we went to a club called hush, a damn long way out of town and we kinda got lost and had to double back a few times. there are freeways everywhere here, so you miss an exit and you're screwed. did i mention they have big trucks?

hush was pretty full on. huge line of cars, valet parking only. inside it was pretty cool, reasonably priced drinks loads of people... but after being there for a while i realised that the crowd were a bunch of knobs. they stood on the dancefloor barely moving; occaisionally sticking their hands in the air like they just dont care. awesome. funny how we only realised it was crap when we were loaded. there was some salsa music outside so we shook our groove thang for about 30 mins and fekked off.

we went to an after hours bar downtown and quickly discovered that you cant get alcohol after 2am! that is completely insane. nuts crazy and generally stupid. matty made some calls and discovered that there was a bar somewhere a ways down the road that sold drinks on the sly. just ask for 'orange juice' and you're good to go. the catch? its a gay bar.

i have the best luck with this kind of thing dont i? dont get me wrong, there were a few girls there. about 2% female. the rest of the crowd have the impression that if you looked at them twice were would be walking home with a distinct difference in your stride. you know me though, a few 'orange juices' and i was dancing up a storm: as long as i had a protective barrier of the 3-4 people i knew i was ok.

sunday was awesome. my first baseball experience and i loved it. beer, peanuts and the baseball song. somehow i managed to know all the words to half the songs, i have no idea how. "the stars in the night, are big and bright *clap clap clap clap* deep in the heart of texas"

not only was it a great game, but the astros (houston) slaughtered the braves. 14-4, and whats more baseball isnt nearly as complicated as it looks. in fact its amazingly simple. the atmostphere is good fun too. sunday night was pretty hilarious. we went to some bar out of the way, had some extremely strong margaritas (the tipping system has its advantages) and before you know it: jessalyn was an absolute mess. im talking in the top ten of all messy people of all time. thrown out of the bar, tried to steal matt's car, tried to leap out of said car on the freeway, broke up with matt, did some crying, kicking and biting. we eventually got her safe and sound to her friends house where she passed out and we kept on drinking, playing poker and watching movies. great stuff.

monday we were supposed to go to schlitterbahn but we were all a bit worse for wear and slept in instead. we opted for the closer but smaller cousin: six flags splashtown. good but not amazing. the tornado was this big funnel thing the you get shot down into and fly all over the place. very cool. we took a couple of pictures with a disposable but i doubt they will turn out, it was all a bit hectic. the day ended with papacitos (the mexican place where matt, jessalyn and john all work) followed by a sports bar, pool and beer. and that was houston. today im having some food with jess and john and then flying out to new york city tonight. rico will join me tomorrow and then its camp on saturday. at camp i will hopefully be able to get some photos online and attach them to this blog. stay tuned.

its been good hearing from everyone back home, keep up the good work, for the non-emailers: shame. actually this trip everyone has been good so its ok.

speak to you soon kiddlets.

hey kids, flew into houston after a very excellent 5 days in vegas. little bit down in the $$ department but overall i think it was value for money. some amazing stories/adventures/pictures

caught up with jessalyn (a texan friend of mine i met in france) yesterday, we went to have lunch at a place called the cheesecake factory, it was very good; i was expecting something crappy, the logo is even the same as the place back home but its actually a really nice restaurant, one of the healthiest meals i have had in a long time: santa fe salad. delicious! she then took me around for about an hour: another restaurant called the aquarium which is more like an aquarium that serves food, we just had a look around there, there is a big cyllinder almost 3 storeys tall with fish in it, i also saw this strange thing that looked like a cross between a swordfish, a shark, a platypus and a stingray. very strange. then i came home for a nap (my flight was delayed and i hadn't really slept at all) then we went to a bar at the other end of town, very very texas. it was pretty dead so we had a few drinks and moved on. went to jessalyn and matt (her boyfriend)'s friend's place where they were playing poker. you would think after a week in vegas i would get away from gambling but no such luck there. i didnt bet much and lost horribly. poker is not my game.

after a quick stop at Whataburger(where the kitchen staff insisted i was someone famous) got back here pretty late (about 5am) and slept until three. i just got in from a stroll down to the imax museum where i saw a couple of exhibitions, one on inuits, one on acient iraq/mesopotamia and then one called bodyworks. that last one was mindblowing. it was an exhibition of a process called plastination: its where they take corpses etc and preserve them so that they are freestanding, they look like plastic models but they are actually the real thing. you werent allow to take photos but i snuck in a few anyway. the most impressive was of a guy riding the biggest horse i have ever seen. i got a snap of it but it wasnt so good because it was on the sly. ill show you anyway. it doesn't capture the size of this thing, standing next to it was quite.. whats the word? belittling? something like that.

the place im staying at is very cheap but kinda dingy. i think i might have to fork out the extra cash and move, besides turns out im not at the best end of town, cost me $40 for a cab out last night. ouch. its the only hostel in town so i might have to switch over to a hotel. im not exactly meeting fantastic people at this place so the main advantage of hostelling isnt really there. everyone is very sombre/shy/quiet. friendly but boring is the best i can do.

tonight im just going to take it easy and read/relax. its so hard to eat well here, there are take out places everywhere and markets etc are all a long way away. ie. need a car. i get my licence back in a few days but i dont think i can afford to be hiring a car, maybe just one day but otherwise ill just have to stick with crap food. the museum i was in had a macdonalds inside. dont see that back home...

tomorrow im headed out to a waterpark called schilterbaan. apparently it is very excellent and worth the 2 hour drive. jessalyn's plan is to stay there from open till close and then head out for friday night. i think that plan is insane but i've never been one to turn down a good dose of insanity.

running out of ideas here so keep in touch ya'll, fire some questions my way im feeling very incongruant here.

check out the photos/videos from a most excellent vegas party i was at. watch the whole video: me and rico are in there a couple of times:

http://vegas.napkinnights.com/mov/view_movie.php?id=6

back in san francisco after a lovely five days in petaluma, northern california. a beautiful town about an hour from San Francisco. partied heartily with some youngins and did a bit of freestyling in the barn. fully sick. sorry, i mean it was so bomb.

tonight i got talking to a guy on the street. i'm starting to get a hang of when someone wants something from you and when they dont. this guy didn't, so i talked to him. he was clearly a little off balance. but only enough to make him interesting yet not scary. we talked about how paramedics smoke, how cheap cigarettes are here compared to australia (about 1/4) and then he said, with a deadly straight face. wait for it... that he was a prophet of god. i wasnt quite sure i heard him right so i played along. he went on to explain that the police had been giving him a hard time because lately he had been making bad things happen: like some very seriously bad weather at the golden gate bridge. "sure they don't mind when you make good things happen, but when bad things happen; that's when they get upset"

i could make some sort of witty remark about this, but i think i speaks for itself on one level or another, so i'll leave it there.

hungover and achieving very little. check out is at 10:30, its now 3:30 and i just got my deposit back. it was quite a night. i just about got into a fight with a bunch of americans for telling them they were ignorant. we all knew it had to happen sometime, lets just hope its an isolated incident. hell, stranger things have happened. i then discovered that the paper bag and its not illegal trick doesnt work, and a friendly officer (looking very sexy in black) was kind enough to pour my beer down the drain. just as well, i was hammered. don't really remember much last night but the resident icelandic boys tell me i was 'difficult'. me? never. getting picked up shortly to head out to petaluma, fun capital of california so im told. can't wait. i think i will definately have to come back to this state after camp. i didnt give it the attention (sobriety) it deserves. had my first round of american mcdonalds today. surprisingly tastes like australian mcdonalds. go figure.

hola chicas, how's things? i will try to talk down my news a bit so you don't get too jealous while you're sitting in your little cubicles/rooms/toilets with your big pile of books and no drunken obnoxious james' spicing up your lives. ok?

last night i went out with a few guys staying at the hostel. just for a few beers, some pool and stuffing around. was nice to have a beer. havn't had one since sydney. was surprisingly hungover this morning considering how little i drank. that was irritating. today did very little. walked around, got a phone, and then i sat and read in union square. when i looked at the time it had been 3 hours. didn't feel like that long, i think i may have even got a little sunburnt. me. an australian. getting burnt in california. the shame.

i've been trying to find bill bryson's other book on the US but to no avail. sucks. i have been enjoying this book immensely and i have almost finished, when i got about half way through i decided to buy a little packet of post-it notes and i have been marking the spots where i have laughed out loud. there are quite a lot of post-it's in there. i suppose i want to go back later and use them for little points of inspiration when i write. the idea of being a writer has for the first time seemed plausible to me since reading this book, a lot of the things he does are reasonably quotidienne but his style of writing makes up for that, and i can see myself starting to think in a similar way. i wont give away any of my secrets just yet, but i have come up with some pretty funny stuff from the most mundane of daily events. then again maybe my view of reality has become skewed thanks to how little i enjoyed LA. still, my positive outlook makes me think i might go back when i have a driver's licence again. everyone deserves a second chance: even a tacky, boarded up, sprawl of a city like LA.

i've been a bit down today really. the amount of crazy/homeless people around has really been getting to me. you just have to completely ignore them, which really pangs; but what else can you do? there are hundreds of them here. and most of them are clearly drunk, drugged or have been so drunk/drugged up in the past that it has had a lasting effect on their motor skills. san francisco is an affluent place really. i shudder to think what poorer places like new orleans, detroit, new york are like. im actually a little scared about going to nyc. its going to be hard from what i have heard. everyone except you says its fucked up.

in a way i feel obliged to do more touristy things while im here, and in a way i feel like i can't be fucked. i did the bridge and that just about killed me. i keep being told i MUST do alcatraz, but i dont think i will, i think i might top things off tomorrow by going to berkeley and doing one of the tours there. with 18 nobel prize winners from one campus there must be something of note there.

i havn't been staying in touch with as many people as i should have. at this hostel you can only use the internet for ten minutes or so and i seem to use about 9:55 on writing here, so you should feel very special indeed. i have a long list of emails, some dating back to february, that i need to reply to, but i need to be in a certain frame of mind to give them the attention they deserve. which doesn't happen too often.

for those of you who have an interest in well... stuff: i was thinking of looking into re-enrolling at UWA and doing a bachelor of education, which is a year's supplementary study on top of the degree i have done, and then rather than going back home, just applying for an exchange in sweden/canada/usa. but probably not canada, why would i want to go there?

After just two days in LA and already I'm on TV; talk about perpetuating the stereotype of this city. After I was done with the newscrew I headed into Hollywood, up to the sign for some pictures and then back down to the boulevard. I was going to stick around for some American Idol filming but then I slapped myself across the face and decided better of it. I wandered past the Chinese Theatre and took some photos of a storm trooper and Eddie Murphy's hand prints in the pavement from 1987. I also found a star on the Walk of Fame for one Jimmie Dodd. Not a nickname I wanted to maintain but it was a photo waiting to be taken. I then did a bit of a trek to the bus and made my way to Santa Monica and checked out the beach/pier. It's a nice places but today was particularly windy and that dampened things a bit. I walked from Santa Monica pier south to Venice beach, thats my exercise for the month! How am I going to supersize myself if i walk off all my In and Out Double Doubles?? Venice was pretty cool, people working out, playing basketball, playing tennis, rollerblading, walking their dogs (90% of which were chiwawas) and such. I had heard that it was full of freaks and was pretty disappointed when it was all pretty normal. The freakiest thing I saw was a guy with no arms and no legs hooning down the sidewalk headfirst on a skateboard. I was trying to figure out how he the speed up. Then I began my marathon effort to get back home. Lots of walking and a couple of (nearly fell asleep on) buses later and here I am. I think it's naptime. Actually, burritos first. Later.

I'm doing it all over again. So far so good. Right now I am standing in Sydney airport, its 10:30 on Monday morning and I have certainly felt better. I have had a good week over here on the east coast. Oli and Monique very both hospitable and entertaining. Monique discovered taxis charge a puke fee, oli screamed something about pies and ran off down the street after an unsuccessful scuffle over the only set of house keys, and we quickly discovered that energy drink-induced heart palpitations are a bit disconcerting. Getting into Sydney Gemma was an enthusiastic host taking me out on a touristy day of opera houses and bridges, beaches and ferries. Although her commitment was put to the test when i suggested we dine on Kangaroo/Emu/Crocodile pizza. I really wanted to savour one last piece of australia before i left. Really. Just had my name read out over a loudspeaker so I should probably get on the plane. Later Cuzzes.

right now im sitting at ben's place just before i head off to the airport, hopefully i'll find my way there in one piece, go me.... well after being in a total panic that i would miss my plan (it took ovr two and a half hours to get here) i am sitting around waiting for my delayed plane,two and half hours delayed.... trip is off to a good start, go easyjet

just got a message from Line, my norwegian friend in nice, sounds like there are more of my old buddies in town than i thought, should be good!

thursday i did a fair bit of sitting around then got on a bus to london... rocked up at ben's place which is pretty sweet... huge place with 5 bedrooms and lots of people around all the time.. thursday night we went to the slug and lettuce followed by the prospect, woke up *somewhere*... and i was very proud of myself for finding my way home, go me

friday night we headed to brixton hill, we were later told that we were lucky not to have been stabbed, tristand got robbed though and ben almost got in a fight, so it wasnt a total loss, i ended up in picadilly circus with shirlz and vic, met an american and a saffa and checked out a couple of bars, found someone to practice my french with turns out i havn't forgotten totally everything. go soho

saturday night kinda sucked, we were too late getting organised and didnt get in anywhere, did a lot of walking around and wasnt too fun at all, and i had a really small quarter pounder. go maccas

hows it going cuzzes? here we are again on the other side of the world. all came as a bit of shock really, not much planning done just packed up and left the day after i handed in my last assignment. so after a surprisingly pleasant flight stopping in brunei and dubai i arrived in oxford to see my dear sister... i was briefly shown around the city which is very gothic looking and beautiful really..not that ihave seen the movies but i am told that harry potter was filmed here,i can imagine that, i always thought it was purely a university city but turns out there is a lot more to it... we went to a funky little place called the kazbar for lunch well technically 'tapas' really tasty stuff but serving so small! that night (wednesday) amy took me to 'formal hall' where you have dinner at the college and its all very regimented; grace in latin, standing for the professors... stuff like that... followed up by some heavy drinking and bad nightclubs :) go oxford.