Hello from the Antipodes, or should I say g'day?
One month after my final touchdown on Queensland turf and the memories of life in Europe and the adventures I had are starting to leak from my mind like water. The long journey back home contains enough stories to fill a novel, let alone the two long years I spent in that ancient, cold, northern part of the world.
The reverse culture shock has just started to wear off and I'm resisting the urge to stare as I walk down the street and repeat "Look, it's a rainbow lorikeet!" or "Wow, eucalyptus trees!" like an excited Japanese tourist. I'm still adjusting to the lack of people in the streets, and the way the sky reaches up so high and wide before it descends all the way down to the horizon.
The space. If you've never seen it you couldn't imagine it, and if you've never seen anything else you can't appreciate it. Even in the cities the buildings are spaced so widely, yards and alleys casually taking up real estate which would be precious in more populated countries. After so long being hemmed in and constricted in European cites, where every last inch is taken up by building butting up against building, the open emptiness of Australia induces a kind of agoraphobia.
And the light! The sun burns in the hot sky, glaring off the ocean and bleaching the trees and grass. Clouds don't sully the flat, open expanse of blue which stretches from one horizon to another, not a ceiling to the world but a huge dome. You learn to squint here. Hats and sunglasses become necessary clothing items and sunscreen is part of the morning shower routine as much as soap.
The trees and plants here are pale and desaturated, the smooth grey limbs of the eucalyptus reaching skywards like the limbs of frozen dancers. Grass underfoot crunches and turns brown, the only colour in the landscape is the birds. Vivid rainbows flitting through treetops, warbling, cawing and trilling from the moment the bright, hot sun begins to heat the landscape.
Night drains the heat from the air, birdsong is replaces by the shrill of insects, the leathery flap of wings and the whoosh of air as a flying fox passes overhead.
It's good to be home.
Sep 22, 2011
Mar 18, 2011
I begin my adventures in London
My god, it's been a bloody long time since I dusted off this blog.
Fitingly it seems my last post was about 4 months after I arrived in London, and this one'll be about 4 months before I haul my arse back to the Antipodes. Kind of a lot happened in the meantime, as you might have guessed.
That boyfriend, huh. That job. That sweet flat in East London.
Take a deep breath, this could be a long post...
So the job was great. Rare turned out to be a real laid-back place to work, and I made a few cool friends. The studio was a tube-ride, train journey and lift by car out into the English Midlands out past Birmingham. Taking me from grey cobbled streets and looming tower-blocks out through miles of terraced-house suburbs and further out until there was nothing but rolling hills, trees and quaint English farms. When I started in January it was mid-winter and the snow was laying thick on the fields, the further I got out into the country the thicker it fell until the whole vista passing by the train window was painted in soft monochrome washes of grey mist and white fields.
The studio was some amazing japanese inspired complex created when Rare were originally owned by Nintendo. Frozen duck ponds were surrounded by long open-plan barns connected by covered wooden paths. Bonsai trees dotted the area and there was a fully-staffed cafeteria on the premises since the nearest town was 5 minutes away by car and inaccessable to walk, especially in the thick snow that blanketed the fields surrounding the studio complex.
Outside the window in my cubicle I looked out onto the frozen pond where ducks slid and squabbled over the ice and the leafless bushes hung heavy with frost. Out the opposite window the white-clad grounds stretched away, bordered by a blue line of bare trees. It was warm in the studio however, and frequent trips to the kitchenette at the end of the barn for hot, instant coffee weren't discouraged. The cleaning ladies who patrolled the studio worked like ninjas, and cups would disappear from your desk moments after you'd emptied the last drop. After working for some months in hospitality myself it always left me with an uncomfortable feeling having someone clear up after me and be so invisible.
A new thing to get used to was the short daylight hours that and English winter brings. When I left my flat in the mornings around 5:35 am to catch the night-bus to the nearest tube station it was pitch black and felt like it was still midnight. The sky hadn't lightened by the time I was on the train and I would often sleep fitfully all the way to my interchange at Rugby where I would shiver on the exposed platform until my connecting train arrived. The light had just begun to break through the heavy morning fog when I picked up my lift at Atherstone ( although I remember taking taxis a few times that first week ). By the time you could call it morning I was sitting inside at my desk, watching the lightening sky over the duck pond.
Cut to the afternoon, when I would get a lift from work around 5pm as the daylight started to leak from the grey sky again. By the time my train arrived it would be twighlight and I'd arrive back in London in darkness to a late dinner and straight to bed. I took that train journey in darkness for several months before I ever saw what the countryside looked like.
After a week of doing that journey daily I realised I'd bitten off not just more than I could chew but more than I could fit in my mouth at all. To complicate matters the tube-line that would have taken me almost directly to the station where I would pick up my train was out ( a christmas present from London Transport that would last till February ), hence the dawn busride to another line, the slowest on the whole Tube network and prone to unexpectedly breaking down for minutes at a time.
I'd bought a week's worth of advance tickets for my journey, which the ticket-seller had kindly stapled together with the ticket and reservation ( for unknown reasons you need both to travel ) for each day together. The problem with advance tickets is you need to catch the particular train you're booked on, and with the Hammersmith line so prone to random breakdowns it was 50/50 whether I would make it there on time. Several times that week I didn't, but after pleading with the barrier attendant about TFL's track problems I would be able to get them to transfer me to the next train. Problem was, that meant I would be an hour late and miss my car-share at Atherstone.
This is what I hysterically and tearfully tried to explain to the barrier attendant on the last day that week when I missed my train the final time. There is nothing worse than missing a train unless it's thinking you're going to miss it because your tube has been late again, running like the wind to the platform and seeing it still there but being unable to get through the barrier because your tickets have been stapled together in the wrong order and the attendent is being particularly dense that morning and won't let you through until you've sorted through all of them to prove you really have it and watched your train pull out of the platform without you. Which, of course, is what happened that morning.
At which point the exhaustion of the previous week and the frustration of dealing with an unsympathetic, insufferable jobsworth led to a huge public meltdown and I very nearly became the person those TFL 'please do not abuse our staff' posters are about.
So, the next week I booked myself into a B&B close to work for a couple of days to save my sanity and pocketbook, and began frantically searching for rooms in the neighbouring villages.
My first experience of an English B&B was something of a culture shock. The elderly couple who owned the large farm-house where I was staying had let out the spare bedrooms but the house, with all it's granny-fied, doily-covered charm was left untouched. It was rather like staying with elderly relatives and I experienced the awkwardness of having someone cook breakfast for you and acting like hotel staff after you've apparently just laid up in the spare room.
The permanent room in a local town which I managed to find couldn't have been better. A quaint 300 year old tudor-style, thatched-roof cottage which could have housed a family of hobbits. Or a family of short, friendly, midlanders with high-powered office jobs. The middle-aged couple were younger than their years and had been renting out the spare room their teenage daughter had vacated after moving to London for university and a singing career. A language school in the area meant that there was always a steady stream of young international teachers to fill the room, but after the last had left unexpectedly after 'health problems' the room was left vacant mid-term.
The teenage son of the family had the other room and I settled into life in a tiny English village, barely 2km wide with countryside surrounding it and 1 bus every hour as a way to escape. The staff at the studio were dotted around that area and I was able to pick up a lift with an exhuberant Scottish bloke who lived a short and pretty walk away on the other side of the village. Those early-morning walks down past little fields of horses and a beautiful rectory and graveyard filled me with an appreciation for the quiet, self-contained beauty of the countryside that English poets wax lyrical about and which is so divorced from the arid, sweeping grandure of Australia.
Still, the short English days meant that I didn't really see the village in daylight for the first few weeks. As the sun began to rise earlier and earlier I was slowly presented with a lovely, quaint country town set either 300 or 40 years in the past depending on whether you were looking at the buildings or the residents. The increasingly colourful hair I aquired later on meant that I became something of a well-known figure walking through the village each morning and afternoon. Still, it was the kind of small town where people nod to each other in the street and exchange "good morning"s.
The contrast from the East London towerblock where I spent my weekends couldn't have been greater. Every friday afternoon I would leave work at 5 on the dot to pick up a train back to the city, arriving tired but triumphant to a glass of red wine with Ruth, my flatmate. Her little flat ( I would always think of it as hers, since I spent so little time there that it never felt like mine ) was an oasis of frugal, bohemian clutter hanging 24 stories above the dirty streets of ( what I would later discover to be ) the 2nd most poverty stricken burough of London.
Still, my weekends in London were my life. I didn't care that I was paying two rents and extortionate train fares, I was able to go out to amazing markets, shop in vast thrift stores and explore the hidden corners of one of the most exciting cities in the world to my heart's content. During that time I spent a lot of money but aquired a lot of memories and learnt the byways and attractions of that city better than some people who have lived there their whole lives.
Portabello road, Burough, Brick Lane, Spittalfields; I was on a quest to see all the street markets, vintage markets and food markets that London had to offer. This was a world away from the sparsely populated Valley markets and Davies park was dwarfed by the monstrous Burough food markets. Slowly I discovered hidden jems of coffee houses, vintage stores and beautiful, narrow cobbled streets.
....
Fitingly it seems my last post was about 4 months after I arrived in London, and this one'll be about 4 months before I haul my arse back to the Antipodes. Kind of a lot happened in the meantime, as you might have guessed.
That boyfriend, huh. That job. That sweet flat in East London.
Take a deep breath, this could be a long post...
So the job was great. Rare turned out to be a real laid-back place to work, and I made a few cool friends. The studio was a tube-ride, train journey and lift by car out into the English Midlands out past Birmingham. Taking me from grey cobbled streets and looming tower-blocks out through miles of terraced-house suburbs and further out until there was nothing but rolling hills, trees and quaint English farms. When I started in January it was mid-winter and the snow was laying thick on the fields, the further I got out into the country the thicker it fell until the whole vista passing by the train window was painted in soft monochrome washes of grey mist and white fields.
The studio was some amazing japanese inspired complex created when Rare were originally owned by Nintendo. Frozen duck ponds were surrounded by long open-plan barns connected by covered wooden paths. Bonsai trees dotted the area and there was a fully-staffed cafeteria on the premises since the nearest town was 5 minutes away by car and inaccessable to walk, especially in the thick snow that blanketed the fields surrounding the studio complex.
Outside the window in my cubicle I looked out onto the frozen pond where ducks slid and squabbled over the ice and the leafless bushes hung heavy with frost. Out the opposite window the white-clad grounds stretched away, bordered by a blue line of bare trees. It was warm in the studio however, and frequent trips to the kitchenette at the end of the barn for hot, instant coffee weren't discouraged. The cleaning ladies who patrolled the studio worked like ninjas, and cups would disappear from your desk moments after you'd emptied the last drop. After working for some months in hospitality myself it always left me with an uncomfortable feeling having someone clear up after me and be so invisible.
A new thing to get used to was the short daylight hours that and English winter brings. When I left my flat in the mornings around 5:35 am to catch the night-bus to the nearest tube station it was pitch black and felt like it was still midnight. The sky hadn't lightened by the time I was on the train and I would often sleep fitfully all the way to my interchange at Rugby where I would shiver on the exposed platform until my connecting train arrived. The light had just begun to break through the heavy morning fog when I picked up my lift at Atherstone ( although I remember taking taxis a few times that first week ). By the time you could call it morning I was sitting inside at my desk, watching the lightening sky over the duck pond.
Cut to the afternoon, when I would get a lift from work around 5pm as the daylight started to leak from the grey sky again. By the time my train arrived it would be twighlight and I'd arrive back in London in darkness to a late dinner and straight to bed. I took that train journey in darkness for several months before I ever saw what the countryside looked like.
After a week of doing that journey daily I realised I'd bitten off not just more than I could chew but more than I could fit in my mouth at all. To complicate matters the tube-line that would have taken me almost directly to the station where I would pick up my train was out ( a christmas present from London Transport that would last till February ), hence the dawn busride to another line, the slowest on the whole Tube network and prone to unexpectedly breaking down for minutes at a time.
I'd bought a week's worth of advance tickets for my journey, which the ticket-seller had kindly stapled together with the ticket and reservation ( for unknown reasons you need both to travel ) for each day together. The problem with advance tickets is you need to catch the particular train you're booked on, and with the Hammersmith line so prone to random breakdowns it was 50/50 whether I would make it there on time. Several times that week I didn't, but after pleading with the barrier attendant about TFL's track problems I would be able to get them to transfer me to the next train. Problem was, that meant I would be an hour late and miss my car-share at Atherstone.
This is what I hysterically and tearfully tried to explain to the barrier attendant on the last day that week when I missed my train the final time. There is nothing worse than missing a train unless it's thinking you're going to miss it because your tube has been late again, running like the wind to the platform and seeing it still there but being unable to get through the barrier because your tickets have been stapled together in the wrong order and the attendent is being particularly dense that morning and won't let you through until you've sorted through all of them to prove you really have it and watched your train pull out of the platform without you. Which, of course, is what happened that morning.
At which point the exhaustion of the previous week and the frustration of dealing with an unsympathetic, insufferable jobsworth led to a huge public meltdown and I very nearly became the person those TFL 'please do not abuse our staff' posters are about.
So, the next week I booked myself into a B&B close to work for a couple of days to save my sanity and pocketbook, and began frantically searching for rooms in the neighbouring villages.
My first experience of an English B&B was something of a culture shock. The elderly couple who owned the large farm-house where I was staying had let out the spare bedrooms but the house, with all it's granny-fied, doily-covered charm was left untouched. It was rather like staying with elderly relatives and I experienced the awkwardness of having someone cook breakfast for you and acting like hotel staff after you've apparently just laid up in the spare room.
The permanent room in a local town which I managed to find couldn't have been better. A quaint 300 year old tudor-style, thatched-roof cottage which could have housed a family of hobbits. Or a family of short, friendly, midlanders with high-powered office jobs. The middle-aged couple were younger than their years and had been renting out the spare room their teenage daughter had vacated after moving to London for university and a singing career. A language school in the area meant that there was always a steady stream of young international teachers to fill the room, but after the last had left unexpectedly after 'health problems' the room was left vacant mid-term.
The teenage son of the family had the other room and I settled into life in a tiny English village, barely 2km wide with countryside surrounding it and 1 bus every hour as a way to escape. The staff at the studio were dotted around that area and I was able to pick up a lift with an exhuberant Scottish bloke who lived a short and pretty walk away on the other side of the village. Those early-morning walks down past little fields of horses and a beautiful rectory and graveyard filled me with an appreciation for the quiet, self-contained beauty of the countryside that English poets wax lyrical about and which is so divorced from the arid, sweeping grandure of Australia.
Still, the short English days meant that I didn't really see the village in daylight for the first few weeks. As the sun began to rise earlier and earlier I was slowly presented with a lovely, quaint country town set either 300 or 40 years in the past depending on whether you were looking at the buildings or the residents. The increasingly colourful hair I aquired later on meant that I became something of a well-known figure walking through the village each morning and afternoon. Still, it was the kind of small town where people nod to each other in the street and exchange "good morning"s.
The contrast from the East London towerblock where I spent my weekends couldn't have been greater. Every friday afternoon I would leave work at 5 on the dot to pick up a train back to the city, arriving tired but triumphant to a glass of red wine with Ruth, my flatmate. Her little flat ( I would always think of it as hers, since I spent so little time there that it never felt like mine ) was an oasis of frugal, bohemian clutter hanging 24 stories above the dirty streets of ( what I would later discover to be ) the 2nd most poverty stricken burough of London.
Still, my weekends in London were my life. I didn't care that I was paying two rents and extortionate train fares, I was able to go out to amazing markets, shop in vast thrift stores and explore the hidden corners of one of the most exciting cities in the world to my heart's content. During that time I spent a lot of money but aquired a lot of memories and learnt the byways and attractions of that city better than some people who have lived there their whole lives.
Portabello road, Burough, Brick Lane, Spittalfields; I was on a quest to see all the street markets, vintage markets and food markets that London had to offer. This was a world away from the sparsely populated Valley markets and Davies park was dwarfed by the monstrous Burough food markets. Slowly I discovered hidden jems of coffee houses, vintage stores and beautiful, narrow cobbled streets.
....
Dec 28, 2009
It's 2am and I'm watching the city that doesn't sleep
This blog has kind of fallen into disrepair. I used to update it as a way of encouraging myself to sketch, or to log my recent travel adventures. Now I feel the need to write so I can free a few thoughts that have been running around in my head.
For the last couple of nights I haven't been sleeping properly. Partly that's because of the hyperactive, nocturnal kitten my flatmate and I are taking care of over the christmas break, but mostly I've been in a mild state of anxiety about something I can't quite put my finger on.
After countless hours ranting and complaining to myself about some of the things my boyfriend has been doing to drive me nuts I realised I've just been diverting my anxiety onto him. Really, it's me. I've moved to a foreign country less than four months ago ( which despite outward similarities has a whole bag of fun culture shocks to stumble over ), I've been working my arse off in a low-wage job that's completely new to me and in a couple of weeks I start a full-time job at a high-profile company located a 2 hour journey away.
Throw in the usual tension and mania that the enforced Christmas jollity and consumerism brings and you have one stressed out kitty ( and not just the one who spent all last night leaping onto my bed at AM intervals ).
Being in such a new situation has brought up a whole swathe of issues, neurosis and baggage I thought I'd left long behind, several months and 2000 km ago. Turns out; wherever you go, there you are. I can travel to the other end of the earth and all the baggage I didn't think I'd checked in has been forwarded along with me. Plus a new bunch of fun cultural adaptations and resettling issues that international relocation brings with it.
So, the skinny. I'm dating a guy who's like me in a bunch of strange little ways, but who brings to the table some emotional baggage of his own and a personal history I have as little success dealing with as he apparently does. I'm living in a city whose grim, grey facade hides a multitude of fascinating wonders but none of the comfort of the familiar. However, despite having fallen into the deep end with a series of hospitality-type jobs of the sort normally staffed by polish immigrants I managed to keep my head above water and even enjoy myself.
I'm about to start a job at a very nice company who head-hunted me from a games convention I attended a couple of months back. To rub it in a bit more I managed to get this job without the help of the 3 ( count them, 3 ) recruitment agencies who're supposedly supposed to be doing this for me.
Add to that the fact that I live in a cute, cheap apartment in the funky East End of London, with a sweet flatmate who's part of a big artist community who populate our building and the surrounding tower-blocks.
Jeez. What the heck have I been complaining about.
So I'm a bit overwhelmed by the big commute out to the countryside that I'll have to do every morning and evening to get to my new job. And I'm nervous about starting my new position. And London is big and impersonal and unforgiving.
I made it this far. London's not so bad, the thrift store shopping is to die for and I'm finally feeling free to dress as silly as I like and not worry about people thinking I'm odd ( provided I stay within a 2 mile radius of Shoreditch of course ). The job's nothing to sweat about, I've done harder stuff than this before and lord knows games developers aren't exactly uptight or hard to get along with. I'll have 2 relaxing hours to draw, write and watch the pretty english countryside go by as I commute and come home to, perhaps, a hot dinner cooked by my lovely flatmate and a call from my boyfriend who, despite anything else I might gripe about, misses me and thinks I'm the best thing since skinny jeans for guys.
Pretty lucky I guess. So, emotional baggage begone. What is the use of traveling 2000 kilometres across the globe if you can't lose some unwanted baggage along the way. So there goes years of not feeling like I fit in, not being confident about my body, not trusting anyone enough to just let myself be loved...circling forlornly around a baggage carousel in Hungary, a million miles from where I am today.
For the last couple of nights I haven't been sleeping properly. Partly that's because of the hyperactive, nocturnal kitten my flatmate and I are taking care of over the christmas break, but mostly I've been in a mild state of anxiety about something I can't quite put my finger on.
After countless hours ranting and complaining to myself about some of the things my boyfriend has been doing to drive me nuts I realised I've just been diverting my anxiety onto him. Really, it's me. I've moved to a foreign country less than four months ago ( which despite outward similarities has a whole bag of fun culture shocks to stumble over ), I've been working my arse off in a low-wage job that's completely new to me and in a couple of weeks I start a full-time job at a high-profile company located a 2 hour journey away.
Throw in the usual tension and mania that the enforced Christmas jollity and consumerism brings and you have one stressed out kitty ( and not just the one who spent all last night leaping onto my bed at AM intervals ).
Being in such a new situation has brought up a whole swathe of issues, neurosis and baggage I thought I'd left long behind, several months and 2000 km ago. Turns out; wherever you go, there you are. I can travel to the other end of the earth and all the baggage I didn't think I'd checked in has been forwarded along with me. Plus a new bunch of fun cultural adaptations and resettling issues that international relocation brings with it.
So, the skinny. I'm dating a guy who's like me in a bunch of strange little ways, but who brings to the table some emotional baggage of his own and a personal history I have as little success dealing with as he apparently does. I'm living in a city whose grim, grey facade hides a multitude of fascinating wonders but none of the comfort of the familiar. However, despite having fallen into the deep end with a series of hospitality-type jobs of the sort normally staffed by polish immigrants I managed to keep my head above water and even enjoy myself.
I'm about to start a job at a very nice company who head-hunted me from a games convention I attended a couple of months back. To rub it in a bit more I managed to get this job without the help of the 3 ( count them, 3 ) recruitment agencies who're supposedly supposed to be doing this for me.
Add to that the fact that I live in a cute, cheap apartment in the funky East End of London, with a sweet flatmate who's part of a big artist community who populate our building and the surrounding tower-blocks.
Jeez. What the heck have I been complaining about.
So I'm a bit overwhelmed by the big commute out to the countryside that I'll have to do every morning and evening to get to my new job. And I'm nervous about starting my new position. And London is big and impersonal and unforgiving.
I made it this far. London's not so bad, the thrift store shopping is to die for and I'm finally feeling free to dress as silly as I like and not worry about people thinking I'm odd ( provided I stay within a 2 mile radius of Shoreditch of course ). The job's nothing to sweat about, I've done harder stuff than this before and lord knows games developers aren't exactly uptight or hard to get along with. I'll have 2 relaxing hours to draw, write and watch the pretty english countryside go by as I commute and come home to, perhaps, a hot dinner cooked by my lovely flatmate and a call from my boyfriend who, despite anything else I might gripe about, misses me and thinks I'm the best thing since skinny jeans for guys.
Pretty lucky I guess. So, emotional baggage begone. What is the use of traveling 2000 kilometres across the globe if you can't lose some unwanted baggage along the way. So there goes years of not feeling like I fit in, not being confident about my body, not trusting anyone enough to just let myself be loved...circling forlornly around a baggage carousel in Hungary, a million miles from where I am today.
Jul 6, 2009
May 17, 2009
Jan 13, 2009
Sep 25, 2008
India
The view from one of the restaurants in the middle of the lake. Very fancy.
Showing off my mad cooking skills at the Spice Box cookery class.
Women bathing in their saris at the ghats in Udaipur.
The lake palace (now a hotel) that sits in the middle of the lake in Udaipur.
Unfortunately trying this myself voids my insurance policy.
Traditional rug making near Jodpur. 
The Meranghar fort in Jodpur with a view of the blue city.
Sep 12, 2008
We're not in Kansas anymore
Where to start. Was it when I was packing my bags again yesterday morning for the dozenth time. Or When I was shuffling through customs at the International airport. Or perhaps it was when I bumped into a friend from work who I'd thought left the country weeks ago and who, when we compared boarding passes, was sitting in the seat in front on the stopover flight to Singapore.
Ryan was there with his mother, and when she found out my next stop was new New Delhi they took the opportunity to gang up on me. Dont drink the water! Dont eat salads! Dont go walking at night!
I was still singing It's a Small World in my head when I was stopped by the security guard. The sight of my umbrella in my carry-on luggage had caused a bit of a stir. After getting the twelfth degree about why anyone would carry an umbrella on a flight I find out that you can smuggle things in them. Wonders will never cease.
Four hours into the flight and I felt like I'd reverted to a baby-like state. I had people bringing me food at regular intervals, but a pale imitation of real, adult food. I was sat in front of a television, plugged into my entertainment unit, watching the world go by through the window I couldn't open.
Nearly half the trip had gone by and we were still over Australia. It gave me, finally, a sense of how huge our country really is. Roads that go on straight for hundreds of kilometers, just once kinking around some creek or outcrop before continuing on, straight as a line drawn by a cartographer between the two points of civilisation.
We chased the sun across the globe, heading into the west, trailing sunset behind us. The last light had only just faded from the horizon when the lights of Singapore blossomed beneath us. Patches of disconnected light like pieces of a puzzle strewn across a tabletop hinted at the multitude of tiny islands beneath us.
I didn't know this, but apparently your bags aren't taken off the plane if you're just making a night's stopover before carrying on your journey. I step out into the muggy night air feeling somewhat under prepared and over exposed, toting my small backpack which doesnt even contain a change of clothes.
Perhaps this is where it starts. Sun not even up, as I sneak from my concrete bunker of a room, body clock giving me false signals to the time of day. Listening to the traffic go by and the soft snores of the boys at reception, sleeping in bunks above their desks. Waiting for the sun to rise through the heavy cloud over a city busy at 6am.
Or perhaps it starts tomorrow, in Delhi.
-- H in S
Ryan was there with his mother, and when she found out my next stop was new New Delhi they took the opportunity to gang up on me. Dont drink the water! Dont eat salads! Dont go walking at night!
I was still singing It's a Small World in my head when I was stopped by the security guard. The sight of my umbrella in my carry-on luggage had caused a bit of a stir. After getting the twelfth degree about why anyone would carry an umbrella on a flight I find out that you can smuggle things in them. Wonders will never cease.
Four hours into the flight and I felt like I'd reverted to a baby-like state. I had people bringing me food at regular intervals, but a pale imitation of real, adult food. I was sat in front of a television, plugged into my entertainment unit, watching the world go by through the window I couldn't open.
Nearly half the trip had gone by and we were still over Australia. It gave me, finally, a sense of how huge our country really is. Roads that go on straight for hundreds of kilometers, just once kinking around some creek or outcrop before continuing on, straight as a line drawn by a cartographer between the two points of civilisation.
We chased the sun across the globe, heading into the west, trailing sunset behind us. The last light had only just faded from the horizon when the lights of Singapore blossomed beneath us. Patches of disconnected light like pieces of a puzzle strewn across a tabletop hinted at the multitude of tiny islands beneath us.
I didn't know this, but apparently your bags aren't taken off the plane if you're just making a night's stopover before carrying on your journey. I step out into the muggy night air feeling somewhat under prepared and over exposed, toting my small backpack which doesnt even contain a change of clothes.
Perhaps this is where it starts. Sun not even up, as I sneak from my concrete bunker of a room, body clock giving me false signals to the time of day. Listening to the traffic go by and the soft snores of the boys at reception, sleeping in bunks above their desks. Waiting for the sun to rise through the heavy cloud over a city busy at 6am.
Or perhaps it starts tomorrow, in Delhi.
-- H in S
Jul 25, 2008
More texture updates
Finally gave in and used some photo-derived texture elements. The rest of the skin is hand-painted. He still needs a bit of hair but I haven't found a nice way to create realistic stubble yet.
-- H
Jul 23, 2008
Zbrush fun
Something I've been working on every so often for the last few weeks. Still need some hair and another texture pass, but I've been told it's a passable likeness.-- H
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