All by myself...

They were dark times indeed. My faithful travel companion had once more left me; this time in a strange new land where the sun never rises and the people all speak in a foreign tongue that leaves much to the imagination.

I had been abandoned (joking Jo) in a house where the last owner had passed away in mysterious cicumstances (she died. you don't think death is mysetrious?!). Weird noises from the celler echo ominously throughout the house each night as I lie curled upon a mattress on the floor; crucifix at the ready as a weak form of protection (found it here with the old grannies stuff). A soul still present? (More probably sounds from the water pipes I still haven't got around to insulating).

I work alone (everyone else was smart enough to move on already), in my rags (borrowed Steffen's clothes to save my own) for long hours each day (I'm still managing a healthy 10 or so each day). Slaving away with no finish in sight (actually, it looks like I'll be done in 3 days!) and no one to confide in. Save that is for a crazy, pale faced boy, who is as much fun to talk to as a packet of soggy potato chips, a hippy girl who but momentarily joins us here on earth for brief instances of environmentally enlightening epiphanies and a ponsy petty prat of a girl who has yet to move in as the floor wasn't clean enough (seriously!).

The boss gone, I find myself talking to myself a lot. Not crazy talk, actually quite revealing, but i think a sign of loneliness and a sign of a time to move on. I have also taken to binge eating. I usually eat a lot but now I positively gorge myself! I am going through a kilo of muesli every 2 days, an 800g tin of meal for every lunch with rice or pasta added and the usual assortment of fruit, bread and so on in between.

But the money is good and though I question almost daily why I am letting life passs me by right now, i remind myself that soon it will end and then i can travel once more. To surf, to sail and to live!

All roads lead to Rome

My blog has really taken a turn for the worst since I arrived in Europe it seems. To myself at least. I am just using up breathes but achieving little. Except of course the money earning portion which was well worth it. But now I am at a bit of a loss as to what to do...

Should I join the 6 month road trip around Europe on offer?
Should I go travel with this CS girl in Bulgaria?
Should I join a road trip to Turkey with a friend from CS?
Should I go back to Laos, work in a bar and enjoy the relaxing lifestyle that is Vang Viang?
Should I move on to Sth America and head into the world of adventure once more?
Should I visit, as i wanted, Poland, Ireland, Scotland and Spain?
Should I go to TT on the Isle of Mann and see Pierre again?
Should I head back to India and travel down and back into SE Asia?

Where is life taking me? In two weeks it will be somewhere in any case...

Anger

To be on a constant high like the Dalai Lama, a high often sought using elicit drugs by those seeking to join him, is maybe the best way to live. To be always happy.

But to be angry can be fun too. Being pissed off for no reason other than being pissed off. Feeling the anger surge through your body. You can feel the power it brings. It burns through you like molten lava. A shot of raw spirit right to the soul. The sheer power of it. Impressive.

But it burns others, not just yourself I guess. Like happiness, the feeling is spread to those who see it.

Oh, and the Kowhai tree. It means 'yellow tree' yeah? Wow, that's an original name for a tree...

Smile!

I love waking to a new dream. A new set of moral rights and wrongs. New desires, new aspirations, new goals, new achievements. To wake and find my wants in life have changed.

A friend told me recently that sometimes when you travel you have too much time to look into yourself. Too much soul searching. Too much of trying to figure out who you are instead of just being who you are.

I never changed this much back home. Too much was going on. Always. Too much worrying about others. What they thought. How they acted. Too much time spent trying to be someone I wasn't.

To think too much is dangerous. But to think not at all is too.

Righteous eyes. That would be the name of my band, hahah.

Bath time

Scscscshhhhrrrllllll. Make a sound like slurping on a slushee only using your spit for moisture. Every now and then suck a little harder. That’s the noise the bath used to make when it emptied at my old house when I was a kid. Some sewer dwelling monster sucking the water down the drain and making mini whirlpools form at my end. And parents thought we just didn’t want to get clean!

But when I empty the german tub here at work, no sound is made. Just a slow disappearance of water until only my muck and a few hairs are left on the bath floor. Why?

So not much going on these days. MY life is pretty routine. Dislike that word and it’s connotations. For me it is not really a routine yet. More a means to an end.

(Boring life part…)

I usually wake around 7:30. Or 7am if Jo changes his alarm and doesn’t think to tell me! Ended up being ready for work at like half the hour! Crazy early!

Work then starts round 8am after a breaky of muesli, banana and joghurt. Jo joins me at around 9 most days. We waste an hour planning what to do all day and then do what we do every day. Sand a bit. Paint a bit. Smash a bit. Paint a bit more. And so on. Majority of the work at the mo is painting. Half and hour lunch and a coffee break and the day usually ends 10-11hrs later, $200NZ richer, by like 6:30pm. Dinner followed by an hour of mindless mate chatter and then music on, into our respective baths and it’s time to soak for an hour plus and for me to write something if any thoughts decide to visit me. Maybe a quick workout in the climbing gym we are building or a visit to the supermarket to fill in the night. Then it is bed as the body is usually wrecked.

(End of boring part.. mostly)

My arms are smarting. If you get paint on yours, I wouldn’t recommend using sandpaper to get it off. Ouch sums up the after effects well. Especially if you plan on bathing any time soon.

Not much else to report. In England you can buy mushy peas in a tin. In Germany you can buy jars of pickled sausages or bags of sauerkraut.

Oh, and there was a pig wandering the autobahn yesterday. 200km/hr car plus pig = not good. Wonder what happened to it? Did someone save it?

The boss

Stephen, pronounced Stchefen, is our boss here. A more laid back guy would be hard to find. He truly lives with hardly a care. Honorary kiwi for sure. He works with chemicals but lives to climb, hey, i wonder if i can make this one rhyme? this week's been crazy, 11hr days. 8 days straight, left me missing me old ways. up at 7, bed at 10, but body is exhausted... nope, too tired to rhyme for now.

Jo's bar

Jo still loves Sophass. I think that's awesome. I hope he goes back there soon. Why not? He is thinking of opening a bar there perhaps. Near Sianikville. He'd kill me to be writing this (o:

I hope he does do it. Then Sam and I can head over after Sth America and visit. Free drinks as we work behind the bar and in between we can tour the area once more. Take Sam to Vang viang!

He could call it Super Jo. Or Where it's at. Any ideas? Maybe No idea.

Would be neat if he owned a bar. And he's lost the travel bug so why not work somewhere cool till it comes back? Some people dream of what he has the chance to do. Own a bar on a tropical beach? Girl by your side? They'd kill for it.

Out damn spot! Out!

It is now Saturday the 23rd of Feb. I have a spot of paint on my eyeball that I can't blink away.

Work goes on. Life goes on. Jo and I have started to build a climbing wall in the attic here. Comes with a rolling pin I use to do pull ups on. We also ran a couple of laps of the stairs and then while carrying a 30kg bag of plaster. A few push ups and pull ups and we were done. This routine hasn't lasted though. Wasn't even to be repeated. I'm trying protein dinners too. Fish, eggs, rice, olives and capsicum. This routine has died too, haha.

We have just come back from a day off. We spent it in Karlsruhe at Jo's aunt's. I took his cousin to the pools for a bit. Swam a few laps. Borrowed some goggles off the pool attendant so they were real laps. There was a girl swimming too in my lane. Not that there were lane ropes. I plan on going back now because of her, haha. Played with Chris and his friend on the slides for a bit too. Each time they would take off, they would pull their pants right down as they thought there togs were slowing them down. Brilliant.

Then that night we went for a drink at an Irish bar. A beer and a snakebite. I suggested the bite after trying it in the Isle. Beer, cider and a drop of black current juice. Tastes like juice but has a kick to it. Then off to bed before work the next day. We left at 7!

Is the worst job to be a butterfly collector? You kill what you love.

Today at work, while fixing a ceiling to the bathroom I stole a glance outside and an aborigini rode past on a bike! I'm in Germany!

Dear diary, (man if you ever wrote that for real, you are sad. Sad and sad. Sorry. But you are.)

Today was the first day of work where I was over it. Couldn’t go around it, couldn’t go under it and so I was left being over it. And it could, and would, have been a good day only someone was playing with time. Slowing it down till it was almost still. Honestly wouldn’t be amazed if it was going backwards for half of it. As you’d imagine, this made the day drag on a bit… How was it for you? On the 21^st Feb? I heard on the radio similar thoughts to mine were voiced by uni students worldwide stuck in life draining lectures but if you were on holiday, I reckon you ought to thank the guy!

- if you want to get paid at work for doing nothing, try drinking lots of water = toilet time, and if you are truly committed, try running your hand down jib board = splinter removal time.

Or that was this morning. Then the person playing with the hours messed up big time, spilt the tin and sent time pouring out of control all over the place. Time became an unreality. Or was that the paint fumes? Woah, there’s a troll sitting under my ladder! Where am I?

Couple of hours later (I update when I get a thought you see) and I am entering the land of the bad trip. It feels as though I am painting door frames with a miniscule brush over and over, door after door, room after room and it just won’t stop!!!

Kill me, dress me, wash me, run with me, learn the time with me… become me!

Sitting in a cauldron of boiling water, the likes of which were last seen on Island adventures gone wrong when the little pygmy natives cooked the lost white missionary, I try in vain to blink away the streams of liquid salt pouring into my eyes. The instant tan line I have attained in less than a minute is sadly a bright red one and the ominous music in the background is giving off the impression things might not be looking too good for me right now.

And fudge is it HOT!

My armpits are foaming though that could be the soap. Or on the other hand, I could have armpit rabies??

Just knocked off another 10hr day and writing my journal in the bathtub is probably not the greatest idea I have had this lifetime. Oh, did I say? I’m now a builder.

Flew back into Germany bout a week ago from old England ways. Couch surfed around Frankfurt for a few days and then hitched down to Karlsruhe. Couch surfed some more and then moved on to Landau where I met up with Jo again and began work. Needed some down time.

Oh, just checked. It is sweat. Thought for a moment that perhaps the shower was running.

- If my sweat is this salty, does that mean I have too much salt in my diet??

So far at work I have smashed two walls, 30 windows, and a door. Also stripped wallpaper, sanded and ground walls, selotaped paper to a floor, drawn lines, built Noah’s arc and screwed some screws. I have also inhaled enough paint fumes to get an entire country high and so all in all, a pretty productive week I feel. Should have been inhaling primer fumes but the paint tin looked the same and it was all in German so if you ask an ENGLISH speaking person to primer the walls, how the hell are they gonna be able to tell the difference! Oops (o:

Now, with Jackson playing in the background, a stomach full of blue berries and rice pudding and of course, the sweat aiding in keeping the bath full, I lye contemplating, well, nothing really.

I prefer showers but I was told I couldn’t take one yet as the tiles hadn’t been laid. Um, how about the fact that there is no shower head either? Wouldn’t that be a pretty good reason?

I am quietly content these days. It’s good to be doing something productive and good to catch up with Jo again. Lots of laughs and no thoughts of the moro for now. Never mind trying to remember the name of yet another person met along the travelling road (O:

- If there is a soulmate for everyone and someone settles for less, are they stealing someone else’s soulmate??

My hair goes past my shoulders now at the back. Some would call it a mullet, I call it awesome Mr Henry. Um, actually no I don’t. I call it The invisible wisdom of a thousand trees. Um, no again. I guess I call it a mullet too. Haha.

Oh, Venga Boys.

Hey, anyone want to tour Ireland, Scotland and Iceland with me? Otherwise met in South America in around Oct? Anyone want anything posted from the land of sausage?