Leaving on a jet plane...and arriving on same.

9:30pm (Stockholm time), CityBackpackers Hostel, 29th July 2009

I'm not sure if it has really sunk in yet, but I am going to the far side of the world. I'm already there, actually...

I confess that I felt quite homesick for a hour or so my first day in Stockholm. Just wanted to pack it all in and come home. It's not a good feeling – akin to depression in some ways. It probably didn't help that I was hungry and extremely tired from being awake (or no more than half-asleep) for such a long time: 14 hours awake in Singapore + 13 hours flight + 2 hour transfer at Heathrow + 2 hour flight to Arlanda + 8 hours of wandering Stockholm = 39 hours without decent, proper, lie-down-in-bed sleep. I actually cheered myself up with whacky schemes for cheering myself up: having Hannah kidnapped by hired goons and shipped to me for company, somehow getting adopted by a kind Swedish family, hopping over to Old Blightey and borrowing a Tardis from the BBC...the list goes on. It actually made me feel better, silly as it sounds. The pizza helped too though :-)

I'm not quite sure how to write about leaving Melbourne. The actual physical process is bizarre to be frank: simultaneously exciting and routine. Successfully completing it on time and on target is reassuring, even comforting; the realization of the finality of the act is quite terrifying and unsettling. You walk through that door, down that air-bridge, and you're not going back. You can't, really. And from that point on, anything could happen, but certain things wont – Sunday Roast with the family, doing the Age quiz with friends over coffee in Union House, falling asleep holding your girlfriend close against you, walking home from work over Princes Bridge in the evening listening to the skirl of Auld Lang Syne from that piper who only seems to know three tunes, riding a tram into the junction for sausage rolls from Jenny's. And for these things you exchange the prospect of adventures as yet unknown. This absence and presence of possibility is exhilarating, but also sad and a little scary.

So all in all, I wont describe the scenes of departure. Too sad and complicated for me, and probably dull as ditch-water for you, those living vicariously through my travel blog. You know who you are...

I will say unequivocally that I hate most aspects of flying. I derive some small enjoyment from just three: the part of the take-off when the wheels first leave the runway and you experience that sense of floating, the view (when there is one) and the roar of the air-brakes the plane uses to slow down quickly after landing. Everything else was predictably average through to awful: seats, leg room, toilets, company (except the two nice old ladies from Perth on my SIN-LHR flight – big shout out to them as they cruise down the Rhine!) and of course, food. I wont go on about it, but just how do they make it SO bad in SO many ways? Of the good things, only the view merits further discussion...even if the air-brake noise is pretty cool...

Australia from the air is really a breathtaking sight. The sun rising over the Western district, casting copper light over the vast volcanic plains. Cotton-wool clouds pooling and puddling in the valleys of the Blue Mountains. The greyish-greenish-purple of the eucalypt forest spread over seemingly endless undulations. Roads like scar tissue on the dusty red skin of western NSW, the Murray a streak of green doubling back on itself over and over into the distance. The terracotta rooftops of Sydney, Adelaide's corrugated iron glinting grey between swathes of park, the mottled reds and browns and grey-greens of the centre.

Oh my, how patriotic I'm feeling (being overseas will do that to you):

I love a sunburned country,
a land of sweeping plains,
of rugged mountain ranges
and beer and prawn-juice stains.

Or something like that, right...?

Zen and the Art of Packing

10pm (Singapore time), Changi Airport, 26 July 2009

I had planned to write a lengthy post about my packing process, the philosophy behind travelling light and the various choices and discoveries I made along the way – the theory being that as you've had a tour of the bag, then perhaps you might be interested in the contents. I had drafted the begginings of a post on this already, but sitting here now in Changi Airport waiting for my flight to London, it occurs to me that this would make for pretty dull reading.

Even my Dad, a most venerable Sensei of the ancient art of packing lightly and effectively, probably wouldn't bother to read it.

Rather than bore even him to death, I'll give you a very quick run-down of what I've got, and maybe follow it up in a few months with some thoughts on whether it was effective. As well as the bag I blogged about a month ago, and the red shoulder bag I'm using as a carry-on, I'm having two packing boxes shipped to me in Sweden by Air Freight.

My bag has all the usual suspects: socks and jocks, pjs, two shirts, two t-shirts, two pants, two jumpers, raincoat, light jacket, shorts, bathers, scarf, hat, travel towel, toiletries, books, sleeping sheet and a lunch box full of small useful items like a clothes line, pocket knife, spork (which I think sounds like a Swedish word...imagine the Swedish Chef saying it. See, it does, doesn't it?), plastic bags, torch, sewing kit and the tiny screwdriver which I need to put the lenses back into my glasses when they fall apart. Oh, and gaffer tape. One should never be without gaffer tape. Or a towel, obviously...

That came in at 13.6 kilos (13.8 out of Singapore courtesy of one small addition which I shall mention later...) which is a weight of which I am quite proud. “Very good Grasshopper” said Sensei Dad.

My carry-on has books, laptop, camera, flash hard drive, iPod, chocolate (thanks Hannah!) pen and paper, address book, ear plugs and sundry paperwork. That weighs about 5 kilos, I guess, although I haven't actually weighed it.

As for the boxes, after an initial attempt to pack what I actually wanted to take:



I decided to settle for most of this:



It looks like a lot, and perhaps it is. Time will tell if it's too much (or too little) but I stand by it for now. Buying enough clothes for 7-months in Scandinavian Europe, including all of Autumn and Winter, was not really an option given the prices. Plus, without my wooly jumpers I loose all my powers.