Category: Travel

Melbourne Bound

For reasons I am not at liberty to discuss, I’ll be flying out on Thursday night to spend the weekend in Melbourne with my workmates. Oh hooray.

I should probably explain myself. Those who either know me, or read this blog regularly, will be well aware that I am an Aspie, and a severe introvert. I go to work, and do my job in order to have money to pay the bills, but when I walk out of the office doors on Friday afternoon I don’t want to have anything to do with the place until Monday morning. This isn’t because I dislike my job (any more than anyone does anyway) or my co-workers, but because being around people drains me, mentally and emotionally. The weekend is when I recharge by either spending time on my own, or by interacting with other people strictly on my own terms.

Spending the weekend in a hotel room with my colleagues – not to mention having to attend an industry event – is not going to provide the opportunity I need to recharge. By the end of the following week I shall most likely go somewhat mad, or at least become quite emotionally erratic. But hey, whatever.

On the plus side I shall have most Saturday free in Melbourne to do things with. I’m not sure exactly what at this point. The Royal Exhibition Building is a possibility and maybe the Queen Victoria Markets. I was also planning to buy a new coat as my old one is starting to look distinctly ratty, but the coat place I was looking at turns out to be run by Jews, so that’s no good.

(No – I haven’t turned into some lunatic racist. It’s simply that the coat place is closed on Saturdays for Shabbat.)

What else is there to do in Melbourne? Walk the route of the Grand Prix through Albert Park? Wander up and down Carlisle Street trying to spot John Safran? I dunno…

Anyway, that’s how I’m going to be spending next weekend. Whether I like it or not.

For Reference Purposes

Behold the God Machines of the Omnissiah!

The battle against rickettsiae continues. I’m still sick, but not quite as sick as I was yesterday. However I’ve completely run out of tissues so it feels just as bad as yesterday. Sigh.

In any case I’ve spent my time today cancelling reservations and preparing to contact my travel insurance company to beg for money. To calm myself down from this I’ve also just spent a few hours researching 40k Titans and seeing what I could figure out about the vexatious issue of scale. So I can find these easily in future, I thought I’d put them here.

So here is height and scale data for Imperial Titans (as far as I’m concerned :))

Imperial Knight Titan (Rarely mentioned these days)
Tabletop: 15 cm / 5.9 inches
Real Scale: 9m /29.5 feet

Warhound Titan
Tabletop: 25 cm / 9.8 inches
Real Scale: 15m / 49.2 feet

Reaver Titan
Tabletop: 40 cm / 15.75 inches
Real Scale: 24m / 78.7 feet

Warlord Titan
Tabletop: 60 cm / 23.6 inches
Real Scale: 36m / 118 feet

Emperor Titan
Tabletop: 90 cm / 35.4 inches
Real Scale: 54m / 177 feet

It would be nice for the Emperor Titan to be bigger (one of my calculations suggested 180 metres, which would require a tabletop model 3 metres tall!), but around 54 metres seems to be the most reasonable figure.

Hope that helps someone out, if only me 🙂

You Can Dance if You Want To

We built this city on Rock and Roll…

Thanks for the concern everyone. I’m feeling a bit better now – mentally if not physically – and can start to think about what went wrong without wanting to curl up and die.

On the physical side I’m sick as a dog, so it’s probably best that I got of the ship when I did – I’d rather be sick as a dog at home than in the middle of the Tasman sea. There’s at least the chance that I’ve caught a mild case of typhus off a tick that attacked my leg, but I’m off to see the doctor today who’ll presumably give me a firm diagnosis and some pills to fix it.

As a final note, if I can pull myself together enough to get the plugin installed I intend to take the Wyrmlog dark tomorrow as part of the worldwide SOPA/PIPA protest. So if you come to visit and there’s nothing here, don’t panic. It’ll all be back to normal soon enough.

On another subject, may I present this?

Oh, ok then, no 😉

A Dark Place

So, am I sailing the ocean blue, heading for adventures in New Zealand?

No, I am not. I am sitting in my apartment in Perth wallowing in a nasty combination of embarrassment, humiliation, disappointment, anger and worry about how much money I’ve wasted.

Turns out I hate cruising. After two days on board the boat I felt so wretched that my only option was to jump ship at Melbourne and fly home. So I’m not going to New Zealand, I’m not seeing all the cool stuff I was looking forwards too, and I’m pretty pissed off at the world and myself for not realising that life on a cruise ship would be hellish for an Aspie like myself.

So, I need to cancel all my reservations in New Zealand, alert my bank that I’m back in Perth so they won’t block my card and get in touch with my travel insurance to see if there’s any way I can get any of my money back. I’m not hopeful on that last one, but I’ll try.

I’ve also got to try and reconcile myself to another magnificent failure at living. If American sit-coms are anything to judge by, this is the kind of thing best treated by consuming vast amounts of alcohol and going to a strip club, but that’s not going to happen, so I’ll need to figure something else out. Give me a week or so and I should be coming out of this horrible funk. I hope.

Man I suck.

Checking Out

Had a lot of fun in Sydney, but today I’m checking out of the Rydges and boarding my cruise ship. This means that I’m going to have even less online presence than I have for the last few days, as I’m not willing to pay insane Satellite Internet prices out on the open sea.

Before I go, a quick summary…

Sunday – Great tour of the Middle Head fortifications, including lots of underground tunnels. Met up with Paula and her friend Saskia, gourmet pizza at the Australian Hotel, tour of the Old Observatory in the middle of a massive thunderstorm.

Monday – Hire car out to Katoomba and the Jenolan Caves. Three Sisters much more impressive than I’d expected. Caves amazing, although we only had time to tour one. Our guide (Analiese I think?) was awesome and took us to look for platypuses afterwards (we saw plenty of water dragons but it was too windy for the platypuses). Drove back to Sydney and had expensive (but very tasty) fish and chips at Doyles.

Tuesday – Fascinating tour of the Opera House, then Cadman’s Cottage and the Harbour Bridge Pylon museum. Afternoon tea in the park at Wynyard Station, then the Queen Victoria Building. Finally a fantastic Ghost Tour through the Rocks with ‘Ghost Guide Gary’.

Today – Plan is to do the Centrepoint Tower, the Chinese Gardens and the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Powerhouse. Then I board my ship.

See you all in two weeks!

Sydney Day One Roundup

Sydney Town Hall – Mildly impressive
Queen Victoria Building – Like an upscale Diagon Alley
Town Hall Railway Station – A descent into the bowels of Hell
Circular Quay Station – Best view from a railway station in the world
Circular Quay – Crowded but cheerful
The Rocks – Enjoyably quaint
Sydney Harbour Bridge – Mind bogglingly massive
The Old Battery – Of considerable archaeological interest
The Old Observatory – Fantastic views

Just about to head off for a tour of the old Middle Head Battery. Should be interesting!

Live! From Sydney!

Live in Sydney!

I have safely arrived in Sydney and am happily ensconced in my quite swanky hotel. I’ll be heading out shortly for a ghost tour in the rocks, and also to find some lunch, as the only things I’ve eaten all day were two ham sandwiches at 3:30am and a small bag of those grain chip things. On the upside I watched three episodes of Warehouse 13 on the plane – which just made the time fly.

Gaint and Wired

Blagh.

Been feeling totally dull, blah and pointless of late. In an attempt to do something approaching worthwhile I spent much of yesterday uploading the photos from my 2009 trip to the UK for Ali and Mat’s wedding to my Flickr account – which I’ve been meaning to do since the day I got back over two years ago.

The vast majority have no titles, descriptions or geotags – but I’ll work on it over the next few weeks. There’s also one day’s worth of wandering around Leicester left to go up, including my exciting and action packed investigation of the Medieval Packhorse Bridge!*

(*Not guaranteed to be exciting or action packed)

Those should go up this afternoon. In any case if you have an abiding interest in amateur photographs of unidentified English buildings, fields and street signs, please consider my photostream!

Back to work…

Dolphins? Pah!

Dolphins are seriously overrated.

Just what is the big deal with dolphins?

Everywhere I turn, everyone seems to love dolphins. See the dolphins! tourism ads proclaim. Meet the dolphins! Swim with the dolphins! Swim with the WILD dolphins! Everyone seems to go completely gaga over the damn things.

Well, here’s the thing. Dolphins are seriously overrated.

I’ve met the dolphins. I’ve met the wild dolphins. And they completely failed to impress me in any way.

For many years Australia’s premiere site for communing with wild dolphins was Monkey Mia right here in WA. There are plenty of other places to see dolphins these days, but that was the first place where wild dolphins started coming into the beach and begging for food. It’s still a major tourist draw, despite being in the middle of nowhere, and we stopped off there to meet the dolphins on a family trip back when I was in high school.

And we did meet the dolphins. Or at least the dolphin, as only one turned up. In the midst of a big crowd of tourists we waded waist deep into the ocean and saw the dolphin. We saw the dolphin, we touched the dolphin, we listened to a lecture about the dolphin courtesy of the ranger minding the dolphin, a few randomly selected folk fed fish to the dolphin, the dolphin bit my brother, then got bored and swam away, and we waded out of the ocean.

That was it. No great revelation. No amazing sense of joy, wonder and communication with another intelligent being – just standing around in cold, salty water prodding at something that could have been a wetsuit full of custard for all the profundity it provided.

We returned to Monkey Mia a few years later with my Aunt who was out from the UK and wanted to meet the dolphins. We sat around on the beach until the dolphins arrived and everyone stampeded down to the water – everyone except me that was, as I was reading a rather good book and couldn’t see the point in putting it down to go and stand in the water, gawking at something rather dull that I’d had my fill of the last time.

Everyone was wildly concerned. Didn’t I want to see the dolphins they asked? Was I alright? Was I feeling ill? Was I – my Aunt asked quietly to spare me any embarrassment – scared of the dolphins? No, I explained. I was fine, I’d just seen the dolphins before and didn’t feel that I needed to see them again.

They all looked at me as if I was dangerously insane, but then the lure of the dolphins proved too much and they scurried down to the water, leaving me to my book, which was far more interesting than any cetacean could ever be.

Now, pinnidpeds – particularly the otariidae – I have time for. They’re smart, playful and entertaining, and you can interact with them without getting wet (well, too wet). They have personalities. But dolphins… dolphins are just dull, and fail to excite me.

Read into that what you will – if that is, you have any time for reading while there are dolphins around.

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