Around a year or so ago, someone posted a link to this photo on Flickr:

duty

Uploaded by Godiex { … } on 20 Dec 06, 1.20PM WST.

Certainly an interesting photo, and one that deserved further investigation. So, I started looking at Godiex’s photostream, and noticed there were a few photos of this girl, who turned out to be his girlfriend. I found her photostream, and then saw this photo

home town

Uploaded by randompanda on 6 Jun 05, 10.41AM WST.

which is a shot of the hill I grew up on (our old house is just around the corner). I thought that was pretty intriguing, and so I added both randompanda and Godiex as contacts.

It turns out that Godiex is an artist from Argentina, and that he and randompanda began a long distance relationship in the comments on a photo on flickr. So, all of a sudden, I’m watching the relationship of two people I don’t know, who met through a photo sharing site. Their photos showed them being apart, randompanda going to live in Buenos Aires, and then the pain of separation when randompanda had to return back to Australia (I presume caused by visa-expiry). I’m guessing I felt an affinity for their situation, as Caren and I spent 10 months of our first 2 years together in different countries.

Through my virtual stalking, it appeared to me that they were waiting for the opportunity to be back together and that all would be well again. Then Godiex posted this photo:

this moon is over

Uploaded by Godiex { … } on 28 May 09, 5.10PM WST.

In the description for the photo he basically said that their relationship was over, effectively being ended by the distance apart. It was weird. Here were two people that I had never met, and only shared the random fact that I grew up in the same town as one of them, and I followed their relationship through the photos they posted. And I was sad that they had made the decision to break up. And it’s clear from the comments on the last photo that there’s a large number of other people feeling the same way.

Well, I hope that these people are still together at least (read the comments on that photo for an amazing story).

• Beef
• Pork
• Lamb
• Chicken
• Turkey
• Duck
• Pigeon
• Spatchcock
• Goat
• Rabbit
• Pigeon
• Crocodile
• Kangaroo
• Emu
• Camel
• Reindeer
• Moose
• Wild Boar
• Your standard assortment of fish and crustaceans
• Scallops
• Oysters
• Abalone
• Sea Urchin (tastes like the sea just exploded into your mouth)
• Eel

Update

So, I totally forgot my trip to South Africa:

• Kudu
• Eland
• Impala
• Ostrich
• Buffalo
• and whatever they put into boervors

More Updates

Rosemary reminded me about the frog legs I ate in French class one year. So …

• Frog Legs

1. I don’t do lists.

File under “killjoy”

Update: Turns out Al had tagged me as well.

I turned up right in the middle of one of the transitions, and built a group of friends aka drinking buddies. I scored a series of crap jobs that funded trips to the pub and food, which was basically what life consisted of. Naturally, if you put a group of under 25 year olds in the same building for any length of time (eg more than one hour) relationships start to form fairly quickly, and with a level of fluidity.

After I had been at the hostel for a few months, I noticed a girl who had returned to the hostel after travelling around Europe (who it turns out, left the hostel the day after I arrived, and who’s going away party I had been invited to, but declined). I was going on a quick trip to Paris, as you do, so I didn’t pay a massive amount of attention, but my interest was definitely piqued. In any case, I returned from Paris, and over the next few months we got to know each other fairly well, but only in a good friends sort of way.

One day I, against all previous history, entered a radio competition to see Crowded House in a special show being put on by Radio Forth. I scored two tickets, so I asked this girl if she wanted to go along. She’d never really heard of the band, but a free ticket is a free ticket, so she came along. We went to the show, which turned out to be in a tiny little pub, and there was only about 50 people in the room. The band had played a show in Glasgow earlier that night, and were driving to Edinburgh to play this special show.

Side Note: while we didn’t know it at the time, but as far as I can work out the Glasgow show was the last show that Tim Finn played with the band as a regular member, leaving the band that night, so they travelled to Edinburgh as a three piece again!

In any case, they put on a typically wonderous show that night for more reasons than one. With the magic ingredient of music, it turned out to be my first date with Caren, who I have since married and had two wonderful children with.

And on Friday night, 16 years, 2 weeks and 1 day after that first date, we saw Crowded House for the second time.

So I bought a new Nokia N95. Rather sweet indeed. Apart from the 5 megapixel camera (!), the wifi, the HSDPA and the huge screen, it’s got a GPS! A freakin’ GPS. Which of course means I now walk around a lot with my phone out in my hand, looking like I’m watching a portable TV.

I got the phone through 3, mainly because of their data packages ($30 for 1GB). I’ve not really cranked it up though. A year on Telstra has made me fear doing anything other than call people … mainly because of the enormous bill that you receive at the end of the month, just for trying to check your email every now and then.

Of course, the iPhone is due for release soon (in the USA at least) but it’s over 18 months away in Australia, and unless it gets a fairly major specs upgrade in the meantime, it’s going to be one of those “nice, but only if it had … ” types of things. I mean, a 2MP camera? That’s so 2007.

So, pretty much the same as everyone else I suppose.

And I also wanted some way of linking to, and putting information about things that really get my goat, such as human rights issues, poverty, hypocrite politicians and the like. Mainly so that I have some area where all of my links are stored.

I might also recreate the Tripography blog that I wrote when Caren and I were on our Wedding Jaunt early last year.

Rock.