wordfalls and scatters

The first leg of our trip is done! We watched terrible movies on the plane (then accidentally talked about politics and disconcerted the people sitting near us) and had a tiny girl stare at our hair a lot. The stopover in Auckland was great - we walked from the city centre out to the Domain park and went to the museum there. (Although it wasn't open yet, so we slept on our faces on the grass for a bit.)

The museum was lovely. We spent a lot of time walking around the "Pacific People's" exhibit. I kind of want to live in the "Weird and Wonderful" bit, which is a really great exploring space for kids - it's full of small, soft, colourful spaces to sit, and a crazy collection of stuffed animals and bones and interesting rocks and dinosaur dioramas and spiders and frogs and (extremely stressed) hamsters. Also, the volcanoes exhibit! It has helpful tips on how to clean volcanic ash off your car, and also instructive lessons from previous disasters (such as: if authorities block of an area because of an immanent explosion, do not evade police roadblocks in order to get closer - it may well end badly for you).

Claire and I got into SF yesterday morning, and have spent the day wandering around with Tim and Star. We had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant with them and some other lovely people who they all know. And Claire baked bread, because she's a lovely hippy. Shortly Claire and I will leave on the next leg of our trip: off to Reno to pick up Claire's mother, supplies, and the truck we're taking to Burning Man.

* "Montessori school" means pre-primary.
* Auto drivers often have big stickers of actors on their windscreens.
* The cows are not just stray cows! They have homes, and they go back for milking.
* I am pretty sure I got called "sir" the other day.

I have been Getting Stuff Done. But I feel like there's a whole huge stack of other things to Get Done. I am pretty keen on having a little nap.

When I travel, it's always the small differences that are most surprising to me. I expect the cows on the streets and different food and not knowing the language.

Two small things:
* We went to the markets on the weekend. I enjoyed walking around: the smell of different fruit and vegetables, all of the colours, lots of things to point at and ask: "what's that? how about that?" I didn't notice at first, but each stall had a thick rope hanging over the fruit and vegetables. I started to pay attention to them when I saw one or two of the stallholders hanging on to them, and wondered if they were there to help with lots of standing up. And then a boy at one of the stalls near us grabbed a couple and used them to swing over the baskets of vegetables in front of them. There didn't seem to be another way to get out of the stall, with everything stacked up in the front. The boy picked something up, and swung back. It looked so practiced and fluid.
* Here, eggs seem to count as "non-veg". When I asked some of my vegetarian friends if they ate eggs, they looked at me like I was crazy. (Happily, this fits in well with the fact that I feel fairly comfortable having milk here, especially the milk we get to the house from the neighbourhood cows, but not eggs so much.)

In other news, I have been writing some stuff on my grown up blog. Much of it is probably not super-interesting to you, but maybe some of it is? It's hard to tell, really.

You guys! I know that your friend feeds are pretty much entirely just me going: "ZOMG India is hard" "ZOMG India is great" every five minutes. Sorry! Given how things usually go, there's a reasonable chance that I will soon become too busy to deluge you with news.

But first!

I totally got some cash! All it took was about ten phonecalls, a heap of emails, three visits to a local bank, and quite a bit of being stern at people. I am never, ever, doing that again. If this wad of cash runs out, I'm going to sort out an alternative option. For now, though, I feel much more independent and less like I am needing my friends here to look after me with everything.

More importantly, though, on my final trip to the bank I went by bicycle. I didn't get lost, and I didn't get hit by traffic. And my bicycle is a "gentleman's" bicycle, so it is HUUUGE - I am as tall as standing on a chair! And I feel like I'm flying! I think I've worked out most of the Indian road rules, and I think I will mostly be okay riding around. (FAMILY! If you are reading this, don't worry! I will be careful and safe.) Plus also I have high visibility: everyone is too busy staring like crazy to accidentally crash into me. There are not a lot of women above school age cycling around, and there are especially not a lot of white women on Indian-style gentlemen's bikes cycling around grinning like lunatics. (A couple of guys shouted out at me, "Very nice! Very nice!", and I am choosing to interpret it as their whole-hearted approval of my enthusiasm for awesome Indian bicycles.)

Okay, now on with work. And eating delicious snacks. (I visited my friends' family last night, and they gave me a heap of delicious snacks to take home. Apparently, I am looking too thin. Also, they are lovely and always spoil me a heap.)

( I was all sooky about work stuff yesterday! )

I wanted to go home after the workshop, but TBD. pointed out that there was a little artists' residence on the roof above the art gallery where the workshop was held. It was one of the most beautiful spaces I've ever been in - something about the way it all fit together tidily and the light and the way the rooms connected made me fall instantly in love with it. Then instantly asleep on my face.

And when I woke up TBD. gave me Delicious Milk Drink*, and I got a lovely long email from PinkHairClaire, and some guys turned up with drums, and A. (a Swedish lady staying here) pulled me up to dance for a bit, and then I played a bit of capoeira, and my new friend-who-is-a-lady, D., turned up and we all went and ate some delicious snacks, and then D. and I spent ages sitting up on the roof looking for songs that she knew how to sing and I knew how to play on my ukulele...

...and I felt much better about the world.

I am very lucky with the people that I meet.

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* I am not being vegan here. I am avoiding eggs, but it feels silly to say no to milk that is delivered by a guy whose cow lives just across the road from us and eats our food scraps.

Last night's arrival in Bangalore was hands-down the easiest arrival in a foreign country I've had, ever. I have this Thing...in almost all previous cases, when someone was meant to meet me at any airport other than Perth, something went wrong. I've spent quite some time waiting in airports in Sweden, various parts of South Africa, and Sydney, wondering what happened and what to do next.

Given the disasters of the last two weeks (of which there have been many), I expected something to go Horribly Wrong with my arrival in Bangalore. I had backup plans. I had backup backup plans. Unexpectedly, though, it was all very smooth. And now I'm staying at Janastu, which means I have a place I feel comfortable to work from and lovely people around me.

Since I've arrived, I've:
* had masala dosa for breakfast!
* watched some children perform super-awesome martial arts from kerala!
* drunk huge amounts of tea!
* made some vague plots for my time here, which hopefully will include learning some kannada and some programming, doing Helpful Things around Janastu, and doing some research.

I am in Tasmania!

The first thing I have learnt about Tasmania, in my careful observations, is that there seem to be more interesting beetles here than in WA.

The second thing that I have learnt is that almost every street we drive down seems to have at least three houses on it that I desperately want to live in. There are lots of old, rambling houses that come in an odd jumble of styles. They seem to be built larger than many houses in WA, but that might just be because I've mostly been in more rural areas.

Today we dropped my brother off at his friends' house. It was raining outside, and we went through the back garden, overgrown grass and sculptures and bathtubs full of herbs and bicycles leaning against walls. The rain dripping through the veranda, and then into the kitchen, and people start coming down the stairs and in from the rain. And the kitchen is so warm and cosy, wood everywhere and a low ceiling and old sofas and a long kitchen table, music playing and bustle.

I really like my brother's friends. One is his very-good-friend-who-he-hasn't-seen-for-months, and I love seeing how happy they are to meet again, all hugs and smiles. I am so proud of my brother for so many reasons, and one of them is that he's good at showing his affection for his man-friends.

Oh! I want to live in a lovely old house with a warm kitchen full of friends-who-live-there and friend-who-drop-in and a shambling garden and the smell of spices!

I love our current house, and our current household, and I am being a bit greedy in wishing for what we have only more so. But there are moments when I do: floating in the lovely space of a cosy kitchen, the rain outside cocooning us, colour and affection everywhere.

1) Somewhere to stay in San Francisco for the couple of days before and after Burning Man. I think I'd like to stay with a friend-of-a-friend or check out the couchsurfing site, but I may end up getting a hotel, rather.

2) A bike. Still haven't sorted out a bicycle. If I don't, I think I can probably manage without one.

3) A camera. I was thinking of getting a lomograph or a Holga, because then I won't have to worry about recharging or running out of space. Ideally I'd like something that can do night shots, maybe one of the lomographs that does long exposures? Any recommendations?

I am unexpectedly going to burning man this year. I only decided a few weeks ago.

Burning Man is something I've been excited and curious about for years, but I'd only ever started to consider going over the last few months. And even then, I was thinking about going next year. And then someone pointed out that this year, while I don't have a full-time job and I'm still a bit unsure about what to do with life, is a good year to go, and said they'd help me out with getting there. Since then, a heap of people have been helping me out in various ways: with tickets, with planning, with reassurances that it'll all be okay.

So, I have a plane ticket to San Francisco. And a ticket to Burning Man that a friend's given me. An offer of a tent. Some glowthings to light me up at night so I won't get run over. Goggles.

What I don't have:
* A place to stay in San Francisco before or afterwards.
* A lift there or back.
* A bike.
* Various campingstuffs I'll need.

I'm still not sure how to manage it all. There are a few queries going out to friends-of-friends for lifts and such, and I'm also checking out the rideshare options on the Burning Man site. I'm finding this very difficult, because it involves a lot of asking strangers or near-strangers for help, being quite aware that I won't be able to give much in return.

The physical difficulties of Burning Man are pretty extreme. It's very hot and dusty, there won't be water for washing, toilet facilities sound not-so-pleasant, there are dust storms, and the nights are very cold. I'll probably get a resurgence of my eczema and asthma. I'm thinking hard about how to deal with all this effectively, but it causes me very little anxiety.

The thing I am very anxious about is all the dealing-with-people. I'm really worried about asking strangers for help, being a complete noob, being in the way or a hassle. I'm better at this than I was. When I went away on geek camps at high school, I spent a ridiculous proportion of the time angsting in my journals and feeling anxious. The first time I went away to a student activist conference by myself, I spent pretty much the whole time totally terrified and uncomfortable. When someone hugged me on the last day I nearly cried. The first time I went to a conference as a postgrad, I was better but I made a few friends and then followed them around most of the time.

I am better than I was, but going to a crazy, week-long event in which I will need other people's help just to get there and then have no safe base to come back to is a confronting thought. I'm more terrified than excited about Burning Man, but I know it'll be an amazing, challenging experience. And I do like to be challenged, apparently.

I'm also fretting a bit about the decadence of flying to the US for this. I'll be carbon-neutralling the flights, but it still requires some thought. It's not the kind of thing I can do on a regular basis, for sure. But it is something I've been wanting to do for years, and perhaps I can allow myself some (more) decadence now that I've finished my PhD?

I might post more about all of this at some point, but I wanted to at least get some thoughts down rather than letting them just race around my head like crazy.

(Crossposted from/to lj.)

Hey, you guys who are inclined to fret about me! I have arrived safely. There was some confusion at the airport, as there is every time someone picks me up, but my friend found me in the end. We spent the afternoon wandering around various bits of Sydney, and once again I am struck by how all Australian not-Perth cities have become the same city, in my head.

Now I am in Newcastle, and I am about to start doing some thesis-work. And maybe also so writing for another youth website, which I have accidentally volunteered for and then failed to bow out of.

Hurrah!