So, I’ve decided to start using this bad boy again. It should be a big of fun. It’s looking far sexier than last time I saw it. This is going to just be a quick post to some links really. I started Rogaining with some mates recently. A friend recently started dating a girl who is quite into it, and I’ve always wanted to give it a shot. Not wanting to take the easy route, I started with the 24 hour event. We won!! Well.. we won the category we were in. The “I’ve never done this before” category, if you must know. We came 19th or 20th all up. Anyway, I just found out that the results online and figured it couldn’t hurt to link them somewhere. For now, this is it. I may need to add some pics and find a better home though.

• 2011/06/20: Over the Watershed
• 2011/10/16: dark-swamp-results

I’ve decided to have a shot at a geo-located blog again. Ages ago I put together a hack job using yahoo tubes, google calendar and google mashup to kind of give you blog that you could navigate either by date or map. It didn’t work very well, wasn’t fun to put input data in, and I gave up fairly quick. Now google mashups doesn’t exist anymore (although a similar app does in google apps) and finding my old google sites made me think: It’s time; I’m going to find something that works. And so the hunt began. This time I’d also like it to be somehow compatible with google sites. At first it looked like a travel blog was the way to go. Sadly most of these didn’t give me the navigation elements, or control that I wanted. And in almost all, I’d loose the data if they found it offensive. Really what I’m hoping for is just a blog that can have structured data for your location and a few other things like the weather, then also a few gadgets for things like making it navigatable via topic, calendar and map. Wait, lets put this into a list. They’re always nicer to read:

• embedded map that:
• depends on posts
• can be viewed like a trip
• doesn’t get too cluttered
• can be embedded in individual posts
• being able to clip what is contained in the map could be nice
• isn’t slow
• compatibility with mobile devices (ie. my android phone)
• some other cool fields like weather
• wow, that’s not a lot really…

But guess what? Blogger is adding geotagging!! Now all I need to do is to make a cool gadget or find someone else’s.  BlurbBits seems like an early contender for taking information out of the blog, and parsing it into a navigation element. I think I’ll go with this approach for now and let you know how it goes later. In the mean time I’ll be reading a bit at Google maps Mania and reading through a few of these ideas from travel bloggers using Blogger. Since I’ve already done a bit of research into the travel blogs, I figure I may as well summarise what I’ve found too.

Here’s a list of the ones I found (I’ll be editing this soon):

• TravelPod
• Travelblog
• Travellerspoint (really good for planning trips and getting info)
• Travbuddy (seemed to have some promise)
• Dopplr (had some cool maps build up of things people have liked, along with a mobile site)
• Everlater
• Bootsnall
• Offexploring (hardly worth mentioning)

Apparently MS Word doesn’t have an update all button for fields, which is frustrating. It also doesn’t have the developer tab added by default which is just as annoying. It can be found in a checkbox under general settings. Update all can be added in as a macro as summarised on this blog. But in summary, the macro’s code is simply this:

Sub UpdateAll()
Dim oStory As Range
For Each oStory In ActiveDocument.StoryRanges
oStory.Fields.Update
If oStory.StoryType <> wdMainTextStory Then
While Not (oStory.NextStoryRange Is Nothing)
Set oStory = oStory.NextStoryRange
oStory.Fields.Update
Wend
End If
Next oStory
Set oStory = Nothing
End Sub

So, in honour of Moet, I thought I’d quote a some which I’m sure he hates :P But, it has been a while since I wrote in this thing so I figure its time for an update. Today’s story: Getting back home. If you’d call it home. I’m not really sure I have a place that feels like home anymore, although I am quite proud of the house I’m living in now, but then pride isn’t always a good thing. Odd fact, when I used to see that tower at uni after a short trip it would feel like I was coming home. I didn’t get that when I came back to Australia :’( So this blog is about getting from Japan to Australia. Now where to start??

Hmm, so I’d moved out of my place and was staying at my mates place for a week before I left. Lots of stories there, but that’s a different entry. Who the hell decides to explore the sewers when it’s raining and cold just for the hell of it? Well, me, but what kind of moron would follow me?? So anyway, I kept postponing leaving because, well, because I didn’t want to leave. Funny that. But eventually I couldn’t postpone it, got my stuff together, that being a cardboard box and my bag, and walked to the nearest convenience store to get a marker and make my sign for hitch hiking to Tokyo. It’s sitting next to me right now actually :) The girls at the store loved it, well at least that’s what I took their laughing to mean :P My first couple of lifts took me a short distances around Nagoya. First lift was two girls who were… nope I can’t remember any of the details. They had a story though. The next was a girl who worked in a company because she could speak English but then never got the opportunity to speak it. Then, I spent half a day waiting next to the toll way on ramp before I gave up and started walking for a few hours. Eventually a Japanese guy who had hitch hiked all through Europe gave me a lift to a store in the toll way. There I met an Aussie guy who convinced his wife to give me a lift. They were just on holidays to meet her family, and on the way her sister seemed to go into shock, we almost got pulled over by the cops and they fed me a whole heap. Just before I got out the car to meet Snave I palmed some money into his hand because I knew the wife wouldn’t approve. Crazy cultural differences :P

Hmm, that paragraph was a bit long. I’ll see what I can do about that. So, I was in Tokyo? Yeah, Tokyo and meeting Snave. So, I met him, borrowed some money to pay a debt, went out for a drink and caught a plane to Australia.

See, that was an improvement ;) When I was booking my ticket my only requirement was that it went from Japan, to Australia. I thought I’d bought a ticket from Tokyo to the Gold Coast. I was wrong. On a side note, the Japanese staff loved my pants and hair (Even the male flight attendant wanted to touch it… wait on!), the Australian staff were rude and snide-ish. Oh yeah, and I only had $30 to get to Melbourne to meet my friend and depending on how that went hitch along the Nullarbor or beg for money. I spent most of my time in the airport cheating their hotel finder to display maps from Cairns to Melbourne and take pictures of them with my phone. Oh yeah, I was in the Gold Coast. Then I chatted to some Japanese girls I’d met on the plane and quickly ascertained that I couldn’t go to any of the interesting places with my $30, so I left.

So, umm, people picked me up and drove me? Who? This is what happens when you wait so long to write. Wait, one guy worked in the mines for half a year, saved, quite his job to sit on his arse and drink and then would start again. Not a bad life. There was an old bloke with kids my age. Then a guy who took me a decent distance and we kept stopping at water holes to go for walks and shit. It would of worked better if I’d had more sleep. He dropped me off near Townsville I think. I had a cat nap till go cold and started walking. The next guy was a champ and gave me a beer. Happiest moment of my life was sitting on that street verge drinking that beer. Then, after getting abused for bogans who mistook me for ‘some cunt who should go the fuck home’, wait that could be me, I was picked up by three African girls who took me back to their parents house where they told them I was a friend from uni and I helped cook and entertain the kids. They also offered for me to got to a party with them and then give me a place to crash. I hadn’t had a shower for a few days and wanted to try to get a lift with a trucky so I said no. I slept on the side of the high way with no blanket or tent freezing for a few hours. Then I walked until I was too tired to walk and then tried to sleep again. Rinse and repeat. I probably could of played those cards better..

In the morning, after waking up behind the bridge I was using to hide, I got picked up by some fishermen. They didn’t say too much. Next was the army guy who wanted to know if I was an emo because then “I should get the fuck out of his car”. He was going to be going all the way to Brisbane but stopped halfway, probably because I was too emo for his standards. Then near some place, the single mum picked me up said I had a face that looked trustworthy and took me back to her place after her parents had left. Sometimes I feel like screaming at people “So does a serial killer!!”. Still, I got a meal cooked for me, a place to sleep, a shower and got to hang with a pretty cool girl and her kid.

The next morning she dropped me off near the supermarket where I picked up some supplies and kept on trucking. Speaking of which, there was a cool bus there that reminded me of the one we used to live in. I think the next lift was the wife who was scared of what the husband would think, but then drove me and tried to get me a lift with some truckies. It failed but I did get my final lift of the trip.

So I was standing there with my thumb out and this guy stops and reverses. I quickly say goodbye to the lady and run up to the car and jump in. The guy who was giving me the lift wasn’t saying that much, but was going all the way to Brisbane so along we go. I started with some small talk.

“So, what do you do?”
“Do you want the truth?”
“Why not?”
“I’m a debt collector”
“Nice, so how’s that go for you?”
“I walk in and take shit”
“Ah, many problems with the cops?”
“Nah, mostly its me that calls them.”
“Shit hey”

It turned out to be quite an eventful drive. He confided in me about his original intent of reversing up close to me then taking off and spraying me in rocks. Great! And then asked if I minded if he stopped for a bong break. I told him it was his car and he could do what ever the hell he liked. So, he has his bong, takes a pill and keeps driving. By this stage the small talk had run out and my sleep deprived body was having trouble staying awake. He simple hunched himself over the steering wheel and kept driving. He stopped a few more times for these breaks, one time scaring the hell out of a school bus full of kids, before he couldn’t find his pills. He asked me to look for them. I did. It was probably time to find out what they were.

“So, what are these pills”
“Well, I probably should have told you before. I’m Schizophrenic.”

Joy!! Well, it did explain a few things. And I did make it to Brisbane alive and in one piece. I hope he went alright in making it to see his girlfriend #3 and cleaning up his property. Hmm… I did miss that part of the story, ah well.

So he left me at a truck stop. I was starting to question the route I’d taken. Maybe I should double check if my Aussie bank account had any money in it. Now where to find a Bankwest on the east coast. I was told there was one and it only took me two hours of solid walking to find it. I got out $100 and had a second wind. I could do this. Quitting’s for… quiters? So I stood near the freeway on ramp, thumb out, hopes held  high and… feinted. I still haven’t found out why, but I’m guessing it was my diet of bread and little sleep. Still it had only been three days. I curled up around the corner and tried to get some sleep. When I woke up I decided it was time to call it a day, I needed a friend to buy my plane ticket home. And someone did. Well, to Melbourne where I hung out with Ra for a week and borrowed money off her for the plane ticket home.

About a week later I managed to sneak into my parents house in Balingup unannounced and scare the hell out of them. That was when they found out I was home. What did they do to deserve me as a son.

Anyway, it’s good to be back and to be seeing friends I’d been missing. Now I’ve just got to knuckle under, get rid of this last year of uni and pay off some debts.

Ok this keyboard is rally sht so iwilledit this later.

highlights:
- drunkguys keep talking to me
- crashing at drunk 30-ish year old that I’d just met on the train’s parents place well after they went tobed.
- Getting stuck at train staions in the middle of nowhere for 2 hrs a piece
- trying to find the monkeys
-sleeping in an internet cafe that also serves　breakfast but doesn’t have a shower
- watching sleazy the japanese guystry to pickup at the traffic lightsand the fancy looking girls looking scared
- other stuff that I’m too tired to rmemeber

Actually maybe I’ll just keep this,　it lookslikeIwas drunk nadjut tryto hid it ;P

Oh sit and a volcano that I wantto see tomorrow

It feels like it’s time for another walk. I want to go to Okinawa but I’m not sure I have the money so I’m thinking I will start hitch hiking and see how far I get. I don’t want to start in a city so I’m thinking about starting from Gifu or maybe Nara again. We’ll see. I should be heading off Saturday after Capoeira.

So, this started a while back, when I… hmm… maybe we… were back in Australia. Back then I only guessed it was romantic. It, surprisingly, feels kinda nice.

I went to a theme park today, well not really since I’m writing this retrospectively but just look at the date it says it was written and pretend.

So, it was awesome! It was my first time. It was for Rie’s birthday, we had said we were going to go for a while and she said she really liked this place. So, on my first big roller coaster I almost shat myself, but it didn’t stop me admiring how flat and artificial the reclaimed land looked whenever we went over a crest. Oh, and there were people on the some mud flats way off in the distance doing something, and I never worked out what. I asked Rie but she had her head in her hands for the whole rollercoaster ride, so she didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t know how ‘fun’ and ‘head in hands’ are meant to be the same thing but hey.

What else happened… oh yeah… the water park. That was a laugh. There was a slide where your falling vertically for a few metres, plus the tapering bits, and I was ok when I layed down but as soon as I hit that verticle bit my hands went out to grab the slide and stop me falling. It did nothing!! After a second I told my self I was a dick and enjoyed the rest of the ride. Ah, it was great.

Ooh, there was this circle pool with a strong current that pushed you around. The current was the strongest next to a set of stairs, so you’ld let the current pull you round and then try to grab on to the ledge and pull yourself around. It was strong enough that you needed, nay I needed, most of my strength to pull myself in. Suffice it to say, I took out a few toddlers along the way, but I made it in.

And they had one of those artificial beaches with artificial waves, but… me and Rie got there just as they were finishing. So we stuffed around trying to lift each other up and throw each other, but not before I tried to see as much of the wave making mechanism as I could… but it wasn’t doing anything and I couldn’t work it out :( I would have to just be a moving wall, right? And the force needed to move that would have to be pretty large, right? Just playing there with Rie was the best part of the day.

Hmm… what else was there… ooh the thing that just dropped you, and the thing that threw you up into the air like a space shuttle, and the roller coaster with the loop-de-loop, and the roller coaster with the loop-de-loop that didn’t start by taking you to the top of a hill, it actually started buy unsuspectingly slingshoting you and scaring the shit out of you at the same time. I think thats enough of a sentence for now.

So, I was pretty tired since the night before I had played futsal I met a bloke who offered to take me out for dinner, maybe for a bit of English practice. He had lived in America for a while and wanted to be a writer but for now was working in the family business which was good for him since he travelled to see clients a lot which was writing and reading time for him. We ate at this thing where you fry meat on this BBQ infront of you and eat it. おいしいだよ！ One of the things that we ate was raw minced meat, with a raw egg with a slice of apple on top. It didn’t taste too bad. I had to wonder how disease ridden it was. Anyway, due to this late night out I passed out in the car ride home, but woke up well enough to entertain Rie before she went home.

I think thats all… The End?

I went to my local スーパー (supermarket) today and saw a fish still flicking. I thought this was odd since my ex-housemate HayHay told me that the-fish-on-ice thing is just a mockery since fish are frozen on the boat. I believed you HayHay!! :’( So I took this movie since I thought ‘WTF!’. Since then I’ve notice that they have fish in an aquarium that they must kill them on the spot… opps. All I had to do was look up…

Ouch. I don’t know how much sleep I’d had when I wrote this, but it was pretty horrible. Anyway, I think this is the time I was wandering around my local supermarket and I bumped into someone behind me and swiftly said sorry in Japanese. I was pretty proud because up until then I had to think about things like that. Sadly.. it was a foreigner and I’m not sure they spoke Japanese. This seemed to break my swing, because I later stumbled into a poor Japanese girl (yeah, I hadn’t had a lot of sleep) and said sorry in English. The small victories, hey? Anyway, back to the original:

This actually happened pretty quick. It was about two weeks before “はい” became reactionary. I was trying to sort out some bank things with my bank in Australia (and that was an effort) and ended up saying はい to the BankWest girl on the phone. Then wondering if she understood, which was quickly followed by ‘what is she thinking? Does she just think I’m some ‘tard!? Wait she’s moving on! Dammit >< I stopped listening. Whats she saying now? Ooh.. she wants me to say something..” and if that fiction is anything like what actually happened then that could explain why that bank transfer went astry stranding me in おおさか but then, me not knowing how acurate it is would also explain the problems…