please post your resolutions, or your objections to the practice, or general indifference on the matter, in the comments. though i won’t be checking back on them until february.

puff up kids, you don’t want to ruin christmas, do you?

i went to see the warhol exhibit at the new gallery of modern art this morning. it didn’t change my perception of the man or his work, but it reinforced the notion of warhol as an astute observer and exploiter of the zeitgeist that surrounded him.

i wonder if in a parallel universe, andy warhol is alive today and making prints of osama bin laden, paris hilton and iphones?

okay. so the first one is, a mate and i went out with cameras and took some photos around brisvegas. which i’ve been meaning to do for a while now. there’s some nice city panoramas, but there’s still a few which i hope to upload later this week, including a very cool composite shot on the steps on “the con”.

secondly this blog has totally sold out, and will now be exclusively used for blatant advertisting threadless is having a christmas sale! that means all their regular shirts are just $10. but seriously, quite a few people ask me where i get my shirts, and of course i point them to threadless, and oddica. so please use my link and help me earn referral points! that’s 2 obvious plugs in 2 weeks, that’s got to be some kind of record!

sorry my life has become so boring. i’m thinking of getting into an abusive relationship, just so i’ll have something to blog about. all that i’ve going for me at the moment is a screwed-up sleep routine from waiting for the broadband off-peak times to start. sigh.

but in more mundane news, i’ve been exploiting the high aussie dollar (around when it was hitting 93 cents) and going a little crazy buying shirts online. i picked up 6 shirts from oddica (10% discount code: shiftedsound), 3 of which have arrived thus far, and i’m very happy with. also this item from threadless ($3 discount code: RUBBERDANPANTS), both of which i scored at thriftee prices. also scored some neat new glasses (the $$$ prescription kind) for a measly $40 delivered from optical4less. i was kind of sceptical of how the end result would turn out, but i must say i’ve been pleasantly surprised. the frames are a little heavy, but for the price, they’re flipping awesome! anyhow, the craving for conspicuous consumption has been quenched — at least until the post-christmas sales. i need to raise me some bond money.

life has been heading back into both familiar and new territories for me since then. i picked up working again 3 days a week at my old job (northside), which along with freelance projects has been keeping me rather busy.

also slowly creeping up on me: the realisation that i must now begin to construct a normal, grown-up working life for myself, pretty much from scratch. or perhaps negative-scratch. i’ve taken a few steps in the direction — found a car, got a loan, seen a tax accountant, looking for potential house-mates and rentals.

of course, adjusting to getting back hasn’t been easy. the thing i miss most: the buzz of exploring. the thing which bothers me most: the obligatory “how was your trip?” without caring to give enough time for a meaningful answer. i really feel like telling them “there is no 10 second answer to that”, but instead, i say “good”, like a moron (but a socially acceptable moron) and skulk off.

another unanswered question is “where was your favourite place?” the fault there is mine, for not having a favourite i suppose. london, paris, chicago and berlin were all great cities, i tell them, but all in different ways… that’s what made them interesting to me anway. now that i think about it, those are the cities where i had a friends to show me around too.

it’s eerie in a certain way — coming back to a place where everyone and everything is the same, but you’re different. perhaps not different in a way other can see, but changed inside. but for the moment, i’m making brisbane home.

i haven’t driven a car, made an espresso, slept in my own room for a week or gone out with a large group of friends in 7 months, but it’s just clicked back in place. which is reassuring, and also disconcerting.

in the next few weeks i’ll be trying to sort through the several thousand photographs which have yet to be processed, and summarise what i have experienced, learned and enjoyed along the way. i think if there has been a theme to the journey it would be: plan b aka. improvisation 101.

more to follow.

so, i’m in hong kong, with a couple of days left before i finally get home. i’ve realised a couple of things being here:

1. i am a banana. yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
2. while i had my doubts at times through this trip, yes, heat is worse than cold.
3. i’m glad i came here at the end of my trip. there’s a lot of cheap junk here to buy, and i would have been torn about buying it if i had to lug it across europe.

i’ll leave it brief, and make the reflections on the trip as a whole when I get back.

so, the show goes on. we’re tyring to work out a solution so that i can still do the work i promised to do somehow before i get back home, but (sadly) don’t expect any new photos until then. the itinery continues as originally planned, minus switzerland because of the high expense.

on recent locales: budapest was lovely, similar to prague, but with it’s character. vienna was a little dull, but perhaps i was just in the wrong places? venice was like the most beautiful maze ever designed.