Home and Away. 24-12-2007

Has it really been more than a year since I last posted? Dylan says 'well that's cause we've been home' but we haven't! I guess our becoming annual SEA-trip earlier this year was such a non-event for us that it didn't warrent posting about? No, it wasn't a non-event, it's just that when you revisit places sometimes some of the charm and wonder is lost from them The long and the short of it is, for this upcoming trip we've chosen to go somewhere we haven't been before: The Philippines.

We're becoming more grown-up backpackers now, no more self-enforced privitations, we've bought super-expensive travel pillows to take away! We also have an exxy head-lamp, a digital SLR each (ahem, yes, insured seperately of course) and multi-vitamins. So grown up are we.

Yes it is the day before christmas, that day of excess, meaning lost in a flurry of spending and eating. I see myself coming full circle with this: From the usual childhood joy at presents and lights and trees; to realising I couldn't be christian and rejecting the idea entirely and then struggling everytime this so-called festive season rolled around (for what was I celebrating, exactly?); to now when I think 'bugger it, just enjoy it anyway'. So we pinched a couple of branches off a radiata pine down by the rail line (and did the environment just a small service by reducing the photosynthetic abilities of just one noxious weed), added lights, red baubles from Target and paper-mache balls from Oxfam and voila! Christmas is in the house, in the corner by the fish tanks, on top of the filing cabinet covered by a shawl from India, next to the Lao woven silk wall hangings, under the temple bells from Thailand and the coloured prayer flags. Hmmm.

So anyway, what's coming up in this life? Well, working Christmas day of course, then off to Mama's for dinner, then madly working, packing and somehow cooking half the food for Dylan's sister's wedding which is on New Year's Eve, celebrating with Dylan's family and friend's all night, expected hangover on New Year's Day then on the 2nd of the new year, off to Melbourne, the first of far too many flights to Angeles, Philippines (alleged home of 10'000 prostitutes, thank you America) for our other life.

'Tis all for now, expect lots of posts about snorkelling to come or Greenie Whining about Coral Bleaching and other assorted environmental destruction ;)

Cheers Big-Ears, and Happy Festive Season for whatever you choose to celebrate :)