This photo was taken on Sunday on the way home from the History of Computer games at the Queensland State Library.
I’ve just discovered another reason to visit Scotland. Apparently they have excellent Forestry Commision supported mountain biking over there. They have a site which lists trails available and from the description it sounds like it would be definately worth a visit.
Sitting around waiting for an interview I can’t help thinking back fondly to my recent trip through Asia. Like most people I love travelling. For me it is the adventure of exploring new things, but has led to disappointment when man made artifacts don’t live up to expectation (terracotta warriors and the great wall) but also a new appreciation of the natural beauty of the place of my birth.
The world is a smaller place but I still have much to see! I have itchy feet to see New Zealand, Canada and Europe with the highlight for me being Scotland. I feel a strong ethnic connection through my father to Scotland.
But today I have to concentrate on this interview. I can go to Europe soon I hope. See snow. Experience the cultures. Check out the Nurburgring and the mountain biking scene. 
Tags: travel
The first indication I got that I was too big to travel abroad was when I stepped into the Boeing 777-300 cabin and immeadiately hit my head hard on the roof of the doorway. I guess hitting my head on things could be considered to be clumsy but to be honest I really don’t expect to encounter doorways, hanging light fittings and other assorted normally high items at the same level as my head.
The place where I’m currently staying I narrowly miss hitting exit signs, smoke alarms and fire sprinkers with my head and earlier I collided with a ceiling in a corridor.
The plane seats felt like a tight prison – dreading another passenger potentially sitting in front of me, trapping and pinning me by reclining the seat onto my legs.
Luckily I had the seat beside me and the seat in front of me free so I managed to stick one leg under the seat next to me and one directly ahead under the seat in front of me. I’m not sure if I’ll be so lucky for the return trip to Australia.
I’m tall, but I’m certainly not a giant. What do the truly tall people do whilst travelling? It must just become habit to duck your head under every doorway and eventually just walk with a hunch.
The other area I’ve found height challenging whilst travelling is the bed length. I have a Queen sized bed at home, but unfortunately hotels typically have double or single beds in the ’standard’ length. With my head against the headboard my feet dangle by a foot off the end of the bed which can get a bit uncomfortable.
I’ll write more when I have access to faster internet. I’ll hopefully be able to upload some pictures.
Flying to singapore in a few hours, managed to check into the flight and secure a ‘leg room’ seat at 6am. Hopefully this seat near the galley has legroom as the check in map seemed to indicate. Could find very little info on the seating plan.
Checked the weather over there: 32c and 95% humidity. And I thought it was sticky in Brisbane this week!
Tags: travel
Well that was a big weekend. I drove down to my parents place and back, got lots of things done but it really takes it out of you for work the next day. Seeing my father rekindles my desire to take photos. 
I haven’t seriously ridden my mountain bike since I got back from Asia last year. This is a tremendous shame because I really enjoy riding and my health was really improving as the weight dropped. I hope to get back into it soon.
This photo is from 2007 where I had let my friend Daniel ride my bike down a tricky bit of hill to try it out and when he stopped the bike stood perfectly balanced for around 5 minutes. I managed to take a few photos before it fell over.
I was impressed by the large number of people in China who despite the cheap local petrol (which was probably still expensive to someone on an average wage) had chosen an electric bicycle in order to encompass their entire transportation needs.
It has to be said though that whilst it had pedals for assistance and shop owners had powerboards for people to plug their bikes into whilst they shopped – the machines didn’t seem to keep up with traffic and were used mostly as bicycles that didn’t require pedalling and were used in the bicycle lanes. When I saw my first electric bicycles and scooters I had visions of people adding batteries with higher capacities and output coupled with high efficiency brushless motors so they could tear around the streets on their eco-friendly racing machines, but in reality none of this appeared to be happening and the owners stuck to the bicycle lane.
In 2001 I was in Jakarta and I remember speaking to the son of a wedding photographer who was a) thrilled to be talking to someone who was more than happy to have a natural conversation in english and b) absolutely stunned that I owned a 1000cc superbike.
His dream motorcycle was a NSR250 which was apparently quite an expensive and large capacity motorcycle. He went on that his family shared a 50cc scooter between them and it was unlikely he would be able to afford his dream NSR250. It really struck home the difference between myself at the time a student, I felt like I was scraping by in my home country eating noodles, whereas in Indonesia I was having a conversation with another student who for all intents of purpose I may have owned a spaceship – it was so far out of his financial reach.
That said, I got the strong impression that if you could afford a 1000cc motorcycle in Indonesia (even 2nd hand like mine was) socially you’d be mad not to own a car instead.
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