Aussie tales

I'm currently staying in Adelaide, and just got an extremely good job, which should take of me financially for quite some time. Because I've been looking for work I haven't seen all that much of the country yet, but Sydney and Adelaide are both beautiful cities. I can't believe how clean Aussie cities are - there is absolutely no litter, no even cigarette butts (buts?). I've thrown up some more pictures of Indonesia on my picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/patgarrity/AsianAdventures#), so give those a look. The Gili Islands we one of the funnest places I've ever visited - highly recommended.

Stuck in Bali

Well I tried to fly to Australia a few days ago, only to find out my passport had gone missing. After several trips to the Australian Consulate (Canada's embassy is in Jakarta), I got all my paper work sent out and should have a new passport this Friday (I hope). I'm now staying at Peter Jansons (owner of The Dunes) villa just north of Kuta - this place is incredible. It was incredibly kind of Peter to let me stay here, and it's a huge benefit financially. I'm dying from the heat here, so I can't wait to get to the slightly cooler Aus. Indonesia has been a pretty amazing place, and the locals are ridiculously friendly (their favorite saying is "if you happy, me happy"), so I highly recommend you come here if you have the opportunity.

Over a month

Without an update; sorry about that. I've been all over south-east Asia and frequently have no internet access (or even electricity at times). I'm sitting in a cafe in Kuta, Bali right now, killing time until my 10pm flight to Sydney. Once in Oz I hope to have much more consistent internet access, so this blog should be bumpin' in no time. I've got lots of photos to go online, and some stories too. Stay tuned folks.

Helsinki

Just touched down in Helsinki after a long trans-Atlantic flight (which went right over Charlottetown, actually). When we landed at 9am the sun still wasn't up - I never normally think of the Scandinavian countries being that far north. I now have about 6 hours to kill in the Helsinki airport, most of which I hope to spend sleeping. I suck at sleeping on planes, so I only got about 45 minutes of shut-eye last night. One more flight to Bangkok!

Umm...

In the itty bitty Halifax airport, free wireless. In the mighty JFK, shitty wireless that costs $5 an hour. Time to man up NYC.

Let's get this on the go again

I don't understand how a plane can take off in high winds and nearly whiteout conditions, but according to the screen in front of me, my flight to NYC will be leaving on time. I had a decent nap on the shuttle drive to Halifax, which was nice. I'm not looking forward to having to sleep on planes and airport floors until Sunday, but it's all part of the traveling experience. I am, however, thoroughly looking forward to to next time I go outside, as it was -6c when I walked into the Halifax Airport, and when I walk out of the airport in Bangkok, it's going to be 30c+.

I couldn't find my uber cheap Old Navy flip flops this morning during a last minute packing spree, but I'm sure I'll be able to buy a pair on Khao San Road for something like 50 cents CAD.

I was looking at my flight path, and it looks like I'll be flying quite close to Mt. Everest, which is pretty cool. I doubt I'll be able to see much, but it's something to brag about nonetheless.

Well, I'll be boarding in a few minutes, so tata for now.

Turn the volume up to 11

I'm listening to some Death From Above, and I'm bringing this bitch back to life, for real.

I totally slacked off while I was in Dawson, but now that I'm home, I need somewhere to shove my thoughts/feelings/rage... so this will be it. And no more pussy-footing around what I'm really trying to say - don't like it, go fuck yourself - this is who I am.

I'm going to start right now by pointing out the pointlessness of life. This isn't meant to be bleak at all, just necessary to understanding life as a whole. My life doesn't matter, your life doesn't matter (it's true, and I make no apologies for saying it), even life on a biological scale doesn't matter. I'm not entirely sure where the values attached to everything came from, but me thinks the concept of god would have a fair bit of influence (I don't capitalize the g in god - don't like it? Suck it). Value is a human convention, but must transcend humans if value is to remain without human existence. How will I go about explaining this... Alright, I don't matter because you don't matter, you don't matter because no human matters, and how can this audacious statement be true? Well how can it not be true? Why do people matter? If all humans dropped dead in 5 minutes, it wouldn't matter, period. There would be no one around to miss us, which is really one of the few things that attaches value to anything. Even when a single human dies, the only way it 'matters' is that (generally speaking) people will miss said person. But that's it, other than the minor emotions of people, no one's death really 'matters' or effects the world.

I'm going to take this a bit further to piss off the hippies - it wouldn't matter if all life on earth went extinct. Why would it matter? A few billion years ago there was no life at all on earth - not so much as a micro organism. It wouldn't even be a set-back if all life was abolished, it would simply be a change (progress and set-backs are just labels made up by humans, and they really only apply to things like construction, definitely not the natural world). To take this to the enth degree, it wouldn't matter if the entire universe collapsed, and there was literally nothing left.

Nothing really matters - people die, and they rot, some people will probably miss then, but even so, things move on. Things would move on just fine without humans, or life on earth or without the universe as a whole (though here we'd be forced into a debate on whether 'nothing' can 'move on' - maybe just a poor choice of terms. Enjoy your life - do with it whatever YOU want, because in a universe in which nothing matters, the only thing that can have value is what we apply value to. So find what you love, and who you love, and value them - just don't forget, that in the end, it's all null

Regardless, none of this is meant to be disheartening, it's meant to be enlightening and freeing