Reading List July 2012:
One classic and three non-fictions. History, music, food and sex. As always, I am more ambitious than I am productive.
3 chapters by the end of the night, and on that note: bonne nuit!
xx doots
Stuff I’ve done in the 6 months since returning to Australia:
Life has settled down into a cruisy, comfortable, bourgeois pattern. And I find myself wondering “is this what the-rest-of-your-life feels like”? Is this it?
Don’t let this be “it”.
There’s a romantic myth about traveling: that when you see the world, meet new people, experience things previous unexperienced, you end up “finding yourself”.
And so there I was, at the end of my time in Europe, wondering if I had ever “found myself” and what that even means.
In many ways, 5 months on from when I left Australia, I was more uncertain than ever about what I want to do in life. Do I want to practice law, in the traditional sense of that word? Do I actually want to work for the government? Do I want to move to Canberra? Do I even want to live in Australia?
But here is what I know. I know that I want to keep writing. Not necessarily to become a novelist, a blogger, a journalist, but simply to keep writing like this, for my own sake. While I was on the road, not a day went by without me wishing I had a laptop at my disposal to tap away at.
I know that however uncertain I am about becoming a lawyer, my structure of thinking, my values, my language and work ethics have all been shaped by this discipline, and I intend to put it to good use.
I know that home is where the heart is. And wherever I go in the world, wherever I end up, Australia - Melbourne - continues to tug the strings of my heart in a way that makes me stuff spoonfuls of milo powder in my mouth when I am having a bad day.
I know that food and wine are important things in life. As are the ethical choices we make concerning food. The gradual realisation of this had me reconsidering my consumption of animals. But that of course, is a whole other topic.
So what does all this mean? Have I “found” whatever I was searching for, if anything at all?
The last thing I know, as I left Europe on a new journey homeward, is that traveling isn’t a real life version of “Eat, Pray Love”. I wasn’t tired of the grind of everyday life when I left Australia. I didn’t have a spasm of epiphanies standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t find eternal love. The meaning of life didn’t just suddenly dawn on me while I crossed the strait of Gibraltar. I didn’t have a Hollywood ending to show for my travels.
But I was going home with a suitcase full of shopping, a few thousand photographs, new friends, shared memories … I was going home inspired, energized, determined to make the most out of the next phase of my life, determined to do certain things differently this time.
I was going home.
xx
Picspam of my visit to the Batu caves while in KL - easily the most fun I had there.
(Traveling has come to an end already, but for the sake of completeness, here are some final backdated entries to cover what happened in January and February.)
***
When I arrived in Porto, it appeared that everyone else was there for the same reason as I was: RyanAir.
The presence of the airline in Portugal has made Porto one of the cheapest cities in the country to fly in and out of from Belgium, so I guess I have RyanAir to thank for bringing me to a city I probably would not have visited otherwise.
It was a Tuesday morning when my train pulled into the main station in the city - one of the more beautiful train stations I’ve seen in my life time - and the entire town seemed to be swarmed by seagulls, crying softly over the river.
I spent the next day and a half climbing up and down the narrow, hilly streets of the city, marvelling at the blue and white ceramic tiling that seems to cover the city on every corner you turn (one of the more curious connections between Portuguese and Chinese culture), and of course, drinking port on the banks of the river Douro.
It amazed me that we were only 3 hours by train from Lisbon, but the culture and vibe of the place felt so different, and yet marvellous and underrated in every way.
Told you the train station was beautiful.
Hills, hills and more hills…
Seagulls, masses and masses of them, singing, crying, flying in the evening sun. It was beautiful.
xx
