What is the most important thing a traveler could lose?? Camera? Phone? Undies?!? No! It’s worst!! Try the passport!!!!!!!11111oneone 
Yep I lost my passport and am stuck in the UK for at least 4-14 weeks. Of all the time to lose my passport, I lose it during the summer season in Europe. Sigh…
How did I lose it? Well, lets add a bit of alcohol then a little bit more then a LOT more….. It was a workmates leaving drinks so we decided to hit the town for a few brewskis and whatever trace of alcohol we could get. Little did I know that I actually had my passport in my jacket pocket. I guess I forgot to unpack it when I came back from Majorca. Got home that night at 4am so all I did was undress then hit the bed - passport still in my jacket pocket. Anyway, yea discovered this when we finished dinner so I figured it’ll be safer in the jacket pocket as people might pick my pants pocket or steal my bag. I only realized the passport was lost when I came out of the bar holding my jacket upside down! DOH! Searched the bar high and low but still nothing and same thing the following day when I was retracing the steps I did through all the bars I went to that night.
Since the search didn’t work I decided to head to the Aussie High Commission to report it lost and maybe if some kind fellow returned it, the high commission would be the one to get it. So I went there to purely register that I’ve lost my passport and to provide my contact details. What did High Commission decide to do??? Cancel my bloody passport!!! AARRGGGGHHH!!!! Couldn’t they wait a few days for it to be turned in?? My working visa is in there you bastards!!!
So this is where I am now… Reapplied for a new passport (and £236 poorer) and was fined (sorry it’s a fee) for a LOST passport?! Yes, you get a fee for losing a passport… and now my new passport is stuck in the abyss we call the Home Office. This is the place which takes 4-14 weeks to process a form that says, “I lost my passport, can you transfer my visa to this one please?”. OK, yes it says more than that but seriously it’s only a few tick boxes, address details and all the documents to prove that I have the right to work here. For it to take 4-14 weeks? That’s just ridiculous!
I hope I can get my passport back soon cos in 7 weeks I’m going to Croatia to which I already paid £750 already!!! AARRRRggGGHHHH!!!
The UK can be a really beautiful place when it wants to be. I’ve been here a little over a year now and the weather has been mostly doom and gloom but occassonally you get those sunny days. Cornwall is one of those places which is extremely beautful when it’s sunny. As a last minute thing, I decided to drive up to the Cornwall region for the May bank holiday.
I was so under prepared for this trip it was not funny… ok maybe it is… The car was booked the night before and accommodation hadn’t been sorted out. I didn’t even know where Cornwall was! I thought it was going to be a 2 hour drive until I punched it into google maps and it said 433km!!! All I knew was to pick up the car after work and start driving the next morning following tomtom to the dot.
Picking up the car was an ordeal itself. I haven’t driven a manual car for almost 10 years so you can imagine the pain there. All the way from Heathrow to Barons Court… I think every stop I had, I pretty much stalled the damn thing. I understood the mechanics of it but in practice not so much. Eventually my memories and practices came back to me the next morning! So my road trip started and oh boy it was a long drive but it was fun doing 90-100mph (145-160 kph) on the motorway! 
After 5 hours when I eventually got there, I needed to fill up the fuel. From memory I had requested a diesel car so I assumed it was diesel. There was no indication of the type of fuel except the fact that the nozzle didn’t fit. Having never driven a diesel I just thought it was weird but continued pumping anyway. The car started alright but after 5 meters it clonked out like it ran out of fuel (trust me, I know how that feels). You can’t imagine the panic that went through my mind. The sense that Hertz was going to charge me a bomb to fix the damn vehicle and having to be stuck in Cornwall until Tuesday… Grrr!!! But never fear, I sucked my pride, embarrassment and fears and called hertz. Surprisingly enough they gave me a free tow but no replacement car. Luckily the driver of the emergency vehicle knew a dodgy mechanic that could drain the car and for the cheap. Woohoo!! No hefty bill
So there I was in Newquay, Cornwall after 2 hours at a pub waiting for my car to drain, I met up with a friend to have a look around the area. Newquay reminded me so much of freo and at times Scarborough beach… It was full of derros and bogans!! I thought I left Perth to get away from them but no looks like this country has them too, though they call them chavs.
As I didn’t have accommodation, I slept in my car after a night out on the piss. Oh it was not a comfortable night at all. It was cramp and worst of all it was cold! Newquay is known for hosting Stag and Hen nights so you can imagine the type of people there. I actually drove out of Newquay cos it was so loud damn loud at 4am.
So there, that was my trip down in Cornwall… I’d highly recommend staying well away from Newquay and stay in B&Bs in Cornwall instead. Go and visit Tintagel Castle aka King Arthur’s Castle, Minac Theatre and possibly the Eden Project. I reckon I had a few good shots of the area but wished I did a little more.
WOW!! Time does pass really fast… Way too fast! It’s already been a year since I left my home town Perth for London. What’s the verdict??? Absolutely FANTASTIC!!! There’s been the ups and downs but luckily it’s been up most of the time. Looking back at what I’ve achieved, I’m amazed it all happened within a span of one year. From landing here, knowing absolutely nobody, no place to live, no job and having very little money to now where I’ve got a flat over in West Kensington, a paying job and a growing set of friends. Especially in this economic climate, I would have thought I’d have to pack my bags within 3 months from landing here and head straight back home. Luckily I’m still surviving!!
So where to now??? Well, I reckon I’ll be over here for a little while as there is still so much more traveling to do. Every time I look at the easyjet or ryanair flight path, I’m just shocked by the number of destinations there are… There are just way too many places to visit!
A year on, I’m hoping there will still be a couple of years to go and hopefully I’ll meet more people, visit more countries and more importantly start getting back into blogging again. I’ve been rather lazy but it’s important for myself otherwise I’d be forgetting things 
Grrr… Ladies and their pms. Stay away from there or you’ll have your head ripped off
Last weekend I was in Copenhagen (Denmark) with some friends to explore the city and see some new sights. It’s been a while since I’ve been back on the mainland so I was quite excited. To be quite honest, I don’t remember much of it but all I remember was that it was FUCKING COLD! I thought London was cold but how wrong was I. If you have a look at the map, Copenhagen is closer towards the North Pole than London. I reckon Copenhagen would be a beautiful city when it’s much warmer. The beauty about going in winter is that there weren’t many tourists at all. So we were left free to roam the city and create havoc.
The most common comment about Copenhagen is that the people there are beautiful. I’d have to say they are ALL TRUE!!! My goodness, everywhere you go there are HOT women but I was surprised there were a lot of brunettes. The thing about Scandanavia is that quite a large proportionate are blondes but that’s not the case on the streets, it was quite equal. However the first bar we went to when we landed was full of blondes… Left right center…
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Apart from that we drank a lot, we went to museums, recovered from hangovers, and walked around. One place we went to was the State Museum for Kunst which cracked me up the whole day. It’s actually an art gallery if you were thinking what I was thinking before we went
Food and booze is quite expensive there and you’d be looking at around £5 per drink and £15 per meal. A burger king / maccas meal would be around £10 which was a rip off. Convert all that to aussie dollars and that’s $20 for a whopper meal?!? No way jose!
Have a look on my flickr page for more pics
Tags: Copenhagen, Denmark, Weekend Trip
Yesterday I had planned to head over to the Dover Street Market to have a look at some clothes (preferably warmer but yet fashionable). So there I went, on my way to Green Park but as I approached to the exit, there seemed to be a crowd blocking it. As a new born true Londoner, I decided to barge my way through the exit and from there I was greeted with Police officers running away from a large crowd. Some of the coppers that were running had shouted at us to get back down the tube. I didn’t know what was going on so I pretended to walk down the stairs but then went back up again when the coppers were gone. Turns out the crowd of people were the Freedom for Palestine protesters and they were relatively peaceful. I was kinda hoping it to be a drunken mob of soccer fans creating mayhem like the Chelsea vs Man Utd game for the Champions League 2008. Having never been to a protest before, I decided to follow the crowd as it would definitely be more exciting than window shopping.
The protest was going along as I would have predicted until the coppers with riot gear came along. That’s where I was expecting things to get interesting and possibly some proper rioting to happen? It’s not that I wanted people to get hurt but I just wanted to seem some action (and photograph it)… Ok fine, I wanted to see people get hurt (whether it be the protesters or the coppers). C’mon, how often do you experience a riot? Nicola told me of his story in Paris a couple of years ago for New Years Eve when a riot happened, there were the full blown and police with riot gear shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas into the crowd so I was kinda expecting that to happen on this occasion.
What I did enjoy was running around the city taking photos of the protesters and police officers. So still something that doesn’t happen everyday and was fun to experience
Somedays I have to pinch myself as I still can’t believe I’m in London. Far from family, far from friends… It’s amazing how time passes by
Well, I finally had some free time to process my photos from Edinburgh (Scotland). There are still a lot more photos but I guess they were rather half arsed shots.
What can I remember about Edinburgh? It is one of the most picturesque places I have been so far. It’s almost as if you’ve stepped into a fairytale. I arrived about 9pm on my way to the train station at Edinburgh to St Andrews when I stopped and looked around. I was surrounded by castles, spires, churches, etc. It was absolutely amazing and it reminded me of how much traveling I need to do! With what I did in Edinburgh, there isn’t a lot to mention . Most of the time was spent walking around in tours or climbing Arthur’s Seat. I read about Arthur’s seat as a recommendation from wikitravel which they mentioned that it was a gentle stroll. Oh how wrong were they!!! I started climbing it and realized I was building a bit of a sweat and the climb started to be much steeper than I expected. How was it a gentle stroll?! When I reached the peak, I noticed there were heaps of people then peering on the otherside of the seat there was this slight inclined path that lead to the peak… WTF?! So turned out I took the not so “gentle stroll” and wikitravel had failed to mention that part!
On another note, I did try some haggis and black pudding. Haggis I didn’t quite like so much as it left this oily/slimey after taste on the tongue which I had to eat with baked beans to disguise it. Black pudding on the other hand I quite liked… mmm…. this was quite cinnamony…
Tags: Arthur's Seat, black pudding, Edinburgh, haggis, Scotland
Didn’t I promise myself not to work so late… 3am now and I just finished committing. KILL ME NOW!!!
My housemate (Dave) and I went out to Oxford Street after heading to some crappy Winter/Christmas market on Southbank. While looking for some cheap 99p gloves we had the following conversation:
j: While we’re here, I want to head into House of Frasers as they had Laura Ashley there
d: *pauses for a while*… erm… that’s gay…
j: what? I want to get a reed diffuser there. You know fragrances, scented oils… to make your room smell better
d: that’s not helping you
Ok it does sound queer… but hey! Reed diffusers ftw!
