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The
Journal of Alan Howard
Wednesday - 24th October 2001 -
6:40pm
Back to Australia...
Yesterday I booked my tickets for a week in Australia.
I'm leaving here on the 26th November and flying to Sydney,
where I'll stay for a couple days with my friend Peter.
I'll be getting there late afternoon, and flying onto Canberra
late afternoon on the 28th. Peter has always been
complaining that I've just been using him as a stopover every
time I've been back to Australia, and this has been true.
I've been staying with him briefly and also catching up with others
while I've
been in Sydney. This time around will be
different, as I'm going to be spending two quality days with
him, without distractions. I know it's not very long, but
it'll be long enough for us. I'm spending 6 days in
Canberra, before flying on to Melbourne on the 3rd December and
staying overnight with Tricia, and meeting up with Sally the
next morning, before I return to Wellington.
Canberra is going to be such a blast! It's been a while
since I was back there in my home. Back in early January,
to be exact. I'll be staying with 'Missy' while I'm there,
but it looks like I'll be spending most of my time with Melanie,
a close friend. She's apparently got all kinds of plans
lined up, like mountain journeys, bobsledding, and other such
adventures. Hehehe. She's amazing. Along with
whatever adventures she's got planned out, I'm going to be
spending a considerable amount of time with the rest of my
friends. It'll be great to catch up with them all.
The relationships I have with my friends is very important to
me, so it's going to be really good for me to get together with
them again. It's hard to maintain the closeness of those
relationships when you're living in another country, so I'm
happy that we're all very active on a mailing list which I use
to keep in touch with them. Dozens, if not hundreds, of
emails have been exchanged on a daily basis ever since I moved
here last year. And going back to see them regularly is
also important.
Another of my friends in Canberra, also called Peter, loaned me
some money to help me out of my financial crisis, which was just
awesome of him. I've asked him if he'd marry me, but he's
just not interested, darn it.
<grin> His generosity has allowed me to keep
my car, and get me out of the financial stress I was in, so I'll
forever be grateful for his friendship.
A new hobby of mine has been to download movies at work (after
hours, of course), burn them onto CD, and bring them home to
watch on my computer. A 600 Mb movie takes about 3 to 5
hours at work, while at home I'd be looking at about 2 to 3
days. A big difference... So that's been
enjoyable. I've got a few movies that I've really wanted,
and a few that I never got around to seeing at the cinema, so
it's all worthwhile.
I was off sick from work today with a head cold. One of
the worst I've had in a long time. It started on the
weekend and got worse. I told my manager yesterday I
probably wouldn't be in today, and it was a good thing I wasn't,
'cause I just couldn't get myself out of bed for most of the
day, until mid-afternoon. Since then I've just been
relaxing in front of the heater... in front of the
computer. <grin>
There hasn't been many updates this month (like that's
unusual... NOT!) because nothing much has been happening.
Nothing much to write about anyway. I'm still getting used
to feeling comfortable with myself, which is excellent.
Oh, something new, I guess, is the feedback I'm getting back
from various people about the feeling that they get when they're
around me. A manager at work started it a month or so ago,
when they said that in the chaos of the call room that I work
in, I present a figure of stability and calm, which has a
positive influence on the others there. I thought that was
interesting. And more recently, I've been told that I
radiate serenity, that I seem very serene. I feel that a
lot of the work that I'm doing on myself is having an effect
that others are seeing. This can only be a good
thing...
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