G'bye, Oz!

Pretty much done with Australia now - I'm sitting in the Sydney aeropuerto, with an hour and forty-five minutes until my roughly ten hour flight to Honolulu. Snagged a book for the flip (Shantaram), hope my ipod is charged, and got about four hours of sleep last night in hopes of crashing out on the flight. Got a window seat, to boot. i think i'm on the east side of the plane, and we fly through sunrise, which oughta be cool (assuming I'm conscious)

Anypoo, enough about the flight - barring extraordinary neighbors, it'll probably be exactly what i expect. It's leaving Australia that's the momentous (but simultaneously entirely devoid of fanfare) part. I still haven't quite sorted whether or not i could continue to wander, or if i'd have been happy working some random job. the job certainly wouldn't've been satisfying, but towards the end of my ten or so days in Manly I had some great conversations with a few brits and a kiwi - helped me appreciate what there is to gain in sticking around. But what I said last post still rings true - I know i can travel now (although travelling Oz is spectacularly easy - easier than travelling the States, I'd bet), and for the time being that curiousity's sated. The job front though, is my current version of the great unknown. I don't see myself happily settling down into a career any time soon, but I want to do something techy, something tinkery.

I'll miss Oz, certainly, but it feels like a good time to move on. I'll miss the kickass landscape, and the mind-stretching expanses. I'll miss the hilarious signage. I'll miss the freakin' bizarre wildlife. I'll miss starting a conversation and having no idea what accent, what voacbulary, and what story's going to come out of the person's mouth. I'll miss weirdass words. I'll probably step out into traffic a few times in the states. And go to the wrong side of the car for shotgun. And probably move over to the wrong side for the escalator going my way. And miss ginger beer. And meat pies. And eating kangaroo.


Mmmm... kangaroo.


Urp.

flightward!

makin' like a hockey player and leafing

Coming Soon to an America near you!

Just got off the horn with Hawaiian Air, and Australia will be short one Ben come Sunday. Plan is to dust off from Sydney in four days, land in Honolulu ten and a half hours before I take off, hang out in Hawaii for a shade over a week, and then pop off to Santa Francomocisco on June 18th. From then I'll probably burn a week in the Bay Area before moseying to points east.

Aside from selling off the car ($800AUD, and the radiator went pear-shaped hours before I sold it. Lucked out with two Brits who didn't mind fixing it themselves for the right price.) the past week has been mostly waffling about what I should do - go back to the states and rustle up a job, pop off to NZ or thailand/laos/cambodia/malaysia and break the bank, or find some cash-in-hand work in australia and then pop off to other lands. I finally sacked up and decided to go home.

I'm in no particular rush to get home, but it seems like the right choice. That's not to say I don't miss friends, family, and familiarity - I missed them the moment I left. It's more that there's no deadline, mostly no job or classes to start. But the biggest question I've got right now (and for the past few years) is if I've got the chops to actually work - to actually design something I'm proud of, to produce something to call my own, to actually affect something other than my own development; to just make Something happen. And to misuse; semicolons. It sounds like hippie crap even as I write it, but it feels right. Staying here and working wouldn't be the challenge I'm looking for, despite getting flair points for being NotAmerica. Maybe an engineering job in NZ, Dubai, or perhaps Europe would scratch the travel itch and chip away at the work thing at the same time. I feel like I'm almost over my Having A Purpose hangup, and willing to finally try something. Or maybe I'm just trying to tack some personal change on at the end of this Oz trip.

Here's where the paragraph about how travelling has 'changed me' (Changed Me? don't think I like the capitalizationing anymore) would go - but I haven't the slightest idea how it has. It was frightenly easy to slip into old internet-addict (short-term mental stimulation addict) habits once I lost momentum here in Sydney/Manly - so I'm not exactly some phoenix reborn. A friend pointed out, I may well realize further down the road that something has changed. Either way, I can say for sure, it certainly has been a trip.