Love

Love is patient

Love is kind

Love it does not envy

Love it does not boast

Love it is not proud

Love it is not rude

Love it is not self-seeking

Love it is not easily angered

Love keeps no record of wrongs

Love does not delight in evil

Love rejoices in the truth

Love always protects

Love always trusts

Love always hopes

Love always perseveres

Love never fails

-Corinthians 

Valentine's Day

I like Valentine's Day. In a way.

I like that there is a day when you can be a bit more "couple-y". I'll accept a bit more PDA on Valentine's Day.

I like the cute decorations and all the pink and red.

I would love to be in America for Valentine's Day on year, and also the other big days. Everything is so much "bigger" in America. They really go all out for their celebration, it's so nice to see people so into something. I would love to be there just to experience the atmosphere.

What I don't really like about Valentine's Day is all the pressure of giving gifts. I get enough of that on people's birthday's and at Christmas, why do we need more days of stress to find the perfect gift?

I would rather get a gift on any "ordinary" day of the year because someone feels like giving me something, or they just saw something in a shop and thought of me, instead of on V-Day just because they felt like they had to get me something just because it's V-Day.

I know some people that doesn't celebrate V-Day because they think it's too commercialised and just an excuse for the big companies to make more money. Which is okay, fair enough. But then some of them will create their own V-Day. Sometimes just a day before or after the 14th. What's the point of that? They still do all the V-Day things, so they still give the big companies their money and all that. And why? Just because of the date? Just to be different? If you're going to celebrate it anyway you might as well do it on the 14th. Don't pretend like you don't want to do it. If you don't want to celebrate it, don't do it at all. A couple already have an anniversary date, why not celebrate that instead of making up your own V-Day? Don't make up some lame excuse that it's not V-Day you're celebrating, when you know that the only reason you have that extra special day that you made up is only because of V-Day. The date is there, if you want to use it do it! Be proud! You're in a couple and you want to show your love for each other, it's the perfect day for it!

Are you coupled up? Are you doing anything special for Valentine's Day this year?

Is this what they call homesickness??

I had my first "I want to go home" thought yesterday.

I don't think it was anything in particular that brought it on. It was more of a realization that I don't have a proper places to live, I don't have a job, and although I still don't know what I want to study I know I can't do it on the visa I'm currently on.

So I feel a bit lost at the minute, and I know I have to find a job so that I won't have to spend all my savings, but it's going to be hard to get a job because I can only work for a few months. The jobs that will be okay with me just working for a few months are jobs I don't want to do. But I guess it's only for a few short months so I shouldn't worry about it.

I also realized something else when I had my "I want to go home" though. The "home" I thought about was England. Not any particular place in England, but England none the less. Even though my family is in Norway, it is England that feels like home to me. Maybe any other place in the UK would be good too, but since I've only ever lived in England I wouldn't know.

I want to go back, study, get a job, "settle down". That doesn't mean stop travelling by the way, but having a home to come back to. I want to live life the "ordinary" way. The way most people do.

I've never felt this way before. I've wanted to go back to England, but never this strongly. I don't know if it's homesickness or just me wanting to start my life. Because I don't miss any particular people or places (a whole country can't be called a particular place, can it?). Well, I do miss people of course, just not enough to make me want to go back to them.

People think I live such an exciting an fun life and that I can do whatever I want, and yes; it is, and I can, it it is also really stressful and even boring at times. I don't regret doing this at all, it's a great experience and I wouldn't be without it, but maybe it would have been enough with 6 months?

If I had just worked for 3 months, or not worked at all, just travelled, I would still have had time to see all the things I want to see here.

Not meeting anyone to "distract" me would have helped too of course, but where is the fun in that? I have done the whole "I don't want to meet anyone because I'm travelling", and it's not fun. Even though things are the way they are with TP, and it probably won't work out between us, if somebody offered me to go back in time I would do it all again.

I like Australia. I like the people, the weather and I like being here, but I don't want to live here.

I could of course book an early ticket back home, I have enough money for it. But. I still haven't see everything I want to see here, and I would kick myself if I didn't see it, and I have also already booked my ticket to go home in July.

I will enjoy the rest of my stay in Australia, but I am also looking forward to leaving.

The 99'er meme - Part 3

Continuation of the last two weeks of Sunday Stealing.
Part 1
Part 2

51. Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong? Depends what they did, but yes.
52. What is your astrological sign? Scorpio
53. Do you save money for anything? What? Right now I'm spending my saved up money, but I will save it for travels when I'm earning money again.
54. What's the last thing you purchased? I bought a pair of black flats yesterday.
55. Have you ever had a relationship that you realized was lust not love? Yes
56. In a relationship? Kind of.
57. How many relationships have you had? 4
58. What do you want to tell us about your day? Not much has happened yet today, I got up, had breakfast and went to the library... 
59. Where were you yesterday? At the hostel, at The Paramedic's and then at some bars.
60. Is there anything interesting within 10 feet of you? Not now, but there was a gecko there earlier, which was kind of coll since I'm in the library. I wonder what book the gecko was going to borrow...
61. Are you wearing socks right now? It wouldn't look very good with my flip-flops....
62. What's your favourite animal? Cat.
63. What's your secret weapon to get someone to like you? Smile.
64. Where is your best friend? Far away
65. How did you end/your last relationship end? The twat didn't have the balls to do it face-to-face so he did it via msn.
66. What's your heritage? As far as I know I'm 100% Norwegian
67. What were you doing last night at 12am? Dancing my butt off in some random bar.
68. What's new? This post?
69. What is the key to seduction? I honestly have no idea... A nice smile?
70. What was the weirdest thing that happened to you this week? Some random dude sat down next to me last night and when I said I was didn't have a job at the moment he offered to pay me to be his girlfriend!!
71. You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do? Well first of all I have never been late to any job I have ever had, so I doubt I would get a warning like that. But even if I had I would save the dog of course!!
72. You are at the doctor's office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone that you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid? a) I think I would probably tell everyone, maybe. I guess that's something I can't really know until it happens (which of course I hope it never will!). b) Go see friends and family, do quick holidays in the countries I haven't been that I really want to see... I think, it's the same as "a" really, you can't know these things for sure until it actually happens. c) Probably.
73. You can only have one of these things: trust or love. Trust.
74. What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it? It changes all the time, but at the moment I quite like "Don't worry, be happy"
75. Who has your cell phone number (other than family)? Some of my friends.

Melbourne - Day 7 and 8

(Day 1 and 2)

(Day 3 and 4)

(Day 5 and 6)

Day 7 – Eureka Tower

When I booked the tour for Great Ocean Road I booked it as a package with the Eureka tower as well, so today I decided to redeem my voucher, instead of doing it tomorrow before my flight as that would probably stress me out. The voucher included the Eureka Skydeck 88 and “The Edge”, where you go into a glass box which is “pushed” 3 meters outside the building, so you look down on the ground approximately 300meters below.

 The lift up to the Skydeck was really quick, 9meters per second! My ears popped. It was strange seeing the numbers of the floors going so quickly! The Skydeck was really good, you could walk around the whole floor, so you got a 360 view of Melbourne.

 I had really been looking forward to doing “The Edge” experience. Not scared of heights at all, I thought it would be really cool to look straight down to the street below, and know that it was only 4cm of glass under my feet. We weren’t allowed our bags or cameras into the box (they want to earn more money by you buying the picture they take of you in there).

 When it started they played some sound effects while they pushed the box out, I don’t know if it was supposed to be cool or scary, but I wasn't really impressed. The glass walls were white and we couldn't really see through them, then suddenly they made them clear. But I was kind of disappointed because I didn't think they were quite clear enough. There was also some glare so I had to move to be able to see properly through the glass floor, which also had steel bars so the parts you could look through wasn't really very big, but I do understand that it’s probably safer, I just think the glass could have been a lot clearer.

 After a while the girl controlling the box started making some of the walls and the floor and roof white again, alternating so that you could look through one of the walls etc but not the others, then she started doing it quicker and quicker so that you didn’t really have time to look through any of the windows. Again, I have no idea why she did that, it was just annoying and I was not impressed at all, neither was one of the other ladies in the box with me judging by her facial expression. The girl made the glass clear again and took pictures of each group in the box. It was only 7 people in the box, including me; a group of 3, a group of 2 and then the lady and I were the single ones. They took 2 pictures, one normal and then they told us to be silly on the other one. After the pictures they moved the box back into the building and we could go out and buy the photos they had taken if we wanted to. I did buy the one they had taken of me, only to kind of have as a memory. The glass is not very clear on the picture, maybe it was the weather or the glare or the flash of the camera, but you can’t really see properly the view. So I took one of myself in front of the normal window on the Skydeck which I think turned out much better.

 I'm glad I didn’t pay for “The Edge” as I personally didn’t think it was worth it. I did enjoy the view from the Skydeck though and that was enough really. Saying that though I would have probably bought a ticket for “The Edge” just because I would have thought it was better than it was, and for the experience. You don’t know until you've tried, right?

Day 8

As my flight left Melbourne really late, around 10pm, I had an extra day in Melbourne in a way.

While I was waiting for Mai at Federation Square I saw some people dressed up as zombies walking around, it was really cool. I wonder why they were doing it. Anybody know?

 When I met up with Mai we went to St. Patricks Cathedral and had a look inside. Like I’ve said before; I’m not a religious person, but I do think that religious buildings are very nice and I like looking at them. St. Patricks Cathedral was no exception; it was beautiful on the inside and the outside.

 After the Cathedral we had a look at harbour town shopping centre down at the docklands, just window-shopping.

One of the guys we met on Friday night had offered to drive me to the airport, which was really nice of him. I actually told him that my flight left at 8pm, a lie, not nice I know, but that way I didn’t have to keep him up late to drive me, and if something happened so that he couldn’t take me after all I had plenty of time to arrange for some other way of getting there. The airport I was going to was Avalon, a fair way out of the city.

H, the guy that was taking me, showed up on time. It took us about an hour to get to the airport, and then I just had to sit and wait… Very boring. The plane was also an hour late because of some bad weather in Brisbane, but the staff got everybody on quickly when it was time for us to board.

As it’s been really cold in Melbourne the last few days I was happy to feel the heat when I landed in Brisbane! Although I will probably think it’s too hot when the daytime heat hits.

I took a taxi (expensive!!) to my hostel, YHA Brisbane City, which I have only booked for the one night. There was someone waiting for me when I arrived as I had warned them that I would be really late, I checked in and went to bed.

“Holiday” over.

I look forward to seeing The Paramedic again.

Melbourne - Day 5 and 6

(Day 1 and 2)

(Day 3 and 4)

Day 5

This morning Mai and I went to the Queen Victoria Market. It was much bigger than the evening one on Wednesday, but like all markets many of the stalls sold the same things. I found some salt liquorice without gelatine and Mai and I found a card that we are going to send to the girls we looked after in England, other than that neither of us bought anything.

After the markets we got some lunch and then went to the Victoria State Library as they have free internet. When I was going in there with my laptop bag the library attendant asked what was in the bag. I was very tempted to say: What do you think is in there?! But I just opened it for him to see that it was indeed just a laptop.

In the evening we went to the Belgian Beer Café on Bluestone, as The Paramedic had suggested it. It’s a very pretty Place and I even found a cider that I liked! It was Mai who suggested the cider, she said it didn’t taste like cider at all, so of course that was the one I tried. And she was right! It was really yummy.

 We didn’t stay out very late as I had a headache and had to get up early the next day.

Day 6 – The Great Ocean Road!

The one thing I HAD to see while I was in Melbourne was the Great Ocean Road. The bus driver we had for the day was very nice. I also liked how he told everyone the reason he was late was because of two passengers, and he made them apologize to everyone! How else are they supposed to learn? Although I’m not sure it worked because they kept being the last ones on the bus all day. Oh well. Anyway.

We stopped quite a few places. In one of the scenic stops there was a wild koala just at eye-level! 

Can you see the koala?

We also stopped at Kennett River where we saw some more koalas, one was even on the ground! At Kennett River we also got to feed some wild parrots! One sat on my hand and ate some seeds out of my palm, and one landed on my head at one point!

 We stopped for lunch at a place called Apollo Bay. The bus driver had packed two vegetarian alternatives and he told everyone to make sure that they let the actual vegetarians have first pick of those, which was nice. Apollo Bay was a pretty place, but it’s hard to go exploring too much when you know you only have a short amount of time in a place.

 After Apollo Bay we stopped at Maits Rest. That’s a cool tempered rainforest. It didn't take too long to walk in it, which was kind of nice because I've seen so many rainforests now. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice and very informative, but the reason I went on the tour was the Twelve Apostles, not another rainforest.

 The Twelve Apostles was the next stop. It was really cool to see the limestone formations made by the sea. Apparently there is only 8 now, not 12, as they erode.

 We also had two more stops featuring stone formations. The first was Loch Ard Gorge (I thought it was Lockhard Gorge at first), that one had 3 different walks. Two on top of the cliffs and 1 down to the beach. It was very pretty there.

 The last stop before we headed back to Melbourne was London Bridge, or London Arch as it is called now. Up until 1990 you could walk to the end of it because it was connected to the mainland, but then that arch collapsed. No one was hurt as it happened, but 2 people got marooned on the newly formed island for a couple of hours until the helicopter rescued them, I laughed at that, I'm a bit mean, I know. But I wonder what they would have done if it had happened before helicopters were invented?

 It was a really nice tour and I’m glad I did it. It lasted for about 13 hours and I was really tired by the time we got back, but it was worth it. 

To be continued...

Melbourne - Day 3 and 4

(Day 1 and 2. )

Day 3

A boring start to the day: I decided to sit down and charge my phone all the way up. At least it gave me some time to answer my e-mails and post some of my Melbourne pictures to Facebook.

After my phone was fully charged for the first time since Canberra I wandered around town for a few hours. I started with taking the free tourist shuttle to Queen Victoria Market, which was starting to close up when I got there. I bought a couple of plums and then I just started randomly walking down a road. I did ask a police officer that I walked past if I was heading towards the city centre, just to make sure I wouldn’t end up too far away, and I was. Once I knew that and I noticed a street I recognised I knew how to get back to my hostel, but I didn’t want to go there yet so I turned left and right down some random streets. My sense of direction is quite good, so I didn’t get LOST.

Anyway. I came across some alleys with some street art; some was being made as I was watching. It’s amazing how good some people are, and it’s really nice that they’ve got somewhere to do it. It should be like this in all cities, because when it’s done properly it can look really nice!

 My friend Mai had been on a wine tasting tour all day, and when she got back we bought a cake and some wine to celebrate her birthday. We sat in her hostel at first, where we met a couple of guys who, when we had finished our wine, we went out to Melbourne Central with for a couple more drinks. This is one thing I really like about hostels; you meet so many new people and so many nice people. Everybody is a potential friend.

Wine in mugs... We're just SO classy!

Day 4 – Luna, Kevin and Antonio!

Today is the day I’m meeting Luna and her daddies Antonio and Kevin. They are the first people (and dog) who I only know from the blog world that I’m actually meeting face-to-face. I “met” Kevin over a year ago through his blog “52 Characters in Search for a Script”, which he’s sadly not writing on anymore. When I got twitter we followed each other on there and then when he and his partner Antonio started a blog for their dog Luna, “Luna,A Dog’s Life…”, I started reading that. When I decided to come to Melbourne I asked if they would like to meet up, and they did!

As I was meeting them a little bit outside Melbourne I had to get a train ticket. I am so used to using my go-card in Brisbane it’s a bit strange having to get an actual ticket. As I was sitting on the train I realized that Kevin, who was picking me up, doesn’t know what I look like! I figured that I would see him when I got off, but just in case it was busy and I didn’t spot him I sent him a tweet telling him what I was wearing.  I needn’t have worried, I knew him as soon as I saw him.

Kevin took me back to their house, it was really strange to meet someone I’ve only known online, but he’s a nice guy. When we got to his and Antonio’s house I got to meet Antonio and the famous Luna as well. Both very nice! Luna was very friendly and jumping up on me and giving me kisses, I’m glad she isn’t a Doberman or something big and heavy like that! Haha! 

Antonio and Kevin left Luna at home in the back garden and we drove into the city and went to the aquarium. Antonio even paid for my ticket! Thank you again for that! They had penguins at the aquarium, I think they just want to make more money after the Happy Feet movies, but then again they probably got some new things after the Finding Nemo movie as well.  But it was cool to see them anyway, except for the penguins in St Kilda, I have never seen penguins before, not that I can remember anyway.

 There were loads of pretty, funny, weird and some ugly fishes at the aquarium.

Spider crab! Yuck!

 After the aquarium we crossed the river to Crown Casino. Antonio was dying for a coffee! The Crown casino is one of those places you can tell is really expensive as soon as you step inside. They had a decoration for the Chinese New Year that was really nice. The picture doesn't do it justice!

 We had some (non-alcoholic)drinks, again I didn’t have to pay my own way! THANK YOU!  And then Kevin and Antonio walked me to my hostel before they went to one of their friend’s birthday party.

 I really enjoyed my day with Kevin, Antonio and Luna. It was strange in the beginning because we don’t really know each other, but after we got over the initial “awkwardness” or what I should call it, I had a really nice time.

In the evening I met up with Mai and the guys from last night again. We had some of Mai’s left over birthday cake and just sat at her hostel and chatted for a few hours.

To be continued...