For much of the last four months I have operated on autopilot, denying my feelings the opportunity to reach the surface. It’s not as though I haven’t laughed or enjoyed myself in this time, because I have, it’s more that I’ve built a wall around whatever part of the brain it is that gives birth to feelings and done my best to abort anything that even resembled an emotion.

Of course, what I’ve since discovered is that days don’t end when you pretend everything is OK, they blend in to one another and time passes as though a blur. Life is usually rich in detail, but when the detail is false and you’re repeating the same lie each day, I guess you kind of lose track of time. Read the rest of this entry »

1/ My flight to Paris, which was delayed
2/ The metro ticket machine that only accepted coins.
3/ A one way ticket to Paris costing almost 9 Euros.
4/ No one around to assist tourists.
5/ The train that was so packed I had to sit my luggage on my lap.
6/ The small French child who decided to sit on my knee on the train.
7/ The internet that doesn’t work in my hotel room.
8/ Sharing a bed with my sister, even if it is a super king size.
9/ No roast beef sandwich.
10/ Waking up with a cold.

I could never get to sleep on Christmas Eve. And when I finally did doze off, I would always wake moments later, certain I had slept well past the time set by my parents as an appropriate hour to open presents. Last night, my sleep was similarly disrupted. Sure I dozed here and there, but I didn’t really sleep, instead I played a game of hide and seek with the alarm clock. 12:32, 12:51, 2:19, 2:23, 4:03, 4:11. I was unusually relieved when my alarm sounded at 6:30am and I lept out of bed, much like I did back when I was a kid on Christmas morning. The moment had finally arrived and I was going to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, my Christmas in July. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mum,

When I imagine your childhood the moments are always black and white, mostly because all the photos I have seen have been in monotone, but partly because I know you grew up in England, and the only colours there are shades of grey. Or so I thought.

My time in Salisbury, where you spent your early childhood years, has painted for me a new picture of your world, and also changed the way that I view England. It isn’t just the largest grey palette in the world; there are actually some exceptional colours to be found. Read the rest of this entry »

The flight in to London was probably one of my more anxious flying experiences. I haven’t done a great deal of flying before, in fact this was probably my 23rd or 24th flight, but when your plane is circling above London and a bit of turbulence is thrown in to the mix, it’s bound to be a little bit of a nerve wracking experience. Mind the gap.

Nonetheless we landed safely and found ourselves with a bit of time up our sleeves somewhere near our elbows. After I tightened my watch strap we headed out to take in the very best that London had to offer and after a wander through the generic tourist spots in London, finished the night at an Indian restuarant on St Martins Place for a curry. Mind the gap.

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Abu Dhabi is a lot like Melbourne, only not. For starters Abu Dhabi is green. Not green with envy, but green like a rainforest, which is surprising since you’re in the friggen desert. Abu Dhabi is so green that if it weren’t for the incredible heat you’d actually forget that you were in the desert. But turning a desert in to a rainforest is no easy feat, especially when you only record 120mm of rain a year. So its no wonder that around 97% of water in Abu Dhabi comes from desalination, allowing Abu Dhabi residents to each use 550L of water a day, which certainly blows Melbourne’s ‘Target 155′ out of the water, so to speak. In contrast Jordan residents, who live in a similar climate to Abu Dhabi, use 87L of water per day, and that kinda puts Melbourne to shame; for all the complaints about droughts back home, at least we don’t live in the desert.

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Before flying to Abu Dhabi, my longest flight had been between Melbourne and Darwin, which is around a four hour flight. So the idea of sitting in ‘cattle class’ for 14 hours was about as appealing as watching hard core porn on my own with cheese graters taped to my hands. But alas last night I boarded my Etihad Airways flight to Abu Dhabi and tried to stay positive about the journey ahead.

It wasn’t too bad in the end. The flight landed an hour ahead of schedule and getting through customs was painless. Things got interesting once we left the airport; if the humidity in Abu Dhabi doesn’t kill you, one of the countless crazy drivers surely will! Despite the warnings of speed cameras every few kilometers, the attitude here seems to be along the lines of if you can afford a car that’s fast enough to race in a Grand Prix, you may as well drive like you’re Lewis Hamilton.

On the 3rd of October 2007 I signed up to Facebook. Some might laugh and think that I was early to the party so I’m a bit of a square, yet others might scoff and think I was late to the party so I was more of a try(angle) hard. When you think about Facebook, it’s quite an amazing not so little piece of social media. When I first signed up I was more amazed than I was with the contents I found the last time I cleaned my belly button. You mean all those people from high school that I haven’t contacted in almost 5 years are all pieces of lint in my belly button? And those people I went to kindergarten with are here too! Holy shit! Maybe I can finally get ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ back from Scott? About fucking time! It’s only been 24 years since I’ve seen him! Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Mum,

Nothing I write on these empty pages can fill the gaping hole that was punched in my heart by your death, and while I may have known that death was knocking, I hoped it had lost your address. But life is a one way, no through road when your driving a car that can’t reverse and eventually everyone reaches the end.

One of my earliest memories is when I was about to start school and just shortly after I had learnt about marriage. Why as a four year old I knew about marriage I’ll never know but I distinctly recall saying that I wanted to marry you one day. Try as you might you couldn’t change my mind. I was sold. The woman who had looked after her clumsy, accident and injury prone child had won over his little heart and I knew, as a four year old, that two things were certain in life. No other woman would come close to loving me as unconditionally as you, and if I cried loud enough, I would always get what I wanted. 24 years later I’m still crying, albeit for very different reasons.

Loving you always,

Jase.

My Mum is a huge fan of Lost. Well, I should say is a huge fan of Sawyer, and she despises Kate with so much malignity that at times I’ve felt as though I should remind her that Kate is a fictitious character and not a cancerous growth. Since the show began in 2004 there isn’t an episode that Mum hasn’t seen at least twice and episodes where the story focused on Sawyer are her favourites. Such is her addiction to the show that she will read the transcript of an episode before it has even come on air in Australia and then watch it anyway when it finally does. If that wasn’t enough, she would then talk for hours and write page upon page about each episode, in an effort to decipher the meaning of the show. You can imagine her sheer joy this year when season 6, the shows last, was scheduled to run here a week after the US. Well you would think she’d be over the moon, but even that delay was too much, and still she reads the transcripts. Read the rest of this entry »