Many a Thought

Well LiveJournal has been down for the last couple of weeks and whilst I'm sure there has been much gnashing of teeth from the blogging community I for one am actually glad of the downtime because I've been depressed lately and I'm sure this place has quite enough "damn, I feel like the stereotypical nice guy that always finishes last" bullshit. My depression isn't normally so melancholy and "woe is me" but hey, I didn't deserve the whole abusive housemate crap on top of the perpetually single (forever aloooooooooone) conundrum despite my past as an all around bastard (only at certain acute points I might add) so I don't feel too bad about it all.

What've I been doing with myself the screaming multituides cry? Working; Like a boss is the only answer there could ever be and it has actually been pretty sweet. My bosses treat me with a small amount of respect, I'm raking in some coins and hey I have done some pretty sweet things lately.

My babies have already hatched, I'm now the proud father of over half a million alevins, all swimming around and living off their egg sac like the cutie pies that they are. These are "fish" that I helped strip, fertilise and lay down and oversaw the incubation of. I have now had my sticky fingers in every element of trout growth and development and it may be weird but that's pretty satisfying for me, it's an achievement of sorts in my chosen career path and now the only thing I have to achieve is see some of these babys I have grown last year grow up to be used both as product and as broodstock. Then I've completed a full circle.

Besides that and general duties like processing the fish and cleaning I've been somewhat of a machine operator, I've been driving the tractor and the bobcat (technically a skid steer loader) since those who could do that got fired and the boss was stuck with the option of doing it himself or throwing me at it and saying "don't fuck it up or crash into a pond (something post rave sleep deprivation almost made a reality)." Needless to say he chose the latter. Recently though I've managed to get my grasping hands on the control of a three tonne excavator and I gotta say, it's pretty easy and a good bit of fun. I wouldn't say I'm even competent at it yet but it would be a great skill to have so methinks I'll be seizing every oppurtunity to get in and practice.

Oh, I have to say this; Cleaning fucking sucks, I can handle it at home and I can handle it at work when it's one nice, big job but well today it was a fuck crap tonne of tiny little, pointless jobs getting ready for an audit amd what with my tired self having little patience it pissed me off. All I could think was "fuck, I want to go home, why can't I go home?"

Also an addendum to my trip plans, I want to visit all the little Finno-Ugric speaking minority groups in Russia, most of 'em even have their own autonomous oblasts so one could assume the culture hasn't been too Rusified but I've no diea. It would be sweet at any rate to see and hear the language; Estonian is bad enough what with its extra vowels and lack of vowel harmony so I really want to see what these places have to offer.

Always forward, never straight
Alastair Michael.

My awesome plan

Well hi, I'm Alastair and I've had many titles in my life: squatter, lover, exchange student, hatchery manager just to name a few but well, they're all just titles and I'm not exactly sure what I am to be honest. For the last year I've been working my tits off on a trout farm, saving money with a reasonable proficiency considering my age and all that because I've had a dream to own my own house, Not that the house is the big picture, mostly I want the thing you put into a house: a family but well it seems I've been failing at getting most despite my best efforts. Okay, quite a bit in the bank along with more in material possessions I didn't have before the start of the year is pretty respectable for someone in what's basically an entry level job (I've worked quite a few 60+ hour weeks in that time) but well, it's maybe a quarter of what I need in order to get a deposit down and that's if the bank even decides to give a single guy in his mid twenties with no job security (my boss doesn't want to put anyone on anything more than casual) a loan. As for the family? I have more chance of getting the house; I've always been a geek with a problem talking to chicks (well, that's misleading, I can talk to them easily as people, I just can't treat them as women) and a self esteem problem (It's a lot better than it was) but well this is getting retarded. It has been over two years since I was in a relationship with someone I loved and a bit over a year since I had sex that I actually enjoyed. I just don't fuckin' get it, I've worked hard on breaking out of my shell and if I'm attracted to someone actually telling them or showing it instead of dropping inane hints but well, nothing. I'm not a bad person, hell I'd go as far to say I'm a good person at least by how I measure thing but all around me everyone seems to be happy in their relationships whilst I fly solo. It is this sweet fuck all chance to achieve my dreams at the moment that has caused me to find a new dream.

I'm going to hitchhike across three continents and enjoy the fuck out of myself. Fuck saving money (I can get a house later), fuck chasing women (One will come along when the time is right and until then why bother) and fuck the white picket fence dream. A wise seppo (yeah, they exist, go figure) told me "always go forward, never straight" and at the time I laughed and thought it kind of amusing but now I see that it's damned good advice because I've been trying so hard to go straight after my time as a squatter living outside of the system that I've actually stopped moving forward and I hate that. The white picket fence dream is a nice goal but I shouldn't be putting my love of travel and learning aside for it (not to mention my love of booze and other such things) so here's the great plan.

I would start in Adelaide in mid to late April so it's not too hot to hitch (and not too cold by the time I get to Europe) and go from there north to Alice Springs and then Darwin, from Darwin I will take a short flight to Ho Chi Minh (I've read everyone just calls it Saigon and fuck the general and his name changes) and hitchhike up through Vietnam and to Ha Noi. According to hitchwiki (yeah, it's actually a site, awesome huh? That hitching is near impossible in China so I'm going to give it an old fashioned crack and if I come up short then just take the train north to Mongolia. Through Kazakhstan is quicker but hey, I want to see Mongolia. From there I'll go up through Siberia (in summer by now I'm assuming) and into European Russia. From there it's just a skip and a jump to Finland where I'll meet up with friends, drink copious amounts of Olvi and maybe go for more hitching through Europe, maybe fly over the north pole to North America or maybe just fly home. Don't know and probably won't till I get there.

Now to make this dream a reality I already reckon that I have about half of the liquid cash I need and I should be able to get the other half together without a bother (even if I get a minimal amount for the furniture and whitegoods I bought and leave my car with my sister instead of selling it) so cash isn't an issue. Besides that I need to learn Russian, something I've already started trying to each myself (as it will be useful in both Russia and Mongolia, making up the lion's share of my non English speaking travel), I should be able to get by with a few phrases in Mandarin and Vietnamese/French as well as a lonely planet phrasebook for each. I also want to learn a martial art (it probably wouldn't make me any safer but it'd make me feel better about crossing 13,000 + kilometres on my own in a manner which is notoriously dangerous. Sambo would be best but well my options in my home town are Tae Kwan Do, Judo or Mixed Martial Arts. I'm going to see if the MMA place has evening classes. I also have to learn to document my thoughts so I have a souvenir of this awesome adventure, voila, here we are.

Always Forward; Never Straight

Alastair