HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!
WARNING: long, rambling post coming up.
I’m feeling a bit pensive today, so this seems a great opportunity to reflect a little on the year just past. It has become way to easy for me to write “report to follow” in my posts and never actually get around to writing it – so while inspiration has struck, here goes.
As far as years go 2005 was about as full on as it can get.
The most significant occurrences of the year include:
Getting married – I like to look back on the photos. It went so quickly but it was a tremendous day for both of us. You know I love my cliches, but there was certainly a lot of love in the air that day. I will never forget the beginning of the ceremony when the doors opened to reveal Olivia looking like the princess she is, and watching her walk down the aisle with the choir in full voice. The reception venue has only just got around to giving me the bill for the structural damage that was done to the roof of the chapel during the rousing rendition of “I Was Glad”. But seriously folks… it was an incredibly joyous day, as of course a wedding should be.
Having an awesome bucks night … I have very fond memories of that night. Plenty of excellent company, food and grog…. Three cheers for entire roasted pigs and goats….
Moving to London – it’s not every day you quit your job, pack up your life and move to the other side of the world (and thank heavens for that). We had been talking about living in the UK for years. Originally the plan had been to just travel for a few months. But as soon as we tallied up our lengthy travel agenda it became apparent that in order to achieve all our travel goals we would have to live and work in Europe for a while.
So here we are, nearly 7 months into our stay in Europe. We are both gainfully employed. My gig at Verbatim has turned out to be quite a challenging role, which is great. On any given day I can deal with people in up to four continents. To me that’s pretty full on. Am excited to see what the next year brings workwise. There’s a lot I’d like to achieve.
We’re still living in our 1 bedroom apartment in Clapham. It’s quite comfortable, but its a bit of a bitch getting to and from work. (Takes me 75-90min each way) There’s talk of possibly moving closer to my work during this coming year, but that will be largely dependant on Olivia’s working arrangements which are subject to change a couple of times a year.
In the past 7 months we have been to France and Italy (twice) as a couple. In addition to this Olivia has been to Scotland and Spain, and I have been to Germany three times for work plus one solo trip to Italy. Wow, I’ve been to Italy three times in the past few months – again, it’s not every day you can say that. Now the issue is one of balance. I could quite happily go to different parts of Italy for every holiday, but that would be boring. There are so many countries on our list of places to go. Currently we’re considering going to Hungary later in the year. We’re both looking forward to doing a lot more travel in the coming year or two, finance permitting of course. When it costs AUD$50 to fly across Europe, the AUD$1800 fare back to Melbourne suddenly becomes a less appealing way to spend one’s leave time and money. But then I’m torn. Having been away these months has left us a tad homesick. I seem to spend all my time either at work or travelling between work and home, so there’s not been a lot of opportunity to expand the social network a whole heap. This is not helped by the fact that Olivia and I treasure our quiet time at home. But I suppose that’s simply how we are.. We have come to miss our families and friends terribly. Anyway, back to my original point. We’d love to come back to Australia at every opportunity – but expense aside, we’ve got an agenda here – and if we don’t pursue it – well frankly, what was the point in coming over? “But Brian, you’re coming back to Melbourne in a week, what’s this crap you’re talking?” Well, you’ve got a point there – but given my dad’s recent spell in hospital, I’m pleading special circumstances. I constantly ask myself (and Olivia) when I think we will return to Melbourne for good. On one level I’d like to come back tomorrow, but know that this is a pretty exciting journey we’re taking here and would hate to end it prematurely only to regret it down the track. So folks, notwithstanding any major disasters this London caper may still have a good 2-3 years left in it.
I’d just like to stop at this juncture and declare to the world that I’ve really loved developing and writing on this site. It’s hard to determine exactly how many of you out there are actually reading it. There are 12 people subscribed to the mailing list (always room for more) and the webstats are vague at best. But all in all it means a lot to me knowing that there’s something of a written record of my life over the past couple of years. If there’s anything you’re not getting out of this site that you’d like to see then please let me know. Thanks for reading.
Time for dinner methinks.. tonight I’m going to try and make a reasonably authentic spaghetti carbonara for the first time. So in closing, 2005 was a great year for me. I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions, but if you were to ask me what my three main aims for 2006 were, the main things that come to mind in no particular order are: getting really good at my job, dropping a kilo or 20 and seeing as many countries as possible with Olivia. Sounds fair to me..
, I now have a site feed. Thanks to 
