Interlude

If your life was a story, what is the title of your current chapter?

I recently came across this question whilst spending some of my far too abundant time online. Using some of my other time I also started listening to audio books a few weeks ago. I've never actually listened to audio books before but I found it as an awesome way to manage to get through more of the books I want to read faster. I'm sure at least some of you will understand the relationship between books I own/want to read and books I actually manage to read. Please see the very scientific graph below illustrating this relationship:

As this graph demonstrates the exponential amount of books that I want to read quickly out paces the linear amount of books that I am able to read, and this dear bibliophiles is clearly quite an issue.

So back to audio books. This effectively doubles my reading ability and also provided both excellent amusement as my cycles got longer and music no longer was making the cut, and also excellent motivation to get back on the bike to find out what is happening. So I started listening to Patrick Rothfuss' "The Kingkiller Chronicles" whilst reading Steven Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen".

Let's start with the Malazan series. Click here to get yourself started or support your local bookstore!

This is an epic fantasy series of ten volumes and is a complete series. And for anyone out there who doesn't enjoy reading fantasy series themselves, having a complete series, especially if that series also happens to be awesome! The fact that there are also five further novellas, six canonical novels by the Malazan Universe co-creator Ian Cameron Esslemont, two further incomplete follow-on trilogies, and a yet to be published extensive guide to the series just makes the Malazan Universe even more exciting knowing that I'm going to be able to enjoy it for years to come. I've been reading these books for a few months now based on the recommendation of a friend and they are fantastic. There are a huge number of diverse characters that you get to know slowly and whilst the plot build-up of each book can be a little bit slow to begin with, the picture that is painted using this process produces an absolutely amazing climatic end of each book that has you reading longer into the night with each chapter and excited to start the next in the series.

And now The Kingkiller Chronicle. First one here or go peruse the shelves at your local book store!

I do actually have the physical copies of these books as well, even though I'm listening to the audio books. But I also have most of the physical copies of my e-books as well. I love books! Books books books! One word that won't lose meaning no matter how many times you repeat it!

I was introduced to this series whilst perusing the shelves of Elizabeth's Bookshop in Perth. It was heavily recommended to me by one of the staff of the store upon seeing the hearty pile of books I had placed on the counter to purchase. She was so enthusiastic about it I excitedly agreed to start the series. Over to the shelves we went, only to find the second book in the series... I was physically deflated upon not finding this book as I really wanted to read it after the recommendation. And so I went into the store regularly for months hoping it would come back in. For anyone who's not lived in Western Australia, books can be rather hard to come by and insanely expensive to boot, plus I enjoyed this book store and was happy to give them my custom. But every time I went looking, every time I was let down. But I eventually managed to track it down once I returned to the UK, and thankfully it was worth the wait!

The Kingkiller Chronicle is a fantasy trilogy of which two of the volumes are so far released. There is also one released and unreleased novella and one novel on different characters from the books and a further trilogy from the same universe planned. These books are a story of two threads: the first is of the 'present' day protagonist Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as "quothe") and the other is of Kvothe's life story told in the first person narrative. It is presented in the form of him telling his autobiography to the character Chronicler with each book representing one day of the story telling. It is full of action, suspense and evokes plenty of empathy, allowing you to really get into the book. I have loved every word of this book including every word of character and plot development and I have moved on to listening at many other times besides cycling as I can't stay away from it.

And this book is what brings me to my chapter. Within the Kingkiller books, when we are with Kvothe in the 'present' day, the chapters are title 'Interlude'. Don't worry I won't actually reveal any spoilers. At this point in time in the books Kvothe is laying low, he is not his normal self and he is doing very little. And this is the point I find myself at now myself.

I came back to the UK in May and finished travelling around the end of August with a couple of very slow weeks in June applying for jobs as well. I spent my time applying for dozens of jobs, received a handful of replies and got one offer exactly two months ago in another stroke of serendipity. Two months! And I still don't have a start date. I can't do a huge amount with my time as unfortunately I don't have an income and money makes the world go around as much as anyone may hate that sentiment. If nothing else, petrol costs money. So I find myself waiting around, going slowly crazy, getting increasingly irritated with the state of the economy and human resource departments and not quite slowly dwindling my remaining savings on Christmas errands and getting out of the house enough to not go insane. So here's hoping to a rapid resolution of the seemingly convoluted hiring process. Apparently choosing to leave the country at all is a big negative check mark on the CV... Who would have thought in 2014?

So anyway, if anyone else wants to share your current chapter then feel free to comment below! I would love to hear your stories.

Until the next time.

The Importance of Eating Right

As Virginia Woolf once wrote, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

And I'm a firm believer in that food can really make most situations an enjoyable one. You can be freezing, burning, bored, tired, embarrassed, hurting, dripping wet, dirty, or any innumerable other horrible things, and a good meal or a nice snack can make the world of difference. Food can also make good things amazing: snacking and reading, blogging and eating chocolate cake and coffee, walking and ice cream, food and sex, you name it - there isn't much that I can think of that can't be improved upon with some food!

But what do you do when you are cold, wet and miserable in the middle of nowhere, a long way from your nice fully stocked fridge and household of cooking appliances. Same thing you would do if you were there, cook! This is my kitchen out here:

I've made stews, curries, pasta sauces, roast beef, stir fry, pancakes, porridge, salads, the list can go on and on. And all on these little stoves running on unleaded fuel 6 inches from the ground.

One great time that comes to mind is when we were in Coral Bay. We headed over to cook in the camp kitchen using my stoves rather than by the tent to be a bit sociable. All around us people were cooking pasta with tinned tuna, pasta and tinned tomatoes, pasta and ketchup (!!!). And we begin chopping up all these fresh vegetables and putting together a rich, spicy, aromatic vegetable curry with the flavours wafting throughout the kitchen. People kept stealing glances in our direction the whole time. As it was dished out, steaming and colourful, people openly stared at our plates before forlornly looking back at their own camping creations. 

It doesn't take much, just a bit of thought and will to spend the extra few minutes on something fantastic!

I think Scott Adams best summed up my feelings towards food and cake, "I love you like a fat kid loves cake." - Meta, I know.

On a side note - I also won a bet that night that I could eat a curry upside down.

Until next time!

Kalbarri, Caves and Foreign Countires

Well, it's only been a week and I've already managed to fail at my self imposed blog update target of Sunday and Wednesday... That's why I didn't quite post it on the page yet - I knew I wasn't quite at that discipline or organisation level. But, it's still Wednesday somewhere, so I can just make the once a week secondary target if I post in the next few hours! So here we go...

Overground, underground and foreign ground

Kalbarri's calling! So we decide to do the sensible thing, and ignore the tourist information advice and do the 9km Nature's Window trek in the rather warm Western Australian summer heat. So we got there nice and early (only 36C at 0730 in the morning) and had plenty of company for the walk in the guise of hundreds of flies. 500m from the car park is the main and often only destination of this hike - a lovely natural rock arch called Nature's Window, for obvious reasons. In this time I managed to drain my camera battery, go back to the car to get a charger, get back and promptly break my cord - so not many photos for me this day.

Nature's Window

There was a lovely view admittedly, but thought we could improve on it slightly before setting off for the remaining 8.5km jaunt in the now 40C heat. 

There were some fantastic views along the way (see accompanying album), a nice little scramble along the river, a wee swim in the river (on purpose) and plenty of flies and heat. By the time we got back to the car, we were all very grateful for the air con and the slightly less fly-filled car - though this required a complex and hard to master 'fly dance' in order to get rid of all the flies and run into the car with as few still on you as possible - unfortunately we never recorded this moment. The rest of the day was a spent as a well earned break after what I liked to now refer to as the 'fox's anus walk'.

Nature's Peep Show

On the way out, there were the breathtaking red bluff, mushroom rock, eagle gorge, natural bridge and island rock. These are possible to do as a 5km walk or so or driven to separately. They were many tempting times where I wanted to get down onto the cliffs, but thought the access without ropes was a bit dodgy so I resisted this time.

Mushroom Rock - shaped like a mushroom, funnily enough

After a nice scenic morning we took an off-road detour to another country. Here we learned about the country's war with Australia, it secession, shook hands with a Prince and learnt that gravity does in fact propagate instantaneously across any distance - a fact known by this king for over 50 years, and yet somehow still being searched for by the scientific community, even though this paper is posted publicly on a billboard. 

This country is of course: Hutt River, run by HRH Prince Leonard Casley. The Principality of Hutt River is the oldest micronation within Australia which seceded on the 21st April, 1970 and is now an independent nation of 75 square kilometres. HRH Prince Leonard decided to separate from Australia when he got very annoyed with the government in 1969 during the Wheat Quotas allowing the Casleys a quota equivalent to 100 acres of wheat after many years of consistently producing 13,000 acres. After being told there were to be no compensation and the government tried to illegally reclaim a large portion of his land, Leonard decided to announce his secession. After a complex argument and legal battle with the government, Hutt River finally managed a legal Sovereignty by declaring a state of war. Three days later, Leonard declared the State of War over, and through the Laws of War, Sovereignty goes immediately to a Government undefeated in a State of War. HRH Prince Leonard has now had a rather illustrious political career, with many foreign dignitary visitors and gifts and now happily gives a personal tour of the country and a stamped passport or visa for $2.

Last stop on the update this time is Stockyard Gully Caves. These caves are located about 90 minutes south of Gerladton near Eneabba. They form an part of an underground river system that has carved out the limestone with many caves in the area, unfortunately only one open to the public. This is a 300m easy walk through the caves with various side passageways and nooks you can go exploring in. There can be bats in there if you're lucky and there are definitely feral bee hives (it is in the Beekeepers National Park after all) at the entrances so be quiet and careful! The hives were incredibly interesting in that the honeycomb was hanging directly from the cave roofs and not inside any kind of hive.

Painfully tempting

The caves are 4WD accessible only (from the south is much better access than from the north), and we managed to get George bogged after foolishly not dumping him by the side of the road. So we spent a little while digging him out, putting him to the side of the track before Claire happily continued on the soft sand track. From the car park, where you get general and safety information, it's a short hike down to the cave entrance along the river bed. Be aware that if it's due to rain or has rained recently, you should not enter the caves, flash flooding can occur and there is a sign showing the exceptionally high flood levels from back in 1998 on the way down from the car park. These caves were awesome fun and I'd really love to go back to have a play in the less easily accessible ones. Unfortunately, time, equipment and personnel made that impossible on the day. 

Onwards and southwards back towards Perth.

Until the next time.