Friday, July 17, 2015

Look! A blog!

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged.   A very long time.  Well over a year.  And several of my friends, family, and co-workers have reminded me of that, which was surprising because I was pretty confident that the only person reading this was my mother.  While I always tried to blog regularly, life took over and it just slipped away from me.  What can I say?  I’m a very important person doing very important things.

Just kidding!  I was probably just busy watching funny cat videos on YouTube.

I last blogged about Russia which was a trip I took in October 2013 (yikes!)  That trip also included Finland and Estonia (which I previously blogged about) and Mongolia and South Korea (which I have not blogged about).  Since then, I have also taken overseas trips to New Zealand (six trips in total), Myanmar, and Bali (Indonesia).

Back in Australia, I finally made it to the last of the state and territory capitals that I had been missing:  Brisbane and Darwin.  I went on a big camping adventure in the outback, channelled my inner-retiree in the Gold Coast, took a road trip down the South Coast of New South Wales, and visited Melbourne once or twice… per year… or more.

But there have been two really big exciting developments missing from the blog.  First and foremost, I became an Aussie!  I was naturalized as an Australian citizen on August 15, 2014 – after roughly four and a half years living in the Land Down Under.  I am now the proud bearer of dual passports entitling me to be shifty when crossing international borders.

Secondly, I quit my job (yay!), moved out of my apartment, and said goodbye to all of my friends in Australia (boo!).  Last Sunday, I set out on a gap year:  a full year (give or take a bit) of travel around the globe.  That was the impetus for me starting up the blog again.  Over the next twelve months, I’ll be blogging about my adventures and even rewinding the clocks a bit and filling you, the readers (my mother and one or two others), in on all the exciting travels that I’ve failed to blog about over the past nearly two years.

In the meantime, here are a few questions you can ponder:

1.  Will I be able to survive a full year of travel?
2.  Just how many times will I get food poisoning?
3.  What is the most random country in which I will eat Mexican food?
4.  Just how long will it take until I pop some loud, obnoxious American tourist in the face?

As I write this post, I am on a flight from Singapore to Johannesburg.  The first few weeks of my travels will likely see limited wifi connections as I’ll be on various camping safari tours across seven African nations, but I will do my best to post when internet is available.  Until then, trust that I’ll be doing my best to type up blogs and have them ready as I go along.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for landing.