The Adventure Continues...

Rants, raves and random observations from an itinerant epidemiologist.

 
100 in 1000
  1. Spend a week up a mountain learning to ski
  2. Visit Karoline's place in Moravia
  3. Hold a conversation in Czech (only)
  4. Drink 500ml of each of the following beers:
    1. Pilsner
    2. Staroprammen
    3. Budvar
    4. Velke Popovice
    5. U Fleku
    6. Gambrinus
    7. Krusovice
  5. Respond to at least one GOARN request (WHO and MSF are also acceptable)
  6. Travel across the Atlantic
  7. Return to South America
  8. Read a book to, or with, an impressionably aged child
  9. Participate in one NanoWriMo Challenge and come within at least 10,000 words of the goal length
  10. Have my nose pierced
  11. Have my next tattoo drawn
  12. Purchase the perfect jeans (x 2 pairs)
  13. Attend a spin class 3 times a week for 8 consecutive weeks
  14. Bake Viv's cheesecake
  15. Make David's casserole
  16. Make David's Chicken Cashew-nut Stirfry
  17. Invite 4 people who don't know one another too well to dinner
  18. Ride from Vienna to Venice on a motorbike (pillion acceptable, those less desirable)
  19. Attend a book group for at least two books
  20. Go on a choir weekend (learn and perform difficult piece in two/three days)
  21. Visit Madame Tussaud's (in London)
  22. Take an architecture appreciation course
  23. Join an all-girl group and sing a solo
  24. Publish in a scientific journal (top two authors)
  25. Cook a duck or other 'waterfowl'.
  26. Locate the Al-Timimi's from Doha Veterinary Practise
  27. Have a pedicure
  28. Maintain a Brazilian (ouch) for three months.
  29. Find a trustworthy Czech hairdresser
  30. Treat my inner-6-year-old twice a week (at least)
  31. Do the liver-cleansing diet properly (12 weeks)
  32. Don't eat out for one month
  33. Find a flat and flatmate
  34. Purchase one Joseph sweater
  35. Purchase one of the following pairs of designer shoes (they MUST also be COMFORTABLE, and be able to be worn with 4 different outfits and 2 types of occasion): Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, Christian Louboutin (Ebay or 2nd hand are acceptable)
  36. Send 5 books to the booksphere and track them.
  37. Go hanggliding
  38. Read 10 'classic' books (from 1001 Books to Read before you Die)
    1. Moll Flanders
    2. Everything is illuminated
    3. Madam Bovary
    4. Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
    5. Catch-22
    6. Odysseus
    7. On the Road
  1. Run (non-stop!) for 5kms outside (preferably in a street race thingy)
  2. Send Christmas Cards on time
  3. Make a collage/mural out of street lights on my wall
  4. Buy a bed, build it, and sleep soundly in it
  5. Go to Africa
  6. Host an 'event' (classified as and when)
  7. Organise a 30th Birthday Party
  8. Wear a costume
  9. Sing on stage
  10. Buy a painting that evokes memories of Prague (cannot involve queues!)
  11. Learn a god-damned card game that stays in my memory (other than fish/snap)
  12. See sunrise. Be sober. Have woken for it. Excludes months Nov-Mar
  13. Take a walk and flip coins at each intersection
  14. Win something
  15. Draft a will
  16. Take a roadtrip
  17. Go to Italy already
  18. Sea Kayak around Abel Tasman Park (NZ)
  19. Get plants
  20. Take a train to another Eastern European Destination (accession countries are acceptable) alone preferably.
  21. Get UK to give me a provisional motorcyclists license and simultaneously get a 'card' license.
  22. Go SCUBA diving again - at least two dives lasting 30mins each.
  23. Go to a dentist. *sigh*
  24. Do a Czech Wine Trail. And live to tell the tale
  25. Make an 'outbreak emergency kit'.
  26. Go to bed prior to 11pm every night (inc weekends) for four consecutive weeks.
  27. Marvel over lack of tiredness
  28. Dine at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant (or Nobu)- preferably for free.
  29. Bet on the nags
  30. Do something for charity (applying and getting a 'red card' will count)
  31. Walk along the Champs Elysee
  32. Do 100 sit ups in a row
  33. Do 50 pressups (arms in tight)
  34. Make branston pickle (or nearest substitute)
  35. Cook something 'new' and 'adventurous' at least once a month
  36. Find a mentor
  37. Be a mentor
  38. Learn what mentoring is all about
  39. Meet an online person in real life
  40. Resist the flirt. Once. Just one night. It's okay if people don't immediately succumb to my natural charm. Really it is.
  41. Spend time at a spa (spa towns in the CR don't count)
  42. Send a care package to someone
  43. Get a Tata Bojs CD
  44. Take a French/German/Dutch course and SPEAK THE DAMNED LANGUAGE WHEN I HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY EVEN THOUGH IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN IDIOT!
  45. Order new contact lenses.
  46. Make a list of things I take with me when I pack for different occasions
  47. Eat lobster. Prepared by someone else.
  48. Back up the blog
  49. Put everything onto an external hard drive
  50. Find a DDR mat and console and 'dance, I say dance!'�
  51. Go to the beach and lie on the warm sand. For an hour. (with sunscreen on, natch)
  52. Take and complete a course in either: Tango, Salsa or Flamenco
  53. Join the Municipal Library of Prague
  54. Move to another country
  55. Go to a live concert of a band I actually like
  56. Pay off debts (student loan excl.)
  57. Send thank you cards for every gift I receive (other than the gift of happiness, blah blah blah).
  58. Get an agent (literary or theatre)
  59. Go to a sports bar without cringing, by personal choice
  60. Ride a rollercoaster
  61. Hold a snake
  62. Spend a day wandering around a museum (not art gallery!)
Monday 25 September 2006
I think I woke up too early this morning: I left the house at 6:20, having not managed to catch Adam and collect his UK ATM card. Damn!

Bez snidane (think of me as your starving heroine, if you wish) my pubic transport start had me staring at the back end of both the bus and train I needed to catch, just as I arrived at the stops.

Once checked in, (“is that all your hand luggage Ma’am?”), I stood and read The Observer and the Prague Post cover to cover at the bookshop, reasoning that I wouldn’t ordinarily do it: but these were special times. The Observer annoyed me when I found an editorial I’d read about 6 months ago on the internet. That’s just sloppy. I’ll write for them if they’re that desperate.

Meanwhile, closer to ‘home du jour’, a detective in the Czech Republic got all Columbo for us, narrating his favourite case, which involved a paralysed, wheel-chair bound man who survived his wife’s “accidental” fall to the pavement below their 6th floor flat. The detective, having asked a harnessed fireman to ‘fall’ from the window while watching from the alleged vantage point of the husband, indicated that, indeed, a defenestration had occurred. All very CSI. But then, the bit that made me laugh out loud. The detective then informed his adoring public that the man himself was famous, as he was the only person who ran for Presidency in the 1993 election against Vaclav Havel. Mwahahhaha. A quick internet search reveals that the internet is insufficiently old to tell me his name. Just as well.

The other thing they told us was that the new road rules (supposedly operating since July 1st) aren’t working. The near-death-experiences I have when I cross the road on a pedestrian crossing are sufficient testament to that; I needn’t read about it. Turns out that, indeed, the Czech populace followed the new rules (you know: seatbelts, slowing down for intersections, allowing people right of way on pedestrian crossings etc.) for approximately 20 days before reverting to the normal Russian/Italian driving style they favoured. The motive for following the rules (i.e. points on licesnsese, fines etc.) were simply not being given, because there were no extra traffic police. 20 days of figuring this out, that no one would enforce the rules, and the drivers are back to their old tricks. To the point where a driver who knocked down and killed a pedestrian this weekend (one of the 13 deaths) simply drove off. Not sped off. Drove. Hit and stroll.

And it’s true: the police don’t want to enforce such things. Apparently, it’s illegal for an owner to allow their dog to ‘do it’s business’ in the street. Bahahahahaha! And apparently, if they are caught: they could be fined 2,000 Kc (NZ$120, E60). But most police officers are in the habit of giving people warnings rather than fines, so the law goes unregarded. In a conversation I recently had with an off-duty policewoman, she is considering getting out of the job and back into sales, not for money, but because she doesn’t like telling speeding drivers off. WTP?

Having read sufficient proof of already known things, I wandered to my gate: through security with my iPod on (still playing music) and my phone in my pocket. And I wondered why I beeped. A part of me simply doesn’t take this all seriously enough.

Zurich airport is fantastic (where Frankfurt airport is my nemesis), not least of which because of the continuous chocolate making going on along the concourse. Yes, folks: the Lindt people were out in force: making the most delicious creamy milk chocolates I’ve ever tasted. Not quite still warm from the rolling thing (made in 1858) but only JUST set!

So now, at the hotel: I have consumed approximately 3000 calories so far today, and you can tell I was en route to Switzerland: since none of those calaroies which fit into any other than the tip of most food pyramids (except that designed explicitly for PMS-suffering women). They’ve all been chocolate (and free).

Not that that’s a bad thing, per se, but I can’t see a gym here anywhere.

Do you promise not to think too badly of me if I lie on my double bed in my hotel room and watch English television until it’s time to go to dinner tonight?

(in my defense, I am here for a few days, and have already taken some photos and read two city guides – AND it’s raining)
posted by Nomes @ Monday, September 25, 2006  
1 Comments:
  • At 11:46 pm, September 27, 2006, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Eat more chocolate! Perform a highly statistical survey (n = 1,000,000,000) on which is better - belgian or swiss chocolate. Go skim stones on the lake. Revel in your hotel bed! Watch brit TV until your brain explodes! You deseve a break, hon.
    Love you!

    Nine

     
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