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!)
Ya think?
Monday 30 July 2007
One really must check the “who links to my blog” more frequently (I try to avoid it to avoid looking quite so desperate). Turns out that I was nominated (in a very, backwards compliment, kind of way) by Daddy Papersurfer – an old git (my father finally has a blog? No no, just turns out there are multiple old gits out there! ).

Anyway, this is apparently “blogs that make you think”. And the rules are straightforward (and below).

Now, the idea is that someone saw my blog, read parts of it, and it made them think. But what, exactly? Did they think that I was as narcissistic and vain as all that? (probably) Did they wonder over evolution and the theory of relationships? (most likely they didn’t get that far back) Did they consider moving to Prague? (don’t. Just don’t do it you masochistic freak) Did they apply for EPIET (actually, I have it on good authority that some did)? Or did they wonder where they could hire a boat in Menorca (yes, apparently)?

But real, true thinking? Thinking of the sort that philosophers have methods (and probably taxonomy for those methods) for? I doubt it. A lot.

My blog is merely an online journal, briefly touching on the bits of my life that make me go ARGH! I realise how self-obsessed this is. But one of the main reasons I set up this blog was that I was soon to be moving from one side of the world to another. Away from friends and family, to a totally foreign environment. Although the new environment is (predominantly) white, and (again, predominantly) developed (depending upon your definitions), that’s where the similarities ended. As I soon found out upon arrival, and have continued to discover during my stay.

The people are different. Not as friendly and open as kiwis. They won’t just let you into their lives, and hope that you turn out to be ‘one of the good guys’. They’ll wait until they’ve known you for 20 years first. The expats WILL let you into their lives, but begrudgingly, almost immediately with a sense of ‘the betrayal to come’ – knowing that at some point either you, or they themselves, will be leaving this city for greener pastures.

The lifestyle is different from that at home. No bus rides into wine country here. No long bbq’s up at a house on a hill overlooking a harbour. No massive parties complete with police invasions, hourly visits from noise control and a constant stream of taxis driven by incurious drivers. No smirting outside (flirting for cigarettes) bars since ‘the ban’. No musical theatre. No fitness and health craze. No cocktails on the waterfront. No skating on the waterfront. No bloody waterfront at all (do not even so much as DARE to mention our bridges here, I may come through the screen screaming like a banshee and gouge your eyes out with a spoon).

People look at me oddly when I mention I’m living with 5 people – here, that seems akin to ‘hostelling’. Our upstairs flat demands we be quiet after 10pm (or we get snarky letters from our landlords). There is dog poo EVERYWHERE in this city. The parks (in which the dogs also roam free) are loaded with dangerous things, dog poo piles and tick-borne-encephalitis bearing arthropods. The haircuts and fashion are atrocious: so much so that I wish I’d been sufficiently brazen to document the worst for you all – it’s to be seen to be believed. There are beer gardens. There is beer, everywhere. That’s if you can see through the smoky haze that forces one to “think of the children” being systematically poisoned from (often) the moment of conception. People here appear undernourished, their poor skin decrying the lack of nutrients and minerals in their diets. Bandy legs abound (it’s a vegetable, even if it’s not cabbage!) and too many people are too thin. Until, of course, they turn 30, when all of a sudden, the women become blousy and apple shaped with the sourest of countenances and the men…Ugh. I wonder if drinking a lot of beer and the development of man breasts are correlated.

In other words, the longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve thought of myself as Dorothy. This sure as bloody hell ain’t Kansas now, Toto. And you all have hopped aboard the “Mis-adventure” train (wreck) every now and then to share in the (vain)glorious yellow brick road. I appreciate your company more than you’ll ever know. I’m thrilled that so many of you have ‘stuck with me’ and continue to read le blog.

I’m not sure what will happen to said blog when I move again (10 weeks, ELEVEN!!!!) because I’ll be moving to a place more LIKELY to be akin to home. Just like everyone else there, I’ll probably start complaining about the weather, the cost of everything, and the transport (I will really miss the DPP). But whatever happens, I’ll know that you, and this blog, got me through some of the weirdest and hardest times yet in my short existence. And some of the best.

I’m not sure whether I’ve made you think, so I’m jus gonna offer an advice soundbite instead. Love like you’re not scared of it and live life the way you want to live it; there’s only one of you, you’ve only got one chance, so you may as well damned well do what feels good.

I do. Sometimes it’s worked, sometimes it hasn’t. But hell, the ride has been marvellous, thus far, and I’ve met some AMAZING people whose impact upon me will never dissipate with miles.

So thanks.

1. If you are nominated, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think*
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,

*The problem is, I use blogs to escape, not as food for thought. So: here are those to which I escape most frequently: Mamma Martini, Oh The Irony, Lucy Pepper, Rick and Ariel.

Labels:

posted by Nomes @ Monday, July 30, 2007  
1 Comments:
  • At 8:07 pm, August 06, 2007, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    There is dog poo everywhere in certain parts of the city - but not everywhere. P6 doesn't have much at all. P3 has more poo than cement.

     
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