Farewell by the River

Today my office colleagues bid me farewell with lunch at my favourite river restaurant, Kin Lom Chom Saphan (which translates to Eat Breeze View Bridge…Keep reading and you will see why).

Flaminia keeps it real

Ting Ting, Flaminia, Me and Ju

Modelling for photos before the food arrives

Don't you wish you'd thought of that?!

Then the food arrived...

...and we never looked back

Delicious fish

Half the team

The other half (and the brilliant Hannah in the bottom right corner)

Bringing down the house with a speech

Two thirds of my programme team, Anya and Sarah

Eat Breeze View Bridge

The Tuesday Turn Around

Don’t worry everyone…I’m BACK IN BUSINESS!

Where was Sarah? I was stuck in bed for two days with some stupid illness! But I told that stupid illness to take a hike (it just took me a couple of days to convey the message clearly), and I’m back in the office and ready to rumble.

And guess what else? My stats have gone and sailed past the magic 10,000! Thank you to all those who helped me reach my goal. Oh gosh, I was just so happy to have been nominated…

But now I am going to bring a new meaning to ‘knuckle down’ and work like focused person for the next three days before I board the Good Ship Melbourne-Bound on Thursday night.

Making sense of my Saturday

Today is so odd. I know I have a few things to take care of before I move next Thursday but I’m not sure where to start. I had a dream last night about leaving Bangkok, but Bangkok was a small regional city in a country where the capital was Jakarta. My office was similar to my real office, but had a look about it that reminded me of a luxury hotel and a much better view (I could see Jakarta). My apartment closet (that I keep my clothes in) was located in my office so when it was time to finish work and fly back to Australia (via Jakarta) I was running late and hadn’t even taken the clothes from my closet and packed them in my suitcase. Then I realised I’d forgotten to book my flight anyway.

Anxious dreams about missing flights are not uncommon for me. Usually they seem to be reflecting anxiety I have about something that could just as well be related to travel as to anything else, but this time I have a real flight to catch which makes the symbolism even more obvious. Also, someone asked me yesterday what day I was flying out and I said, “Thursday night.” Then they asked what my last day of work would be and I said, “Thursday.” Then this group of people standing around told me that was a dumb idea and I need to take a day off. I don’t need to take a day off, but their words got lodged in my mind somewhere and made me worry that I needed to take a day off. Proof positive of the power of words to affect our subconscious I suppose. I think that was another reason for my dream. Running from the office to the plane was a really bad thing in my dream. In reality there will be about four hours between my finishing work and leaving for the airport.

My anxious dreams used to be about being late for my Friday night shift at the bookshop. They even continued for a few years after I stopped working in bookshops. Sometimes I would be hours or days late to my Friday night shift at the bookshop, but I was still trying to get there. Then one night I had a dream that I was running late for the bookshop and I saw Greg who was running late for work at the library. We both sat down on the curb and decided it wasn’t that big a deal anyway, and we’d just skip work that night. That was the last bookshop anxiety dream I had, and so began the ‘missing the plane’ anxiety dreams. Once I was in an airport terminal and got stuck in the China terminal and couldn’t make my way back to the France terminal. That was really confusing.

So now it’s Saturday and I know my mind is anxious about getting organised, but I don’t really have that much to organise. I have a lot to do, I don’t know how I will fit it all in, but it’s pretty straightforward. I’m pretty sure my subconscious is overreacting – but whose doesn’t from time to time?

I came over to Wawee Coffee just now to use their internet because I’ve been waiting for a call from my landlord who has been hard to pin down and remembered that she wanted to use email, so I needed to check email too – she’s probably the greatest source of anxiety. I got here and five minutes later she sent me a text message telling me when we can meet, which makes it easier to plan the rest of my weekend now.

So now that my greatest source of anxiety is more predictable, rather than spending more of the time talking about my dreams, I’ll head back to my apartment and start packing.

I like my name in books

An unexpected perk of my job is that sometimes I get credited as the editor of a book! It seems so….professional!

I purposfully made the words too small to read...

The last of the Photikans

So I did a rubbish job of reporting on my last trip to Australia. I didn’t take many photos while I was at home (I was too busy sleeping), and because my “reports” of travel are just strings of photos with captions I don’t have much to work with.

So just to make it feel like I’ve met the minimum reporting requirements here are a few random photos from my trip and we will just call it even, OK?

The Night of Jess and Beck’s Double-birthday Extravaganza

Lara at the European after Jess and Beck's birthday

I would add some photos from the party but it’s hard to pick my favourite one out of 500 photos of 17 drunk people trying to squeeze into one shot. I might just create a hall of fame. That reminds me, did I mention the party? In case I didn’t…Jess turned 30 and Beck turned 40 and it was a ridiculously funny party. There were even chocolate cupcakes with pink icing…so we smashed them in each other’s faces. Obvs.

Museum Day

I took heaps of photos the day Meaghan, Clare, Ryan, Miles and I went to the museum.

Skeletosaurus

Ryan in the museum playground

Fountain in Carlton Gardens

Ryan resting by the fountain

Miles exploring the garden

Clare and Meaghan walking through the gardens to the tram

Ollie and Liam turn 1!

The other time I took my camera out was another lovely Melbourne day out. Ollie and Liam’s first birthday at the Children’s Farm and Convent.

Sarah tries to get a smile out of Ollie...Ollie is not impressed

Chloe and Rueben (this is one photo out of a very funny series)

Nanna, Liam and Ollie

Done! that’s a load off my shoulders…

When I grow up…I want my very own teahouse

ArchDaily has changed the focus on my life’s ambitions (which are admitedly pretty vague) by writing about a teahouse in the Czech Republic.

Oh man, I want one sooooo bad!

Take a look at the originial post for lots more photos, including Tea House in the Snow.

UPDATE: MJ suggested I build a tea house in the backyard at Rushworth! Ask and you shall receive…

Where is Sarah when Sarah is at home?

Where is Sarah? began when I left Australia for Indonesia in September 2007 (I wrote my first post instead of packing my bags).

While I’m obviously quite fond on non-travel related tangents, for the most part the idea of the blog is to report home about my travels (and sometimes to report on Australia to everyone else).

But shortly I’ll be back in Australia in a more permanent sense for the first time since I began the blog, which kind of muddles the basic motivation behind it. So do I continue Where is Sarah? or let it die a natural death?

Well, don’t give it too much thought because I’ve made an executive decision. For the time being I’m going to continue writing on Where is Sarah? as though nothing has changed. I’ll be travelling and doing fun stuff for the first couple of months after getting home, so I’ll still have stories to share, and I’ll still have plenty of “the thing I don’t understand about this culture is…” moments, because Australians are essentially pretty weird.

I will be working on about 70 new side-projects, including 15,000 new blogs, so if Where is Sarah? loses steam I might redirect my Where is Sarah? energy into one of my other projects. So if I start blogging frequently about what was on TV last night just tap me on the shoulder and I’ll take the hint.

There are ten days left before Where is Sarah? goes domestic, and I’m hoping you’ll help me reach 10,000 hits before then (take a look in the bottom right hand corner of the blog to see the current stats).

Thanks for reading!

The Secret World of the Hair Whisperer

So last week I went to my hairdresser who I’ve named ‘the hair whisperer’ for her ability to give me an amazing haircut on absolutely no input from me. She doesn’t speak English, my Thai does not extend to hair adjectives (it doesn’t really extend anywhere at all).

I’d had a three month absence from the hairdresser because I’m trying to grow my hair and cutting it seems to be counter-intuitive to that aim. My hair had just gotten long enough to put into a pony-tail. This was a huge bonus in the humid hair frizz land of Bangkok, but it was getting out of control so I was willing to take a cut that would set my pony-tail aspirations back a few weeks. So I sat down and conveyed that I wanted just a little bit removed (scissor signal with hands, the thai word for ‘little bit’).

Now, I don’t doubt that the hair whisperer communicates with my hair and knows what it wants, it’s just that I’m pretty sure my hair wanted to stay long. Turns out she heard  my hair say, “CUT ME OFF!” So now I have shorter hair than I did three months ago.

And so, back to square one….sigh.

Graduate of Web Courses Bangkok!

I just graduated from my beginner’s web design course! I learnt so much and really enjoyed the process. It was one of those “things are getting stuck in my brain faster than I knew was possible” moments. Now I know HTML and CSS, and I can design sites in photoshop and use Dreamweaver to turn them into a reality. The next step is to build something new from scratch to test my knowledge and iron out the grey areas. (confession: working on  your own project alongside the formal teaching time is part of the course, but I changed my mind so many times about what my ‘project’ would be that I now have three or four possible projects to follow through, all of which still require a lot of work.)

Our guru, Carl was AMAZING. Find him and his range of services at Web Courses Bangkok. You won’t be disappointed. Carl was committed to giving us a solid foundation to build from and wasn’t interested in cutting corners. And what’s more he’s a fun guy to hang out with! The classes are small so Carl has enough time to give students individual attention – each ‘class’ feels more like a group conversation than a class and everyone contributes. This course totally outstripped my expectations for a short web design course. Thanks Carl.

If you wrote a book what kind of book would it be?

Question: If you wrote a book what kind of book would it be?

*Note, don’t think about what book you are capable of writing, but the book you would like to write.

Flaminia’s answer:

A book about the way different people deal with problems…or something about history.

Sarah’s answer:

A novel, something like The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

But these answers are, of course, subject to change!

Share your own answers/thoughts on the process in the comments.