Titles are hard to think up.

Travel preparations are forging ahead. Yesterday, I turned 21 (bfd- I spent the day in bed, off work, unable to move through gut-ache- hooray for ovaries!), but today I received and filled out my passport application papers. (I always seem to do these momentous things on the day AFTER my birthday. The day after I turned 18, I changed my name by deed poll.) Now I have to get some hideous passport photos (now that you're not even allowed to SMILE, I shudder to think how unutterably awful I'll look) and get Rach, my old highschool co-conspirator, to sign everything to prove that I am me and not, as is widely believed, a fat forty-five-year-old South African man named Nigel.

I've also bought three things in preparation for my grand tour:

a. A headlamp. For camping, navigating the Underground during a power cut, scaring away rabid squirrels, etc.

b. Teensy eensy panty liners. So that even if I'm unable to wash my clothes for weeks at a time, I will smell marginally less disgusting.

c. This:



It cost $4.25 off Trade Me. It's cubic zirconia, white-gold plated, and FEARSOMELY gorgeous. I much prefer it to the real one I was given a few months ago (but subsequently returned on realising that I was 20 and hadn't seen the world and really, the whole thing was ridiculous). Anyway, now I need a wedding ring (which I may have to pay SERIOUS MONEY for- more in the region of $10-15 off Trade Me), and THEN I can traipse around the world pretending that I have a husband. I may also get a big, burly male friend to pose with me in a photo to brandish at any would-be Romeos. Because, like, I'm a girl, and totally can't protect myself without falling back on the spectre of an imaginary man. Ew.

Books!

I've been attacking that pile of books. Now, I really really really want to go to greenland and the Faroe Islands, and to learn Danish. I also wavered for half an hour or so, unsure whether to turn my nose up at "experimental travel" or to embrace it, but eventually came down on the side of silliness (and fun). I'll write little reviews of all the books presently. Now, I have to watch Nippi and Nigel opening a restaurant in rural France on TV1.

Tschus!

Posted from: Chair, Mum's bedroom, Christchurch, NZ
The time is: 6:59pm
The weather is: beautiful, calm, sunny, and balmy
Number of countries visited to date: None