Sorted! Now the countdown begins....

Well it's a bloody relief that I have finished all the major stuff that I needed to do before I go away. This week I have passed my Class 4 (read bigging #%$&ing truck) licence and my Class 6 (read super-cool motorcycle) full licence and now am all set. Just over a week to go now until I fly away and I only have minor stuff to do now.

I guess the next biggest dilemma to face is what to take with me. I know what should be taken when you go travelling. If someone comes to see me and says "I'm going to India what should I take with me?" I can read off verbatim a complete and minimalist packing list that would make the most ardent 'travel-lighter' proud. "Don't take more than two shirts" i'll say. "You can buy extra clothes everywhere you know" i'd quip. So why is it then, that when I am preparing for my own trip I have absolutely no ability to stick to my own advice.

I seem to have a wonderful ability to come up with thousands of exceptions for the journey that I will be embarking on that rationalise taking extra stuff.."Well i'm working in the U.K. for 3 months before I begin the main part of my travels so I need these 12 extra pairs of trousers".. or something like that. I did do a test pack the other day and was quite suprised at how little stuff I do have so I suppose it's not as bad as I thought.

So i know have one last week in order to say goodbye to various friends and family and try to think of all things that i have forgotten to do ... I'm sure all these things will come ot be in a blinding flash as soon as I step onto the plane. I'm starting to get excited now.... this week is going to fly by.....

Perhaps I should point out...

...that I have been successful in achieving my dream job as an overland truck driver. I go back to the U.K. in October to start with my three month training. I'm not really sure the purpose of this blog yet... I have created a travel blog on a couple of otehr sites to record my travels and adventures and i'm not totally sure how this one fits in. The previous update is a cut and paste of the opening post on those blogs. Perhaps I will keep this one going as a more personal blog as well as a back-up of my other blogs. Whether or not I can be bothered updating more than one blog will be seen.

I have a heap of things to do now... travel doctor tommorrow to talk about vaccinations and I also start the theory component of my advanced motorcycle course.... my diary is very full I just hope I can get it all organised before I go.

I guess I will see....

At Home Contemplating

It seems almost unreal to me, sitting in my bedroom in Auckland, that in about a month I will be flying to the U.K. to begin my training to become an overland tour leader, a job I have dreamt about having since 2001. I know I am incredibly lucky that I have been able to pursue this dream of mine, in fact as it draws closer I get a feeling that something MUST go wrong to stop it all from happening so smoothly and easily. Although I can’t wait for the next month to pass as quickly as possible, I am sure that as the date of my departure draws closer that time will accelerate and Monday 1 October will be upon me before I know it. This time at home, however, does give me an excellent opportunity to say farewell to friends and family who I won’t be seeing for at least 18 months or so. So the most important thing that I have to do before I return is to complete my Class 4 truck licence, a task which I am somewhat nervous about. I have only had my Class 2 licence for 3 months and have basically no experience in driving trucks so I am a bit worried that I may find it hard to transition to the larger Class 4 vehicle. It doesn’t help that I can only start my truck lessons on 19 September and I hope to fly out on 1 October… if anything goes wrong I may be forced to reschedule my flight which will be a complete pain in the backside. I have then almost 3 weeks to occupy before I can start on the truck lessons, the only thing else I have planned is to have five fillings which unfortunately the dentist has told me that I must have - what fun. I suppose that I should put in more planning for what I will need to do before I leave as I am sure there are a million things that I haven’t even thought about that I will need to organise, avoid, pay for, sell or inject myself with before I fly away. Anyway this has been a rather disjointed opening post, probably suits my mood quite well and I’m not actually doing too much of great interest at the moment. I’m sure that when I start my training then some interesting posts may eventuate. Heres hoping.

Me is Educamated!! (Officially)

Well god damn and whoppee!! Just checked my results of my final exams online and I passed everything so now I will be graduating with A Bachelor of Arts in September!!!

I am so bloody happy! Even the exams that I thought went quite badly I ended up with a decent grade in.

My final marks were:

Anthropology 304: Contemporary Oceania - A-
History 125: War, Peace and Society since 1800 - A-
History 307: Modern Germany since 1848 - B+
Politics 106: International Relations - B+


Happy happy happy! And now I am furiously getting ready to fly out to England in two days! How exciting is everything right now.... I can't hardly wait :)

One more day left at work...

It's been a struggle for the last two weeks... getting up early and going to a job that I really do not want to do. The prime motivation for working the last two weeks wasto have a bit of additional spending money for the U.K. It has been difficult... the longest run in the branch which gets the most mail, plenty of posties calling in sick, strong winds and torrential rain and mega-mega-mega amounts of mail.

But now I have only one more day to go and it all seems worth it :) Funny how these things work really. Now I just need to get myself organised for my trip... trying to sort out what clothes to take and also sell my car tommorrow.

I also got me a fancy new camera as an early birthday present from mum. It is a Sony H-2, a camera from last year but had been discounted very heavily so was very worth it. I haven't used a camera for a long while and this one has many manual functions so I'll have to learn how to use all its features.

Funnily enough even though it is only 5 days until I leave it doesn't seem real yet. i guess because of the stress of exams and then straight into work 6 days a week I haven't had too much time to think about it. It is quite exciting though... I really hope my interview goes well, I want this job so much! Anyhow not much I can do now until the 16th - just going to enjoy my last few days here and London. Trying not to think about the 37 hour flight :(

Big ups to the Commish

Well I have to give out a "bloody well done old chap" to the British High Commission in Wellington for handling the renewing of my Brit passport in record time. I wasn't expecting too much and having heard of the huge delays that some US citizens were having getting passports I assumed that my new passport may not even make it to me by the time I left for England next months. Instead, barely 2 weeks after I sent off the application my brand spanking new passport arrived, complete with new biometric thingy-ma-bobs to prove that I'm not a terrorist.

3 days until my next exam - I really should start studying for this one as it may be tricky. Also I received a mark for my last third year history paper and I'm thinking that I will get a B+ as a final grade which is acceptable. 8 days until exams are all over and about 25 until I fly away!! Can't wait.

One down - two to go.

Had my first exam yesterday, now only 2 left until I graduate. It was a History exam but only for a poxy first year paper so I probably didn't study enough. In fact I know I didn't only relaly started that morning but I lucked out on the questions that I got, almost exactly what I studied for. I only had to write two essay in two hours, my first essay was;

"The humanising of war! You might as well talk of the humanising of hell!" (Sir John Fisher, The Hague, 1899). Do you agree that the attempts to restrain and limit wars and warfare have failed in the period 1815 - today? Explain your answer, citing evidence from at least THREE different periods of conflict and/or conflict resolution. No problems with that one - wrote about 6-7 pages and some of it may even have been relevant. Next question;

The Second World War is the world's only example of truly 'total war'. Do you agree? Discuss, reffering to at least TWO other twentieth-century conflicts aside from the Second World War.
Again not too hard - I tlaked about WWI, WWII and the War on Terror.

I only needed 8 marks from the 50 on offer in the exam to pass so I am hoping that I did ok.

Next exam is next Tuesday and is a third year Anthropology paper on Contemporary Oceania, might need ot do a little bit more study for this one.

On a side note - I bought some travel trousers today - chino(ish) style and quite comfy. And my payment has been received for my flights and my tickets are being generated. Exciting stuff!!