After a week back in Adelaide, today I am finally realising that I am here. Today the temperature hit a maximum of 42 degrees celcius, and the streets felt like a huge open-air oven.
I rode down to the beach with my friend Poon, on his scooter, holding on to his shoulders as the hot wind […]
A Japanese guy near me is fanning himself, even though it is not hot at all. Actually it is somewhat chilly. He must just like fanning himself. Good for him – those who like fanning themselves should be allowed to do so, while those who do not want to fan themselves can sit in repose.
I […]
5:30am. I am in Amman, Jordan. It is strange being woken up by the loud and ghostly sounds of prayer by megaphone. Around the city, metal cones mounted on cylindrical towers (‘minarets’) give the first call to prayer for the day. Different megaphones start at slightly different times, or come from different distances, so that […]
I went to Heathrow airport this afternoon for my flight to Jordan, but I am still sitting here in London tonight – or at least, in some version of London. I was at the check-in counter in good time, but it seemed that most passengers had turned up extra early, as I found myself at […]
I had wanted to visit Barcelona for a long time, long enough and keenly enough that when I arrived I could barely see it through the fog of expectations. Over the course of a couple of days, however, I began to distinguish some outline of the city.
Barcelona was made more difficult by the fact that […]
I am sitting right now in the “gymnasium”, the training room at an official Freaks’ Convention. Officially, this event is self-described as a jugglers’ convention, but in reality this includes not just jugglers but circus performers, mime artists, dancers, fire-twirlers, fire-eaters, lovers of the diabolo, those who have developed their own personal one-person “show” – […]
I rode through the outskirts of Madrid this evening, on the way to stay with a friend, Francisco. I realised that I am afraid of cities.
Not the centre of cities: that part is comprehensible, manageable… frenetic, but familiar in its freneticism. It is the outskirts that scare me. Five years ago, Madrid had 4.5 million […]