confusion spreads day in day out i try to make tiny adjustments in order to feel i’m being a better person some days it feels right like when i let somebody share my taxi on a crowded friday afternoon and wouldn’t let them pay but that kind of deed is the easy stuff and i still feel as if i founder at other times when it matters more. it’s the post-holiday slump »
i wish i knew what it was that makes melbourne airport so frustrating to return to last time last year the people who guide you into different customs declaration queues made me walk this way and that ordering me around in gruff annoyed voices. this time it was the baggage retrieval my face hurts to think about it i should’ve just let it go and picked it up on the next round »
Somewhere in between the apartments full of people watching the CCTV new year’s eve broadcast, it all starts – explosions echoing through the streets all night, coloured flashes reflecting off apartment buildings. Two days later, exactly as I noticed the silence and suggested to my wife that maybe they’d already run out of firecrackers, one exploded in an alley nearby. The streets are a pulpy mass of discarded red casings and canisters – 15 tonnes of rubbish in one area, according to the news. »
In this town…: You can actually walk on many of the pavements (strangely, they’re not all used for bike storage and outdoor shops like in other cities I’ve been to). You can get an “automatic guide” for the Forbidden City in Esperanto (so the sign suggests). Pizza Hut appears to be some odd, TGIF-style “family restaurant” that sells all sorts of western food, not just pizza. The taxi drivers are very polite and very helpful (suggesting good places to eat as you kill time on the expressway coming into town from the airport, finding the number for and ringing up the China Aviation Museum 40 miles out of town to find out how to get there). »
it’s not time, yet but a sudden lethargy overtook me yesterday evening as i started to think about the passing of time and what i should be doing with it all i have to do at the moment is what i’m told but after a week of it i’m feeling a little overcome. »