New Years Eve in Australia and Return to England

My last posts were at the end of December from Melbourne, Australia.

I celebrated new years eve with three of my closest friends. The day was hot. Really hot. My parents went to the beach and it was going to be one of my last chances to spend the day with them, so I went to the beach too. After the beach I came home, had a quick shower and was picked up by one of my mates. We stopped by the bottle-o (Aussie for liquor store / off licence), picked up some beers, ice and a bottle of Jäger. We went to a friend's house and drank in the comfort of his air conditioning and then some more in his back yard as the heat eased off.  As it was time to head out, the cold front came through, the temperature dropped noticeably within seconds and it started pouring.

We were thinking of spending the evening in a lively inner beach-side part of the city but the rain kind of drowned that idea. We made it into the city where we were unable to get in anywhere and were getting wetter by the minute. The fireworks started exploding all around, and we sheltered under a bridge and watched them light up the rainy sky over the Yarra River.  We decided,  then, that we would seek shelter and booze in Crown Casino.

Reflecting on the evening, it was great to spend it with close friends. They are great guys and I missed them while I was away. But overall we ended up doing the same old thing in the same old places. During some of my visit I had doubts about why I am still in cold dark England when I could be living life on the beach in Australia. But I now realised that if I were to settle in back in Australia, live life there, not just a holiday, that the monotony would soon get to me and really, I'm not ready for that just yet. Adventures still await in the Northern Hemisphere.

So a few days later I was feeling fine about leaving the sun and the sea, and boarding a London-bound jet.

My flight departed in the middle of the night, and I had a good sleep on my way to Malaysia. We landed in KL while it was still dark, and I spent the morning in a lounge there. It was a five hour stopover and it was nice to be able to have a  shower and a free feed.  But then came the longer part of the flight, the 13 hours back to London. It did give me a chance to watch about 5 movies and some TV shows. Video on demand really does make flights go faster these days!

I landed in London and it was indeed cold. In fact I had just gotten there in time for the "big freeze". In the long passport control queue I picked up an Evening Standard and saw an article predicting snow and lots of it. Its prediction  was accurate. The next morning I woke up before dawn, looked outside my bedroom window and saw London covered with snow. It continued like this for about two weeks, until just a few days ago. What a contrast! A few days ago I had been on the beach covering up with sunscreen, and a couple of days later I was trekking to work through the snow.

They say variety is the spice of life. It is. And I like my life with a lot of flavour. Change - it makes life interesting. It makes life tasty.