Loic e-mailed the other day and said that he could see we were busy because there were no new entries on royby.com. You are quite right Loic, it’s not for lack of material that I haven’t posted anything here for a while, rather there is too much to write about right now and every time I think about beginning writing this writer’s block thing kicks in and I can’t come up with a word.
In the nearly 6 weeks since we arrived back in Australia so much has happened that it makes my head spin. We are now in our new house and even though it was interesting living in a 21st floor apartment in the Brisbane CBD I am glad to be out of there and to experience having some of our possessions around us again. We have both been blown away however by how much “stuff” we kept in storage, although it’s strange that some things which we are sure we would never have gotten rid of haven’t appeared as yet. Oh well, plenty more boxes to unpack yet.
Speaking of things that have yet to appear, our things that we had shipped from VN are reportedly on the dock in Brisbane but it is debatable whether we will get them in time to retrieve our clothes for Bianca’s wedding, which is this Saturday, so it looks as though I either go and buy some new stuff or turn up wearing Nike’s and a black linen suit with a crusty t-shirt underneath. The Vespa is no longer being held hostage and will be shipped sometime soon which is all good but I’m now beginning to wonder whether I will be brave enough to drive it in this traffic. Cars travel so quickly here compared to VN and drivers are much less “motorbike aware”.
It will be great to get our bicycles from our shipped goods, even though I have assemble them with the only possibility of directions being those written in Vietnamese. Probably there will be a small amount of bad language issuing from my garage at the time of construction. Brisbane has literally hundreds of miles of bicycle tracks and I can’t wait to get out and explore. We have our new car sure, but there is something about exploring at a slower more leisurely pace that appeals.
Out new house is 3.5 Klms from Qld Uni and 3 Klms from the Brisbane city centre so we are very central and getting around by bicycle will be very easy. For instance I can ride to my university of a morning and if I’m feeling a bit tired or the weather turns foul during the day I can slip the bicycle onto the City Cat with me and travel downriver where the trip home from the terminal is only about 500 metres. We are close to rail and bus transport and have two major arterial roads close on either side of us which means that getting anywhere is easy, and yet it is remarkably quiet in our small street.
I haven?t become used to the quiet yet although I am very tolerant of any outside noises, they just don?t worry like they did over two years ago before I went to live in Viet Nam.