Two and a half years is a long time to be away. It’s kind of too long to say anything coherent when somebody asks “What have you been up to?”

Rather than rattle off a shopping list of countries visited or blah blah blah about the vibrancy of the culture in Europe or mourn for another day trekking in South America, I’ve tried to come up with my top 20 of things during the period. Things you might not have known or guessed. Things that were out of the ordinary. Things that were a bit spesh. They’re not really in order of importance.

1. We worked on an organic farm for two weeks as WWOOF volunteers in Argentina. Huerta de Vida had no running water or electricity, but we are now well versed in transplanting tomatoes, digging irrigation ditches and building a natural construction house. I still have an irrational fear of chickens.
2. I fainted for the first time in my life in Berlin, Christmas 2007. After a sauna, where, instead of relaxing I spent my time lying on the warm wood fuelling an internal conflict. You know the ones: “what am I doing with my life. I don’t know what I want to do. Have I made the right decisions. Yada yada yada.” I finished my sauna, walked upstairs and folded into a mess on the bathroom floor. After picking myself up with only my ego bruised, I had a shower and promptly burst into tears.
3. We went to Paris for a one night only culture binge. We arrived off the Eurostar, around 4pm in the afternoon for Nuit Blanche, an annual evening of Parisienne brilliance, where museums, galleries and other spaces are open all night. Basically the entire city turns into a psuedo art installation. Highlight of the evening was sitting on the marble floor of an enormous cathedral gazing up at a black and white short film, documenting a group of blind people touching an elephant. Quite breathtaking. Hearing a chamber choir in Notre Dame was pretty spectacular too. We stumbled back to Gare du Nord station at 8am for our return train to London.
4. I did a two week internship at a BBC science magazine in Bristol. And wrote things like this.
5. I woke up in the dark FOUR times to climb steep things. 1) Final day of the W trek, Patagonia, Chile, to see sunrise onto “los torres”. Okay this was quite amazing, helped by the fact that we took our sleeping bags up there. It was ‘effing cold. 2) To climb up a volcano in the Reservo Eduardo Avaroa, Bolivia. This sucked. I made life hell for everyone else and our guide thought I had altitude sickness because I kept stopping to harrumph and complain. 3) To get out of the Colca Canyon, Peru. Mike walked ahead so I considered breaking up with him. 4) Final approach to Machu Picchu, Peru. This was fine but I grumbled anyway.
6. On a work jolly in London, I was at a fab restaurant and Sienna Miller was sitting at the table next to us. For all you trashy mag readers out there.
7. For my birthday in 2008, Mike organised a surprise trip to Barcelona for a long weekend. We got all Gaudi inspired, ate tapas, drank red wine and very nearly missed our plane home.
8. For Mike’s birthday in 2008, I booked us in for a dinner at Dans le Noir. This restaurant is completely pitch black, your waiters are blind (sans guide dogs), your food is a total surprise and you eat fine French cuisine with your hands. What a trip.
9. We studied Spanish in Buenos Aires. For three weeks, we were back to school. For the record, I scored higher in the test.
10. We went to an ATP music festival in the UK at a family holiday park. Not as weird as it sounds. Being able to play ten-pin bowling, mini-golf or those carnie basketball games when there are no bands is rad. Also, your own cabin at a festival… fricken cool.
11. Mike broke his nose by accidently punching himself in the face. Sorry babe.
12. We stayed on Sipan, a Croatian island that has a population of 600. In the granny flat of an older couple who spoke no english, instead communicating with us with “da’s” and pointing.
13. I became buddies with Jake White, coach of the Springboks, while I was following his team around Marseille, reporting on the quarter-finals of the Rugby World Cup 2007 (writing things like this). Okay well maybe not buddies, but he said G’day at the pub one day and also waved while I was at the beach with Jez. Buddies enough!
14. We played ping pong in a club in Berlin. As you walk in the door, you swap your ID for a bat. Entertainment sorted for the entire evening.
15. We took hallucinogenic vine during a Shaman ceremony, in Cusco. No hallucinations but at least the cleansing effect took place. I spewed like  a waterfall.
16. I got the: boys have a penis, girls have a vagina talk from a three year old Bolivian boy whilst volunteering with Proyecto Horizonte. It’s even cuter in Spanish.
17. I stayed overnight in an internet cafe (Manga Kissa) in Japan. Twice. Once in Osaka. The second time in Tokyo so I could be at the Tsukiji fish market super early. This was such a chaotic yet strangely functional, fascinating place. I had uber-fresh tuna sashimi for brekky. Yum!
18. We crashed our hire car in New Zealand. When I say we, it was Mike. Nobody was hurt, but it was a wee bit scary.
19. We had a very East London evening. A house-party in Hackney, followed by some bar-hopping and topped off with an underground carpark rave in Shoreditch. Boy did we think we were cool.
20. We fit 8 people (plus the driver) in a taxi. A slightly crazy evening with some other backpackers in Bogota, Colombia.
21. We came home. At the moment, this is feeling just as massive as the previous twenty.

I had hoped for a day of calmness, relaxation and maybe some quiet. Instead I was smacked in the face with just how serious the international obesity epidemic is.

A visit to Britain’s only thermal pools in Bath couldn’t have been less Zen. I must admit, my experience (my now longed for experience) of thermal pools is Japan, where still and quiet are not just prerequisites for the culture, but rules of law in the confines of a communal pool. The British, I am coming to realise more and more each day, are not fussed by matters such as these. They just don’t get the ideals of the communal bathing experience.

My fellow bathers were predominantly old ladies, fat ladies or fat, old ladies. This would have been fine had they been lovely fat old ladies… but they weren’t! They were nattering, whiny, heavy breathing fat old ladies. And to make matters worse, if they weren’t ladies of this ilk, they were groups of shrieking, hysterical hens parties. Worse in my opinion. The only males around were obviously uncomfortable around so many ‘powerful’ (and by powerful I mean could squash you in one sitting) women and inwardly bemoaning their newly wed (let’s say 1-2 years tops) wives… although at the same time tallying up the brownie points this was earning them – at least a football trip with the boys… strippers included.

She wasn’t professionally trained, but I had heard that she swept the hair at her Aunt’s salon, in her early teenage years. She had even been promoted to washing hair, taking out perm rollers and buying the magazines when she had turned 13. She lived and worked in Paris, that had to count for something right?

When I arrived at her house she’d just gotten out of the shower. It was past lunchtime! Something about really tired from work, not enough red meat, talking to her boyfriend on the phone late the night before.

We set up in the bathroom. It was a mess. There even looked like there was hair in the sink from a previous cut*.

She waltzed in wearing only a singlet and undies. Oh well, I thought, she’s the artist. To say I was nervous was an understatement, but my fears were only compounded when she began her preparations. A big gulp of coffee, followed by some erratic combing. I reminded her that it was just my fringe that I needed cut. I didn’t want to cause too much damage. Mmm hmmm she nodded.

Remembering that she didn’t have her scissors, she skipped into the other room. While she was gone I had a quick check of the colour she had done the night before. Hmm, it wasn’t too bad. The brown was deep and she had managed to keep some of the ginger as an undertone. Maybe there was a future for her as a colourist. There was a dye stain on my left cheek, nothing that wouldn’t be erased with some exfoliation though. Maybe I should have more confidence in this skatty girl. It will be fine I told myself.

I wasn’t so sure of this when she bumped back into the room with the scissors. I was sure they weren’t real hair scissors, but was too embarrassed to say anything. I just clenched my teeth and put on a forced smile.

Maybe she could sense my nerves. Each time she had finished parting and rearranging my fringe, she would put the comb down with a smack on the bathroom sink, place the scissors diagonally across the hair then hurriedly pick up the comb and rearrange again. This happened over and over. Then finally, on maybe the eighth movement, she paused and made the tiniest snip on my right side just above my eyebrow.

All of a sudden her confidence was regained. She was channeling every haircut she had ever watched in Haircraft, Video Plaza, Moruya. She wasn’t the greatest at keeping the hair from snipping straight into my eyes. After the initial diagonal fringe was made, she tried her skills at thinning it out a bit. Hmm… not as successful.

Then her confidence got a bit too much. She started playing with the side bits of hair that frame my face. I put a stop to it there, but not before she had made some layers in the left side that more resembled steps up to my ears. Oh well… she has to learn some way.

I don’t know if I’d go back to her. She wasn’t bad. Just not the hairdressing experience that I adore. No head massage, no good coffee, no witty chatter. Not even a ditzy young assistant to wash my hair. It is hard to find good hairdressers though.

]]> http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/self-service/feed/ 1 just jessi http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/ http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:02:10 +0000 just jessi http://musingpractice.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/dear-pigeons-et-al/ ]]> Dear Pigeons, male backpackers, weird old French men and people scoping for charity

From now on, could you please just leave me alone? Just because I’m sitting by myself, in a public sphere, doesn’t mean I’m screaming out for company, or conversation, or distraction. Furthermore, if I am sitting talking to somebody else already, this should be enough of a sign that I don’t need further interaction. Apparently not.

Look, it’s not that I’m anti-social. I’ll talk to randoms at the best of times. I’m just perplexed at why you cannot understand that that time is not now!

I’m reading a book. I’m typing on a computer. I’m eating my lunch. I’m sleeping. The last time I checked none of these things were international signs for come and annoy me!

Do I look lonely? I don’t feel lonely. I feel quite happy to be sitting here by myself doing my own thing. In fact, I would go in so far as to say I am loving sitting here by myself. Look at my surrounds. I’m in a beautiful park. I’m in Paris.

Is it just because you don’t ever sit by yourself? Is it because when you do just have your own company you aren’t happy and you’re worried that I am feeling the same inadequacy? Well I’m not! Maybe you should try it. Find a spot. Sit down. Avoid that little voice inside you that is urging you to go and talk to that solitary girl over there and just think your own thoughts. Leave that girl alone!

A winding parisienne street flanked by off-white buildings and lead by cobblestones. North of the Notre Dame end of the River Seine; East of the architectural anomaly that is Centre Georges Pompidou (inside out is the best description). Our hero is filled with quaint dress shops, coiffeurs and orderly queues outside “best falafel in the world” shops (try Chez Marienne… yum!).

Queues which this author can only guess have been rustled up by over-enthusiastic, well-meaning and probably unethically financed travel journalists. First on our list is the “ideal place for a never-ending Sunday brunch. Relax in comfy sofas amongst Paris’ most stylish and arty” – Le Loir dans la Theiere. It must be true because Lonely Planet ‘Paris Encounters’ told us so. It also promised free wireless internet.

Once inside the opening of a laptop brought intense glares from the well-manicured gentlemen in the pink polo shirt carrying raspberry tarts. This was quickly followed up by sign language from his pursed lips and shaking head colleague closely translated to: “close your laptops you mooching backpackers. Can’t you read this fucking sign?” The sign, obviously a symptom of too many mooching backpackers, read “ C’est ne sont pas portable PC dans cet etablissement,”… or something like that.

No matter, lunch was still to be served. Unlike the all day “Paris’ best brunch” promised by Lonely Planet we were greeted with responses of ‘C’est finit’ to quite a few items on the menu. The coffee was sufficient (I’ve found this to be a compliment in Paris…) and the food was an uninspiring omelette and an overpriced, but delicious tapas plate filled with quality cheese, meats and fresh artichoke hearts.

So yeah… just because Lonely Planet say it’s so… doesn’t mean it’s true!

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… you know when you start writing something and it is going to be the beginning of something big, but then you just write the first part and that’s all there really is? Yes.