Strange girl and the spider

Strange girl and I are walking into town. We walk through Sydney University. For those who've never been, its quite lovely. It looks a lot like a well-established British university, right down to the mishmash of different architectural styles (some much more attractive than others). However, the grounds and the flora betray its foreigness - the trees and bushes and flowers are not at all European looking, and the effect is a little like coming across the ruins of a university after the jungle has swallowed it.
We see a nice-looking building, and we decide to take photos of it. We walk up a small embankment. Its quite a warm day, and we've been walking for quite a while, so I suggest to Strange girl that we sit for a moment and catch our breath, and point to a flat rock. She sits down, and I'm about to do the same. But when I notice this, not two feet away behind from her head, and I leap back and scream:

Strange girl turns round, gets up, and lurches back with me
"What is it?!" I ask
"Yeah, stay away from that" she replies
"Why, what is it?!!"
"I don't know"
"Is it dangerous?"
"It's colourful. In general, stay away from the colourful ones"
Then Strange girl does something that, if it were done for a joke, it would be quite cruel. But she didn't do it for a joke, she did it in complete earnestness, and totally without malice:
Strange girl: (while peering at me) "What's that on your face?"
Me: freaking out, flailing limbs and slapping myself in the face multiple times "What, what, what is it?!!!"
Her: after I stop, and in disbelief "It was only a fly."
At which point I berated her quite loudly, asking if she was for real, doing a "what's that on your face" not twenty seconds after I've been freaked out by finding a previously unnoticed giant, terrifying looking spider inches from my head. She then explains that if someone points out that there is a bug on me in the future, I should freeze dead still and let them deal with it rather than move and/or slap myself in the face. Which strikes me as reasonable advice, IF I were accompanied by someone who HAD a modicum of bug-sense, whereas in fact I have her.
It is for this reason that learning how to identify dangerous Australian creatures has moved to the very top of my skills-to-learn list.

1st February post

(editorial note: due to very limited internet access, the post I wrote for the 1st of Feb is going up very late. It (and a couple of others) were written on the 1st, so ignore the posting date please)

1st Feburary post

Today is my birthday! Also its the start of a new month, so there's a bunch of monthly things to start.

Cuisine of the month: Chinese. I'm going to Billy Kwong tonight, which is a modern Chinese restaurant run by Kylie Kwong, who I've seen several times on Masterchef Australia. Her restaurant doesn't take reservations so we're just going to have to show up. I'll be taking pictures and blogging about it later.

Willpower challenge of the month: Personal hygiene. Glamourous, no? Feburary is the height of Australian summer, and its going to be very hot and sticky. So what better month for this resolution? The challenge then: new clothes every day. Shower every day, and immediately after exercise. Brush teeth twice a day. Stay clean shaven at all times. I'm also going to try to buy some clothes that will be a bit better suited for me and for the climate.

Skill to learn: Identifying dangerous Australian creatures
There's a good story behind this one - stay tuned

Learn new skills
But the hero can't just rely on the same old tricks to get him through his quest - he'll need to pick up a few new skills along the way. Daniel-san learned karate, Luke learned to use the force, I will learn 8 new skills, one to help me in each other part of the quest.
Test of strength
Physical prowess is one of the things that heroes definitely have over mere mortals. Superman - faster than a speeding train. Flash - faster than a speeding train. Achillies - faster than whatever sped before trains in Ancient Greece. Now, with the best will in the world, I can't expect to reach heroic physicality in the space of a year. I don't have a body like a Greek god, I have a body like a Greek kebab shop owner. I'm not setting out to change this, I'm just going to try to be a little bit fitter than I am, and have my clothes fit a little better. So, my goal, challenging for me, laughable for some, is to run 12 km in 12 minutes per km by the 12/12/2012.

Tests of will
Physical strength is not enough however. A hero's will must be resolute. That's the other thing separates them from mere mortals - the grit and determination to see their quest through.
New year's resolutions are notorious not sticking. Its a rare breed of person who makes their resolution for the year last even to the end of January. A classic example of lack of willpower. Surely a hero could do better.
There are a few classic new years resolutions. Keep a diary, go to the gym, give up chocolate and so on. Rather than trying to keep one of these resolutions for twelve months, I'm going to try to keep twelve resolutions for one month each. Hopefully I'll determine which one is the most difficult, and will be able to offer advice to resolutionists next year over which one they have the best chance of succeeding at.

Tests of luck
Of course, heroes don't just get by on their strength, their skills, their will, their wits, their friends and their character. They need a little bit of luck as well. So I'm gonna need some too.
But how to make a challenge out of luck? Fortune, the fickle creature that she is, cannot be relied upon - if you KNOW that your luck is gonna come good, then you probably ought to call it something else (cheating perhaps). And its not like you can work hard to make it happen, that's called something else too. But heroes often exhibit uncommonly good luck. In fact, they pretty much ALWAYS get lucky. Surely this can't just be some massive statistical anomoly.
As we know from the old proverb, fortune favours the brave. And we also know that you can't win if you don't play. And if I'm honest, I don't take that many chances, so maybe I'm not giving Fortune the chance she needs to get a look in. That's the challenge then. To let luck take a bigger part in my life. My test of luck: make 12 bets.

Treasure obtained
An engagement ring and a promise of love everlasting are the reward if I complete this quest. See earlier post strange girl for details.

Return home
After all the trials are completed, after the damsels are de-stressed, after the dragons are slain and the treasure is taken, its time to go home. Often, this isn't as simple as it sounds. My return home will mark the end of this quest, and the deadline on my visa means that I will have to return.

Quest recorded
Its not a heroic story unless the story is told. Quests get recorded. Ideally there's some sort of scribe or poet or bard sidekick to tell the story. Ideally, the story gets told or sung before its written down, bound, published and sold. Ideally the epic tale gets passed down from generation to generation, told as bedtime stories for children, is praised by scholars for its clever allegories and by ethicists for its moral lessons, and becomes so iconic that its references become catchphrases or cliches. But times are tight, and this hero's budget doesn't stretch to stone tablets or a faithful Watson to record the tale. So I'll be doing my own recording of this quest, on this blog. Two challenges here: the first is quantity/regularity 12 posts a month, 1000 word average. The second: honesty. Heroic deeds are told with an eye on dramatic effect, that's fine, my deeds will be too. But this is a real-life challenge that's supposed to be real-life difficult. If I'm failing something, you'll know about it.
That's it then. Let Quest Australia commence!

What's in a quest?
Quests tend to revolve around a hero (in this case: me).
Typically, quests tend to follow a similar pattern in every story. The hero begins his adventure by travelling far away from home. In a far away place, he meets people and undergoes trials. Whatever skill he is reknowned for will win him favour. He'll learn new skills as well. There will be physical challenges and tests of will. He'll find that chance favours him as well. He gains what he has been seeking - treasure, love, power, or glory. He returns home triumphant and his deeds are recorded.

Travel far away from home
Leaving home may actually be the quintisessential element of a quest. I can't think of a hero out there who has quested from within the confines of his own living room. The reason why the hero leaves home varies wildly - sometimes he wants to, sometimes he's forced to. Sometimes his home is destroyed. He might go for love, or to search for his fortune, or to find his father (its always his father rather than his mother). The place he goes to varies as well, but usually its far away, often its unknown or shrouded in myth, frequently its dangerous and sometimes its really really weird - magical even.
As questing destinations go then, Australia is a pretty good one. Being from Britain, its about as far away as you can go before you start coming back again from round the other side. I don't really know anything about it, except from unreliable sources like movies and backpackers - for instance, did you know that Australians do not say "toss a shrimp on the barbie"? The Australians call the invertebrate sea creatures suitable for barbecuing "prawns" - any "shrimp" put on a barbecue woud fall straight through the grill on account of their tiny size. And contrary to what we learned from Skippy, kangeroos are rarely if ever kept as pets and are incapable of even rudimentary communication.
But Australia does contain many weird and bizarre creatures - every single one of them deadly in some form or another, no matter how cute they are. And the locals seem bafflingly unfazed by this. So its fair to say that Australia is a strange and dangerous place.
The best reason by far to have "travel far from home" on the list though is this: its already accomplished! A long checklist with many unticked items is a terrifying proposition. But add an item that's aready done, and immediately things start to seem more managable.
Travel far from home - COMPLETED

Learn the ways of the land
To thrive in a strange land and within a strange culture, the hero must learn the ways of the people he encounters. Often this involves eating disgusting food, participating in weird rituals and occasionally accidentally getting married to the chief's daughter.
Therefore, to better understand the culture of my girlfriend and the land I am staying in, I will try to partake in as many Australian cultural experiences as I can. A few that are on the shortlist:
Eat vegemite
Drive a ute*
Go surfing
Barbecue
Sing along to Cold Chisel* in the pub
Pet a kangaroo
Christmas on the beach
Christmas in July*
Something involving drinking
Slip slop slap*
Skinny dipping
AFL game*
Bathurst*
Ute = pick up truck
Cold Chisel = blue collar rock band/creators of unoffical Aussie national anthem
Christmas in July = cos they want to have Christmas in the winter (as well, not instead of)
Slip slop slap = sunburn protection advice: slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat
AFL = Aussie rules football, a bloodsport not dissimilar to rugby
Bathurst = see "Jack's favourite fact about Australia"
This list is not complete or exhaustive - basically if anyone says to me words to the effect of "that's a typically Australian thing to do", I'll try to do it while I'm here.

Enlist aidRarely does the hero make his journey alone. Don Quixote had Sancho Panza... Luke Skywalker had R2D2... Jennifer Connelly had a bunch of muppets... heroes make friends. So shall I.
The third challenge then is to make friends while I'm in Australia and (ideally) get them to help me on the quest. The target number is either 6 allies or 12 friends, where an ally is deemed to be anyone who would otherwise qualify as a friend and who also materially helps me to complete the quest (and is therefore worth twice as much as a friend in quest-terms).

Hone existing skillsHeroes tend to be reknowed for being particularly good at something. Hercules for his strength, Sherlock Holmes for his deductive mind, Green Lantern for his... colour? (I'll double check that one). Usually, its fighting. I'm not really into fighting. If I have a superpower at all (I don't, but play along), its cooking. Its definitely the thing that I'm best at - I want to make a career in food and I want to be better at it for my own enjoyment as well. Heroes use their unique ability in their quests to overcome obstacles or win favour, so a cooking task is definitely going to be a feature in my 2012 challenge.

Last year's food based challenge was to cook 52 new dishes in 2011 - something new every week. Not a bad challenge, but ultimately I it didn't really work for me, as some of the new things I cooked I only tried once, didn't think were particularly good, and didn't bother trying to refine. This year I want a different approach.

Food in Australia is heavily influenced by the waves of immigration that have come to its shores. In particular, Asian cuisine is huge, though to lump traditions as diverse as Korean, Malaysian, Chinese, Thai, Indonesian and Japanese together as if they're one thing borders on absurdity. Or so I'm told, because, actually, I have no idea what the differences are. But I ought to know. So this year's culinary challenge is to learn.

Every month, starting from February, I am going to learn a new cuisine. I'm going to go to restaurants, read cookbooks and practice dishes until by the end of the month I can cook with confidence a three course meal that I feel exemplifies, without parodying, my favourite parts of the cuisine in question. For which cuisines to pick, I'm going to look in particular at those which have a major influence in Australia. The climax of this task will be a Modern Australian meal, drawing together as best as I can what this country has to offer.

More on the Strange Girl

As I mentioned, I first started talking to my girlfriend online in 2005. My username was "Spoffin" and hers was "Skoffin", and we talked long into the night, many nights, for many months. In the main, I was a right little sex pest and I'm not proud - I would not recommend a policy of badgering a 15 year old girl over the internet as a path to romance. Fortunately however, feelings went both ways and hers were expressed through the time-honoured manner of getting someone else to find out if he LIKES-me likes-me. Then we stopped talking for a couple of years.

But then we started again. I told her about my current non-relationships and made her jealous. She told me about her current relationships and made me think that nothing could happen. Then around June 2008, pending her dumping an emotionally abusive boyfriend, we made plans for her to come to England to visit me. And in August, after a fist fight with an American under the Eifiel Tower over a girl I'd been flirting with on holiday, I proposed to Bronwyn that we be exclusive, and not see anyone else for the next six months until we planned to meet. She formally broke up with her boyfriend, and then on the 28th of January 2009, she was being detained by Heathrow immigration, just a couple of dozen minutes away from seeing me for the first time. I'll never forget the first words she spoke out loud to me: "What's with the face?". I lost my virginity to her on Feburary 1st, my 22nd birthday. She stayed in London for about five weeks and then went home at the beginning of March. I'd planned to go to Sydney in June, but before I'd even gotten there we were already arranging for her to come to London in the new year. I stayed for seven weeks with her and her crazy family, and then spent a looonng six months waiting for her to come back to the UK. She lived with me for two years, the length her working holiday visa allowed, and then I moved to Sydney on a one/two year visa and that takes us up to today.

I was writing an entry for this blog, trying to define the elements of a quest so that I could write my challenge around it. Quests involve journeys, trials, and so on. And I realised that there was an essential element of all quests that were too common to leave out, but that I didn't have a way to fit into my challege: The treasure that lies at the end. I thought about it, trying to come up with something appropriate. I could buy myself something if I manage all of this, I was thinking, but I couldn't come up with anything that I wanted enough to be worth all this effort, but that I could wait a year (or longer) to get.

Of course, its only a golden fleece or an ark of the covenant that the hero wins at the end of his quest about half the time. As often as not, the hero's quest is for love.

And an idea came into my head. One that took hold, and wouldn't shake.

And I asked Bron what she thought of it, and her voice went quiet and she said she thought it was pretty cool.

So the prize at the end of Quest Australia is a wedding ring

Why I'm doing this

There are many different things that lead to this quest.

At the end of 2011, I was preparing to go to Australia, a trip that was more compelled than chosen. Not that I didn't want to go, but rather that I kinda had to, regardless of whether or not I wanted to. This is because in 2005, I started talking online with a very strange girl (more on her later), and through a series of circumstances that progressed in a not at all linear or straightforward fashion, she ended up moving from Sydney to London to live with me in January 2010. Her visa was a two year working holiday visa, so in January 2012, it was going to be my turn to move to Australia (more on this weird and wonderful land later). So I was getting ready for this big move, due for January 19th (more on this date later)

At the start of 2011, my Australian flatmate (1 of 4 at the time) told me her new year's resolution: to visit a new country every month. This was the coolest new year's resolution I've ever heard, and it inspired me to give up my lifelong antipathy to the idea of new year's resolution and start one of my own. I decided that I would try to watch 365 films before the end of 2012, and also cook 52 new dishes and read 12 books. (more on challenge 2011 later) I was still going strong on this as 2011 drew to a close, and I had enjoyed it, even if I had found it a little grinding and unbalanced towards the end.

One of the things I watched in October 2011 was a stand up set by Richard Herring called "The 12 Labours of Hercules Terrace" in which he tries to perform the 12 labours of Hercules in a reinterpretation more appropriate for the modern age. (more on this later). In the end he comes to realise that Hercules, far from being a hero, mostly is just a macho arsehole who killed a lot of one-of-a-kind animals and that being heroic in the modern day, if its possible at all, involves something different.

On the 11th of November 2011, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released. Those not familiar with the game only really need to know that you play a medieval adventurer and most of your time is split between trying to level up your skills by using them over and over, and doing whichever quests get you the best loot. The gameplay is like a Skinner box - its repetitive, abusive and unsatisfying and is a massive time sink, and I love it more than I love chocolate, sunshine or baby ducklings. More on Skyrim and its predecessors later.

These are all strands of the thread that lead me to Quest Australia (2012). I was coming to the end of a year-long challenge and wanted new and improved one for this year, ideally one that was a bit more well rounded. I had been thinking about the idea of the 12 Labours of Hercules, and in particular the conclusion that many of the tasks were a bit same-y, and did not add up to a particularly heroic endeavour. Skyrim had me thinking about the idea of a hero improving his or her many different skills as a part of becoming stronger and more heroic. And Australia, coming near the start of a new year, is an exotic, far away, quest-appropriate location that I was about to depart for.

My challenge for 2012 then was going to be a multi-part challenge, focused around tasks or challenges that improve myself in a more well-rounded way than either Hercules (with his slaughter of mythical creatures) or I (with my film-dominated 2011 challenge) had done before, and around Australia itself.

That's the idea anyway. Next up is what I'm actually going to be doing.

Australian Quest

I'm going to a new land, filled with strange and dangerous creature. My travelling companion, a native with an unearthly pale hue to her skin, may be as much liability as asset. My quest - to learn the ways of this place and to master this strange land. To better myself and to make my fortune.