We have had an exciting day visiting Port Botany this morning to be met by our agent and two crew members who had just flown in from Manilla. The trick was to get through the turnstile and wait for the "bus" to come for us and take us and our luggage out to the ship. Lots of security but none of the electronic variety although we were conscious that photography was not allowed on the port site.
In the drizzling rain we climbed the steel gangway helped with our luggage by friendly crew, up to meet captain George and two customs officers. Claire was the surprise passenger as everyone had just been expecting Colin. We met our fellow passengers, one disembarking and leaving us the double room, a couple travelling on to Melbourne where they are to disembark and an Irishman is due to board and the German woman six times voyager and great freighter enthusiast.
We are back on tonight for a bed & breakfast experience @ Port Botany. We sail at 6am tomorrow. Flying by boat will really begin then.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
A case study in preparation
What to pack, deciding what to take: clothes, books, electronic devices, documents, and the fear of leaving something essential behind. Packing a suitcase is the equivalent of creating what in effect will be our mobile home. It has to last six months.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Further reading matter and uTube
Further reading
Stevenson, Seth. Grounded: a down to earth journey around the world. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2001. Makes a great case for circumnavigating the world without leaving the ground.
Hazard, Richard. In Hazard. New York: New York Review of Books, 1938/2008. Ficto-ethnographic study of cargo ship when it hits a hurricane. Anxiety inducing narrative.
Secreste, Merlye. Frank Lloyd Wright: a biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. A less than flattering account of the man behind the architect.
Atlas, John. Seeds of change. Vanderbilt University, 2010. Atlas gave an account of his book dealing with the Acorn organization (we should all know about) and how it was destroyed by the Republican Party and FoxNews. Scary stuff.
Gauguin, Paul. Letters to his wife and friends, edited and with a preface by Maurice Malingue, trans. by Henry J. Stenning, Boston: MFA, 2003. Deals with Gauguin's struggles to survive, relations with fellow artists and to maintain contact with his estranged wife. Background reading for the Tate's Gauguin retrospective.
For a much a less sanguine view of the Canary Wharf development and its social implications, see Kal Gulson's Education policy, space and the city, forthcoming from Routledge.
Perec, George. An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris, trans. Marc Lowenthal (Cambridge, Mass.: Wakefield Press, 2010). This extraordinary little novella documenting the infraordinary makes mention of number 96, our local bus.
Cobb, Richard. Paris and elsewhere. New York: New York Review of Books, 1998. Acquired at Paris' Village Voice, this set of essays on Paris and other cities in France is marvelous.
Cobb, Richard. Paris and elsewhere. New York: New York Review of Books, 1998. Acquired at Paris' Village Voice, this set of essays on Paris and other cities in France is marvelous.
uTube
Great introduction to Seth Stevenson's book:
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