Admiring the Admiral

So I am not 100 percent sure where we are up to with my travels but this morning the lovely people at American Airlines were able to help me get a new ticket to New York this afternoon at 3pm, which is amazing, meaning I will be able to get to New York in time for new years eve!!

By the time I got the new ticket I ended up having a few hours spare to spend in LA, so I asked my concierge to explain where the nearest mall was ( because if you want to learn anything about a people you can always tell by their malls, right?) and anyway I ended up with a driver in this hot mess black gangster mobile to go shopping. AH-MAY-ZING!! My driver was really nice but and we chatted about things, and then he started talking to me about relationsships and stuff and asked why I was still single, I think we possibly had a moment which was nice and odd at 10:30 in the morning.

The only downside to this was that the local mall was infact a Westfield, so hardly breaking the cultural mould there. Fortunetly they did have a Macy's and a JC Pennys that I was able to go into. They were fantastic, not because of what they sold - think a waterdowned version of David Jones, but because of who staffed it. The only shop assistants where Hispanic woman with too much eye make up or black woman who hated you for interupting them because they were really busy doing nothing.

Now I am at LAX, my flight got delayed by 2 hours so instead of waiting downstairs with the peeps I upgraded into the Qantas Club which the Amercian's have creatively retitled The Admiral's Cub. It' full of annoying Australian teenage girls and rich American's who just exist on their laptops. Oh I did totally see James Blake here though, he was using the computer next to me which and instead of being an obssessed fan asking for his autograph while he checked his emails, I just starred at him forever until he left.

I am really looking forward to New York and can't wait till get there, even if it is a day and a bit later than what it was meant to be.

Snowed in - but from the outside

So I have arrived in the merry old U.S of A however given the recent weather it is not so merry as most of the American Airlines staff and customs staff of LAX can attest. The flight over wasn't as bad as what I was thinking it would be, but then I had to go through immigration which was the most amazingly painful thing I have ever done. It took me two hours to get processed because they had like 2000 people arriving and about 6 staff to process them.

It was beyond rediculous and I think it is unfortunate that this is the first impression visitors to the US will get of how the country runs, which unfortunately in LAX is poorly. I also loved being given the third degree from my short hispanic lesbian TSA offical. I came to visit your country not to blow it up.

Anyway I cleared customs went through the transit area and then found out that my flight to New York (which I thought I would miss because immigration took so long) was cancelled because of the snow storm and that I would not be able to get on a flight until 1 January arriving at 6am or so, so there goes my new years plans, or do they?

I am going back to the airport today to see if there is anything they can do now that the airports are all open again in New York. There are a lot of people stuck in New York trying to get out so I think it is better to be trying to get in than to leave the city. Anyway I will soon find out what the situation is, worst case scenario is that I will be arriving on 1 January, not the best but still there are alot more people worse off during these holdiays, as the below illustrates.

I already miss home - how pathetic is that? But my main reason for missing home is because everything seems to work and function in Australia, even during winter!!!

Baby it's cold outside

There is only a few more hours until I head overseas and the excitement and panic has already started to set in.

Especially because New York has now gone all nuclear winter and any hope of planes landing in New York seem slim, so potentially I could be spending more than a four hour stopover  in LA, but I hope not because I really want to get to New York and catch up with everyone there, I already have shopping and lunch plans with Emily and dinner with the amazing Sarah M on the 29th. Hopefully the amazing winter blizard will have passed by the time I get there.

Fingers crossed!

The Australian Cricket Team are the DEVIL!!!

Oh My God how is it even possible for the Australian Cricket Team to play worse than they have been this summer, especially after doing so well in Adelaide during the third test, today however it was a very different cricket team that played England. It will take a minor miracle for Australia to win this test and the Ashes.

One thing is for sure though, that once the fifth test is done and dusted Ricky Ponting's captaincy will  be over. I think it is unfortunate when good leaders of any sort of domain be it sport or politics don't know when their time is up and equally when the team has no clear secession plan. It is embarrassing and only ends badly. It is not a characteristic of true leadership.

Boxing Day Adventures

Even though I am heading out of the country in less than two days and I still have about half my house to move and pack my life in a suitcase, I thought that the best way to spend Boxing Day was in the Southern Highlands.

Jen and I went to Red Cow Farm in Sutton Forrest (http://www.redcowfarm.com.au/) to look at their amazing gardens and spend our last day together. In 2009 and 2010 I decided that I was practically part of the Ralph family, fortunetly Jen and her family had enough sense to just run with it and we have never looked back since. One of our favorite things to do is to do daytrips to the Southern Highlands and yet this was the first time we had been to the farm.

Red Cow Farm is amazing and has a very rich history being a monastry at one point. The new owners have worked hard at making the best of the area and maintained the diverse gardens. I don't know how they do it. I think the photos speak for themselves.

What I don't want for Christmas

A panpipe CD

A Justin Bieber CD

John Howard's biography

A nasty weave

Lindsay Lohan to ever get out of rehab

Pre-trip breakdown

I thought that I had been planning everything pretty well and staying relatively calm with my upcoming trip, boy did it catch up with me today!!

So I was trying to juggle my finances and make sure I could cover everything while I was away etc and I worked out that I would eventually run into some trouble which I couldn't really see a way around, so I did what every gay man would do - got hysterical, panicked and then performed an emotional spiel about my life breakdown to my Mum who said "We will speak about this in the next few days" I took that to mean "OMG how can you be my son, I guess I will have to save the day again!".

God bless mother's for all they do for us.

I am now trying to travel to New York and Europe on a budget, which is a dirt word for me but I have been assured that people travel on budgets all the time and it can happen. In fact I think that will be the theme of my time away, New York and Europe on a shoe string.

Knowing that to make my travel time work and stay within budget I would have to remain positive and do whatever I needed to do to stay on top of my finances and make the best out of this situation. Who knows perhaps it could even teach me something!

Lisa Wilkinson I think I love you!!

So I am guessing that we all watched the Chrsitmas Carols at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne tonight courtousy of Channel 9. Thankfully they had the foresight to make Lisa Wilkinson the host, however not so for making Karl Stefanovic her co-host. As usual Lisa totally stole the show and was a complete hot mess in her little orange strappless number. She was also making most of the front row moist in her second blue gown, especially when her earing fell down her cleveage, oh sister haven't we all been there!!

Also amazing tonight was Marina Prior just doing her Christmas thing being a hot mess as she usually is. What I love about her and Lisa is that they are both naturally beautiful and don't seem to have had any work done and if they have then they made sure they got a good doctor cos it don't show honey! Marina also has one of the most consistently amazing voices I have ever heard. And they are both so nice and genuine.

Now don't get me wrong, just like everyone else, when I meet a beautiful person who seems to have everything and then they turn out to be the nicest person in the world  and want to be your best friend, my first reaction is normally to push the bish from the 22nd floor and then call her fat, but not so with Marina orr Lisa, perhaps this is because one day I am sure I will become one or either of them which is important.

Anthony Callea was also set my Chrsitmas heart a flutter tonight on stage, but mostly because he was doing his best to dress like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. Meanwhile did you see the tie that bish was rocking? There was more bling on it then most drag queen's eye make up! No wonder Tim Campbell is tapping that shiz. Oh Tim Campbell you hot hot mess.

The Christmas suffering has begun

Now not that I want to be a Christmas negsicle or anything but sometimes even something as magical and amazing as Christmas can have a downside, and this downside is what I experienced this evening dear reader and it took the shape of a family dinner.

So for those not in the know I am child of a broken home (shocking!) which as my primary school priest will tell you is enough on its own to send me straight to hell, fortunately I am also a rampant homosexual so me in heaven was never going to happen, which I actually feel relieved about, like who wants to spend all eternity with a bunch of catholics, talk about a nightmare!! I secretly imagine that is what hell actually is but the Pope is too scared for the truth to come out, hopefully Julian Assange will be all over that shiz in 2011 - anyway how is any of this getting us to tonight's family dinner?

So my Dad (who I always have Christmas Eve dinner with) decided to be all noble and invite my mother along for the ride of insanity that is our Christmas Eve as I am going on my trip in a few days. Mum was all like whatever it is up to you kids to decided and I was like hell no! I already have enough crazy stories to become a psychologists wet dream so let's not add to it, so of course she decided to come.

The whole thing was a bit awkward and dragged on but wasn't too bad. I took my solace in every now and then seeing my Mum look at my Dad and in her eyes I know she was reminding herself about the reasons she divorced him.

Then Mum and I got home and totally got our Christmas on, watched the carols, finally put up the Christmas tree and wrapped the last few presents, including a lawn mower for my brother in law. Straight men are so weird who wants a freaking lawn mower for Christmas? The most amazing thing is though that I know he will love it and my sister will have a breakdown that she didn't get the biggest present. She is 27.

Holy God in Heaven LET ME SLEEP!!!!

It is 1:30am on Christmas Eve and for the second night in a row I can not sleep. There isn't really any rhyme or reason for my new found insomnia other than a late night phone call I made to Europe the night before last for a job thing (which I hope I get).

I really shouldn't be this tired because it is not like I do anything during the day now that I have left my job for almost a week. I now spend my days packing up my little flat (which is proving harder than it sounds) and having lunches and dinners with friends who all want to individually farewell me and if there is one thing I have never done in my life it is turn a lunch date down.

Today's lunch date was with Jennifer who identified as a ghetto hoe during our lunch date as I am sure good reader you can dechipher from the below photo.

I think that the realisation of moving overseas in a few days with not very firm plans is also starting to play on my mind and is probably contributing to my sleepless nights. But, alas the loose plans that I do have are already in place and it is too late to backout now, which is slightly terrifying as it means that it is definetly happening.

These are the plans to date:

• 28 December - fly to New York and see Sarah, Emily and Alex
• 4 January - fly into Brussels
• 5 January - confirm working holiday visa at Brussels town hall and set myself up
• 6 January - Panic and constantly question what I am doing with my life OR fall in love with a beautiful French speaking Bruxillian who is pained and arty, either or really.