One light at a time please, it's Adelaide...

A quick observation.
On my travels around the world I have seen all sorts of traffic lights. The UK ones where the red and orange together tell drivers that the light is about to go green. Ones in Stockholm (and some other cities) where the pedestrian lights have a counter telling you how many more seconds you have to cross the road before the red. And so on.
But in Adelaide...
Red for stop, green for go, with an orange thrown in as a 'slow down'.
Nothing more.
Something to be said about the simplicity of this town.

Confessions of a compulsive emailer

Ok, I think I have a problem. And I'm about to take the first of the AA steps on my road to redemption.
I admit it, I'm addicted to email.
It all started innocently enough. I work in IT, and its kind of par for the course to have an email address. You get one from your place of study or work, and you start to communicate with people this way. It's all a bit of a laugh and, back then, a novelty. Not everyone had an address, it was a symbol of the elite. As technology progressed, and more people came online, there were more email, and more time spent on the pc. Soon, you realised that people were losing touch with you because you changed your address as you changed your place of employment, so you get your own one. While I've never been so bad as to create endless email accounts that those pushers of this drug at hotmail and yahoo encourage you to do, I became a person who was checking their email everyday. Not too bad, hell I check the snail mail box everyday they do a delivery, its normal. But then, I was checking it twice a day, then three. When I landed a job that left me with little to do other than surf the net all day, email became a permanent fixture. Always running in the background, only a 'refresh' away from some communication. The highs when it was a note from a dear friend, the lows when it was just another person trying to sell viagra.
I'm trying to break away from this, I'm back to checking just twice a day. I've also moved to less 'hard' technologies. The TV, radio, even blogging (for this takes some effort and thought, which i'm not always able to muster) are comfortable substitutes.
I believe in myself, I CAN live without knowing if someone has emailed me in the last hour or so. It CAN wait until tomorrow. Breathe, breathe....
For now, though, I think I will calm myself by checking my phone for any text messages....

Home again home again, jiggity jig

Or something like that, I forget how the poem goes (there's pigs and tickling of small children (NOT in any weird way you sickos!), so what more could you want?)
Yes, despite my incomplete profile saying otherwise, I'm back in the land of Oz after the looonnngest bloody trip from the UK I have ever endured (and, being the seasoned traveller that I am, this is more than once). 40 bloody hours in the economy class special mini chairs that only elderly Japanese women can confortable fit into (despite this actually being the standard for ANY long-haul flight, it was an especially annoying to have it rub in your face while on Japan Airlines, as said elderly people make up about 50% of the flying customers, bastards, I bet they are 3 feet shorter than me on purpose...)
On the last leg I also had to endure loud and deaf elderly Australian man, who just said random things, and insisting I listen, despite my best efforts to block him out by hiding behind a book, and putting my headphones to listen to the airline radio station. My favourite random thing of his was :
"Can you believe, I had my drivers licence for 50 years, 50 years of driving and the bastards took it off of me just like that, just because I had a cataract..."
Yeah, those bastards at the Transport Department have been blatantly discriminating against the legally blind for years. Someone should complain....
But some observations about my lovely home town of Adelaide, and my general feelings.
Its weird being back for only a few weeks, especially seeing as I am not back in my own small space of serenity and familiarity, and instead I am living with my folks. Which is not all bad, but does have the affect of making me feel like i'm still travelling and begging my way into free accomodation. (except this time I didnt have to beg, I just played the leech-child card...)
I had also forgotten that although the Adelaide winter max temps are about the same as the English summer ones, the temp plummets overnight, to bring you more in line with sub-zero conditions, if only for a few hours around the 3am mark. Nipple protruding weather if ever there was any.
Adelaide also never changes, and neither do the signs that I have lived here for, i dont know, lets say ALL MY SHORT LIFE! Can I just randomly walk the streets of the CBD and run into people I know? Yes, yes I can. Can I tell if even one blade of grass is slightly bigger than the last time I was here? Why yes, I can! Its just like a pair of slippers that are old and comfy, yet at the same time, you've had for so long, you know every crease and wear and you half want to give them to the Salvos while you buy some new fabulous pair with the fluffy pom-pom at the front, but you know you never will....
But I digress...
Its good to be back, to see people who know me very well, and who I have years of history with, something I have missed in my travels, but still, I'm restless to move on and see the next part of the world.
Oh well, at least I know where to find some nice slippers when my feet get tired...