Plans plans and more plans

I've just organised my flight home plans (again). As things stand, they look like this:

3rd August, 8:10am: fly Sydney - Nadi (Fiji)
3rd August, 10pm: fly Nadi - LA (10 hours, arriving in LA at...1:20pm on the 3rd of August. Gotta love that international date line).
3rd August, 3:30pm: fly LA - London. Arrive at Heathrow at 9:45am, 4th August.

Nearer the time, I will look into funds and will be staying in LA for a week or so if I can afford it...we'll see. I hope I can because otherwise, I think you'll agree, that's a pretty punishing schedule. It may be only 26 hours on the clock, but in real time there's alot more, and most of them will be spent hanging round airports. Hello deep vein thrombosis... (don't worry, I intend to wear my flight socks. And march round the plane religiously every 2 hours. I'll probably do those in-seat exercises as well).

Anyway, back to the more immediate future: Laura and I are currently in the process of selecting a travelling companion. We want to hit the road with 3 people rather than 2, for reasons of sharing petrol costs, camping costs, etc, because our car is big enough, because travelling with 2 can be quite intense and we don't want to end up killing each other, and because there's safety in numbers and we don't want any crazed psychopaths killing us either. (Just watched Wolf Creek the other day...)



Obviously cool and collected backpackers would probably have made a lifelong friend in Perth by now, someone just dying to join them on their outback adventure, but quite frankly we...just haven't. So! Next step is locating an eligible travelling buddy. We set the ball rolling a last weekend by putting up adverts in various hostels/internet cafes around town (stop laughing...it's cool...lots of people do this. OK?!), the calls started coming in, we've been vetting the applicants and tonight we meet our first candidate.

Our advert specified (in addition to GSOH, HWP, DDF and LTR, obviously) that we're leaving next saturday, going up to Broome and taking a couple of weeks on the way, and that we can provide a tent. The requirements we didn't state include the fact that we want a boy who can protect us from scary strangers, fix the car if necessary, has a guitar for entertainment and won't take up too much space (a small but strong mechanic with minimal luggage aside from guitar, for example). Shouldn't take us too long to find the right person...right?! Oh yes, we also want somebody non-English (for variation), preferably French so we can brush up our language skills...

We're meeting one guy tonight (a long-haired, guitar playing German...right ball park?) and two tomorrow (a French guy with a great accent and an Israeli). If we don't get on with any of those, we'll start calling the girls back...(ah, discrimination, isn't it great?) Expect a full report on the interview process by the weekend (I envisage it as something like the flatmate interview sequence at the beginning of Shallow Grave).



This is my ex-landlord (the scary one...ah, he's lovely really) with Laura and a couple of other housemates, Ben and Jay. Jay, the blonde guy sitting down, is the sweetest guy in the world. Seriously.


And this is very true: http://www.gapingvoid.com/youcannothaveitall.jpg