Thursday, April 02, 2009

Reading Material

It’s a looooong flight to Australia. We have a non-stop flight from Los Angeles that will take just under 15 hours. Much of that will be at what seems like nighttime to us, but I don’t sleep all that well on planes so I need something to do. We will also be taking two long train trips in Australia, and of course, there’s always the trip back.

This means that I need a lot of reading material. Luckily, I have a number of books stacked up at home. I do feel, though, that I should stock up on some destination-specific reading.

I have a guidebook, a Frommer’s guide to the whole country that I’ve been flipping through. I’ve also already read Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country.

If I’m feeling like something light, I might re-read The Thorn Birds. I read that once when I was quite young—probably too young, actually—and I remember having crushes on several characters and the whole southern continent as well. It seemed like a place with enough drama to satisfy a young teenager, which is a lot of drama indeed.

I also want to read Jan Morris’ Sydney. Her last book took me several months to get through, so that may be enough, but if anyone else has some good Australia books to recommend, I would love to hear about it.

1 comment:

John Lander said...

Hi Nicole, Congratulations on your SF Chronicle coup. I hope that will pave the way for many more. Also kudos on your honorable mention award. The Australia trip sounds exciting on your blog. (Yes, why is there no 'u' in Quantas?) I added that a halfway affordable place is the YWCA, smallish rooms but cheap for Sydney. I stayed there a couple years ago when I was vibed out of a condo my Aussie friend in Tokyo let me stay in but he had another friend in town staying there who considered it was HIS place and made me feel extremely unwanted so I left for the Y. Sorry I don't know the URL but it should be easy to find. It's near the Botanical Garden so it's semi green around there and lots of cheap eats and gay area too.

I'm ruminating about a visit to SF this June. I've graduated into using Adobe Lightroom (nowadays Photoshop is really more for graphic designers) but I still feel very klutzy and amateur in using it so may need a crash course from those gurus down in the Mission who teach that stuff. I won't be staying on Potrero Hill - I probably told you that the owner woman RAGED at me about murdering her house plants as their automatic watering system failed and somehow I was accountable for that. Luckily, SFSU has rooms and condo units for rent fairly cheap. Can't stand the neighborhood but at 400 per week for 1 bedroom I can manage Stonestown for a short while at those rates. I'm considering mid-June if I can afford it, sadly not enough mileage for a freebie.

I need to ask a favor. I've been literally OBSESSED by SEO or "Search Engine Optimization" since I had to move all my photos from Digittal Railroad who went bankrupt and took 500 bucks from me while they were at it (I had to renew my yearly storage fee 2 weeks before they went under with no reimbursement). and moved to PhotoShelter which is very very good and they are trying to get us all to be much more googleable so photo buyers can find our images. One of the best ways is cross-traffic so they recommend having friends with Blogs add our photo sites to their favorite links. Here is mine:

http://www.photoshelter.com/c/asian_images

Of course if you don't like it, you don't have to feel obligated to add it to your favorites if it is not a favorite but it would help me out and I would appreciate it if you could see you way to adding to it.

Thanks for the X-mas card too. I appreciated it as I had been feeling like you'd dropped me into the abyss for eternity.

Congratulations again, Hope to see you in June,

Hugs, John john@asiapacificimages.net