General Category
Waimea Bay
Hawaii has been one long beach session. All around the island are beautiful tropical beaches. One of the most famous on the North Shore is Waimea Bay. It is well known for it’s huge waves and hosts the Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational.
It is a beautiful beach and floating out on the swell really is eye opening. The season is just starting for the big waves so what I experienced there that day are considered “small”. The swell was still bigger than anything I had ever seen before.
Leading into the bay is a small creek which runs through the Waimea Falls National Park. The park is filled with historical information on how the islanders used to cultivate food and live in the area and it has a wide range of plant life and over grown jungle. About a mile and a half into the valley you come to the Waimea Falls. While it’s not recommended that one swims in the falls, I did anyway and it was great.
A bit south of Waimea Bay is a beach which is a favourite place for turtles to hang out. I have never been that close to such an awesome creature. There was something very relaxing and peaceful about sitting on the beach surrounded by such wise creatures.
The North Shore really is an amazing place. If you ever get a chance to go there hit up Masumoto Shave Ice. Great Stuff.
Housekeeping
This morning in Montreal I spent a little time doing some housekeeping. Just checking flights, planning the next couple of days, sorting accommodation etceteras. In doing so I began to take stock of my trip so far and thought I would just give you an update on some stats:
Days travelling: 199 days
Current weight: 68 kg (starting weight 78kg)
Amount spent on toilets: ~$150AUD
Countries visited: 12
Cities (1 night min): 22
Photos taken: 9,000
Blog posts: 105
Flights: 7
Flights missed: 0
Major trains: 3
Trains missed: 1
Major busses: too many to count
Busses missed: 0
Backpack weight: ~28 kg
Daypack weight: ~10 kg
Souvenirs bought: 0
Clothes bought: 2 pair of shorts, 4 tshirts, 1 hat
Postcards sent: 0
Hostels stayed in: 23
Books read: 8
Number of times caught in rain: don’t even start
I’ve still got around 2 months to go, so these stats are sure to increase, especially the photos one. I have also updated my itinerary with my latest flights and movements if you need to check up on / stalk me.
Battaglia dei Fiori
In Ventimiglia, once every two years a pretty amazing festival is held: La Battaglia dei Fiori or in english, the Battle of Flowers. This festival is an celebration of the Spring where the communities that make up Ventimiglia compete to create the best most extravgant float to be judged during a parade. These floats are made almost entirely out of flowers. One person told me there can be as many as 80,000 flowers on a float, but from the looks of them I would guess more.
The floats parade around the town on two days. The first is a night parade, with dancing, music and food. Everything culminates in a fireworks spectacular while the floats are repaired and touched up ready for the following day. The daytime parade is where the meat of the competition happens. Float girls climb aboard their communities entries, bands fire up, dancers and entertainers pour out onto the street. I have never felt such a happy, excited crowd. The parade loops around the town two or three times, at which point everyone in the parade starts showering the crowd in flowers. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. With this the parade degenerates into a massive flurry of thrown flowers with the audience getting in on the game and having a good time.
The day was a caccophony of music, fragrance and colour and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I particularly liked the Pink Floyd float. A fairly fitting way to end my last day in this wonderful town.
Enjoy the (rather large) gallery, and there’s even a bit of fan service in there, just for Kym. The day photos were taken from a rather precarious position on a fence, from which my relative who was one of the float girls almost knocked me off with a well pitched flower. The flower battle starts on page three and the day time parade on two.
Get out ya seat and…
I have this developed this strange compulsion while on this trip to get jumping photos at major highlights of my adventure. I hate normal, posed, stare down the camera photos; mainly due to the fact I am pretty rough looking, and the less I appear in photos the better. Jumping photos however provide a great substitute. First of all they put me in the photo, something which helps to show “I was there” and second of all; they are relatively interesting. They also give bystanders something to laugh at, particularly when the photographer is no good at capturing the jump. A good jumping photo can take up to 5 shots to get, but you’ve got someone handy with a camera and it can be done in one. Most failed jump shots end up with the jumper just off the ground, stretched out like a board, toes pointed south and arms all akimbo. The requirement of having a decent photographer on your side is a bit of a restriction of the jump photo. It is almost impossible to get a jumping shot on your own.
For the busabouters, my jumping shots have provided a great amount of entertainment, and those skeptical at first of the brilliance of the jump shot are soon turned. Most of my mates on the bus have at least one jumping photo of their own in their collection.
Some tips for taking jumping photos:
- Fast Shutter Speed: Set your camera to a fast shutter speed, or if you have a “sports” mode set it to that.
- Bright Days: Jumping photos look best of bright days. A good shadow can make a jump look ten times higher than it actually is.
- Focus: Get your photographer to focus lock on you before the jump. Most cameras will take a photo almost instantly after focus is achieved. On most cameras this involves positioning the subject in the center of the frame, pressing the shutter down half way, listening for a beep and a visual indicator in the display and then, while holding the shutter button down half way, recomposing the shot.
- Countdowns: Confirm on a count down before starting. 3,2,1,JUMP or 1,2,JUMP etc. The is nothing worse than confirming a countdown from a few hundred meters away.
- Choose your backdrop: Sometimes you want people to see the background, rather than the jump. Most “sightseeing” stops are great jumping locales.
- Get Creative: Don’t just jump straight up and down, I’ve found my preferred jumping position to be arms out running man style and knees up. An overly dramatic contorsion will give the jump energy and usually looks pretty rocking.
- The More People The Better: Get a group involved. Jumping photos are about sharing the fun.
I’ve had a few people say they enjoy the jumping photos that are appearing on the site, so I have created a gallery which I will keep updated with the latest jumping shots. Keep checking back on it, I’ll have it linked in the footer, to see the latest jump shots. Enjoy!
… And we’re back
So, as usually happens with these things, ol’ murphy came into play when I took my laptop to get repaired in Rome. Walking into the Apple repair centre, I placed my crapbook on the bench, described the problem, turned it on and lo and behold, the fans start spinning and everything is hunky dory.
Shit for me, as I have had no laptop for around 10 days, but great for you readers. Over the course of the next few days you should get around 11 updates. Hold onto your hats guys, you’re in for a treat. Vienna, Munich, Venice and more are waiting to get their odyssey treatment. Over 700 photos are itching to emerge into the world like over cooked infants scratching at the walls of their flash card uterus.
Keep an eye out for jumping shots, something that has become a bit of a theme for me through Europe. Just to start us off, here’s me rocking St. Johann in Austria. The alpine air has proven a boon to my vertical leap.
Off the Grid
Anyone who is concerned/bored/mystified by the lack of updates lately can blame it on my fucking mac laptop. For some inexplicable reason it has decided to stop doing certain things on certain websites, such as facebook and this one.
This has basically meant I can’t upload anything to my site, nor can I update posts or even do internet banking without having to resort to the syphillitic, virus filled communal computers. Even then I can’t upload my photos as they are on my laptop, which as I said before, is being a little bitch.
I am in Praque at the moment with a headcold, having spent 3 nights in the very awesome Berlin, and I am heading to Vienna tomorrow. I am travelling by busabout, which has proven to be very enjoyable. Hopefully soon I will be able to post some entertaining articles about the locales I have hit so far. Also, I apologise for reusing one of my old header pictures, I have no ability to upload as MY FUCKING LAPTOP IS BEING A C**T. Bloody macs.
Hacked
Over the weekend you may have noticed that this site was suspended. My hosting service only issued me with a brief email saying “Due to scripts taking too long to execute the website was disabled”. This email was not entirely helpful, and after repeated support emails that went without reply and a few calls to the support line I found I could not get my site reactivated until today.
I decided to do a little research myself while my site was done. As I had no access whatsoever to any part of my hosting (logs, emails, cpanel, etc etc) I had to rely on what little data Google Analytics recorded before the site was suspended. I found something quite interesting.
Google recorded a bunch of hits to the following URL:
/_vti_logs/VideoEclusivo.avi.mpg.exe
Obviously something dodgy going on. Once I had access to my site again this morning, the first place I went to was this _vti_logs folder. In it I found a phishing site and a PHP email generator. I contacted support at webcity but they were unable to tell me who put these files on my site and seemed uninterested in helping me further.
Snooping around the files I found a few things. First that around emails 6089 were generated by the PHP script. Second the script was written by “MurdeR” who’s website is Diosdelared.com . This does not mean this phishing site was put there by this character though. Third the scam seems to be a phishing site masquerading as “Moviestar” a Venezuelan phone company.
Apart from the lack of support I got regarding this matter, the most frustrating thing is that this scam seems to have worked quite well. The phishing site received thousands of hits, with 2397 being to the exe which is obviously a virus/trojan. Out of the 6089 emails that “Murder”‘s script reported it generated almost half landed with people who fell for the scam. Quite scary when you think about it. It is quite obvious from the URL (www.agamersodyssey.com/_vti_logs/index.php) that the user had come to something unaffiliated with Moviestar, but nearly 50% of the people who received this poorly crafted email clicked on the link AND entered details.
My hope for humanities future continues to decline.
I have kept a copy of the phishing site incase anyone else would like to look into this issue. Please contact me if you need more info, or if you can provide any info that would help track down the perpetrators.
Raining Again
Rain seems to be a bit of a theme of my adventures so far. Rain on Australia Day, rain around Sydney and, now that I am in Brisbane, constant rain for the past few days. Not that I’m complaining at all. I love the rain. Sitting on the veranda listening to the drumming rain on the tin is one of the most relaxing experiences in the world. Anyone who thinks that rain is depressing is a little tapped in my opinion.
My friend Tegan has been kind enough to offer me a place to stay in Brisbane. It is a shed out the back of a share house and it is perhaps the most wonderful place I could ever have imagined. The rain falls hard on the roof. I am awakened by the scratching of Bush Turkeys and the purring of Lilou the cat, and the vibe is just great. I have met pretty much the whole house, and we went out drinking last night. Brisbane has a very Perth feel. The city is very young, just growing up. I am looking forward to exploring more in the coming few days.
Monopoly
Last night was my last night at the Railway YHA with my new friends and I got to do something I have been hanging out to do for ages: Play Monopoly! I love Monopoly. I brings out the best and worst in people. It shows you how people think. How they reason. Something that can be difficult to discover when there is a language barrier. I met some more Canadians during the game which by the way, was very entertaining. For dinner we made Burritos and then had a few send off drinks down Sidebar. I woke up on the couch in front of an episode of Carnivale at 4am. It was a great end to an awesome 3 weeks at the Railway.
I’ll miss my new friends, but I am looking forward to getting know the new group of people I am staying with at Whynot Street in the West End of Brisbane. Tegan set us up the Shed, and everyone has been very welcoming. I have about two weeks here then head back to Sydney to head to Japan.