I live my life by a number of unwritten rules. One of them is to never eat or drink while walking or having a phone call. My rationale for this is that it's nearly impossible to enjoy the sensations of taste when your mind and body is preoccupied. Flavour is diminished, satisfaction is lost. You only get a finite number of meals if you want to stay lean and I intend to enjoy each one.

The perpetuity of mobile phones has kind of ruined this for me. There was a time that I didn't instinctively reach for my phone each time I sat down with a meal. This habit is so ingrained that if I don't resist it I find my meal or beverage has disappeared unnoticed and the opportunity to walk somewhere or listen to a conversation on a phone has been lost.

In 2022 I discovered walking with a coffee can actually be good. In fact, unless you walk while using your phone screen, it can actually be a more immersive experience that drinking a coffee sitting down. I was enlightened one sunny, winter morning when I ordered a takeaway coffee from a café on a main road (because it keeps the liquid warmer than a cup) and then felt awkward about drinking the coffee in the takeaway cup at the café. So I walked to find a park. But, given it was winter I had sips of the coffee as I walked the backstreets and I felt the sun on my face and I tasted the creamy, bitter goodness and I realised that this experience was a lot better than sitting outside the café scrolling on my phone.

Now it's summer and actually a bit too hot to be walking around drinking coffees. But I figured the same principles would apply to walking around with a beer, and so I packed one for after-dinner trip to the beach. It was extremely pleasant. So I guess my theme for January 2023 will be determining what other unwritten things I need to deal with.

There's a new overpass that opened near my house and when I drove over it I noticed there were footpaths on both sides.

Tonight I went for a walk around sunset to see if there were any good photos to be taken from the new vantage points.

There are some nice views but most of the sights are obscured by a three metre fence with only tiny holes to see through.

I was going to walk back over the bridge on the other side but I decided that would be a walk I'd save for another sunset.

Some of the fondest memories of my youth, university days, are long summers and warm nights sitting on a deck drinking with friends. Inane conversations would carry on into the wee hours. Occasionally there'd be a midnight barbecue. I've missed those times a lot. It doesn't seem impossible that those type of nights could still happen as a middle aged adult. It's just that they so rarely do.

Tonight was a chance: a warm night, outdoor seating, beers and friends. Topics of conversation included kid problems and divorce sadness. I didn't get drunk because I needed to drive, as well as keep my immune system in shape due to pandemics. My lower back ached the whole time.

Sadly, I only miss my youth even more now.

Nothing compares to the pleasure of a cold beer on a hot night. Sadly, in middle age and climate change, there are more hot nights than my aging physiology can tolerate beers during.

One substitute for a beer on a hot night is a Zooper Dooper. It's cold and refreshing, but a Zooper Dooper is not as good as a beer, for sure.

However, dwelling further on it during a couple of Zooper Doopers tonight I started pondering if that was a fair comparison. A beer is 375ml, give or take, whereas a Zooper Dooper thaws out to 70ml. So really I should be asking: is ~5.35 Zooper Doopers on a hot night the equivalent pleasure of a beer?

Still no, I think. But as I sucked down a few more Zooper Doopers and the sky turned lavender on this 36°C day I considered that a craft IPA in a can straight from my fridge is still going to cost me at least three to four bucks, perhaps more. I can get a 24 pack of Zooper Doopers when they're half price for $3.50. Are 24 sugar free Zooper Doopers on a hot night an equivalent substitute to a cold beer on a hot night?

Still no, probably. Although you can have a Zooper Dooper in the shower about as easily as you can have a beer. That's not as satisfying either...

I'm currently planning a trip to Europe, and while Top 10 Things To Do In Blah videos on YouTube have been useful, I decided that if I was going to spend a week in Paris then I wanted a deeper understanding of one of the world's great cities than monetized content on Google could provide. So I read How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean, which could more aptly be titled "How 17th Century Paris became 19th Century Paris". Nonetheless, this was an excellent starting point for my Parisian enlightenment (far better than Süskind's Perfume...) and it avoided overlapping my existing understanding of French History (also known as Andrew Roberts' Napoleon the Great).

How Paris Became Paris was well structured, centring chapters around specific urban features or cultural changes rather than trying to regale the two centuries chronologically. I admit that I did find the chapters about la mode (fashion) and shopping a bit less engaging than the history of the Pont Neuf and the first attempts at the tree lined boulevards in place of the old city walls. Paris was, according to this book, the first European city to have sidewalks, a mail service, lighting at night, and public transport. They also apparently were the first city to lean into "looking at the river and taking a picture", instead of lining their bridges with houses and shops in order to finance the structure.

I detected that the success of Paris comes down to a few key, raw elements that define human progress. War - conveniently starting and ending at the right times. The end of the religious wars - which provided a monarch a chance to spend money on civic developments to build a legacy as opposed to battled, and then the civil war that accelerated progress in printing and communications. Money. Flirting.

The history of Paris comes down to war, communication, money, sex, and being able to stare at a river. I actually think that distils humans down into their fundamental parts quite succinctly.

What this book didn't cover was the years during/after the revolution (Haussmann, Napoleon, the Eiffel Tower) or the years before it (The Bastille, Notre Dame, the palaces). It amazes me that nearly two centuries before my own city was founded there was magazine advertisements for fashion items in Paris. And that centuries before a city with the size and history of New York City there was Paris doing it's thing.

I recommend this book - a physical copy so that old paintings and engravings can be examined. I do wish it could have kept going, but hopefully later this year I will be able to contribute to the history of the city of Paris, or at least write down some of my experiences in it.

I have been in a good mood these past two heatwave mornings in January 2023.

Yesterday I walked to the supermarket to buy pitas for pizzas, as well as cheap salad ingredients.

Right after the three gigantic cucumbers I'd selected were bagged at the checkout I felt a sneeze coming on. Even with the sneeze barrier and the checkout girl's facemask I did not feel comfortable sneezing in public in 2023. Every muscle in my face did its part to prevent my diaphragm from propelling. I don't know what expression this suppression left on my melon, but the guarded way she said "have a nice day" after I'd paid made me suspicious that my lips had curled in an mis-interpretable way.

This morning I walked to a different supermarket, a bit further away, to buy beans and corn. On my way I crossed path with a woman walking a pug. The tiny dog was adorned with plastic fairy wings. As I passed I was going to say, "good morning" and perhaps remark, "nice wings" - as I thought that no one would dress their dog like that without hoping for a compliment or comment. But perhaps there was something to my stride because as we drew nearer she stepped off the footpath and onto the road to avoid me. The pug didn't see this coming, nor consent, and the force on its lead sent the tiny creature skywards up and over the gutter - briefly airborne. And I understood then the intention for the wings.

I also may have fortunately prevented a potential cyber security incident this week, so overall a pretty good Friday.

Before summer ends I want a person or perhaps a small crowd to notice that I double tapped the unlock button on my central locking and now all my car's windows are rolling down as one before I even open the door, and for them to be like, "Dang, that stupid looking guy must really have his whole life together."

I've read three books relating to Paris so far this year (and a fourth is on the kitchen table), which seems odd considering I've never really been interested in the city. Even while churning through the history of The Revolution and the decades of Napoleon I was more interested in maps of Austerlitz and Waterloo than I was in even working out what a Tuileries was supposed to be.

I've found fascination in many other cities. London, Rome, New York City, Constantinople, even Adelaide. And I certainly respect The City Of Light for it's significance. I think the problem is I am possibly the least French person on the planet.

The Flânuer, which I finished reading yesterday, was an insightful counterpoint to How Paris Became Paris. The former is reflections of the city from the 1990's backward, a clip show of the history that the seventeenth century promised when the city tore down its walls and discovered urban planning.

The latter was a tale of monuments and infrastructure, entrepreneurs and nobles. The former a perspective on writers, painters, musicians, immigrants and non-Europeans, Jews, the LGBT, and royalists.

Consistent between these two Parises was the designation of the same revolutionary sidewalks being a place to put on a show in the streets, regardless of whether Haussmann had or had not set about bulldozing and straightening the avenues.

While I do not intend to be seen in Paris, these books have given me places to see. Additionally, I have gained an appreciation for the fortune a piece of a city must have to survive so much history in a single place. The ironically named Pont Neuf - now the oldest bridge over the Seine - has stood for over four centuries. The Tuileries Palace, whose construction started in 1564, has not made it so long. In 1871 a far left uprising took control of Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. Before they were subdued they torched the place. They were in power for all of 100 days in the period of nearly five centuries. That's all it took.

Considering all the civil wars, religious wars, war wars, occupations, revolutions, counter-revolutions, fires, civil strikes and general wear and tear it is incredible that so much of Paris is left to see. It's a testament to humanity. I now look forward to some fascinating strolling.

At least I better. Having the car broken into was enough to get me to buy the security cameras, these purple fruit finally ripening was the catalyst for me installing it.

There's been a lot of hype about "Chat GPT" recently and while I have been curious about this technological evolution and how it might replace us all I hadn't really found an opportunity to play with it. Then I realised I had on my todo list the task of slowly creating a bunch of blog entries for my FT project I've been building on the weekends and rather than researching a whole bunch of FT-related things and using my shit wrists to type them all up and fact check them I could just ask Chat GPT to generate the content for me and then I could clean it up a little bit.

Well, I honestly was not expecting it to be as useful as it was. I asked it a simple question first up and it came back with a nice paragraph of good quality internet content. Then I decided to cheekily ask it to rephrase the content as a "blog entry designed to rank highly in Google search". A few seconds later it was fluffing it up and turning it into a listicle and already I had saved myself half an hour. I copied it into notepad++ and started to add HTML tags, but then I realised I could say "Can you add HTML tags for formatting to he last response please?" ( I found myself using good manners a lot in case AI does become sentient and decides to kill people who were jerks to it). Another 30 seconds later it was pumping out the same content with all the HTML tags that I could need. I just copied it into the database verbatim and there I had my first blog. All I had to do was think of good ideas for more blog posts and feed them in.

Chat GPT is a machine! Well, literally obviously. I got myself another dozen blogs and saved myself a day. Maybe not quite. It does tend to repeat itself a lot. It generated one listicle where five of the six items were "a unique way to experience F". It doesn't feel unique when they're all unique, does it?

Then I decided to ask the question I'd been denying myself from asking. The test that could determine so much. After another good blog post I asked it to rewrite the last response in the style of the writing on bradism.com.

It took a long time to think about it. I assumed it was busy, parsing my journal, learning everything about me, formulating a model to understand me better than I even knew myself. The response started to generate. Words began to flow. My stomach sank. Was I about to have my identity replaced by a machine?

"Hey there Bradism community! Are you a fan of F? I know I am!" It started, and continued, and I chuckled a nervous guffaw of relief because I knew that it wasn't today that my identity was going to be replaced by a machine.

Phew.

_{This entry written by Chat GPT}

What am I going to remember about today in twenty years? And if I don't remember it, will it have happened? I walked in the shallows at the beach this morning (barefoot), other than that the shoes I wore were a pair of Adidas Lite Racer 2.0 shoes. The same shoes I wore to multiple offices last week. My work shoes are still there in various drawers and amusingly numbered lockers...

I went to Green Who Shall Not Be Named twice today. I don't want to remember that, but I don't want to have to buy and install another toilet seat either. So that definitely happened.

I didn't listen to much of the Hottest 100 today. Why do I feel like I'll have more of an interest in this countdown when it gets replayed in 2043 on Double J? That's even assuming my biological age at that point won't be 21 thanks to age-reducing drugs.

Event Ahead!

It was Nash's birthday today. She is aging in her own style. Most Sundays she gets a walk to the bakery and a mini sausage roll during the intermission. As today was special she got a full size treat.

And she pissed exactly nine times over the course of the walk up and down the hill.

Each time I check my email during the day I have 3-4 new ones.

Every time I open the front door I have a similar experience.

On Sunday I finished reading Metronome by Lorànt Deutsch which was about the history of Paris over the past twenty-one centuries. It wasn't a heavy book in any sense of the word, but I did feel lightheaded at the conclusion of the final chapter. I could feel the spirit of like a billion people living and dying, ebbing and flowing through history on the same island in the same river adjacent to the same marshes, cathedrals, and Roman ruins. Life took on a surreal vibe where fortresses were now cobblestones and chapels were found five layers of a parking garage below ground.

The inebriation of history that washed over me was definitely not because I've been at Flinders University lately, ebbing and flowing all over the same campus I lived and died on two decades ago. The weird feelings that being back there triggers in me are solely narcissistic.

I do think that appreciating history gives you a viewpoint on your own existence that differs from the average person. I took my shirt off in the Flinders' car park yesterday afternoon so I could don a more lightweight outfit for the drive through peak hour traffic to home. I don't think my self consciousness would have let me do that in 2003, but as a student of history I now think to myself, "What would a Middle Ages Parisian being slaughtered by a Viking care about seeing my nipples in public in 2023 right now?" And if they conceivably wouldn't give a fuck then I don't either. I presume they'll forgive any implications I'm a heathen because they are too busy dealing with plague or famine or civil unrest.

I mean ironically I was a student of history in 2003 at that actual university, but that was in the humanities building and not the car park. Maybe it's not my perspective on life that has changed since then, it's my perspective of my nipples.

I've officially contributed back to the Cake PHP codebase as of this weekend. This is possibly a sign that it is time to move away from PHP after nearly 20 years... Why do I keep using PHP? It can't be laziness because I spend so many hours using it. I have taught myself React over the past few months and even invested in ways to make that work nicely on a PHP server with a PHP backend. Today I updated my database with imported data and when the react app automatically reloaded and it all looked so nice and smooth and the PHP API was responsive and powerful. I felt like I hadn't wasted the weekend after that. Even though I suspect that if my new site is even remotely successful I might have to rewrite all that PHP to something more performant. At least I have decoupled the front end.

This week I will be trying to set up some virtual network resources in Azure, so things should balance out.

I put about five passionfruit in my smoothie this morning. I wore a finger glove on my morning walk.

I laughed uncontrollably recently because I caught myself - while driving beneath blue skies - thinking that nothing bad had happened for the year yet. This was on the fifth of January. The fact that I considered this a milestone is a testament to what the last few years have been like for me. I'm trying to delay the period of my life that I'm addicted to painkillers, but occasionally I will relent and let myself swallow some codeine and twenty minutes later a layer of tension will be sheared off of me and I realise that I am constantly living like that. It's disconcerting.

So when I revisit Summer 22-23 and its soundtrack will I want it to remind me of the warm and also cloudy days that are starting to be consumed by chilly dawns that penetrate deeper into the mornings each week? I didn't hate my summer. I enjoyed the occasional submersion in the ocean, rounds of Chameleon, eating salads, walking up steep hills, reading books about Paris and eating a lot of passionfruit. The injuries and illnesses of myself, Vanessa and Nash only served to make me crave more of the good things that life offers. The adventure, the flavours, the photographs for later.

Music has always been important to me, but recently I've been using music as a link between the past and the present, a medium for nostalgia. This summer music has not been a channel as much as it has been a release. Like a milligram of codeine, a song can displace the tension and be a reminder of the perks of living. Just little moments during a day when my other senses are demoted by the vocal range of Caroline Polachek over smooth synths. Or the pulsing rhythm of Urban Funk. Dre-like piano paired with dubstep wobbles. French disco-house mixed on 2022 computers promising bonus summers of glossy sophistication. Simple, catchy melodies. Atmospheric trance. The lick of guitars and the memories of fully-intact summers of my youth. Keyboard pop and emotive vocals. The songs on this summer's playlist are not related to memories, but distractions from them. Music is one thing that hasn't been taken from me yet.

The biggest challenge associated with multiple clients isn't remembering all the business capabilities and enterprise architectures of each organisation. It's not different project domains or Oracle Integration vs Boomi. It's not even having to have four different O365 accounts and always having to sync up my calendars. The biggest challenge is the distinction in tap pressure in different bathroom sinks. Door handles that you turn versus door handles you push. Detergent that shoots out watery or in thick, soapy gel. Remembering the names of multiple stakeholders that are some variation of "Jason".

All of these offices have one thing in common at least. Every time I sit in their shitty chairs for a day my back ends up fucked.

I'm going to make more of an effort to focus on the good things in life and less on the shit things. There still are a lot of shit things, but dwelling on them isn't going to make them less shit.
For instance, Alex got engaged on the weekend. That's exciting.
I got to wear a black hoody and feel warm but not hot this morning, and it was then temperate enough in the evening to cook some discounted lamb chops on the barbecue for dinner. There are birds and fish and cherry tomatoes in my backyard, and just enough fallen, yellow leaves to make things look cosy without requiring twenty minutes of scooping every day.
I may have lost a lot of my hobbies but I still have programming to keep me entertained and distract me from the urge to play video games and watch television. I'm going to Europe soon and will hopefully have many nice days to experience and photos to take.
There was a beautiful sunset tonight, the colours of fireworks and fairy floss, and as the sun set I finished the last Zooper Dooper of the summer. Appropriately the same flavour.

Daily dildo rehab sessions let's go.

My physio is very expensive. I force myself to go and pay because what good is a life in pain with money in the bank? You have to treat health like an investment. That said, it's a bear market, and for the price of one 30 minute session you can buy two business class rail tickets between Venice and Milan. If I sold the house today I could literally just ride the train around Europe for like 27.39726 years.

There was a study this week that showed a correlation between consumption of magnesium and brain size. I was pleased to read this because, as the Bradism archives will attest, I am a huge almond stan. Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact entry from my early life where I discovered the benefits of almonds (by trying to eat half a kilogram of them on a train ride home) because a lot of my older entries are removed due to my childhood ignorance and dumb opinions.

Of course, having consumed more reasonable volumes of almonds in the decades following, I instantly correlated that my dumb childhood Bradisms might actually have been because of my low almond consumption! It would explain a lot, like my terrible grammar back then. And driving a VK Commodore until 2007.

The passing of time can cloud a lot. I think I've been remembering myself as a smart kid, but now with context maybe I've only become smart since I started eating almonds?

I assume that a larger brain size results in higher intelligence. I only read the headline of the study.

One of the benefits of marriage is having a day off and parking in Adelaide places that are always busy on the weekends.

In a conversation with Vanessa one sunset in late summer we were discussing how there had been no women in power in western history until recently. The exception to this that came to mind was Cleopatra. I didn't know much about her, beyond whatever tropes I'd seen in cartoons as a kid and a university student, but I was suddenly intrigued. Who was Cleopatra? And how come she got to have a fanny and be in charge of Egypt? To answer this specific question I employed Joyce Tyldesley's book Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt, which was excellent. I placed a hold at the library and the library service shipped it to Adelaide for me to pick up at my convenience which was also super handy. That has nothing to do with Cleopatra or Napoleon but I just wanted to shout that out.

Writing a biography on a historical figure from classical antiquity is a bit of a trip. It's like being a private detective trying to solve a murder but all the suspects and witnesses are also dead and the police and the detectives are also dead. The crime scene has been defaced several times and then a hundred years ago was dismantled to be used as raw materials for a sugarcane factory. Is that torn piece of parchment used to wrap a mummy in a tomb 50 years after Cleopatra died that has her name on it evidence she was ruling and signing decrees? Maybe it is, maybe it was one of the other six Cleopatras. Maybe it was one of six million mummified Ibises.

Cleopatra's story was very interesting. Almost definitely because the majority of its primary sources were Roman writers who had vested interests in using her for propaganda and entertainment. I can only imagine what contemporary history would be rewritten as if all that the historians of the year 4023 have is access to a smattering of archived Tik Toks. Most of the artwork and records of Egypt were destroyed or lost between 33 BC and the invention of the paperback.

There was one piece of evidence of Cleopatra's reign that nearly survived to modern times. A temple depicted Cleopatra and her family on a stone wall. The stone wall was knocked down in the 19th century, but that was after Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt during which a member of his Armée took down a drawing that survived to this day. There's something phenomenal about the idea of Napoleon and Cleopatra having this kind of tenuous connection over so much time.

Anyway, the answer to the question to how Cleopatra VII got to rule Egypt for quite a long time was due to 1) Her father (the king) dying young 2) Her brothers being too young to rule and then (cough) dying before they could be old enough 3) Cleopatra having a son that was too young to rule 4) Probably being a descendant of Alexander the Great 5) Being on very good terms with two of the most powerful Romans of the time.

This was not exactly an inspirational tale, but it was more inspiring than the history of Ptolemy VIII.

Easter, pretty chill. Not always by design.

Thursday night - programming.
Friday morning, Torrens walk in the rain. Making and eating hot cross buns.
Saturday, brief lunch in Freeling. Smoothie for dinner.
Sunday, a lap of West Lakes. Risking Adelaide's worst pizza bar with Mum.
Monday, bakery walk, BBQ with friends and many portraits with the new camera.

Shoshana Zuboff must be an incredibly intelligent person. I know that starting a review of a book with a sentence like that could sound sarcastic when read on the internet, but I mean it. Throughout this book and its broad range of topics it is evident that the author has a comprehensive understanding of - among many things - economics, business, psychology, history, philosophy, and of course technology. I'm potentially as qualified as her to talk about just one of those subjects.

Does that mean I shouldn't review this book? Probably. But because I aim to reflect on the non-fiction that I read in order to absorb it better I shall review it, but with the caveat that the author is a lot smarter than me, and that my opinions are not authoritative.

Why does that matter? Well, a good chunk of the opening section of this book is dedicated to trying to explain that just because you think you're smart enough that tech companies and their disrespect for your privacy won't influence your spending habits/life, you can't know that for sure. No one can, because the pervasiveness of big tech companies is doing something to human civilization that no one has ever seen through to the end before. Not even Napoleon.

That concept was my attitude. I've never really bought anything on impulse because of an aptly timed buy button appearing. I block ads and trackers. I do all my web searches in private browsing mode. Everything on my Facebook is locked down.

If you're like me in those regards, you're not going to learn anything shocking while reading this book. Instead what you'll get is a thorough summary of how Google and then Facebook and the rest adapted their business and operating models to use a huge (gigantic) amount of computing resources to be able to track and classify every person on the planet, primarily for the sake of competitive advantage and revenue from ad sales. And if you think you're exempt from tracking and predictions based on your personality you better hope you've never appeared in the background of a photograph, had a Street View car drive past your Wi-Fi network, or had your Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on in your phone while walking around in a public place.

So if Google, Facebook, Amazon and the rest of the internet is now an orgy of cyber surveillance and pushy marketing that affects most people but definitely not me, what's the big deal? Just because something is unregulated does that mean it's bad?

Probably. The key takeaways for me were:
Governments and society cannot keep up with technological evolutions, or hope to regulate them. This is exacerbated by the fact that both governments and corporations are essentially just people, and quite often they are people with motives of making money. And sometimes (often) there is overlap between people in big tech and people regulating big tech.

This is bad for humanity in general because of the opportunity costs for building a better world.

The book describes a learning and teaching divide, where public advancement of machine learning, AI and data mining is held back because established companies hire the best people and patent their ideas for the sake of competitive advantage, i.e. to charge more for ads for things. If some of those resources were turned towards other endeavors like combating climate change, poverty, exploring space, etc. humanity might be able to advance further in my lifetime.

Instead this type of capitalism is fuelling overconsumption. If society could buy a little less impulsively, in lower quantities, there are a lot of material benefits. Less consumerism equals less pollution and carbon, reduced spending meaning reduced earning requirements. Ramping down consumerism might be what gives us that four day work week and a healthier planet to enjoy it on.

Finally, the impact of this kind of technological immersion combined with poker machine logic JavaScript functions has never been measured in the youth. The book refers to many peer reviewed studies that describe the negative implications for the psychology of young people. And it doesn't sound like a good idea that we sacrifice the minds of Gen Z and future generations to the "machine zone" for the sake of increased profits.

These threats appear to be material, but I didn't like how Zuboff uses strawman arguments to paint the evils of future technology against dumb policies that can't stop it. After bestowing so much credit to artificial intelligence, I don't see evidence that "humanity" can't be programmed into the governing processes and software policies.

The stanzas of sonnets that open each chapter give some contrasting artistic imagery to scientific subjects of economics and computer science, but in Part 3 in particular I feel the argument gets too poetic. After all, do Zuckerburg or the Google board really want to be the heads of a totalitarian government? Or just make a lot of money? Or are their motives irrelevant? There's no doubt these companies possess incredible, possibly unregulatable power over markets and people. As the book points out, the power to make power means even if not evil now, they may already be on an unstoppable path.
Does this mean we will never be able to "live free in a human future"? I don't know. I'm not that intelligent.

It definitely feels like ANZAC day has been transitioning over the years from the first day of winter into a late-Autumn last gasp glimpse of summer. Today's weather was so exceptional that it felt appropriate to take Vanessa and my ANZAC tradition on the road and I ate this year's giant cookie at the midpoint of the Seacliff to Hallet Cove coastal walk.

Somehow, in spite of my aging and dilapidated body, I made it through the whole thing. I finished the walk too.

After enjoying Adelaide's unseasonably warm April, we finished the month by flying into Canberra on the uplift of a high pressure cell that was trapping cold, wet air over Australia's capital. This was tolerable for the sake of spending time with family and not working for a Monday.

Saturday began with a trip to the Fyshwick Markets, some rounds of Chameleon, a walk around the ovals with the kids, then a nap. After a Parma (not Parmi, infidels) and a pint (I'll forgive that one) Steve, Jess and I enjoyed a selection of local beers bought from Plonk that morning.

I also got my revenge and beat Steve at Acquire.

Sunday was even more rainy, though we did get a decent walk in along the flank of Mount Pleasant and then back along the lake.

In the afternoon there was an attempt to play Fortnite using a PS5 controller (0 points for both) and then some nachos for dinner and two rounds of Taboo. (The squeaker really makes that game).

Monday was even colder, but at least less rainy. Vanessa and I completed an eleven kilometre loop of our nation's adolescent Arboretum, then ate lunch overlooking it. A quick loop up Black Mountain (more of a hill) managed to get our daily steps for the trip back in line with our daily average. After that and a shower there was enough time for a few rounds of sardines with the kids before our flight back, via the Virgin Lounge for a complementary visit where I drank three beers and ate four pies.

A pretty packed weekend, I regret we couldn't squeeze in the National Rock Garden.

The massive Colosseum was built in Rome in the first century AD and for hundreds of years was packed out for Senators and Civilians alike to witness glorious, zero-sum combat between man and man, man and beast, man and chariot, man and boat.

Two thousand years later it is still standing, and unfortunately there are now up to eight billion humans all clamouring to get a ticket to a modern wonder of the world, mostly so they can be on-sold for a massive profit to those who only have one day of their life in Rome to visit it.

The Colosseum website tries to manage this by selling tickets in small batches released 30 days to the minute before the tickets can be used. So tickets for 9am Saturday the 3rd of June go on sale at 9am Thursday the 4th of June. Tickets for 9:15am go on sale at 9:15am.

This does not really curb the demand, it just drags out the pain of trying to buy tickets only for them to disappear before you complete the Captcha every time in five minute intervals. Today was my day to face the gauntlet. I was ready when the portcullis lifted and the tickets started to fly. Available bookings flashed in front of me, and disappeared just as fast. Refreshing was like running blind in circles, hoping to see another available timeslot, swinging as soon as it appeared, being pushed back to calendar page again.

Finally, after three hours (and a little bit of tweaking using developer tools) I managed to skewer two tickets on the tip of my spear. I got through the checkout and now I have my prenotazione. And today I joined the gladiators of ancient Rome who have emerged weary, yet with glory, after a battle beneath the gaze of the Colosseum's stands.

Future Brad, if you are reading this and you haven't had your future beer yet, go and get one now and drink it. I don't care if it's eight in the morning. Why are you reading random entries at 8am anyway? Are you retired? Sounds great! Definitely drink that beer!

I can't drink beer this weekend. I spent time around children last weekend, and for that I got sick. Despite being sick I spent a few hours on Saturday trying to disassemble the ergonomic chair I spent $800 on because it was designed for people 180-210cm. (Spoiler Alert: It was designed for people who are 180-190cm.)

This chair was advertised as a risk free online purchase because you could return within 21 days if it didn't fit. The return policy also stipulated that the chair must be fully repackaged in the box it came in for this to work. Everything was going smoothly until it came to extracting the gas-lift from the seat-base and the wheelbase. YouTube was helpful in giving me tutorials that made it look easy, followed by comments that someone needed a tractor to extract theirs. Well, highly motivated, it took me an hour, some WD40, a pot mitt and a lot of mallet work to get it free from the base. That was the first beer. Another hour getting it all back into the box so it closed again was the second beer, with a couple of peanuts or something for also compressing the gas-lift to fit in the box using a dumbbell and my shit wrists.

Vanessa got the gas-lift out of the wheel base for me so Vanessa if you're reading this, go have a Rose Cider.

If that wasn't enough, today we mowed the lawn and mulched all the leaves around the house. So that's another beer I owe me.

After the gardening I tried to finally end the weekend by having a hot shower and shaving my beard of sickness away, but on my way out of the shower the rolling door fell off and I had to fix that after drying myself as well.

So, future Brad go get a second beer.

In less than three weeks I will be in Italy. Even the weather this past week is acting like its summer again in a fortnight. That's perfect as I had a lot of hummus to get through before I go away.

The history of Japan after World war two, as described here in John W Dower's Embracing Defeat, reads as a microcosm of human behaviour. War. Money. Fucking while starving. Propaganda photos. Steering committees and subcommittees. Using peoples' culture against them (plans to preserve and repurpose emperor). Cultural appropriating (both ways). Inventing "Joe Nip" and enjoying traditional duck hunting in the same breath. Ego. Hypocrisy. Drafting new constitutions in the restroom. Communism and black markets. Short memories. Ideals of peace sacrificed less than a decade later for more war. No clear line on when the past ended and the future began. No clear narrative or direction, just millions of humans doing what they think is best.

Emperor Hirohito, the same monarch who had led Japan into the war, penned a poem to commemorate the last day of post-defeat Occupation in 1952.

The winds soften, winter recedes
Long awaited
Spring has come
With its double-blossomed cherries

I found this irony particularly palpable. The allegory of a changing season underlying an even more appropriate metaphor for the cyclical nature of life itself, stretching both ways into perpetuity. And the tendency for humans to talk about the weather, also into perpetuity.

Some photos from recently, cropped at 5x4.

It was pretty chilly this morning, I had a smoothie. By midmorning it had warmed up and I had some sweet potato and lentil soup before a long series of meetings. I managed to finish the hummus in my last salad of autumn before more meetings. I completed the workday with two diagrams which earned me two beers at dad's tonight with dinner.

Despite perfectly executing my beverages and timing of 1kg hummus consumption before my upcoming holiday, I am also taking a view this week that I should ensure my expectations are not too high before I take off. Life is a bit cruel, and I don't want to feel the pressures that the month of June needs to make up for the first five months of 2023, nor what comes after. After so much holiday planning since Boxing Day, my horizon is now revealing life after Europe 2023. I will reserve some joys for that time too. I will have a lot more free time then when I can cease planning travel and forget Italian.

Autumn 2023 started with good intentions and good weather, and like the leaves on the mulberry in my backyard things went nowhere. Just hung around as the skies got greyer. I tried to distract myself with history books, NBA, programming and working more than I should have. Some of it was enjoyable. I do not feel as if I like myself more as a human being since summer ended. I did enjoy some music though, to see me through the positive times and the gloomy ones.

Anyway, the obvious solution must be to go and have another summer.

When I inserted my blood into the post box three weeks ago a horrible feeling came over me. Is there a word like "trepidation" which means "a fear of upcoming irony"? I can't Google it, I'm on aeroplane mode.

When my blood was to eventually reach the lab it was going to be scrutinised for allergies and intolerance to over 100 foods and other organic matter. Life has been a bit shit lately pain wise. As it kind of has been for me since 2006. Sometimes the cause of pain is obvious, like riding a bike into the footpath, or... Actually, that is the only injury I've had of the many that I actually know the root cause of. For nearly two decades I've suffered more soft tissue injuries than the 2006 Western Bulldogs (possibly an exaggeration, I can't Google it) and this summer's recurrence of lower back pain felt like the tipping point. Why is it that for the healthy eating, regular walking, and hour of stretching, mobilisation exercises, core strengthening and range of motion maintenance I do on average daily leads me not nowhere, but backwards? Why is everything so inflamed?! Even my physio was at a loss, having proved that my mobility, flexibility and strength was fine but my lower spine would not quit crippling me. His only remaining theory was that a gut issue was causing inflammation in my abdomen that was then creating tightness, imbalance, and other conditions for my hips, core and legs to run into problems.

This seemed unlikely. If gut issues are social policies then my bowel movements are fucking Norway. But without any other ideas, and with the cost of the test only being twice what I'm forking out on the regular to my very expensive physical therapist, I figured I'd try it.

But awaiting the results has been torture, because I'm 38 now and I learned many years ago that there is no fairness in life and it was inevitable that this allergy test was going to come back and ruin something for me. Was I going to have an intolerance to yoghurt? Smoothies? Coffee? Weet Bix? Beer? All of the above? It seemed inevitable that all this blood test was going to achieve was to deprive me of whatever skerricks off joy still remained in my pitiful life.

I woke up to results this morning. Over 99% of the tests came back with a perfectly uniform and Scandinavian, "None Detected". The only real hit in all those lines? Almonds. Almonds allergy. Almonds intolerance. The most journalled about foodstuff in my 2,330 entries. At one stage I even considered adding a tag for the nut. And now the universe has taken it away from me.

I guess, if this is the cause of my ubiquitous inflammation problems, it makes sense that it's the most discussed food on this website. Come to think of it, it's very possible that the advice I read in Men's Health was the exact same issue that had encouraged me to do decline dumbbell rows with my legs locked onto the back extension machine too...

Well, whatever, if I can decrease my back pain, tendonapathy, tendinitis and general misery by even 20% I'll happily never eat another almond again.

I read Edward J Watts book Mortal Republic last week, a recap of the Roman Republic of the centuries BC before it was overcome by autocracy and became the Empire. A book I selected as my next read purely because I was going to fly to Rome soon and it was the first search result for "Rome" that sounded interesting.

It wasn't a bad book, but I find that any time a writer tries to cram multiple centuries into 300 pages or 10 hours it does a disservice to the narratives and personalities at play and relegates fascinating history into sounding something similar to when a new person runs through their CV at the start of a Teams' meeting.

The best thing I can say about this book is that it helped me fall asleep on the flight to Doha. And I completed it yesterday on the second leg.

And boy, if I thought cramming centuries of Roman history into my ears for ten hours straight was tough, that was before I tried doing it with my feet.

Rome, the vibe I'm getting, is that before we invented the internet everyone was either killing each other or carving things out of stone.

Trevi Fountain had crowds at 6:30 AM.

More Rome highlights. Started with a walk to Travestere, then back across the Tiber and around the back of the forum ruins. Stopped for coffee and croissant at a little bar looking up at Capitoline Hill. Took the steps up to the summit and stood in line for free entry to the museum. Inside are too many artefacts and fragments of history to truly appreciate in one visit, interspersed with views out the window of the sprawling city and the Vatican dome and phone towers in the distant hills.

Left the hill and returned to our accommodation for brief moment of shoes off, most definitely not the first tourist to reach the tactile conclusion that it really is a city of seven hills.

Took a quick walk towards Via Veneto, passed the immense American embassy and found lunch at a trattoria, a plate of lamb and potatoes as well as a margarita pizza.

Had a proper nap after lunch, then the evening was more walking. Down the Spanish Steps and towards Pont Cavour, and again along the Tiber towards Pont Sant'Angelo and back on the other side.

Statue of Angel using selfie stick.

We witnessed the hustlers switch with impressive efficiency from pushing bottles of water in the sunshine to pushing ponchos as some clouds rolled in.

Italy is... Tiny cars and giant monuments.

The rain never arrived. We had first gelato, and then cheap takeaway Ragù pasta in Piazza del Popolo on a bench taking in the ancient churches, even more ancient stolen Egyptian obelisks, and a Michael Jackson impersonator under a dusky, overcast sky.

After dinner we walked up to Borghese Gardens passing bust after crumbling marble bust dotting the paths that led to the terrazo. Romans and tourists everywhere, famous Italians forgotten and millennia of nondescript Romans, Italians, pilgrims and slaves buried at our feet among the first twinkling signs of twilight. It was easy to feel insignificant, as millions before me have likely felt as well.

I spent months sitting around at home on the couch wishing I could be doing something exciting like traveling and eating an authentic pizza in Naples. Tonight I'm finally living the dream of sitting in a home on a couch eating authentic pizza in Naples.

To be fair to the above comment, I did start my day in Rome drinking an espresso at the bar, before stepping foot into the pantheon, a building over two thousand years old and by far the oldest building I have ever stood in.

Ordering a coffee at the bar in Italy is pretty easy. You just order the coffee you want and stand at the bar to drink it.

Then literally six hours later I one-upped myself but standing inside an even older building in the excavated ruins of Herculaneum.

Getting a statue of yourself for your front room was in fashion in the first century.

After three consecutive 30,000 step days I feel that delicious, Napoli pizza on the couch was justified.

The Naples port and its associated ferry companies have a plethora of one star reviews. For these companies to still be in operation despite such poor customer feedback really tells you that the destinations that they sail to must be worth visiting.

To be fair, my experience with Naples Port was extremely satisfactory. Signs pointed us to the correct building, the line was short, the ferry was right outside, departed on time and arrived early at Porta Ischia. However, I can understand that any hurdle in this process, particularly for those tourists transferring to the ferry on foot from Napoli Centrale via the wild Corso Umberto I, might be a little prone to stress. Allora, the woman behind the counter when I paid for the return tickets barely glanced up from Little Big Farm on her phone, but I wouldn't deduct any stars because of that.

Ischia is a beautiful island that you need far more than a day to explore because it is way too hot in the steamy Mediterranean air to get a lot done between 11 and 4. Nor is it a tranquil escape from Napoli, just an island variation. (Note: I recant this remark, it is wild there but nothing on Naples.)

What we did get done was a walk to and up Castello Aragonese d'Ischia, a stronghold in stark contrast to the Germanic and British fortresses I have visited previously. This one stands above the sea, built on volcanic rock and featuring gardens and olive groves that frame the view over azure water and the colourful, jagged towns that stretch from the beach up into the sheer, green hills.

After making it back to our flat in Naples we planned a walk across the street for pizza, followed by a short stroll before an early bedtime. The pizza happened according to plan, but what was supposed to be a quick visit to Castel dell'Ovo (pretty impressive) via Fontana del Gigante (a bit meh, although the only thing in the entire city not decorated in white and blue). We ended up walking another three-plus kilometres back, up Via Toledo before weaving and getting lost multiple times in the Quartieri Spagnoli. Words could not describe the glorious mayhem that this long stretch of humanity put on display. It was like Rundle Street during the Fringe on the busiest weekend in March, extrapolated across kilometres of 16th century avenues and alleyways. The population of Naples is only 2.2 million people, I think they were all there. It made me wish that I was young and also had two million friends.

The morning started with a hike up a multitude of stairs to Castel Sant'Elmo for a look over the now calm city that lay beneath a humid haze.

We returned back to our apartment for breakfast, before storing our bags for a few hours to explore before the ferry to Amalfi.

We visited the Complesso Monumentale di Santa Chiara, a peaceful garden and cloister surrounded with high walls. Constructed originally in the fourteenth century, a lot was recreated after bombing in World War II. The inner gardens were beautifully decorated with frescoes and tiles that somewhat sadly were the designs of the women who lived in the church and used this as an outlet to imagine the world outside the walls. First born women were often given to church's to allow their birthright to go to a younger brother.

None of the frescoes described the Spanish Quarter, especially not its alleyway of nativity figurines, and delicious food and desserts.

After lunch we collected our bags and dragged them to the port. The Naples ferry experience continued its alignment with the Naples experience in general. I arrived intentionally early to be able to buy tickets, only to be faced with a shuttered ticket office and many other confused tourists.

But eventually they rolled the windows up, tickets were purchased, everyone crammed on the ferry and we were away about on time.

It took about two hours to reach Amalfi, and it was nearly another world in contrast to Naples. Spotless streets, beautiful architecture, a calm and positive vibe from everyone (well, once the battle from dock to piazza was complete. But before I had to carry the suitcase up 80 steps).

We had dinner in front of the Duomo, then gelato. It felt like the relaxing part of the holiday had finally arrived.

I ticked off a bucket list item this morning. Hiking Sentierio degli Die, the Path of the Gods. Before that could happen we needed to take the bus from Amalfi to Bomerano. The narrow roads and hairpins of the Amalfi Coast are not exactly designed for buses. I'm not sure they're even designed for cars. This did not deter the busdriver, who swung and finangled the long 56 seater around the bends as if simply tooting the horn to whatever melody took his whim would be all it took to keep the roads clear ahead and the cliffs a comfortable distance away from the windows.

The path of the Gods had spectacular views over the villages and landscape of Amalfi and the Mediterranean Sea and sky that blends together in a hazy blue horizon. The bus trip also features these characteristics, thus making it the bus route of the Gods.

The hike itself was stunning. Cliffs and forests and an unending stream of views all the way to Nocelle. That's the official end of the hike, but it is possible to continue down the hill to Positano, and because Positano is both renown for its beauty and also where the ferry leaves for Amalfi, it made logical sense to continue downward after a quick lemon granita.

The route down to Positano contains a lot of steps. They can be conquered, but probably at the cost of being able to enjoy yourself when the ocean brings a merciful end to the downhill slog. Particularly because Positano is itself a city of steps, and that's how I felt today. Barely able to walk, we bought a quick lunch by the beach then it was time to get out.

Positano like a poisonous flower. Beautiful, but deadly. Today in June its narrow laneways and staircases were choked by crowds. It felt like a mix of people who had saved up for years for the holiday of a lifetime, and people who dock their yachts off the Amalfi Coast for a few weeks most summers. I didn't enjoy the vibe.

The docks to get out of Positano were also crowded, and not pleasant, particularly under a hot sun in sticky air. We crammed into the ferry with the rest of the yacht-deprived and when there was finally no room to move on deck we disembarked. After an amazing hike among the clouds, it was the ferry ride of humanity back to Amalfi.

But for the opportunity to complete this hike, it was totally worth it.

Tonight I was standing knee deep in the water, looking at the town of Amalfi as the sunset lit up its layers of buildings along the cliffs in shades of pink and blue. And I was thinking the only thing that could make this moment better is a beer, or a coffee, or a limoncello. Or a pizza, croissant, Delizia al Limone, high protein chocolate mousse, breakfast cereal with low sugar yogurt, or I guess an overpriced ice-cream scooped into a mutant, hollowed out lemon.

Sadly, or perhaps more aptly, happily, I had consumed all of these things today already. So I had no choice but to appreciate the vista while the European summer enveloped me and the Mediterranean Sea took from me another day's worth of toe bandaids to add to its millennia of human history and flotsam.

Many hours earlier the day commenced with hundreds of metres of stairs starting in Amalfi and then through Pontone and out along a ridge to the ruins of Torre della Ziro. From this belvedere we sat and ate breakfast as clouds descended down the front of the cliffs and blurred the horizon.

After breakfast we ascended higher, past lemon groves and goat farms until we reached Ravello for a coffee and treat in the main piazza. And from there we conquered even more stairs as we traversed the town to reach Villa Cimbrone and its beautiful, English gardens that look down from great height on the coast below.

The Villa's gardens are consistently reviewed as being the most beautiful vantage point on the Amalfi Coast. I do suspect these reviews are written by people who have not hiked up ancient stone steps through the forest to come to harder to reach vantage points. But bussing and driving around Amalfi are no easy jobs either. Getting into the bus down from Ravello was only possible due to considerable assertiveness and having correct change. Taxi drivers hover like mosquitos ready to help tourists out with €100 fares to get down the mountain. And those with vehicles have to face roads that crumble into the abyss on the way down, and Saturday afternoon traffic jams by the beach.

If you ever visit Amalfi I would recommend not coming in summer. And I would also recommend not being here on a Saturday.

That said, on a Saturday in summer I had an amazing day. Between afternoon nap and sunset dip we had dinner at Pizzeria Donna Stella, who cooked us delicious food and served it under a garden of lemon trees shrouded in jasmine, and they tolerated my ugly Italian. They also served me a huge, delicious shot of limoncello for only 4 euro. Only in Europe do you get a scoop of sorbet for 500% the price of a standard drink at a nice restaurant.

My calves hurt.

We said goodbye to Amalfi with just a short 300 metre climb to Pogerola this morning for a final breakfast in the clouds. And more steps down...

When I was planning the Europe itinerary I didn't see the day travelling from Amalfi to Florence as being a highlight. But after the first eight days of this holiday and how packed they've been, I found myself looking forward to some downtime in the form of a ferry ride to Salerno followed by a four hour train ride in business class.

I booked the business class tickets back in March because due to a promo they were actually cheaper than regular tickets. About 30 euros to go about 500km, including seat selection and a free snack box.

Unfortunately I learned before the snack box could even arrive that Italian business class seats - like Italian beds and Italian ferry toilet cubicles - are too small for me to be very comfortable. The scenery was nice though. And we arrived in Florence successfully and crossed the Arno for the first of many times. And bought yogurt for our next breakfast for not the first of many times.

I shall add fourteenth century cathedral dome maintenance stairways to my list of Italian features that are a little small for me.

The cramped conditions did not deter me though, and we reached the top of the Duomo for 360° views of a city centre that physically and spiritually embodies the Renaissance.

Brunelleschi's dome, atop the magnificent structure in the centre of Florence, is absolutely impressive and stunning no matter how irreligious you might be. Whether it's from directly below while you wait your turn to climb it, from the top of Piazzale Michelangelo during breakfast at sunrise, or when you're within the interior and feeling dwarfed by the immense fresco that covers the inside.

Pretty much every ceiling in Florence has a fresco for you to appreciate when you remember to look up. I feel like middle age parents with young renaissance children must have constantly complained that they were looking up at ceilings instead of focusing on where they were going.

The apartments and halls of Palazzo Vecchio only reinforced this view, and the strain in my neck.

Also on the schedule today was Galileo's museum, tiramisu on the Ponte Vecchio, and the Duomo Museum. Purely by its institutions you can really feel how a few centuries ago this was a place where science, architecture, and ideas merged.

A seventeenth century globe

Even the artwork showed signs of moving from religious and mythological iconography to the new understanding that Earth was part of a much wider universe.

Yes, this is a ceiling

All of this exploration probably did not justify the white lasagna I ate in Piazza del Carmine for dinner. It was possibly the only disappointing food I've had so far. The gigantic gelato for €2.5 afterwards made up for it though.

It would be a challenge to come to Florence and not leave more cultured than you arrived. Although it would be less hard if you do this outside of June and its long queues.

And I'm not just saying this because the two most common sources of protein in Italy seem to be a couple of slices of salami on a plate sized pizza, or flavoured yoghurts with 20 grams of protein per tub.

There are more pieces of art on the walls and bridges in the streets than there are in some other cities' museums.

Sculpture overload.

Florence was quiet this morning at 6 A.M. when we walked along the river and back, before breakfast at Piazza Ognissanti.

The next stop of the day was Giotti's bell tower, which you get to do for free if you pay the cost of climbing the Duomo.

The climb and view from the bell tower is not much different than the view from the cathedral, other than obviously from the bell tower you get an excellent view of the immense dome.

Through gothic window frames.

After the climb it was over to Galleria dell'Academia to join the masses in the street waiting to take their selfie with Michelangelo's David. (It was a 30 minute wait for us, thanks to our skip the line tickets).

The gallery contained many works of art and history, including a wing of musical instruments and paintings of their original users. And many, many photos of Baby Jesus. But it was clearly David that was the drawcard and the centre of attention. The sculpture is certainly a phenomenal work of art, very large and mostly intact. Also you can see the penis.

Then for lunch I paid my second visit to All’Antico Vinaio to overindulge in a different kind of white, creamy works of art with a focus on excessive smallgoods.

La Paradisa

This concluded the first half of the day. Midday naps have been a successful method for getting the most out of the long and hot summer days in Europe. Today was no exception, even with the hammering and drilling going on next to our AirBNB, or due to the six foot long short mattress. We rose around 3pm and walked back across the Arno to the Uffitzi gallery for more art. And even more art.

It is hard not to get desensitized by the amount of sculptures and Catholic imagery that makes up Florence's most prominent art galleries. Especially all the Baby Jesuses. I'm sorry Jesus, but I have the same reaction to you as I do to seeing anyone else's baby photos on Facebook over and over again. Yes it's Jesus, he was a baby yesterday as well, and won't have grown up much tomorrow either. I wish Correggio, Leonardo, Raffaello, Michelangelo and Caravaggio and the rest could have drawn more inspiration from other mythologies, or daily life instead.

Everybody in this painting is in need of a beer

Medusa, and the Botticelli's, stole the show.

That was all a lot of art, and a lot of Italy, and we needed a beer. Peroni have a 2% Radler that sells for about $3.50 a 3-pack and a cold one of those did the job. Then as a change from epic sandwiches, pizza and lasagne we tried Florence's most highly rated Indian restaurant and that food tasted molte bene as well.

Having now crammed two days of culture, and two days of food, into a single planetary revolution, I was both exhausted and full of energy. So as the sun went down I went out with my camera and tripod to experience Italy at nighttime. I felt slightly tentative walking alone with camera and tripod after dark, but European cities in summer are something else compared to Australia. Nearing 11pm on a Tuesday night and the streets were packed. It's hard not to feel safe when you're surrounded by people everywhere eating dinner and gelato.

On June 14th last year I woke up twice. Once at six A.M. to take a taxi ride to the hospital, and again around lunchtime in recovery after my wrist surgery.

I felt pretty fucking miserable for a lot of last winter. I spent my days working, watching TV, playing Reborn with one hand, and wishing I could have a different life.

On June 14th this year I also woke up twice, the first time in Florence to have some breakfast and then a morning stroll in the Boboli Gardens of Palazzo Pitti, and the second time after a brief nap on the train as we pulled into Venezia Santa Lucia.

View from the top of Boboli Gardens

The wrist that this time last year was in a cast and dragging me down was now dragging a 17 kilogram suitcase for two kilometres of Venice's cobbled, car-less streets, and up and down bridges across the canals.

I took for granted that last year's surgery would have a short and linear recovery and I was wrong about that. I'm not taking anything for granted any more. Venice is an awesome place though, and I'm glad I have my life. Today felt like a chapter end in that story, and as chapter ends go it was a satisfying "fuck you" followed by a sunset.

I've never been to Disneyland, but I think visiting Venice is a pretty good analog. That's how the experience felt from the moment we stepped out of the train station. Ponte degli Scalzi loomed under blue sky as it spanned the sparkling, grand Grand Canal. Car-free streets were lined with colourful buildings, and concession stands stretched away in all directions. There were tourists everywhere. The excavated and stolen remains of one of the S-Tier apostles were buried nearby.

There's obviously rides to be had in Venice, the various watercraft, and there's some roller coaster thing that I think takes people to the big carpark. What I enjoyed most though is the giant maze where every dead end is part of the adventure.

I had planned to spend part of today taking a ferry to Burano, but there was far to much to see and enjoy simply strolling around the different neighbourhoods. When the sun was too hot it was a good opportunity for a nap, or a spritz and a magazine in the piazza. When the sun was low - morning and evening - it was a theme park. Golden Hour persisted for longer than felt natural. Every corner and bridge felt deserving of a moment to stop and stare. And after 27,000 steps that was a lot to take in and absorb.

Historically, Venice has survived a lot, and I hope it continues to survive through whatever the rest of this century and beyond have in store for it. I would definitely like to visit again, maybe in Autumn, and make it to Burano and see Saint Mark's without the cladding. Even if I don't, I'm grateful that I got to experience something as amazing and historic as a city on the sea.

I do have doubts about some Italian customs. For example, eating a late dinner and restaurants not even opening until 7pm, and yet there being a long line of hungry diners waiting outside at 6:59.

It was very warm in Milan today. An unpleasant, humid 30° that was only slightly better endured by noting that the max temperature back in Adelaide was 14°.

We didn't schedule much for our full day here, having already had our fill of giant cathedrals, sculptures and baby Jesus over the last two weeks. Lake Como was an appealing location just a 30 minute train ride away, so the plan was to head there early, hike, do a lap of the bottom half of the lake on a boat, then go back to Milan for dinner.

Unfortunately our only day for Como was a Saturday, and one big lesson for European holidays in June is to keep Saturdays pretty cruisy because they are by far the most hectic days based on my experience in Rome, Amalfi and Como. Let's see how Paris goes... Como was quiet when we arrived at 7A.M., but after the hike the beautiful lake side was packed with people and every fast and slow ferry for the day was sold out.

I at least found a wee castle in the forest.

We took the train back to Milan early and had a nap. This was likely the best possible use of time as the heat was grande by that point. Later in the evening we did walk through downtown Milan to the massive cathedral, as well as Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II which was a mall but it also had cathedral vibes.

One last giant cathedral for the road.

Clothes are very fashionable in Milan shops and very expensive. Yet another Italian custom I'm not convinced everyone is onboard for. Due to all the forest walks and the cobbled streets I've been wearing hiking boots and hiking socks nearly every day, and my shorts haven't seen a washing machine in this hemisphere of the Earth.

After a burger for dinner (at 7:30) I went to the rooftop terrace of the hotel to drink a Milano-Torino and watch the sun set in Italy for a final time. No one on the terrace with me was eating.

I was checking into the hotel in Kriens tonight and for the first time this trip the hotel asked for my home address, which for a moment I'd actually forgotten. That's the sign of a good holiday I guess.

The morning was spent exploring both the Porta Nuova commercial district, the most un-Italian area of Italy I saw in the whole country, and then after the first breakfast buffet of the trip (an incredible amount of fruit, pastries, eggs and coffee) we spent the rest of the morning enjoying Sempione Park. We had a final, coffee tiramisu infusion in the shade overlooking Arco della Pace. Then, after so much planning, preparation and exploring it was time for one last exorbitant service fee, and to say Ciao to Italy.

The subsequent trip to Lucerne on the train was appropriately transitory. After a stretch of Italian countryside and industrial areas (plus Lake Como again) we went through a long tunnel. I ate the last of my breakfast pastries and we emerged into vibrant sunlight, green mountains and sparkling lakes under fluffy clouds. Half the train carriage seemed to ooh and ah. Europe has so much diversity across such small distances, it's incredible.

Last year I drove over 2,000km from Adelaide to South Queensland and other than the temperature every place essentially looked the same.

There were, however, still sunset cows at the end.

The cost of living in Switzerland is ridiculous. It's .75 Francs for a cold half litre of beer at Aldi, and another Franc if you want a fresh pretzel to go with it.

After an evening of admiring Pilatus from a distance, this morning we ascended the mountain via a series of cable cars to stunning views of Switzerland from such a high place that it actually made the rest of it look flat.

Even the short walk we did halfway up the mountain past a few fields of wildflowers, and through forest, to a view of a tiny cow shed beneath an immense rock face was one of the best hikes of my life despite it only being a kilometre each way.

After Pilatus we took a cogwheel train down to Alpnachstad and then a boat over Lake Lucerne, each mode of transport an incredible experience on its own. The only challenge was the trek back up the hill to the hotel under alternating torrential rain and blinding sunshine. The steam curled like snakes on the steep stairs. More forest, and the aforementioned beer, helped get through the experience. Then there was nothing left to do but enjoy the hours of sunset as it coloured the mountains, hills and lakes. The cost of living in Switzerland, it seems, is that you'll never want to leave. And also the impact on your knees.

Switzerland is totally extra.

It's extra amazing, and every time something great happens there's an additional something that collaborates to makes it even better.

Like, cable cars take you up mountain, and then there's another cable car for even more mountain. This one with 360 degree views.

Medieval watch towers you can actually climb up, and then when you come back down there's pigs and Highland cattle.

Trains take you kilometres through mountains, and there's 5G coverage the whole way.

Lovely hotels with free apples and free binoculars for the views.

Mini golf courses in the alps with amazing views in the background, and with mini horses.

Mini Viennetta on a stick! For like 50c each. Just minutes from a huge sculpture monument of a dying lion where there's a park so you can eat them in the shade.

Lakes, in between mountains, with beaches you can swim in and drink a beer at.

Beautiful sunsets that last for over an hour.

It was my intention to ease the transition from Switzerland to France by visiting the Alsace reason, which has historically been both French and German depending on where in time you are.

That said, the moment our train crossed the border into France the multi-lingual station and journey updates ceased and everything was purely French. It's okay. The audio system on the train was hard enough to hear the words clearly anyway.

Colmar is not a big place and it didn't take long to drag the suitcase from the station to the start of the cobbled streets of the old town. And this old town was old. We first decided to visit here because it looked like a Disney cartoon. (There are a number of towns in the Alsace region that claim to be "the inspiration" for Beauty and the Beast and this is one of them.)

Most of the buildings in the historic centre, and "little Venice" (a nickname given by someone who obviously hadn't been in normal sized Venice a week earlier) date from the middle ages and renaissance. And they're originals, as unlike a lot of the rest of Europe they weren't bombed or shelled during the 20th century. It was a very pretty place, something that was easier to appreciate after depositing our luggage in the Airbnb.
When picking a place to stay here I'd decided to book an upstairs room above a restaurant in pretty much the heart of the old town area thinking it would be easy to take some photos early or late in the day, potentially out of the window.

Our accommodation was the two open shutters on the first floor of the back building. I did not work out how to close the shutters when the sun finally set.

This was maybe not the best idea. At the time of booking I didn't appreciate just how happening European cities are basically every day of the week in summer. Rome, Naples, Amalfi, Florence, Venice and Lucerne all had a party vibe late into the evening every night of the week. Even knowing this, I wouldn't have predicted that a town as small as Colmar (population 70k according to Google) would be absolutely pumping on a random Wednesday evening. The streets were packed, and roads were closed so that musicians could set up stages or DJ booths all around the picturesque streets. The restaurants were full. Additional bars set up on trestle tables were pulling beers for five euro a cup on the streets. I figured this must be life when it snows in winter and your summer days don't literally cook you. And also when the law doesn't ban you from drinking a beer on the street.

For the majority who are smarter than me and realise that today is the Winter Solstice (in Adelaide) and therefore the Summer Solstice (in France) you would know that this means it was Fête de la Musique today. An annual, French celebration of amateur music in public places.

Arsonic playing for a huge crowd in front of the 550 year old Koïfhus.

DJ and dancing in front of one of the churches.

Because we won't have a kitchen or even a fridge for the week in Paris, our first stop in Colmar was the supermarket (which wasn't centuries old) so we could take advantage of the full kitchen in the apartment. Here we learned some other harsh truths about France. They do not sell many high-protein yogurts and puddings here. Most of the display fridges were dedicated to cheeses. This is not a whimsy, sadly. Even the regular yogurt selection was quite limited. We were able to find some ravioli and tomato sauce and - after eating only one serving in Italy over the course of two weeks - the first meal I ate in France was pasta.

After dinner we walked around listening to bands and admiring architecture. A few thunderclouds passed overhead, along with a random sprinklings of rain and an occasional flash of lightning. The sun did seem to be setting quite late which was pretty typical for the trip so far, and we had travelled ~150 kilometres north-west that afternoon, but I hadn't twigged it was the solstice yet.

10 P.M.

Vanessa went to try and sleep after being absolutely smashed by pollen that morning. I continued to listen to the bands until the sun eventually did disappear, not before colourful lights were beamed upon the big church across the square from the apartment. I went to bed around 10:30pm, the music stopped around 11pm and the giant church lantern dimmed its lights at midnight. It was extremely warm, and extremely humid. They did not have air conditioning in the fifteenth century.

All of this on top of a walk through the forest to Lucerne that morning, and breakfast (including high protein milk drink) by the lake before lunch and non-Aldi Swiss beer at the Rathaus Brauerei, and the aforementioned train ride. It was definitely a very long day...

I put a lot of effort into learning Italian and German for the purpose of visiting the countries those languages are named after. I did not, in 2023, have the brain power or mouth muscles required to learn basic French as well. So - excluding Bali - this is the first time I have crossed a border into a country without the ability to ask for directions, order a beer, or request the toilet in the population's native language. This felt especially risky because - of all the countries - it's the French who are apparently the least accommodating of non-French speakers.

Last night did reduce my anxiety a little bit. Nearly every band and every song played on the streets of Colmar had been a cover of an English song. The crowd sometimes sang along. Clearly the average French people understood English words, and by choosing those songs over French ones they had given me ammunition in the case of ambush to debate that English clearly wasn't an inferior language if all the songs the French like are English ones. (And I had a back up flex where I list my favourite French musicians like M83, French 79, La Fine Equipe, Moussa and VIDEOCLUB).

I did not put a lot of effort into planning my visit to Strasbourg. There was an Alltrails map that promised a thorough tour of this World Heritage district and I took it at its word. Unfortunately it was not a good trail. It was also hot, we had both slept poorly in the echoes of Fête de la Musique the night before, and we had been on our feet for nearly three week straight (with some afternoon naps for balance). And there hadn't been a single open coffee shop for kilometres. (Partly because we started our walk shortly after sunrise).

Two-thirds through we bailed on the trail and headed for the old town to at least find coffee. I felt like I had wasted $50 dragging us to Strasbourg to see a brief glimpse of Petite France that looked exactly like Colmar, plus a big EU Headquarters building and this cathedral which I did like a little bit.

We found an open café and Vanessa ordered us some coffee successfully and the caffeine helped a little bit. Infused with some optimism, I suggested we at least visit Strasbourg's most famous cathedral before we gave up on the city completely. And yeah, it really is something.

Not petite.

So far in Europe I'd mostly avoided buying food and coffee in direct sight of major landmarks such as this one, but one French coffee had not been enough for the second longest morning of the year (until December at least) and there was a crepe restaurant that Google reviews assured me wasn't a rip off so we checked the menu and then took up a table. At this point it was my turn to communicate with a French person. We'd used the self-checkout in the supermarket the night before in Colmar, so this was my first true test.

"Parlez-vous anglais?" I enquired.

"Yes, a little," she said with a smile.

Despite what I've written above, I had no plan to defend the English language to anyone in France, and I had even promised myself that I would not flex about my below-average ability to speak 2 other languages in order to justify my lack of French.

"Thank you," I said in English, immediately followed by: "I don't speak French. I speak Italian and German. I'm very tired."

This defensive response kind of slipped out and I felt very bad about it. We ordered crepes in English, and more coffee, and so that she didn't think I was a classless foreigner I tipped 7% on the eventual bill.

The gothic cathedral looked very impressive, but we couldn't go inside the because we hadn't brought enough clothes, so the next destination wasn't very clear. Other than the obvious needs for more water and a toilet to deal with the two coffees. Both of these human needs was provided for free by the facilities in the forecourt of the cathedral. While I waited for Vanessa afterwards I noticed the tiny train/car waiting nearby that had a map in the window of the route it would take. I was curious to see how closely it matched the Alltrails map, so I took a look and while doing this I noticed the cost was only eight euros which was cheaper than two coffees with milk and also cheaper than the fast train back to Colmar.

On a very tired whim I decided we should ride le Petit Train.

After paying, and being wedged into the front seat of a carriage, and then moving back a row so I could at least put my feet somewhere, I had a horrible instinct that the petite-arse seats in the petit train were going to blow out my lower back at the first red light. Thankfully I'd been carrying around my lumbar support in my backpack all day, so I reversed it looped it around my abdomen and I was good to go. I put on a pair of the headphones and clicked over to one of the many languages I apparently speak (English) and off we went through the streets of Strasbourg.

It was fun. Even though we didn't get a close or long look at anything, the voice tour was good and the route was well planned so that you could get a couple of glimpses at most things. It definitely deserves to be a World Heritage district. The train went past a whole bunch of cool things that weren't on the Alltrails map. You couldn't really take photos, but getting the context and history of what you were seeing really enhanced the touring experience. But above all of this, after so much planning nice to be taken for a ride.

I have been economical at times on this $15,000+ holiday. It's smart to use free resources and your feet and to do a lot of research in advance. But today's lesson is that sometimes it's better to ride le petit train.

Given today was also my last kitchen day until July, and therefore my only remaining chance for a big summer salad, I splurged on that for lunch. Just like protein yogurts, they do not have 4 Bean mix in France either. You have to buy all your legumes separately. I went with just kidney beans because I didn't think the baking tray I was going to use as a salad bowl could handle much more than one variety.

I have been in Paris less than eight hours. Ten percent of that was spent in the queue for a metro ticket.

My first impression is that scaffolding is on everything. (Not everything, but it felt that way by the time we'd walked past the Louvre and through Place de la Concorde.) And also that the French haven't worked out that smoking isn't cool yet.

The only thing not scaffolded is the sun.

After the initial check in - air conditioning! - we walked past the Luxembourg Gardens in search of food and on turning left onto Rue Soufflot the Paris Pantheon came into view. Huge! Seemingly floating in the near distance at the end of the boulevard. This was Hausman, not an accident, but it's one thing to know about it and another to experience it.

We started our visit to Paris with the City of Lights walking tour, which concluded an hour before sunset.

Today was our first full day, and it was definitely filled.

Starting early, on a mostly deserted Boulevard St. Michel, we bought café crème from a takeaway store, the first hint that coffee in Paris was not going to compare to Italy.

We then ate crepes on Ile de Cité in a park that wasn't technically open.

After breakfast we needed to find a toilet, a journey that took us across the prow of Ile Saint-Lois (a 17th century planned neighbourhood), over the Seine, past the medieval architecture of Hôtel de Sens and to a small playground where a part of one of the Bastille's towers remains in a fenced off section behind an old gazebo.

No plaque, but a little bit of trash.

Between that point and our first afternoon nap in Paris we walked up the canal of Port de l'Arsenal, visited Place de la Bastille, had another average coffee among the shops of Marais, visited Place des Voges for further review of seventeenth century urban planning.

One of the first planned, public squares for recreation. Circa ~1604. Still going strong in 2023.

Then we visited one of the oldest houses in Paris (now a busy Pho place), had a kebab, and saw more of the canals.

Around dinner time we re-emerged to golden, early evening sunshine and browsed a couple of the many English second-hand Bookstores. As a book lover, these cramped spaces crammed with second hand novels, non-fiction, plays and everything else in narrow aisles and mismatched shelves stretching above my head reminded me of Portland, and were a treat just to be inside. The prices were quite high though.

After the bookstores we commenced a self-guided history tour of the nearby area, concentrated on the Latin Quarter and Île de la Cité. This took us past statues, old churches, parks and streetscapes, and highlighted the many appealing and busy restaurants between Church of Saint-Séverin and Boulevard Saint-Germain. We squeezed in to a table at La Maison de Gyros for an immense plate of chicken kebab, salad, fries and garlic sauce. More chicken in one meal than I think I ate in all of Italy.

Our tour continued after dinner, past the church into Square René Viviani to observe the oldest tree in Paris. There was a paving stone from the original Roman road somewhere around there, but I couldn't spot it before the whistles started to kick everyone out.

We crossed to the island and admired what was left of the Notre-Dame. An amazing building, and with all its scaffolding a reminder that even city staples that feel like they might last forever could one day be whittled down to a hard to find paving stone in a small garden.
Fortunately, the gargoyles withstood the flames. And we learned about the difference between gargoyles and grotesques, and added a few museums to the to do list.

After a further tour of the island, we came up to the O.G. modern Paris landmark the Pont Neuf. According to some French historians, on this bridge in the seventeenth century they invented for the first time "stopping and admiring a river in a city". And whether that's true or not, I do believe that at a time when rivers were full of mud and corpses and the many cast offs of early industry that anything that motivated city planners to take steps to clean up waterways and create walkable places to visit was a huge turning point in world history for people like me who would come to visit centuries later with my camera.

And speaking of walkable cities, we crossed Pont Neuf to the right bank, and then down to the edge of the Seine. As the sun set in front of us we walked four kilometres, never needing to cross a road once. The entire way, on both sides of the river, people sat with picnics and drinks and music. Parisians and tourists. Hustlers sold water, beer and cigarettes. Everyone was happy. A group walked behind us for a few minutes playing Titanium on their portable speaker on repeat and people sang along, which was a nice connection back to Adelaide on a Saturday night in France.

We reached the Eiffel Tower at dusk, paid a Euro for the toilet and then crossed back to a good spot in front of Trocadéro to wait for 11 PM and the light show.

During planning the Eiffel Tower didn't even earn a pin on my map of Paris, but it was worth seeing once. Not just for the spectacle, but to be a part of that huge crowd which spanned both sides of the river and all around me. Everyone was here to be in Paris. The part of my homo sapien brain that likes to conform to social norms was ecstatic. But more than that, during the sparkling that lit up the iron beams, the mood of the crowd carried the sensation that this was one of those moments in life that you look forward to, and that you don't forget. It symbolised the achievements of a species and an individual that allowed me to be born halfway across the world and to then stand here in this historic city for a few minutes. Five to be exact. Then we took the metro back to the hotel for sleep.

A lot of restaurants and cafes in Paris advertise a "Formule" which is basically a combo meal that costs a lot less than buying all the things individually. It's very hard to not know this because over the kilometres you will walk in Paris you will pass many, many cafes and restaurants, and because while doing that you will also feel very hungry.

Today we decided to skip the yoghurt and oats and get a formule for breakfast. We walked along the boulevards from the hotel to Saint-Médard, which is a nice, old church in front of a nice, old public square with a fountain. But stretching up the hill from that part is a narrow, cobbled street lined with market shops and markets as well. Sunday is, apparently, more of a local's day than a tourists day but in the same article which I read that, it also said that this was because the markets opened only in the morning and there is definitely an advantage to being a tourist that is capable of being up before 9 A.M.

We selected Le Mouffetard for breakfast based on the breakfast formule on the chalkboard outside, and the fact that it had a lot of locals eating there, but also a table away from the locals. (The locals liked sitting in direct sunlight and smoking).

For the full formule at 12 Euro each we received coffee, a croissant, slices of baguette, fresh juice, an omelette, and a little cup of fruit salad. (The extra 2 Euro is for the omelette). Everything was delicious. By the time we finished eating, the street in front of us was ready for markets. We bought a strawberry crumble to eat later from a very nice looking bakery, then walked back to the hotel the long way to visit Arènes de Lutèce - an old Roman amphitheatre that was rediscovered in the 19th century. It's now part of a public park and used for a lot of people to play Bocce.

More like Arènes de Boccè

We continued our walk, grabbed another coffee and sat in another park where a further echo of Rome stood in the garden. Either that or I have been in Europe so long that all statues are starting to look the same…

Then we had a nap, which wasn't easy after the coffees, but we'd tried to plan the day like this because we had a booking at the Louvre for 2 P.M. and the day was going to get very hot.

Luckily, the streets of Paris are not in a grid and run on all sorts of diagonals - again thanks to old mate Hausman. This is actually super handy on hot days because at nearly any time you can kind of weave your way across the districts and find a shady side of the street. That worked for us until we reached the river. There is no shade on Pont du Carrousel, nor much to compensate once you reach the right bank and try to find the entrance. All the hustlers from the Eiffel Tower were here this afternoon, clearing the plastic tower replicas and selling bottles of water for 1 Euro which was very tempting even though we'd left the hotel only fifteen minutes earlier.

We got inside and through security and picked up the Nintendo DS guides to help us through. Even though we had the reservation, no one even asked for it, although we did use the "with reservation" line to get in.

The Louvre. I have a lot of thoughts about this place. They could take every single artefact and piece of art out this building and it would still be worth a visit. Being a former palace, the rooms, walls, ceilings, everything (in the old part) is incredibly large, intricate, and detailed.

Another ceiling.

That said, it is way too big to see everything. Even trying to see the highlights is a challenge. Part of the reason we got the guides was for directions, but at times they did not know where we are, and once they were guiding you somewhere I could not determine how to cancel the navigation so the map was focused on taking us somewhere we no longer wanted to go. It did not help that I made a list of things to see based on an article that may have been written by ChatGPT, because the rooms and locations listed for these pieces did not exist at all.

We started by trying to visit the ancient Egyptian collection - being exhausted of Christian art. Unfortunately we got lost, saw some cool Middle East and Greek art and pieces, and then ran into more of old baby Jesus.

Eventually we made it to Egypt (with the heat and the walking it felt like it literally). And then we tried to find a toilet, one which was closed and another that didn't exist. It used up about 30 minutes of our visit. After that, and a crazy amount of rooms filled with antique furniture, we found the Salon and the most famous paintings and were able to slow down a bit and take some of that in. I hadn't actually realised so much of the Napoleon collection was here, and they are such mammoth pieces of propaganda and artwork, and very cool. At least the DS guide was now adding some value.

The museum closed and it was still scorching outside. Another thing we hadn't been able to locate in the museum was any of the supposed eight water fountains. So we were quite thirsty as well. I relented that I would give one Euro to the hustlers for a cold bottle of water - but these guys know their game well! At museum closing time they all added an extra 50c to their water prices. So I didn't buy water from them, not just out of principle but also because I didn't have the extra 50c worth of coins with me either. We heroically strove until we reached a supermarket and I bought a one litre bottle of water for 31c. We drank that, ate some potato chips, found shade on the eastern side of Bourse de commerce and refilled the bottle a few times for good measure. That was enough art and culture for a while.

Still quite sunny, we made it as far as Rue Saint-Martin before spotting another Lebanese place. That was good for dinner, which we carried to the nearest park that just happened to have a five hundred year-old gothic church tower in it (the rest of the church was destroyed during the French Revolution, the main one...).

Like all public spaces, this one too was filled with people in groups enjoying the shade and having a nice, friendly time in a great many languages. It was very pleasant - except for the toilets that were extremely disgusting.

We went out and got ice-cream and came back to the park with it to continue enjoying the summertime vibe and the aforementioned shade.

From there, with the bite in the sun finally mellowing, we walked to Parvis de l’Hôtel de Ville - another landmark on the list. This one too was blocked by scaffolding although what could be spied through the gaps was impressive.

We then crossed the bridge to Ile Saint-Louis to see what we could of the grand, original residences built there after King Henry IV's plan to turn it into the West Lakes of seventeenth century Paris. Again the banks of the river were filled with people chilling in the sun. Even a garbage collector got into some of the tunes being played under the bridge.

We did a loop of Ile Saint-Louis. The sun was finally nearing the horizon. It was another long and diverse day. We had paid for the full formule.

This morning while walking back to the hotel after walking the Paris version of the high line, some guy with windows down on Pont de Sully was playing Daft Punk's Around the World unironically

Allora. Pooping on holiday poses challenges for me as I lose the rhythms of eating, caffeine and bowel movements that I have at home, and whose predictability is what inspires me to take holidays in the first place. It wasn't until my third day in Rome that I managed to pass the omelette and smoothie I'd eaten back in Adelaide, and everything else since. It took a double Roman coffee with milk to finally do the trick. "I am the Caesar of my sphincter", I proclaimed to myself as I kicked off what I thought would be a return to normal form. (The visit to the Roman Forum the day before was still embedded in my consciousness.)

I think it was the extra spicy sauce on the already spicy chicken curry takeaway that I ate on my last night in Lucerne that disrupted further Pax Romana. Or perhaps it was just the Gauls? Because I've had troubles for days in France and definitely feel like my stool is in arrears, and is approaching a debt-ceiling that I do not want to hit in public, especially in the Louvre or on the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The Caffe Latte Venti that I drank this afternoon on the Metro between Odéon and La Defense gave me great confidence that a bipartisan agreement might be reached quickly, and - other than on the 25 minute bus ride to Rueil-Malmaison - the most logical place for this accord to occur was in the toilets at Château de Malmaison. It was the former residence of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais and her husband Napoleon Bonaparte. And where we were visiting this afternoon.

Well before this trip out of Paris, months earlier, when I first discovered Josephine and the Bonaparte family's sprawling retreat was on the Paris Museum Pass I'd wondered how Napoleon might feel if he knew I was visiting his retreat and taking pictures of his stuff. The first, obvious impression is that he wouldn't care at all. I don't like Napoleon, but I do respect him for working really hard to be an extreme example of what a single, individual human is capable of doing in a lifetime. Even though a lot of the things he did were bad, other things he did were admirable and incredible (the metric system, his strategy and tactics, his memory and ability to learn and innovate).

Napoleon was also a general of the people, and would join the soldiers and followers at the campfires before and after battles. Theoretically, if he was interested in those people maybe he would be interested in me and my life too. He was definitely an egotist, which would count in my favour as he would surely be inquiring to know exactly what kind of future-people would visit him. He also spent a lot of his days travelling, so I think we would have in common the challenges of pooping across Europe.

I did try to poo at Napoleon's house today, but just like the appropriately named Waterloo, today was not my day of victory and I only farted a few times. Oh well, I'm going to Les Invalides tomorrow so I might have to console myself by dropping a turd next to his corpse.

Editor's note 27/6: I did, and it was satisfying. I am l'Empereur of my l'Anus. Napoleon and the Tyrannosaurus Rex are now both on the same list.

Back in Paris, the Coulée verte René-Dumont - AKA the Paris High Line - was a lovely although not thrilling way to spend the morning and enjoy some cooler temperatures that had rolled in. The baguette and coffee we had for breakfast helped with this. Also, I am not even joking, the free water fountains in the park at the end give out sparkling water. I am not looking forward to returning to Adelaide...

Here are some photos from a new perspective:

I won't write about getting lost on the way to lunch before our trip out to Rueil-Malmaison. One of the drawbacks of doing so much walking is that you do need a lot of calories to restore energy and despite all the restaurants and supermarkets it can be hard to just find a burger sometimes. Luckily I eventually did, which helped a lot.

The trip to Rueil-Malmaison via La Défense also required eight total tickets for the two of us, including special ones for the way back into Paris. Probably worth it to see Napoleon's study, harp and billiard's table.

Did he seriously read all these books on a weekend getaway from Paris? Maybe he did. Maybe he just thought they looked cool. I should get a library...

There was a bit of overlap with artworks I'd already seen in the Louvre too. And - in a topic I'll reflect on more in future - while the Château was primarily focused on Bonaparte, historically a lot of other things happened there too including Napoleon III restoring it after the changes between the restoration and 1870. I can say that I sat on Bonaparte's toilet, but really there's a whole 150 years of cheeks between then and now that mean it wasn't a completely immersive experience. And it wasn't his actual toilet obviously, he would have shat in a fancy bucket and I had to make do with the public toilets in the renovated right wing.

When we finally translated the public transport protocols we arrived back in Paris to overcast skies around Trocadéro for our plans for a dinner picnic in a park with the locals. We balanced our view of the Eiffel Tower with finding a bench in the shade that wasn't covered in pigeon crap. We did have a view of the landmark, through the trees, as you could kind of see if I hadn't focused on the raspberries in this photo.

The picnic - baguette with falafel and carrot with vinaigrette, cucumber and raspberries - was extremely pleasant no doubt helped by the rising tower in the background and the can of French Amber Ale.

After dinner we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe and skipped the queue with the Museum Pass to take in the panorama.

I think Arc de Triomphe is my favourite landmark in the whole city so far. The story behind its construction (more Napoleon obviously) and positioning, the sheer amount of detail in the reliefs (after so many in Europe, finally some with guns in them). And the view. It kind of makes everything you've seen feel so close, but all at the same time.

One of the reliefs features a stolen sphinx being carried through... An arc de triomphe! Très meta.

Having borne witness to the scale of the city and the length of the Champs-Élysées, the most obvious course of action would have been to take the metro back to the hotel. Instead we walked. First through the garish, American shops and restaurants on the right bank, then across at Place de la Concorde and back to the hotel from there. A total of 32,300 steps for the day and that barely squeaks in for a podium finish.

How many landmarks can you spy?

I love Paris, but I'm yet to land on the right choice for a souvenir to bring home. And it's not for lack of options. First time visitors would be amazed at the opportunistic touts and the scale of locations that they try to sell plastic Eiffel Towers from Wish along with bootleg water, cigarettes and Heineken.

Last week, the day we rushed to Paris thanks to delayed trains, I lost my notebook and my most treasured pen. But I don't want to replace that with a new book with a cover featuring a painting of Napoleon, or some Parisian landmark.

What I want is something that truly captures the vibe that is this city on a summer's evening. From the crazy bustle of the subterranean metro, to the riverside picnics and the cafes filled at 9pm at night, to the calm, flat, off white landscape that is the city when viewed from up high, such as the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

I want to put in my house the feeling of a city that is simultaneously 2500 years of history, and millions of living people. I want to feel in my backyard the vibe of bringing a baguette and a beer to a park or square filled with other people doing the same, under the view of monuments or ruins or gargoyles that are ancient.

In Adelaide there are no human monuments around you that remind you that you are one of a multitude, a meaningless life lucky enough to be surrounded by delicious food, cheap drinks, company and incredible sights. There are geological reminders, sure, but there's something about the works of human hands that resonates with me, and something about such a density and intricacy of works that reinforces that feeling.

So I guess what I need to fit in my suitcase is a gigantic, old building. A Roman bath, a chateau, a triumphal arch, a temple to reason. A marble statue slash fountain with a plethora of spouts and ornately shaped stone butts.

The Jardin du Luxembourg is where we started today, looping around the boundary to see birds, fountains and flowers. We then found a crepe and coffee forumule for breakfast, and began walking towards Les Invalides. This required eating a bagel at a second stop along the way, before arriving right before opening time with the other diehards who wanted to see Napoleon's tomb first thing.

Les Invalides

The life of Napoleon Bonaparte's corpse, I would say, would be more interesting than the average human's actual life. Dead on St Helena, and initially a symbolic enemy of the Restoration, things changed again in Paris and it was recognised that - in all the complexities of life - he was worth being a tourist attraction as this was a few decades before the Eiffel Tower was raised.

So in 1840 they dug him up, released the gases, and transported him 7000km. In Paris he was marched through the Arc de Triomphe (that he commissioned when he was still alive) and put on display for 20 years. He was then laid to rest permanently in Les Invalides in 1861, a former military hospital that Napoleon's wars kept busy many years earlier.

The tombs of Napoleon, his son, and a few other family members, famous generals and marshals can be added to the long list of buildings in Paris that are over the top in their size, decoration and detail. Sculptures, reliefs and gilding define all of them, but Napoleon's tomb is the most momentous. Viewable from the top, and below via a marble staircase lined with statues and carvings, it is an enormous grave. I was joking about people lining up to see it first, but witnessing it without a crowd around was an experience, although I'm not exactly sure of what kind.

Napoleon in a box. It's about five metres tall.

Bumblebee motifs in the corner of a fresco above an arch.

The rest of the exhibitions at Les Invalides were less ornate. The big parade ground is lined with old cannon, and from there we took in the medieval and renaissance armour and weaponry. There were a lot of suits of armour. After that we visited a temporary exhibition about Charles de Gaulle who I actually didn't know much about. He too lived a very eventful life for France, and his existence is probably the reason the aeroport of Paris is not known as Napoleon Bonaparte Airport. (Or maybe it's because Napoleon Bonaparte Airport already exists in Corsica).

Triple gun. Was probably not used in actual battles.

A large movie theatre with five different screens ran through de Gaulle's life in the language of your choosing, and this was enlightening and also a great opportunity to sit down for half an hour.

After that, and at some point a Nespresso coffee at the cafe, we moved onto the Napoleonic Wars. Here there were many artefacts of the soldiers and battles from the Napoleonic era, and the centuries after leading up to the twentieth century. Having read Napoleon's biography a few years earlier, this was an excellent review of things I'd read about. There was also a cool recreation of a battle featuring lots of miniatures and well-timed lights.

Sketch of Napoleon, we are rocking essentially the same haircut today. Coincidentally! I am sure Napoleon was cable of having a haircut in Paris as he speaks French.

We left this part of the museum around 1820. The World Wars exhibit was closed, which was disappointing as well as a reprieve. I'd expected the visit to the museum to last a few hours but it was already past lunchtime and there was one remaining part I really wanted to see - the Museum of Relief Maps. Up on the top floor of the wing was a collection of wood carved, 3D maps of geographical areas of importance from the seventeenth and eighteenth century. They were originally created for planning and strategizing purposes, and created by master surveyors and master carpenters so that the dimensions were exactly right. They are huge, and basically a preview of satellite maps from 200+ years ago.

The floor also featured a wooden model of the Mont-Saint-Michel, which was not made for military purposes, but by a brother of the island at around the same time of the reliefs. This one was very cool.

Random building on the walk back while trying to find lunch.

Post-nap, we went to the Paris Pantheon with hopes of climbing up the top there for an early evening view of the city, but it was closed for an incident that was not disclosed. We then considered briefly going to the opera, but decided to stick with the original plan of another picnic. This time in the Tuileries Garden that we had skimmed past a few times but failed to spend any time in. We grabbed some takeaway and a drink each and then found a spot (a couple of spots in fact) to enjoy the evening ambience. I absolutely love how many freestanding seats that the city of Paris has littered around its big parks. You can cluster them together in groups, or take them away to your own private space.

Plenty of chairs to choose from in Luxembourg Gardens at opening time.

We sat in the Tuileries until close to sunset, then walked slowly back along the river admiring more sculptures and architecture and well-adjusted public drinkers. In Adelaide it was close to eight degrees.

Tuileries duckpond.

In French, souvenir literally translates to a "memory". I will be bringing back many of those.

As a history enjoyer, a major challenge when planning a 2,000 kilometre trip across Central and Western Europe is deciding exactly which sites and sights are worth visiting. For instance, in the courtyard of a medieval church in Paris (now a public park with a view of Notre Dame) is a large, flat stone which used to be part of the pavings of the Roman road back in the days of Lutetia. When you are sitting in a twenty year old house in Australia that sounds really fascinating. But if you've just come from a walking tour of Palatine Hill in Rome, it's far less impressive.

Even such obscure Parisian landmarks such as the oldest house, with its exposed timber frame, are less meaningful after a visit to a town like Colmar and its cobblestone streets that are lined end to end with buildings from a century earlier.

The fact is, you can cover kilometres and plan meticulously, but you can't travel through time. The Pantheon in Rome might be over 2000 years old, but it's not possible to see it as both a pagan temple, a Catholic sanctuary, and its current, restored form. Which is annoying, because I really want to.

The Latin quarter of Paris in the nineteenth century might have been the epicentre of nightlife, culture and innovation, but nowhere in 2023 will let me experience a night there with the same vibe. And even if they do invent time travel and I become fluent in French, I'll never be able to do something about my Australian accent.

So at some point, immersing yourself in history becomes a choice between chasing the sensations of the past through proximity and crumbling marble, and just reading books on the subject in Adelaide. Or a balance in between.

Europe has plenty more to offer than history and photo opportunities, like cheap supermarket beers, great hikes and baked goods. It should be possible to enjoy it without the pressure of gaining a greater understanding of the Western civilization canon. And there are free walking tours that will cover 75% of what you can possibly memorise through books before travelling while also maintaining a 9-5 IT job.

At the same time, a non-superficial understanding of the history of a city does help with finding the right Airbnb location. In the same way that learning the basics of a language might help you get a new bottle of conditioner from the hotel room service. Travelling can be a conversation between yourself and a location. Knowing what a city has been through can break the ice.

But if you really want to intimately understand somewhere you're probably going to want to stay there a month so that you can justify the years of study you needed to do in order to get the context as it applies to the past three millenia. That's definitely the case for Paris and Rome, but I wouldn't rule out anywhere in Europe for a lack of yore.

But Europe also has an opportunity cost, with cities so diverse from each other only a short train ride apart. So what can you do with your time, really?

After another pleasant visit to Luxembourg Gardens for breakfast, we were then turned away from the Pantheon as whatever incident they were facing entered a second day.

That was sad, but the crypt under Notre Dame was open and not very busy in contrast to the huge crowd of tourists above ground posing for selfies in front of the cathedral and its scaffolding.

This museum was quite small, and I learned about the former Roman baths that were on the site, as well as the apparent former shoreline of the island. It definitely wasn't as good as time travel, but there was a cool computer simulation that helped with visualising things.

Bocce players not featured.

Next step on our quest to maximise the Paris Museum Pass was the Concierge, a former palace slash prison with an interactive iPad tour that described both.

That experience was much better than the Louvre's guide, and you certainly left with a connected feeling to the time of the terror, having spent your moment in the former cell of Marie Antoinette, who spent far more than a moment in it herself.

From there, and after another kebab in another city park, we entered Musée Carnavalet. Once again, this was an institution that was an attraction in its own right. Originally the mansion Hôtel Carnavalet was converted into a museum when Hausman was doing his thing on the streets of Paris. And once they ran out of room the Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau next door was annexed to join the fun.

The restaurant in the courtyard of Musée Carnavalet

Musée Carnavalet in Paris is a museum about... Paris. Once again, this sounded amazing in Adelaide. Having consumed a mini-library of Paris content after booking my flights, attending a logical, physical catalogue of so much of what I'd covered was naturally enticing. And I do give this museum five stars in providing a comprehensive history of Paris. The first few rooms contain an archive of physical street and shop signs, for example, and each gives you a glimpse of a moment, a life, a transaction between two Parisians and it's awesome. But then you go downstairs and start the history lesson from the old, bark canoes and stone tools uncovered from prehistoric Parisians and realise you're going to be working your way up to modern day and your feet immediately start screaming. Because Paris is unto itself a museum of Paris and there is only so much content you can absorb in seven days. Also there were way too many exhibits of antique furniture and wallpaper. My advice for Musée Carnavalet is the same as it is for Les Invalides, the Louvre and many other Paris institutions - dedicate an entire day to it. Ideally a day inside a month that you are in Paris but otherwise not going to museums.

However, this model of the Bastille was the perfect size to go in the garden. If only I could find it on eBay.

After the museum we took a break for coffee before riding the metro north to Montmartre. Here we combined further history with even more stairs. Getting out of the metro station by foot was like climbing Giotto's Bell Tower, with a bit less claustrophobia. Then there were more stairs up to Sacré-Coeur, and even more to reach the viewpoint on the dome. It was another good sight though. The inside of the cathedral was also impressive, but I didn't take any photos there. I was sorely tempted to take at least a snap of one of the "No Cameras, No Phones" signs and the many other tourists next to it waving around iPads filming.

Looking out from Montmartre

We then took a walking tour of the Montmartre area for even more history, covering third century Christian martyrs and twentieth century famous artists. There is a lot going on in Paris. And I love it, but it's tiring. Sometimes this week it has felt like it would be better to travel somewhere with histories that no one knows for sure. I don't want to trade Paris for that. But next time, that's probably what we should do. Maybe there I would actually feel like I'm on holiday.

St Denis was killed around ~250 AD for his beliefs.

The St. Denis Gate, a fragment remaining of the medieval city's walls, gives a different view of the martyr. Passing drivers don't seem to register the historical significance of this.

Today I tried being a Parisian. After being here six nights, seeing most of the tourist attractions, eating a lot of kebabs and working out how to use the self service checkouts at Monoprix I finally found myself with a couple of hours free to live in the city instead of visit it.

This meant, leaving my hotel wearing sneakers instead of hiking boots. Donning sunglasses and noise cancelling headphones. No backpack, camera, or map. I had places to go and things to do.

My first impressions, it reminded me of living in Sydney. There too, any visit to the city for work or leisure is always slowed down by tourists. Paris is a lot vaster than Sydney. And because of the language, tourists stand out much more here too. I would imagine as a Parisian that it would be easy to feel superior when there is a ubiquitous lower class of human - the tourist - in your daily life behaving clueless and obnoxious because they don't know your language or your culture.

I strode by some tourists on my way to the supermarket, and left them standing dumbly while they waited for traffic signals that I jaywalked through. I reached some gardens with a snack and a beer and music on and felt very at home putting my feet up on a second chair and relaxing under the cloudy, yet warm summer afternoon sky.

My belonging in Parisian lasted until someone sat next to me at the park and their cigarette smoke put me off. Which was not long.

This was actually my second visit to the Luxembourg Gardens today, and third gardens in general. I don't think I will ever tire of going for a walk first thing in the morning and then eating breakfast somewhere pleasant. The destination for us today was Jardin des Plantes. I was forced to eat my oats with a fork as one of the spoons has been MIA for a while.

We then indulged in more summer fruits from the street markets of Rue Mouffetard, as well as a chocolate covered eclair, that we took and enjoyed in Luxembourg under nice skies and in front of nice flowers.

Then we did visit one final museum, because we already had the reservation for Sainte-Chapelle. This place is only really worth visiting because of the stain glass windows, and yeah, they are impressive.

Each panel is a full story, most are books of the bible. I'm starting the plan now for converting my June journal entries into stain glass.

After that we ate lunch at an Israeli style creperie, enjoying a savoury crepe followed by a buttery one. This gave me some fuel for the being a Parisian that followed.

Our final evening: another visit to the bookstore, then dinner at Rosie's BBQ, and a walk along the river enjoying the sunset.

And that was that. C'est fini. Nothing left to do but go to bed so that I can then travel for 26 hours and end up in the cold.

Shuffling through Italian border control like level 99 on Nokia Snake

Cowbells jangling in the cloud cover at dawn.

Strong coffee poured from a moka pot onto microwaved milk in a tiny kitchen in Naples.

The smell of alpine forest. Rounding a bend to see the peak of the mountain Pitalus, and the steep meadows bathed in sunshine.

The colours of Venice after the sun gets low.

The cold, sweet water dispensed by the water fountains suspended on the cliffs along the Path of the Gods.

Removing my hiking boots after ascending and descending the hundreds of steps from Amalfi to the Valle delle Ferriere.

The view of everything from the top of Arc de Triomph where a hazy, grey sky turns the muted, symmetrical avenues of Paris into an infinite sphere of amazing views.

The contrast between the bald, muscular Italian man overtaking us at 120km on the freeway and the tiny smart car in which he is seated.

Tucking the lower half of my shirt up into my backpack straps so that my exposed abdomen can leak off some heat into the humid atmosphere.

The shower in Amalfi with its warm, heavy water falling from directly above in a glass cubicle of perfect proportions.

Cheesy dance music thudding as the crowd dances beneath the eaves and shutters of 500 year old buildings, while lightning flashes overhead.

The surge of the Paris metro 4 line accelerating from one station to the next.

The heat of the sun in Rome being instantly extinguished by the massive shadow of the colosseum.

The taste of the puddle of butter in the centre of a French, buckwheat crepe.

Standing between the monumental size of THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON on the equally immense Louvre palace.

Sitting still in the Luxembourg Gardens under a stormy sky.

Naked and wet in the middle of Qatar airport.

Before... After

I've been back from Europe for over a week now. Did I ever really go there? The thousands of photos indicate yes.

I've ridden my bike three times already, in an attempt to conserve some of the summer spirit. The first trip was to the supermarket, then on Monday I rode along the Torrens to visit the office. The sky was overcast, the water was brown and the boring, muted towers of the Adelaide skyline gave me a visceral reaction. I muttered some ungracious things about the city and did not take any photos.

Since then my body has adjusted to the dark and the cold and the damp. It was definitely a good idea to put fresh bedsheets on the bed the day we left. There is still eight weeks of winter remaining, but at least the backyard that confronted me after a week away was not just a gigantic pile of mulberry leaves, but a couple of flowers too.

Saturday was my third bike ride, a trip to the markets between downpours for delicious, strong coffee better than anything I had in Europe (except maybe one in Rome) and cheap fruit. I felt a lot better after that one. Then we rode back home.

How can you understand the lifecycle of something that lives for hundreds of years? Do trees have brains? These questions and more are asked in The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, a book which I read in about three days this week.

I love trees. They're tall and stoic, so I relate to them. Like Peter, I too feel a sense of serenity and belonging when walking beneath an ancient forest canopy and that is not just because most ancient forest canopies I've walked under have been adjacent to a thriving craft beer industry. There was a day in Switzerland last month where we walked through a forest ever so briefly and it reminded me of the endorphins of hiking in the forests in the Pacific Northwest. Nearly every chapter in this book also gave me that feeling.

In Hidden Life, Wohlleben summarises the results of many studies into trees and tree "behaviour". Do trees have a sense of taste and smell? They can react in different ways to different predators. Can they remember, and count? They respond to stimulus in different ways after being conditioned, and seem to know what time of the year it is. Do they have friends and enemies among their forest neighbours?

The answers are fascinating, though simplified from what I am sure are rigorous scientific experiments. However at times I did worry that the author may love trees too much. A lot of his narrative seems to be personifying natural selection, biology and physics as thought, knowledge and memory. Surely trees don't have brains. What they have is really just chemical reactions and electrical impulses.

Which, I guess, is actually how my brain works as well...

Perhaps the real problem here is that I have personified myself too much.

It was three degrees this morning, and I couldn't help think back to the summer of last month and some of the unsung heroes that made it what it was.

Water Bottle

After a day of juggling water refills in the four small bottles we accumulated on the flights over, we bought this bottle in Rome and proceeded to refill it countless times from the free and often constantly running water taps in Italy, Switzerland and Paris. The bottle finally went dry at the security checkpoint for the final flight back into Australia due to the Australian government's policy to keep incoming passengers dehydrated. As if we needed another reason to think Europe was better than Australia. It was recycled in South Australia (hopefully).

Bottle in Lucerne in front of one of the million free, delicious water fountains of Europe.

Spoons

What started as a pair in Rome for the cost of one gelato (I fished them out of a bowl of spoons sneakily). Despite being compostable they proved extremely durable and honestly I do not feel confident to put them in a green bin. Extremely handy for consumption of high protein yogurt and pudding tubs directly from the supermarket, and sturdy enough to stir a Tupperware tub of oats and yogurt on a walk, where other spoons failed and crumbled. Half of the duo went MIA in Milan, the other is still going strong four weeks later.

Yes, we did bring the Tupperware from home for this purpose.

Knife

Probably the only positive out of the takeaway lasagne I bought in Florence was the serrated, plastic knife which then went on a killing spree, including slicing several baguettes, cutting up a cucumber during a picnic in Paris, and spreading a lot of knock-off hazelnut spread on croissants and crepes.

One last crepe for the road, Charles de Gaulle Airport. Also featuring the backup hazelnut spreader, a Gelato scoop from Rome.

Forks

Drafted in Rome on our first weekend, started life in a takeaway pasta and went on to scoop a variety of savoury snacks and home-assembled meals. Also pitched in as a spoon after the attrition of our original set of two. The back of each prong was hollow and tapered in at the point, making them quite annoying to clean.

A tin of tuna in Montmartre. In Europe, tins of flavoured tuna are actually large enough to nourish a standard sized human.

Socks

The good thing about merino socks is, like Marino shirts, as long as you don't soil them you can just hang them somewhere to air out for a day and then rewear them. (I will die on this hill). This makes them ideal for vacation as you only need to pack a few shirts and socks to get you through a long holiday. This is okay for a month, but the Smart Wool socks I bought in 2013 have unfortunately reached the end of the road. Bought in New York due to me not packing enough socks, I had no idea that I would fall in love with the best, most comfortable and temperature regulating socks I'd ever wear. I remember being disappointed when I realised what I'd bought wasn't a 2 pack, unaware that I'd get more wears out of these socks than any other pair so far in my life.

Alas, you can't wear socks every second day of winter for ten years without them eventually succumbing to wear and tear, and though there are only a few holes among the thin parts unfortunately hanging them outside for a night won't fix that. The time was right to say goodbye, and - like Jim Morrison - lay these socks to rest in Paris.

Skin on my Toes

It was a long and painful death, but it died for a good cause - the sights of Ischia and the Amalfi Coast, and from the tops of the landmarks in Florence.

Low resolution for your viewing pleasure.

Belt

(Not Pictured)
My belt did not die in Europe, but it earned a medal of honour for being able to pop the lids of multiple cheap as heck beers in Milan and Paris when I lacked a bottle opener.

Butt Pillow

(Not Pictured)
Lasted until Naples, then taken by the trains into the unknown because I was in a rush to get the suitcase and forgot I'd been sitting on it.

I added better image zoom and optimisation to Bradism today, after June 2023 cracked 100mb page load. Other than that, nights are essentially as above.

It was a very family and Adelaide focused weekend. Mum arrived Friday night and stayed the weekend. Saturday morning we had coffee at My Grandma Ben at Bowden. Then there was a walk from Grange to Henley Beach. Saturday evening was My Brother's Engagement just off Goodwood Road. Sunday morning we walked Nash Along The Torrens. Then the afternoon was spent learning the basics of quantum physics in Oppenheimer and then dinner at Daughter in Law on Rundle Street.

I received a parcel from France today containing my notepad and the July/August 2012 issue of Analog that I left behind in Colmar.

What was not in the package was Uni-Ball Signo 207.

The biro had been mentioned when I'd listed what I'd inadvertently abandoned, and it was the reason for me estimating the package value at €5. Staring into that reused Amazon cardboard and seeing only Alsace air made me realise it was gone forever. Dead or missing in France like Private Ryan.

This made me sad. I wrote a lot of words with that pen, albeit not recently. It travelled with me across the world twice. Losing it made my remission from storytelling sting a bit more. I do still write occasionally, usually by keyboard these days, but I'm devoid of any commitment or habit that would define me as a writer. And I hadn't typed a word since before my holiday on anything that was still in progress.

But tonight, in memory to the pen, I typed a fresh 500 words onto the end of my current project. And if it ever gets published the dedication on the first page will be obvious.

I soaked up a lot of sun today as the brutal summer that I will probably be journaling about sadly in a few months set off a flaming canary into the blue sky.

The quality and precision of weather forecasting available for free online in 2023 is excellent. With my work calendar how it was, and the neighbourhood flowers how they are, I knew as early as yesterday morning that I'd be walking past a blooming jasmine vine in the late afternoon when the temperature would be around 20 degrees and the wind about 20km/h. Despite the total lack of surprise, it was still pleasant when it did happen.

As I approach a decade of home ownership I'm sorry to say that I have not improved much when it comes to home improvements. I feel a lot of internal pressure to be better at being a handyman. I watched a lot of football and Big Box Hardware Warehouse advertisements at an impressionable age, before I possibly could have realised what the subconscious messages I might be digesting because of this association were.

These days I can make holes in bricks and fix tap washers with a 90% success rate. But I am not one for renovations. This explains why the shitty, constantly breaking three-panel sliding door on my dilapidated shower with its weak-pressured showerhead that sprays the back of my shoulders each day has been the norm since I moved into my current house in February 2020. There are many skills a handyman should have, and organising other skilled tradesmen to come and do larger jobs in exchange for payment is one I have struggled to develop the most.

If I didn't have to pay tax, I could probably get a whole new bathroom every year. But paying $1500 for a new shower screen and installation of a new showerhead has eluded me for many years. What if the actual fair price is $1400? What if they drill through the tile and hit a pipe and water sprays out once again below my head level? What if I have to talk to someone on the phone? Despite these obstacles, finally, I succeeded in procuring and having delivered a new shower screen and - after a few helpful holes were drilled by someone with the right drill-bit - I installed a new shower head too that I can actually stand under.

Is suffering for 1200+ days with a terrible shower experience the secret for bathing bliss? After I replaced the plumbing tape and had a drip free experience tonight, I think the answer is yes. The glass of the shower walls now reaches close to the ceiling. The door doesn't fall off when you get out. The Methven showerhead seems to magically increase the pressure of my plumbing, the cascading water feeling both firm and silky. It reminds me of Amalfi, standing in a much narrower shower screen getting drenched by an endless waterfall of warm water to wash off the day's hiking. All that was missing is a little, wooden-framed window through which you can see the mountains as well as the buildings across the street.

I think installing that as a feature is gong to be beyond me.

On the weekend I walked a loop around West Lakes under grey, drizzly skies. Sunday morning I walked along the Torrens and into North Adelaide for a bakery visit. That afternoon I ate a huge chunk of pork and bystanding garbage directly out of the bin. My name is Nash the dog and I am living my best life.

The Monday morning walk was the more pedestrian circuit between home and the local park. About five minutes in, I had to shit and after scooting about in a hunched pooping position it became apparent to me that not everything that was in that mouthful of garbage was digestible. Luckily my human, Bradism himself, had the bag ready to go and he yanked the compromised, half-exported turd right out of my butt and off I went again, smiling toothily in the late winter sunshine.

Well, I definitely learnt my lesson, which is: it's cool to eat as much as you want out of the garbage if you have a giant being watching out for you at all times.

I don't like growing older, but I'm getting used to it. It's not like there are any better alternatives available. And it was a good excuse for taking Friday off work, hiking the long way around Morialta, then having lunch at Little Bang.

The whole long weekend has been pleasant, with a day trip through the grey cloud curtain to Victor Harbor yesterday, multiple coffees, and lunch at Alex's today. Despite being 39 I've kicked a football, worn shorts, played minigolf, finished a computer game, deadlifted, eaten way too much cake in a single sitting, and many other activities more suited to those with more testosterone than whatever my body's declining natural levels are these days. I've also gardened, sorted my work emails, worked on mobility, followed the stock market, and thought about my tax return. So the opening of this entry remains true.

I'm not sure exactly how I should plan out the last year of my thirties, nor how much deviance from expectations life is likely to throw at me. I guess I should really think about what entry I'm going to post when I'm forty.

Bradismlocks was taking a walk through a winter and came upon a house in a wet, cold part of the space-time continuum. This was very tiring. In the house there were three months. Bradismlocks tried June, which was amazing - it was warm, and there was a lot of adventure and delicious foods and not much joint pain. "This month is too awesome," said Bradismlocks. Next month was July. July was cold, dark, filled with work and not much adventure. "This month is too not-awesome," said Bradismlocks.

Bradismlocks tried the third month - August. The bed was not just right. The porridge was not just right. The chairs were not just right. Bradismlocks realised with horror that June was actually just right and that it was not possible to go back. At least now August was over, along with this journal entry...

After multiple duckling sightings today, it is clear that Spring is over and I'm both warmer overnight and closer to death. In the latest Above and Beyond mix he also shouted out that an amazing summer was coming to an end... This seems like a good moment for finalising my latest seasonal playlist and reminiscing about it. I was in Italy like twelve weeks ago. It feels like it was another lifetime. How does that make me feel about my trip to Europe in 2016? That was someone else's existential crisis in someone else's lifetime.

Hopefully writing about some of the music I listened to a lot over the last twelve weeks will help with keeping every moment of my life compressed like a pancake inside my own mind (except the embarrassing parts obviously).

The title of this mix is Estate Winter 23, a name I chose because "Estate" is the Italian word for "summer", and "Winter" is the Australian word for "suck shit we don't believe in double glazing or insulating houses".

Here's to you, Winter 2023. Whether it was hearing a reggae remix of Metallica on a warm morning in Parco Sempione, or listening to the original version on shitty headphones on my ride home from Wayville on a sunless day in August, such a specific stretch of months has never made me feel so free and helpless at the same time.

Johnny Jane, your voice carried over the streets of Paris the night before I flew home. Gorje and Manchester Orchestra, you were lullabies for afternoon naps. Spoon, the soundtrack to trains across France. Milky Chance, summer vibes regardless of the weather. Various trance and progressive house tunes, you are like the Vaseline over the camera lens to make work feel more beautiful. The rest of you, well, I just know I listened multiple times during the mundane walks around my neighbourhood, or while shivering through rehab in the gym, or while frolicking in the glorious parallel universe that is the tourist destinations of Europe - or just remembering that.

I've been wanting to journal lately. There is a lot happening in life, but nothing that fits neatly into a few paragraphs with some narrative structure plus a pun.

The last two times I have ordered a flat white at a café I've received a cappuccino. This kind of made sense on a sunny Sunday after our walk around St Clair and viewing of moorhen ducklings (henlings?) among the mosquitos. I phrased Vanessa's cappuccino order as size, then variety combo, whereas when I ordered the flat white I started with variety and ended with size. This could have caused confusion. Whatever. I'm not afraid of a little chocolate sprinkled on top of my frothed milk.

Today there was no Vanessa or second order. I handed over my keep cup like it was 2019 and I paid $4.50 for a flat white like it was 2019. There was no size specified because they just give you whatever amount of coffee fits in your keep cup. Again I received a cappuccino. Also I'm not sure, but I think they called my order out as "Brett" rather than "Brad". But what are the chances that someone with a similar name to me and the exact same recycled aluminium keep cup ordered a coffee at the same café as me? And no Bretts yelled out "Hey, that's my keep cup!" as I walked out, screwing the lid on to cover the thick layer of chocolate powder sprinkled across the top.

Am I subconsciously sabotaging my own coffee orders, and requesting chocolate on top without even any memory of it? Or does my deep voice in a noisy café saying "flat white" sound like - when half-drowned out by the milk frother - I'm saying "cappuccino"?

Well, powered by caffeine and cocoa, I picked up where I left off yesterday in trying to improve the performance of a flow that needs to generate a 700MB file with 96MB of java heap. And I did make a lot of progress. I had to pause mid afternoon for my follow up with the rheumatologist, who confirmed that I don't currently have rheumatoid arthritis. I worked this out during our initial consultation when he was poking around at my bones. My finger still swells up when it's cold, and despite no almonds since autumn I am now entering my seventeenth spring of chronic back pain. Neither of these things are caused by an autoimmune condition or lupus. That's good. He did say I have a remarkably straight thoracic spine. He said people would "kill for it". I hope not, it would be worse than back pain.

I googled it later today, and maybe it is not a good thing. There's something called flat back syndrome (not cappuccino back syndrome) that can cause lower back pain and/or heart conditions. Am I going to need to spend another $400 on specialists to get told there's nothing to worry about again? Maybe.

I returned to an office in glorious sunlight. I was walking fast so I could get back to benchmarking, and also because I forgot my headphones when I left. I realised when I was in the elevator down at 2:20pm and I didn't go back up because my appointment was at 2:40pm. I arrived at 2:39pm, and the doctor called my name (not Brett's) at 3pm. So I could have gone back to get the headphones. If I'd done this my ears would have been a lot warmer though by the time I got back.

I spent the rest of the afternoon testing and tweaking acknowledgement timeout settings, before a call at 5pm which delayed my bike ride home until 5:30pm. This made me a little uneasy, as the sun felt a lot darker than it actually was - especially in the canyons of Adelaide's central business district, and I didn't want to get hit by a car. I felt my usual sense of relief when I reached the Torrens path where I would be out of reach for most cars for the rest of the way home. Every time I had a view to the north I felt a nice, warm breeze. The sky, in the golden hour, was all sorts of vibrant shades of orange, pink and yellow. Fluffy clouds lined the horizon, which looked beautiful. But I was wearing my sunglasses the whole way because I don't want any more bugs in my eyes. However the polarised lenses muted the colours quite a bit and made the clouds look like the plain, frothed milk on the top of a flat white.

The last week of September has been the kind of unrealistic spring weather you dream about in winter. Sunny, warm enough to wear shorts, but not so hot you can't go outside. Basically perfect, if you don't suffer from allergies. I've been riding my bike into town when I'm not working from home. Drinking coffees in the sun. I can't help being fascinated by flowers and the lifecycle of plants.

On the weekend we went to the Barossa to dog sit, and took Nash along for the ride. This presented more opportunities for enjoying the weather. We did the full Kaiserstuhl walk after having to cut it short last time due to injuries. I ate cereal, fruit and yogurt on a log in the morning light watching the birds before striding on up the hill and it felt like this was what my body was made for.

While in the area I also tried award winning bacon (it tasted like bacon smells like) and visited Greenock Brewery for a tasting paddle. I also walked around a lake and took in the golden canola fields.

The second brown snake spotting made us to decide on cutting the trip short, and we packed the second dog into the car for two more nights of dog sitting back in Adelaide.

I feel like I will finally sleep well tonight.

The other day I walked by some blooming Spanish lavender in someone's front yard in Croydon. The entire garden was overgrown with the purple flowers with huge springtime bracts erupting from each flowerhead like the botched lip injections on a sea of Instagram superstar wannabes. I've seen bracts on a lavender before, and these were something special.

Well, a couple days of fucking flowers everywhere later (and a sideways rain storm that thrashed the house with water and petals to boot) I kind of figured I'd imagined those gigantic lavenders in Croydon. I was walking that way again today, and so I double checked and lo and behold there was the tiny field of jumbo bracts in vibrant, pale purple.

I wanted to take a photo, but from every perspective other than my own it would have looked like I was photographing some strangers' living room window, so I didn't. I just enjoyed the view as I walked by. And because my hamstring tendinopathy was making me miserable I pondered the fact that in my mortal life I will never contribute anything meaningful to society, not even something as simple as a field of lavender, or even a picture of one. 2,375 journal entries all combined felt less valuable than one flower.

But then I thought, maybe the world needs me just to observe the bracts. Maybe among those hundreds of purple blooms there is one flower that no other set of eyes came to rest on but mine. I can offer that for free. That's something.

I ate a duck, mushroom and cherry calzone for dinner tonight. Sharing this because I don't think I'm ever likely to write that again.

After last weekend where my only social excursion was a routine of visual beer puns from the owner of a craft brewery, this weekend has been packed with seeing people and also a lot of eating. Vietnamese for lunch Friday, beers with an old colleague that evening, picnic in the park Saturday. Mother over for dinner. Pizza parties and then Italian dinners.

The New York Times, host of Wordle, have a new game called Connections that has added some variety to my life once a day. The premise is that you find groups of four related words, but some words are ambiguously in two categories to throw you off. My social interactions are similar to this premise. Alumni from university, former colleagues, current colleagues, family, ex-teammates, wedding partied, high school friends. Many across multiple of the above.

It is nice to have connections.

I watched a video the other night about new co-pilot features coming in November for the Office suite. The demonstration included summarising the unread contents of an Outlook inbox to find pertinent information about a specific topic, scanning Teams meeting recordings to extract actions and key information, and turning raw data in Excel into reports with visualisations based on a prerogative.

As someone with access to multiple O365 enterprise licences, and working on many, many projects I saw a lot of potential being demonstrated and I figured I should aim to be on the bleeding edge when it came to AI augmentation of my workload.

Edge has a built in Bing AI query these days, which is available already, so I decided to hone my skills by asking it a question about the client credentials plugin for the HTTP Request component in Mule to see if it could solve a configuration problem I'd spent the past day trying to resolve.

Well, blow me down, it came back in thirty seconds with a solution that sounded exactly right, and it included some source code that quite simply added the missing custom JWT claim I was trying and failing to find a place for through the wizard.

I was not surprised when I added this code and received a compilation error. This is not the first time an AI LLM has blatantly lied to me when it comes to code. Earlier I was experimenting with possibly building a Svelte app and I didn't want to learn the Wikipedia API, but after Chat GPT kept inventing new query params I realised I would probably have to.

It was a sunny afternoon today so I decided to make a coffee smoothie after lunch. Normally I prepare this in the blender by starting it on power level 3 for 30 seconds, then increasing the level by 1 every 45 seconds or so. About four minutes later this typically results in two litres of thick, creamy and consistent smoothie. For some reason today I was compelled to press the pre-programmed "Smoothie" button and I watched in horror as the blender separated the ice from the liquid, and created a half glacier half ice-melt half-filled jug. Again, AI had let me down. I guess I'll have to keep using my brain and wrists for another few months yet.

Every work week I have to manage four different Outlooks to do my job. For this long weekend I got to enjoy four new and relaxing outlooks instead.

The long weekend concluded with whatever work-related application is synonymous with driving for kilometers down a blacked out hill dodging fallen branches and trees.

In the distant past I used to perform several minutes of dynamic stretching before using my body for basketball games or long runs. Today I found myself going through wrist warm ups to prepare myself for a business meeting where I'd need to shake hands.

While this is sad, I was happy with my wrist's performance today. I forgot my ergonomic mouse AND my rolled up beanie that I use for ligament padding, but I got through a day in the office using the default mouse setup that all the normal people were using without any pain! Maybe this was because my lower back and hamstring tendon origin were on fire! You can only suffer so much.

My lunch plans got cancelled and despite forgetting my ergonomic equipment I had remembered to bring my backup lunch - 2 Minute Noodles. But given the conditions I left those in my locker and treated myself to what is apparently an Adelaide institution and its best panini.

Well, it was no All’Antico Vinaio, but it's a lot closer to my house.

No matter where I turn in my house I see something half-arsed that I did or built or bought. Examples include: the shower grouting, the hair straightener hook, the cupboard door under the kitchen sink, the cardboard curtain on the window above the stairs, the rug, the rangehood lighting, the front door shelving.

I spend a lot of time at work getting the colours correct and the alignments perfectly straight in my architecture diagrams. I proofread all my Teams messages. I update design documents after go live to include any changes during development. Is this why I don't have the energy to full-arse home improvements? Or is physical work just a lot harder?

Last weekend I tried to get through a few things on the to-do list. I half-arsed a mount for the fan in the gym, and I half-arsed relocating the tomato from a pot to the corner of the garden. Now the tomato is dead. It's tied up like a crucifixion to a trellis, but I know it's dead because I didn't dig a deep enough hole or erect a sturdy enough trellis or keep enough roots attached when I lifted it from its pot. I loved that tomato. It provided nearly three years of amazing service and killing it was no way to thank it. Will this be enough to motivate me to stop half-arsing things around the house? I don't know, but my passionfruit vine can only hope.

Last year I listened to Power and Thrones as an audiobook. As it regaled from start to finish of the Middle Ages in a thoroughly entertaining way I couldn't help wishing that Mark Corrigan (aka David Mitchell) were narrating it. Mitchell is the perfect comedian for me, wordy, not smug, but not too much self-deprecation. The perfect combination lampooning the past while still possessing a historian's authority.

Well, when I saw he'd written Unruly: A History of England's Kings and Queens and that he'd also personally narrated the audiobook I felt like the simulation had come up aces. This is the exact kind of content I'd wished for during Power and Thrones, albeit for a much narrower slice. Mitchell is in top form for this book. I'm not the type of person who'll ever piss themselves laughing. The equivalent for me would be a short, audible chuckle. And by those standards I was doing the equivalent of pissing everywhere. It's the first audiobook I've needed to slow to normal speed I think ever so that I could catch everything in its rich comical, historical detail.

The only reason I considered not rating this book 5 Stars is because it coasts along through the centuries with delightful cadence, then stops abruptly after Elizabeth the First. I understand why it stops there, but I still felt disappointed. But if wanting more is what you feel after a read like this I think you can say it was a good book.

After listening to David Mitchell's voice for so much of the past couple of days he is now appearing in my dreams.

How much do I like APIs? A decent amount, it seems. They keep me employed, to an extent, and they make it pretty seamless for me to check the weather, my email, the stock market, along with a thousand other daily use cases. They justified my work paying for me to fly to Melbourne for two days to attend a conference about them.

I don't just like APIs because of the free food and chance to spend time in airports and around lakes. I like APIs because, I think, they're just my kind of software.
Two aspects of my personality are solved by good APIs.

One, prescribed, effective communication. APIs have standard protocols and mediums. Connecting to one can be done at any time. Responses contain the data you asked for in the format you expect. There's no standing around with a half eaten pastry wondering if you should speak now. No waving back at someone who was actually waving at the person behind you. No lingering once the message has been delivered. Good APIs are elegant and clear.

Two, APIs enable maximum efficiency for tiny increases in value. You can asynchronously plug in to an operation while the main program carries on. I prep my milk and take my fish oil while I'm cleaning the blender each morning. If the interfaces of the froth button and my mouth weren't always available I'd spend more time each morning achieving the same result. APIs let me upload images while I'm creating the entry, and spam new iServer objects via a script instead of using the UI.

So yeah, I do like APIs. And free food. And even kinda airports.

Social activities planned for the weekend all vaporized for a variety of reasons. Instead, how I spent much of my time was building an API into Bing Chat so that I could use it from my PHP application. I couldn't do this directly as I needed to host a NodeJS library to act as a proxy. So I elected to deploy a serverless function app in Azure to fill the gap.

As an IT Professional I've advocated for serverless solutions plenty of times as Cloud becomes a more routine part of organisation's infrastructure landscape. There is much to like about the concept of code that's only running when you need it, that will spin up in milliseconds any time you want it. But despite having a reasonable understanding of how that works under the hood, I've never actually deployed serverless code myself. So there was an element of magic that lingered behind the curtain.

Building and deploying a serverless API only took a few hours, and that included setting up an Azure account and installing Visual Studio Code plugins. The only real problem I had was with a version of Node that was too high. I called my API a few times from my PHP application and it worked. Such a mundane experience, but it felt like I was finally over the threshold and ready to call myself a Cloud expert.

Away from my computer, no one seemed to care that there was a piece of code in a database somewhere, but not hosted until it was called into action whenever it was needed. I went for a walk around the neighbourhood, enjoying the golden, sunny light knowing nearly everyone I was passing had never deployed serverless to the cloud.

Some days it seems bizarre that my job is to sit, which is not very comfortable, and not to walk up steep hills, which feels so natural.

I experience a moment of self awareness at lunchtime. I was walking back to the office from the city library. A borrowed book and a kilogram of low fat strawberry yogurt balanced in one hand while I tried to slide my sunglasses on between the headband of my noise cancelling headphones with the other. I realised that I was probably peaking.

I enjoy reading history books, though it typically leaves me feeling infinitely small in the zeitgeist of human history aka the universe. There's been approximately 108 billion humans on this Earth (according to Chat GPT), and a number several magnitudes greater of total mammals (Chat GPT refused to get specific). Since synapsids broke off from reptiles and started on the evolutionary high way to developing LLMs (Dimetrodon isn't a dinosaur, but actually my great-grandpa?) there have been generations and radiations of so many layers and layers of creatures throughout the epochs that eventually gave us humans and golden retrievers and elephants without scrotums.

I found Liam Drew's I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals endlessly fascinating as he took me through the stages of evolution that led to nipples and middle ears and brains. Every time he explained how one of our mammalian traits could have developed - like hearing, and being able to survive out of water without oxygen - it made so much sense. Like, well, yeah I can see why that trait led to a higher success rate than other animals without it.

There were also lots of good titbits of a lighter nature. Like, apparently sperm were first observed by the person who invented the microscope. He didn't even let anyone else have a go first.

The chemistry of genes and hormones also was insightful. Apparently in one experiment with rats - who usually press a lever to be rewarded with food - were given a lever that resulted in baby rat pups being pushed out the chute. All the rats did not press this lever, except the group that they dosed with oxytocin triggering hormones and those rats pumped that lever until they had twenty babies at their feet. That explained a lot.

While I now feel even more miniscule, I do feel less like I am at the top of an evolutionary tree, or even a leaf on a branch. On timescales of millions of years I'm basically overlapping Napoleon in comparison to Dimetrodon. I am essentially background noise.

Tonight I attended a meetup for Australia's preeminent online bargain finding website. It played out how I expected it would. Chow negotiating a deal with the owner of the barcade for better discounts on the free dinner. Me briefly interacting awkwardly with strangers from the internet, then taking advantage of the unlimited play on the pinball machines partly to avoid conversation and partly to learn how to tilt machines without being penalised. I did ask a few people the small talk question I prepared in the car. What's the best bargain you found? Only one person had an answer. I focused mainly on the Wheel of Fortune pinball where I successfully solved two puzzles, GIANT PANDA and UNSALTED CARAMEL. Solving puzzles results in a delightful multi-ball period.

On Wednesday evening I walked with Mum and Nash around the Torrens after dinner. She was complaining about dealing with call centres and hard to understand people. I mentioned that AI and voice synthetization would probably replace those employees within a few years, and potentially my own job as well. After I extolled the benefits of generative AI some more she asked what I would do as a job if AI replaced my current one. I answered that I would pivot back to being an author and writing stories. I don't think AI will take over that for a while yet.

And yet... I finished the draft of my latest story a few months ago which gave me great satisfaction. And I workshopped it after making a return to writer's group where I also received good feedback to help improve it. All that is left for me to send this story to publishers for the small chance of it being published. And I have procrastinated that step more than any other in the process of writing it. Much of this procrastination time has been used to upskill myself in Generative AI.

Submitting stories is so hard because that's the point you lose control of them. And that's the point the feedback loop can stretch to such lengths that the whole hobby feels unfulfilling. Programming in React means you don't even need to refresh the page to see functionality changes. A short story can take months to get rejected. That means a thread is running in your brain for all that time. You can try to ignore it, but it's there.

But getting stories accepted is more fulfilling that pushing code or even running serverless function apps. You have to try and submit, even though rejection will come. And what better time to learn how to handle this fear, when AI is coming for our day jobs.

Saturday started with a nice walk up Brown Hill with Alex, featuring views over the city and an excited dog.

And ended with watching the 36ers being demolished at home, where I also did not get close to catching a packet of noodles from cheerleaders led by a giant chicken.

Technically it ended with a Zooper Dooper and Luka highlights with Tim, but I didn't take a photo of that.

I started this day having no idea how to implement an Azure hosted AI chatbot that used Retrieval Augmented Generation to incorporate my organisation's data into its response.

By the end of the day, I still have no idea how to implement it, but I'd done it!

Less than three days after professing to having implemented a semantic search with a generative AI front end without any idea how I'd done it, I found myself in a conference room delivering a Powerpoint to about twenty people with authority on the same subject.

This wasn't actually bluster! If you stumbled upon this article due to keyword searching... Since Monday I not only learnt to understand RAG, Semantic Search and hosting models in the cloud a lot better, but I even implemented a Flask UI for one! That's how fast things move in the world of AI in 2023. Or perhaps a sign of how simplified some of these cloud services actually are thanks to the actual geniuses working for the AI and Cloud giants who I admire greatly. Also technically the AI generated the Flask UI for me.

I rode my bike home exactly 160 minutes before sunset. The weather was perfect. Blue skies, a couple of wispy clouds, golden light. I rounded the corner under the King William Bridge and into a panoramic view of beauty. Rowboats cutting through the water. Vibrant grass. Glass buildings shimmering. Water features bubbling. People out enjoying an afternoon beside the Torrens. It was nearly offensively beautiful. What right did I get to pedal my way through a scene like that. I mean the smell wasn't fantastic, but other than that, I felt blessed.

Currently, my favourite coffee in Adelaide based on taste is The Grind in the central markets. They are a treat, as the price is now $7 for a large flat white which must be noted contains a lot of shots of coffee that you will feel after sipping.

We filled up two backups with fruit and vegetables after that, for about $19 (which for future reference was quite good and would have been double at the supermarket).

Then we went to the supermarket and spent a lot of money on groceries like frozen berries, sugar free soft drink, and a royal flush of dog treats.

There's a lamb surplus in 2023, so lamb legs are now much cheaper by volume than excellent tasting coffee. Lamb is a good meat, but a pain to roast as it takes a long time. Today I experimented by searing it in a frying pan with salt, pepper, olive oil and garlic at about 11am and then putting it in the slow cooker on top of a cup of chicken stock and a few sprigs of rosemary. It was ready about 6:30 and I have to say it turned out extremely well for something I put very little effort in to. I even made a wheat-free gravy out of the leftover stock and some chickpea flour and despite being lumpy that was easy cooking too.

In more uplifting news, I reworked the irrigation so that the tomatoes will get sprinkler water now.

Good thing I drilled a hole in the ceiling when it bloated from rain water, according to the roofer who came tonight. If not, the ceiling could have collapsed.

He then proceeded to demolish the ceiling, sending plaster, sodden insulation and black mold down to the floor.

Today was not the first day of my life that began with sunrise in North Adelaide walking the dog and sunset at the beach walking with my wife. I didn't take any pictures, which is not because there was nothing to see nor great light. I am privileged that despite what happens in my life I can enjoy pleasures such as these with such regularity that I don't even feel the need to document them. I also ate what apparently is Australia's best breakfast of 2023 and I didn't take photos of that either.

What I did document today were these Nash themed oat-flour gingerbread cookies.

The inevitable happened. Not getting Covid, but getting Covid with the precise worst timing such that many enjoyable social, fun activities would need to be avoided.

The summer solstices of 2023 had been going so well for me up until now. In June the day started with breakfast and a walk around the shores of a lake in the Swiss Alps. And then an evening of music and sunshine on the cobblestone streets of a little French town. Today started with a sunny stroll through Prospect, and ended with a socially distanced walk along the sand at the beach.

While missing Christmas due to Covid will suck, I take comfort that at least I am not suffering from anything more serious. Like scurvy, thousands of miles from home on a rotting timber ship in the eighteenth century. Although at least that might have come with more of a sense of adventure.

Every Monday of 2023 I made a short, coffee related video.

Coffee and my phone, basically the only two ubiquitous aspects of every day of 2023.

On Saturday morning, the first day of my ten day Christmas break, I watched as garbage man emptied a dumpster of recycling into the same compactor as he'd just lifted two dumpsters of trash into. I heard the metal on glass crunching as rinsed containers were pulverised into bags of leftover popcorn and snotty tissues. It felt like a bad omen. I was right.

The Detroit Pistons were my favourite team when I was a kid. I don't recall why. Grant Hill probably, because no other names on the 95-96 roster resonate with me except for Joe Dumars. I had two Pistons hats. One was an old school Snapback cap with a small logo on the side. The other was - from memory - a shiny blue hat surfaced with some soft material and a huge logo. My friend's dad gave it to me as a gift and it was an awesome hat. In fact, the hat may be why I was a Pistons fan.

I feel like a Pistons fan again today. They suffered their 27th consecutive loss, setting a new league record. I too have been taking L after L in December 2023. Today I registered another consecutive positive Covid test, leading to my sixth straight day of cancelled plans. My injuries are making it hard to even sit and do a puzzle. I don't feel sick, but I'm not willing to drink a beer until I get at least one day past a negative test. This is Covid in 2023. I almost, but not quite, feel like I should actually go out and spread this variant because it is so mild. But I won't do that. I will be a good social citizen and hope that someone out there appreciates that they're having a good time this weekend because I made a nice decision. For me, it feels inevitable that I will spend my entire holidays stuck at home until the day I go back to work.

Vanessa, Nash and I walked to McDonalds tonight for a socially distanced soft serve. The machine was not out of order. Maybe that's a sign that things are improving.

This was not how I expected to spend my Christmas break, but 1500 pieces later at least I can say I helped to do something.