30 YEARS YOUNG

It's my 30th birthday today and on this occasion I've written down sixteen pieces of advice - general or career related, original or borrowed - that I've learnt over the last 3 decades. Enjoy. 

1.     Don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about how you live your life. You’ve only got one, so just do what the hell you want.

2.     Don’t listen to anyone who tells you it can’t be done. Because I’ve already proved them all wrong again and again.

3.     Cut down on sugars and caffeine and eat meat and dairy and you’ll never need to diet a day of your life and you’ll be less moodier and become an entirely different person.

4.     Only a fool thinks they know everything. The wise are always keenly aware of how much they still need to learn and they never stop searching for more answers.

5.     Those who don’t look after their skin and health wilt quickly like a rose. Those who do mature like a fine wine; better and better with age.

6.     Exfoliate and moisturise your skin with oil to have fresher happier skin.

7.     Never ever take anyone’s love for granted. All relationships are like gardens that need daily love and nurturing to survive. Your friends and family are precious and you need to value them and respect them.

8.     Selfishness will only get you so far in life. Corruption or no-corruption, the world revolves around relationships and networks; so make yourself a trustworthy and reliable friend to your colleagues and connections.

9.     There is absolutely nothing good that can come about from having spiteful jealous people in your life. You can’t help them and they can’t help you. Get a thousand miles away if you want to live a happy life.

10. Go easy on yourself. Roll life’s ups and downs. Let yourself cry. Learn from your mistakes. And watch how beautifully you grow stronger and more compassionate with every hurdle that you tackle in life.

11. Live moderately and frugally. But reward yourself with naughtiness occasionally – chocolate and desserts I mean!

12. Be disciplined or you will never achieve anything in life.

13. Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t get what you want at other people’s expense. But if you really want something then it’ll eventually happen if you keep dreaming and believing, but never as soon as you’d hoped. (Our gymnastics motto was: Dream, Believe, Create, Succeed.)

14. The greatest gift you can give yourself is to learn to be grateful for what you have and live graciously. It doesn’t mean you can’t have goals, but it helps you to enjoy the present fully.

15. You can never ever be too security conscious. Anyone that says your just being obsessive-compulsive obviously doesn’t know what a pain in the arse it is to have something stolen.

16. Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. The only battle to be fought is against yourself.

Miranda the "Australienne" - Radio interview - 05/01/2015

The following is a link to hear me speaking on French local radio in Noumea, New Caledonia.

It's an hour long interview about the Northern Territory, advice on moving away from home the first time, the Machu Piccu and Lima, Melbourne, etc.

I recommend they visit the NT and do the Jumping Crocodile Cruise and taste test a Croc Burger after a chartered fishing tour to catch the sought after Barramundi!

Enjoy!

http://nouvellecaledonie.la1ere.fr/emissions-radio/evasion

Emission title:

Miranda Welch, Australienne (05/01/15)

Miranda Welch née à Darwin en 1985 ; Elle a suivi son mari qui a trouvé un poste en Nouvelle-Calédonie. Elle est diplômée en génie Civil et spécialisée dans la gestion de l’eau. Elle nous dépeint avec passion sa ville natale et notamment une particularité locale qui est la visite d’une rivière aux « Crocodiles sauteurs » ou on peut y découvrir des spécimens de plus de 5 m !

My New Year's Resolution 2015

Happy New Year! May 2015 be a year full of fun times, love, caring, giving, receiving, good weather, community participation… I hope too it's a year where we think about and act on the things that really matter and we rise above our selfishness to work actively at making the world a better place (building tolerance, compassion, fighting pollution, fighting weed infestation and feral animals, donating time to community groups, supporting local artists…)… not the whole world, but just the little bubble that each one of us lives in and I will say it was enough… and I hope people, especially youth, get off the internet and back out into the real world and start again to really spend time with others, learn to actively listen again and learn to appreciate the simpler things in life again, because happiness is found in rainbows, sunshine, wind, bird song, people's company and nature (and a beer at the pub!) and it'll never be found at home on our computers… go out and find it again in 2015!!! 

Film Review: The Connection (La French) 2014 - Cédric Jimenez - Jean DuJardin

If I could only recommend you go and see one film this year, The Connection would be it.

The film follows the true story of the rise and fall of Pierre Michel "The Judge", played by The Artist's Oscar winning Jean Dujardin, against the Marseillaise mafia gang The French Connection in the 1970s. The story had already been put to cinema in The Judge (1984), but this time the story's been redone much more ambitiously.

It's a typical good guy versus bad guy story, but it's the bells and whistles in this film that really make it so much more than that. The director achieves the perfect combination of action, drama, comedy and tragedy with the irrepressible Mediterranean sun beating down on every daytime scene in the film. The Mediterranean settings give the film a sense of glamour and surrealism, juxtaposing the surreal nature of life as a successful drug trafficker in the 1970s, passing time between seaside villas and the biggest nightclub in Marseille.

This is film making at its best - it's as if the screen writer and director Cédric Jimenez pulled out an old school book of film making craft written in the 1970s and followed all the old rules to perfection to bring about not only a brilliant piece of cinematic entertainment, but also of art. This film is a living, breathing and intimate nostalgic reinvention of the 1970s and a just and accurate portrayal of a real gangster story, with some liberties in representing the character's private lives.

Cédric Jimenez grew up himself in Marseille in the 1970s and says that the story of the Judge has run through his veins his whole life. He has wanted to make this film as long as he has wanted to be a film maker, starting his career initially as a documentary maker. He chose to shoot the whole film with a hand held camera, which gives the film it's intimate and raw feeling.

It is an absolute viewing pleasure to be immersed back into the 1970s era and the sets and costumes have been rendered to perfection, to every last detail. The velour furniture, the dingy nightclubs, the glamourous dresses and old style police surveillance technologies are a delight to rediscover. The cowboy style of policing in the 1970s makes the action scenes much more exciting than anything depicting the risk-averse 2000s - the only person in the film wearing even a bullet proof vest is the gang leader Gaëtan "Tany" Zamper (Gilles Lellouche).

There are countless unforgettable scenes in this film, the dialogue is witty, the action is edgy and the acting is superb. Another highlight is the film's soundtrack featuring endless classics from the 1970s (Blondie, Kim Wilde and the Velvet Underground) and tunes by composer Guillaume Roussel that reflect the film soundtracks of the time (for example, his tune Meurtre de fou).  It can be tough to watch a sub-titled film for 2h15min, but believe me it's worth it.

Five out of five stars from me. *****

Link to soundtrack list: http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-221419/soundtrack/
Link to Meurtre de fou: http://www.deezer.com/track/90537423

The Day I Met a Chechen Mafia Hitman on the Trans-Siberian Train…

2nd May 2013

We're on the Trans-Siberian route back to Moscow 36 hours on the train. Masha, our guide, meets a Chechen guy in her cabin who takes half a day to talk to her, but when he finally does he straight out tells her he has a gun on him. She invites him to come and meet us, because he's been asking about us. Via her translation we have a long conversation with him after lunch. He's 28 and he's (apparently, assuming we believe all he says about himself…) head of security in a mafia security company in Moscow. He has a Chechen wife in Chechnia with 3 children, a Russian wife in Dubai and a mistress who he doesn't support in every city he works in over Russia, about five. He says your wife should fear you and that every woman is a liar. He believes world war three will begin in Syria according to prediction in the Koran and that Hitler always wanted to create Israel and because his wife was Jewish, he wasn't really anti-semite. He believes the Queen of England wants to move to Australia like most Westerners and he believes they are all preparing to move to Australia when WWIII begins. He believes the Chechen language was the language of Noah, as in Noah's ark and sites that in Chechen Adam means person. He tells us his name is Aslan.

Aslan used to be a free wrestler and his brother was the World Champion free wrestler in 1997 (which makes him some dude called Kuramagomed Kuramagomedov according to google). A Chechen won the free wrestling at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. He said we in Australia live in a bubble and assumed we didn't know much about Islam, so I told him some of us had travelled in the Middle East and one of my best friends is Iraqi. We said we're trying to get out of our bubble. I asked if he thought Russia had the same influence as the USA on Israel and he said that no one has any control in Israel. I asked if he's happy with the situation in Chechnya and he said he wouldn't be working in Moscow if he was happy. He doesn't want his children to grow up in Moscow because it's Sin City. He asked about kangaroo meat and was interested to learn from Tim that you can find Halal kangaroo meat. He believes Australia is the land of plenty and we tried to explain to him that it wasn't entirely true, but it was hard to know if we managed to convince him at all; he was obviously a man of conviction. He gave Tim advice on having multiple wives that Julia and Masha didn't enjoy translating. He joked that if your wife misbehaves you can shoot her. Everyone laughed nervously.

Aslan is a man of average to shorter height, bulky but fit, wearing a cap and track suit. He looks to me like a fair Lebanese - he has honey brown hair and sapphire blue eyes that pierce and intimidate you if you let them. He's not handsome and his face is very aged, he could be ten years older than me, but he's 29 in October. He was more than happy to share his world view and I/we flattered him with our full attention so he'd continue to talk freely. His mannerisms were aloof and relaxed, his lower lip relaxed, his shoulders hunched over from years of weight lifting and he'd hold your eyes longer than most people are comfortable with, but I boldly held eye contact with him and ignored his comments about women.

He said if you're honest and brave in Moscow then you can make good money there. Honesty was definitely a virtue of his. He had lunch with Masha, paid for her. The others found our talk too full-on, but it was the highlight of my trip. I was sitting opposite him and I asked most of the questions, some of them pretty bold, but I was careful not to overstep. I didn't let on I knew too much (having just finished reading McMafia by Misha Glenny so my head was full of Mafia information) about his world and I tried to show him empathy to make him comfortable and to try to explain a few things about Australians to give him a good impression of us and our country, but we found out more about him than he did about us.

He said he's never been on Moscow's Red Square, because it's not seen as a cool thing to do. Instead he's driven by in his car and he said maybe one day he'll visit it at night in a hoody to hide his face. He's afraid of flying and tries to avoid it.

When we pulled into Moscow we saw him meeting a Ukrainian mistress at the station. He wanted us to see her and he wanted to show off to us how powerful and successful he was. We were a little disappointed though that the Ukrainian wasn't as stereotypically gorgeous as she could have been, and really, at least the facts stand that he was just a guy in a track suit that we met on the train who could have been anyone.

Is the Expat Lifestyle Really for Me?

Just the word “Expat” sounds so exotic and perhaps high flying to people who don’t know much about it. Or maybe to some it seems like the “in thing” to do; maybe you have friends doing it and you think you should be doing it as well, because well that’s what lots of young people seem to be doing. You can have this attitude to travel and easily spend a fortune on travel, just to be able to say “yeah I’ve been there and done that, too” but it’s not so easy to be an expat and becoming an expat is a much bigger decision.

Like any decision in your life there are consequences, there are advantages and disadvantages. Here I’ll delve into a few of them…

Why am I doing this?

You can’t become an expat without a real sense of purpose otherwise all the heartache and pain just isn’t worth it. You make the choice to become an expat; it’s not like being a refugee where you have had to flee your country to survive. You should see being an expat as a privilege or else you shouldn’t be an expat at all. Why might you do it?
Because you believe you can give your family a better future in another country
Because the career opportunities don't exist in your own country 

·      Because you are working for some cause and to do it you have to be overseas

·      Because you are passionate about multiculturalism and world peace and you think living overseas will have a small impact on people’s tolerance of foreigners if you can be a good ambassador

·      Because you have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, you need to continually be learning, meeting new people and having different experiences

·      Because you are addicted to challenges and setting goals. You want to prove to yourself that you can “do this”

·      Because you are a fanatical traveller and you figure you’ll have a smaller carbon footprint by living overseas and exploring in close vicinity to your new whereabouts.

·      Because you are a natural anthropologist and you are only happy when you are living in strange places meeting amazingly different people

·      Because you want to learn another language, probably for love or for your career, and you believe the only way to learn it properly is to live in the country where it’s spoken

Culture Shock

In my experience it doesn’t matter how many times you move, inside or outside your country, you will always experience some level of culture shock usually in the first six months.

There’s a nice summary about it on Wikipedia I recommend. What is it? So there are phases of adjustment when you go somewhere new; there’s the Honeymoon, Negotiation, Adjustment, and Mastery phases and essentially 3 possible outcomes;

1.     You don’t adjust and you go home. Back home you struggle to fit back in, too initially.

2.     You relocate once and you feel happy there so you stay and totally adapt to the new culture.

3.     You take on board what you like about a culture, but you also maintain the values you see as important from you former culture. In this way you are able to adjust again and again, ultimately becoming an “expat” I guess.

Even if you are lucky enough to count yourself in the third category it doesn’t take away from the fact that you still will experience culture shock again and again every time you move. Believe me it is not fun at all! You feel alone, alienated, confused about who you are and what on earth you are doing, little things seem stressful and difficult and there’s a point where it’s so painful and you don’t believe the feeling will ever end. At this point lots of people go home, only the very stubborn continue to exist the way they are, or those that know they have an end date in sight.

Some people who think they have travelled a lot may think they aren’t susceptible to culture shock. The point is that you don’t get culture shock when you travel usually because you are always moving so you are always in the Honeymoon phase enjoying new experiences, etc. It’s when you stay someone more than three months that you start to experience it.

All you can do to survive culture shock is first recognise you have it, accept you have it, be willing to talk about it to your friends and family and know that it won’t last forever! This sounds much easier than it is in practice!

Family

Maybe some expats are lucky enough to have a family they despise so being away from them is no problem! But most normal people miss their families immensely and are missed immensely, and remember: absence makes the heart grow fonder. This means even those of you sick of your families after a few months away from them start to realise how important they are to you and how much you need to maintain them in your existence.

Thankfully these days there are a million and one ways to keep in touch with our families and a regular Skype chat and daily emails make it bearable. But do you have the support of your family for your Expat existence? For those who don’t it can only make the experience even more painful with the added sensation of guilt that you are perhaps abandoning your family.

Cost

Being an expat is extremely costly, especially for those who like to move around. Every time you move you have to either pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to relocate your possessions or buy them all over again, unless you think you can live on the very basics for extended periods of time, which becomes painful believe me.

Visas can be costly and time consuming and you can spend months unemployed waiting for visas to be approved, which could be days earning money in an easier situation back home.

Visas, red tape and shit

Every time you move to a new country there is a new mountain of red tape to get through before you can live there legally. Believe me this is a huge pain in the bum and alone enough to put lots of people off from trying to be an expat. It doesn’t get easier if you’ve done it several times; it just gets more loathsome!

Lack of contacts and networks

You have know idea how important the people are around you to your own sense of self worth until they all just miraculously disappear from your life and you have to start again from ground zero. This is both liberating and daunting; the people you meet in a new place have no idea that you were that embarrassing guy in high school that got bashed up by the school bullies or whatever so you can carve a totally new identity for yourself. But you might grow tired of trying to recreate your former identity or you might get confused about your new one, is this really me? If you are living in a country that doesn’t speak your native language, you might find it impossible to replicate your former self in the new language, say because you don’t know how to replicate your humour in the new language.

Some people may exist in very tight knit social circles with clear hierarchies. Someone may be well regarded by their peers at home, but feel themselves to be “nobodies” out in the big bad world. An expat situation is extremely threatening to many people’s sense of self-worth and self-image for these reasons.

My recommendation is to build up a network of friends at home that you value and respect and a network of expat friends who know what it’s like to be an expat and who you can relate to when things are tough in the expat lifestyle that your friends back home can’t understand. For many people initially this seems a less than ideal situation, but it’s the best you can hope for. It is important for you to keep in contact with your friends back home for many reasons, but most importantly it gives you that sense of identity you lose in your new home. But the support from your expat friends is as equally as important to stop you feeling alienated and alone during culture shock, etc. It is good to know you are not alone and others understand what you are going through.

A sense of groundlessness

Literally, when you live somewhere new it can be like you have come unattached from the earth. This is especially true if you come from a smaller town and you’ve thrown yourself into a big city lifestyle. Beyond culture shock, there’s an “environment shock” – you can have sensory overload as you adjust to the new sounds, smells, tastes, sights and so much unfamiliarity makes you feel like you aren’t connected to the environment anymore. It is a horrible feeling of loss as your old connection to the land so to speak gave you so much pleasure you were hardly aware of, as it was so natural and unconscious. 

Perks

Well the perks are better known than the blows, which is why I’ve chosen to concentrate on the blows in this article. But if you can put up with all these challenges and stresses of course you can be well rewarded in your expat life. You get to meet interesting people regularly, being outside your comfort zone helps you understand yourself and the world better, and you will have the memories forever of the beautiful places you have seen and all the experiences along the way. As well, the sense of achievement having conquered all those challenges only sets you up to fearlessly take on other life challenges! So you decide now if you think it’s the lifestyle for you! 

Le feminisme: C'est quoi?!

Le mot « féminisme » dans l’ensemble a une connotation négative dans mon pays et dans beaucoup de pays. Il y a une connexion entre ce-mot-la et le mot « misandrie » (comme la misogynie) malheureusement. De plus, il y a une perception que une féministe est quelqu’un masculin, hostile et moche.

J’étais une féministe depuis mon enfance. Je suis née la cadette avec deux frères qui me regardaient comme la petite fille, inutile et pathétique. Depuis toujours, j’ai voulu prouver que j’étais aussi intelligente et aussi forte que mes frères, mon père et en fait tous les hommes dans ma vie.

Pour moi le féminisme est le droit d’être moi-même. Je peux choisir une profession traditionnellement masculine ; l’ingénierie. Je peux jouer au foot. Je peux porter des jolies robes au bureau et dans la rue sans harassement.

C’est la reconnaissance que je suis aussi intelligente et aussi forte qu’un homme dans quasiment tous les domaines. Oui, je cuisine bien comme mon stéréotype. Mais j’ai des autres talents traditionnellement masculins, par exemple le mathématique, la négociation et le sport.  Par ailleurs, j’ai des talents au bureau qui sont utile et féminine en fait comme l’aptitude pour collaboration.

Pendant les premières 25 années de ma vie j’ai cru que c’était inconvénient d’être une femme. Maintenant je crois que c'est davantage ! Les femmes sont fortes, flexibles, créatives et belles. On garde le paix et on peut jouer plusieurs rôles à la fois sans problèmes ; femme, mère, collègues, amie, sœur. On est incroyable !

Le féminisme : c’est belle, dynamique et davantage pour tout le monde ! 

The Boy Who Took His Life

This is a story about a boy, but it could happen to anyone. Maybe because it happened to a boy, when boys are meant to be so tough then we realise just how hard what happened to this boy was.

He was a boy from a big cattle station in remote Australia. He had lived there all his life, but in his teen years his parents had to sell the station and moved into the city. Shortly afterwards he took his own life because he couldn't bare the change.

Anyone, who has ever had to move (unless they are almost inhuman) will know how difficult the first six months are - whether you are moving to Paradise or Hell, the feeling is pretty much the same. Anyone, who has persevered and not run home will also know that this pain ends, it is just part of the journey of adjustment. But how many people are aware of this? How many people find the pain so unbearable that it feels like it might never end when it drags on for months and months? And everyone is different, everyone can cope with this pain if different ways. But there are some things you can learn from people who have been through this before that might make it easier for you. Even just to know that you are not the only one who finds major changes difficult. Before I go into more detail on advice, I want to say the first thing that you need to accept is that change is inevitable. The world is constantly changing, as much as we dislike new developments will always be proposed, weeds will keep infesting new forests and the more we understand our own families we realise that nothing was ever as perfect as we were led to believe as children. If you can come to accept that change is always going to happen and we can't do much to stop it (unfortunately maybe) then this is the first step in accepting change in your life and accepting your status as a newcomer.

It's a total tragedy that this boy took his life. I don't know all the details of what happened. What I do know is that maybe just the words "your pain will pass in time" could have saved him and he might have one day learnt to love and embrace the exciting differences in his new home.

Not everyone is sad when they have to move. Many of us want to move and go on adventures. But many of us go on these adventures and realise they aren't as much fun as we imagined when we read about them in books, so we ultimately feel the same feelings of alienation, rejection, etc of someone who never wanted to move without understanding why this happened when we were 100% certain that this was what we wished to do and saved all our money for! Then you feel ashamed - yes you - to tell people what you really thought about a place! You say it was fantastic and you had a wonderful time, because that's what people want to hear. If you say it was a nightmare then everyone might think you were selfish and pessimistic. This can happen if you leave a place right in the middle of your culture shock when you haven't had time to settle in and get over the big bump in your otherwise amazing experience. The truth is everybody has these bumpy months at some stage in their adventure - there's no need to feel ashamed, like a failure who was incapable of fitting in properly - you are only human - or animal as I will discuss later on as I believe it is more the animal in us then the human in us that can explain these mixed emotions when we are displaced...

Long Haul Flying Advice

Yes, this is a post with advice on long haul flight advice. I've been on over twenty long haul voyages so I'd like to think I've learnt something in that time that I can share with less experienced long haulers. Have you only been on a few long flights and at the end you've had terrible jet lag, possibly a migraine and vomiting and you've arrived to meet your long distance boyfriend looking and smelling like... you just got off the long-haul flight from hell?! ...You sit in the waiting lounge in a major international airport like Singapore, Heathrow or Abu Dhabi and you see others, especially the airline hostesses, who look immaculate and you can't understand how it is possible! If this is you, then this is the blog for you.

The main thing to bare in mind is that the flights dehydrate you badly; the strong air conditioners for hours on end dry out your skin and everything excessively and this excessive dehydration is your biggest challenge.

Long Haul Flying tips:

1. ANTI-HEADACHE TIPS
DO NOT DRINK THE ALCOHOL! Now this is one of the hardest rules to follow, but it's also one of the most beneficial. It is so tempting to drink the complementary bevvies (alcoholic drinks), but trust me it's not worth it; you can always slip a bottle in your handbag if it's your last leg of the journey for another day. Alcohol will dehydrate you, which will only lead to oilier skin and increased headaches later in your journey. The same applies for the tea and coffee, you can have a little but don't overdo it.
Even when you think you have drunk enough, believe me you still need to drink more.

You might be angry about losing your water bottle at the beginning of the trip going through security, here is your plan:
Fill up a water bottle and take it with you to the airport. Drink it gradually and aim to finish drinking the whole bottle just before the security gate where they don't accept water bottles. Then you present them an empty bottle and they will (at most airports) allow you to keep your empty bottle.
As soon as you are through security, refill your water bottle. If there's a second security gate that rejects bottles (I've seen it before!) you have to drink it all, all over again. But at least then you can save money on buying expensive fluids in transit and stay more hydrated.
Then on the plane, I choose soda water instead of soft drink, because soda water is water that will hydrate you, whereas soft drink is much less hydrating.

2. ANTI-SMELL TIPS
Bring spare underwear and a spare t-shirt on your flight. I usually change half way through the voyage, so by the time you arrive at your destination you are not too smelly.

At your stop-over go to the bathroom and wash-up at least. It's so nice to at least wash your armpits and at an oriental airport that has fresh water in the toilet you can rinse more. People who can afford it can pay for a shower and a bed at major airports, but if you can't then realise this will do just as well and for free.

As per the moisturiser below, if you haven't carried deodorant "borrow" the duty free tester perfume!

Choose your clothing carefully. Cotton is breathable and doesn't make you too hot or cold during the changes in temperature between transit, takeoff and landing. Trousers, a cartigan, a t-shirt, a jumper or big scarf and closed in shoes will tend to be your least smelly option for an outfit, as well as providing warmth and comfort, which are equally important.

3. SKIN CARE TIPS:

Before the flight, moisturise your skin excessively; especially your face. You can carry some moisturiser with you on the flight to top up or use the testers in the stopover duty free shops when desperate!

Some of the airlines now have a "mist moisturiser" in the plane bathroom. This is really nice as it has an anti-bacterial and moisturiser all in one.

Do not touch your face except for moisturising and definitely don't wash your face with soap even if you are dying to because all your pours are opening up and your skin feels awful! Touching your face will just lead to more dirt getting into the pours, etc.

4. SLEEPING TIPS
Sleeping is probably the hardest thing on the long-haul, especially if there are good films to watch all night long. I don't have much to say here, I recommend watching the films but also trying to get as much sleep as you can at a time during the flight that matches as closely as possible to night time at your destination (if that makes sense)! So in one direction it may be better to wait to sleep until the second half of your flight, but in the other direction it may be better to sleep as much as possible at the beginning of the flight. You decide. I can explain better if you want me to.
Just know that the more sleep you manage the better you will feel on arrival at your destination. Good luck!

5. HAIR TIPS
Well, as with the skin, the hair dries out first and then reacts by getting really oily. I recommend tying or pinning your hair off your face and trying not to touch it for the duration of the flight.

6. YUMMY MEAL OPTION TIPS
Well this tip is just something I've learnt to avoid making a bad meal choice on the plane. I've noticed a correlation between which meal is the best option and where was the last stop-over location or sometimes what nationality airline you are with. For example, if you just left Venice, Italy the chances are that the pasta option will be better than the Asian rice option. But if you just left Bangkok then the rice or noodle option will definitely be better than the pasta option. It seems so simple that it's stupid, but I've found that by following this principle I usually end up with the best meal option on each flight!

Hope this advice may help you arrive a less grumpy, thirsty, smelly, dirty, ugly passenger next time!

Travel Safety Tips

Well probably you have received loads of advice before about being safe whilst travelling, but maybe you still somehow managed to get mugged on that last trip to Paris/Bali/Peru/wherever. You may have heard it was the safest place in the world with low crime rates and how on earth did you still manage to get mugged?! I've travelled in over 30 countries and I've only been mugged once overseas in Berlin - I left a bag of dirty clothes in a hostel locker unlocked assuming no one would be desperate enough to want my dirty traveller clothes! Well below is a list of what seems to work from me - a mix of my own ideas, others and common knowledge. I hope it will help you stay out of trouble for your next trip.

1. Blend In. I almost cried when my parents got mugged in London and at the time my dad was wearing a bright yellow Australia jumper. Why dad, why?!! It may be hard to blend in when you are a blond in Africa, but it doesn't mean you should give up completely and attract attention to yourself. My tips for blending in are - match the colour scheme (if you see lots of black coats wear black, if you see lots of colour wear colour), don't be too noisy and attract attention to that fact you are speaking a foreign language, buy some cheap local clothing and donate it after your trip (hiking boots and backpacks are a giveaway so try to keep your tourist outfit for hiking trips not city site seeing if everyone is well dressed where you are and you are the only person in miles wearing hiking pants and boots).

2. Trust No One. Molder and Scully were wise in saying this. Never ever leave your bag with someone else unless (a) it has no valuables in it and (b) you have warned the person you will unfriend them from facebook if they take their eyes off your bag for a second. A second is all it takes to get mugged.
The oldest scammer trick in the book is "Oh you're from Melbourne, I have an uncle who lives there" then they pretend to help you before coaxing you into a shop you don't want to visit and even forcing you to buy goods you don't want. These can be interesting experiences the first few times, but after a while it's tiresome so I recommend not befriending people who approach you on the street like this.

3. Dine in Local Restaurants If a restaurant is full of tourists then it will be a target for thieves. Plus local restaurants are usually cheaper and more authentic - don't be fooled into thinking being with other tourists makes you safer, not from pick pockets.

4. Keep your valuables on you. You know all about the pouches you can buy. Keep them hidden or keep the zips in site and check them regularly - I'm paranoid about this.

5. If you're alone, don't flash your camera about too much. If there's two of you you can keep an eye on each other, but alone and attracting attention can attract pick pockets, scammers, etc. Just pull out the camera when you are about to take a picture if possible.

6. Be adventurous, but be intuitive. If your gut instinct tells you an ally way is dangerous then most likely it is. Make good judgements whilst your wandering. I check my access routes for a street. I avoid walking next to cars that are parked with people inside them in case they decide to jump out and grab you. I make sure no one is following me when I leave a bank. Listen to locals - in some situations locals have even warned me not to go somewhere, because they thought I'd get mugged.

7. Don't do exactly the same thing every day. Predators watch your habits. If someone observes you dining alone in the same restaurant at the same time every day then you are looking for trouble. I learnt this hearing about crocodile attacks in north Australia - crocodiles can watch you for months, even years, swimming in the same water hole until they know your habits to well and they know the perfect moment to strike. My boyfriend's work van in Lima took the same route every morning collecting the employees until it had been doing this for around 8 months and at a traffic light just after everyone left the bus besides the driver, the bus got ambushed and stolen within seconds.

8. Become Taxi Wise. Not everyone comes from a place where taxis are dangerous, some of us come from places where taxis are very safe or simply expensive so we seldom use them. Understand that taxis are one of your biggest safety risks in many countries. I recommend asking locals for advice about their local taxis. For example, in Lima there are more illegal taxis then legal ones, so if you are transiting between the airport with all your luggage it is recommended to only take a booked legal taxi to avoid being the victim of an armed robbery, etc. In other places, it's simply about taxi-scammers who don't turn on their meters of pretend it's broken - you need to develop an instinct for when this will happen or in many places you can agree on the fair before you hop in the taxi. In South America sometimes people judge that if a taxi has a Christian cross hanging from their rear-view mirror then they are less likely to rob you because of their values - but obviously this is prejudice and won't always be the case.
Maybe this is more about saving money then safety - but another good trick to avoid scammer taxis is not to catch the taxis that fester around train stations, bus stations etc. Walk 20 metres to the main road outside the entrance and you are likely to avoid many annoyances mentioned above to do with taxis because these scammers love to target tourists.

The Shisha Queen

TO MARK THE IMPENDING ARRIVAL OF "THE CHAMELEON AND THE CUCKOO CLOCK" HERE IS A TRAVEL POEM FOR YOU FROM THE BOOK (Illustration and poem by Miranda K.A. Welch © 2013)

She’s on holiday in Egypt
No more racing around for a little while
Her parents and she are touring in a group of Aussies She sees date palms, donkeys and carts
Rides camels
Drinks mint tea and smokes strawberry shisha
She says outlandish things
She makes everybody laugh
She was offered a thousand camels for a dowry
She’s the Shisha Queen
She’s happy sitting in the hot summer air
She likes the feel of her kaftan and scarf
Loosely keeping her covered from prying eyes
She loves the felukas in Aswan
She wants to swim in the Nile again
She’s looking out at the Alexandrian shoreline
It’s half past nine
And the breeze is fine
Out on the balcony
They’re smoking and laughing
The locals are out
They’re sober but they love their own company
Men arm in arm as comrades
Not gays
She’s staring into the twinkling lights
Ebbing off into the horizon
It would be nice to stay for a while
Chill out in a Bedouin tent on soft cushions
She could marry him and stay here
Live in a kaleidoscopic dreamland for a bit
What would happen when she wanted to go home? Would they all just stare?
But what would the local women say?
Would she be lonely in this world of crazy cars and ancient tombs?

Would she really forget forever her home? Getting further and further away . . .
All she can see is what’s around her Welcoming, candid faces
Bright colours
She could own a donkey,
Teach English in Cairo
But
The smog would burn her lungs
The sun would shrivel her up into a premature prune Better not stay

Will come back another day 

A new beginning

Ganesh the god of new beginnings; a funny looking elephant headed man is who we all worship when the romantic first few days somewhere new have faded away giving way to signs of culture shock and alienation. And yet we do it again and again like it is a total addiction that we can only succumb to. This is the start of a new beginning for me that I wish to share with you over the next twelve months. But it is also simply another dot in an already old dot-to-dot drawing, so I hope too to share my wisdom about moving, change and transition. The other journey is a journey to unleash my creativity that has been locked up most of the time over the last few years. 2013 is a year of creative liberation so come along with me and enjoy!

Which type of woman of the road are you?

Who am I speaking to?

I am speaking to you right now and you could be any type of woman of the road. We can be several different types even:-

- the eternal traveller
- the expat
- the first time away from home for studies girl in a far away city
- the "I can't seem to get rid of my itch to move again" girl
- the "I can't seem to fall in love with someone from my own country let alone own town" girl
- the "Citizen of the World" girl who hasn't any nationalist pride, but feels an affinity with everyone


Here I hope to speak to you of your own unique challenges, wishes and questions day to day, month to month, year to year. You need a voice and someone who knows what you are going through. Please give me feedback as I go along and hopefully we will discover we are not alone and some of our issues are universal to the Woman of the Road.

Face Care in Tropical Climates

Face care and travel? What? Hey, this is a blog for ladies so of course face care is relevant!

Women who have recently moved to Tropical climates will find it a shock when their perfect skin is suddenly riddled with blemishes they can’t get rid of. Their favourite skin care products suddenly become partly to blame, much to their dismay.

I grew up in the Tropics and as a teenager had no one to give me good advice on skin care so I used to wash my face incessantly with Sapoderm soap thinking that removing the oil was a good idea – these were the days before the internet so I had no idea who to turn to.

I moved back home a year ago and now finally, at 27 years of age, I think I have become an expert at managing combination skin in tropical weather.

Here is my weekly skin care regime for humid climates:

Exfoliate once or twice per week with a mini face loofa and any gentle exfoliating scrub. Being a tomboy, I only learnt about exfoliation when I was 25! A gay guy working in the Body Shop gave me a lecture for being so clueless! I was so embarrassed, but now I am so grateful he made me change my terrible ways! Exfoliation is your best friend. I like to use the loofa with antibacterial Sapoderm soap, because then you’re removing the dead skin and deep cleansing at the same time.

Do your own facemask once a week. Or even do a few different masks on the same day. Different masks do different things, so experiment a bit. Masks are not only good for your face, but they’re a nice way to pamper yourself, which is extremely important for feeling relaxed and happy about yourself wherever you are in the world. Even on the move you can do a quick face pack.

Mornings:

·      Rinse my skin with a deep cleanser such as Clinique foam cleanser or Liquid facial soap oily skin formula to really clear your pores. Alternatively, cleansing oils also do the same thing and are very effective. Try Clarin’s Total Cleansing Oil. If you told me oil was good to put on your face when I was 13 I would never have believed you, but these products are amazing at balancing the moisture in your skin so your skin stops producing the excess oil that produces blemishes.

·      Straight after, rinse your face with a gentle cleansing milk like Yoghurt of Bulgaria’s. (This step probably isn’t necessary if you used the cleansing oil.)  

·      Dry your skin.

·      With a cotton pad apply Bulgarian pure rosewater as a toner. If you can get hold of this stuff or something similar do it! It is total heaven – it makes your skin feel magic, it smells lovely and is totally natural. It is the gentlest toner and gentle is better because it doesn’t agitate your skin to produce more oils. (The key is to use a toner that is alcohol free.)

·      Apply a very small amount of a good quality moisturiser and eye cream and rub in well.

Afternoons:

·      Give your face a quick rinse with the cleansing milk when you get home just to remove any oil or dirt.

Evenings:

·      Repeat your morning program, but apply night moisturiser instead of your spf day time brand.

Some other tips I have both for the tropics and elsewhere:

·      Carry around with you every where you go the Body Shop’s handy little Blotting Tissues! These things are one of my best kept secrets, especially as someone with combination skin – when ever there is excess sebum on my face i.e. I start looking shiny, I take out a blotting tissue and dab off the excess oil. It stops me from touching my face, which is one of the worst things you can do for oily, pimply, combination skin.

·      Mix your moisturiser and your foundation together before applying your foundation to get a more natural look – read this somewhere and it really gives a nicer finish.

·      Don’t apply makeup everyday if you can avoid it, especially foundation. Your skin is much happier if you let if breath more often.

·      DO wear spf (sunscreen) moisturiser and/or foundations every day of your life. Look after your kids’ too and make sure you set an example and make the whole family wear hats, sunscreen and sunglasses everyday in the sun. Maybe you can’t see the rewards now, but in a few years time you will start to notice the different signs of aging between you and your peers. My parents were extremely strict on us growing up in the tropics and now that I’m 27 people who meet me for the first time often think I am only 21 because I look so young. Maybe occasionally I feel embarrassed if I’m the only one on the beach wearing a wide brimmed hat and a long shirt, but aging gracefully is the biggest reward. Especially pay attention to your face, neck, chest and shoulders as they are the most visible places for sun damage. If avoiding skin cancer won’t motivate you, hopefully the idea of being beautiful for longer will when you think about sun care.