And my brain goes poof!

Great heavens above.

I just bought our tickets. We fly out of Vancouver, Canada on Thursday, September 13 and arrive in Melbourne, Australia on Saturday, September 15.

It's really, really real now! At the moment of this writing, the freak-out-spazz level of my brain is approximately 5.7 out of 10. I expect this will increase to a full, rip-roarin' 10 in a few hours.

Strange - I'm scared, but I'm grinning!

Necessary Geek Gear

“Necessary” may be an overstatement here, but I’m trying to decide which nerdy indulgences Glen and I should pack along on our trip. The laptop (which plagues my thoughts on a regular basis) is coming, according to Glen, and he intends to fit it out with a computer game or two that is easy on the system requirements. The availability of a computer game will ensure that Glen and I do not resort to staring, poking, and eventually boxing in order to amuse ourselves when we get a bit squirrelly. As the laptop is more for work and professional development related stuff, however, I shall leave it out of this discussion.

What I am wondering more about is what small, space-and-weight friendly diversions can we bring out when spending the occasional “night in” at a hostel or kicking back with particularly interesting or friendly WWOOF hosts. At the moment, the three most practical nerd diversions I can think of are:

1) A couple sets of gaming dice (the infamous D20, as well as its friends – the D4, D6, D8, D10, and D12). For the uninitiated, the ‘D’ stands for ‘dice’, while the numbers refer to the number of sides each dice has. These are crucial for any tabletop role-play game, and it would be fun to scratch up an impromptu D&D game and teach some people how to play. There are few things quite so satisfying as playing pretend while drinking bear and throwing around dice to see if your character can beat up a horde of goblins. Furthermore, they only occupy about a square inch of space when bundled up.

2) Our Munchkin card game. Cards are a good thing to have, but Glen and I don’t play normal card games, unless it is the occasional poker night with Glen’s buddies. And this is one of those stupid games that you can whip out anywhere, teach the rules in about five minutes, and have a rip-roaring good time. We bring it with us when we decide to line up for absurd periods of time to see movies of particular interest. It is slightly larger than a regular deck of cards.

3) My zills. As I am going to be keeping up with my belly dance practise while down there, I want to have my zills with me. I also want to have them because I can make a great deal of noise with them, thereby producing hours of amusement on my part while annoying the snot out of everyone else. They are very small, light and easy to pack despite feeling like a couple of dinner plates strapped to my fingertips when being played.

I’m rather concerned about over-packing (a classic rookie long-term traveller’s mistake), so picking amusements requires considerable deliberation. Truthfully, I think that Glen will be naughtier than I in the over-packing department. I’d like to be able to pare our stuff down to one carry-on sized bag each, but he is insisting on bringing a 70 L pack. I’m guilty of large capacity packing as well, as the best bag I’ve found so far is a 60 L fellow. As long as we don’t carry too much weight, the large bag size shouldn’t present a problem, comfort wise. Live and learn, I suppose. We don’t be able to really figure out what is best for us until we try it.

Partially fledged

Now that the visas have been acquired, impatience to 'get stuff done' has increased. Today’s thing-that-got-done was to become a member of WWOOF New Zealand. We should receive our “Wwoof Book” sometime in August, and we are therefore able to actually make inquiries to hosts and make a list of the places that seem the most enjoyable. I’ve already got a few marked out for possible inquiry. The main problem appears to be that there are many, many intriguing sounding hosts and – as cheesy as it sounds – we won’t have time to visit them all!

Great Scott Kiwi!

Are you sitting down?


I have experienced governmental efficiency.



But don't get excited, fellow Canadians. It isn't from our government. Rather, it is from the New Zealand government. Be proud, hospitable Kiwis!

The efficiency occurred thus: on Sunday, Glen and I submitted our online applications for our New Zealand Working Holiday Visa. We were fairly certain that there was still space left for incoming Canadians, as the website's new section did not indicate that all the WHV spots for Canadians had been filled. There are set quotas for various countries as to how many working holidaymakers they will allow - Canada's allotment is currently set at 2,000.

I was not expecting immediate processing of our applications. Indeed, the conservative estimates that I had came across (which include some of the NZ governmental websites) led me to believe that we would be waiting about two weeks for the acknowledgement of our applications, and another two weeks for the applications to actually get processed.

Our applications were received, processed, and approved in two days. A mere two days! I am quite delighted. Now we can get our WWOOF New Zealand membership and start plotting which places we would like to WWOOF at and where we might like to work for actual money. Now I feel comfortable booking our flight tickets.

Now it feels absolutely, insolubly real!

Weekend Lessons Part III – Drunken hedonism

The following tidbits were gleaned directly from the experiences of our friends who visited New Zealand a couple of years ago.

5. New Zealand has really good vineyards and wine tours. ‘Nuff said.

6. New Zealand also has a great deal of very good cheeseries. Cheese is, of course, the natural ally of wine. Other natural allies of wine and cheese include: Laurens, Glens, artists, and librarians. Our bases are therefore covered.

7. The humidity in Fiji is absolutely oppressive and may potentially short out electronics such as the laptop we are planning on toting with us. Appropriate cases in which to keep the laptop safe and dry must be located.

8. The best place to stay in Fiji is (according to our friends’ experiences) Caqali island. The best way to approach Caqali is to to to Leluvia island first. Bring stomach remedies for nausea and constipation.

9. Zorbing is overrated. It is fun while it lasts, which isn’t long, but is not really worth the price. It sounds sort of like the overpriced inflatable innertube ice slide that an Edmonton ski-hill runs; quite fun, but they charge entirely too much for the single brief death-slide down the hill.

10. The Rotorua mud pools and thermal activities, on the other hand, are defiantly worth the time and money. The mud and thermal spas were recommended to us, and I intend on taking up those recommendations. Glen and I do love our hot springs.

Full Metal Panic

It seems that every time I become anticipatory about the trip, I begin to get excessively nervous. With a sort of frenetic anxiety that borders on compulsion, I begin checking flight options and comparing travelling by one-way and last minute deals versus multi-destination passes. Prices come up, and impossibilities arise in my mind. I refuse to go into debt for this trip, but I don't want to completley deplete my savings account either. I am able to accept that the seperate investment fund we set up for the trip will be gone - that I can stomach. I can even deal with Glen's comfort in draining his chequing account for our expenses. But airfare costs so very, very much. How long can we afford to stay? What if we are unable to get working holiday visas?

These are the sorts of nagging fears that continually pop up in my mind. Truthfully, this is part of the reason why I feel as though I should go - to get over the sorts of security anxieties that may keep me from trying anything off the scale of complete predictability. Yet it is extremely difficult to simply ignore the nagging voice in my head that insists that Glen and I are being irresponsible, that we are on a wild goose chase for an experience that will ultimately be a dissapointment due to uncertainties over where we will be sleeping that night, how we will eat the next day, and whether or not we should just pack in and go home.

Granted, the logical side of my brain is aware that this Henny Penny worrying is unreasonable. Others have done this before us, and others will do these trips afterwards. We will be able to get a work permit, even if we need to wait until January to apply. At the absolute worst, we will need to cut our losses and come back home. In the end, that is better than not going at all.

And yet I am still frightened. We've invested too much time into this endeavour to stop it now, but I am still terrified despite all the bravado that I claim to have. Adventure should never be easy. That statement was posted at the top of this journal not as a claim to the world at large, but rather as a personal reminder. If this was easy, what would the point be?

All this fretting has had the effect of instigating a roaring headache. I may leave work early today to get some of these issues sorted out. We shall see how the afternoon goes.

Weekend Lessons Part II - A working, flying, smelly mess

2. Glen and I may not be able to get our New Zealand working visas before January, as they are doled out in limited numbers from the start of each year. Our friends recommended that we do not let this delay our departure, however, as we can apply for the visa while we are down there. I was curious as to whether or not having a visa would affect our plans to participate in some WWOOF activities, so I did some digging on the WWOOF New Zealand and the WWOOF Australia websites.

As it turns out, WWOOFing in New Zealand is considered work and requires a work visa, however in Australia it is considered as a volunteer activity and may therefore be done without a visa. As we are now thinking of starting our travels in Australia and then heading to New Zealand, we may spend a little longer ‘Down Under’ to take advantage of the budget friendly travel options that WWOOF affords. Ultimately, we will just have to keep a flexible mind-set when it comes to working, our visas, and our itineraries.

3. Multiple destination flight packages can save a whopping amount of cash. Originally we were planning on booking our own flights as we went along, but now we will talk to a travel agent in regards to multi-destination deals. Hopefully we can find some with flexible departure dates so that we are not roped into specific timelines. If not, I believe that we may just book the one flight from Canada to Australia (our first stop), and keep an eye our for last-minute deals to the other destinations. It will allow us to fly more by the seat of our pants (no pun intended) and with fewer restrictions on our whims.

4. Apparently sunscreen and shampoo is expensive in New Zealand, so we should bring our own. This will necessitate the deployment of several dozen plastic zip-close bags to contain any potential leakages. I’m rather paranoid about toiletry bottles exploding.

Weekend Lessons Part I: Lobster Red and Loathing it

On the Canada Day long weekend (first weekend in July, for all you non-Canuck readers), Glen and I visited our friends in rural Alberta for a few days of fishing and brain-tapping. They had both been on extended sojurns to New Zealand only a couple years ago, and we wished to learn from their experiences. Fuelled by large amounts of food and wine, travel stories and suggestions flowed long and fast. There were several things that we learned that weekend, not all of which came from our friends’ travel stories.

1. SPF rated clothing is a good thing; actually, for me it has become necessary. I learned this after obtaining a very nasty burn during the weekend’s two fishing expeditions. Despite my liberal application and frequent re-application of SPF 30 sunscreen on my body, SPF 55 sunscreen on my face, and a thick long-sleeved t-shirt, I succeeded in catching a sunburn on my shoulders, face, and hands. One of our friends was quite aghast, exclaiming about the impossibility of the burn, as she watched my frequent re-applications of the sunblock. I also caught one whitefish and four walleye, but that did nothing to relieve the sunburn.

Seeing as the New Zealand and Australian sun is much more intense than what my pasty white skin is accustomed to, I need to up the ante when it comes to battling sunburn. As I cannot resort to covering my entire body with opaque zinc sunblocks (mountain resort skiers from the 80’s and early 90’s will undoubtedly remember the neon coloured stripes of zinc on noses and cheekbones that were oh-so fashionable at the time) Glen and I came to the conclusion that actual SPF rated clothing will be the way to go. This is not to say that my entire travel wardrobe will be kitted out with pricy sunproof duds, however I did go to Mountain Equipment Co-Op the next weekend and purchased one long sleeved shirt with a very small collar, and a v-necked t-shirt, both of which claim to have sunblocking powers. It may not be the SPF 45000 that I seem to require, but every little bit helps.

With an odd sort of timeliness, the local paper then ran an article about summer skin care and the complexities of sunscreen application. Apparently most people do not use nearly enough sunscreen – the article cited dermatologists suggesting that people use approximately one teaspoon of sunscreen on their face and around a shot glass worth of sunscreen on the rest of their body. I personally use around two or three teaspoons on my face and neck, and a hell of a lot more than a shot glass on the rest of my whiter-than-white flesh.

Furthermore, higher SPF numbers doesn’t necessarily mean better protection. Formulas with SPF factors of 60 are intended for people with very pale skin that burn easily and still need re-applying every two hours. You can’t just slap on an SPF 60 and assume that it means double the length of protection time of SPF 30, thereby justifying your four-hour UV ray brazing session. SPF 30 should be considered the norm for most people, while SPF 15 is now considered to be a bit on the low side. Also, apply a good half hour before going out into the sun or applying insect repellent.

But what about those lovely new spray-bottle sunscreens that promise easy, simple, spritzable, non-greasy application? The commercials declare that sunbathers may mist themselves with a refreshing burst of protection, while parents can conveniently hose down their children from afar instead of having to perform a rub-down on the squirming, protesting beastie. Unfortunately, the convenience of these products outstrips their effectiveness. The Edmonton Journal article linked below states that the sunscreen is too thin and the distribution too patchy to really be effective. What you should really be using is the thick cream type sunscreens that you need to rub into your skin.

And a note to the budget-conscious: those cream sunscreens are a heck of a lot cheaper than the excitingly new and ineffective spray-on sunscreens. You may need an extra minute to rub the goo in, but you’ll save more than a few pennies.

For the informationally suspicious among you who require sources to back up my claims (I applaud your wisdom, by the way), here are a couple of articles corroborating the info I’ve supplied above:

Is 30 the new 15? (CanWest News Services)

Sunscreen: Answers to your burning questions (Mayo Clinic)

Passports and Pincushions

There is a necessary trial that every internationally bound traveller must endure at some point, a trial that bonds all such travellers with the friendly chains of irritation and bitterness: acquiring a passport.

As neither Glen nor I have – or have ever had – a passport, we went through this tradition a couple of weeks ago. While gearing up for this integral part of our overall travel adventure, we were inundated with a great deal of advice and tips from well meaning family and friends. They warned us about the passport office line-ups, about the lengthy period prior to the passport actually arriving in the mail, and about the fiddly passport application forms that are binned unless filled out with exact compliance to excruciatingly strict rules that govern those documents. Ultimately, we were given the impression that applying for one’s passport is about as invasive, uncomfortable, and interesting as an anal probe.

While the process for passport application will undoubtedly vary from country to country, I imagine that several of the more general, if not the specific, aggravations are reasonably consistent. One must gather several proofs of identity, fill out forms detailing your various goings-on over the past few years, describe nose hair growth, and get a photo that makes you look like a hardened criminal. At the time of this writing, Canadians must also get the signature of a 'guarantor' - an individual of an approved profession who you have known for at least two years – to sign the mug shot and affirm that it is indeed a valid likeness. Obtaining this signature was not terribly difficult for Glen and I, as two of our brother-in-laws are of the approved professions. For people that are not in such a happy situation, getting the signature of a doctor, lawyer, chartered accountant, school principal, or other individual that requires a consultation appointment made over a month in advance is a royal pain in the backside. The reasons for needing to have the signature of someone in an approved profession apparently hearkens back to old class systems and ideas of nobility and trustworthiness (please to not ask me for a source on this one – I truly cannot remember the online resource where I read this tidbit). Happily, the government has recognized that the system is somewhat antiquarian and frankly stupid, and so will be easing the guarantor requirements in October 2007.

There are other ways that the Canadian government is attempting to make the passport application process a little easier is to provide printable online application forms, eliminating the need for a trip to the post office to get pre-printed forms, as well as to provide the option of filling out and submitting your application via the miracle of the internet. Before getting excited about the prospect of avoiding the passport office line-up, however, one must bear in mind that you need to register for the online services, wait a few weeks to get your username and password snail-mailed to your home address, submit original documents such as your birth certificate via standard post, and assuming that the original documents do not get lost in the mail or at the passport office itself (we have heard first-hand horror stories about misplaced birth certificates), wait an additional nine weeks for your passport to be mailed to you. Doing the application in-person requires you to stand in line for a couple of hours, have your documents reviewed by a clerk, be scolded for not filling out a couple of the fields properly, and then wait two weeks for your passport to arrive in the mail. So much for online efficiency.

Following the advice given to us by my parents, Glen and I both took a full day off of work arrived at the passport office at the wee hours of 7:15 am, an hour and fifteen minutes before the office opened. I was expecting to encounter a considerable line-up and was not surprised at the crowd that had already gathered. Glen, on the other hand, was quite shocked at the number of bleary-eyed travellers already standing patiently along the wall. We had some fun conversations with several people in the line, and joked around a lot with a Newfoundlander who needed to pick up his express-delivered passport, a friendly lady who had a gift for conversation, and a really nice guy who sounded like he had moved here from India (I couldn’t accurately place his accent beyond a vague idea of what land mass it was from).

Behind this fellow was a woman who I can only describe as a complete red-neck, the sort that give Albertans a bad name. She looked offended whenever the guy moved to talk to her, would only scoff through her nose at what other people said, and basically behaved in a thoroughly rude fashion. At one point the Indian guy asked Glen and I if we thought it would be okay if he left the line for a minute to grab a coffee, and we assured him that it wouldn’t be a problem. The red-neck woman only gave a curt nod, and once he had left the area, snorted and said something to the effect of being worried that he would shoot her if she said no. I will admit that I was very surprised at hearing that from her, as it is a level of rudeness that I haven’t often encountered. I replied in what I hope was a sufficiently icy tone that I’ve no problem with people wanting to duck out to get a coffee or go to the bathroom, as I hope that other people in line wouldn’t mind it if I did the same. She gave her little nose-snort and goggled at us, not making much of a reply. Eventually the guy came back with his coffee and we carried on the conversation we were having before he left.

Once the passport office opened, the line progressed fairly quickly. It was marshalled by a very small woman with a very strident voice who would march up and down the lines, barking procedural directions at the applicants. Eventually, my ticket was called, and my form was processed very quickly by a chipper and friendly woman. Glen’s form took a little longer, as there was a discrepancy between the home address on Glen’s drivers license and the address on the passport application due to an immanent move. Glen was roundly scolded for holding up the line, had to find me to get a couple of postal codes, was irritated with the unnecessarily brusque manner of the clerk helping him, and was thoroughly annoyed by the time we left the office. However our overall documents were in order, we had the correct signatures, and both our applications were readily accepted in the end. It didn’t take nearly as long as our friends and family foretold and all dire predictions of hassles and hang-ups came to naught.

After our applications were submitted, we headed straight for the University of Alberta’s student health centre for our travel vaccinations. As our approximate date of travel is rapidly approaching and several of these vaccinations require boosters, we needed to get them done pronto. As Glen is still a student at the U of A, we could enjoy the walk-in services that are even faster during summer hours due to the absence of a large number of students. Instead of having to make an appointment, get prescriptions, and then wait hours in a provincial travel health clinic, we waltzed in unannounced, and were seen by a doctor within minutes.

The doctor we saw was quite entertaining, although I doubt it was his intent to amuse me so much. He was very dry in his manner of speech, and frequently punctuated his statements with grumbles about people who don’t vaccinate his children. He went through the necessary checks to determine what sort of immunizations we needed, and then went on to sell us on getting an additional pertussis (a.k.a. whooping cough) vaccination as a "public service" to prevent unintentionally passing the illness on to vulnerable children. After that, we went straight downstairs to the university pharmacy, got our vaccinations at the discounted student rate, went back upstairs and about ten minutes later received our shots. I only needed one, while Glen received two needles. As the pertussis vaccine had to be ordered in, we returned a couple of days later to pick up that prescription and each received another needle.

For the potential traveller or medically curious among you, the immunizations that Glen and I were prescribed were based on travel to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and other areas near there. We figured that those areas would cover our bases as far as vaccinations go, as we are defiantly not heading much further abroad than that. The immunizations we received are as follows:
-Hepatitis A
-Hepatitis B (Glen needed this one, but I had already received my full course of immunizations when I started university and so didn’t need to get it again)
-Typhoid
-Diphtheria
-Tetanus
-Pertussis

Glen and I will both need to get Hep A (and Hep B, in his case) boosters in one month, as well as again while in New Zealand. It will be pricier to get it while travelling, but such is the cost of health. I did not get a rubella vaccination as it was included in my Grade 9 boosters, and we were advised to get malaria pills while travelling only if we actually go to an area where malaria is concerned.

A great many countries do not allow you entry without record of proper immunization. Aside from this requirement, I’d rather spend a few hundred bucks ensuring mine and my husband’s health instead of farting and vomiting our way through our vacation. For a full list of current travel health concerns and recommended vaccinations, visit the Public Health Agency of Canada: Travel Health website. The info on the diseases is valid world-wide, but most countries should have their own specific government website that covers the same subject.