Saved State 1

You lucky, lucky people.

I've been meaning to write up what I've been up to since arriving in Australia, as I'm no doubt sure most of you know I haven't the greatest ability to relay any actual information to people in conversation. People often ask me what I've been up to so far, or what opinions I have formed on what is geographically England's tropical arsehole*, only to have me reply with a dismissive non-comment about something unrelated. Well done me.

Nevertheless, I do feel I should keep track of what I've been up to and tagging everyone I deem polite enough to feign interest in my goings on seems more pleasant than telling you all to "fuckin' read it, comment on it and laugh at my witty observations."

Now, as I'm over a month in I'm going to have to do a considerable amount of back-tracking in my storytelling and my memory is at best abstruse, still somewhat addled by a post-teenage comedown which I suspect will be in place for the majority of my life. With this in mind I am going to be scoring myself points on various storytelling merits throughout this note-blog-story-critique, in an attempt to keep me coherent in my writing and motivated in my...

So without further ado;

Fuckin' read it, comment on it and laugh at my witty observations.



02:00AM.

Wednesday morning.

Far too early.

I'm not fond of mornings. By and large, things in my life are supposed to end by the morning. It could be due to me freestyling my body-clock for the best part of my existence, but I naturally feel sick at any given moment 'ante meridiem', I physically cannot cope. It doesn't matter when I woke up, or what I've been doing, I just find it impossible to function. It may be partially due to this that I also feel that it's completely unreasonable to ask people do anything this side of the day, anything ending with 'AM' in my experience, ends messily (jam, Saddam, Vietnam..). [COMBO +3x50pts]

Still, at a little after 2 o'clock in the morning I pile my suitcase, the contents of which I am still discovering, into the boot of my Dads car and head off to the Cattle Market Bus Station (I'll advise anyone unfamiliar with Ipswich that the name is a relic of its former use and that it is not currently offering dual services). [+20pts]

After what I deemed to be a rather coolly played goodbye, but what probably came off as a slightly awkward and peculiar act of wandering off, I climbed onto a surprisingly busy, but unsurprisingly quiet coach to begin the first 6 hour stage of my two day journey.

Now, I'm not going to retell step for step the entirety of my journey as it involves a lot of sitting and staring at a book. The idea of somebody reading about me reading about somebody else (who himself makes numerous references to his favourite author), does not make for good storytelling... [INCEPTION +100pts]

So just take a couple of minutes to imagine me doing something awesome for the next 18 hours, where I probably resolved a hijacking with a series of back-flips before reattaching one of the engines whilst air-stepping alongside the plane at just under the speed of sound. Yeah, that sounds like something I'd do.

More coffee.

Once I'd gotten over the initial reflex-outrage of discovering that Royal Brunei Airlines were a fundamentally (Note: not fundamentalist) Muslim service and therefore would not be providing alcohol, something I was fairly certain would make my preplanned travel singing both difficult to explain and tediously coherent, [+20pts] I had a comfortable enough journey.

Having been awake for over a day before I started traveling, I was hoping to spend large chunks of my journey unconscious, though this was scuppered by the overwhelming hospitality of the airline, who were more than keen to offer every member of the cabin a torrent of juice, snacks, meals and flannels every 15 minutes, whether they were conscious or not. Retrospectively I might have come off as ungracious, but having managed to fall asleep for the first time in about 36 hours only to be reawakened seconds later by the politely modulated chant of "Sir, sir, sir." I felt my response was entirely justified; Taking in my surroundings and assessing the situation I replied with "Hneurgh?"

"Sir?" Was repeated again.

"No I don't want any fucking ice-cream."

Then a brief pause as the young steward considered the possibility of miscommunication, before reiterating that I should fasten my seat belt. [CONVO +75pts]

As the plane 2-stepped its way from continent to continent, I made the most of my frosted viewpoint over the world. I enjoyed flying over Iraq and tutting at the mess, coming into Dubai at night and seeing it lit up like a neon circuit board that had caught fire, then switching views between the Arabian Sea and South Asian landscape before touching down in Brunei. [+25pts]

Landing in Brisbane at around 21:00 I was pleased to find myself appropriately tired, as it turns out my spasmodic body-clock is seemingly uneffected by jet lag. So I go to check out with my immigration card unattempted and stuffed into my pocket,. This being highlighted to me as a problem I quickly fill it in, ticking all the boxes suggesting that I may be bringing in foreign food, soil and animal products, before being asked where I was going by a large Australian chap in a suit.

"Ah, I was just heading to the back of the queue." I replied.

"Nah, don't worry about that, just go through here." He said, ushering me past a Chinese family and towards a woman who scrutinised my problematic immigration card before sending me to quarantine.

I arrived at the quarantine area to discover that there was nobody there, so I ambled my way through a complicated series of rope barriers to end up on the other side without hindrance. Concerned I might have done something wrong, I began waving my foreign packet of crisps at people as I made my way out of the gate. [STEALTH +100pts]

Finding the whole experience a little disorientating it was good to see Toni, [+10pts] who had apparently just that second arrived. I hugged, kissed and complained to her about the inappropriate warmth of the night, then she drove me through Brisbane city centre. Toni offered to highlight Brisbane's points of interest, but I didn't take that much in on the way back to hers, there were the tall buildings synonymous with any major city, the tallest being inexplicably obscured by some of the smaller ones, there was the area she worked; Fortitude Valley and Toni pointed out the river, which later turned out to be a car park.

Everyone was asleep by the time we arrived back at Toni's and the house was silent, except for an odd, chorus-like warble which I wasn't prepared to question.

Now I'm sure that's far more than most of you are prepared to read, so I'll stop for now, more than happy to have started my note-blog-story-critique a month late, with less than a paragraph of it about me being in Australia.

Cheers.

• SCORE: 500pts
• TIME BONUS: +0pts
• LEVEL BONUS: +1pts
• IMAGE BONUS: +3x1000pts

TOTAL: 3501pts

NEW HIGH SCORE

HIGH SCORES

1. 0003501 - JOW
2. 0000000 - _ _ _
3. 0000000 - _ _ _
4. 0000000 - _ _ _
5. 0000000 - _ _ _

*'Arsehole' is auto-corrected to 'Arsenal' by Toni's computer, you may also be pleased to know that it corrects 'Walcott' to 'Walkabout'.