Adventures of An Urban Nomad

Many, many, many years ago I read the book “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig. One of the things which has stayed with me is his observation about the difference between people on bikes and those in cars. Today, these comments came back to me very

Last Friday evening I took the dogs for a walk. Molly was clearly quite energetic and started to run. For a while I was able to keep up with her and then disaster struck – she suddenly hit the accelerator and I lost my grip on her lead. I ran

Have you ever noticed how spot-on the music of your youth was? I’ve started to really appreciate the Beatles (hey ! I never said I was a fast learner). “Help!” & “With A Little Help From My Friends” have been running through my head a lot recently and “When I’m

Let’s start a campaign for causeless love. There’s plenty of hate in the world and it can often be justified. The simple task of getting help from your telco will usually result in angst and frustration. Often we take that out on the person at the other end of the

The ability to forget is a powerful tool in the survival of the human species. I suspect that if not for our ability to forget most people would be celibate after the first child. Not only as a result of the birth but what comes after. Bringing up children offers

I once heard about a management course in which the participants had to train a chicken to perform a particular task. Clearly, raising your voice and pointing out “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times how to do it” is not going to achieve the desired

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke Last week I gave a talk at the Manly Warringah radio society entitled “Your Life As A Radio”. It was about how our thoughts and feelings generate energy which affects our thoughts and feelings. This in turn creates our life

This morning I woke up in a state of fear that almost had me panicking. I’ve been worried about the big hole we’ve currently got in our house-sitting bookings as well as a number of other things going on. Added to that an experience/dream from some time ago recurred. In it

The house we’re looking after at the moment belongs to a lady whose main residence is a lovely farm outside Sydney. This house is her city “camp”. Consequently, it’s not set up for full-time living and a lot of things are not present – like some basic cooking utensils. On

Got a bit of a musical theme going here – in my previous post it was channeling Joni Mitchell and now it’s REM (It’s The End Of The World As We Know It – and I Feel Fine). Last week the contracts were exchanged on the sale of the house

This week the house was sold – YAYYY!!! Well, at least we think so. There was an offer and an acceptance and then the lawyers got involved 🙁 A clause in the contract which the buyer’s lawyer was not happy about. Very minor and easily sorted but has put the

Now that the owners are back I can tell you about the disaster which befell us a few weeks ago. When looking after someone else’s house and pets what do you imagine would be the worst thing that can happen? For us it was the death of one of the

We’ve finally settled in to our current residence – it ONLY took us 3 weeks. We’ve sorted out the household technology (oven, microwave, cappuccino machine, DVD player, TV, washing machine, clothes drier…..), our business technology (more on that below), nearest shops, travel routes, best walks etc. It’s amazing how much there is

This week I discovered a hidden treasure. You know your friends – well at least you think you do. When we started on our nomadic wanderings – a whole 2 weeks ago 🙂 – a question occurred to us about maintaining our library subscription. We’ve really been enjoying our local

This week has been one of pain and angst resulting from dealing with technology. Before we began our nomadic lifestyle (1 week ago) we were very happy with our technology. We had a cable internet connection with 3 computers and a couple of printers all working very happily together. I

We’re on the road 🙂 Last Friday we moved out of the house we’ve lived in for over 10 years into our first house-sit. We’re officially “persons of no fixed abode”. While this may be “interesting” from a legal perspective it does feel somewhat liberating. One of the very exciting

This week has been devoted to preparing the house for sale. We’ve had a team of painters here for the whole week. That meant cleaning and emptying rooms and trying to stay one step ahead of the paint brush. During this time we also had the house washed. We discovered

Danita & I have decided to become urban nomads. We’re selling the house and, being very open to options and possibilities, have investigated house sitting. As we’ve talked to others about this we’re finding it’s much more common that we had expected. Our main tasks at this point are :

A few weeks ago Danita & I drove to Frankston (near Melbourne) to visit my daughter and her family. We returned to Sydney via the Hume Highway. This is a great road, in good condition, which bypasses most townships and has a speed limit of 110kph pretty much all the

Recently I spent time with two men – Mr B & Mr K. Mr B is well read, knowledgeable on a very wide range of topics and a considered and deep thinker.  Mr K is an alcoholic who had lost his business and family as a result of actions by