Indo 2011

My 9-5 job is to advocate for Asian language and culture literacy in the school system. Makes sense then, to learn an Asian language, right? I have a patchy track record of languages (shh, don't tell my boss), studying French through high school, hating it, learning Portuguese when I was with Rui, then Arabic and Lithuanian in Vilnius. Oh, and an afternoon learning Korean in Seoul.
So I'm fluent in nothing but Strayn. Charlie studied a year of Indonesian at high school and seems to remember a great deal. So we studied a short course and enjoyed it immensely. Totally inspired. And very much supported by my colleague, the Indonesian Advisor. This week I'm due to start Indonesian Elementary II and in four weeks I'm gonna head to Sulawesi and get some immersion as I cycle around.
I started my cycling training with a lap of Studley Park this morning, hands frozen, eyes squinted in the bright 7am sunshine. Felt like a slug on a tractor but the tour has me riding 60kms every morning so I'll need to keep it up. Four weeks.

This weekend, to the summits

Tonight I'll knock of work as soon as I can, race home in the sunshine, change and get camera and toothbrushes and drive north. We usually stop at Yea for petrol and iced coffees, then on to Mansfield. Camp will be at Lovick or Bluff hut. Big day is planned for Saturday, driving to the start of walk which follows the Australian Apline Walking Track (AAWT) over to Mt Magdala, which I've never been to. Then we'll head to Mt Howitt, where Charlie and I did one of our first big walks together, back in 2007... or was it June 2008? We'll walk along one of the most beautiful ridge lines, the cross-cut saw, along to Mt Buggery where we'll camp on Saturday night. Sunday we hope to leave most of a our gear at Mt Buggery so we can walk to Mt Speculation, a summit that we have attempted a couple of times before and been thwarted. In the past it has been too slow, too hard, too hot. This time we hope to make it! Conditions look good. Sunday arvo back along the cross-cut saw to camp at Vallejo Ganther Hut where we cooked dinner on a snowy night a few years back when we camped by Devil's Staircase and had mouse run over our tent. Monday we've got off from work and then plan is to come back over Howitt and Magdala down to the car and home.

To Do List

Somehow the first half of this year seems gone already. I have so many things I want to do and so many things I should be doing and so many things I am doing. I'm overwhelmed. So here I list things so I'm not forgetful.

• Learn to type so I don't get a sore shoulder
• Learn to swim so I can...
• Learn to row
• Get into crisis management, do the Red Cross course
• Operate my LoMo camera
• Fix my Zenit
• Learn Indonesian
• Learn to use statistics and data