A tourist in my own town

Again, I've been really slack.

The cliched stresses of apartment hunting in New York nearly brought me undone, and I haven't felt in the mood to write much in the last two weeks.

The story has a happy ending though - I've found an incredible place on West 15th Street, just around the corner from the Chelsea Market. I can walk to work, and I'm near almost all of the major subway lines which is sensational. I move early January. I'm terribly sad to move out of my lovely sublet in the West Village, but it will be fabulous to settle into a place of my own.

The visa processing has taken so much longer than I expected, and with the rare opportunity to spend three or four weeks with my family over Christmas I decided late last week to fly home to Perth in Western Australia to spend the time with my family. I've decimated my Frequent Flyer points and it's going to cost me an arm and a leg to get back to NYC in early January, but it's worth it. Once I start working it will be hard to take such an extended break.

I've been hanging out with my sisters and my mum and my dad, and yesterday morning I went for a long bike ride by myself all along the coast, watching the ocean waves underneath the cloudy, stormy sky. I stopped in at one of the beach and had a quick swim, which was delightful. Unsurprisingly, after all this bonding-with-nature-type stuff, I'm feeling very zen again after the stresses of the last few weeks.

We had a huge electrical storm last night and the weather is really odd - just under 30 degrees but lots of rain, which is strange for this time of year. A friend sent me some photos of another storm that happened in Perth last week, and I've included a couple below. (If you know their provenance, please let me know).

My cycle route yesterday took me from Swanbourne to Fremantle and back again - I felt like a tourist in my own hometown, which is always kind of fun. Favourite part of the excursion: spotting the itinerant surfers in their combi van using the wing mirrors to shave their stubble into a semblance of respectability, and the old guy with the electric bike whizzing up the coast path playing Phil Collins loudly on his portable radio. Sometimes I do love this town, for all its sleepy nothingness.