Where In The World Is Evan?

I got an email today from a former lover of mine who’d become concerned with the thematic direction my blog has taken, or rather, what the content of recent posts implies about my lifestyle. This got me thinking a lot about why I blog, and particularly about the choices I make in regard to what I blog.

In the beginning I had clear motivations for what I was doing, although I don’t think I’ve ever really addressed any of them here. Primarily I was getting seriously fed up with sending off long group emails to a contact list of 76 people and only getting an average of about five replies. I guess it’s a reality of extended travel that the number of replies you get dwindles over time—there’s only so many times a person can read about what a great time you’re having without getting royally sick of it. Conditions in most Chinese internet café’s were pretty rough, and after spending two or more hours writing up an email it seemed like such a shame for that record to just disappear.

When Olen suggested that he could set me up with a blog it seemed like a good way to sidestep this issue. By notifying people of the blog and then posting to a central point I could monitor the statistics on how many people were actually reading what I wrote, broken down by country codes. What I didn’t expect was that far more people in China and around the world would read my blog than people I knew back home.
(Read more …)

Never let it be said that my life lacks variety. After being inspired by the McDonalds documentary Super Size Me, James and I cooked ourselves a truly disgusting meal.

We stir fried a kilo of pork spare ribs in a homemade plumb marinate and then stuffed the lot into a two kilo chicken. The chicken was then basted with more marinade and baked in the oven for two hours.

All the fat in the pork and chicken liquefied and then percolated through the meat, slowly rising to the top and erupting through four small holes in the foil.

Our attempt to carve the resulting meal was frustrated by the unbelievable tenderness of the meat. When we attempted to pick up a drumstick the bone pulled clean out, leaving all the meat behind… oh, yeah

But three kilos of meat proved too much for us, and we could not quite finish.

Check out more photos here.

One of the interesting things about being back in Australia after such a long period of absence is the many things that I get to discover anew. My lifestyle over the last year has been quite dynamic and my interests and attitudes have changed in tandem with many of the external influences in my life. Shortly after I got back I went through the address book on my old SIM card, and was surprised to find how few people I actually wanted to call. By the time I’d finished my deleting frenzy there were only about six names left. Partly this reflected a change in my interests, but it also reflected a desire to start anew, with as few ties to the past as possible.

Although it’s an obvious statement to make, the sort of social scene that I got into while living in China just doesn’t exist here. The bars, the clubs, but more importantly the people and their attitude to life, are just so different. As I no longer really mesh with my old lifestyle in this country I’ve been broadening my horizons a little recently.

On Friday night I drove out to Gippsland with A and J to attend a two day bush party. This party, on a remote farm property, was held in celebration of the anniversary of the accidental discovery of LSD by Albert Hoffman. Having never been to a bush doof before I was in for quite a treat.
(Read more …)