It’s interesting reading through the first blog entry after we got Nettle — particularly, the comparatively low cost of fuel (we pay $25 AUD per 100kms now, as opposed to $20 then), and our wildly optimistic assumptions about using laptops on our leisure battery!

We’ve come a really long way, and learned heaps about living in a motorhome. With the various minor hiccups we’ve encountered along the way, I feel like I’m getting familiar with many of Nettle’s different systems and feel increasingly confident about DIY-ism. The originally dreaded task of emptying the cassette is now effortless, and something I do without thinking now. We (or rather, I) also learned very quickly at the beginning about how to remain calm in the face of navigation hiccups — put aside the anxiety and just go with it!

Speaking of navigation hiccups and driving anxiety, I have to say, I’ve also become a dramatically better large-vehicle driver. After some insanely tiny tiny Italian streets, we’re rather calm about tight spaces now, and find ourselves chuckling about the “wussy” English drivers slowing to a crawl to pass us on laneways when I probably would’ve just happily barrelled through.

As we were discussing just the other day, it’s amazing how much Nettle’s just become our home. We were originally envisioning renting for a while, maybe over winter, to get a break from the tight living quarters — aside from rent-free house-sitting, now we wouldn’t dream of it! She’s our home, and what’s more, she’s homely! We love her dearly.

So, thanks for looking after us for a year, Nettle!

Our decision to remain stationary until Mike’s new app is up and running and out in the big wide world led us to the intriguing prospect of finding the cheapest CL in the UK in a region with strong internet coverage. What fun! We had no idea where we would end up for the next few months – just lots of little dots on a map – it was like a lottery!

Mike spent a while trawling through the Caravan Club site, looking in ever-expanding circles for a suitable place to relocate to.  They were all rather expensive for our liking, so he embarked on a massive project to write some software to drag the entire several-thousand-site CL database from the Club’s website, and make it easily searchable for price (which isn’t searchable on their site).  Several days later, he had a spreadsheet of the sites across the UK that were within our price range, and proceeded to call through the list to confirm the prices, which are invariably inaccurate.

After a rather silly number of hours of work, he’d narrowed our choice down to 4 sites around England’s south-west. The winning CL turned out to be Langarth Farm just outside of Truro in Cornwall. Looks like we’re going to spend a few months in Cornwall then! At first I was a bit under-whelmed at the prospect, despite having wanted to tour Cornwall for quite some time. Before we changed our plans we were going to travel up the east coast of the UK to Scotland and then go back down the west coast. I’ve been pining for Scotland for months now and it looked like I’d have to wait a few more months yet. As the aforementioned friend pointed out, there is something rather funny about feeling let down at the prospect of spending a few months in Cornwall!

During our trundle over to Cornwall we picked up our new (to us) vintage bikes that we’d bought on eBay! Mike’s is a surprisingly shiny blue beast circa 1960s called “Apollo” and mine, also blue, circa 1970s named “Way” short for “Wayfarer”. We’d been looking for these bad boys for a long time and we’re absolutely thrilled with our new purchases.

Mine was in Plymouth which, from our brief drive through looked like a lovely little city.

We made our way to Langarth Farm down ever-narrowing roads, pleased with the promisingly scenic drive on the approach. As we drove we thought about cycling along these very roads with anticipation. Langarth Farm turned out to have many other features of benefit to an extended stay that we hadn’t even thought to check for – grocery store and fish and chip shop in walking distance, small city with everything we could ever need – namely Indian and Thai food – in cycling distance; there’s even an honesty stall down the road selling eggs, potatoes and leeks!

Our days leading up to meeting up with friends in Bath were spent quietly working away, Mike on his new iPhone app and me in my new marketing role as well as my own projects, albeit to a lesser extent as previously. I’m hoping the next app will do well enough so we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can get back to my art and creative biz. In the meantime, I don’t mind the work and I’m learning a lot which I’ll be able to put to good use in my own online biz when the time comes.

We also spent our days going for bicycle rides on our new vintage steeds and marvelling at our friends doing this across continents! The hills (and slight inclines indiscernible to the human eye) of Cornwall defeat me every time and I end up taking my bike for a walk half the time, which Mike kindly documented.

The scenery we cycle through is quintessentially English – gnarled trees, bright purple flowers growing along the side of the road, and of course everything is very, very green. This is an achingly pretty country. It reminds us of Mike’s pretty hometown but on steroids. On one of our rides I commented to Mike how I used to think it very funny that the English settlers in Australia found the landscape depressingly barren and wholly uninviting and that they would try to re-create English gardens around their outback homes – how silly, I thought! Looking at this beautifully lush landscape now I completely understand why they pined for the beauty of their abundant colourful flowers and gentle leafy green woods. The area I grew up in in Australia is characterised by dry scrub, the plants are hardy, tough looking things and the trees are tall, straight and skinny with sparse leaves – and forget about flowers. I can see how this may have proven a slightly depressing state of affairs to our English ancestors.

We missed the lambs at Wootton, and the antics of the local pheasant, Monsieur Squark-and-Flap, but the void was somewhat filled by a rather enthusiastic rooster who I realised sounds just like someone over-excitedly yelling “WOOOOO-HOOOO!”. So, we dubbed him Party Rooster. Every day’s a party for that guy – he loves a good time.

Punctuating the uneventfulness of our quiet days spent in Cornwall, the only other things of note are that our boiler miraculously fixed itself and we now have a functioning shower again – reaffirming our “If it aint broke don’t fix it; if it is broke, don’t fix it – it’ll fix itself” policy; Mike sent his passport and Australian drivers license off to the DVLA with baited breath hoping they send us back a British license and preferably don’t lose his passport in the process as we hear they are prone to do, and we finally got around to “spring” cleaning Nettle. Huh. I didn’t know our skylight was white. And what happened to our windowsill terrarium?

“”Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver”

I celebrated my 28th year on this planet recently. Twenty eight years of my one wild and precious life. This is what I decided to exchange a day of my life for on this particular day.

The Eden Project in Cornwall houses the world’s largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world. It was delightful and quirky and beautiful – the perfect birthday setting for a girl who loftily aspires to bring more of these very things into the world through her art. There were charming little details like stairs designed just for children… and Mike.

And quirky sculptures throughout.

Despite having looked forward to the rainforest biome the most, it was the gardens I got the most joy out of. I found myself thinking about elements I would like to incorporate into our future garden, namely wonky little fences made out of sticks, little stick teepees providing a vertical home for creepers and rows of lush edibles. Plus, who doesn’t love purple balls on sticks?!

Surprisingly, another highlight for me was the cafe! It seems somebody told them it was my birthday because it was a baked goods extravaganza – we’ve been without an oven for a year now and every now and then we crave cheesy baked comfort food and apple crumbles – exactly what we ordered at the Eden Project cafe and it was excellent! The cafe itself is surrounded by a beautiful, brightly coloured vegetable garden. Staff filled up their buckets with delicious looking edible bounty presumably for use in the cafe’s cuisine. There was something very satisfying about watching them work and I found myself thinking what a wonderful job that would be.

We topped the day off with a very satisfying Indian feast – our first Indian (not including the horrible, over-priced quasi-Indian we had in Rome) since we were in England this time last year! A foot massage over an episode or two of our new favourite and surprisingly educational TV program, “The Tudors”, topped off the perfect day. Ooh I almost forgot to mention the triumphal birthday present. I’d had my eye on this skirt for a little while and this was the last one they had – the one on the mannequin in fact – and it fit perfectly! It was meant to be! Thank you mum, dad, Margaret and Chris! I definitely wouldn’t have bought it without your kind birthday donation. Oh, and chartreuse is totally my favourite colour now thanks to the top I also found that goes perfectly with the skirt! Aaah, birthday serendipity.

I am super proud to say that I saw in my 28th birthday, confident that I am putting my one wild and precious life to very good use.

Our one year digital nomad vagabonding anniversary came and went the day before yesterday unacknowledged. This time last year we awoke to our new tabula rasa life in a BnB in Camden, London having just flown in the day before. I think a little reflection is in order.

Then

On the 31st May last year I wrote this in my notebook:

“Come Sunday evening a melancholy befalls in the realisation that I have to go to work tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on and so forth. Well, this is officially my last Sunday of mourning the weekend for hopefully a very long time, if not forever. This week is my last week of work before I take annual leave and then move to Europe with Mike to re-evaluate and re-invent out lives. I never again want to have a job that makes me mourn the end of the weekend. I either need to have a job I love or a job that takes up as little time as possible”.

A note to the people of seaac (my previous workplace), if you are reading this: I still love you and seaac! I thought I wanted to be a social worker since before I knew what a social worker was – in fact, I even talked to Steve, our beloved leader, about all of this in my exit interview. Turns out I’d prefer to be holed up in a little studio day and night drawing and painting strange but beautiful fictional characters and designing yummy collage papers and patterns! Who knew?

Now

I’m working on the marketing side of things for A Tasty Pixel, Mike’s software development business. I’ve learnt how to use Photoshop so I can design my own collage papers and surface pattern designs and have plans to learn how to use Illustrator as well. I’ve designed over 100 of them and even had a hand in designing Mike’s new website! Hopefully Mike’s next iPhone app will do well enough so that we can hire someone to do the marketing next time and I can focus on what I love. Until then, I don’t mind this type of work. At the end of the day I have complete autonomy and that counts for so much. What I would love to do is sell my collage papers, surface pattern designs, textures and brushes online as downloadable files. I’ve pretty much got it all worked out, now I just have to find the time to do it!

Then

A couple of weeks after arriving I wrote this in my notebook:

“The world is full of wonders and we’re going out to see them. This is probably the most amazing thing we’ll do in our lives and this is the beginning. It is all ahead of us. I’m really excited about spending TIME, precious, preciuos time on art. Learning, learning, learning. The thought of learning has always grabbed my imagination with all of its connotations of possibility and the unknown”.

I also remember updating my facebook status with something like this: “I have dallied for too long: Too many paintings left unpainted”.

Now

I’m still really excited about seeing the wonders we have yet to see. Scotland is our next super exciting destination. I dream about being in a remote Scottish countryside surrounded by dramatic mountains, achingly pretty lochs and at the mercy of fierce weather.

I would still like to spend more time on art. It’s funny, for the first time in my adult life I’m neither studying nor do I have a “job” but I am busier than I have ever been. Sometimes when I think about all the things I want to do and learn I feel overwhelmed. I think it’s a pretty good problem to have. Now that I’ve found my passion it’s gained its own momentum. It’s as if it was waiting, dormant, and as soon as a shaft of light fell upon it, everything that was already there, in waiting, unfurled and is growing bigger and bigger the more light it gets.

To round off, some things I know now that I wish I knew then:

1. Put some bamboo mats and towels under your mattress or you will be re-constructing your bed in 9 months because a dirty big patch of mould is growing there.
2. Driving the entire length of France on toll-ways will cost you a small fortune, which you could use instead to buy a small island or put towards your firstborn’s university fund.
3. One month in Ireland is NOT enough time – not even close – and indeed three months in one country is not enough (unless it’s Tunisia) – slow down!

Some things I never anticipated:

1. Learning how to use Photoshop – those familiar with the mutual animosity between myself and all things computers will appreciate the enormity of this
   
2. Starting a small business and being self-employed – not something I ever envisaged for myself but now I wouldn’t want it any other way. Also, knowing a great deal about running an online business – didn’t see that coming.
3. Having a blog and meeting kindred spirits online – I used to think blogs were rather self-indulgent, pointless things and I was even quite sheepish about telling people that I had one to begin with (ditto for twitter)
   

Some things I’ve learnt:

1. How to have an argument – Mike and I live together, travel together and now work together all in a 6×3 metre space! We need to be able to resolve arguments and we’ve gotten pretty good at it.
2. I can wear a pair of socks (light use) 5 – 10 times before they start to smell
3. I don’t think I ever would have dreamt of, let alone done, any of this – the business, the design, the blog – If I had’ve just stayed in Melbourne working 9-5 Monday-Friday with 4 weeks off a year. Not a chance. There’s something about drastically changing your entire life that opens up boundaries you didn’t even know were there and lets you begin to imagine that things can be different, very very different.
   

Michael:

My mother made this comment about our experience just recently, but it’s worth repeating because I find the fact of it really remarkable: That this thing we’re doing is totally multifaceted. The travel stuff is wonderful – one of my top priorities for my life – but equally valuable is the creative side which has been really rewarding (although not quite financially rewarding, yet – we’ll get there!).

The most awesome aspect of this is Katherine’s artistic journey, and I’m loving seeing her artistic side prospering. Plus, the glee she gets from art supplies is a thing to behold.

Personally speaking, I’m loving the indie software developer lifestyle to pieces. It’s a creative outlet that suits me perfectly, and I love designing software and putting the pieces together just so – which satisfies both my creative side, and my OCD side. My mother used to joke that me, working (tapping studiously away at a keyboard), was rather similar to me taking a break – party time (tapping studiously away at a keyboard). It’s pretty much that way still, and doing this job means I basically never work, and am in fact constantly playing. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Actually, the one thing that does get better than that is having a beautiful, changing view out of the window that we can go and explore from time to time, at our leisure. When we started out, we didn’t have a clear idea of how the travel thing was all going to work, but we’ve sorted it out and found our pace. We love being in the country, fields, woods, mountains, and really enjoy hiking (although not for too long!). Cities have their appeal too, but our hearts lie in the wide open horizons, or the deep green (or preferably, orange and yellow!) of woods.

One thing I never anticipated was the people we’ve met along the way. I certainly hoped that we would make connections with people as we went, but given that we’re not exactly gregarious (I almost wrote ‘egregious’) people by nature, I wasn’t sure how successful we’d be. Don’t get me wrong, we like a good pub, maybe once a year. For a few minutes.

However, we’ve met some really interesting people and made some wonderful friends, always in unexpected ways: On the side of a volcano, in the back-alleys of an ancient Tunisian marketplace, in the car park of a little Italian town, and through my involvement with writing WordPress and iPhone software. A great adventure still to come will be spending some time living in Padua (and learning Italian!) and getting to know our wonderful new-found friends there, who I originally met via my product Loopy.

The online side of this mobile social life has been fascinating – we still have quite a number of people we’ve met online to catch up with some time: Users of software I’ve written, other bloggers, and other people who’ve come across us online (or vice versa). We’ve made some great friends who are currently cycling across Europe (actually, they’ve just bought a little red car and are heading towards, and then across, Siberia), who we discovered while doing a bit of travel research in Tunisia, and we dearly hope to meet them in person one day – then kidnap them and keep them all to ourselves, in our enclave of ‘favourite people’ that we will one day build. nothing

The last thing that I find surprising, in spite of my ever-overly-optimistic self, is just how feasible this thing has been. Okay, we had some fantastic help to begin with – some great, long house-sitting appointments that meant we went almost a whole year rent-free – but apart from the initial, mostly recoverable outlay (Nettle), we’ve generally been living on less that it would’ve cost us to live in Australia – particularly with the horrendous housing situation there lately. My blithely optimistic anticipation of this whole thing has been actually pretty spot-on. We can do this for a lot more time yet, even if this indie software thing doesn’t take off.

So, in more ways than one, becoming ‘vagabonds’ (‘technobonds’?) has been a real enabler for us to pursue the things we really want to do with our lives, travel aside. It’s taken us away from the distracting, (albeit dubious) attraction of a steady income and jobs about which we’re ambivalent, freeing us up for the more important things, while actually lowering our living expenses to make our ‘buffer’ last longer.

That’s pretty cool.

Things I am glad I now know:

1. What Katherine says is right. (Katherine’s note: this is a work in progress)
2. Taking a wrong turn or getting lost never matters – relax, go with it.
3. It’s probably not a good idea to wild-camp in a big city, and especially not a port. Just…don’t.
4. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t like marketing/PR stuff, or how much you’re too engrossed in developing a product: Do it!
5. Don’t look too closely at how your motorhome’s put together, especially the raised bed (or as I like to call it, flimsy-sleeping-platform-of-death).
6. If you run out of food, you can make pancakes with flour and water! (Although they’re not so good if you’re out of water too)

Here’s to another year of technomadding!

England! Ah, England.

Our first stop, via an unsuccessful initial attempt to book into a site for a few days, was the local big Tesco Extra supermarket. Words simply can’t express our excitement at the range of things we found in that cornucopia of plenty — one of the benefits of being in a multicultural society: There were bagels and muffins, chai tea, the great curry powder we’d missed, cider, coconut milk and Thai curry paste, peanut butter (even Vegemite, to our delight!), and most exciting of all, cheddar cheese. Good times.

Stocked up and excited about the meals to come, we found ourselves an available CL site (basically a field with the bare basic facilities for campers) in a tiny little village delightfully named “Wootton”. Our drive there involved wending our way along a little country lane past a vast bright yellow canola field, through cool, shady woods, past fields of deep green grass and sheep, with views over the gentle hills in all hues of green. What a beautiful country.

The CL (how we’ve missed these!) was a grassy field, beside a paddock of sheep and little adorable frolicking lambs. We parked with a view out our main window over the lambs — “lamb view”, many times better than TV or sea view — and watched them chase each other around, running and springing, as the ewes patiently abided the lambs’ aggressive lunges at their undercarriage for milk.

Our stay began at about a week or two, then rapidly lengthened to almost a month. While pondering our finances, and running some numbers, we initially thought that our finances were going to last only another 8 months! With that fearsome possibility, we decided it was as good a time as ever to stop travelling for a while, and focus on developing some products and getting a more steady income stream established. Then, I realised I’d not incorporated current earnings from app sales, after which it became clear we had enough money to last us three years. Certainly not breaking even and saving money yet, but that’s quite a substantial difference!

Despite that realisation, however, we’d become rather attached to the idea of stopping for a while and having a break from travelling. We get an equal amount of joy from creating as we do from travelling, and the thought of devoting all of our time to it was quite appealing.

The decision carried ramifications for our previously planned schedule — three months in the UK, then back to Europe — so, we did a little re-thinking of our plans. In theory, at least, time isn’t a particularly important factor; as far as we know, even when our 2 year UK visa expires, we still have the Schengen visa available for 3 months out of every 6, and the remaining three months can hopefully be spent in the UK on a tourist visa, or perhaps even in an eastern-European country. So, we fairly relaxedly decided to postpone our prior plans and spend a bit longer in the UK.

We set up shop in Wootton, working at our laptops from about 10 or 11 in the morning to around midnight. I was steadily redesigning the interface for my new app, developing a beautiful vintage appearance with Katherine’s guidance. Along the way, we realised just how much work the non-programming aspects of the project really are — the social networking, research, assorted PR and marketing activities. The likelihood of taking the time to do it properly, and ever actually releasing a product seemed slim, so along the way, Katherine decided to lend a hand, devoting the time she’d been spending on setting up her art business to helping me get Cartographer released. I was really touched by the faith that she put in my work and the generosity in giving up that valuable time. I love that girl!

Aside from “working”, we had a bunch of errands to complete. Our bed, badly prone to condensation, had developed a veritable forest of black mould which had rotted away some of the base — we were sleeping in the “guest bedroom” in the meantime. So, over the course of about two or three weeks, we found a carpenter who was happy to cut a new piece of plywood to size, sourced an appropriately sized piece of ply (not an easy task, given that the standard sheet size was too small!), dismantled the bed and delivered the new plywood and the old base as a template, found an upholsterer and sourced some vinyl to replace the covering, transported the newly cut base to the upholsterer and painstakingly reassembled the beautiful new creation. A vast amount of work, but we’re very pleased with the result — and are taking new measures to make sure we never have to do that again! One side-effect of the process was that it took us a long time to trust that the bed wouldn’t collapse under us, after seeing how it was constructed — just 25-or-so screws around the outside. The edges of the base don’t even rest on the frame — they’re screwed onto it from underneath! Ignorance was bliss, there!

Along the way we also took Nettle in to have her wheel alignment fixed up (which ultimately made no difference to her gentle rightward drift — she just likes to go right, is all), fix our leaky tire, and spent a truly vast amount of money on some entirely insignificant minutiae (very, very slightly wobbly headlight, and something about a fog light on the wrong side) getting Nettle’s MOT (the annual registration/checkup) done for the year. Whew. Oh, and I finally got a haircut!

We paid a visit to the rather charming town of Canterbury, and spent a while wandering its streets shopping (his and hers: I got my first hands-on with an iPad, which I was rather besotted by, and Katherine found some much-needed shoes). I got some cool pictures of the Cathedral and the Christ Church gate, and the Old Weavers’ House, dated 1500 AD!

So, we wrote code, designed interfaces and got the marketing ball rolling. The lambs played and napped out the window; we attempted to assist every now and then when one of them got a head stuck in the fence. At around the same time every day, they’d all start making a huge racket (we called it “baa o’clock”), and sure enough, a minute later a car would pull up and the farmer would bring some pellets, wrestle a sheep or two to give it an immunisation, and bring a little black-faced lamb out for its daily bottle, which it would attack with glee. The local pheasant, who we named Monsieur Squark-and-Flap after his routine and his rather uppity bearing, would roam around and, well, squark and flap. Grey squirrels and rabbits were our other entertainment while the work continued.

It’s a good life.

Still, we’d decided (after a little procrastination) that it was time to get out again. The forecast wasn’t letting up for several days ahead and we felt it wasn’t really worth waiting for the weather to clear first — we have good wet weather gear and warm layers. Plus, as Katherine said, it feels slightly superhuman to be out walking when it’s freezing and wet. We mock you, weather.

So, we headed out, all bundled up against the chill — I guess we got our winter after all! We were walking to Amalfi, then we planned to climb the path from Amalfi to visit the town of Ravello.

More steps!

The weather held off beautifully for us, and we were soon removing layers. Needless to say, there were some great views over the coast. Unfortunately, we had only gone about twenty minutes before our cryptic “Ital-grish” walk directions we had on paper were entirely indecipherable. Google Translate is probably to blame for that one, it just can’t cope with Italian-English.

Faced with a choice of steps going town or a path leading up and around the cliffs, with Amalfi a fair way off still, we took the path, which quite quickly turned into a little trail, then little more than an animal track. Not to worry though, we knew where we were headed and soon enough we discovered some stairs leading down past walled groves of lemon trees, tucked away under black shadecloth.

The stairway become increasingly twisted, passing by doors through which wafted tantalising lunch aromas, and a wall with, written in texta, “We thought we would die, lugging our 25kg suitcases up, but then we realised we’d already be halfway to heaven ♥”. We met the road and spent a little time wandering back and forth trying to figure out where to go next, probably looking quite silly to the man sitting by his truck selling vegetables by the road. We got a little way down the windy main road, then we both, separately, nearly got squished against the rail by a truck, and decided that there was no way we were making it down there. So, back we went along a higher road that went through a tunnel and round the hillside.

Soon we saw the town sign, ‘Lone’, and recognised it from our directions! A little further and we saw a chapel which we thought might be the one mentioned in the directions, and headed back and down some more stairs towards it, greeting an excited and friendly Dalmatian who rushed up and down his side of the fence.

Katherine was happy to find some rich textures from flaking paint, and took lots of photos. Then, finding ourselves successfully back on track, we paused to admire the view, then set off on the final leg to Amalfi.

“There’s no way they’ll fit, just no..holy cr…nope, they’re fine. Piece of cake. Never a doubt in my mind.“

The path took us along the side of a cliff rising over the bay, and as we got closer, the left side became vertically-stacked apartments, white and pastel colours, with colourful doors, nestled into the cliffside.

We entered a cavelike warren of little paths leading up and down in all directions, sides of apartments making the canyon walls. It smelled like clean laundry.

A friendly local stopped by to recommended that we take a peek up some stairs at a very old part of the town — we thanked him and walked up to find an area that felt like being at the bottom of a well, a square of daylight at the top, surrounded by four ancient and peeling walls. The area put me in mind of some of the Ksars in Tunisia.

We emerged into a square, found a café and had a very well-deserved and delicious lunch (pizza with fresh tomato and rocket for me, lasagne for Katherine, then a very enjoyable cappuccino!). By this time, it was late afternoon, and there was no way we’d make it up to Ravello. We satisfied ourselves instead by just wandering Amalfi’s pretty streets, in the process discovering a magnificent church in the main piazza, heavily decorated with gold leaf.

We waited out the last few minutes before our bus back to San Lazzaro was due sitting on a bench on the pier, watching the last pink colours fade from the clouds.

We inched our way through the city traffic, weaving around pedestrians and motorbikes (not the other way around, of course), and with minimal pain found a spacious manned car park. We were here to visit the medina, the ancient marketplace, which we’ve read is one of the most ‘real’ and un-touristy, where others tend to be packed full of pushy souvenir vendors.

Sure enough, it was brilliant — no hassling whatsoever. We just wandered around amongst the locals, with a friendly “salut” or an “aslama” here and there.

We met a guy working a stall when he asked where we were from as we passed by — we paused to answer, and we just kinda kept talking; His name was Baha, and he spoke English, which was refreshing. He got a neighbouring vendor to watch his store and took us around the corner (we lagged behind a little, cautiously) to where his brother was selling drums and some other freaky-looking traditional instruments.

He surprised us by not asking us to buy anything, and instead took us for a coffee, which was great — he told us he lived in Tataouine (you know, where Anakin Skywalker lived), and travelled in to work sometimes. As always, there was a bit of a communication barrier, but we got by. He showed us how our names were written in Arabic:

And he wrote down his address in Tataouine for us, in case we needed him! We’d read about the persistence of the hospitable Berber culture in Tunisia, and I think it’s definitely apparent.

We’d just said farewell to Baha, and were wandering through some back-alleys taking pictures of some excitingly grungey-looking doors, when two young women paused to puzzle over what we were doing, and one jokingly posed for me in front of a door:

They surprised us by speaking to us in excellent English. They gave us funny looks and asked us why the hell we were taking pictures of grotty doors, and what on earth we were doing in Tunisia of all places. Classic!

They were art students at the Sfax art university, Sirine and Amal, and after checking what our plans were, they invited us to have coffee with them at a café/studio they were headed to.

It was absolutely brilliant to be able to meet some Tunisian women finally — we were a little frustrated at talking with just guys, not having a woman’s perspective at all; in fact, just the day before Katherine had voiced that frustration, so it was great timing! Plus speaking in English helped massively — we really aren’t at the point where we can understand very much at all. We just tend to make up for ourselves the other person’s side of the conversation, which can have interesting results. They said it was nice to speak English for a while.

So, we joined them at the café, an artist’s haunt, with a room upstairs for painting and milling about creatively — Sirine negotiated for us to head upstairs briefly to say hi to their friends (I admit, at this point I was remembering the art scam that got Kevin Rose and Glenn McElhose in China, but once again, all was well!). They spoke for a moment in Arabic, and when I observantly noted “that isn’t English!”, they explained that they were commenting on my beauty. It’s the hair, you see. I nodded modestly and agreed that I was quite the looker.

So, we four grabbed a table downstairs and spoke for ages about a variety of topics — life in Tunisia for women, and in Australia, and marriage; Sirine was, I suspect, a tad baffled at our opinions towards marriage — “but you love each other, why not just get married?” — We explained how marriage has much less weight in Australia, for various reasons, and that with us two it was just something we didn’t see as necessary; We know we’re going to spend the rest of our lives loving each other, and that was enough, at least for now! Of course, that’s a very big contrast to here in Tunisia, where you’re not even really allowed to even go out at night as a woman until you’re married. It’s actually illegal to live together here unless you’re married! Luckily, there’s a little lenience towards tourists. It sounds a bit like one remains with a child’s restrictions until the ring is on your finger! Sirine mused that she’s probably quite fortunate — her family sound quite tolerant and moderate!

We spoke about family life and obligations, the art university and it’s modern and moderate nature, and their chosen specialities — ceramics for Amal, and sculpture for Sirine. They told us that teaching art was a very good career, and well paid.

We also spoke about being a traveller in Tunisia, and they warned us about being too trusting, like when meeting someone who offers to take you somewhere. We gave them a look — “well, not us!”. I think they should make the evil-doers wear a badge or something. Sirine said something disparaging about my manly strength compared to the big strong dangerous local men. I think she probably had a point. Maybe I could defeat them with my mighty brain? It’s an interesting conundrum, though. Do you play it safe all the time and never have any new experiences, or do you take chances and risk your safety? Maybe we just need to learn how to improvise a shiv from nearby objects.

Sirine was engaged to a Tunisian man — from Sfax — living in Paris, and was happy to be getting out of Tunisia. She told us that she always knew she wanted to marry a foreigner (I guess this way she keeps the family happy and gets to marry someone who’s living overseas and is all Frenchified!). She actually suggested that we come and attend her wedding in Sfax in August, which was very touching, although we couldn’t have made it. We’re totally going to catch up in Paris though.

So, Amal and Sirine gave us their full names to look them up on Facebook (man, that thing is so international!), and we’re going to stay in touch. It was just brilliant to meet them, both to talk about how they lived and just to hang out with cool people in our age group! We wished each other well and parted ways.

We wandered our way back to Nettle, who was still there and still in one piece — awesome — then had a quick lunch and headed out of Sfax. People here drive…differently to people in other places.

We drove north-west through some beautiful scenery, and by some amazing ancient towns perched on hillsides, buildings almost sitting atop one another. We headed into one, edging along the narrow cobbled roads by very old stone buildings and stopped for a quick espresso.

Our first destination was by an ancient bridge on the beautiful bright blue Alcantara river. Only one arch of the original bridge remains, the rest having been destroyed in WW2 (by the Americans, of course — interesting being in a country that was originally on the other side!). The remaining bridge segment was built of hand-hewn chunks of lava in an Arabic style — an example of the influence of Arabic culture here.

Nuccio and Carmelo took us on a walk upriver a little, Nuccio translating into English for Carmelo, pointing out plants along the way and explaining how they were used — an aniseed-like plant that was in the sausages we had the other day; a plant that makes a good cold remedy when brewed as tea.

The river itself runs down a bed of lava: A long time ago, lava from an eruption ran all the way down the old river bed to the sea. The river has once again claimed its course, and has eaten down into the lava leaving some impressive formations.

We drove on for a while, and stopped by some run-down looking residential buildings. Nuccio pointed out an abandoned, empty lot, fenced off, with some rubble, and explained one of the more surprising issues the locals face, and one which answered a question we’d pondered for a while.

They way I understand it, the Italian government have a law that says if anything of ‘historical interest’ is discovered on a property — and around here, you only have to scratch the surface almost anywhere to find something of historical interest, such is the rich history of the place — then the property must immediately be relinquished into the custodianship of ‘the people’ (the Italian government), for the protection of whatever’s there. There’s no compensation to speak of for the now ex-owners: they lose their land and that’s that, even if it’s been in their family for generations.

That’s bad enough, but regulations state that before any alteration or development is begun on a property, the property must be first inspected for historical significance. Given the huge risk involved to a property owner — the loss of their property without any kind of compensation — of course, the result is just that no one alters or develops.

Renovations, building, and maintenance are all included in this law, so even if you want to repaint the door, you have to go through this process. During the earthquakes that came with Mount Etna’s 2001 eruption, Nuccio’s mother’s ancient house was damaged and in danger of collapsing. With the house in danger, and without time to go through the bureaucratic process, she quickly organised some local builders to reinforce sections of the house. Just a couple of days later, the police appeared and demanded that the ‘illegal’ reinforcements be removed. With no other choice, she complied, and the house was destroyed soon after in the next earthquake.

The less-extreme effects of this law are apparent everywhere — run-down buildings, desperately in need of painting or reinforcement, derelict blocks of land, abandoned buildings. Because renovation or maintenance comes with the fairly high likelihood of losing one’s property, no one does it, and so historical buildings fall into disrepair and many towns have a poverty-stricken look. Remarkable.

Nuccio and Carmelo led us down a path that led by olive groves and past many enormous cactus plants. They explained that the cactus leaves make a good haemorrhoid remedy; Apparently, quite frequently Nuccio will write a prescription, and his patients will laugh and say no thanks, they have their own remedy.

Carmelo pointed out a plant called ‘Bagolaro’, an Arabic tree highly valued by the locals for its ability to break up lava. After a lava flow claims some land, one sprinkles Bagolaro seeds over the lava, waits for a surprisingly short time (I can’t quite remember if it was a couple of years, or even just six months — but not long), and the fast-growing plant will put out roots through the lava and break it apart, eventually making the land usable again.

We were continually amazed and impressed by their knowledge — traditional expertise the like of which we just don’t have in Australia unless you’re Aboriginal.

Carmelo spotted a tree that bore large red fruit that he thought we should try, and Nuccio hurtled into the bushes to pluck a couple for us — ‘royal fruit’, which were very juicy and sweet.

They led us back to the Alcantara river, a different stretch where the river has widened out, broken up by a series of falls and rapids, and bordered by greenery.

On the way down, Nuccio was telling us about an incident towards the end of WW2; the finer details escape me, but the crux of it was, German soldiers in the area had demanded to be fed by the impoverished locals. Embattled, the locals barely had enough food to feed themselves, and when they were not sufficiently forthcoming for the Germans, the Germans started massacring men, women and children. The things people do during war…

So, we crossed a footbridge over the opaque and startlingly blue water and rock-hopped our way upriver a little. Carmelo’s wife had considerately made some delightful cake that morning, and he had brought some along — so, we sat on the rocks and ate cake, while Nuccio pointed out a chasm in the side of the riverbank, down which water flowed to no-one-knows-where.

On the walk back up, Carmelo spotted some fruiting cactus by the path, and cut some fruit off for us to try — mildly sweet and with a texture a little like honeydew or less-juicy watermelon.

They took us next to the Alcantara ‘throat’, a gorge through which the river ran, lined with a strange rock formation that reminded us strongly of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, and was probably formed via a similar process. Unfortunately the throat was closed since some earthquakes rendered it unstable, but with a little scrambling up rocks aided by Nuccio, we were able to get a look in. Were it still open, it would be a great place to swim during the warmer months.

With time getting away from us, and with Nuccio needing to start a shift at the hospital soon, we headed off. On they way, they pointed out a number of impressive ancient churches, several in the Spanish style, and even Arabic-esque designs. One was actually built into a cave in the side of a cliff.

The number of different cultures that have had their impact on Sicily are very apparent — everyone who was anyone has invaded this place at one time or another: The Greeks, the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish…

There was still time to take a quick driving tour through Giardini Naxos on the coast, through — that would be the influence of the Greeks, this time — and past Isola Bella (“Beautiful Island”, of course).

There was a car rally coming up later in the week (the Taormina-Messina rally), and Nuccio invited us to join him — we delightedly agreed, and made plans to catch up then.

• 49 Decent Virtual Assistant & Personal Outsourcing Resources
• PHP: Display Adobe PSD files on a web page "Any webdesigner know the PSD filetype, which is the Adobe Photoshop format. PSDs have a lot of great features, as such as layers, but they can’t being read by a browser. Unless you use this great PHP class!"
• Iconfinder – Icon Search Made Easy
• Typetester – Compare fonts for the screen
• KNAppGuide KNAppGuide is a Cocoa framework for embedding “guides” into your application, visually inspired by Apple Guide from the System 7 and 8 era

More interestingly, it’s just passed the $4000 AUD ($2640 USD, or $2050 EUR – stupid Australian dollar!) earnings point, which works out at about $500 a week. For essentially a niche app, I’m pretty damn happy.

I can’t think of any other marketplace in history where almost anyone can jump in with an idea and a little ability, and come out with something resembling a salary almost immediately. I can’t imagine the indie lifestyle has ever been more attainable.

Apple have done something amazing here, in creating a marketplace fully equipped with their mature infrastructure, their brand, and most importantly, their enormous user base. They’re basically giving developers the fruits of all the work they’ve done over the past decades in building Apple’s brand and customer base (in return for 30% of sales, of course!).

Now that’s some profitable symbiosis. Apple – thank you.

The 9-5-plus-preparation-and-commute, five-day-a-week, living-for-the-weekend lifestyle is one I’ve become increasingly unimpressed by, particularly after meeting my partner Katherine three years ago and realising that life has so much more to offer (mostly, West Wing and Indian food delivered). Not so long ago I came to the decision that it just wasn’t for me; that living a balanced life was too important. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my pretty-easy-going PhD (and there may only be one thing, aside from the less comprehensible your writing is, the smarter you must be), it’s that I don’t want the big career I planned for. I just want to enjoy my life with Katherine, see the world, create awesome stuff, and do what I can to help some other folks along the way. I think I’m fortunate enough to have the ability to give it a shot.

Writing About It

Emailing with a new visitor to the blog, Charley, gave me the idea of focusing a little more on this journey towards true freedom and independence – the merging of career into lifestyle (not the other way around). This is a bit of a career ‘holy grail’ to many of us – at least, it is to me – and while it’s mostly for my own benefit, writing about my efforts might make for a moderately interesting story arc, and give this blog a little direction.

This will be a story about indie software development, the amazing, wonderful and supportive community that is the Mac world, the awesome marketplace that is the iPhone App Store, travel, play, hard work and hopefully quite a bit of luck.

The Plan

Now is also not a bad time to begin, as we are rapidly approaching the beginning of our true journey: An ‘unbounded’ trip to Europe. This was a plan that seemed to make itself – neither of us remember a conversation where it was decided, but here we are, four-and-a-bit months, and nine thesis chapters, off flying away to London.

We have no intention of staying in any one place for long, and we have no end date in mind – while we have a 12-month flexible return ticket, we aren’t expecting to use the return flight. It’ll mostly be us, a campervan, a MacBook Pro and wireless internet access for as long as we can make the money keep happening, assuming the global economy doesn’t fall to pieces entirely (thanks, market-which-knows-best!).

The Holy Grail

One of the big enabling factors – and thus, a risk factor – is a decision to make a career building and selling Mac and iPhone software, one which has only just begun – hence the adventure. This is my holy grail career, and one I was cautiously optimistic about, but the success of which I could never predict.

The release of Loopy, my first iPhone app, has me feeling quite hopeful. Despite a number of inhibiting factors – my inexperience and inattentiveness to promotion and the limited target audience, for example – the app has brought in an average of $450 AUD a week, over the almost-two-months since it went to market. With some more time – that is, more than zero – spent on promotion, and some more time put in to continue making it a better product, Loopy’s sales will hopefully be enhanced further.

The real test for whether this can be a viable, stand-alone career, is whether earnings are sufficient for support while developing the next application. There’re no shortage of ideas for applications, but it’s only possible to keep building while the money’s there. As it is, $450/week is unlikely to be sufficient for European living expenses. I suppose only time will tell whether having a few additional apps on the market will do the trick.

The next app, Journeys, which will emerge soon enough, will be the next interesting test (and the one after that will be freakin’ awesome, I promise).

So, let the adventure begin.