A couple of weeks ago I went camping at Big Sur, south of Monterey and Carmel on the California State Route 1. It was a lovely spot, and we spent time on a very windy beach, eating S'mores around a campfire, and enjoying being away from civilisation. A very American camping experience!

Once we packed up and headed for home, we detoured south to the lovely McWay Falls near the Julia Pfeiffer Burns National Park. The whole area is ...

Being dumped over a call sucks.

Being dumped without any warning sucks.

Being dumped when you're settling into a new place on the other side of the world from your friends and family for a year sucks.

Being dumped three days after you were told that everything was fine sucks.

Being dumped three weeks before she was going to join you on the other side of the world for six months sucks.

Being dumped over a ...

Australian English is a funny little beast. Fused together from British dialects, Aboriginal languages, American English, and other things we could find under the kitchen sink, it's turned into something of a unique lingo. And every now and again, I say something that causes the Americans in the room to give me a blank look, and laugh at my funny Australian ways.

Today, I learnt that Americans find it odd when you ask to "hire" an inanimate object. I ...

Here in Berkeley I'm living in the International House (affectionately known as I-House). I've previously lived in the International House at Sydney (which we called IH), and sometime soon I'll write more about these places. But earlier today I attended my first college football match, courtesy of some free tickets from I-House. It was the opening game of the season - the California Golden Bears playing at home in Berkeley against Nevada.

Now, I know that college football ...

As I meet people from all over America and the world, it's fun addressing some common misconceptions about my homeland. I thought that I'd jot down a few of my favourites so far, and add to the list as it grows.

1. Australia has 22.5 million people, but roughly the same landmass as continental USA. We're the sixth largest country by landmass in the world, but we have less than 4 people per square kilometre (that ...

Today I'm re-entering a space that I left some time ago. Many years ago, back in school, we had an assignment to maintain a blog, and post interesting things on it. Unfortunately, the site hosting my blog met the way of a server crash, and that data all disappeared. I've stayed off the blogosphere since then.

I've now reached a point where I think it's important to write more stuff down. I don't feel like ...