As people have started sending me grouchy emails about the lack of blog posts describing the adventures of the last few weeks, here is an obligatory update.

As it was my turn to be shown around Europe by Martin after the great Penny and Martin Adventure 2008_1 (NZ), I have been galavanting for the last 3 weeks. Since I left New Zealand, we have visited:

.ch: Zürich, Bern, St Moritz, Pontresina
.de: München
.fr: (near) Bandol
.it: Torri Ventimiglia, Genova, Firenze, Bologna, Ferrara, Mantova, Lovere

and: learned to make Olive Bread, got fat on salami, pate, beer, contentment and laziness, played frisbee in the sea, sailed, eaten snails and donkey (!!), done hardly any work, slept far too much, and drank a lot of beer (did I mention this?!)

phew! that's quite a bit. I'm now in London staying with dispersed parts of Mischief Bad Group until I find a flat, and have started back full time work, speccing out the Moodle Portfolio API which is quite a complicated wee beasty.

Photos from the trip are of course on flickr

Over the last few weeks before I left Wellington, I had to run about and carry out a few leaving rituals. Things I had to do a last few times. And then there were some things that happened that I didn't plan, but made me smile anyway with a slight feeling of nostalgia.

Here are a few of those things:

• Epic beer at the Malthouse with Flight of the Conchords on the tv


• The Eggs at Matterhorn on the last Saturday of the month


• Bubbles in the Bucket Fountain


• Tom Yum Soup on Marjoribanks


• Pronounciation of Marjoribanks


• Listening to Fat Freddy's Drop


• Boozey Friday Lunch


• Morning Mojo Doppio


• Running about Mt Vic barefoot at 8am after locking myself out and bumping into someone I know


• Sarah Wigg playing at Mojo on Friday night


• The Cuba Street Small World Effect


• Breakfast with my mother at Scopa


• Matterhorn Sunday Roast


• Mischief Bad Group Saturday Boozey Dinner

PS: I'm in Zürich!

The final thing I was waiting for to come through has arrived, and now I can announce:

I'm leaving. Moving to London initially, but I hope to be in Europe proper by the end of the year. I'm not really leaving Catalyst yet, I'll still be loosely tied to them, and for the next few months I'm going to be working on the Moodle Portfolio API & Mahara Integration for Moodle 2.0.

I'm leaving New Zealand on May 21 (which is also my last day at Catalyst here), and will have a few weeks holiday, continuing the Penny and Martin Adventure, before arriving in London June 15.

For those who know and care about my little black cat, Andypants is moving into my Mt Vic flat and taking over the lease, and Nothing will stay there with him.

And yes I am well aware that I tried to ragequit elearning, and have clearly failed. I can't say I am surprised in the slightest, and I'm super looking forward to working fulltime on Moodle upstream.

After the Portfolio integration is done, I'm not sure what will be next. I do want to keep working in elearning and ideally on Mahara, but I expect it to shake out over the next month or so.

I'm going back to work today after two weeks of holiday, spent learning to dive & becoming certified, and then frolicking around the South Island with a visiting Martin, and then an obligatory webstock experience.

I'm ridiculously bad at blogging these days, but luckily Martin isn't, so hop off over here to read about Phase 1 of the adventure (Wellington) and Phase 2 of the adventure (the road trip). Photos are on flickr.

Webstock (the tiny bit I saw) was amazing, I'm really sad I missed most of it. There was bad behaviour in the photo booth with ducks.

My other big news I guess, is that I've left elearning at Catalyst and am moving to another project. I've been in elearning for almost 4 years, right from the start pretty much. This is a pretty sad move, but it's definitely overdue. Realistically, it's pretty unlikely that I'll find much time to continue to do any work on Moodle or Mahara in my spare time, so this is goodbye to both of those too for a little while at least. So long & thanks for all the fish!

Photos are here, including a very badly done and rushed panorama of where I stayed after I left the city.

So Auckland was great. I spent one night getting very drunk with Anna, on red wine, and then rum, and then the next day started drinking beer in the sun with everyone, which turned into guitars and singing and all things crazy. We had to drink Tui out of 750s so Megan could take home photos to Venice to show them how New Zealanders behave on sunny holidays.

Then Megan and I ventured North to Kaukapakapa for 3 days and 2 nights of relaxing, drinking wine and (for some of us) sliding down muddy hills with our skirt around our waist. Not me!

I arrived home to a beautiful home cooked thai dinner and wine and a movie with the usual house suspects and James, who has since abandoned us to Christchurch.

I am scared of how large the moodle.org forum imap folder has become while I've been away, I have been going through and reading emails as I have time (what time?!) but I think it's actually increasing rather than decreasing. Ack.

Later this week I have Webstock and then, this weekend, 48 hours. It never ends.

I finally put up the rest of the photos of my month away:

Debconf
The formal dinner, last night out (appended to previous photos)

Madrid
In which I mostly look fat and content

The Andes
I got a bit carried away from the plane window

Buenos Aires
Sightseeing, dinner out, La Boca

Debconf so far:

~ Screwed wifi
~ Missing almost all scheduled meals because of sleeping/drinking/hacking
~ An astonishing amount of nakedness (generally contained by either lagoon or sauna)
~ Lots of photos (soon to be uploaded)
~ Oh my god I am so unfit one game of frisbee almost killed me
~ Only one instance of girl != programmer that was duly apologised for (and gratefully accepted)
~ Killer rabbits! (seriously)
~ Desperate coffee missions
~ Camera still not working under debian on my mac
~ My laptop is now sleeping (sort of, but echo 'disk' > /sys/power/state == good enough)
~ I volunteered to help with the vast number of bugs against open office
~ M and I seem to have one of the nicer rooms in the entire HUT. We have three rooms (2 people in each) that share a bathroom and kitchen and we managed to push the two single beds together.
~ I have been acquiring tshirts at quite an alarming rate, not all of which are black or fit me.
~ Much, much beer. Some blessed by the DPL, even.
~ Oh, more squirrels
~ Killer rabbits!

OK, I'm getting repetitive. It's fun, anyway. I started packaging s9y and managed to learn a thing or two.

Tomorrow we have a daytrip

Photos soon.

<disclaimer>This is going to be lengthy</disclaimer>

London
The next day (which I believe was Saturday London time), we went out for breakfast to a very strange cafe and then wandered around town shopping. We met up with a few friends and went home for dinner, then I fell asleep and had to have more of these caffeine strips from Boots in order to wake up, before going out to see Art Brut. Who were great. The venue was so hot I couldn't believe it, but the band was great.
Sunday. Ani and Peter went back to Manchester. That was sad. Then we went to Spitalfields which was great, except I chipped my tooth on one of my lip piercings which I have since taken out. I bought stuff. Then to Camden where I bought more stuff. I really wanted to buy a pair of boots and I tried on a pair which would have been perfect, but I couldn't zip them up. Yes, apparently my legs are too fat for boots in London. Who would have thought!
Then I was supposed to go to Gemma's for dinner, but she didn't give me her address, just told me to text her when I got off the tube at her station, and so when I went to do that, my phone had run out of batteries. Gr. So I caught the tube back up to Brixton (from Tooting Broadway) where I was staying, and plugged my phone in to call her. So I eventually managed to get to her house, but an hour and a half late.
Last day in London - went shopping for presents for Sara who let me be couch fungus and babysat me for 4 days. Then plane!

Rome
I arrived in Rome late, and had to call my hostel to tell them I was late and they didn't speak English and I didn't speak Italian so it was difficult. I managed to catch trains and find the hostel and arrived around midnight. 5 people staying in the hostel room, but I managed to sleep ok. Woke up early and went to do the bus tour which was just incredible. I can't get over how young New Zealand is compared to pretty much everything else. I ate this great dinner at the place owned by the hostel owners and stayed up late talking to a guy staying in my hostel from Costa Rica. Then I had to get up before 6am to catch my train to Venice.

Venice
Megan met me at the train station and we had to carry all the luggage to her house, she lives across 5 bridges from the train station (I guess it could be worse but still it was pretty bad as we're both kinda small). We wandered around looking at buildings and taking photos and looking for bags. Went out drinking and had this amazing food from a bar where we just choose different dishes and got a large plate with them all piled on. Really good wine. I talked to Megan in (my very basic) Spanish and she spoke to me in (her almost fluent) Italian and we almost understood eachother! We went back to her apartment and I don't think we were that loud but the person downstairs banged on their ceiling so we had to stop and go to sleep. Next day we went out for amazing Italian breakfast, then bought a bag and some clothes and then caught a boat to Burano and had a picnic. By the time we got back it was time to go out for pre dinner drinks and then we went out for dinner. Then it was time to go back and pack and then get back on the train to Rome in time for my plane to Hel.The whole day I was waiting to her from people in London, they're all ok.

Hel
Plane was late and I was extremely tired after all night train ride in very cramped train, but I met interesting people on the train and M came to pick me up from the airport, and I arrived and I'm here and it's all good. Wireless is fucked. I had sauna already. Coffee is scarce. My laptop is now sleeping, but I still can't get my (insert swearwords) camera working. Tonight I may see if I can fit some packaging in if I can stay awake!

To all you London people (especially Adrian!): first morning in Hel and I saw a squirrel. Again this morning! Hel > London.

I managed to make the plane, and I'm currently at Sydney airport which has free internet!

I already read my large book and half of a book about Ruby and I bought Lolita at the airport bookshop. I have 24 hours ahead of me to London and I doubt the other half of the Ruby book and the new book will be enough, but I need to sleep a whole lot as well, so hopefully I won't get too bored!

Things I managed to get done before leaving:
Finish my jewellery class
Install Debian on my powerbook
Fet the USB wireless adapter working on powerbook
Have a successful install-fest
Clean my room. I hate coming home to a mess
Write to my grandmother
(Obviously) get this website set up
Sort out travel insurance, cellphone roaming, and all the bills I had to pay before leaving
Watch the entire first season of Scrubs. Oh my god, so good

Things I didn't manage to get done before leaving:
Get my digital camera working on Debian. I suspect this is some strange combination of USB1 and PPT mode or whatever it's called.
Get the laptop to go to sleep when I tell it to (this one could be a problem)
Get Serendipity packaged for Debian (I started though! -- actually this could be a potential boredom-thwarter on the plane)

When buying Lolita in the bookshop I couldn't get the counter person to understand me. For god's sake, New Zealand and Australian accents are not that different. I asked if they had a 'literature' section, as well as just your typical pulp fiction airport crap and she looked at me like I was stupid. At which point I spelled out L-O-L-I-T-A for her to type into the computer search and when she got results that said 'Classic' next to it, she said, "Oh! Is it a classic?". Well, we got there in the end.

Writing this has only taken about 10 minutes, and I have another half hour to boarding call. I've been in the airport about 4 and a hours now. Next up: 24 hour flight! And then crazy-madness in London. Woohoo! I would be able to muster up the excitement for an extra !!!! or two and some 111one!s, but I'm dead on my feet and the fact that I have to stand to access the internet is really pissing me off.

Also: timezones are confusing when you're in the middle of trying to figure out which one you're currently in and what it means when you have a 24 hour flight but arrive only 14 hours after you leave. I can't even begin to figure out what time I should go to sleep on the plane to set my clock to London time and I'm sure it somehow means I'm missing a full night's sleep somewhere along the way.