Khrys weblog

Toinen jouluni Ranskassa on nyt vietetty ja vuosi vaihtunut. Hyvää uutta vuotta 2009!

Maailmanympärimatkamme on todella alkamassa huomenna! Viime kuukaudet ovat kiitäneet niin vauhdilla, ettei koko asiaa ole vielä oikein ehtinyt tajuta. Tuntuu itsekkäältä ja uskomattomalta ajatella että lähes vuosi meinataan todella reissata. Oppimiskokemus tulee olemaan aivan huima. Reittiä suunnittelemalla ja netistä matkavinkkejä etsimällä on opittu jo nyt hurjan paljon. Matkan tärkeimpiä asioita tulee varmasti olemaan ainakin kärsivällisyyden opetteleminen, mm. Bolivian busseissa voi kuulemma helposti vierähtää ylimääräinen vuorokausi jos toinenkin lukemattomista syistä.. Muiden matkablogeista on saatu tosi hyviä vinkkejä, kaikkea ei vaan ehdi millään lukemaan vaikka matkaa valmistelisi kuinka kauan. No mutta, pitäähän sitä jättää yllätyksiäkin, ettei kaikkea tiedä etukäteen!

Rinkat on pakattu ja hostelli varattu pariksi ekaksi yöksi. Mahdollisimman vähillä kamppeilla koitetaan startata että voisi ehkä jotain matkan varrella lisätäkin, mutta armottomasti 15 kiloa tuli hetkessä täyteen. Toisaalta varmasti hyvä kokemus koittaa pärjätä noilla tavaroilla vuosi sen hirveän tavaramäärän jälkeen, joka kämpästämme muutama viikko sitten raahattiin.

Huomenna siis koneen nokka kohti Limaa Madridin kautta. Lennot kestävät yhteensä noin 15 tuntia ja perillä ollaan sunnuntai-aamuna paikallista aikaa. Etelä-Amerikassa pitäisi olla nettiyhteyksiä saatavilla lähes joka nurkan takana, että pian varmaan palaillaan!

Netta finished her job on Wednesday and we could leave Helsinki. We had found some time the previous day to buy some good clothes, a first-aid kit and some cooking equipment in a specialized shop. We still are missing some, but we know a good shop in France too.
I checked carefully on our To-Do list, but resting wasn’t on it … on Wed, we had to drive to Savonlinna, and on Thursday, unpack the car, start to sort our stuff in a clever way (what we need, what can stay). We managed to get our International Driver Permits too. And since we were in town, more papers with the Maistraatti, and some shopping for Christmas.

I also started to get some problems with my new eee PC. The lack of space on the root partition didn’t go well with the automatic updates, and lots of various stuff stopped working. Since I was already unhappy with the default interface (AsusLauncher), I decided to get rid of the whole system, and installed Ubuntu eee.
I take advantage of the situation to test a few things, like the new camera and the album generation. You might also notice a new functionality: it will be possible to us from now on to write articles in more than one language, for your comfort.

Friday was my last day at work, but I haven’t had much time to relax. In the evening, we started to pack. On Saturday, we managed to fill a truck load of furnitures and belongings as we emptied the most part of our apartment. We then hit the road (4 hours) and arrived quite late to Savonlinna.
Sunday was definitely not a resting day, since we had to unload the truck (bed, sofa, etc.) and drive back to Helsinki, where we still had so much to do: papers to prepare, shelves to clean, etc. We probably didn’t get more than 4 hours of sleep and Netta went to work while I was starting a new marathon: driving the truck back to the rental place, getting a bus back (that took a while), finishing packing, stuffing the car (next to that, Tetris is kid’s play), cleaning the floor, and giving the keys of the apartment back before the owner’s company closes. And of course a few other things on the way.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be an easier day …

I wanted to put it online for 3 years, but it was at first really crap. Then I made a version for my workplace, suiting their needs. Now I might need it also, so I decided to rework it for myself. You can have a look here: khrystube.

Goal is to host my own videos during the trip, but I still have some technical issues to deal with. And even if it becomes useless, it made me work quite a lot and learn few things. Nothing is ever lost :p

Here is an example :

Hi !
Sorry for the delay, server was offline for few days, since the machine had to be moved away (we’re leaving this apartment). It is now up and running, and hopefully will stay so.

We’re now done with our vaccinations, and passports are new. We’ve got visas to Australia, but we’re still trying to contact Chinese consulates to make sure we can ask visas from South Korea (we can’t do it here, these expire after only 4 weeks). Also Vietnam seems to be asking for visas.
We’re on schedule for almost everything: we still haven’t started looking for good clothes. Perhaps this weekend will be less hectic.
There seems to be some mistakes with our flights dates from Bangkok onwards (they are 1 month too early), I’ll try to fix that also. Shouldn’t be hard, these are quite far from now and they were ok before, guess someone made a typo.
I’ve been looking very closely at the South-East Asia, since borders aren’t easy to cross: one can do so only in a few places. Our itinerary should take this into account, and still include as much points of interest as possible.
Also, I bought a small laptop for the trip, an EEE PC 901 (the one with the SSD drive and Linux), to store stories and photos along the way. I still need a good camera.

I’ll give some news soon.