From August 2011...

So, sitting on a plane, heading back from Amsterdam to Perth – another 24 odd hours in planes and airports – living the dream. Had a couple of things i wanted to discuss last night, but after a couple of beers, it didn’t seem like a good idea.

So the latest on the basilisk’s bookshelf:

Tales of a Female Nomad – Rita Golden Gelman. Rita’s story reminded me a lot of a friend of mine from Sydney. Rita, and my friend M, are both more senior adventurers. M is a fantastic warm and funny woman who opened up her house and her heart for me after we met on a bus – that’s just the kind of woman she is. M lived as an expat in Saudi Arabia for 25 years and used that as her base for travel throughout the middle-east, Africa and Europe. I wish she would write a book on her experiences! Slightly different to M, Rita’s story starts, somewhat similarly to Elizabeth Gilbert’s pop-culture classic “Eat Pray Love” with a decision to make the change from the married life in high-achieving Los Angeles and commence a lifestyle vastly dissimilar to that which we would hold as an ideal. Unlike Eat Pray Love, Gelman does not stop after one year, and traverses quite a bit more of the globe. Gelman’s story resonated with me far more than Gilbert’s – which is a great read, and a must for women to read – because it wasn’t focused on “fixing” her life by taking time out, Gelman is instead describing a full-time lifestyle of a woman who chooses to embrace different cultures from the inside, and communicating and interacting with the aim of exchange – whether it be teaching English, singing songs, or cooking with the village. When I started the book, I was expecting it to be escapism – it has never been a conscious dream of mine to embrace cultures the way that Gelman does – she studying anthropology prior to her separation from her husband. Anyway, afterwards I was so fired up about the experiences she describes – I don’t know if I would ever be that brave, but I wanna be like Rita Golden Gelman and M when I grow up.

Following the completion of Tales of a female nomad, I couldn’t sleep, so thought I would jump into something a little different – James Allen's "As A Man Thinketh."

When posting: Oh my gosh – my transport related posts seem to be never ending – unfortunately they tend to run out of steam with the battery on the laptop!