sinnatious: (Default)
No chapter this weekend, sorry! I'm a little bummed that I didn't manage to hit the final weekend of the year, but I feel pretty good about doing my 2018 resolution to attempt to post something once a week justice. I missed a few weekends to external factors but I didn't miss any weekends without a super good excuse! Which I'm super happy about.

That said, I'm not going to attempt to keep that up in 2019 - mostly because there's a lot of other creative projects I want to work on in my own time. I will still post things occasionally - I want to attempt to finish all the WIPs eventually at the very least, and no doubt there will be one or two bunnies that pop up and compel me occasionally, and I don't want to totally fall off the map again like I did for a solid couple of years there - but I'm dropping the schedule since it's going to clash with my 2019 resolutions, and it also meant I posted a lot of stuff that I felt was unpolished and unhappy with.

Thanks to those who tagged along for my 2018 fic-writing adventures. To any lurkers who don't have Dreamwidth for the easy update notifs, rest assured I will eventually, at some point, get around to posting most things to Ao3.

Happy New Year!
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Wow the end of year kind of mugged me. First set of prompts should be along in the new year, for those waiting.

Anyhow it's tradition now so here's 2014's end of year meme!
Everything under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
So since I'm apparently still a woman of leisure, when a bunch of relatives from overseas came to visit, they realised that rather than spend a stupid amount of money on hiring a car, they could just rope me along to drive mine!

2014-06-12 17.08.53

Though this was more time with family than I typically like, it turned out to be a not-too-terrible deal. I netted a free trip to the Whitsunday Islands!

It's pretty much paradise, also Australia Zoo )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Last travel post!

My path back to Australia took me via Japan, and given the time of year, why not stay a couple of extra days and see some cherry blossoms?

2014-04-12 10.50.39

CONSIDER THIS TICKED OFF THE BUCKET LIST.

Mostly just photos of flower and bonsais under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
There's only two of these travel posts left now!

Picking up where I left off last time, we caught the train from Montreal to New York, because we were cheapskates and it was like a quarter of the price of flying. It was actually a pretty comfy trip, about seven hours long, plus about forty minutes at the border for customs and immigration. There was only something like ten other passengers so it wasn't too bad, aside from about half an hour where the elderly chinese guy sang along to his headphones.

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The scenery was quite nice for a lot of it though.

Lots of photos of awesome famous places under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
After my exceedingly pleasant stopover in Vancouver, my next stop was in Toronto!

I had a old University buddy living in Toronto who wanted in on my world trip and had planned holidays while I was in the vicinity accordingly. This was pretty cool because I netted a travel buddy, but it did somewhat play havoc with my itinerary (or lack of one). But whatever, free place to crash for a couple of days in Toronto!

Toronto was... underwhelming though, after so many of the other places I'd been on my trip. Some people have asked me what my favourite and least favourite places were, and while I would be hard pressed to pick a favourite, Toronto was easily my least-favourite stopover of the journey. I'm sorry Torontonians! It was still an interesting place in its own right, but it was kind of dreary.  Maybe not helped by the weather or season. (Though this was true most places...)

Of course, in Toronto's defence it was around this time I started getting some serious travel fatigue. At this point I had been travelling for nearly five months, and living out of a suitcase transitioning between hotels and air beds was getting a little old.

Still, despite my increasing lack of curiosity, I did wander downtown a bit.  Found this place:

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I didn't actually go in here because I know nothing about ice hockey, since as you can imagine it is not a popular Australian sport. But still very Canadian.

More pics under the cut! )








.

Vancouver!

May. 7th, 2014 08:06 pm
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
I hadn't actually really planned to go to Vancouver at all. But I needed out of San Francisco, and had secured accommodation with a friend later in the week, and was left with an awkward gap of a few days. So at the last minute I wound up booking a flight to Vancouver.

It was very disconcerting, on first arriving to Vancouver, to collect my bag from the baggage carousel at the airport, walk towards the exit... and wind up on the street.

I looked back. Had I somehow circumvented customs? Immigration?  No, it just turned out that flying from San Francisco is basically a domestic flight, and the processing I'd gone through while passing security (without even noticing, because American airport security has so many steps I just assumed they were double-checking my identity) was all that was needed. It was such a stark contrast to my arrival in Quebec that I sort of stood there for a couple of minutes in confusion, worrying about visas, before shrugging and wandering off in search of a train station.

I really knew very little about Vancouver. People had told me it was nice, and not as cold as other parts of Canada, and it gets compared to Melbourne a bit, but that was all! Nothing about what one should see or do in Vancouver.

Turns out Vancouver is really awesome.

My time there was much too short )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
So! San Francisco is amazing.

I did not have nearly enough time in San Francisco to appreciate the city proper - I got to see only a small fraction of the things I wanted to see. I'd made the somewhat inconveniently-timed jaunt to the opposite side of the country in order to attend the Game Developer's Conference, and the subsequently astronomical hotel prices meant I really couldn't stay much beyond that. I managed to only really squeeze in one day of proper sightseeing.

10/10 would live here )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Onward once again with the travel posts!

I actually wound up going to Montreal twice because pretty much everything after Chicago itinerary-wise was totally messed up and all over the place for various reasons. A big part of that being that to get to and from Quebec City to anywhere else you really have to go through Montreal - I flew in direct from Chicago only because by a weird fluke that was the cheaper option at the time. So it was a very pleasant four hours on the train through the snowy landscape until I was once more dumped unceremoniously back out into -17 degree temperatures.

Pics under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Rolling right along with the travel posts, we venture into colder territory - CANADA.

More specifically, Quebec City.

I had crossed seven borders at this point and been waved through without a care (even in Japan with my extended stay) until I got to Quebec City, which decided to do the whole interrogation and rifle-through-the-suitcase thing. There was no real concern because I knew I wasn't carrying anything remotely contraband, but jeeeez did it give me a helluva lousy first impression of Quebec. Luckily I had been playing some Papers, Please on my laptop in Chicago which has given me a whole new world of empathy for immigration agents.

In any case, I was staying with a friend in Quebec, and since I got in on a Friday night, bright and early Saturday morning we went to his favourite bakery.

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There are bakeries all over Quebec City. Chocaltiers too, they are ridiculously prevalent. French patisseries, guys! The food was so so good. The best one out of this set was definitely the pear-thing, I have no idea of what its actual name was. My friend speaks reasonably fluent French so for the vast majority of transactions I was content to sit back and let him speak and avoid outing us as filthy, filthy tourists.

Lots of photos of cold things under the cut )

Chicago!

Apr. 14th, 2014 09:41 pm
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Another travel post! And so soon, too! I have a lot of catching up to do.

Chicago is basically Gotham City, okay )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
This is rapidly feeling like ancient history, but here's another travel post! Expect a flurry of these over the next two weeks as I try to catch up.  How has everybody been? Well, I hope?

So after Seoul, I made my way to the USA. I actually landed in Dallas Fort Worth and had a layover there, but wound up so jetlagged I didn't do anything, and also public transport in the United States outside of of the biggest urban centres is a horrible, horrible culture shock after asia's train system where you just turn up and there's a train magically there leading to walking distance of anywhere you might want to go. I did want to hit up the stockyards in Fort Worth but when the train timetable was 'oh hey it only comes once every two hours and even then you're gonna have to catch a cab' I promptly threw that idea in the bin and went back to sleep.

As a result, no Texas for me! It was onwards to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Pictures under the cut! )

Seoul!

Mar. 13th, 2014 07:08 am
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Falling even further behind with these travel posts, gah! How is everyone? Well I hope?

I was only in Seoul for a couple of days, and lost pretty much an entire day to a fairly miserable stomach bug which was a giant tragedy. :(  Especially since because of said stomach bug I didn't get the full South Korean food experience, as pretty much everything I tried tended towards the spicy and I was naturally ultra leery of spicy stuff because that burns coming back up. One thing I did notice about South Korea though which I didn't expect is how much they appear to love fried chicken. I swear every time I turned around there was another fried chicken place, KFC there must be all like 'AHHHH MOTHERLAND!'. I did venture to try some on my last day once my stomach was feeling a little more steady and have to say, no wonder, South Korea is pretty freaking good at fried chicken, it's like some undiscovered local speciality next to kimchi and bibimbap.

Anyhow, complaining about health issues is no fun and no one wants to read that. That time was mostly spent trying to stay hydrated in the hotel and watching Korean dramas which I didn't understand (and Ocean's Twelve and Cloud Atlas, the latter of which was only marginally more comprehensible than the dramas).  As for the rest of it, that time was awesome!

Photos under the cut! )

Hong Kong!

Mar. 1st, 2014 03:19 pm
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
This is lagging fairly dramatically, but Hong Kong happened! And that was pretty cool.

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I absolutely lucked out on my hotel room in Hong Kong. The hotel itself wasn't the greatest, but who cares, right? I would just sit at the window and stare. I admit to spending at least a couple of hours in Hong Kong just watching the boats come and go in the harbour, or the hawks riding the thermals as they wheeled above the water.

more HK under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
One last post about Japan!  (Although not the last travel post. You're stuck with those for a bit longer yet!)

So, one of the highlights of my time in Kansai turned out to be Toei Eigamura aka Toei Movie Park.

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Look, yet more Detective Conan VS Lupin the III promotions!

Toei Eigamura, Nijo Castle, Arashiyama, Dotonbori and more )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Okay! I'm on my last few days in Japan, but my sleeping schedule is all messed up so here's another travel post!

IMG_4123

I noticed my hotel (and a lot of other places too) often place bottles of water near all of the entrances to the building. Asking around about it, it appears to be an attempt to scare off stray cats. ...I cannot imagine how, but there you go, there's something kind of interesting, bit of an old wives' tale maybe? (Or a tiger rock...)

Festivals, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara, oh my! )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
So continues Sin's somewhat belated tales of overseas misadventures!

IMG_3963

Huehuehue. There hasn't been that much Engrish actually but there are still some great ones to be found.
Ridiculous amounts of photospam under the cut )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
Yosh! Time to finish off the tales of my time in Kanto! Wow I'm already so far behind, this is stuff from last year already. I would apologise for the photo spam, but it would be lying.

Although the exact timeline of what I got up to has already blurred in my head, one interesting journey I made was to Jimbocho!

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Comiket, New Year's Eve, and a bunch of other random things around Tokyo )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
It has been a while! A lot has happened since the last Japan post.

One standout was meeting up again with [livejournal.com profile] dokuganria and heading to the Capcom Bar!

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Capcom Bar, Enoshima, Kamakura, Nikko, more Tokyo, Christmas! )
sinnatious: (TenipuriAvatar001)
It's that time again! End of Year Meme time!

The usual set of questions )

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