A bit of mile stone around my work is hitting thirty countries before turning thirty yourself. As of the last wee weekend away I have just clocked it up as well as 186,652 km plus or minus. Although the Western Sahara is a bit of a dodgy one and could be argued that it isn't really a country. So thats leaves roughly 163 to go, better get a move on :)

Australia Austria Cook Islands Egypt England

France Germany Netherlands Hungary Ireland

Italy Luxembourg Malaysia Mauritania Monaco

Morroco New Zealand Portugal Russia Scotland

Senegal Singapore Spain Sweden Switzerland

Thailand The Gambia USA Wales Western Sahara

Where I have been Worldwide

As some of you know, I found out about a month ago that Carmen Doran was having an affair with a married man at her work, Simon Forsyth.

Actually, the saga goes back a bit further then that, I initially found a number of text messages from him on Carmens cell phone over six months ago. At the time Carmen denied everything and said they were just a joke and flogged them off. This is as far as I know when she started systematically lying to my face. As over the next 6 months, she had more and more excuses for coming home late, staying in to see the night shift multiple times a month, and each time I confronted her about it - I got accused of being paranoid and was driving us apart.

Then about a month ago I found more, and she admitted some things but again denied a lot. I really wanted it to work out, so we were going to give it a really good attempt at making it work, Carmen promised she would break off anything she had going on with Simon. So that brings us to today...

So Carmen was late home last night, and this afternoon Simon had sent a number messages such, 'you were so good last night' and 'I want you so bad right now' with other simpler messages of xxxxx, mul (miss you lots), looking forward to seeing you soon etc.

So having broken up, Carmen has now admitted they were together.

Not entirely sure what I am going to do, need to find somewhere to live.

Can someone forward this to Kathryn (Simons wife, so she too can know the truth as I feel she should have an informed choice whether to stay with a cheating husband).

9th of May. Today marks one year ago Carmen and I set off across to the other side of the world. Gee whiz whitakers Batman has it gone fast. Leaving the family in tears at the airport, we detoured Thailand before landing in London to the warm welcome of cousin Gary. I must admit it did make it sooo much easier having a landing pad while we watched our kiwi dollars sinking into the never-ending pit of foreign exchange. But we landed, and we landed with grace, as one year closes, this is a summary of what we have got up to, and how life has turned out so far.



Travel
Obviously, one of our top priorities of being over here was (and still is) to travel and see as much of Europe as we can. Nearly done 40,000 km! We are doing it one holiday and trip at a time. We have almost covered the Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) as much as we want to. We have a couple of camping trips planned along a couple of the coasts, but on the whole we are happy enough with our explorations of the UK.

We have only scratched the surface of Europe. We are trying to hit the big ticket items which are high on our must do lists, so if money or time becomes short we won't go away disappointed. So we have one to a couple of large festivals (Oktoberfest, Hogmany and La tomatina) while at the same time spending a week or some around the festival to take in the local culture and tourist destinations. After that we have hit up a couple of the major cities which have a wealth of history and things to do.

Work
As most Antipodeans do, after initially failing at getting a full time job within the first two weeks, we hit up the recruitment agencies and with our engineering skills (i.e. we could type and add) we very quickly had temp jobs. I was going mad with boredom at the UK Environment Agency as a personal assistant while Carmen got a job at ConocoPhillips (a large American oil company) as Trading analyst. Not content with temporary work, we continued to look for permanent work; Carmen hit pay dirt first with a large Pharmaceutical company as a Technical Graduate. Not happy with her title, Carmen quickly got a performance review to release the shackles of the graduate to become a Technical Manager. I was interested to see what was happening at ConocoPhillips in regards to Trading and general finance, so I moved into Carmen’s temporary role. Upon giving notice that I was going to leave to find permanent work after Christmas, they offered me a full time job as a Financial Analyst (Accountant). It is actually a lot more interesting than it sounds due to the field, plus the company is helping me out with a qualification to become a chartered accountant. So at the moment, both Carmen and I are very happy with our jobs and can see a lot of future potential within our multinational companies.

Friends
Leaving friends and family behind was by far the hardest part of moving over here. Although we keep in the touch the best we can, making a new life includes making new friends. Most of the cool people we have meet have been through our travels, some through work and a couple others simply by random when picking up furniture off e-bay.

Home
A bit has happened while being away from home. Some good news, some bad and other just simply news. We have missed a number of weddings and special occasions (assuming we would have been invited): Tom and Kats Parsons engagement, Crystal and Darrels wedding, Michael and Stephanie Chernishov wedding, Mark and Hannah Carey wedding, Pots and Andrews wedding, Nick and Jade Hudson’s wedding, Amy and Aarons engagement, Hemon and Katies wedding, Michael and Josie Bakers first child, Trevor’s 70th birthday, .... All of which we would love to have been a part of, and regret not being.

Future
Unfortunately, we don't have any unplanned holiday leave left for this year. We are heading back to New Zealand for a general catch up, Tom and Kats wedding and New Years, which has taken about 3 weeks holidays up. Also on the agenda is a two week tour of Egypt. That aside, we are off to the Monaco grand prix in two weeks time. We are entertaining the idea of buying a flat in our current area before Christmas, we will keep you posted.

P.S Happy Mothers Day Mum

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Although at some point in my entries I say what I'm currently doing, the entries get pushed off the main page as I post my new adventures. So this is here to give you a wrap up of what I am currently doing and what I have planned for the near future.

Currently I am...
I am in the drawn out process of looking to buy in London.

Aaron is working as/at...
ConocoPhillips as a Trader - Natrual Gas and Power. UK and Europe

I am planning on...given my huge amounts of time. I am going to stop saving and start spending for a while on these:

+ Car rally through Africa (http://spittingllamas.slowlane.net)
+ Cuba - before Castro dies.
+ Skiing in Europe. (booked in Feb -> Italy)
+ Skiing in the US. (booked)
+ Greece - Athens and some island hopping.
+ Westminster Abbey in London
+ Oktoberfest - Go back, this time with a group of mates
+ Czech Republic
+ Amsterdam
+ Budapest, Hungary
+ Copenhagen, Denmark
+ Safari in Africa
+ Norway (booked - April) -Cancelled..need a new plan now
+ Rugby World Cup (booked - NZ vs Scotland)

+ And more, but need ideas?!

If you are over this side of the world and want to join me, I would welcome the company!

Matt Harding is my hero. (watch the video)

Welcome to Slowlane.net!!! Glad you could take the time to visit, and obviously read past the front page.

I've been over in the UK over two years now, kicked off after completing a Masters in Engineering back home in New Zealand, completing that I set off to see the world, have a great time and earn my fortunes (or something like that...).

Upon arriving in the big smoke (London) I pretty much turned my back on Engineering and started a new career in Finance - which I am now half way through becoming a chartered accountant (which I am going to finish), but that soon bored me so now I have moved on to commodity trading at an American oil company. It keeps me entertained and I enjoy it.

This site tends to follow my trials and tribulations on my travels through Europe, and maybe beyond. I aim to keep the folk back home, the ones we meet along the way, and anyone else that is interested, up to date on where we've been, what we've seen and what we thought.

Make yourselves at home - have a look about. Feel free to add comments to our entries - it is expected, so don't be shy. If you want to be informed about new additions to the site, join the mailing list.

You can see what I am currently doing and what the future plans are here.

You can also contact Aaron , for a more personal touch...

About the site:
I made the site myself, with http://www.movabletype.org/ as the back end for the posts and http://gallery.menalto.com/ for the photo gallery.

Hosted at Lunarpages.

As part of any adventure, you want to make sure you remember. To that end we have set up a gallery of photos. Being engineers we like our toys and gismos, hence we have a couple of digital cameras for the trip. We have picked up an Canon IXUS II, which is 3.2 mega pixel. By all accounts a very good camera. So lots and lots of pictures of everything we see, and hopefully lots with us in them.

Next we have got hold of the latest (at this time) and greatest consumer digital-SLR. The Canon 300d - Digital Rebel. Along with the kit 18-55mm zoom lens, we have bought, 50mm f1.8 II and 75-300mm USM Image stabilized lens. So we will still use this to take photos of everything we see and even some of us, but they should be more artistic and a good start for a hobby.