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Reports

During my travels, I received free accommodation for a night in exchange for writing a daily travel diary. This diary documented how I reached my next destination, the hosts who welcomed me, the food I was offered, and other experiences along the way. Below, you will find the archives of these extensive reports. Please note that English is not my native language, and most entries were written quickly, often around midnight. Enjoy!
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Wednesday, 15 May 2002
--> Townsville, Australia

This morning I had to wake up around 5.30 in the morning, to join Darren as he took me along to the SeaFM radiostudio in town. Here I woke up with some strong coffee, while enjoying the rocky atmosphere of this station.

I was taken on air on the Dazza & The Bulldog morningshow and had a ball with today’s topic: “Let’s learn Ramon some Australian slang.” People from all over town called in to the show with the latest words of the continent. With a notebook filled up with new words and phrases, the show ended around 10am.

Did you know that dead horse means tomato sauce, a dill is an idiot and don’t spread your legs too far means ‘don’t talk that much!’? The mention that I was a bloody ripper actually meant that I was doing very well!

After the show I connected myself onto the Internet at SeaFM and discovered that the laptop I had ordered online at buyquick.com would arrive somewhere in JUNE! Hey, that’s not what they told me on Friday! They told me it could only last a maximum of nine days... So: I cancelled the order as I didn’t want to buyquick from deliverslow and told Darren I had to find myself a new laptop shop.

I first kicked off with some addresses of online computershop and then Darren took me out for a drive around the entire city of Townsville, to visit shops and look at available laptops. Well, you can be in Australia, but it’s still a small village mentality – there isn’t much electronics in the stores. Everything either had to be taken from Sydney or China!

After a few hours driving around we got back to the office and I decided to order my new laptop online at Harris Technologies in Sydney. When I called their costumers service, they told me they had a few samples of my laptop in stock and I only had to pay it, to have it delivered tomorrow! (They even took round off the total price down!)

Wow, that was good news! Finally a reliable shop. But problems followed the rest of the day. As I have to pay it from an online VISA-account, the office did not accept international creditcard payments! Indeed, that was strange! Isn’t VISA worldwide accepted? Their logo is even on their website!

But the hands of the sales department were tied, they couldn’t help me out – while the computer was just there waiting for me!

So I tried it another way, by electronic money transfers. I loaded all the money for the laptop (AU$ 2660) from the VISA card to a bankaccount in the Netherlands and transferred it from there with high-priority to the bank account of Harris Technologies in Sydney.

And that was done late in the evening. Tomorrow I’d give the Harris-guys another call and see if they had received my payment. I just hope it works out. It means I’ll have that laptop this week! Yes!

In the afternoon, after that computer hassle was organised, Darren took me to the Townsville Strand, the beachfront of town. Here I was going to meet the photographer of The Bulletin, the local newspaper, as he had to make some photos of that 'famous worldtraveller'.

Earlier the day I already had a chat with a lady from the newsroom of that paper and she called in to have some important data about my project confirmed.

Wowy! Darren and I might appear together in the newspaper together!

At night Adele and Darren prepared dinner which we at outside on their concrete veranda. What a place to live they have! I had a marvellous sunset just behind my plate!

Ramon

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