Away on holidays – Happy New Year!

Tomorrow we leave on a little over two weeks holidays – it’s a good time of year to get away, so we always take the opportunity. The last three years Victoria and I have taken our New Year’s holiday in various Asian countries – Vietnam and Laos, Thailand, and Japan. The last was with our lovely daughter Leda, who was four months old at the time, but not too young to acquire a taste for Japanese cuisine and esthetique.

This year we’re heading to the North Coast of Australia’s New South Wales. We’ve made no bookings for accommodation or anything else, so it will be a very laid-back affair as we wander around and probably hang out for a while in the hippie hinterland rather than cosmopolitan Byron Bay. My wife Victoria will paint and design, and I may make some progress on my novel set in the near future (realistically a few years away from publication yet). Leda will no doubt make some friends and enjoy being out of the city for a change.

I’ll report back on any startling encounters or insights when I'm back, but there’s unlikely to be anything as futuristic as Leda’s encounter with a robot in Akihabara, and more likely I'll just experience a very pleasant stilling of the mind before I throw myself into 2008, which promises to an extremely fun and exciting year.

Have a fabulous New Year!