14.11.11-15.11.11 The first two days on board the Pacific Pearl we were at sea so I spent them milling about, winning the pub quizzes (ha! Try cheating on your smartphone when the internet is 75c a minute!) and getting to grips with all things cruise-y. The first (and most obvious) thing I noticed was the stunning demographic divide. On a ship of 1,500 souls there must have been less than 30 of us who were young, hilarious and up for dancing the night away. Everybody else adhered to that painful cliché of newly-weds and nearly-deads. There were some families on board, but put it this way: the vast majority of the ship’s compliment of passengers were in bed by midnight. Something else I know I shouldn’t say, but I will: boy there are some big fat fatty fat fats on board. Hey, I’m no Slim Jim…

13.11.11: Sydney, the capital-in-all-but-name of Australia is a marvellous little sprawl that sits to the north of Botany Bay. It also appreciates the importance of people liking to stand in front of things and take a photo. Okay, so the Sydney Opera House is a Danish contraption with the interior design features of a nuclear fallout shelter, but at least you can take a picture of you and yours standing outside the damn thing (and the magnificent Harbour Bridge) and people will instantly know where you are. Melbourne, for all its liveability, has no such boast. One word for you, Benjamin: Landmarks! Mand and I got to Australia’s Mega-City One in good time on the overnight backpacker bus, neither of us sleeping very well. My girlfriend puts up with a lot from me and my stupid idiotic adventures, but on this Sunday morning she was less…

12.11.11: Did I mention Mandy and I had a music festival to go to? Perhaps I should have, cos we did. With Portishead, Flaming Lips and The National on the billing, it was not something I wanted to miss, even if it meant a frantic dash to Sydney afterwards. With all my things packed up in the morning, we headed over to Matheus’ house and met up with our fellow festival-goers. For reasons I still don’t 100% understand we took a stretched limo to the festival – apparently, between us it was cheaper than getting the bus(!). Yes, I’ve finally become all my worst nightmares of middle-class festival goers skilfully lampooned here by Adam Buxton: But the limo was pretty damn cool, so I’m not complaining. It’s been an AGE since I’ve been to a music festival: which feels weird for me since I normally go…

07.11.11-11.11.11: This week was mostly taken up with editing old travel videos and putting them online in a kind of filler not just for my YouTube channel but for my life in general. With The Odyssey Expedition back in action, I’ve got to get moving. The worse thing I could do at the moment is to get stuck in Melbourne for another six months. With the help of Dino Deasha in Manchester, Alex Zelenjak in Sydney and, of course, Mandy in Melbourne we’ve been hassling Pacific Forum Line and P&O Cruises all week to get me on some kind of big floaty thing that could take me to Vanuatu, which my website keeps screaming at me is my next – and 187th – country. But with a flurry of unanswered phone calls and unreplyed-to emails we hit something of a funk and I (tellingly) responded appropriately.…

04.11.11-06.11.11: Mand’s mates Damien and Allison were getting married. Allison is a Yank, but Damien’s family hailed from the most ridiculously-named country in the world: “The Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia” or FYROM for short. This lousy acronym comes courtesy of the Greeks, who are loathe to allow there to be a country called Macedonia. But now that everybody in Europe (and therefore the world) is less than happy with Greece, it’s a good time for FYROM to officially change its name to Macedonia. If there’s one thing that Macedonians will emphasise it is the fact they are most definitely not Greek. The Macedonians have their own alphabet (one apparently nicked by the Ruskies – or so I’m told) and their own language and their own Alexander The Great. Actually, when it comes down to it, the reason Greece doesn’t want a country called ‘Macedonia’ staring…