Aug 2007

Before heading to Iceland, Liam and i dropped into the UK - London was mostly catching up with friends from Perth - followed by a whirlwind peep into Glasgow and Edinburgh. We were both surprised at how small both these towns were - egad, even smaller then Perth maybe? Not that they lacked in character by any means, we are just slowly coming to realise that other towns are just as small as Perth; it's just that more people have heard of them. We had initially thought that Scotland might be an alternative to London for a place to live and work in the UK, but we decided we need a big city for better job prospects. So begrudgingly we have accepted that London is where we are probably going to settle down and look for work. Now on to Iceland...

Ah Iceland. Where to start with beautiful Iceland? Let's see... upon touching down, we were greeted by a beautiful, clean and well designed airport, it had a high level of material finishes and well considered detailing; it was essentially a sophisticated little pod in the middle of nowhere. This really summarises Iceland quite succinctly. The place is bloody perfect and so are its people. In fact we continued to encounter various forms of Icelandic perfection on our 8 day drive-a-thon around the small island.

The road from Keflavik airport to Reykjavik gave us just a taste of the landscape that we would uncover over the next 8 days. Li and i were mostly silent for the 40 minute drive, just quietly observing this new landscape in front of our eyes. Initially Iceland strikes you as so... 'removed', you really feel very very far away. The land looks so fresh and feels a little bit strange too. Kind of new and prehistoric at the same time. The colours are really crisp; acid green mosses, bright blue water and black black black rocky outcrops. The best way to describe it is like looking at the world through high definition, and i hope that our photos convey that.

We arrived at Reykjavik city hostel, (another snazzy piece of architecture) checked in and picked up our cute lil hire car - a volkswagon polo. The VW made Li feel a little bit at home atleast! Funny thing when we hopped in the car, all confident with our driving-on-the-right-hand-side skills after america, we expected an automatic only to discover it was a manual. Eek. We weren't so confident anymore - it's a whole other ball game driving on the other side of the road AND having to change gears. My left arm kept bashing into the door everytime i needed to change gears! But we adjusted quite quickly and with no collisions. Phewf.

So - we had tackled the driving situation, next was food. We expected Iceland to be expensive. We knew this fact well in advance, but our shopping trip to stock up on food at Reykjavik's biggest shopping centre soon pummelled that fact home. A McDonalds value meal costs AUS$16. AUS$16!!! Even the fast food is expensive! We soon realised that we would be self catering every meal for the next 8 days. We are now masters at buying exact amounts of food to portion out correctly for the exact number of meals required for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yes, yes, very anal and nerdy.

Walking through the shops, we also realised how good looking everyone was. And i mean EVERYONE. They were all perfect Scando specimens...pert little noses, high cheekbones, every girl with an outrageously cute fringe...it was like they were humanoid robots or something. It felt like we were in Gattaca. This land was proving to be more and more perfect by the minute!

There wasn't too much time left in the day so we headed straight for the Blue Lagoon, which is a naturally heated lagoon of baby blue opaque water. It cost an arm and a leg to get in but was well worth it. This building too was another beautiful piece of architecture. (What i can't understand is that Iceland, (pop. 300, 000) can provide unique high quality architecture at every turn, and Perth (pop. 2 million) seems to poo-poo anything that resembles good taste. Anyway...back to the lagoon!) The water was as described, baby blue and obscured your hand if you held it 20cm under water. Check out Liam's photos on Flickr to get a real picture of it. Soaking in the warm water amongst the surrounding black lava field rocks with white silicon mud slathered all over your face was a surreal experience. Gah - More perfection!

So after the shopping and nature stuff we were pretty tuckered out after all that perfection envy, so we only took a casual stroll down the main street in town and then went off to bed with the sun just dipping below the horizon at 12 midnight and never really setting (this is known as the midnight sun).

The next morning we had our maps in hand and were ready to hit the road! We got off to a tricky start, getting a bit tangled in highway exits, but eventually we hit highway 1 - the ring road. What followed was 8 days of waking, eating, driving, drooling over the beautiful landscape passing by the window, arriving at the next hostel, eating, sleeping - that was our routine everyday. But it was far from tiring or tedious. Iceland is pretty small so 6-7 hours was probably the longest amount of time that we drove (usually 4-5hrs), and the midnight sun conveniently extended our sightseeing time too.

We saw alot of amazing natural sights. What blows me away about iceland is how varied the landscape is. Water falls, lava fields, geysirs, glaciers and glacial lagoons, craters, geothermal bubbling pools of sulphur stenchy mud, desert like sandy mountainous dunes, crazy black beaches with caves made of hexagonal columns of basalt (apparently lava that errupted from under ground volcanoes and then crystallised when meeting the extremely cold temperatures above ground)...were just some of the things we saw. Like i mentioned earlier, there were also suprisingly many encouters with beautiful architecture around the whole island. For example, we found a small but amazing concrete church reminiscent of Ghery´s Bilbao Guggenheim in a town population 300 or something. Cra-zee!

My favourite moment was coming across a church (eerily similar to the house in Beetlejuice) that was holding a small concert. As I sat down inside, a 20th century string trio had just begun playing as i looked around the amazing interior of the church - a typical example of Scando modernism, restrained but still warm with a massive avante garde mosaic of jesus behind the alter. I just cant explain it really, but it just felt so otherwordly, it was like the abstract aural beauty of the music matched the churches avante gard aesthetic - every perfect, precise, atonal pluck and moan of the string instruments united perfectly with the interior. A bit wanky, sorry, but that´s just how it felt!

So, in a nutshell my initial self-conscious fears of Iceland being a nerd holiday "are we just going to be looking at moss and rocks?" were absolutely forgotten about after our 8 days driving around that small but totally unique country. It was just what i was hoping it would be, I´ve seen nothing like it before and I loved it! I think you should all go and see it one day if you get the chance.

xs

Sitting in a 7-11 in Stockholm, looking back at my diary- I realise it's been 5 weeks since Botcon finished. On one hand it it's hard to believe it's been that long, since the memories are so fresh- and on the other hand it really does seem like it was a whole world away... which of course it was. Well, half a world

I should preface the coming ramble with a disclaimer- I've been to my fair share of toy fairs, read reports from previous transformers conventions, and seen tv shows about other fandom conventions. To be honest I was expecting a lot of socially retarded geeks. You know the type- like the comic book guy from the simpsons- large, loud, smelly and hopelessly opinionated.
While there were a few choice specimens encountered over the 5 days I spent at Botcon, I was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone I met and spoke to over the weekend were really decent, down-to-earth and friendly folk. I kinda feel a bit stupid for thinking I was in the minority as a socially-adjusted obsessive geek :P

So I rolled into Rhode Island off the bus from NYC, sweaty and tired since it was a scorching 30+ degree day in both places. I met up with the two other Australian fans I had made contact with before leaving- Matthew (aka griffin) and Ian (along with his wife Caroline), and griffin lugged his growing piles of shopping bags into our shared hotel room. They'd already taken advantage of being in town early by hitting the local Wal-mart and raiding the shelves before the convention had begun.
And after our tiny NYC hostel, this hotel room felt like a palace

We checked out the centre of town (consisting of a busport, convention centre, giant mall and about 10 hotels) and made friends with a few other fans who were milling around.

The next morning Ian and Caroline were busy with an organised tour and we didn't need to be back for official registration until later in the afternoon, so griffin and I made it our mission to hit up more department stores, as well as stocking up on groceries and finding somewhere to clear our camera memory cards onto CD. We navigated the bus system, walked a few miles, and ended up on a highway with strip malls in the next state (not hard considering the size of RI).

We managed to tick every box on the list of things to do, and I bought a bunch of movie toys (which weren't out on the shelves when I left home) just because of how cheap they were in the US. Loaded up with bags, we got back into the city and hit the convention centre to register. I was also surprised to recognise a few people in line from various US messageboards that I visit all the time for TF (that's TransFormers) info: I hadn't expected it to be so easy to come across people that I've often had conversation with online.

After half an hour in line for registration packs, we lined up again for the opportunity to buy more exclusive mechandise. We dropped off our piles of toys to the hotel, and got ready to head out again, this time for the exclusive preview screening of the TF movie. While it was a week early for the US, it was actually around the same time as the Australian release, so some of you may have even seen it before me. The screening was great- there's nothing better than a bunch of fans watching something that they love, everyone was laughing, cheering and clapping throughout- and it didn't get out of hand, so it was still easy to focus on the movie. Needless to say I loved it- as long as you go in expecting a big funny action movie and don't think about the details too much, you'll have a good time.

The next big event was the Hasbro tour the next morning, which I had been hanging out for as much as the movie. Finally, a chance to see TF HQ, to see the engineering department, to meet the designers, and to hound them with employment questions I chatted to the design team guys a lot, and then some more that afternoon back at the convention. I ended up meeting the TF head honcho and getting his business card to pass on my folio- I'm not really that hopeful, but it will be nice to get some feedback.

The next couple of days were a blur- consisting of wandering around the dealer room (tables upon tables of toys for sale), dropping off stuff at the hotel, eating and drinking with new friends, lining up for autographs, and sitting in on question-and-answer panels with various creative people involved in all aspects of the TF world. Voice actors, designers, comic and computer game artists, the works. I got to see designs and prototypes for the next year's worth of TF toys, get a movie Optimus Prime toy signed by THE voice of Optimus Prime (a very charming and humble man), buy more toys that I hadn't planned on buying, and spend time with some great people.

I barely made it to the busport (posting a 7kg box of stuff back to Oz took a little longer than expected) but stumbled onto the bus to NYC exhausted and satisfied. I'd never been able to justify the expense of Botcon, and made it to this one due to pure synchronicity with our travels- I hope the same thing happens again in a few years time, maybe when they release the TF movie sequel?

Will post again soon with more stories, we've got a lot of countries to make up for!
Been thinking about Perth and all our friends and family very fondlyrecently, so lots of love!

-Liam