The River Tyne

New Journal Entry 2 – Finding clarity

Our future, or at least short-term future, has become clearer over the last few days in the Argentinian capital.

We were surrounded by the familiarity of unfamiliarity as we stepped out of the airport near Buenos Aires. The city is unknown to us but this feeling of being thrown into the deep end and trying to find the quickest way to swim is something we’re intimately accustomed to. You see, we don’t travel in style. No one is ever waiting for us at the airport with our names on a board, ready to chauffeur us to our hotel. The one time we were expecting that, in Surabaya, Indonesia, the guy forgot to turn up. We sat by a dusty roadside, drinking iced coffees hoping someone would appear.

We often find our way to our accommodation via public transport and sometimes by taxi, but always with an extremely open eye. Tourists newly landed are fresh meat for those whose motives are less than pure. Looking confident of your direction and using a strong tone, you minimise the appearance of someone who is easily walked-over. On this occasion, public transport wasn’t an option. We were taken into town by a squat Argentinian whose only desire in life seemed to be to die driving. No one on the road was safe from his madness behind the wheel.

It’s been four days since we arrived in BA. Two of which were completely rained out. The last two, however, were gloriously sunny. As the rain thumped against the pavements on Wednesday & Thursday, Rachel and I were afforded a lot of time to sit in cafes and discuss the next 2 or 3 years.

On Monday I wrote about our love of travelling but the lack of direction that our lives have. Lots of folk on facebook and google+ seemed to praise our approach to life, and it’s true that we enjoy it. But when we aren’t travelling, or when we have time to consider the future, we don’t feel particularly comfortable about the not-knowing. We make money on the internet – that’s how we sustain our adventures – but it is not a stable career at the moment.

We want to think big, to aim high, but above all to be ourselves and not be forced into a life that we don’t want to live. A time in our life that we truly enjoyed but didn’t appreciate fully was our 2 year stay in Korea. Rachel has been yearning to return and I, too, would love to be re-united with old friends and the amazingly relaxed lifestyle it gave us. I’m also craving the chance to photograph, as much as is humanly possible, Asia and South East Asia.

We are seriously considering a return to the Korean peninsula in March for an extended stay of 1 or 2 years. While Rachel will become an English teacher again, I haven’t decided what I’ll do. I may teach, or I may work on our internet businesses. It’s also possible to combine the two.

We have more to discuss and bigger decisions to make but we’re enjoying the thought that we might gain some stability for a time while still being able to explore Asia.

In the meantime, we’re flying and busing down to El Chalten tomorrow, a tiny town in Patagonia, for 5 days of hiking and photography.

Today’s Photo – The River Tyne from the Millenium Bridge

I had an interesting encounter with a local wedding photographer when I took this shot. He described himself as the ‘premium photographer in the North East’, whatever that meant. He said I would surely want to feature him in HDR One despite the fact that he doesn’t shoot HDR. He then took pleasure in listing all of the amazing equipment he has and how much work he is getting at the moment. Some people feel they have a lot to prove, for some reason or another.

Before the Joys of Post-Processing