Another year over, another year none the wiser... 2014 was a pretty "Full-on" and busy year for me. A lot of that revolved around going to the UK - not just the actual trip there itself, but doing a lot of trips around NZ in the 9 months leading up to it. It was actually my "most travelled" year to date, and as someone who has a reputation for travelling a lot, thats probably saying something. Hell, 2014 even started off for me in the middle of a Road trip with Jebby and Wollum where we slept in a tent and had awesome pancakes the next morning for breakfast. The travelling reputation isn't undeserved - I have travelled around a lot, particularly over the last 5-6 years since I've been in Wellington. However the travel around NZ for 2014 didn't come cheap in total - but comparatively, it hasn't been that bad actually.
How do I know, comparatively? Well when I moved to Wellington in 2009, I started flying between Wellington and Christchurch a lot to see my family and friends. It certainly felt like a lot, though I'm not certain quite how often it actually was.
I wrote things on a calendar to try and keep track of date of events and trips etc so I could tell when I was free to take advantage of Grabaseat deals, but it was at home, and I'd recieve notification of Grabaseat specials while I was at work. The solution was to migrate to an Excel spreadsheet and upload it to Google Docs (later Microsoft Skydrive/OneNote when that came along) so I could open it anywhere at anytime, so I'd know if I had something on on a particular date or if it was free, or whether I could combine multiple things into a trip. It got more sophisticated than that, tracking how much I was spending for these trips - when I set the first spreadsheet up late 2009 for 2010 I was getting a bit wary at not knowing exactly how much I was spending relatively unchecked on these trips, something that I literally couldn't afford to continue. It further evolved as I set "budget" limits on the amount each trip could cost and how many to particular destinations could be done in a year - this helped add incentive to seek out the best possible prices or if a trip seemed too expensive, realise it wasn't worth doing. As a result, I now have statistics for how much I travelled in the last 5 years, how often by what modes and how much I spent. The 2014 statistics are a bit skewed in that the spreadsheet covers the huge costs of my trip to the UK and only covers up till I arrived in the UK in November - any trip since then has been done on the 2015 sheet, as costs in Pounds are too difficult to reconcile against the 10 months of ones done in NZ$ and since I'm only going to be able to stay in the UK for a maximum of 2 years, it will kind of work out. On the whole, per flight I spent less than what I did for any of the other previous years, just - it would have been even lower by a 1/4th if I excluded the $500 I spent for two last-minute flights to Auckland after I stuffed up on the bus ticket bookings for the Northern Explorer trip. In terms of total number of trips, in those 9 months I had more trips than in any of the other 12-month periods I've been keeping track of stuff. But that was going to happen - one of my 2014 resolutions (because I actually made some for 2014!) was to come up with a list of things I wanted to do or see in NZ before I left, my "Bucket List" goal - and do them. In that, I was successful - but only just managed to fit them in there, I thought I'd have more time than I did!
One resolution which I didn't succeed in achieving was the completion of "Project Backstep", which is my silly name for uploading all of my train photos to my Flickr Gallery. Its not as simple as just bulk uploading them as I don't want my full size versions on there for people to steal (I keep getting hate mail through Flickr for not uploading the full versions from people who want to use them for their own purposes!) and so processing the photos takes a bit of time. The Flickr thing originated about 2-3 years ago, as a sort of 1-stop reference catalogue place to put up my train photos for all to see as there's no point in having all these photos unless people can see them, and if people want to use them they can contact me and we'll figure something out. At first it was easy - I still had copies of the emails with the reduced photosize versions I'd sent out to an email group, but beyond that it required going through and processing the photos. I set myself the target of completing putting up the remaining "old" photos while having it up to date with the current ones taken throughout the year - an ambitious goal, one which proved too ambitious as time went on as I literally didn't have the time to sort through the new ones I'd taken let alone the older ones. Given I set myself the "Bucket List" goal, I probably took more photos in 2014 than any other year - making the problem worse and this goal unachievable. I figure it might only get worse from here being in the UK, but mind you now that my main lens is broken I'm not so inclined to go out and take photos willy nilly - which is giving me some breathing space to catch up on processing the "new" photos. I would like to resurrect the goal for 2015, but feel it again might be unachievable. We shall see - it would certainly be worth finishing off the older ones once and for all, then I only have to worry about the new ones from then on.
2014 saw a lot of other stuff happen outside of travel - moving from my flat in Mt Victoria in Wellington out to another in Manor Park, Lower Hutt for the 7 months or so until I headed off to the UK which turned out to be a blast, and although it was a bit sucky to not have easy access to the central city at will I have to say I very much enjoyed commuting between work and Manor Park far more than the much shorter journey between Mt Victoria and work. The company was great too, much hilarity was had and actually I'm quite sorry I wasn't in the flat for longer. Jeremy and Rachel got married (which accounts for most of the travel to and from Auckland early in 2014), and I got to meet my American cousin Emma and her friend Kelly for the first time - that whole time where both of those things happened was an exciting and fun time. The steam locomotive I'd spent at least half my Saturdays working on ever since I arrived in Wellington stopped being a collection of bits to work on and became a fully working engine for the first time in February - and then we proceeded to take it out on its first trips throughout the year, culminating in its first multi-day trip in October around the North Island. It was this engine and the October trip I was basing when I headed off to the UK around - seemed like I'd worked for ages to help get it going, I wanted to be around to see it do its first lot of trips before heading off on my OE. And all in between, catching up with family and friends, even making new friends and re-acquainting myself with some older friends who I hadn't seen or heard from in a long time. And of course, picking up sticks and going to the UK to do my OE is a pretty big thing on my list for 2014 - my first time in the Northern Hemisphere, and I've also visited the United Arab Emirates and Germany in addition to the UK.
What will 2015 bring? hopefully a job and a place for me to move into, so that I can stay here in the UK and get to see it and Europe - possibly even further afield - else my money will end up running out and I'll have to go back to NZ. Its a real possibility but not one I'm ready to concede to just yet. Other than that, 2015 is quite a blank canvas with lots of uncertainties for me right now and in that respect, a little bit scary. However my first New Year's was quite nice - I tagged along with Jeremy and Rachel to a workmate of Jeremy's party where there was food, drink and music and a countdown to the new year on a screen all night - and when it came time for midnight the screen switched to the BBC broadcast, showed the Thames fireworks, and then the concert where the band Queen (with Adam Lambert singing the Lyrics, although for a good portion a big video of Freddie Mercury singing the songs was shown up behind the back of the stage) played Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions and a few others, then it was time for "Auld Lang Syne" which no-one knew the actual lyrics to and involved crossing arms and shaking hands while doing so which was new on me. A little bit later, the host brought out the 14 large fireworks he had and we let them off in salute to 2014 - they were exceptionally decent, big skyrockets of a type you'd never be allowed to purchase in NZ but apparently are legal in the UK and went off just like the real pyrotechnic rockets. It was a pretty neat feeling start to the new year!
So lets see what 2015's going to throw at me. And don't forget, its Back to the Future Year this year!