Sherborne

1. Elizabeth & Byron's hospitality.

2. Walking tour of Sherborne with our local guides.

3. Cerne Abbas Giant.

Stonehenge

1. Waking up to Benji finally being on Skype, 'Closer' being in the letterbox, and then breakfast with Dad.

2. Crepes and buskers in busy Oxford.

3. Sunset at Stonehenge.

Precious

1. Having trouble concentrating on psychoanalytic film theory I was gazing out the Cambridge UL window and saw it begin to snow again. (I thought we were done for the winter but apparently not).

2. A bleak but amazing double feature: 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring' and then 'Precious' at the Picturehouse with Rob.

3. Kitchen cleaning blitz before Dad comes over for breakfast tomorrow. Even housework is fun when I'm listening to the Go-Go's on my iPod.

What is theory?

1. Taught my first class at my new uni. Film Theory 101.1 went smoothly.

2. Coffee with Rob. Hatching more plans for overcoming researcher isolation (because I'm not so keen on life drawing or more dancing classes).

3. Attended the first MA class on New Extremism. Lots of interesting ideas likely to feed into my PhD.

Amazon

1. Online book shopping. One for me (Closer), one for the PhD (Interrogating Postfeminism).

2. Lunch with a couple of my new officemates.

3. An interesting research seminar at uni on human interest stories and the online 'public sphere'.

Mini-percolator

1. Mum's recovering well after her car accident and Miri is over in Perth taking care of her. It was nice talking to them on Skype this morning.

2. My new single shot coffee percolator. Impractically small but so cute!

3. Finding a comfortable spot right next to the heater on the quiet sixth floor of the Cambridge UL to read for a few hours.

Trainspotting

1. Quality new boots. I'm sure these ones will last me more than a month. :)

2. A fellow Australian befriended me at salsa dancing class.

3. 'Trainspotting'. Can you believe I'd never seen it? I was putting it off for about 10 years. It made me feel old, and sort of sad, but it's a great film.

Movieum

1. Taking photos of the amazing views from the London Eye with my new camera.

2. Dad and I stumbled across the London Film Museum, which I didn't even know existed. Happily Dad was as keen as me to spend a few hours there. The Chaplin exhibition was especially good.

3. First visit to BFI Southbank. Peter Campus video art, and a few goodies from the filmstore.

Avatar

1. Coffee & the weekend newspaper.

2. Dinner with Dad in Wimbledon. Good company and good food. :)

3. 'Avatar' in 3D. Very 1990s Hollywood, and pulling focus in 3D doesn't work, but otherwise better than I expected.

Transmasculinities

1. Talking to Benji and Ochre who were at the Transmasculinities exhibition launch when I woke up this morning. Ouch was I homesick today and so badly wishing I could've been at the premiere of my films, celebrating with my beautiful Melbourne friends.

2. Day 3 of the teacher training course was the most useful. I got some good feedback and ideas through the peer reviewed micro-teaching session.

3. The young Clint Eastwood in 'The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly'.

Butchered

1. An easy meeting with my supervisor. She seems impressed with what I've written so far.

2. I overcame my phobia about going to the hairdresser and got myself a haircut. She totally butchered my hair and it doesn't suit me at all, but the good thing is that I overcame a phobia... or maybe the good thing is that the phobia has been reinforced and I won't be wasting money on haircuts for a very long time... or maybe the good thing is that my camera is broken so no one in Australia can see it. :)

3. I met a few new PhD students at a Faculty Welcome Evening and then caught up with Rob over some delicious Chinese food.

Teaching and learning

1. 'Wallander' over breakfast again. Almost late to school but it was a great episode.

2. Teacher training. The first day of the three day course was a bit generic but I got a little bit of good advice out of it.

3. Text love to and from my dear friends Romana and Ej.

Christology

1. Deleuze's book on masochism. So engaging and full of interesting ideas relevant to the films I'm writing on at the moment. Read the whole book in one sitting.

2. Vegetarian cottage pie and chips in the library tea room. Along with a latte macchiato it was just the refueling I needed before delving into a book on Christology and redemption.

3. A successful friendship 'blind date'. Cathie set me up with her wonderful friend Aileen and we had a drink at the Portland Arms tonight.

Sentenhausen

1. Burnt 'Blowing Smoke' DVDs for my actors and posted them off. I'll keep a lookout for other screening opportunities, but other than that the project has been completed!

2. I went to visit the shared postgrad office downstairs from my current office and had a cup of tea with a fellow PhD student. They've got a spare desk I can use while my usual office transforms into a bookshop (for the first few weeks of semester), and even more exciting is that they've got a kettle.

3. Salsa dancing class. Ellie roped me into it but I had a great time so I think I'll go regularly. Dinner at a friendly little pub afterwards.

Percolator

1. Coffee at my local pub. Gemma took her percolator to Norwich and I was dying for a coffee today. Not too many options in my neighbourhood and I ended up at a suburban pub / sports bar, drinking sweet nasty coffee while everyone around me drank beer and watched the rugby. I felt rather out of place amongst the regulars (all men about 30 years my senior) but it was a nice daily fix of absurdity and caffeine.

2. Gemma loaned me a spare mobile phone, which is great because mine has now died completely. She also loaned me a colorful rug which has brightened up my room. So I forgive her for taking the percolator.

3. A long Skype chat with Elise. I had a nice chat with Miri yesterday and twice this week with Mum & Dad. Now I just need my friends to get Skype!! The face-to-face chats are lovely.

Light show

1. Second episode of second series of 'Wallander' with breakfast. I'm hooked.

2. Gemma came to visit. We went to the Picturehouse and saw 'The Road', cafe and pub-hopped for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

3. We also swung by the light show at King's College, the finale of Cambridge University's over-the-top 800 year celebrations, and the projections on the building facades were mesmerizing.

Wallander

1. Took those shoddy leaky boots back to the shop and got my money back no trouble.

2. Coffee with Ellie at uni. Hadn't seen each for a month and it was nice to catch up.

3. Discovering the crime series 'Wallander'. Kenneth Branagh is great and the cinematography is beautiful.

Premediation

1. Getting the lowdown from the coordinator of the introduction to film theory subject I'll be teaching this semester. All seems pretty straightforward.

2. A very interesting talk by Prof. Richard Grusin on 'Premediation, Affect and the Anticipation of Security' at uni today.

3. Watching the interview with the director on the DVD extra features of 'Lady Vengeance'. He quite simply stated what the symbolism was about and his views on revenge, affirming what I'd spent a long time trying to decode myself. :)

Blow wave

1. I used my new hairdryer for the first time and it dried my overgrown hair in record time. Thanks for the Xmas present Elise & Georg!

2. Making friends with a couple of postgrads in my department at the academic writing course. Being terribly homesick and isolated means making a new friend is more than a Good Thing, it's a chip in my loneliness and a preservation of my sanity.

3. I got a few useful tips about how to structure my thesis at the training day.

Home grimey home

1. Sleeping alone for the first time this year. Counts as a good thing because I'm referring to not having to share a dorm room with 8 backpackers who snore, switch on the light at ridiculous hours, struggle to find their alarm which is waking me up, leave mess everywhere, etc.

2. Drinking coffee and chatting in the kitchen with my new housemate Matt for about 3hrs this morning. I am super sad about my first and closest Cambridge friend Gemma moving to Norwich so at least the guy moving into her old room is friendly and interesting.

3. The beautiful birthday video Benji made for me with cute messages from Jaigur, Josh, Tanya, Elijah and Munkee. It was the sweetest gift and so lovely to see them all.

Nudo Per Stalin

1. The conversation starter in the middle of my face. I was too shy to talk to the pretty American sharing my breakfast table at the hostel this morning, but she kindly broke the ice. 'Did that hurt?'

2. I went to both the Libreria del Cinema and Fandango bookshop-cafés and they were both closed. I had been looking forward to going but it was a good thing because bookshops are dangerous enough for me, let alone bookshops full of cinema books. :)

3. 'Nudo Per Stalin' exhibition of photos from the 1920s and 30s. Such a good thing that I just stumbled across it, that I'd caught it on its last day (and mine), that it was open on a Monday, and that it was free.

Couch

1. Being stranded in a foreign city and running out of everything (cash, clean clothes, painkillers, phone credit...) except blank journal pages means I'm getting a lot of writing done.

2. Not too many puddles in the streets of Rome today, which is a good thing because I still haven't bought new boots and I went for a long walk up to Piazza del Popolo.

3. Couches in the hostel. I don't have a couch at my place in Cambridge so it was a joy curling up on the couch with a good book ('The Lacuna').

Apocalypse Wow

1. Free printing at the hotel. I printed of the current thesis chapter and got some work done, assuaging my guilt about still being on holiday.

2. Apocalypse Wow art exhibition at MACRO Future. I was in awe of the artists' wild imaginations and especially liked Nicola Verlato's pieces.

3. Viva La Liberta exhibition about the fall of the Berlin Wall. An effective blend of news footage, artifacts, photographs, and art installations.

Fiumicino

1. Eggplant for breakfast. It's a new concept and I like it. The buffet at the airport hotel had every breakfast food you can think of and more. Except kimchi.

2. I thought I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, but I went for a walk and discovered the airport hotel is on the edge of Fiumicino, Rome's port town. It reminds me a little of Brighton and of Newcastle, warm associations to comfort me in this strange sense of limbo.

3. Spending hours sitting on the pier then on the beach reading. It was quite eerie - quiet except for planes taking off and the strong winds, and the bright grey sky was exactly the same colour as the ocean. As the sky darkened the water turned green and I left just in time to miss the rain.

European Drawings

1. Bernini's sculpture 'Apollo e Dafne' at the Borghese Gallery. The Caravaggio Bacon exhibition was good too (well the Caravaggio part more than the Bacon, and I don't really understand why they were paired).

2. The current exhibitions at MACRO weren't all that inspiring but I came across a beautiful little contemporary gallery down the street with an exhibition of European Drawings, some of which I really loved.

3. There are worse places to be stranded than Rome, worse things to happen than being forced to stay on holiday for another 5 days. :) My flight was cancelled due to snow at Gatwick.

Bellissima

1. Peaceful stroll through the cemetery behind the Piramide looking for Keats' grave. Cats live in the cemetery, and also in the Roman Forums, and there's dogs in Pompeii - beautiful public pets.

2. The boys from the kebab shop around the corner from my hostel calling out 'Ciao bella!' or 'Bellissima' to me every time I pass to go to the gelati shop for another cup of pistachio. :)

3. The mosaics at Museo Nazionale Romano.

Pompeii

1. A long but enjoyable train ride to Pompeii via Naples. Beautiful scenery along the coast.

2. Wandering around the ancient city of Pompeii for hours, which wasn't at all what I expected. It's similar to the ruins in Rome, only it's a whole city and even better preserved.

3. The clouds. Dramatic and beautiful and didn't release rain. I wish my camera could've captured them, but at least it's still working well enough to capture the ruins. The sunset with those clouds as I left the site was spectacular.

Basilica

1. St. Peter's Basilica was impressive, the queue was relatively short, and it was free.

2. The holes in the soles of my new boots (I have been doing a lot of walking) gives me an excuse to buy a pair of Italian shoes in the Saldi.

3. Jeanette Winterson's 'The Passion'. It's making me want to pop up to Venice while I'm in Italy.

Papal lollipop

1. The sun was out again today, perfect weather for exploring ancient Rome. I went to the Colosseum and the Forums and as I was sitting resting a tour guide started a free English tour in front of me. Jason reconstructed the ancient caput mundi around us for the next hour.

2. Pantheon. Despite being packed with the tourists, the incredible square/circle human/god symmetrical design does indeed bring a sense of harmony. Or that could be the effect of three weeks on holiday. :)

3. Finding a rainbow lollipop with the Pope's face on it in a gelati shop. I had to buy it.

Triumph of Divine Providence

1. Lying under the ceiling fresco 'The Triumph of Divine Providence' at Palazzo Barberini.

2. After days of rain the weather cleared up today so I went for an 8hr walk to the Villa Borghese gardens, through the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, and down to Piazza del Popolo (which I got a film nerd thrill from because it's one of the locations in 'My Own Private Idaho').

3. While in Germany the Xmas markets closed back on the 24th Dec, Rome's was still on today in the beautiful Piazza Navona. No gingerbread or glühwein‎ but an amazing guitarist busking.

Florence to Rome

1. 2009 is over. I reflect on it as a cruel year of separations, heartache, and false starts. 2010 will be better.

2. A pleasant train trip from Florence to Rome. A nearly empty carriage, my iPod, and beautiful scenery.

3. Finding shelter at a closed food stand on Via XX Settembre to sit out of the rain. I couldn't help going exploring in Rome when I arrived, despite the rain all day.