I hate birthdays. I'm Scottish and we seem to love things like new years and birthdays as an excuse for self flagellation.

I'm 29 this year, which feels like the on-ramp to 30. I've not really got established here, so it's going to be a skype-fest of well-wishes as opposed to heading down the pub with mates. Not the best start, but as I will write about, with the tools of modern life travelling alone is anything but...

Anyway, back to the birthday, as per usual, I started listing the standing points of woe....

1. I've not travelled
2. I'm stuck in a rut in London
3. I still don't feel grown up, and I'm 30 soon

Boo hoo, whiny middle class guy complaining again. I'm bloody lucky to be able to do what I'm doing right now and I know that. The flip-side was when I thought through the points:

1. I'm in Sydney for 7 months having seen some bits of Asia.
2. I've a job for 6 months starting Monday. It's going to be a challenge, in an entirely good way.
3. Why should I feel grown up? Sure I do lots of grown up stuff, but it's not like you get a certificate. Frankly do I even want one.

So yes, while I'm a little sad I've not found housing and some friends sooner, the last 3 months have been some of the most adventurous of my life. I've not gone mental, but I'm merrily doing things that "I don't do".

If that's not the best present you can give yourself I don't know what is.

Update: After I wrote this offline and before I posted I found somewhere. w00t.

Sorry, this is a rant containing some vague user experience stuff behind a thick veneer of bile.

Banking is always fun when you're abroad. I'll leave the more general rants about how banks aren't really global to my friends Laurie and Simon who have covered this far better than I. I'll give some vague praise to the UK banking system, because compared to the Australian system, they don't seem to want to charge you for everything - and I mean everything. Praise where it's due however, and I should give Citibank Australia some since I applied on Tuesday, and on Thursday my account is up and running.

Trying to explain to banks that you're not going to be where they think you are is challenging. A few months ago I tried to get a replacement card, as my card was due to expire when I was away. I figured I'd go through the pain of the cardswap while I was in the UK so I knew that I wasn't going to be left high and dry abroad. The operator didn't seem to understand that I could possibly want my card early, "we'll be automatically dispatching all cards due for replacement sometime in April". He also failed to place the order correctly so that it wasn't until a week later that I go a meek customer services call to inform me that the order wasn't placed. My old card was cancelled and eventually I got a new one.

Anyway, turns out the my beloved Citibank UK will sometimes accept my old card number, I'm guessing because it's "helpful". It was very helpful last week when I had a pointless 5 minute chat with an operator (at international roaming rates) only to be told I'd typed my old card number in (damn muscle memory) and that I would have to call back and re-enter it. Had the automated system rejected me that at the front of the call, I could have checked it and typed it in again. That is a apparently inconvenient for customers though, dragging them towards the transaction then declining them is a better experience.

Anyway, today I picked up my Citibank Australia card, not a totally useful Visa Debit card, that's gone back to Scotland and is lost in space. That card, which I will never see is cancelled and DOA. As and when I have an Australian address I can get a real card. But today I do have a bank account and they did issue me with a cashcard on the spot. And they even gave me the account number. Regarding this as progress, I sat down to log on to my internet banking for Citibank UK to transfer the money to the new account. This is free and instantaneous online. This financial umbilical was pretty much the reason I chose Citi, there's little else integration in the banks, and little real difference in the charging, just in how they are dressed up. (Mobile phone tarriffs anyone?)

I couldn't log onto Citibank UK internet banking. "Please enter you new card number" My first thought was "they've cancelled the wrong card, somehow they've cancelled the UK card". Got a balance from a cash machine. The card was still alive, so why couldn't I connect to the internet banking.

After calling and getting irritated at call centre, far more than I want to as I know they can't really help - I figured it out. Although you log into the internet banking with a username and password and personal data, that is just a front for your card number your Electronic PIN, which is of course not your Telephone PIN or the bog standard PIN. Once you've registered you're never asked for the ePin ever again.

What's happened is that, unbeknown to me, I've still been logging on with my old card into internet banking. It wasn't until today when the card (that was cancelled when I got the new one) actually expired that it stopped being valid. Which is very useful. I'm in a foreign country needing to enter a 6 digit number that I've not had to use in about 2 years since they introduced the new logon process which gave you a username and password.

There was no warning displayed on screen. No handy little "This is an expired card, please revalidate with your card and ePin" type messages. Do they not realise that asking people to enter a security number that you've not used in 2 years is a little hopeful. I don't keep PINs stored anywhere, because of you know security.

It's ok though, as on the first call, having had an ePIN dispatched to Scotland, I was told that "you can do anything you could do online over the phone as you still have your telephone-PIN." That's alright then, so i call back to add a payment to Australia.

As said before, if I do it online it's quick and free. Turns out if I do it over the telephone it becomes a bog-standard international transfer rather than an inter-citi, so will cost me 20 quid and take about 3-5 business days. As I was locked out I could have the transaction fee waved. But the time thing was still stuck. I walked to a cash machine, took some cash out, walked to a Post Office, paid the money in. I now have an Australian bank account with some balance.

While I'm glad that there is some grace with the card & online access (when they issue a new card they have to cancel the old), a couple of weeks would be more realistic than "until the card expires". And give me a damn warning on the interface, if you're going to hide a long forgotten ID from me, prod me that I might need to look it out/get issued with a reminder.

Apparently HSBC was founded by a Scotsman, one Thomas Sutherland. I'd heard this years ago, and the nickname Home to Scottish Banking Clerks. See, I'm Scottish, and my thoughts upon arriving in Hong Kong were not, "you know what, I'll form a banking empire that will eventually grow to be huge, only to undo itself slightly with a misplaced acquisition of a US sub-prime lender shortly before sub-prime goes really wrong." No, my thoughts have been "it's too hot I'm melting". Which I think is the correct response a Scotsman arriving here would have. Shorts have been bought, jackets have been ditched.

The presumed default now appears to be that as a tech-savvy person, if you're doing something big then you'll be blogging about it. And I assumed that I'd do similar on my grand trip around the world. But I don't think I will. In a boring bullet point style here's why:

a) Subject Matter: Middle class white-boy does at almost 30 what other people do the year before uni.

I think it kind of falls at the first hurdle. What exactly can I say that's new and inspiring. My thoughts on America were "oooh, everything really is big" and "skyscrapers are tall". Hardly inspiring sticky content. I can't help thinking that most other travel commentators have done that before and better.

b) I missed my window of opportunity

If i was going to do it, I should have started prior to America and SXSW. Starting now seems jarring, and as of Tuesday I've already left Japan for Hong Kong.

I'd have to install Wordpress, set up the blog, etc - and pride dictates I couldn't live with a default theme. Alas, my slightly rusty CSS and HTML skills mean it would take too long to set that up properly.

As an ongoing operational thing, most of my effort at the moment is about doing fun tourist things, essential things (like finding food that I can eat) and boring back-home things like juggling money. I'm not convinced I've the time to devote to this.

Also, when I arrive in Sydney I'm going to be working again, and that reduces my drive to write a lot.

c) Anything interesting is too personal to plaster over the internets.

"The emotions I felt sat on the Heathrow Express were the first time I realised that I was actually doing what I was doing..."

It's whiny EMO stuff. The internet already has enough of that. And I'd rather that I was associated too heavily with it either.

d) I don't actually write that well

My copy is full of flowery phrases and generally needs subbing with an axe. Until there's an online subbing service I can submit my work to for a reasonable fee, I'm stuck with that. Annoyingly I'm aware that my copy isn't that sharp, were I in blissful ignorance I could just publish and be damned.

e) I'm putting up photos on flickr

I'm a visual person, (I'm happiest explaining stuff with a bit of a3 paper and a pencil) and I take far better photos than I write words.

I'm a news addict, and a TV presentation nerd. I freely admit to watching TV and commenting far too much on the delivery, and not the content. Over in the US for a bit for South by Southwest I'm missing UK news being honest. CNN has sound effects on their shows that I remember from Doom. FPS and News doesn't mix for me. (and don't get me started on how untidy the local ad-inserts are)

I've not posted anything about my trip to America, depressingly I've not really thought of my that wasn't cliche ridden. Big, loud, brash, sure of itself, and lots of overcomplicated coffee orders. Right now though I'm sitting in my hotel room decompressing from an evening of fun, about half way into my South by Southwest experience. I've caught up with people, moved on from others, and it's a great place to be. Unless you have strange dietary requirements, which round this place seems to constitute not eating meat all day every day.

It funny, bitter and was the deranged ranting of 4+ geeks who just weren't quite cool enough to make it into the in crowd. Low grade brooker-esque bile for the interweb, because there clearly wasn't enough of that already. The things it caused were interesting, from meeting someone who worked in the same building as me, through to other way more complicated stuff.

In the light of Ofcom's concerns over the cost of HD iPlayer delivery I figured I'd actually post something.

I was at a houseparty last night, and out of the blue, I heard a riff from the iPod playing music at the time and practically yelled across the room "WHAT IS THAT?". It was California Soul by Marlena Shaw, and the place I'd heard the particular bit of string was sampled in Rez. Suddenly I was in level 5 rising up through the clouds and attacking the massive ship with the rotating.

Rez is a unique game. It's quite simple, with very little development or changes in the game as you advance through the levels. It just looks pretty, and sounds pretty. And that's the unique thing about it, it all lines up so that the sounds and music sync seamlessly in the game.

Today, somewhat fired up having bought the song on iTunes, I looked out the Dreamcast from the drawer, and finally plugged in the old stereo downstairs. It'd been ages since I'd played it, and even longer since playing with decent sound. Which makes the game.

I was grinning like an addict as I dived into level 5, with the lovely line art graphics and Adam Freeland music. But the thing I'd forgotten was that you're encourage to play the game "well" by the soundtrack. While you can just fire indiscriminately, and sometimes you have to, if you let it lock onto the maximum 8 targets it sounds better. So you're duped into playing nicely because it feels nicer.

Amusingly I also remembered that I tap the fire button in the quite bits to boost the rhythm.

It's a one trick pony. But it's a one trick pony I enjoy playing, and that I was reminded off by the original song that someone sampled/lifted a bit from in song.

I like this occurrence.