Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

I’d just like to thank everyone who emailed me, posted messages this last little bit and actually anyone who reads this. I had some rough times there and those little comments really help out; Mom, Dad, Tiff, Jesse, Colby, Dan, Yolanda, I really appreciate it. I’m feeling much better now after a week of pretty much just chilling out but I’ve been getting a little “itchy” the last couple days sitting around here in Adelaide and I’m really looking forward to getting out to the farm that I’m going to. It actually looks a lot more like a bed and breakfast then a farm and a pretty posh one at that so I’m thinking this could be a pretty cool experience. The only thing that’s been biting me the last couple days are mosquitoes but they’re getting everyone else too and they’re laughable compared to the ones back home.

I think one thing that had brought me down there for a bit is that I was watching too much what others were doing and not what I was doing. Yeah that’s great that a lot of people want to go on tours and just see the sights and there’s nothing wrong with that but I’m realizing that that’s not entirely for me. Getting bed begs, having a crappy farm stay and whatever else bad things that have happened to me are just part of the reason and the only reason why I’m here; The experience. I’ve had a lot of good ones and I’ve had a couple bad ones and yeah Colby, some days I do miss my own bed but then I think back to where I was a year ago and I can’t help but laugh and shudder in fear of being back there. Around a year ago it was about -30 and I was toiling away 10 hours a day at a job that I really didn’t have too much of an interest in. I remember quite well that it was right around this time of year that I was spending my days in the dark confines of a large rusty mudtank, which was in a large dusty and cold shop, taking measurements of the tanks and trying to make some kind of decent drawings out of them. It pretty much sucked big time. If I was back home sleeping in my comfortable bed I’d have that, or something to that effect to look forward to everyday and well, I’d rather have bed bugs everyday then that.

I changed hostels from a 5-star one to a place that was just a mess and super crowded to a place that was above a bar. At first I wasn’t too sure about it, being it was above a bar but I took a look around inside and it was clean so that’s all I really cared about. Sure there was no TV room, the kitchen,yet clean was a bit crammed and there was no laundry room but since I’d rather not sit around watching TV and I handwash all my clothes I really didn’t care. Plus I paid the weekly rate which came out to like $13.50 a night, mix that with buying food from the market and I’m living pretty dam cheap. It’s almost more of a guest house than a hostel and I figure I’m going to have to remember places like this and keep an eye out for them. I found with the 5-star YHA it was tough to meet and talk to people and that the atmosphere in the place was really bad. Here since it’s pretty small, it’s almost impossible to not talk to people.

My home for a week.

View of China town from the balcony

So I spent a couple days just chilling out in town and seeing the free sights. I went to the musuem by myself one day but was too itchy from bed bugs and couldn’t concentrate on the displays so I had to go back home. I went a couple days later with the French Canadian chick I had travelled from Alice Springs with and an American guy, both of which were very cool. They had some pretty cool exhibits there, specifically to do with the Aboriginies.

All the natives that I’ve seen thus far have been big huge people sitting around under trees in parks. Now Chris, the lady who owned the farm in Carnarvon, said that that’s how they socialize as in they are a very public people and don’t hide what they’re doing. I hate to assume that all they’re doing is sitting around getting drunk in there little groups but from what I’ve seen that seems to be a lot of it. I wanted to take a picture of them in their little groups but I figured it was a bit impolite and quite frankly, they scare the shit out of me. They’re all very heavy obese people and I thought it was just the way they always were but form the pictures that I saw at the museum taken in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, they were a pretty stacked group of people.

Some pipes that they used.

This one is made out of a crabs claw.

Thus far I have a very mixed view of them. From what I’ve seen of their history and earlier way of life I have a huge amount of respect for them but from what I’ve seen of them in real life and the way they currently are I have this perception that they’re like children. They scuttle around town, yelling and squabbling amongst one and other and seem to have no jobs or a real earge to do anything. I think I’ve seen the last of them though, since I’ve gotten to Adelaide they’ve pretty much all disappeared and it’s not like there’s no parks in Adelaide for them to sit around in, in fact from what I’ve seen of Adelaide it’s all park. I guess they’ve all been pushed out of the large cities and now just live in the smaller communities which explains a couple things to me. One of the mindsets down here is that a lot of the down problems here and what’s “wrong” with the country are due to imagrants moving into the country. They mainly live in the large cities and are seen by everyone yet from what I’ve seen I think one of their main problems is their natives but since they’re out in the smaller towns and in the woodworks, no one sees them and sees their problems except the local people living with and around them and a lot of their opinions seem to be that the natives can only blame themselves.

I was thinking that I probably shouldn’t point out all these problems with a country that I’m visiting but I decided I should since it’s part of my experience here. I know the natives and my country in general have a lot of problems too and I’d be really interested in looking at them a lot closer when I return home. I wonder to myself, “When was the last time I went to an Indian Reserve?”

I’ve been to the market a couple times the last couple day’s and it’s pretty dam cool there, super cheap fruits and veggies and the atmosphere is great. Each time I go there I end up getting carried away and buying way too much stuff but it’s all good since it’s so dam cheap. I went on Saturday which is the busiest day there, last day of the week it’s open and the most insane. It was just wall to wall people with everyone pushing and shoving to get the best deals, it was great. I should have worn hockey equipment it was getting so rough. The shoppers were pretty crazy at some stalls but it wasn’t until about 2:00 before it closed when the vendors really lost their minds and started slashing prices to get rid of anything and everything; that’s when shit really hit the fan. People yelling and screaming numbers, handing you bags of fruit calling out a price, general mayhem took over. I spent like $20 and got a weeks supply of fruit and veggies so I’ve been eating good this last week and have probably been doing too much cooking when I should be out and about seeing the city and such. I’ve been making a lot of curries lately and have been dishing out some pretty dam good ones. The secret is coconut milk/cream.

I also spent a day in the botanical gardens, which was pretty relaxing. It was some pretty nice gardens and they had some pretty cool little wooded trails to hike through.

Rose Garden.

Some big building by the rose garden that I had to pay to get into so I didn’t go in.

Nice walkway.

A tribute to the king onhis birthday.

One thing that I’ve been meaning to talk about is pack sizes. I am carrying with a 45 liter pack which is a bit small, moreso when you compare it to other peoples. I had done a fair bit of reading and reseach when deciding what pack size I needed and pretty much all of the articles said to get a smaller pack ranging from 40-55 liters. The theory behind this is to force yourself to travel light by taking a small pack, makes sence. Now so far from what I’ve seen of others I have the smallest pack in the world and I figure I am carrying pretty much nothing with me. I constantly see people lugging around 70-90 liter packs with things hanging from them and wearing an other small daypack on the front of them. Back in Perth I met this English chick who had to get other people to carry her pack for her from the bus or where ever, now that’s insane. I constantly see people lugging around with them shit that makes me scratch my head. Stuffed animals, hair dryers, what appears their entire wardrobe of clothes and just other shit that they really don’t need.

The first couple weeks were the hardest; my pack seemed so small and it was so stressful packing things up that at one point in Perth I was walking around looking to see how much new ones costed and if I could trade mine in. Fortunately now, but unfortunately at the time, there are laws in places in WA that don’t allow shops to trade in packs so I was stuck with the little one I had. As time marched on I became a better traveller and packer (it’s all about rolling your clothes up), traded in a luggy towl for a sarong and just downsized a lot of stuff to the point where I can put everything I have in my bag with plenty of room to spare and that’s even after I went out and bought clothes to work in. Albeit, I don’t have a lot of clothes but how much do you need? I handwash my clothes that I wore the day before so my stuff always clean and I try to keep it simple when it comes to other stuff. What a great traveller I am, I have only what I need. Actually no, I’m probably worse then all the rest.

I have my fair share of “luxury” items that I don’t need but lug around with me anyways. I started out with the following:
Workout Gear – I have with me a large elastic band that I use for resistance, home made gymnastic rings and a jump rope to workout with. I don’t need all that stuff, albeit I think I do.
Coffee/Tea Plunger – I like my coffee and tea and have been carrying around a plunger with me since day one. There’s days that I have cursed the dam thing but more days that I have bowed down to it’s caffinated goodness.
Coffee and Tea – I usually have with me some coffee and right now I have 3 different types of tea. As I have mentioned before everyone down here drinks instant coffee at home meanwhile in he streets cafe culture is ripe in the big cities. No Starbucks, Tim Hortons or any “quick and easy” equivalent.

The way I see it, I love fitness and working out and not doing it would kill me, mentally that is. As for the tea and coffee, well I figure I’m saving myself a good chunck of change by not having to go out to cafes and such to buy coffee so a penny saved is a penny earned.

Now things is where things are starting to get ugly.
Spices – Being that I always cook for myself, enjoy cooking and enjoy eating moreso, I have with me a variety of spices. At first it started off simple with just some pepper but as time has worn on it’s expanded into a monster on it’s own. I now carry with me 7 different powered spices and herbs: pepper, curry, oregano, mint, cinnamon, basil and hot peppers.
Espresso Maker – I don’t know what I’m thinking and I need help. The other day I noticed that they have these little 3-cup stovetop espresso makes for super cheap. I figured, “I have room for that” and bought it. Silly me but DAM it makes a good cup.
More Coffee – Well I’m going to need some good espresso style coffee for my espresso maker right plus I need some for my plunger.

So yep, I’m slowly losing my mind by stocking up on all these things that I really don’t need. I’m realizing though that with all these things they all point to one thing; Thefiner things in life; Good coffee, good tea, great food, good workouts and now good chocolate. Yep, I’m eating a bit of chocolate now too but it’s the good stuff. Lindt’s dark chocolate with 85% cocoa is what I’ve been nibbling at. I allow myself only little peices each day but enjoy each bite. It’s odd, as a kid and teenager I was a chocolate-oholic and had pretty much cut it right out of my system for a long time (becoming lactose-intollorant also helped with that). Now when I eat regular milk chocolate I find it way too sweat and don’t like it at all compared to the really really dark stuff, whereas when I was a kid I hated the dark stuff.

Also, I finally broke down and got a mobile phone. Yeah another thing to lug around but it was becoming a pain in the ass to get a hold of people in the local area using the pay phones and even more of a pain in the ass getting a hold of people back home. Because of the time delay I’d end up having to sit around until late morning/early afternoon to try and call home and it would be a major pain in the ass if there was no one there. Now people can call me, which I don’t expect them to because I think it’ll cost a fare bit but I do have text messaging, which is extremely popular down here and rather cheap. At first I thought I was just out of the loop when it came to texting and that everyone back home texted but me but I guess not. I’m hoping that others out there have text messaging so we can keep in touch. The charges for me are like $0.25 a message so it’s not that bad. My number is 04-0500-8583 and the Australian international dialing code is 61 so throw me a hello or even throw me an email with your cell number.

Tragedy

One little thing that has happened to me that could very well be a terrible terrible thing is that my Mp3 player broke. The battery top peice snapped off and now the battery won’t stay in. I got it for free from Tiff (thanks again) so I’m not too upset yet but I’ll see what happens to me after a couple weeks without music.

Other then that I’m feeling pretty good right now and I’ve pretty much have been just sitting back relaxing and getting things ready for my farm stay at Maslin House. As it looks like a really nice place I’m hoping to do a longer stay this time around if the situation is good. Got a hair cut or actualy gave myself a haircut with a pair of clippers that a guy at the hostels had so I saved some money there to make up for all the other crap that I bought the last couple days. That said, I’m still doing really well for money and with this wwoof stay should do even better.

Many people might not have any idea of where some of the places that I’ve been to are located in Australia so if you go here, you can click on each link and roughly see where they are.

Safe Travels

Troy

In Adelaide now and I must say I am dam glad to get out of the desert. This is the first true city that I’ve been in since I left Perth over a month ago and I’m a bit glad to get back to civillization but I don’t know how long that feeling will last and in fact I think it’s already starting to leave and is being filled with a feeling of ill-contempt.

My last couple day’s in Alice Spring’s I went to a Desert Park with a guy from the hostel that I met, Dave. Dave is from Sydney and just finished off a 6 month wwoofing stint in Queensland near Brisbaine. I guess he is pretty big on organic foods and perma-culture living, took a course on it all and then went to go and live it for a couple months. I don’t know if I could do that for 6 months.
The Desert Park was pretty interesting; it had a lot of the natural vegetation and flaura in the region and how the natives managed to live off of it. I got to say that the natives in this country were a pretty resilient group of people to manage to meek out a life in this harsh climate; I’d be dead in a hour if you left me out in the desert to fend for myself. Unfortunately though I think most of that life is gone for the natives here too.
The heat in Alice Springs was pretty steady teh rest of my stay in town and I pretty much just chilled out by the pool the rest of the time I was in Alice. I’m sure that I jumped into the pool at that hostel more times than my entire previous 2 months in this country.

A big ass bird of prey that was hanging around the park. The picture doesn’t give it any justice but it is a big bird. There was suppose to be a feeding but the birds were being very unruly so they had to cancel it. When Dave and I first walked to where the feeding was suppose to be, we saw one of them swooping at some lady. That was cool.

The bird of prey was big but it wasn’t this big. I’ve got to find a super market where they sell emu…

Lazy days. He almost looks drunk in this picture…

Until Broome it had not rained once my entire time here then it was just down pour there. I flew to Alice thinking that I’m out of the wet yet it rained more in Alice Springs than anywhere else I had been save Broome. Now I’m not talking a major down pour or anything, in fact it was just a sprinkle but it was rain sure enough.

To get to Adelaide from Alice Springs I took a tour bus that would normally go from Adelaide to Alice Spring’s taking about 5-8 days, stopping along the way at all the interesting spots. Instead of heading back to Adelaide empty, they pretty much charge people a small fee to head back south, stopping over at a town called Coober Pedy, the Opal capital of the world and where a number of the residents make there homes underground.

If you’re travelling Australia, learn German

The bus took off pretty early in the morning and was filled with 6 travellers and the driver. I wouldn’t really call this thing a bus but more of a van with 2 benches in the back for people to sit on. There was pretty much no A/C in the back and where I sat the sun always seemed to be on me. The people in the van were all young travellers, 2 German girls, a Swiss-Germans couple, a French-Canadian girl and myself. The french Canadian girl got to sit up front (lucky her) so I didn’t get to talk to her too much while on the road. I didn’t manage to find out who she would have voted for if she was back home but she was pretty nice. I was thrown into the back with all the Germans. At first it was all good, everyone was talking, exchanging stories and having a good time. As time wore on though the inevitable happened; everyone started to speak German. I guess it was my own fault since I somehow managed to fall asleep amongst the uncomfortable, twisted mess of people in the back of the van and when I awoke, I was in Germany. There are a lot of Germans in this country as I guess just a couple years ago they aloud them the working-holiday visa so they’re just flooding in when they finish off high school. Lot’s of Swiss too but most of them are here for vacation or school in the instance of Corin and Simona.

We drove from about 7:00am to I think around 5:00pm the first day with stops at the roadhouses along the way. There only 5 towns in the entire Northern Territory of Australia and the rest is just little shit hole roadhouses in the middle of nowhere charging an arm and a leg for anything and everything. I don’t understand how or why other travellers spend money like they do, $7.00 for spaghetti and toast is just simple not a good deal. Either is a $4.00 bag of chips but sure enough, everytime the can stopped, they got out and bought some sort of over-priced junk food. The only thing that I find is good about the roadhouses is free peanut butter they have in little packages for breakfast. Unfortunately I think I’m out of roadhouse territory now.

We spent one night in Coober Pedy, which is also the opal capital of the world. Now, there’s no major company that does the mining, it’s just local people and from what I can gather, most have a regular job and then dig in their spare time or support someone else to dig for them. I asked if anyone strikes it big and then takes off for a nice beach or an early retirement but it doesn’t sound like it as most of the people do it for the thrill.

As I had mentioned before, some peoples houses or at least part of their houses were underground or built into the sides of hills and that included the hostel we stayed in. The underground dwellings were old mines that they stopped mining and started living in as above ground it’s just barren rock as far as the eye can see and often gets over 50 degrees. In a lot of places all the sand and rock they dug up from mines they just dump out in the middle of nowhere and there’s plenty of nowhere out there. Underground though it’s a nice cool constant temperature of around 24 degress.

The pictures I took of inside the hostel didn’t turn out so here’s the outside.

This looks as if it might have been someones house at one time. I figure from the amount of spider, bugs and snakes I’ve seen in this country there’s only going to be more in there.

Part Coober Pedy’s residential zone.

More desolation

We stayed at a hostel that was underground the night we were there. It was pretty cool but nothing too exciting. We had to get up at like 5 to be on the road by 6 so I didn’t get too much time to soak it all in. So back on the bus we go for a nice 10 hour drive of hell and misery before we get to Adelaide. For pretty much the whole day it was German that I had to listen to so it was a very long drive. The night before we went out to a bar and they were playing the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the TV there. In the movie there’s a German kid that wins one of the golden tickets that’s a very stereotypical german; fat and pudgy, love chocolate and in the background his dad was making sausages. All the Germans were so adament that it was not true and such a cheesy stereotype, the German guy was especially adament about it yet he fitted the stereotype to a “T”. He was always munching away on chocolate, was rather plump and was overall very jolly.

So far on my journys of Western and Centrel Australia, I’ve gone to and seen some great and interesting but as I leave that place I always have the thought in the back of my mind of, “Who in there right mind would want to live there?” There are so many isolated little towns and roadhouses in some of the most inhospitable places that I can’t help but question what the hell people are doing out here. Case in point; Port Geraldton. I don’t think I wrote about Port Geraldton before because all we did was drive through it on the way to Broome but that drive through was enough for me to see to just keep moving. The town is hardcore industry with a major railway and sea port for it’s huge steal and salt industry. Because it has such a huge steal industry, everything in the town is red from the dirt and then baked in the sun from it. The town is located in the Pilbara region of Australia and it’s notoriously hot there. Marble Bar, which is just north of Hedland has a record of 161 days above 37.8 celcious. It was a bizzare town, I was glad to leave and I can’t help but think that the people living there are just a little tiny bit crazy. Coober Pedy was another town like that. I left there thinking “Why?” Alice Springs is another one of those towns too. It;s in the middle of the scorching desert and the only thing they’ve got going is a big ass rock near by. So far from what I’ve seen of Western Australia and the Northern Territory there’s a lot of these places and you have to be just a little teeny-tiny bit insane to want to live there.

This is what passes for as a lake in Australia; salt flats. I guess it fills up with water sometimes.

More Coober Pedy Pics

When we finally got to Adelaide I was hot, miserable, didn’t like Germans and very itchy; I guess I got a nice batch of bed bugs from my stay in Coober Pedy. I was unsure where to stay, was tromping around town looking for a decent place and just about checked into a real hotel with my own room where I could unwind but I resisted. Instead i checked into the local YHA which was the 5-star resort, creme de la creme of hostels. It was easily the nices hostel I have ever stayed in; great kitchen, cinema room, good internet computers, nice rooms, 2 TV rooms, a good quiet room and just an overall beautiful place. Unfortunately it was $25 a night with is a bit out of my range. I was just going to stay for one night but ended up staying for 3 on account of being very itchy from bed bug bites. I’ve changed hostels now to a different place just down the street that’s $21 a night but I don’t know if it was too good an idea yet.

The 5-star YHA Resort.

This time I know they were bed bugs because they are up my legs and arms in lines and itch like crazy making a bit tough to sleep. I was starting to really upset and over this; I keep getting biten and it seems very reoccuring and it makes things very frustrating and not a lot of fun. To top it off I feel rather ashamed; I’m a clean guy, I shower each day, twice right now with all these bites and I hand-wash all my clothes just about everyday in hot water. I’m told it’s not my fault but bad upkeep by hostel managers but that doesn’t give much solace when it looks like you have leprosy. I do think that this time around it was my own fault because when I got to Coober Pedy I was pretty tired and didn’t want to go digging for my sleep sheet so I just laid down right on the matress, that had no covers or anything and fell asleep. Bad move. I’m hoping that now that I’m back to civillization, things will be better. A guy in my room reccomended using Tea Tree oil on the bites and I’ve found that to make a huge difference. Stuff is expensive though a $5 a small bottle and I’ve been dousing it on like crazy but I can feel it working.

Woe is me.

Leprosy

All in all I feel that traveling thus far is tough work. I always seem to have a cut or two on me and being eaten alive by something feels like it’s the norm. At times I feel rather beat up and I think to myself that if I can barely mange this country what will happen when I get up to Asia? At this rate I’ll be dead in a week up there.

So here I am telling people in one entry to go to hostels, stay there, meet people, do it for the fraction of the cost and then a couple posts later I post all these horror stories of being eaten alive and getting cut, beaten and bruised.

Anyway’s I’m finally out of the outback and into a decent sized city. Adelaide is a pretty nice city and is a lot more temperate compared to the harsh desert, no bugs and no dust. So far on my travels I’ve yet to find a place that I could see myself living in but Adelaide is probably the first, that said, my view is probably slightly skewed comparing to where I was the last couple months but I think that again is changing and I’m already starting to miss the laid back small places like Coral Bay and Broome. Meanwhile a German guy that I met says that he thinks Adelaide is rather bland and doesn’t like it that much, he of course is coming from the opposite way that I am and was just in Melbourne and Sydney.

There’s a strong Asian presence here and it’s a pretty multi-cultural town, which is a nice change of pace. There is an amazing fresh food market here with super cheap fruits, veggies and cool little Asian markets. I went a little crazy there and now I’m walking around with way too much food with me but whatever, I’ll eat it. I seem to be a sucker for these places and just the Asian atmosphere, I can just walk around in these markets for hours on end not necessarily buying anything but just soaking in the atmosphere.

The market

I’m told there’s a really nice museum, botanical gardens and beach close by and they’re all free. The internet at the library is free too and I found a free chocolate factory tour in town too at some famous chocolate producers. Yep free is good plus with cheap food from the market, I can’t go wrong. Free is also good because it looks like I’m going to be kicking around in town until the 20th of this month, waiting to get onto a local place for a wwoofing stay. The place is a bed and breakfast called Maslin House and looks pretty posh. If things go well I might end up staying there for up to a month. Until then I have to find things to occupy my time and free things are the way to go.

There’s lot’s of Canadian and Americans here in the hostels. I’ve met like 4 Canadians and 2 Americans on the west coast but so far here I’m hearing a lot of people without accents, in fact one of the guys in my room was from Spruce Grove and a couple days later his brother came to town. I seem to be getting back onto the tourist trail and from here I hear it’s a lot of big city lights and which is where I think my ill-contempt lies:

Everything is so commercial

I think it was always there but I just didn’t notice it that much at first but everyone and their dog wants to sell you some package tour where they load you up on a bus drive you to something out in the middle of nowhere, you get out, take some pictures, jump back on the bus and go off to the next thing, which in this country more often then not, seems to be a rock. You then stop someplace for lunch, jump back on the bus and repeat. For me there’s just no appeal in any of that. They take a simple thing like going to see the sun setting and find a way to sell it, for instance doing it on camel back or by quad-bike. Add in the word “Adventure” and suddenly it’s marketable.

A Low?

I don’t know, I’m feeling like I’m getting a bit bitter and since I’ve gotten back to Adelaide I’ve questioned, “What am I doing here?” Everything is the same as back home. I don’t think I’m homesick but just…I dunno. Perhaps it’s a whole mix of things like the bed bugs and a new city and area.

The thing that I’m liking the most so far is just meeting other people but it’s hard to break out of that travellers bubble and get in with the real people. I much more prefer to meet people that actually live here and are part of the culture, which can be a very hard thing to do. My only exposure to “Real Australians” seems to be through wwoofing thus far. To top it off, from what I’m told it’s only going to get worse the more I go up the east coast as it gets more and more commercial. The one guy from Spruce Grove I met was saying that if he was in my shoes he would just get a regular job at like Subway or something and just live here for a while. I didn’t come halfway around the world to make sandwhiches, I came here to try new things and experience life. I guess it’s hard at times to keep in sight the many new things that I have done thus far and the many new things that I will do. At times I think that perhaps I should stop being so damn cheap and go on one of these big tour packages but then again not too many of them really interest me and most of them just seem fake.

Regardless, I have a wwoofing stay starting up here in a weeks time so hopefully I don’t get too borred kicking around town. It should be interesting to get back onto a farm and such and I guess I’ll see how I’ll feel when I’m out there.

Well, that’s about enough gripping for one post. Here’s some pics from Adelaide that I’ve taken thus far and I’ve updated a few more from my last couple days in Alice Springs

Safe Travels

Troy

Well here I am in hot ass Alice Springs which is also known as the "Red Center" and when I say hot I mean hot; it's averaging about 40 degrees everyday. I thought Broome was pretty rough at first ... [Continue reading this entry]

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you all had a great time and great year. It's been an interesting one for me and 2006 is looking to be quite insane. I spent New Years eve in Broome, Western ... [Continue reading this entry]