The Talking Traveller

What a nice feeling when all your planning pays off, even if it's the second or third try. I was successful with my visa application and received it promplty on thursday trought the post. I was given permission to be in holland for 30 days, which suits me fine, as that is how long I predict my set out budget will last. Talking about budget, here is today's travelling tip: You are thirsty after a long day off walking about, what do you buy to drink? A cola? to much suger! a pint of beer? Sounds good, but expensive with side effects! bottled water? Nice, but too expensive.  What will be the best value for money? My suggestion. A pint of skimmed or semi-skimmed milk. Cheap, 33p - 40p, nutritous and enough to qeunch your thirst. And afterwards you can use the container to cram in all your rubbish and dumb it in the next dustbin that comes along.

Now a word about confidence. As you may have deduced, my speech say over the last month or so hasn't been top notch. And I have been delving deep to see what my be the cause or reasons for that, and here follow my hypothesis. I was lacking confidence in my speech. Even though I tried to use my technique, deep costal breath and all that, I just keep getting stuck in some situations. Then suddenly on wednesday, after doing some contacts, it snapped. I realised that I lost, no, not lose......................lets rather say....forgot to have confidence when I speak. After that 'aha' moment I then remembered some confident speaking situations, re-lived those feelings, went over a few mantra's and tried again. And wouldn't you know it, much better and much more in control. And the rest of the week back on the farm my speech and attitude felt much more in control. If you think about it, and I'm talking in the broader sense now, stutterers and non- stutterers, have you ever heard a fully confident person stutter? I haven't. To have confidence in whatever you do is a great feeling, and it lets you perform better. I am going to convince my mind to have confidence in whatever I do, and I would suggest that to everyone else as well.  The "feeling" we get when not confident is a feeling of helplessness, a feeling of "I can't handle it". Another thought that I had about what may have influenced this is my work. Not suggesting anything but I really had to humble myself to do the work that I am doing. In south-africa you would never-never-ever find a white man with a university degree on his hands and knees scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets etc. Not that I had the slightest problem in doing it, but maybe somewhere in my subconcious mind it triggered a certain state. Maybe something like humbleness = lower on social scale =  lower self worth = lower confidence in self. Some of the wise men who have conquered the stuttering say that "stuttering is not just about speech, but a reflection of the whole person itself" and after this experience I do understand that much better.

I would like to wrap these thoughts up with the following lines. "It's a good attribute to be humble, just as long as you don't loose confidence in who and what you are, if you feel you are slipping, you have the right to be a bit selfish, and stand up for yourself or do whatever you need to do to realise your confidence" and lastly........."there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way: there is now way to confidence, confidence is the way: there is no way to eloquence, eloquence is the way"   

 

My farm-working days are slowly but surely coming to an end. To be precise, I have exactly nine more working days left on the farm. Am in london for the day because I have to apply for my schengen visa to go to the Netherlands. This process is a drag as you have to hand in a loadfull of documents including a letter of employment, proof of transport, proof of accomodation, invitation letter, your latest payslip, proof of funds and such. Anyway, hopefully my application will be processed within two weeks as I bought bus ticket for the Netherlands. Travellers tip: If possible, travel your long journeys on a bus during the night. It's the cheapest you'll find and you save a night worth of accomodation. Off course is not all that comfortable, but if your travelling on a shoestring, comfort is a luxury. I'm quite excited for my Netherlands trip as one of my goals is to find the ruins of my familie castle, the "van der Merwede" castle near Dordrecht.  I will also be attending a McGuire course there and looking forward to meeting new people and learning some of the Dutch language, which would be a fun challenge in terms of speaking. Soon enough I will be in full talking mode again!

I spend my weekends on the farm cyling throught the wonderfull countryside of Oxfordshire, and last weekend I visited a ancient buriel site called Waylands Smithy.See the photo's. 

And so the two weeks of taking on the lone ranger persona has come to an end. The family will be returning today from their trip. They had left me list of chores to do in the absence and monday will be inspection day. I hope, but not to worried, that everything I did will be to their satisfaction. My plans for my next trip is slowly taking form and will hopefully set in the next week.I have made an appointment with the Nehterlands Embassy for my Shengen Visa application, this was done telephonically :), for the 25th of October. I pray that my application will be processed within two weeks for I want to fly to Holland on the 8th of November. Through my travels so far I have calculated that you need about £30-£50 per day to travel cheaply in the UK. To raise the funds for this you need to work 2 days for every 1 day of travel. All is well further on as I count my remaining days of pulling weeds, cutting grass, cleaning hoves and eating nothing but veggies. Silent apologies for not having an update last week as I know that some folks check my blog everyday, and it gets pretty boring reading the same old story over and over, but once the boots starts walking, these lips start moving, and the counter starts clicking again, I will update more freqeuntly. O yes, btw, today is my birthday, 25 if you don't know it. Happy happy! I think I'm due for long missed juicy hamburger as a present. We all can save the guilt for another day. I would say that the last year was a good one, a lot of changes, a lot of smiles, and many warm fuzzy memories.