Tis the end of the year, my friends.

Greetings Typospherians, readers and lovers of the printed and/or electronic word. And I wish you the sincerest of holiday greetings, and the best for the new year.

It has been a trying year for me in Brisbane but I have always enjoyed writing this blog, and writing with my typewriter. These elegant and beautiful writing machines and what I have written with them have helped me keep my sanity over the last 12 months.

Now, we are rushing head-long into another new year. A year that already has some very big changes in the works, that I am sure are going to bring some good - and bad, surprises. So much is happening now that I almost feel lost in it all. I could fill a blog entry with just a list of what has happened in the last two or three weeks.

I'm currently sitting in a hotel, and it is 40 degrees C outside (104 on the old scale). As such I'm loathe to leave the air conditioning of the hotel room.

And thus we have the Australian Christmas.

While shops dress their stores in faux snow to represent the northern hemisphere christmas that we are bombarded with via television and film, it always is with a sense of irony that we celebrate a frosted christmas as the temperatures usually rise harshly. In reality, Australians at christmas are likely to be having a lunch at a family member's house that has a swimming pool, so that we can all have a bit of a dip after we have filled our tummies to exploding point with salad, cold meat and a fair amount of beer.

I always feel sympathy for the poor bastard that has to dress in the Santa costumes at children's parties, shopping centers and church events. That gear is made for the North Pole, not stinking hot summer days on the driest continent on earth. As I said... irony.

Santa suit? Screw that... Hot enough here as it is.

As most of the typosphere lives in the northern hemisphere I'm sure this is very much a foreign ideal.  And to be honest, Christmas time is an oddly strange period here in Australia where it largely has little religious significance, but is rather focused on family, retail and food along with some very silly behavior.

I stepped outside the front door this afternoon to go to my car, and I burned my feet on the concrete driveway that had been baking in the sun. It really is damn hot here.

I don't have a typewriter with me, but I think I will be seeing Rob Messenger sometime in the next 7 days - so I won't be going totally typewriter talk free by the end of the year! I'm looking forward to chatting to Rob again.

The past year on this blog:
Meeting with John and several other typewriter lovers in Brisbane (Steve, Rino, Kate to name a few) has been great. Also, other writers around the country (Teeritz, Rob) have been great, too.However, I feel there's a few things that remain a bit unfinished at the end of this year.

I speak of 'The apocalypse of the typosphere' - my little piece of blog fiction that seems to have gone dormant. It hasn't, and I have a handful of episodes ready to post. However I held off because I had borrowed some ideas from discussions with miss Jane, that were related to her line of work (infection control) that made up a major plot point that I was just about to explore in the story. The problem was that a real world event that was similar to the scenario that I was envisaged actually looked like it was about to happen, and was likely to be a major stress to Jane's work life. It just wasn't the time. 

So, I just put it aside to revisit later.

Meanwhile, miss Jane and a few other people have been pushing for me to re-start another piece of blog fiction that I had neglected for a few years. I don't think I will, but I think it is time to take the material in that blog, and make something of it. I'll put the link up a bit later, if anyone is interested. It was a 'blog' of an Australian that was forced to flee the country as a refugee, after witnessing the horrors of war in a land that previously had never seen such things.

The Future:
Firstly, I'm looking forward to the second Brisbane type in - which will be on March 9, at a location that has yet to be advised. So start contacting me if you are interested in coming. Especially you, my mysterious Burpengary reader, who often visits my blog. You're only a suburb away from me, so you should really message me sometime!

Meanwhile, there's still the possibility of moving overseas. I've been thinking about this, and I intend to keep up a typosphere blog. However, I think it may be a good time to start a new blog with a new title, that is hosted somewhere other than blogger.

I'm quite nervous about the future this week, and I wish I had a typewriter with me right now, so that I could do some writing. Nothing soothes the soul like a tap on the keys of a beautiful machine.

*   *   *

So that's it for the the year. I'm going to be busy with family events and other things for the next couple of weeks, and I will be too busy to keep up with events on my blog - or even the typosphere.

So, thank you all very much for reading, commenting, and writing. I have loved reading all that the other members of the typosphere have written over the past year, and I look forward to seeing what you write in the next.

Thank you all, and have a great time!

P.S. Did I really just hit 60,000 blog reads? I missed even hitting 50k. I wonder how many of those have been shonky sites.

Singapore, you've been good to me.

Typewriters have been running hot lately almost everywhere but on my own desk. NaNoWriMo has seen the Typosphere reduced to a skeleton crew, while the ICI has been chugging on.

Even my own computer keyboard at home has been feeling largely rejected of late.

It's not that I've lately lost the passion for writing, typing and just generally blathering. But rather I have had a distinct lack of time and energy to be able to just simply - enjoy these little things in life. Not to mention reply to some of the letters that I have received from some of the members of the Typosphere. I really, really need to get onto that. Sorry Ken.

I seem to be missing out on a lot of late. I haven't had the time or mindspace to read Teeritz's latest Bond fan fiction. I haven't had time to mow the lawn, wash the car, or even just... call my sister and tell her that I wont be coming down to Melbourne for Christmas.

I really should get onto that last one. Maybe I'm just procrastinating on that... and the lawn.

Work has been something of theme park mess of late. One moment I'll be on the workplace emotional roller-coaster, only to then jump onto the workload dodgem-cars.
 

In amongst this personal mess, a handful of bright and cheerful people invaded my desk with their wonderful letters and bright and cheerful gifts.

A lot of the Typosphere bloggers may have noticed something interesting of late - a large amount of page views from Singapore. I'd been hearing rumors of a passionate crowd of users and collectors in Singapore for a while, and I was delighted to recieve some letters from some of the Singapore crew.

Not just letters.... Oh no.... But photos of typewriters and a puppy, a bookmark that looks a lot like my Lettera 22, stamps and beautiful envelopes. One of the letters even came bound in a card depicting a wondeful sketch of the writer's Hermes Baby Featherweight typewriter.

Seriously, this was nice stuff.

My lettera 22 looks over my collection of goodies! Look at that awesome bookmark!

Firstly I received a letter from Caroline C, who can be found over at the Inkleaves blog. She was replying to my original ICI letter, but did it in far grander style. A beautiful Lettera bookmark along with the card made from a sketch of Caroline's Hermes machine accompanied the letter in a striking blue envelope. 

 

On the same day that Caroline's letter arrived, another letter from Singapore appeared in my letterbox. It was another beautifully written letter that was a thank-you note for helping repair a typewriter. It came adorned with gifts and goodies that I also enjoyed. 

But this letter was different. One of the first things I noticed was that the letter had a distinct lack of the sender's details. The writer's name was no-where to be seen! Also it was a thank-you note for helping repair a typewriter that I had not even laid a hand on. Actually, I lived approximately half a country away from the typewriter. Not only that, but the person writing the note had yet to actually touch the typewriter themselves!

Confused? I was a little at first... 

Nat over at the NatsLapTaps blog had a little issue with her Adler Tippa one evening. To help her fix the problem I grabbed my own Tippa and set about dismantling it, and re constructing it while I sent her instructions live via Facebook's chat function. I didn't know it at the time, but the Tippa was to soon be delivered to one of Nat's friends in Singapore, and it was this friend that sent me the lovely little package.

I'm hoping they'll write again soon with their Tippa... this time with their name, so I can write back to them! One good turn certainly deserves another. It was very touching to get a thank-you note like this - so completely unexpectedly.

Speaking of Nat... 

Nat is also from Singapore, but is currently living in the Australian city of Darwin. There's a nice road between my city (Brisbane) and Darwin, but it is hard 3 to 4 day drive through some of the most desolate countryside that I have ever come across. 

Nat also sent me a little envelope with a bit of a treat inside. 

A great little package of Sholes and Glidden themed Post-it notes!

Nat informs me that these are actually pretty rough to use, and are more ornamental than anything. Sounds a bit like the typewriter that it depicts actually. 

But is this all I got from Singapore?

Oh good grief no! 

While all of this was going on, my friend 'Mars' (no, she isn't typewriter people) took a bit of a trip to Singapore. Mars and I often discuss blogging and online goings-on, and you can find Mars's 'Mars on life' blog over here.

Coming back from Singapore with Mars were a couple of very funky little gifts that now sit my desk. Firstly, there's the globe....

 

Ms Jane floated past my desk not long after I put the globet next to my computer. A subsequent fight to the death ensued, and I only narrowly escaped having the globe stolen and relocated to her desk at work. Which would have been bad, as her desk at work is in a building that was heavily damaged by the storm I mentioned in my last blog entry, and is currently uninhabitable.

But Mars also got me this -- super cool pop culture mouse mat. 

Fraken awesome! 

Just for reference, the mouse is covering Sean Connery's face. 

This awesome stuff is now all over my desk, and I feel really guilty for not responding to anyone's letters and posts of late. Caroline gave me a little prompt on my page the other day, reminding me of her letter (yes... I got it about 2 weeks ago, Sorry!) and as such has prompted me to get off my butt and actually post a blog.

Actually, more accurately she prompted me to get ON my butt and tap out a response on my blog. 

Anyway, thanks a heap guys - you came at just the right time. Singapore, I've yet to visit you... but you're clearly awesome!