When I started this blog (back when it was Marianne in Asia) I was living the life of a nomad, travelling around and seeing the world. Ah the days. Now I’m living in London, travelling as much as I can and (lucky me) working for a travel company, so hey, things haven’t gone too badly.

But I’m back! I miss writing and I hope perhaps you’ve missed me just a tiny bit? Just a little?

So here we go, the resurrection of Filling The Pages. Watch this space.

Coming up: Remembering why I do love the States, and my recent exploration of Tenerife.

Speak to you soon

Yours

McPhee

15 DEC 09 @ 08:50PM BY ALEX WARD

Marianne Mcphee - Now living in Lane Cove

MARIANNE McPhee camped for two days outside a London travel agency to win the chance to become a 10-pound Pom.

The agency offered 150 British travellers with working holiday visas the 10 tickets to Australia as part of its 30th birthday celebrations.

Ms Mcphee, 23, now living in Lane Cove, determinedly queued outside the STA office near London’s Victoria Station to get one of the highly sought-after Qantas tickets.

“Camping on the streets of London was an experience” said Ms McPhee of sleeping in a tent.

“I still can’t really believe it has happened. I just bought a flight to Australia for 10!”

The term 10-pound Pom was given to British immigrants who travelled to Australia between the 1940s and ‘70s under an assisted-passage scheme. More than one million people journeyed to Australia this way.

An avid traveller, Ms McPhee plans to work in Sydney over the summer before exploring and working in other parts of the country.

Tourism Australia UK and Europe general manager Rodney Harrex said the promotion was to raise awareness of the working holiday visa among young Brits at a time when increasing numbers were looking to travel Down Under.  – By Alex Ward

You can check out their website where you’ll find blogs about myself and the other ‘Explorers’ to find out where we all are!

My latest appearance is here:

http://www.statravelbuzz.co.uk/marianne-is-leaving-the-country…/

Just more ways to find out what I’m up to!

But for now, Amanda needs a bit of help. There are two things you can do to make her life in Senegal easier.

One: e-mail her MP3s. She is dying for some jams to rock to while she rides her bike through the bush into town. If you would like to do this, please e-mail them to me and I will forward them on to her on your behalf. (My contact details are on the ‘Contact’ tab).

Two: Donate a couple of pounds to help her build a well.  She lives in a village of 197 people where she is working to improve the conditions of their health hut in order to try and provide some basic, sanitary care for the people living there, as the closest town is a few hours away by bicycle. She is currently starting to build a well in the hut grounds so that the village has access to clean water.

The well project is only $500 which should hopefully be an easy target to reach. So if you’re looking for a good cause, this is one that wouldn’t otherwise get much attention. Any amount helps if you want to donate.

That’s all, I promise, just thought I’d pass it around and see if I can help out a friend.

You can read more about it and donate in the link below:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/67

There’s some pretty nice, upmarket hotels that maybe not all of us can afford, but it’s a great way to get some inspiration for your next holiday!

I really recommend looking at it, even if you’re not looking to travel right now, I just love the design!

Download it here

But here’s my question: Should I really be that worried? It’s just a flu right? Ok, it’s a bad flu with no vaccine yet, but I never get the flu vaccine anyway and I’ve had some pretty nasty flu in my time. I once had a mild case of pneumonia during a particularly bad flu back in high school.

Is this thing any worse than any of the other flu viruses that travel around this planet? Or is it just new and therefore people are more scared of it? What do you think?

Harry Potter’s first film was in 2001. A mere eight years ago, with only five (soon to be six) movies released, and yet it has (or is about to) make MORE MONEY than the man with a license to kill! Who ever thought that was possible?

This is just my own guess, but I’d say that the James Bond film franchise is one of the most famous film series out there. It’s definitely up there with Mission Impossible, Die Hard, even The Godfather; and it has more movies than those three combined; so it’s simple math. How could a franchise with six films beat one with 22?! Well it has, and I’m amazed.

What I think it really says is something about who is going to the cinema these days. The James Bond target audience probably starts with early teens, especially boys who like to see things blown up, but it’s range goes through adults and was certainly more focused on it’s older audience back in the day when Mr. Connery was playing the dashing agent.

Harry Potter does appeal to adults who like to relive a little childhood fun and magic, but it’s main appeal is to the younger generations. It appeals to males and females too, unlike Bond’s action packed sequences and cool cars that typically appeal to members of the public with a Y chromosome.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re a person looking to make the next blockbuster, look no further than Generations Y and Z because apparently they’re the ones lining up at the box office multiple times, and they’ll probably bring their parents along for the ride.

BY the way. Back to James Bond. Agent 007 is supposed to be this handsome, ever so polite, refined ENGLISH gentleman right? I know a lot of people were up in arms when Daniel Craig was announced as the new Bond because his look was too ‘rugged’ or something like that. But at least he’s from the right country! He’s only the SECOND English person to play the big man. Even the first Bond was Scottish! He was interrupted by an Australian (George Lazenby… it’s okay if you forgot about him, most people do since he was only in one film, and Connery did one more after him, making him even easier to disregard). It wasn’t until the third James Bond (Roger Moore) that we actually got an Englishman, and he was followed by a Welshman and an Irishman!

Secondly, why is it that he’s supposed to be English anyway? If you actually look into it (or just read this blog since I already did this for you), James Bond’s dad is Scottish and his mum is from Switzerland!

This is all off the topic of Harry Potter, but it’s interesting. At least I think so.

So here’s to Harry Potter, beating 007′s record in about one quarter the amount of episodes. Also – I have a ticket to go see the sixth film with my parents after which I will be driving straight to the airport to fly back to London. See I told you – a Generation Y child hiking up those box offices sales and bringing her parents to help too.

We all know that MJ turned out to be a somewhat strange person, but let’s give him a break people, he just died. I think it would be in pretty bad taste for people to bring up all the bad and weird memories we have of MJ the week after he has passed.

Whatever you think about who he turned out to be, you can’t deny the enormous influence he had on the music world and the rest of the world for that matter. He turned the concept of dance and entertainment into something completely new and different, and on top of that he was one of the pop world’s most generous givers when it came to charity and helping those less fortunate.

I can’t think of very many child celebrities who HAVE turned out completely normal. Actually I can’t think of any… But MJ had a bigger impact on the world than any of the Britney Spears’, Nicole Ritchie’s and Drew Barrymore’s.

So yea, I know he turned out sort of strange in his adult life, but since when is it appropriate to trash talk someone so soon after their death? When people die, whoever it is, we always honour them for the good things they did, not the bad. So I think all the talk, the music and the memorial service were totally appropriate. For those who think the service was too much like a concert…hello?? MJ spent his life performing and being on stage, and he obviously had a passion for it, so why shouldn’t his memorial service be a tribute to his love for over the top performance and glamour? I can’t imagine it being any other way.

So from the girl who spent a lot of her childhood singing along to the songs on her ‘HIStory: Past, Present and Future’ CDs, that’s all I have to say about it.

If you followed my ‘Marianne Goes East’ blog then you know that I’ve recently been traveling around Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Australia. Those blog posts have been imported to this site now so feel free to have a look if you haven’t already!

I loved writing about what I was up to while traveling all over the world so I’ve decided to keep up with this whole online writing gig and set up a permanent blog – Filling the Pages.

This blog won’t always be about my travels. As much as I’d like to continue traveling non-stop my bank balance won’t allow it, so I’ll be somewhat stationary for a little bit until I can afford my next big jump which is probably going to be a year in Australia.

So here it goes. Let’s hope my life and thoughts are interesting enough to keep reading about!

I’ll write about what I’m up to (at the moment that would be visiting old school friends and my parents in the USA),traveling that I do myself, and any other news about the world and traveling that I decide to put here.

Since I can’t always do my own traveling, what I would LOVE is to get your travel stories! So if you have been abroad and had some crazy experience, tell me about it! Check out the ‘Contact Me’ tab for more information.

Thanks for reading, tell your friends, and keep checking back for more!

Leeor and Julie lived down one end of our hallway and Tori and I lived on the other. Our rooms were all the size of closets, and small closets at that, but Tori always managed to keep hers immaculately clean. I like to think I’m a tidy person, but Tori’s room got a professional service every day; nothing was ever out of place.
Her dedication didn’t end with her room. She was probably one of the most responsible students I knew, managing to actually NOT go out when she had to read or study instead… what a concept!? She was dedicated to her friends and never had a bad word to say about anyone. She was a peaceful, fun and happy girl who never gave me a reason to frown.

We shared an obsession with the show Lost, especially when ABC decided to put every single season up online for free; we would often sit in our rooms less than five feet apart with a thin wall between us for hours watching episode after episode and running into each other’s rooms to talk about what had happened.

She studied in London when I was there working before heading to Asia, but we never managed to connect in my home city because of our difficult schedules.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in an Internet cafe not unlike the one I’m in now, in Vientiane, Laos surrounded by six of my friends and a few dozen strangers when I received an e-mail from Julie telling me that Tori had mysteriously passed away in her sleep on March 8, 2009 at 21 years old. I didn’t know what to do or think then, and it’s hard to know even now. I wanted to write something to let people know what a great girl she was, but finding the words that don’t sound like every boring cliche you’ve ever heard is difficult.

Perhaps the strangest thing about it all now is occasionally surfing through Facebook and finding her profile still up and running. Her wall has turned into a place for friends to grieve and talk about the things they remember about their time with Tori. It’s given everyone a chance to show their respect and share their stories instead of limiting it to those who were able to speak at the services. Anytime I think of Tori I can go to her profile to see her photos, see what friends have written lately, and maybe one day write something myself.

I know it was a little while ago now and the memorial services have already passed but since I couldn’t be there, here’s my contribution to the things that have been said about Tori Rubino since she left us. I miss her and the part she played in my last months of university. She didn’t deserve to miss out on that herself.

read more | digg story

After stuffing our faces we watched The Christmas Story on Kelly’s laptop and I now feel appropriately ‘Christmassy.’ But now Christmas is about to be over, so what now? By the way, HILARIOUS skit about the time between Christmas and New Years by Michael McIntyre here. Please check it out, he is hilarious. American’s may not find him as funny, so Brits, enjoy.

A few blog posts ago I wrote about the political situation here in Thailand.