This is my fourth day back in Melbourne.

It's bone-numbingly cold. It's skin-shrivellingly dry. It's expensive. And I have to cook again.

I'm missing Southeast Asia. I'm disorientated.

And I'm working on my thesis.

I have this sense of deja vu... Didn't this all happen last year?

Just keep thinking of the positives... There's fast Internet; there's red wine you can drink at a sensible room temperature; there's a TV; there's hot water; there's all Melbourne's winter programme of activities firing up; there's stuff that really matters in the news, like AFL...

I am LUCKY. I am LUCKY. I am LUCKY.