About
Hello: My name is Nicola. My middle initial is J, which stands for Joan: Joan of Arc, Pope Joan and my Aunty Joan (very important women!).
I am: principally about the Good Things: mountains, oceans & rivers; climbing, snowboarding & skiing; kayaking, S.C.U.B.A & freediving; beekeeping, growing food & cooking; exploring, traveling & adventure; running, biking & yoga… I also like art, ballet and literature. I am a Humanist. I don’t believe in deities, nationalities, or letting people starve. I do believe in kindness, playing hard and dreaming bigger. Currently I live in Melbourne, Australia but I’ve also lived in Europe, Canada and the USA. I am also a biologist.
The Photographs: were, with a few exceptions, taken by me or by my partner, Ross. Please don’t take them without permission. I don’t bite, if you want one, flick me an email.
Some good times: 1 Hot Sundays in August on the balconies of the Tate Modern, watching the Thames float on by, 2 Climbing boulders with great friends & watching them send beautiful lines 3 People-watching from the top tier of the Solomon R. Guggenheim in NY 4 Tea and fruitcake by the fire on rainy days at the Briton Arms, Elm Hill, Norwich
5 Gin & tonics at the Old Winter Palace in Luxor, overlooking the Nile 6 Coconut milk right from the nut in Savannah Park, Trinidad
with all my cousins teasing me that I will swallow a cockroach 7 Floating down steep sided gorges in virgin jungle in Vanuatu 8 Climbing glaciers in British Columbia 9 Shaking hands with Giant Pacific Octopus 18m under the ocean 10 Being surrounded by a school of small, inquisitive sharks 11 Swimming in Lake Skaha after rock climbing all day 12 Sushi at the Tokyo fish market 13 Stalactites and blind fish in underwater caves in Mexico 14 Camping in the desert for a week and then arriving in Las Vegas 15 Entering a giant ship-wreck at night to see schools of flashlight fish. 16 Camping really, really high and seeing nothing except mountains as the light fades
Apart for the above, I’m also keen on: orchids, nudibranchs, choral harmonies, the origin of language, the origin of life, limestone caves, the time travel paradox, tea, the mechanics of flight, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligent life, weather patterns and wolves
I also really like planning adventures: of which some happen and some don’t. Presently, I intend to climb Mount Kinabalu; dive in Pulau and the Maldives and maybe Lembeh Strait; ride the snows of Hokkaido; snorkel with humpbacks; snorkel with whale sharks; climb mountains in Argentina and Chile; climb more mountains Mountains in Nepal and China; kayak up the Inside Passage from Campbell River to Prince Rupert; explore the canyons and rocks of Eritrea and Ethiopia; kayak through the Torres Strait Islands.
My most FAQ is: “Who are my dream dinner guests (alive or dead)?”
1 Some dirtbag climbers, 2 Pianist, Liberace (to play Rachmaninov during the main course),3 Humanitarian, Paul Rusesabagina 4 Women’s rights activist, Elizabeth Blackwell 5 Author and pioneer, Laura Ingalls Wilder 6 Underwater explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau 7 Ecudorian Huaorani spokeman and anti-oil advocate, Moi Enomenga 8 Philosopher and writer, Plato 9 Writer and Nobel Laureate, Herman Hesse 10 Writer E. M. Forster 11 The ‘little woman who started this great war’, Harriet Beecher Stowe
The books I love best are: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, E.M.Forster’s Passage to India, Haruki Marakami’s After Dark and Kafka on the Shore, Jose Saramago’s The Cave, A.M. Holme’s The End of Alice, Isabelle Allende’s House of the Spirits, Johnathan Franzen’s The Corrections, Greg Bear’s Eon, Iain Bank’s The Bridge, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbavilles and The Mayor of Castorbridge, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, Herman Hesse’s Demian, The Glass Bead Game and The Prodigy, Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes, Michael Marshall Smith’s Only Forward, Milan Kundara’s L’Ignorance, Kenzaburo Oe’s Somersault, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Chronicles, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Anchee Min’s Wild Ginger, Tom McNeal’s Goodnight, Nebraska, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The movies I can watch again and again are: Iron Ladies, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Donnie Darko, Primer, V for Vendetta, The Machinist, Memento, Imitation of Life, Italian for Beginners, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Samson and Delilah, Revolutionary Road, Betelgeuse, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Paris J’taime, American Beauty, Walkabout, Lilja4ever, Kids, Boys Don’t Cry, Brazil, Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Twelve Monkeys, Requiem for a Dream, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, In This World, In The Loop, Sharkwater, The Departed, The Graduate, Kill Bill, True Romance, Thank You for Smoking, I Am Love, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Edward Scissorhands, No Country For Old Men,
You can also find me at: ♥ facebook ♥ KIVA ♥ lastfm ♥ librarything ♥ twitter ♥ youtube ♥
