While settling in London, looking for a place to live, a place to work, planning mini-holidays, and generally getting used to a new way of life, Project 183 has been put on the backburner a little.

Today, I am kick-starting it again.

And I will be doing that by achieving goal 114, by going to a public place in the middle of the day in my pyjamas. Stay tuned for all the embarassing photos shortly.

Nat and I are now safely in London, and have already found a place to live, in Angel (as in The Angel, Islington from Monopoly). It is close to the centre of London, with plenty of pubs nearby.

We arrived on August 26, so achieve goal 84 (live overseas for six months) we must survive London until February 26.

At this stage, it will be dead easy. We are loving it so far, and are excited about what adventures and holidays we will have over the next couple of years.

I have even picked a football (soccer) team - Fulham FC.

This will be my last post for a little while, as Nat and I fly out to London on Monday to begin our two year UK work/play adventure.

Wish me luck!

Back in June, I did a radio interview with 3AW. During the interview I mentioned that one of my goals (#18) was to meet Sir Richard Branson.

Shortly after the interview, a caller rang in and said that they might be able to help put me in touch with him. They had the details of his personal assistant.

I spoke with the caller (Bronwyn) and took the details she had. Until a week ago, I had done nothing with them.

Last week I thought it might be time to try the email address that Bronwyn gave me. So I sent an email, hoping that maybe I would get a response. Personal assistants tend to be the gatekeepers, so if I could get through this one, I might have a chance.

I eagerly checked my email inbox the next morning, and to my shock, there were two emails.

One from the person that I emailed, saying that she was not the personal assistant but would pass my email on.

And one from his actual personal assistant. Saying she loved Project 183 and had passed on my email to Sir Richard.

Cool I thought. But I still didn’t want to get my hopes up.

The next morning I eagerly checked my inbox, and to my shock and excitement, was an email from Sir Richard Branson!

Here is what it said:

Dear Heath,

Flattered you should want to meet me. Happy to get together the next
time that I’m in Australia. We’ll send your note to Danielle Keighery,
who will fix it up. Likely to be in December when I come to launch our
Pacific routes. Great idea!

All the best,
Richard

Can you believe it?! I now have a direct line with Sir Richard Branson (and his actual email address!).

Given I am moving to the UK next month, the meeting in Australia would not work, but we have spoken again since this email, and will be meeting in the UK in September.

Until I actually shake his hand (and maybe get a picture of him with a Project 183 magnet) I won’t get too over-excited, but just for him to write an email to little-old me is pretty damn awesome I reckon.

After a mountain of paperwork and a month-long wait, I have finally had my UK Working Visa application approved.

London, here I come! Two weeks to go until take-off.

Nat and I are a few months into preparations for what will be the biggest goal achieved on the list so far; we are moving overseas to work and live! Goal 84 is to live overseas for six months, but we are planning to stay at least a couple of years.

Where you ask? London.

When? Our one-way tickets are booked for August 25.

Why? Because we can. We were there last July, and had such a great time that we have wanted to go back ever since. So we are.

Just waiting now on the Visas to be approved, and then it will be London, here we come!

I’ve even found a short course in Flash website development in London that I will be booking into upon arrival, which will help to achieve goal 183. Here is the link to the course, for anyone interested.

As you probably now know, yesterday I took a longer than usual train trip.

And thankfully, I managed to complete my trip on time, as scheduled, completing the journey at Belgrave at 10.50 last night.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in comments (even the negative ones, they are kind of funny to read; and sadly true at times). I will make sure I respond to everyone over the next few days.

But right now, I need to catch up on some sleep. I have had eight hours sleep since Monday morning.

… and decided to pay my site a visit.

Thanks very much for coming. I would offer you tea and scones, but given you are at a website, rather than my house, it makes my offer rather difficult to fulfill.

But feel free to look around, inspect the goals, and leave some comments along the way.

The MX article covers my attempt tomorrow (Tuesday June 17) to be the first person to travel through the ENTIRE Melbourne train network in one day. If I do, it will also knock goal 141 off my list. Here is a photo of the article; I will attach a read-able version later.

Connex and Telstra have decided to tie themselves in with the silliness of this goal as well, which adds a little more pressure to the occasion.

Connex have written and sent out a press release to all the media outlets, and it sounds like I may be doing some radio interviews during the day, which is very exciting. Stay tuned to Channel 7 news tomorrow as well!

Telstra are providing me with 3G phones and a laptop, and they are building a blog on their website to track my progress during the day. I will be updating the blog during my trip (I do have 18.3 hours to kill!) with video updates and posts, and people can leave messages and comments that I can respond to.

The progress website, when live, is NowWeAreTalking.com.au/blogs/project-183

As discussed in a previous post, I am going to be attempting to achieve goal 141 next Tuesday. The goal is to travel on the entire Melbourne train network in one day.

Here is my schedule for the day for anyone strange enough to want to join me.

I am preparing at the moment for a new goal, and you can get involved.

On Tuesday June 17 I will hopefully be completing goal 141, which is to travel on the entire Melbourne train network in one day.

I have managed to secure some newspaper coverage for this goal (the MX newspaper, which is handed out free to hundreds of thousands of people every afternoon in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane). This will be the first time Project 183 is getting mainstream publicity, so I am very excited.

The goal starts at about 4.30am on the morning of the 17th, and will last until I finish shortly before 2am the next morning. If you are interested in accompanying me on any part of the trip, let me know. The complete schedule for the trip will be put up shortly.