Dave and Jen For Oxfam

To make the remaining three weeks sound like a longer amount of time to fundraise, we can think of it in terms of 504 hours or 30240 minutes. To make it sound like a shorter amount of time until we hit the bikes in Ho Chi Min, we can think of it as 21 days. One we are counting off as slowly as possible and one we are striking off the calendar with a daily increase in excitement. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise in terms of which is which, but we are still surprised and shocked how quickly the last few weeks and months have gone by, and how quick the next few will follow suit. Three weeks left, and we still need your support!

After a weekend training session in Byron Bay under cloudy skies and intermittent rain, we catch up on this day of a new countdown week for lunch and this post. Sitting at a cafe with our little computer at hand, we are slowly getting used to strange looks from passers-by as we excitedly chitter and chatter (Jen chitters, I chatter) about the trip ahead, the fundraising left to do, the training remaining and even how best to keep up with our travel diary of sorts. Yes, this blog. And yes, people do tend to give you funny looks as you push half eaten sandwiches and empty coffee mugs aside to fold back pages of a Lonely Planet and argue good naturedly about travel blogs, little computers and looking like a geek in public. Oh yes, and the small issue of crossing Jen’s current threshold of geek-comfort-in-public by way of a demonstrations of dumping photos from a digital camera to this small form factor laptop via Lightroom. They might have been timelapse photos from the morning ride to work. Very cool and will be up on the site by the end of the week. Some might find this a little too geeky (ahem, Jen) and some might think this is totally awesome (ahem, Me). The jury is still out on that one perhaps.

So as lunch ticks on and our thoughts turn back to projects and the daily grind, we pay our bill and make our way back into the sunshine with a discussion on take away coffee and our lunch bill. I’m now carrying this little laptop in one hand and poking away at the keys with the other. But yes, coffee and lunch bill. One we probably won’t be able to enjoy on most of the trip ahead, and the other will be a small fraction of what we might spend here in Brisbane. If our perception of the cost of lunch in Vietnam and Cambodia is insignificant, then we can only enjoy that the cost of making a difference for local communities in both Vietnam and Cambodia is also, by comparison and quite literally, insignificant. What isn’t insignificant is the increasing feeling of pride in getting closer to our fundraising target of $11,000 to support the work of Oxfam Australia each and every day. We couldn’t be doing this without your support and as ever, remind you that we need further support to reach out target. And with that, it’s time to shut down the laptop, throw it and the camera in our new Crumpler, and head back to work. For three more weeks.