Explanations

How can religious people explain something like this? asks Martin Kettle in the Guardian. How can a God exist that can allow such things to happen?

Over the coming days, it will doubtless be revealed that many thousands more have died as a result of the Asian tsunami - after the flood waters have subsided, disease will come to finish off some of the weakest, poorest people on the planet. No explanation that includes deities, axes of evil, fallen men or infidels can possibly provide any explanation for what has happened - this is just tectonic plates shifting beneath the sea, and woe betide you if you're anywhere near by when it happens, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist.

My trip to India and the Aidcamp will still be going ahead, though all of the Aidcamps volunteers have been instructed to make totally sure that they have cholera vaccinations, malaria prophylaxis, and the means to purify water. I was looking forward to visiting some of the fishing villages and quieter areas around the South of India - but obviously many of them have now been destroyed, and the closest I'll be going to any of the disaster areas will be if the group offered any help or went to view the damage.

Spokesmen and ambassadors from the affected countries were on BBC News today, one in particular saying that India was 'looking after itself', and not in as much need as Sri Lanka or Indonesia. This doesn't seem to be the situation according to SCAD (Social Change and Development), one of the charities that works in association with Aidcamps. I got an update today from the charity in India:

"Cletus [Babu, founder of the charity] and a team of 40 to 50 SCAD staff are working in a block of 12 villages which are among the worst hit in the Kanyakumari area at the southernmost tip of India. The situation is very bad here as the full force of the waves hit the area with several after shock waves.

Cletus estimates that there is a total population of 15 to 17,000 people in these 12 villages of which between two and three thousand are known to be dead and about the same number are thought to be missing. It looks like at least 10% of the local population is dead and this figure is likely to rise substantially."

The Indian government have apparently promised an immediate grant of Rs2,000 per family (25 pounds) and a grant of 1Lakh for every person killed (1,200 pounds). However it will take a long time for this to be paid - and there is some scepticism as to whether that money will ever be paid. If the government are suggesting that they don't need help, this doesn't seem to be the case on the ground - when commentaries and news programmes identify lack of communications as one of the most serious problems, that probably doesn't just apply to whether the phones work - it probably also means that thousands of people won't get more help if their governments don't ask for it.

The US has offered an initial $15 million in aid, a fraction of the cost of a Stealth bomber (a snip at $1.26 billion), and nothing compared to what they're spending in Iraq (approximately $50 billion a year). Mind you, it's understandable, the US economy is buggered after all, and there's no oil in the Indian Ocean.

Other stuff:

• Tsunami blog
  
• BBC coverage and links to charities
  

Earthquake

The devastation around the Indian ocean in the wake of the earthquake earlier today looks to be massive - affecting, amongst other places, Tamil Nadu, one of my first stops on the trip, which starts next month. I've e-mailed a friend who's volunteering in India at the moment based in Chennai - she was heading off to see family for the new year in Zimbabwe - to check she's OK. What remains to be seen is whether this will affect the Aidcamp I'm attending, and indeed any other parts of the trip - many people have died in Tamil Nadu and even Kerala, and the damage is massive. I've already had an e-mail from the charity I'm volunteering with, to say that the itinerary will be changing, but that they don't yet have the full picture.

Toys

I'm a fussy bugger at the best of times, and constantly checking out new innovations on the net and in technology, so with the trip next year, it's been fun to check out services I can use while I'm away. I have to find some way of keeping techie toys working for me - I'll be without my laptop, and mum suggests I'll need to be surgically removed from it before getting on the plane.

I'm settling for a combination of Gmail, Hotmail and my own Wizwow e-mail accounts, which is a pain in the neck, but they're each good for different things - I've got enough storage between all of them to keep my whole life online while I'm off. Gmail is very promising indeed so far, very intuitive to use and very simple. I've also found a fantastic tool for storing and displaying photos online, Flickr - it's easier to use than anything else I've seen, with one of the best facilities being the ability to e-mail photos to the service and, in turn, have it publish them to this blog. This is all no doubt hopelessly boring if you're not fussed about techie stuff!

Potted guide to Hinduism

I'd feel a lot more nervous about going to India if I wasn't starting off with Aidcamps - they've sent masses of information and material on vaccinations, flights, packing lists, local conditions, and now an impressive looking guide to Hinduism - so that all of the volunteers have a good idea of what to expect from India. I still have to figure out how to get from Mumbai down to Trivandrum on my own, and find somewhere to stay on January 29, but at least I can expect to meet a bunch of people after that who may be as new to India as me, and it looks like we'll be getting a great induction into India on the Aidcamp.

I was struck with a sudden fear last night - that while the basics of planning flights and getting visas are things I can work on, I won't actually know what to do when I get to each place. I dread the idea of arriving in a country and not even getting out of a city because I don't have the gumption to get out and explore. I'm sure this won't be a problem, but I want to start looking for another volunteer project to do along the way, and at least one organised expedition, so I have things to aim for and fixed times to hang flights off.

If I'm worrying about this now, I'm going to be a pain in the neck next month...

Around the world in a minute

I've discovered the most impressive piece of software I have seen in a very very long time - it's called Keyhole, and allows the user to zoom into anywhere on Earth from space, sometimes at such a high resolution as to allow for views of individual houses and cars. I found my old house in London!

It's very addictive to use - I've been using Keyhole to track the course I'll be following next year, and the video you can see here shows the entire route (1.82 MB Quicktime Movie) in one minute!

Pills

A decent size of my backpack is now going to be taken up with malaria medication, after the doctor presribed me 400 Doxycycline pills - to be taken a week before I go away, all the way through Asia, for the first month in Australia, all the way through South America, and for a month after I leave South America. Better than catching malaria I suppose. I couldn't help but laugh at the box - it said to avoid direct sunlight when on the pills. That'd be great - I can say I went round the world but was under a very big hat the whole way. At least I'm not on Larium, which has always sounded like scary stuff. You have to start taking that before any other medication so you have long enough to find out if it's driving you potty.

Jabs, laundry and greenery

I finally found the way to fully appreciate Suffolk - live in London first. I've never liked it so much here, and can really appreciate the quiet. What an old fart I am. Anyway, I've had my first vaccinations - polio and tetanus boosters - and recovered from mild palpitations at the price of the rest. Some of my jabs are over £100 each - I go back for them in January. Apart from that, I've had my first health check-up (6'2", 16 Stone, blood pressure a bit high) in ages, and have my first opticians and dentists check-ups in years coming up.

It's good at forcing you to do a bit of life laundry, this travelling lark. I'd recommend it to anyone, even if they weren't going far.

Moved

I'm in Suffolk. Have moved three tonnes of crap. Very much in need of 1) More shelving, 2) A car boot sale, 3) The ability to get rid of things I don't need.

Hangovers and packing

My time in London is now coming to a close, and travelling seems just that bit closer, with a sudden panic over changes of address, packing, visas, plans for next year... things feel like they're coming to a head a bit, and suddenly my settled existence in Arundel Close is nearly over and it's brought home that I might not get to feel settled again for a long time!

I've been reading The Beach to get myself in the mood for travel, but annoyingly I can't get Leonardo di Caprio's face out of my mind, having seen the film first and attaching his face to Richard's character. It's also all wrong that Sal is American and Richard is British in the book, where in the film it was the other way around. Ah well, these are the hazards of seeing the film before the book - the book is so much better than the film.

After two nights out on the trot I am feeling beer fatigue in a major way, but as powerful as the urge is to do nothing for the next 48 hours except watch films and each snack foods, I'm picking up a van tomorrow morning to move all of my worldly possessions back up to Suffolk - where the hell they're going to go in mum's place is yet to be figured out, but I can already hear her complaining about the amount of my junk I've left in the living room, and I'm sure I'll lose the cat under a pile of boxes. Driving the van should be fun though - it takes moving to have an excuse to hire a van, when actually Transits are just great fun to drive!

The last few nights out in London have been great. It seems like at long last, I actually got to appreciate London and how much fun it can be - but maybe that's just nostalgia kicking in in advance, looking back at the last year through rose-tinted specs, when I actually spent most of the last year whingeing about how London was no fun, dirty and expensive, people were rude, the rich kids in rugby shirts and the prams in Starbucks were annoying, and Northcote Road was a stuck-up and unwelcoming place. London is a good place, sometimes, and sometimes it just plain sucks. Maybe I'll give it another chance when I get back. I will miss some great people - and it's always the people that have made places memorable so far. I'm starting to sound like the voiceover for the Wonder Years, so it's definitely time to go and pack.

Bush's Hotmail account

What George has been reading

Grumpy old man

I left the house this morning in fine fettle, to drop my car off for an MOT and service. Got to have it ship shaped ready to sell before the trip. Well ship shaped would be a miracle with a Fiesta, but you get my drift.

Anyway, it's been one of those mornings where events have conspired to bring the Victor Meldrew out in me:

• Yet again I could hardly move in the Northcote Road Starbucks for haughty mothers and their prams, with countless bloody children scuttling around the floor getting under my feet. Not only do they seem to turn the place into the equivalent of a busy supermarket fruit and veg aisle packed with trolleys, they always take up the comfy chairs and the sofa, and what's worst is that sometimes a small child will get a sofa to itself, meaning that if I want to sit on the sofa I'll run the risk of a) having to listen to someone going on about how marvellous their new curtain fabric is, and b) getting covered in the fine film of jam that seems to emanate from small children. I'm not saying mothers and children have no right to use a coffee shop, that would be unfair, but why can't they have their own special coffee shop?
  
• On the way home I saw a young woman being accosted at her doorstep by a couple of Bible bashers trying to push literature onto her, probably copies of Watchtower. They should just come round to my door, I'll give them something to think about. Previous Jehovah's Witnesses have finished conversations with me looking punch drunk. It's nice to think I've maybe converted a few to godlessness.
  
• Walking home over Bolingroke Grove, the traffic lights went red, and as has been the case several times recently, one or two cars continued on through the red lights, even though the green man was showing on the pedestrian crossing. This really riles me. I've taken to stepping out in to the road in front of these cars that run the lights so they have to swerve around me, making eye contact with the drivers, and occasionally mouthing 'What the **** do you think you're doing?'. Maybe not wise. Maybe I should recruit the buggy brigade down Starbucks to protest with me, mothers with prams seem to get away with murder.
  

The Da Vinci Code

This article on Empire Online reveals that Tom Hanks has been cast in the part of Robert Langdon in Ron Howard's upcoming film version of the Da Vinci Code - not a big surprise. Even though Robert Langdon is described as 'Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed' in the book, Ford's knocking on a bit.

Even less surprising is the fact that Jean Reno is being touted for the part of Bezu Fache - I kept seeing Reno's face and hearing his voice when I was reading the book, it seemed inevitable that any movie adaptation would use Reno to play Fache; even though he might not be a perfect physical match to Fache's towering, broad-necked detective, the gruff voice is there. When I was reading the Da Vinci Code, I kept thinking of it as a movie, and I'm sure Dan Brown did when he wrote it, fat cheques for the movie rights in mind.

Other likely castings? How about John Hurt as Leigh Teabing (surely!), Jake Busey as Silas (maybe not!), and as for Sophie Nevue... Emmanuel Béart too obvious? This is all bearing in mind that the average film goer only knows about three French actors...

Relaxation just got stressful

Well, I just timed it - it would seem it takes precisely a week of doing nothing much before I start climbling the walls with boredom. Good job I have to move out next week, or I'd run the risk of serious muscle and brain atrophy.

All done

Strange... I didn't have to go in to work this morning. I am, however, for the benefit of anyone who thinks I'm now doing nothing more than watching daytime TV and eating cookies, getting lots done. I've got visas, vaccinations, Wizwow work, letters, cleaning, packing, and washing up to sort! Busy busy!

I've already discovered that, in order to complete the visa form for India, you need handwriting the size of a flea's elbow.

People of the US, your president

Post-election USA

It would be funny if it weren't so true

Star Wars III

The first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III is out on www.starwars.com - and should be enough to get any Star Wars geek excited!

Leaving do

I had my leaving do from the tube last night, a joint thing with Kim - great fun, and really chuffed to see so many people I liked come along for it. I got some ace presents, including a sterile emergency medical kit so I can re-attach my own leg if it gets bitten off by a rabid squirrel or something. Had a skinful, and ended up wrestling Tara in the ladies toilets at one point. Odd. Very tired indeed, so why am I awake blogging at 1 a.m?!

New web site

I've put my new web site up for next year's trip.

Joe flying a kite at Great Yarmouth - look at the size of those props! 

Firefox and Shatner

Firefox rocks! I am moving to using this browser full-time, it is excellent - fast, efficient, and more attractive than IE, with built-in Google search, the ability to add new search engines, tabbed browsing, and lots more. I don't know if it's using Firefox or something else, but my laptop seems to be working like a dream at the moment, which almost makes up for all the blue screens I've had lately.

I also just bought the latest William Shatner album, produced by Ben Folds, and it is a work of genius. Shatner can take the piss out of himself, but also writes some touching lyrics, and with the music of Ben Folds, it's a great piece of work.

One week left at LU. Five days, two of which at least are likely to be started with thumping hangovers after my leaving do on Wednesday and another on Thursday... ah well, I'll have all the time in the world to kip from next weekend. I'm not rubbing that in at all but, well, OK, I am.

Chavtastic

• What do you call a Chav in a box? Innit.
• What do you call a Chav in a filing cabinet? Sorted.
• What do you call a Chav in a locked room? Safe.
• What do you call an Eskimo Chav? Innuinnit.
• What do you call a Chav in a white tracksuit? The bride.
• If two chavs are in a car and no music is playing, who's driving? The policeman.
  

Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies

This is such sad news, what a shock! He apparently died of a heart attack while having the holiday of a lifetime with his wife in Peru. John Peel was a fantastic presenter, so funny, while maintaining the deadpan expression and tone of a curmudgeonly old uncle. Home Truths was fantastic, and Peel was about the only reason I would tune in to Radio 1 any more.

Booked it!

Give it a woo, and a yay, and a seriously loud COME ON!! I've bought my ticket!

The itinerary is this:

• London to Mumbai
• Mumbai overland to Delhi (while in India I'll be volunteering with Aidcamps, seeing Rach in Chennai, and checking out Kerala, Goa, Agra and Varanasi)
• Delhi to Hong Kong (from here I'll be jetting up to Shanghai to see the Babes)
• Hong Kong to Bangkok (here I'll check out Thailand and get a flight up to Hanoi)
• Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Sydney (Sydney to see Anna and Prue, and check out Oz)
• Sydney to Christchurch (overland up New Zealand from here to Auckland, maybe on the Magic Bus?)
• Auckland to Papeete (Tahiti baby!)
• Papeete to Easter Island (to check out those big freaky statues and eat some choccy eggs)
• Easter Island to Santiago (to eat some chile in Chile!)
• Santiago to Lima (Peru is where Paddington Bear came from so I'm looking for bears, and I also hope to do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, see the Nazca Lines and maybe on into Bolivia)
• Lima to Quito (Ecuador's capital)
• Quito to Miami (bienvenido a Miami!)
• Miami to New York (start spreadin' the news....)
• New York to London!

Four weeks to go...

There's four weeks to go at LU now - not long given that I'm only there for three days a week. After such a long time of feeling stressed out and bogged down by the job, I'm finally enjoying myself again - partly because the end is in sight. It's nice to think that, for the first time in a while, I should be able to leave the job happy and on good terms... but then I do have four weeks to go, so I could still cock it all up.

It's now time to start panicking about something else though - the itinerary I had in mind for the RTW trip is looking increasingly unfeasible, having tried a few online route planners, and having looked at the hubs used by the airlines I'd likely use. As an example, I chose to visit Bratislava and then move on to Istanbul and India, but in order to get to India from Istanbul, the Star Alliance round the world route planning software I was using suggested I had to go all the way back to Frankfurt from Istanbul just to get to India! I'm sure this isn't necessary and assume I can go through Abu Dhabi to get to India, but will need to speak to someone at Trailfinders. I've left getting the ticket for far too long and just need to get the stupid thing, quit fannying about. As for the vaccinations, that's another to-do on the list I can't leave any longer.

Still, at least I have a target to aim for - on 30 January 2005 I start two weeks volunteer work with Aidcamps in Pettai, Tamil Nadu. I have high hopes for the trip - that it is worthwhile, fun, challenging, rewarding, a good induction to India. We'll have to see.

Doggles! 

Music and curiosities

This is a fantastic place to go for MP3 downloads - one of many MP3 sites I'm discovering on the web... This is also an interesting toy to play with, presenting any web site's Google results along with the sites that link to it in a kind of map arrangement...

Are You A Northern Bastard?

I'm disappointed - according to this test entitled Are You A Northern Bastard?, I am in fact a Southern Fairy. I've been trying well hard to be a Northern Bastard as well, and Garry told me I was an honourary Northerner once, but I guess birthplace and current location are too much to overcome...

Reasons to be cheerful... 1,2,3

I just like that as a subject so I thought I'd use it - it's the name of a good Ian Dury song, which was almost like a rap in that it was a long list of reasons why you should be cheerful - maybe just if you're Ian Dury, it is all subjective after all.

Anyway, reasons for going travelling:

1. Shockabuku. To quote Minnie Driver's character Debi in Grosse Point Blank (all time top ten film), it is the swift spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever. I think I need that, and seeing as how India is likely to be my first destination, I think I'm sure to experience it. I've heard India enthrals, delights and infuriates all at once. Shockabuku is needed to clear a severe creative, mental and emotional blockage. I can't keep my mind on one thing for more than fifteen seconds, and when I do, I find that an effort. I can't express myself as well as I'd like with people, and I simply find myself not feeling much of anything about anything. I'm bored out of my tiny little mind!

Reasons for going travelling

Why am I going away? This is a good question. Do I need to have a good reason to leave behind responsibility, family and friends for anything up to a year?

I've been thinking about exactly why it is that I'm going away. I have a load of reasons, I think. I was concerned about the idea of travelling for a while as everyone I knew was doing it in my early twenties, so I wanted to do it. If they could, why couldn't I? This was of course the worst possible reason to want to go away. Reading the Rough Guides book 'first time around the world' confirmed this, saying that you should go travelling when you felt ready, not when someone told you it was a good time to.

So now I'm 29, and my reasons are... let me get back to that...

My leeetle friend

This is a squirrel that has become my newest friend - I don't know it's name, I respect its privacy. It appears out of nowhere and looks expectantly at me on a regular basis after I started giving it nuts. It looooves the nuts.

It's all change...

This is my second go at a blog - I gave up on the last one as it was mind-numbingly dull. Not that mind-numbing dullness stops many from blogging, but day-to-day existence and complaining about work just isn't good enough! A friend of mine keeps a blog that acts as a postcard from Canada, and I'm resurrecting mine (sans previous dull-as-shite posts) so I can keep people up-to-date on my upcoming trip round the world - yes, woooo, I'm going round the world!

Destinations so far:

• UK (duh!)
• India
• China
• Thailand
• Vietnam
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Fiji
• US
• Canada...
• ... and back.

I'm due to set off from the UK in January 2005, so planning the trip starts here!