Hanging out with Clarence

I've spent the last few weeks of my life kicking it with Clarence and more importantly taking shelter in his domain and on his street. I'm assuming that Clarence owns the property and the street was named in his honour, of course, I have never admitted to being anywhere near sane. I think the closest I got was back in April 2000 and there was a brief moment in October of 1994, some brilliant flashes in 1989 but outside of those timeframes, I've got nothing.

I don't feel compelled to discuss aspects of work at the moment, I can say the I'm scooting along swimmingly. As for Uni ? Three subjects hitting the 'red alert' radar by mid November, I should really be more stressed that I am, watch this space *space* ...go on, watch it and amuse me.

What to do , what to do ?

Well, I've got myself booked in for some Leyland Brothers galavanting in December with my partner in Sheesh and mentor in sarcasm, JC. Now this I'm looking forward to, if nothing else, for the assault on the senses that it will promise. In my current 32 years I've cruised through relatively economically robust countries and I'm looking forward to seeing areas that are a little less developed, a little more 'real' and somewhat more different to the stock European agenda that I've been on for sometime. The disappointing thing is that 2 weeks isn't a particularly substantial period of time to immerse yourself in the culture and get a real feel for life at it's base nuts & bolts level but I'll claim what I can. From the current agenda the highlight for me will be taking in Angkor Wat and doing a whistle stop tour of Cambodia. I don't really know why but as a child the stories of Pol Pot and Idi Amin always haunted the shadows of my historical and geographical interests. Maybe it's just the standard morbid fascination with the logic and reasoning that manifests itself in genocide through some type of warped ideological reasoning or maybe it's just a fascination with pure evil and how and why it can eventuate. I don't know, but Cambodia (Kampuchea) has always held a type of mythical place in my mind along with the ubiquitous Killing Fields that somehow represent whatever Cambodia is to me. I know viscerally that's not the case but as I've said, those well known ads for Cambodia keep popping into my head.

Where next then ? Well, I'm planning to put many miles up on the Elisher 'Flying Miles' scoreboard. I have solid plans for Morrocco, Portugal, Spain and France next year and at this moment in time December '08 has me drawn towards Gulmarg in Kashmir, although it's going to be a toss up between that or Chile/Argentina....but...if I go a year without snowboarding I don't feel like a 'real man', the argument of course being that I'm not, I'll leave that open to debate. Why all the travel ? Well, there's just too much to see and experience and not a hell of a lot of time to do it in. You never know how the cards will fall, so I'm raising and I dare anyone to call me - go on !!