I am now in Bali!

Again.

Waiting…

Doh.

Said goodbye to mum in Lombok earlier today. That was sad but dont worry Mum, i’ll be back there before you know it!

I’m staying at Made’s place again (this is mainly for Rox) just to save money. 5 pounds a night is a bargain man. It even includes a nice breakfast. It’s not as bad with just me because I won’t get woken up by a certain someone every two hours as they are attacked by angry mosques… hehe I mean mosquitos.

Yeah so i’m back in Bali, tack capital of Indonesia until 10pm tomorrow… I’m thinking of going to Waterbomb park on my own for the day. Hehe that would be funny. Or maybe I could go bungy jumping. Hmm… its run by a kiwi guy but I cant get over the feeling that maybe it would become affected by the “indo touch” if i tried it. I would probably end up buried head first in 2 metres of sand! Hmm maybe i’ll just walk up and down the main drag buying surf gear while being accosted by “beauty therapists” and “masseuses” who all call me darling or sweetie. Or maybe I’ll just sit in my room all day reading crappy fantasy books. Yeah thats what I might do. Choices, choices… so many choices.

I cant believe I will soon be back in Perth!! Thank fark I am going to Melb after it though, I just couldnt handle “the great adventure” being over so soon. Its gonna be great to see my little (not physically anymore… little bastard) bro again We will have to have a kungfu showdown to see whos skillz have atrophied the most over the years… um i’m guessing mine. i couldnt kick my way out of a pair of thongs (sandals not underwear you english pervert bastards) at the moment.

Leigh is in perth as well and has already emailed my about beers at his place so thats good. And Seb has organised som shizzo as well. Its gonna be just like the old days cept im bald and fatter and HEAPS FUNNIER HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ouch i think i sprained my spleen.

Yeah so bring on 2005!! Its gonna be a good year i think, with lots of programs being written, songs being made and robots being built (Oh yeah and in between all that I need to get a job and a career). It’s time i put my money where my mouth is and put my back into it, pulled my finger out my ass and put a cork in it. You know what i mean ma nizzos. Its time to bust the caps of progress into the meaty carcass of lethargy. Yes, its time to get shizzo on the nizzo.

Don’t know what the fcuk i am on about? As my main man Fresh would say…

“W..a..t..c..h.. ..t..h..i..s.. ..s..p..a..c..e…..”

1) Terrorists Bombs
2) Mad Egyptian Taxi Drivers
3) Hot Air Ballons + Powerlines
4) Insane Camels
5) Rabid Donkeys
6) Poisonous Scorpions
7) Falling Geckos (And Their Poo)
Food Poisoning (From Like, Everything)
9) Filthy Water
10) Drunken Airplane Pilots
11) Lightning Bolts
12) 3 years in London (Includes bad drugs, women and THAT GODDAMN WEATHER!)

This a short list of the things I have had to survive recently. Now it seems I have to add a lucky thirteenth entry to it.

13) FUCKING HUGE TSUNAMIS CAUSED BY HUGE UNDERWATER EARTHQUAKES!!

Jesus Christ, 26, 000 dead so far. Half the countries affected dont have a freaking clue how many people actually live there so how the hell are we ever gonna know exactly how many people have perished in this bollocks.

Man, I was swimming down the beach with mum and gaz when the earthquake actually struck… I actually noticed the tide moving around a miniscule fraction but the tides here are big anyway so it could have been that. A couple of hundred miles away around the other side of indo whole fucking villages were being decimated. How totally fucked up is that??

Shit. In case you hadn’t noticed I am swearing a lot in this post. Thats because it seems like just as you start to get used to the fact that terrorists are gonna blow the shit out of you as you sleep in your bed or crash shit into you when you are at work, now when you are swimming on holiday you are gonna have to entertain the notion that all of the water in the beautiful beach you are at could suddenly be sucked out and dumped on your head from 4 storeys up. bollocks it is.

DIAGNOSIS: FUCKED UP MAN

P.S.

I’m fine by the way and so is everyone else here in Lombok. Merry fucking christmas.

Hello?

Can you hear me?

BZZZzZT0000090 –

Hello?

I’m not sure if y0u are receiving this but 1′ll send anyway in the h0pe you a00000000
0079-969A-E0FF
0079-969A-E100
0079-969A-E101
0079-969A-E102

IO ERR: Restarting… –

[ UPLINK RE-ESTABLISHED: BANANA0 PROTOCOL ACTIVE]
.
.
.

Thats better… I’m actually writing this using a laptop and network card made out of half an empty coconut and a piece of bamboo. I am having some protocol issues still as I try to mesh my homebrew BANANA0 network compatible card with the village’s much faster PAPAYA2 wireless network. Oh the tribulations, trials and er, tripe of computing. it seems that even halfway up a mountain in the middle of nowhere you can still find problems!

ANYWAY!! apologies for the enormous delay between updates!! No suprise there though! We are not dead at all, we have just been up the side of a mountain in Lombok that unfortunately doesn’t seem to be getting the best wireless network coverage at the moment… maybe things will change when the electricity gets put in

It has been very ‘authentic’ this trip. We have not had tv, running water or mains electricity for the last two weeks!! It has been really good though, its been really good to see mum and gaz again and just chill a little bit. And apart from the scorpions its really beautiful and other nice words that i cant think of at the moment.

The restaurant is looking ‘orsem and it is going to be groovetastic when it opens! Ive got heaps of photos for yaz which i will upload as soon as i get to perth.

Um yeah, heaps of shit has happened which is really cool but as i have the organizational capabilities of a squid. on a rock. in the sun, I have just wasted the last hour+ cleaning out my gmail inbox when i should have been writing an in depth update so oh well. The main thing is that we are totally safe and roxy has now started the final part of her journey home, leaving Lombok earlier today.

Shit, i havent been apart from her since we met and now they are playing some cheesy 80s love rock song on the radio in the internet cafe…

You know its true..
Everything I do…
I do it for you…

..
..

Sorry, just had a little moment there… oh the 80’s how i hate and love you simultaneously like a skitzophrenic(whatever) AI with multiple primary processing cores.. or something.

Yeah so back to my main stream of consciousness…. Indo has been REAL. Perth is approaching fast. Who knows what the future holds? Me. And Rox as well, cos she booked it. But who knows what may happen still on the way to Sunny Melbourne (aka Promised Land). we can only wait and see I guess…..!

Hope you guys have a really great christmas!! I have a feeling mine is going to involve bananas and Bintang beer at some point

Some of you I will see when I arrive in Perth, others when I get to Melb. Still others when I freak out and fly back to the UK (I have the passport maaaan!). And others I will never meet because you are dirty perverts that only stumbled upon this site after doing a search on MSN search for ‘ROBOT’ + ‘BIG JUBBLIES’. Sickos.

Anyway, love you all that are female and nice and then even only in a purely platonic way unless you are my girlfriend which in that case……….. shutup ash.

BYE

Shit!!

We have left London.. For.. Ever!!

The place that has been so important to me for the last 3 years (mainly because it contained my home, air, food and friends) is now no more. It’s still there of course (the terrorists don’t posses nukes yet.. we hope) but from my point of view is now just a fast fading memory (goddammit, dont we have a drug to fix this yet?).

My mid and short term memory is notoriously bad so I am doing my best to shoehorn The London Experience as I am going to call it from now on into long term storage as soon as possible. Even now I am forgetting things. Like what was the name of that Scottish/Turkish abomination I used to get bongoed with on occasion? Oh yeah Sinan, that was it Also, Dubicon Software? Did I work for them? Or was that a dream I had after one too many Starbucks chai teas with extra vodka?

I dont think I can really come to grips with the reality of leaving right now (the internet cafe probably wouldnt appreciate me crying on their keyboard) so I will just suppress it until it bursts like a giant boil lanced with cold steel of the realisation that I have no job, money, house, prospects or clothes that werent bought in 1989.

I’ll get Rox to take a picture of me when this happens and I’ll post it up here.. should be interesting.

Anyway, we have been in Singapore for the last 4 days.. Ahh lovely singapore, with its nice(ish) people, sights, zoo and FUCKING MILLIONS OF SHOPS!! Did i mention it has lots of shops? Anyway its been great

doh i have to go now cos this interenet cafe costs heaps and i have no money left.

I’ll update you again when we get to Indo… the next destination on the Great Trip Home!!

Says everyone… like i mean everyone, here.

Unfortunately I cant speak the language so I dont get the egyptian prices that the locals get. But that doesnt matter because no matter how you look at it we western sons of a three humped camel have fuckloads of money here!!

I mean, 1 british pound sterling is worth about 11 egyptian pounds but everything still costs the same as elsewhere so its like i have 11 x as much money!! Yahoo!!

For example Rox and I went out for dinner last night to an excellent seafood place and had dinner for two with after dinner tea etc and the total was 77 pounds… Egyptian. So thats like 7.70 GBPS!! WHAT THE FUCK!!

Ok better go my time is running out. Cant afford the extra 50p it will cost me to stay on here for an hour..

Off to the pyramids tomorrow, cant wait!

See ya soon

Ash

Location: Cairo

Goodbye Turkey, Hello Egypt!

Well we arrived safely in Egypt yesterday at the lovely time of 1:30 in the morning. A new country beckoned like an oasis in the desert in summer and I was raring to go and explore it…. And then I got into an egpytian cab and all of that fell away like bad dandruff as the thought of not dying in a screaming fireball of metal and rubber tires took up the entire front row of my attention.

We had just come from Istanbul where the lines on the road were treated as just a suggestion not a law so we laughed when people said that the ones in Cairo were even worse. ‘Haha!’ I said laughing in the face of those who mentioned them, ‘Thats impossible!’

But not only was it possible but the reality of it was twice as awful as I could have imagined. Think fareground dodgem cars with pedestrians with deathwishes and you will begin to understand. The rules of driving in cairo (in fact everywhere here) seem to be:

a) drive as close as humanely possible to everyone else as fast as possible swerving madly
b) if you are going to crash then beep your horn really loud and repeatedly and call the other driver a son of a camel farmer who sells questionable goods.
c) never use the brake. Brakes are only for use when swerving madly and swearing is not going ot work.
d) indicators, road lanes, working cars, seatbelts, old age. These are all for those western devils and have no use in Egyptian society.
e) if it is between 9am and 5pm you will receive double points for each near miss so goto a) and multiply it by two units of madness.

Did i mention that no one here has let alone uses seatbelts? Well they dont. They also try to rip you off constantly which i will have to tell you about later. “hey are you egyptian?” they say. then they try to talk you into visiting their uncles “authentic” papyrus shop. mofos.

But don’t worry mum! I’m sure you have been in the same situation in the past and know its just the usual crazy shit that happens over here

Anyway, we are now in a nice CyberCafe in Alexandria which is up the top of Egypt 3 hours from Cairo. I can’t believe that Israel is so close. And Sudan. And everywhere else that is usually outlined in red with flashing bits on CNN. When you are actually here its another story. Everyone is quite nice (not as nice as the Turks though so far) and it quite chilled. Alexandria is a coastal town and is the place where the Pharos lighthouse used to be which was one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.

Tomorrow we are going to go to the Alexandria library which is a replacement for the Ancient one destroyed by fire (i think). Should be good.

Anyway… I think i might go cos i cant be bothered writing anything else. I’ll keep you guys posted on stuff. We are staying in Alexandria until friday morning and then its back to Cairo for the rest of the day then our tour starts properly!! I dont know if i will be able to update you guys once its going cos we are on a boat for some of it (on the nile!) so inet cafes might be hard to find. i’ll try though. In the last week and a bit Rox and I have been to Europe (Turkey), Asia (Turkey) and are now in Africa.. crazy eh!?

Anyway, until next time….!

Ash

PS:

Rubicon guys…

The mp3 player you gave me was really cool but it broke randomly the third time i used it. WHAT THE FARK? I dont know how that its possible considering it doesnt have any moving parts at all. I still have the reciept tho so i might try to sort it when i get back to london on the 28th. Hope you guys are well. I glanced at the bug reports you have been sending me but i couldn’t work out what they were on about. Accelerator? what the hell is that all about? hehe

turkey ıs great!!

egypt ıs tomorrow!

got no tıme to talk though!!

see ya soon!!

Hello my friend, want to buy a rug?

Hehe just kidding, rox and I have made it to Turkey!!

Nearly didn’t though owing to us nearly forgetting all our money and then having to wait around all morning (like 3am morning) for a farking night bus. But we are here now and it is totally cool!

All the Turkish people are really groovy, we have already been invited to an Ramadan after party (some of you will get this) and our guide is really funny as well. His name is Hussain but he asked us if we could refrain from calling him Saddam if we could help it

Yeah so lots of good shit going on, there are quite a few aussies in the group so we are gonna have a chance to slowly become more shrimp/barbieized as time goes on…

Anyway, i had better go cos I am running out of time! I’ll keep yo posted with the adventures.

l8r!

ashmofo

Hi guys,

Sorry the sites a bit fucked at the moment but this is how it will have to be until I get back home and sorted.

The comments don’t even work anymore,…

Oh well…. send me an email instead!!!

ashmodeus@gmail.com