Dilemmas....

It is hard travelling...

I have a decision to make. Do I stay in Cyprus for another month. Go to a salsa festival in Greece, and another one in Cyprus, and skip India and Nepal altogether.

Or do I stick with my original plan (with abit less time in India), and get to Nepal and check out the Himalayas...

On the one hand lots of salsa... and i could check out Nepal next year some time...

On the other it kinda defeats (part of) the point of staying for longer, ie so I can leave the villa keys with my parents...

And the salsa option will definately cost more money... and I will probably have to start watching my cash soonish...

I think I'm going to check out the mountains... they are calling me...

My Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Friendly guy
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Good voice and posture
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Outwardly appear self confident
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Good cook
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Intelligent
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Love to dance (and maybe good at it...)
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Good (I mean excellent) at sex
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Strong
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Honest
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Good will power and self control
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Like of new experiences
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Curious
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Generally a happy person
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Love to learn

Weaknesses

Fear of approaching strangers
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Not very chatty (even with friends)
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Tendency to retreat inside my head when faced with a social situation in which I might have to be social.
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Lack of self control when it comes to food
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Tendency to over analyze
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Can be (very) lazy.
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Sometimes like to annoy people
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Not musical
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Tend to look for problems rather then solutions
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Don't show emotions
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Addicted to facebook...


I'm sure there are more, anyone can feel free to add to the list!

Ignorance is bliss?

Small talk is one of my weaknesses. I find it very difficult to fill a silence with chatter. If talk isn't of supremem relevance, or plumbing the very depths of human experience, then I really feel I have very little to say...

I sometimes wonder if it would be great to be a bit stupider. I have observed that... less bright people... often have no problem making inane talk. And often, I've observed, this is because they will say the most monsterously stupid things! However, these inane observations and questions often lead to fascinating conversations as people try to clarify some point or another, and then they go off at a tangent and suddenly an animated conversation is happening!

So maybe it would be nice to be stupid, to not have the answers to reasonably simple problems just "appear" in my head, leaving no need to open my mouth to communicate about it...

Maybe...

Transport in Cyprus

Whose great idea was it for all of the public transport to stop at 7pm in north Cyprus?

Apart from that it is very easy to get around in Cyprus... The public transport is, while erratic, plentiful and cheap. But there is this weird curfew at 7pm, after which it is necessary to get around by a private car, or by taxi!

Because of this anomaly I had to spend about £30 getting home last night, instead of the £3.50 which it would have cost had I arrived 10 minutes earlier!

For fucks sake!

(Note to self.... try to borrow Chris' scooter)

I'm jammin'... And hope you like jammin' too...

So I'm just coming to the end of my first salsa congress, which was the excellent Salsa Jam organised by DJ Salsero (otherwise known as Mehmet Aslan). The experience is really over far too quickly. I've been waiting for months for this, and here its over in just a weekend!

I think that a better length for a salsa congress would be a week! It would give more time to get to know everyone, would give a much better grounding in salsa, allow you to build on lessons learnt already and hopefully remove the feeling that everything is over far too soon!

Another thing that has become apparent is that I need a personal cameraman! Normally I am happy to takee the occasional photo when the opportunity presents itself. However, it is very difficult to take any pictures when you have your hands very full with dancing with a girl. It is as a result of this that I have managed to come out of the Salsa Jam with only a handful of photos, and with even fewer of me dancing!

I did however take a lot of videos (to be found on my facebook), mostly of the shows, which were absolutely mind blowing! I think I'll upload a video here... if I find the time...