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...

A tale of two cities (Egyptian nights & days)

This is more a tale of 2 days. Our first 2 days in Cairo to be exact.

The first day was our day as tourists (also known as marks, or possibly mugs). Everyone saw us coming, we were taken on a "tour" of the city (that we purchased in the airport). This tour basically consisted of taking us to various shops to try to get us to buy various overpriced items. They also took us to see a man about a camel ride around the Pyramids. We went on it, but it was hugely overpriced. We still had fun of course, it was an unforgettable experience, but ever since we have had to endure the laughs of any Egyptians that we told about how much we paid for it...

The other day was our second day in Cairo. I'm lucky enough to have friends in Egypt. We met up with one of them on the second day, and she brought some friends who are locals of Cairo. These guys showed us a local side of Cairo that most visitors don't get to see...

We had some local style fast food, a river cruise in the Nile, a visit to a ridiculously large and shiny mall, a trip up a nearbye mountain (it was well past midnight by this point), and then a visit in the early hours to a local style shisha cafe to try this local delicacy. We were eventually dropped back at our hotel at around 7am.

The other notable contrast of this as compared to the first day was that these guys insisted on paying for everything, i guess because we were their guests in the country. Even when they left us for an hour in a local internet cafe, they left some money with the owner to cover our bill...

There was something that both days had in common, which was the phrase "Welcome to Egypt". It seems like every egyptian that speaks even a little English knows this phrase. But it somehow felt like on the second day they really meant it...

Egypt is also Crazy

Psychotic.

And probably sociopathic.

The first car ride we took was a perfect example of this... All car rides really, but especially the first one...

It was the taxi ride from the airport to the Hotel, and the driver ws what in the UK would be called a boy-racer. This combined with the rules of the road in Egypt meant that it was a ride I'll never forget. Sharlene on the other hand had her eyes closed and one of my hands in a vice-like grip.

A brief note of the rules of the road, Egypt stylee. It basically seems to be a combination of the rules "Every man for himself", and "Who dares, wins". So effectively any cubic foot of free road space is instantly moved into by someone. Be it a bus, a truck, a car, a bike, or even a pedestrian. The rule for who gets into a space seems to be that if you can get into it first, and you thing everyone else trying to get into it can stop in time, then you go for it. They do have lines in the road, but most people seem to ignore them. And the horn is used as a kind of "look at me" so that all of the other people trying to get into your square foot of road space know that you are also trying.

Surprisingly this all seems to work with relatively little mis-hap. As long as everyone knows the rules it is kinda safe. I've not seen any accidents yet, and the only damage done was to my poor clamped hand...

So yea, the sociopathy thing. I guess I mean that everyone is out for themselves, regardless of the consequences.