Friday, December 02, 2005

Thoughts, Dead Dictators and Boney M

A rather peculiar day...

Two events in Singapore made me pause for thought...the first was in the blogosphere - one of the better known Singapore bloggers - Idle Days has died, leaving behind her written legacy, her final post being a sign of what was possibly to come. As Mia wrote, in the blogosphere our links are tenuous and if one of us just stopped posting...the majority would just assume that we had just decided to stop blogging. Yesterday in my search for info on the Trans-siberian (see below) I came across this message -
"traveled with you all in Sept of 1993. I was in Beijing scheduled to travel down to Hong Kong to fly back to the states. But when I found out about your company and trips, I booked a Beijing-Ulan Batur-Irkitsk-Moskow trip and decided to just eat my non refundable plane ticket out of Hong Kong back to the states. After all, who knows when I might get the opportunity to travel the Trans-Sibrian again.

So after you all helped me have the best journey, and getting myself from Moscow to London and back to the states, the irony of this change in plans hit.

I was back in the states for only 3 weeks when I was in A CAR ACCIDENT and I broke my neck at C-5/6. I am an incomplete quadriplegic. I use a power wheelchair to get around now. It would be extremely difficult to repeat this journey."


...Both stories made me think a little more about my life and the way I live it....too conservatively by half...

Also in Singapore the hanging of Nguyen Tuong Van, I agree with Imagethief's take on Singapore's execution policy, particularly in regard to their lack of clemency...and he's right - it all comes down to public image, in Asia we are all familiar with the concept of 'face', saving it or giving it....

I also found a new blog, Manila Journal - a newcomer's views and thoughts on Manila, also being new here I smiled at most her posts with a raised eyebrow of recognition.

And a new Hong Kong blog - Flagrant Harbour

Next year on the 10th June I have a date in Moscow with my family…brother, sister-in-law, parents and grand-father...we will be ‘doing’ Moscow and St. Petersburg..a chance to walk in Lenin’s footsteps (and to see Lenin's body, can add it to my viewing of Mao and hopefully at some time Marcos - Macabre? Moi?!!)– standing on the Finland Station, follow Rasputin’s manic trail and see where the doomed Romanovs lived out their last tragic days.

Fortunately with my sister-in-law being Russian and her parents still living in Moscow we should get the insider’s tour of the two cities.

The question now is how to get to Moscow from Manila – I could fly with a little stopover in HKG or BKK but…I want to take the train from Vladivostok all the way through to Moscow with a few stops along the way – a night in a yurt, some horse riding across the steppes and a few photo 'opps'!

I spent a little bit of Wednesday looking at a few travel books and it seems that my trip would go along the lines of Manila-Seoul-Vladivostok-Ikurtsk-Ekaterinburg-Moscow. My kind of travel itinerary!!! Added to the fact that I may be accompanied by a couple of good friends...so a few bottles of Vodka, a couple of friends, vast amounts of reading time – an ideal start to the holiday – now just need to find some kennels for the kitty cats! This is the terrible thing about me and planning holidays – as soon as I have the idea - I want to leave...now...!!!

It is a while since I planned a proper adventure...the last adventure was probably when I stuck a pin in a map of Canada and it landed on Calgary...I based myself in the area for three weeks and just pottered around Alberta and B.C...and that is going back quite a while! Just thinking that in six months time I will be Moscow bound is fantastic – even better is that in between now and then I will go to HKG and also plan a visit to Oman and on to Jordan for a few days – Wadi Rum is sitting, waiting for me!!

And to finish, I was sent the following little poem yesterday...quite true really….

Life is all about arse;
you're either covering it,
laughing it off,
kicking it,
kissing it,
busting it,
trying to get a piece of it,
or
behaving like one ....

1 Comments:

Anonymous Jarred said...

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7:24 pm  

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