- 07.09.2001 -

Twenty nine years

Man. I’m 29 today. Happy birthday to me. I think. Yeah I guess it’s not so bad. 29 finds me about to give up my career for a year and ready to head off into the big blue yonder on what could be the biggest adventure of my life. Definitely scary anyway. How does that Thunder song go again? “I’m an Englishman on holiday”.

I’ve been reading a lot about travelling around the world and the countries I plan to visit. Some guidebooks have quite a bit of history in them. The alarming thing that I have learned is that our ancestors were quite the bar-stewards. We did not recognise the aborigines in Australia and used genocide to clear them out and steal their land. We kinda took over a lot of countries and I don’t think we are that well liked in Argentina either.

I’m not put off though. A lot of people have been offering advice lately. Some of it good. The few that have actually travelled around the world do not recommend using a RTW ticket. If you decide to change your mind about going to one particular country in favour of another, you are screwed. Your stops are fixed after you hand over the readies. I’ve got maybe a week to think about this and to look into getting flights/visas ad-hoc.

Thinking about it, I have probably used the internet for travel research over these last few months so much that I have not surfed anywhere else. There has been no news updates on Detox partly due to this reason. If I have a spare few minutes for on-line use then you will find me at lonely planet or the RTW guide web sites.

Getting back to Detox. You may have started getting into the habit of checking this site now and again to see if the new comics are up yet. I’m sorry about the delay but packing/selling stuff/sorting out bills and paperwork/arranging stuff has taken priority. And after a day of that plus work, the last thing I want to do when I get home is to boot the PC. When I do its only to watch a movie. God bless Morpheus.

There will be a series of comics appearing here before I leave. I am still working on them so please bear with me. I don’t leave the country until November anyway so there’s plenty of time for me to finish them.

You may have also noticed that I have replaced DK One with Wild Rain. DK1 was a sort of rant that I’d do occasionally with some relevance to this site. Wild Rain is my web journal and this is its third web address! Its making a come back because when I do leave the country I plan on keeping Wild Rain updated with my travelogue. Yep, this site will become a web journal for the year that I am travelling. Of course the email will not be used, as I will be keeping internet café costs down as I travel. Those of you that I consider close mates have already been added to the address book of the email accounts I will be using.

I’ve decided to go home this weekend to see my family and to take some of my belongings back to be put into storage. There’s not much you can fit into a sports car.

I did not fancy listening to the radio or tape music for the 4 hour drive up north so I put Morpheus to good use and downloaded some comedian MP3s. Stuff like Denis Leary, Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy doing stand-up. MP3s are not all about music ya know! Hopefully the drive will not now be so monotonous.

Did I tell you about me being the bad guy? My folks had asked for a list of stuff that I might want as birthday gifts so I cut-n-pasted parts of my ‘to buy’ list for travelling and sent that. One of the items was a pocket 2002 diary so I would know when birthdays are due so I could get a card sent in time. That’s when they realised that 2002 was an important year for our family. Its my mam’s 50th, my little sister’s 18th, my Grandma’s 80th and my 30th birthday. Not forgetting my parent’s 30th wedding anniversary. And I won’t be around for any of them.

I think they’d just got comfortable with the idea that I won’t be around for Christmas for the first time ever this year. Uncle David is always around for Christmas. I guess I’ll be busy the month that I am home before I leave. I’ll have to buy the presents before I go and leave them behind. I wonder what Christmas will be like in Thailand?

Another job on my ‘to do’ list that I don’t want to think about yet is my will. I’ve never had one before but I need one now that I am heading off around the world. I plan on having a safe journey but I guess you make preparations for every eventuality.

Sometimes I think, “why am I doing this?”. Because I want to that’s why. If I was an employee of a company I know that I wouldn’t even be considering going around the world. That’s one of the things I like about being a contractor. You are your own boss. If you get tired of working and you need a break, come the end of your contract, you can take one. And I’ve been working for a few years now without a decent break. So I guess you can say that I’m making up for it by taking a very big break.

- 14.09.2001 -

Hows my driving?

It’s been a week since I was 29 and a week since I actually bothered to write anything here. It’s not inspiration failing me but laziness not wanting to release me from the familiarity of the couch and the remote control. Not that there is anything on these days other than the news. The same news over and over again from many different angles with a myriad of different speculations I might add. No news is good news and the current news is not good.

My visit home was ok. I got to watch SKY digital again. I can flick like its nobodies business. I can flick for England. That decoder has trouble keeping up with me. It needs a flick upgrade.

I’ve been adding to my music collection again. Found a group that I really like called Stratovarius. They are Finnish and play a mean rock ballad. Imagine rock music and classical mixed up. Buy/download and listen. You may just like it.

I also downloaded some Asian music. I still have not found this track that I liked called ‘Janneman’ or something very similar sounding, phonetically. It was playing on MTV Asia throughout my stay in Egypt. I’ve downloaded a load of music that conjures images of distant eastern places. Well.. I typed ‘Egypt, Egyptian, Arabia, belly dancing’ into Morpheus and I downloaded the hits that sounded like I may like them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a pirate. If this stuff were available in the UK I’d be buying it right now. I have a massive CD collection due to my occasional urges to buy music. Morpheus just allows me to increase the range of music that I listen to.

Also check out the artist ‘Jesse Cook’. His acoustic guitar tracks are second to none. Now all you need is a balcony, Jennifer Lopez and a bottle of tequila!

Still on the subject of music. When I was driving home I heard this piece of music on the radio. Within the first thirty seconds of listening I knew I wanted it! I’ve never heard something that I must have as much as this. Not even Alannah Myles ‘Black Velvet’. I searched the SKY music channels with no luck. I heard it once on the journey back. Searching Pete Tong’s essential collection I finally found it. It’s called ‘Rapture’ by Vaiio.

The purpose of my trip home was two-fold. One, it was my birthday and it is always nice to spend it with your family. The second reason was that I needed to take up some of my stuff to put it into storage. So come Sunday I was in the loft sorting out my old junk so I could make space for my new junk. Well that’s the official story anyway and the one I told my dad who asked what I was doing up there for so long. The fact that I was nostalgia tripping with my star wars and action man toys was besides the point. Spring-cleaning can be good therapy.

So.. 29 eh? Another year and more jokes from my younger friends. Of course the shoe was firmly on the other foot when I got a phone call from JP. “When are you coming back dude?”. You see JP was moving house but he found out that you have to be 25 or older to hire/drive a van.

Now I’ve never driven a van before and with JP describing it as a transit I thought, no problem. When we arrive at the rental place I spot the only transit-type van in the lot, complete with burned out engine bay. This doesn’t look good. Budget removals turns out to be just that as we enter the hut/office and are told that he has lost JP’s booking. Looking down at his notebook full of scribbles he says ‘I have no idea how your reservation has fallen through the system’. I stifle a laugh. What system?

The guy promised us a van by 7pm at half price for the inconvenience so we came back. Oh goodie. I get to drive a type of vehicle that I have never driven before and I get to practice at night. I do love a challenge.

Of course the ‘van’ turns out to be a big Luton that looks like its seen better days. It’s sandwiched between a van at the rear and a 4x4 at the front but we managed to get it out. First gear turns out to be nothing more than a way of getting you rolling. I stuck with second and third for a bit despite JP moaning about me having to change because it was not an automatic. I know, I know!

The van was too big to park in his street so we park it around the corner facing down a hill. Not trusting the handbrake I put it in gear. After loading it the drive was pretty unadventurous. Anna took the piss of course by putting on her hazard warning lights as she drove JP’s car up front because I was driving at 20 miles an hour. There was so much play in this steering wheel that I could pretend I was in an American film and move the steering wheel through ninety degrees right or left without affecting our direction. Plus it had the habit of throwing the gear stick out of reverse every few seconds. Did I say I liked a challenge?

It was fun though and I did get the hang of it eventually. Sadly it was when we had to take it back. Oh yeah, cheers JP and Anna for the bottle of JD and er edible undies.

David Kei

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