Man I'm tired.

Today was rather tiring. We did a big rehearsal for the play the kids are doing tommorow in the procession. Man, these kids have so much energy, even in the midday sun when I feel like I'm melting!

I went to have dinner at the guesthouse next door yesterday. They have a small garden at the front enclosed by a few big trees, with a table and chairs set out in the middle. As I was sitting there sipping an illegally smuggled beer, i suddenly noticed it was starting to rain! I was amazed, as rain is not exactly common in this part of the desert. As the rain pattered down through the leaves and landed on my bare arms, I started to get a funny feeling that there was slightly more to this than was first apparant. Suddenly Montu, one of the sons who owns the guesthouse, jumped up and started yelling at me to move and gesturing frantically with his arm as the tree! "peesin! peesin!" he shouted, and when I turned back to look, having fled my chair, I realised what he was talking about. Up in the tree was a band of about 7 monkeys, taking it in turns to try and piss on my head from about 20 feet up in the branches! After wiping myself down, we tried throwing stones at them, but this just pissed them off and made them more determined to piss on us. Cheeky monkeys!

I've decided to hang out in East Asia for an extra month so i can see nepal, and also avoid south east asia for a while longer until this SARS thing is under control. Although apparantly and American woman has been hospitalised in Bombay with suspected SARS, so perhaps even here is not safe anymore....

This war is an abomination. I dread reading the news now. I can't believe we can get away with this kind of hypocrisy! Why don't they just be honest and call it an invasion! All this rubbish about "securing" cities and "liberating" bagdad! And the rhetoric from the US generals is becoming just unbearable! Stuff like "The dagger of truth is pointed directly at the dark heart of bagdad! We will prevail!".. I mean from the Iraqis i expect this kind of bullshit, but from the "allies"! Hah! That's another good one, the "allies"!! Or the "Coalition"! What fucking coalition?! You didn't manage to get one, remember?! And the "allies"! This isn't WW2, Saddam isn't Hitler, and he hasn't invaded anywhere! (recently). At least there's still some media providing a small amount of subjective journalism, but I think about 90% of it now is just bullshit propaganda. "Military Experts", thats another good one! here's a miltary expert to explain why no one was likely to have been killed by that daisy cutter as it pounded into the street..... ok, rant over.... :)

right, enough is enough. I've been online for 1.5 hours!

bye.