So it begins

Look ma! No air!

Published Date : July 19, 2004

I went for a free “Try Dive” with Lodge Scuba on Friday night.  Seriously fun!  I’ve done an intro to scuba before (in a shark tank in Edinburgh a few years back) but I decided to take advantage of the free dive before I committed to taking the full Open Water PADI course.  Originally, the idea was to do the course in Dahab, Egypt in November, but I decided it would be too rushed and I wouldn’t be able to do anything else while I was there.  So I’m doing a referral course here in London before I go.  It’s only £120 for all the theory and pool dives and all my manuals and log book, so when I get to Egypt all I’ll need to do to finish the certification is 4 open water dives in the Red Sea – much more fun, much less hassle.

As for the dive on Friday – I had a blast.  It was quite a shallow pool – only 3m in the deep end – but I really enjoyed it.  There were 6 of us doing the try dive and I think everyone had a good time.  We covered a few of the basic skills, and just went for a bit of a paddle around the pool.  A bit of a challenge being sans flippers (they don’t bother with them for try dives), but that just made it more interesting!  So Gray and I will both be going back in a couple of weeks to take the actual course.  Should be good fun.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t half bad either.  Saturday night we went to see another play, How many ducks in Stacy? It was about a mental institution where the patients are sane and the doctors are crazy.  It was a bit short, but very entertaining.

Yesterday we were going to go on a 10-mile hike just outside London, but there were some tube issues so we ended up missing out.  Since we had already purchased our TravelCards for the day we decided to make the most of them and see all the places we had often wondered about.  So we ended up in Stratford (not to be confused with Stratford-upon-Avon) for a bit, then out to Cockfosters just because we liked the name.  And we rounded out the day at Canary Wharf and West India Quay.  Not much happening anywhere, but we had a good wander around and can now say “been there, done that”.

Ready to fly

Published Date : July 20, 2004

My flight itinerary is now confirmed.  Wahoo!  The final price is US$1500 for a total of 8 flights when you include the stopovers.  The longest leg is 9.5 hours from Mauritius to Singapore.  The shortest flights are London to Ljubljana and Ljubljana to Istanbul at 2 hours each.  The times are pretty good too, apart from a 3am arrival in Istanbul.  Ah well, that will just add to the adventure!

Summer has arrived

Published Date : July 26, 2004

Friday night we enjoyed another play out at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.  It cost £5 each for a two-hour Bollywood play, Precious Bazaar. I’d say it’s probably one of the best shows I’ve seen yet in London.  We didn’t know it at the time, but the cast were winners of the BollyIdol competition, so only one or two members of the cast were professional actors.  And the show was great.  An East meets West sort of tale about a British-born Indian journalist who goes to India to cover a story.  Great story, brilliant costumes and fantastic music.

Saturday was a bit of a lazy day reading in the sun in the backyard, but we hopped on the tube out to Ealing Common for a Blues and Roots concert that evening.  Unfortunately, the concert is actually this Saturday, but we still enjoyed spending the evening in the park with some Champagne (one of the many bottles we got as a wedding present) and cheese and biscuits.

Taking full advantage of the sunshiny weather, we caught a bus out to Battersea Park for a Thai Festival yesterday.  £1 entry with loads of great, cheap Thai food, market stalls, massage booths and a couple of groups doing traditional Thai dances and music.  We got a great meal for the two of us for only £8, plus some absolutely fabulous fruit shakes for £2.50.  There were about 10 options for the shake, but we just went for the mixed fruit and had a little bit of all of them!  It was seriously yummy!  We rounded out the day by walking back home from Battersea.  It took about 45 minutes, and just our luck it started to rain, but getting some (relatively) fresh air was worth it.

As for the weekdays, well, they’ve been pretty dull the last few months.  Up at 6:45am, onto the bus into Chelsea, at work for 7:30am.  Work itself has been really slow lately.  That’s the only problem with work that involves repairs…stuff has to break first if you want something to do!  Makes for some long days, but the pay makes it all worth it.  Because I come in so early I get to skidaddle at 4:30pm and still get an hour of overtime in the bargain.  Can’t complain about that.  But, only 10 weeks of work left, and then I get to be a travel bum for 8 months.

And as far as the trip goes, it’s all pretty much organized now.  I get my last vaccination today, so I’ll just have to decide what I’m doing for anti-malarials.  I’m paying off the tour kitty this week, and that’ll be it for the upfront expenses.  I started looking into visas, but they’re all pretty straight forward.  The only ones that were causing problems were Syria and Jordan – usually you have to get them ahead of time and they cost about US$25 each, but because I’m going through with an organized tour I get them for free at the border instead.  E-e-e-xcellent!  All the others I can pick up as I go.  All good.

Antimalarial agonies

Published Date : July 30, 2004

The anti-malaria drug dilemma continues.   Since I’ll be travelling through areas that have drug-resistant strains there are only 3 anti-malarial meds that I can take:  Lariam/Mefloquine, Malarone, or Doxycycline (all 3 of which I can get for free from work!).  Malarone is out because it can’t be taken for longer than a couple of months; Lariam is out because you can’t take it while SCUBA diving; Doxycycline is out because it reduces the effectiveness of the birth control pill and makes the skin hypersensitive to the sun.  So that leaves me with…hmmm…nothing!  All of this is information I’ve had to source out myself.  Of the 3 doctors I’ve seen, none of them knew about the problems of Lariam with diving or how Doxy interacts with the pill.  What a mess!

So where does that leave me?  I’ve been talking to a lot of people who have been through Africa, and I decided that I’m going to take my chances with Lariam.  The general consensus is that as long I don’t experience any side effects on dry land, I should be safe to dive with it.  So what if I am the 1 in 10,000 that gets side effects?  I’m also going to take Artemisinin along with me.  It’s a Chinese herbal anti-malarial, with a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting its effectiveness.  Unfortunately, there are no clinical studies on it yet, and I don’t want to take any chances with an illness like malaria.  It has been shown to be very effective at dealing with the effects of gastro upsets, so it will be worth tossing in the backpack at any rate!

In other news, Jake and his brother are arriving in town today.  It’ll be great to catch up and hang out for the weekend.  They’re here until Monday I think, and then they’ll be off to explore The Damage (Amsterdam). Not much else in the works.  There’s another free concert out in Ealing tonight.  And it’s off to another play tomorrow night, although I can’t remember which one for the life of me.  It’s a comedy though.  That much I can tell you.

Well, that brings another month to an end.  Time is just a-flying.