On the plane again

Well well well. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind end to this shift. Having completed the Shilabo job without any other major issues I ended up back in Addis to try and organise entry into Morocco for the next job. Easier said than done.
I’m still on a Malaysian passport and despite Morocco also being a predominately muslim country, I needed a visa.
No problems I thought. Letter of invite from the client, a few days to process and I’m in. Lol. As usual with Africa, no such luck. The resulting drama ended up with me scouring the city for a non-existent Malaysian embassy for half a day. In the end it was dumped in the too hard basket and I found myself on early break in Eastern Africa.

What to do? Well I had made numerous promises to numerous people about dropping by London if I was close enough. In fact I was already planning to head there after the short Morocco stint. The only issue was me being $500 USD further away in airfares, oh and it was snowing in London and the warmest thing I had in my kit was a long sleeve shirt.

Ah fuck it. Book the ticket and see what happens. It would be good to see some old friends anyway…

Sitting on the tube from Heathrow along the Cockfosters line, (yeah I had to put that in. I still laugh when it’s announced on the tube) I was beginning to wonder whether I had gone to the right city as I still hadn’t heard any English being spoken for 15 mins. Then much to my relief, a couple of spritely young teens got on (whom I later discovered would be labelled ‘Chavs’) ending each sentence with the ever endearing “Ya know wha I mean yeh?” Bliss.

Had deliberate intentions to avoid most of the touristy crap in London and focus on seeing friends. Almost suceeded, but I ended up with some time to kill.

The next week revolved around catching up with various souls some of which I hadn’t seen in years. Then the weekend hit where by I spent the next week recovering and getting ready for the next weekend.

Somehow in that first week I managed to catch the first 4 days of beautiful spring weather where the sun shined and the mercury hit a massive 18 degrees. Then it snowed. Then it hailed and rained. Then it did all 4 in one day for the next week after that. Now I get what all the whinging was about.

All in all I had a blast in London. Other than getting sick as a dog (and subsequently passing on an eye infection to the friend I was staying with… sorry) and eating a terminally bad kebab on my 2nd last night (which I am still passing out now) I really had fun catching good friends and generally running amok.
London is a really cool place to have a few friends and party hard when dropping by.
God forbid I ever live AND work in London, but as somewhere to visit regularly or be based out of and work abroad, it’s pretty cool. At least I understand the exodus now from Sydney now. Curious thing those for those that haven’t been, London seems to be the exception to the rest of the country.
There are people from all over the place and the most of the Brits you do find in London have families in the outer areas, living in the city during the week and heading out on the weekends. Either that or mommy and daddy have bought them a flat in Clapham to get to work from.

So here I sit, in Dubai again (I’ve been through here 3 times in the last 3 weeks) waiting to get the last leg home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m really getting sick of planes and airports. I actually started my leg home at 2030hrs on the 15th and I’ll end it at 0605hrs on 18th. Hmm… there’s 3 days of my life I’ll never get back.
SIGH…… ANYWAY. Enough whinging for one morning. I’m looking forward to going bush for a few days when I get back and touch rock again. There’s also a certain friend I have in Sydney who needs a good kick up the ass. You know who you are. Travelled all over the US and ran amok in London, now sitting at home doing jack-diddly-squat.

Life is good. Hopefully I live long enough to tell the grand kids about it.