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First stop on the entire journey was Bangkok Airport, where Ryan, Ash and myself spent half the day waiting for our NokAir flight up north. 8 hours of airport hanging later, NokAir finally let us board this brightly decorated deathtrap and headed off.

To entertain ourselves on the 1 hour flight, Ryan had challenged both Ash and I to eat 6 Dunkin Doughnuts each of his choosing. Naturally they were the most cream-filled decadent doughnuts available, however we did manage it..

I'm already regretting this

13:03 later for me, 13:56 for Ash

There was one touch and go point though, midway through the 2nd last doughnut – a custard filled cream topped specimen – where we hit turbulence:

The moment of horror when I realised I couldn't open the sick bag one handed

We hadn’t booked any accommodation in Udon Thani andended up in a hotel just across from the central bus station, kicking back with some beers waiting for our fourth – CK – to join us.

Interesting note – the accommodation – 2 twin bed rooms with ensuites – cost less than the doughnuts..

Decided to harden up and go through with this trip, see how well I survive backpacking less than a week after a fairly serious injury. First stop, Bangkok! After some Australia day beers of course..

We finished that today

Keeping it Australian

Skydiving over the Great Ocean road yesterday. 2.5 week backpacking journey though South East Asia starting on Friday. What do I do two days ago, on Saturday? Dislocate and fracture my elbow. Of course.. As it turns out, coming over a jump and landing in a tree doesn’t do great things for your arm, as you can plainly see below.

2 hours after the crash, finally make it to the ambulance - at this point still no drugs!

An elbow should not look like that

In any case, the Ambo chicks (Kelly and Tanya) were pretty cool, chatting away while they inspected me. Kelly tried to stick a catheter in my hand but missed twice, so I started making fun of her about it until she got my in the elbow and blood pissed everywhere – great fun! Once at the hospital however, the levity was gone – also, I was spaced out on morphine something chronic.

Philly collar after reaching Hospital, they were worried about my neck

Well and truly dislocated

Now the biggest question is do I ignore my doctor’s advice and still go to South East Asia with my mates, I did organise and plan the whole trip…

Its 4am.

I’m not drunk.

I was drunk, quite some time ago.  I miss that.

Right now I’m cracking open another beer and relaxing for the first time in several hours. Over those serveral hours, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong, technology-wise, has gone wrong.

Firstly, retrieving some music files (an asston of chillout/jazz) from an old mac turned into a fiasco when the mac refused to allow my usb stick to be formatted in any other filesystem but UFS.
Fuck you for not supporting EXT2/EXT3, you slack bastards.
Then, the file/folder exploring utility on said Mac wasn’t recognising files that didn’t exist, and trying to copy them. When it found such a file, it would crash without warning and undo all copying.

If one is copying 1091 files, which may or may not exist, this can get tedious.

While all this was going on, a routine software update for my iPhone fried the sim card, requiring me to scab someones spare one in an attempt to allow me to use it again. No, let me clarify. To allow iTunes to allow me to use it again. The phone functions fine without a sim card. iTunes however, does not. Cause its shit.

Then, while sorting all this out, the computer on which I’m working (Jimmy’s laptop) had multiple hardware failures cumulating in iTunes wiping all existing memory of well, pretty much anything. All playlists, all music, everything.

So, juggling backing up a USB stick on one PC so I can reformat it to use it on a Mac to put files to a PC which then can’t read the files cause they’re in the wrong fucking filesystem (UFS + windows = fail), and trying to put my music back onto my iPhone, I’ve had little enough time to do my Fez blog, let alone the Chefchaouen one.

Oh, and did I mention I have to catch a flight out of the country at 9am, and this will be the last chance I have to use either laptop for blogging/pictures/iPhone music stuff. So yea, sweet night in Portugal.

In any case, while I’m writing this rant the pictures and original content are being restored to my usb stick, the songs/playlists are being restored to the iPhone, and I’m relaxing with a beer.

4:23 am now, but life is good.

Just got the wordpress app for iPhone, test post…

Beyond that, Italy is pretty exciting with much, much going on, but that’ll have to wait for a more detailed post/summary once I get more time. Right now though, partying!

Last exam of Uni today, which means I have 4 days until I leave the country…again. Lots to do, little time to do it in. Graduation can wait, I’ll do it next year – I gotta go to Europe now!

One of those things to do is fix the script I have running here so that stuff isn’t saved as a draft instead of being posted…incoming lots of backlogged crap spam

That’s right, it’s alive! the little crotch rocket which started it all is back in action.

Cause Saturday was actually warm and sunny for once, yay Melbourne weather, I did some work on me bikes. Pulled apart the minibike completely, gave a clean and lube, flushed out the old fluids…and banging, she’s back in business.

It’s not QUITE as good as my Gixxer, which is looking pretty mint after a wash, but still goes alright – as you can see from my housemate having a go.

The movie night at Jess n Jules’ effectively turned into a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon…not by any means a bad thing. While consuming copious amounts of alcohol (read: getting fucked off Jaeger bombs) and trying to eat our body weight in junk food, we watched Pirates till roughly 4 am…which is when I passed out on the floor. It was a good night

That could have been the end of me for all of Saturday, but I was woken up with a bacon, egg, cheese, hasbrown and bbq sauce burger, courtesy of Jess. Life became a whole lot better.

As I’ve been slogging away over 3 assignments, a final year project and of course, countless bloody graduate position applications, I’m deciding to take the night off and relax, chill with some mates, and get decidedly drunk.

Hence, Movie Night! Jess and Jule’s place for pizza, drinks and lots of movies which we of course legitimately rent from a video store… >.>

After constant reminders by wordpress that my version was long out of date, I updated to the newest version (which is niiiiiice), and in the process I decided to add a live chat window as well as a dynamic image gallery.

Looks pretty cool, not particularly lightweight but whatever, will give it some high-bandwidth testing later on.

anyways, time to go drinking!