circa. 2001
2011
Archive for the 'international' Category
Modern Warfare 3 – ONN from kenny yuan on Vimeo.
It was the largest roll of notes I’d ever seen. 3 grand in fifty pound notes. The guy who hauled it out did so as if it were a rolled up copy of the Sun. One night on sentry I had a conversation with another guy on how his law exams were going. Another evening those of us new to the unit went through a joining process at the end of which we were judged by our peers as suitable to serve alongside them.
The side effect of leaving us in a state of complete physical incapability as we crawled into our pits in the early morning was only a minor talking point, getting up the next day for annual fitness tests just another non event none of us stopped to think about for a second. No one failed.
No one ever fails.
Continue reading ‘The Waiting Game’
Image courtesy PAPYRARRI
Time Magazine this week has a disturbing image of a girl with her nose chopped off by Taleban justice (her long hair disguises the fact she no longer has any ears either). In the UK The Spectator is running with the headling ‘How we lost the war’.
In this post-Wikileaks environment, which while not releasing very much we didn’t already know, sets in stone a 360° view of Taleban resurgence. Perception is a powerful lens and it’s the sheer volume of data released that highlights the depth of the problem we face. The enemy is spreading it’s influence to parts of the country that for long periods faced little or no Taleban threat, granted while still under the benign rule of local warlords.
To exacerbate matters a politically-motivated date for retreat has been set for UK forces at least – giving the Taleban a timetable for takeover. So how do we get out of this mess?
Look across the border to Pakistan.
Continue reading ‘Solving Afghanistan’
So there’s a corner shop up the road run by a family of Kurds and as well as being open everytime I walk past (it’s got to be practically 24 hour) they do a disparate range of foodstuffs from around the world.
One such item is a drink called Irish Moss. From Jamaica, it inexplicably comes in peanut butter flavour. In a tin (of the canned tomato type) although you do get a quaint ring pull.
Continue reading ‘Irish Moss: A Review’
Now that we’ve arrived in UB and had the closing party here’s a few things
- Globalisation has made things less hassle but also less interesting.
- Lowest price hotel – $4 in Tajik Pamirs
- I have to learn to swim better but river swimming is cool
- Soviet style border bureaucacy is worse in the ‘new’ Republics than Russia itself
- If someone utters ‘foot deep potholes’ don’t listen to their views on road quality – they’ve never been off the motorway
- Things I missed out on: Bukhara market Uzbekistan, Gates of Hell Turkmenistan, Iran
- Number of weddings attended: 1
- Best city – tie between Ashgabat & Istanbul but the phrase ‘great for a weekend’ still applies
- Suzukis give most ‘never say die’ per pound sterling
- Cost of Trans Siberian from UB to Moscow is ~120 quid. It took far too long to find out this basic info on the internets. Too much expensive ‘travel guide’ crap getting in the way
- I was previously unaware how Asian Central Asians looked. Imagined Persian-speaking Tajiks to be predominantly similar to Afghans. Not the case
- ‘We are Turks’ – Kazakh educated man in Olgii, Western Mongolia. Also share their religion
- All the horror stories you’ve heard about those boats crossing the Caspian are true
- Bulgarian traffic policing is a complete joke. Some states are going to need lessons in how to be good Europeans. And yes I realise how ironic that statement is coming from me
- 3 man water balloon launchers have a range of over 100 metres in dead wind
- Gap in the market for British style kebabs from Turkey onwards
- Best pizza/worst pizza – Holiday Inn, Sarajevo/finish line cafe UB
- Best fast food – Either egg burger in Big Burger UB or kebabi bap in Osh, Kyrgyzstan
- I haven’t had breakfast yet…
Since ahem, launch, I haven’t really given much of an update on our rally progress as yet. There’s been a good reason for that though – we haven’t made any. Until yesterday, when we paid for 6 of our 9 visas. If progress is measured by how quickly a bank account can tend towards zero, well then we made a shitload of progress last night. But any sense of satisfaction at having ‘done’ something has been quickly lost in the ream of paperwork now due to various embassy offices ASAP. My fellow LRDGers and I are now auditing our initial ‘comprehensive’ travel plan submission made late Monday to Adventurists HQ.
And to be frank, it’s total shite.
Dart board dates, non-existant routes & towns that are in a different country are all heavily featured. I should point out that when we originally planned this out there was no planning, nor was the future need for it planned either. This seems to us contrary to the ethics of the Mongol Rally and so having to actually think through such concepts as ‘routes’ beyond anything more detailed than country level just seems like rallying heresy.
So we haven’t really done it.
But whatever, we’re almost done writing words in boxes and inserting random numbers in correctly formatted date spaces. We’ll be sending them all off sometime this week and then biting our nails and ringing up the Adventurists every so often for progress reports I’m sure. Mostly though we’re just going to sit back and with the help of a few cold beers reminisce about all the old adventures we’ve had and discuss all the new ones we’re going to have.
To get me in the mood I’m going to repost something that showed up on the Rally forums tonight, from the 2nd year of the Rally back in 2005:
These interesting tidbits are from the first (proper) year of the Mongol Rally, 2005. Yes, they are all true.
43 cars left London.
27 cars reached Mongolia.
14 cars reached the finish in Ulan Bator.
2 teams were robbed at knife point.
1 car snapped in half.
3 engines fell completely out of the cars.
1 team was held for five days in no-mans land.
1 team cycled almost 100 miles to get to the finish when their car gave in.
100’s of tires were blown.
1 team got engaged.
3 teams attended weddings.
1 team found a 10 foot deep pot hole.
1 team found a 25 ton crane rolled by a pot hole.
1 team had to reverse up a mountain after losing all but one forward gear.
1 person spent 24 hours in a Kazakh jail charged with five crimes against the state.
1 person was stoned by a Mongolian nomad, who then shot at him with a gun (and missed).
1 team was rammed off the road after an argument over water melons.
1 person spent a day in a Turkish hospital.
3 people were banned from Turkmenistan for a year.
As a result of an incident with a cow, one person was detained by police in Azerbaijan and threatened with a beating from a dwarf.
2 cars flipped over in Mongolia.
3 teams were chased by armed bandits.
0 team members died.
We’ll be visiting at least one active warzone while we’re away so kind of hoping the last statistic isn’t bettered…
And now the ineptitude of our economic ‘masters’ has lead to violence on the streets of Paris. Not an uncommon thing in Paris but you can’t help wonder if it’s a sign of things to come?
As the cluster of disparate economies known as the eurozone struggles to cope with the oncoming depression, is it prudent to watch out for the health of the emerging banking sector of Eastern Europe as the next source of financial panic in the global meltdown? Austrian banks say EU bailouts are needed to prevent these organisations (their debtors at the end of the day) from collapsing – from this we may deduce their own balance sheets would not withstand such an event either.
The emerging Eastern states received the bulk of EU investment and optimism as the collection of states struggled to move sluggish economies even in the good times – will they prove their downfall in the bad times? And can anyone realistically expect to see a unified EU action on the crisis?
Catching up on the African agenda, looks like tentative steps to get around the piracy problem have been taken by the West. Hope to do my LC course next year so maybe I’ll get a part of the action at some stage in the future. Frankly I’m surprised it took this long for Royal to get in on the act. While Brigade is out in Ghanners, a landlocked AOR should in theory at least free up 539 Assault Squadron for maritime ops.
And there’s a lot to be done. The Ukranian vessel MV Faina (operating under a Belize flag of convenience) and it’s crew are still being held to ransom. Not to mention their cargo of 33 T-72s bound for South Sudan seemingly under Kenyan patronage (or Ethiopia?). Keep up to date with arms deals here.
Meanwhile it remains to be seen whether Somali pirate activity dies down. Further reports of hijacking attempts on Chinese & Russian vessels are filtering through. And the corporates are sensing blood, with some getting results. There is a deep rooted issue that is lost amid the intrigue & imagery created by the pirates actions. The lack of anything resembling governance coming out of Mogadishu, together with deep-rooted international ambivalence had allowed illegal poaching to run unchecked in Somali coastal waters despite the warnings. The long term solution to piracy is to defend the Somali waters against the poachers, many seemingly of Chinese origin.
With the Islamic Courts Union on the march once more, it’s all happening.
To get my new Africa category off the ground enjoy this FarCry 2 trailer complete with Black Hawk Down’s Bara Bara soundtrack.
On a more serious note, I find it puzzling that after years of virtually ignoring the destruction on a World War scale in the DRC’s various uprisings the BBC last night went with it as their lead story. Likely had more to do with the fact their African correspondent Orla Guerin optained an exclusive interview with the Tutsi rebel leader than a marked change in their coverage of Congolese affairs…
As always, there’s a lot more to this than serial guilt merchants like the BBC can ever hope to convey – I’ll be reading the experts opinion to remain current.
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