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.

So each time I went into this shop the vaguely alarming Irish Moss would be there immediately to my left staring me down, daring me to pick it up in comedy red button ‘do not touch’ style.

Today I bought one and here’s the unboxing:

It is thick goop. In my excitement I forgot to shake and initially after opening and lifting it into the glass nothing came out bar a few heavy surface blobs.

Few quick shakes later and it emptied surprisingly well.

According to wikipedia, Carrageenan – what you call the seaweed it’s made from – has aphrodisiac qualities. This however was overshadowed by the fact it looks like a pot of whale cum and tastes what you’d imagine same to taste like. Only with peanuts naturally. Maybe it’s a Yardie thing?

Apparently it’s used in ice-cream too. Will try not to think about that much.

• 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…

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…

 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.

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.

This is the Wikipedia generation. Peer information is often considered more reliable and trustworthy than the top-down message. It’s far from wishful thinking: studies showed that the survivors of the World Trade Center tended to be the ones who relied on peer rather than official information. It may be anathema to the cult of the imperial leader in politics or the boardrooms of media corporations, but it is the future.

source: ft.com [sub required]

Disregarding the horrendous ‘Wikipedia generation’ coining attempt, I was struck by how much the p2p concept has pervaded into the mainstream.  I had a look around the net on this topic, but nothing really worthwhile at first glance.  Sure, there’s observations regarding the crowd-source type news networks built up around digg, the mobile phone to net video sites.  These though chiefly focus on information distribution, not necessarily information quality and subsequently it’s trustworthiness (particularly in my experience of Digg anyway, but that’s an aside).

The world-wide ridiculing of the current US president is surely the best example of this challenge to supposed superiors.  Cynicism in the system is pretty much ingrained these days – or maybe a new hierarchy of trust is replacing the old political one, the question then is what the new one consists of.  If it is largely a movement to a kind of meritocratic new media – p2p information still requires publication after all – does it mean we get International subject experts or cross-border idealism?  Is it really merit, or simply a self-fulfilling meme galvanised by a crowd willing to act as sheep?

Apparently the Israeli’s will be hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities soon. Presumably the US will follow? And us with them? Half joking, but wouldn’t be surprised.

I like this post

Edit: Seems the politico making the nuke claims isn’t in danger of getting to make the decision whether to attack Iran. But Oil still went shooting up. Apparently 2 million barrels/day of spare capacity could be ate up by disruption to any of the volatile oil states. Nigeria would still be the obvious concern