shaunism

[The Life of Shaun #443] Dublin take two

2012-01-22T22:01:00.000Z

In a case of history repeating itself, I found myself in Dublin again with Mary Keany six years after our first visit. Some things have changed - by all accounts, the Celtic Tiger is dead, or at best, meekly limping along, and some of the city's swagger is gone; everywhere there was talk about how bad things there were, whereas before there was endless optimism. Other things have not - it is still terribly expensive (especially with the diminished pound) and the people (and their accents) are just as lovely. Fortunately, this trip was scheduled to visit my friend Matt who's over from Seattle for work, so at least we escaped the hotel fleecing. I really enjoyed the city this time, saw a lot more of its charm and can say that I am now officially a fan.

The trip was subdued - nothing touristy at all, just dining, drinking and lounging - so I won't say much. But I will take a moment for a well-deserved plug for Siam Thai. Mary and I found it by chance in 2006 and it was so good we went back the next night. So this trip is was the only definite plan on the itinerary and it was amazing - the best Thai food I've had outside of Thailand. I would go back to Dublin if only to eat there again.

Slán,

Shaun

Some pics from our weekend:

Gaelic on top.

Thank goodness for these signs letting us know to walk on the left - I was going to try and jump over barriers!

Is it just me, or is this sports bar window dressing a wee bit camp?

Enda Kenny greeting the shoppers boosting the Irish economy.

Saw a great drag act at PantiBar (great name, eh?). This was the famous duet "Time to Say Good-Bye" by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli.

But Gatwick M&S welcomed me back to London gloriously!

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[The Life of Shaun #442] Slumdog Thousandaire

2011-12-20T17:35:00.000Z

I am back from my whirlwind tour of South Asia, and I am the latest in a long line of visitors who have been impressed and charmed by India.

The country is mad - barking mad, chaotic, crowded, poor, wealthy, engaging, uplifting - almost primal, but peaceful. If I had to say just one thing about my visit it's that I've never wanted to hug so many people in my life. We encountered so many kind and helpful people, with disarmingly charming dispositions and honest smiles.

All the platitudes about India are true: it's hot, huge, overcrowded, juxtaposed, spiritual, another world. But it's good they're out there as they help prepare you, as best as words could, for the insanity that embraces you from the moment you step out of your air-conditioned plane into whichever port you've chosen. Everyone says you love it or hate it, and I fall into the former group; it is definitely somewhere I want to return to.

Writing about it all would be endless, so I've put together a few groups of photos for those who are interested:

Mumbai --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/mumbai.html

Colombo --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/colombo.html

Bangaluru --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/bangaluru.html

Kolkata --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/kolkata.html

Delhi --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/delhi.html

Taj Mahal --> http://shaunism.blogspot.com/2011/12/agra-and-taj-mahal.html

Now Rachel Klem is in town for the holidays and I have to give her the attention she is due. Back to work tomorrow - so not ready for it!

राम राम,
Shaun

My favourite picture I took in India.

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Agra and the Taj Mahal

2011-12-20T17:21:00.000Z

The coup de grâce of any visit to India, the Taj Mahal. It's a painful four-hour journey from Delhi, but absolutely worth the trip. You know you're going to encounter beauty, but it's even more impressive than can come across in photos. Counter-intuitively, some pics below of day trip are below.

A sweeper at Akbar's Tomb; notice the mobile phone.

Signs at the entrance to the Taj, separating the queues.

First view of the Taj!

And proof I was there.

Close-up.

One of the three optical illusions of the Taj: Albert Einstein.

From the distance.

Where Shah Jahan lived his last days under house arrest; the story goes that all he asked for when he was imprisoned by his son was that he have a view of the Taj.

Delhi

2011-12-20T17:08:00.001Z

New Delhi was the last capital of British India and remained the capital after independence. Its broad avenues, roundabouts and stately buildings belie the country it governs. There's more to see in Delhi than in other cities, per the guidebooks, but it somehow lacks the soul and spirit of India, and least from the exposure I had. Glad to have seen it, but I don't feel the need to return.

New Delhi airport has fantastic toiler indicators.

Un-Indian-like streets of the capital.

The effect of 16 million residents and an industrial base is clear in the haze.

The Indira Gandhi museums was one of the oddest museum experiences I've had. If you're actually keen on reading about her life, it's the wrong place to go, as you don't have a chance to pause because you are swept along in the virtual conveyor belt of people filing through. And the attendees seemed much more interested in the tall white guy than anything in the displays.

Some tall think in South Delhi.

Love the vest!

Ma Petroni and I were mini-celebrities; caucasian-deprived Indians were fascinated with us, and we will be in many family albums across India.

We saw this sign all over India - I've never wanted a Coke so badly!

Like so many other Aussies, the Opera House went to India to get spiritual and became the Lotus Temple.

India Gate.

Connaught Place, the commercial and social hub of New Delhi.

Ma Petroni and me at her birthday dinner.

There's military all over India; this one is guarding the Red Fort.

A swarm of birds randomly kicked off.

Old Delhi docs.

Old Delhi was a crammed maze of ancient streets; I loved getting wheeled around its crazy streets is a rickshaw - each street seemed to get smaller than the previous.

Old Delhi.

I went on a tour that explained the lives of the street children of Delhi and the foundation that looks after them. In this pic, our ex-street kid guide, Satender, was explaining that the reason the Hindu gods are put on the wall is because the wall used to be heavily urinated on, so they do this to prevent people from making a toilet of the wall.

The foundation takes in about five new kids per day from New Delhi rail station alone. They manage to get about 70% back with their families; the other 30% they try to get off the streets and into education or employment.

Modern filing...

Who needs the NHS?

The most local place I ate at - and no Delhi belly!

Kolkata

2011-12-20T16:31:00.001Z

Kolkata, née Calcuta, of black hole fame, the armpit of India, per many natives' opinions. From the moment you land, you can tell you;re in a city that hasn't quite made it to the 20th century. It's crumbling, crowded, medieval, frantic, poor, dirty and utterly charming. More than anywhere else in India, life is lived on the streets in Kolkata, and I liked it instantly.

Somehow, I could feel the weight of Empire here more than anywhere else in India. It was from this port that London drained much of the wealth out of India, as well as its food, leading to the death by starvation of two million citizens in WWII. There is an abundance of colonial architecture, grand homes and libraries, mixed in with the clamour of daily life in the metropolis on the Hooghly.

We stayed at the Oberoi - a oasis of colonial charm and solitude literally in the middle of the masses; on the sidewalk you are surrounded by street-hawkers and commotion, then you pass through the gates and the sound quickly fades as you walk to the main entrance. Inside you would never guess there are 14 million toiling souls on the other side of the walls.

Kolkata is known for its position in the Empire, separatist uprisings, communism and the angelic work of Mother Theresa. All together, it's a city unlike any other.

A chaotic welcome at Kolkata.

The view outside my room.

Our lobby - and how we saw Russ on most of the trip (he is newly iPhoned!).

Victoria Memorial, built to commemorate the death the Queen a continent away.

Kolkata's charming taxis, in their normal free-for-all state.

Health and safety does not rule over every public action; these workers painting the road median had nothing more than a paint can to separate them from the passing traffic.

Though the party lost the last election, communist flags still abound in many neighbourhoods.

The Kali temple!

A random street.

Many people don't have plumbing and rely on public pumps.

Instant commerce can spring up on any available space.

Outside the entrance to our hotel...

...and the centre of our hotel.

Me at Baan Thai - for two weeks' wages, a local can have a nice curry here.

Mother Theresa's final resting place.

Mmm hmm.

With no plumbing in many homes, everything from shaving to bathing takes place in the streets.

Jain temple.

Next door to the Jain temple.

Indian English.

A typical Kolkata block of flats.

Howrah Bridge - not quite the Bay Bridge...

Bathing and washing in the Hooghly.

Overfilled truck on the highway,

We enjoyed the service at the Oberoi very much.

Not quite...

Towards the airport there's endless construction, reminiscent of the Olympics-inspired development of East London.

And they stretch on and on.

This is my favourite such picture - it's the highway leading to the airport, on which a farmer was walking his herd.

Must watch out for hair fall!

I found the streets of Kolata fascinating and took dozens of pictures. Several are below, for those who are interested.

Bangaluru

2011-12-20T15:12:00.001Z

Onward to India's Silicon Valley - Bagaluru (or, more well-known, Bangalore). The recent development of this city is quite apparent, much of it looking as if it were transported from Southern California. We had a surprisingly fantastic three days here. However, this was more due to our hotel (the Purple Lotus, which deserves a plug here) which was a happenstance gem in our itinerary. It provided excellent service, rooms and atmosphere, for half or less the price of any of our other hotels. We were ready for a little rest at this point of the trip, so it was perfect. The £10 reflexology massage didn't hurt either.

Bangalore instantly stands out for its greenery; parks overtake large parts of the city and trees shade many of the streets.

Above the pillars is written "Government work is God's work".

India does creep through the Southern California façade in the older parts of town.

The dining are at the Purple Lotus.

Anywhere else is fine, but just not here, please!

View from our roof terrace.

Our environs.

Truth in advertising!

Colombo

2011-12-20T14:49:00.001Z

Next was Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, a modest-sized (by Asian standards) coastal city that has more potential than accomplishment. Its main purpose, to international eyes, is as a port of entry before dispatching to one of Sri Lanka's myriad coastal resorts. The city was hot and seemed to receive no relief from its seaside location. Though it has a few lovely visages, I can't say there's a lot to recommend the metropolis of Ceylon.

Duty free appliances anyone? Curious, if you buy one, can you receive it at the end of your journey?

Sri Lanka's languages have very attractive, curvaceous, scripts.

The city, in colour and temperament, is reminiscent of Caribbean towns.

The requisite snake charmer photo.

Judging from this sign, emigration is still a major industry for the island.

Colombo could be a lovely seaside city, but much of its beach is taken over with dilapidated buildings and a commuter railway.

Russ and me at lunch.

The view from lunch.

I had the most ridiculous hotel room; more a fish tank than hotel room, it afforded all passers-by an open view of me, whatever my state.

But there were a few natural sights of particular beauty...

Mumbai

2011-12-20T14:32:00.001Z

My South Asian adventure began in Mumbai, India's largest city and its commercial and cultural capital. When you apply these superlatives to the superlative that is India, the result is a unique madness. Much has been said about this city's baking, teeming streets, frenetic pace and juxtaposition of rich and poor, but it is still a rambunctious site to take in. In Shantaram, there is a one-liner about Mumbai that encapsulates its essence: "The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future."

Mumbai isn't packed with sights, so is usually just an entry-point for tourists to India, but I found its less famous aspects the most engaging: the energy of too many people in one spot, the strata of agrarian Indian society grafted onto an urban setting, slums and roof-top bars. It's a city you feel more than see, and for that it will either agree with you or it won't; it agreed with me.

Flying into Mumbai, you can see the geography that's formed its modern reality; once several islands, akin to a subcontinental Manhattan, the channels between them have been filled in to create a long, densely populated peninsula, known as "South Mumbai/Bombay". Roughly the same size as its American cousin, more than twice as many people call it home.

Over half of Mumbai's population live in slums, which meander around and through the richer, more permanent, parts of the the city.

If there's an open space, it will be used, for commerce, socialising, or perhaps sleeping.

The Southern tip forms an arch around a broad bay, one side being the business centre and the other (pictured) Mumbai's nicest neighbourhood.

Leopold Cafe, a Mumbai institution and nexus for tourists, ex-pats and locals alike.

Gateway of India, built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay and its grateful citizens of the Empire. Physical affection between same-sex friends is common in India, as these two buddies show.

Marine Drive rims the bay and is nicknamed "The Queen's Necklace" due to its appearance when lit up at night.

Towering over the expanses of slums and middle class neighbourhoods are ostentatious piles, such as this one, owned by the head of Kingfisher.

Mumbai is also the address of the world's most expensive private residence, with a price tag of over $1 billion, it was built by Mukesh Ambani for his family, but stands empty most days of the year.

Population of India in 1891: 25 million. 2011: 1.2 billion.

Ghandi's room in Mumbai. On the desk sits a sculpture with three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

Mumbai's India's financial capital and most progressive city, but you don't have to look too far to find the caste-laden reality of traditional India. The open laundry vats, where the Dhobis toil for about $3/day.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (née Victoria Terminus), a bit of colonial impracticality in the middle of a tropical city, through which more than three million commuters pass every day.

We were there on a Sunday, which is a slow day, but it was still brimming with the peoples of suburban Mumbai and its hinterlands.

India's infrastructure, though agéd, is superficially familiar. Its usage, however, is entirely Indian; roads designed for vehicle traffic is used by everyone and everything that needs to get from A to B: cars, busses, bikes, cows, goats, people. There's no delineation of space; if a space can be used for a purpose, and is not already occupied, it will be taken up.

Though it's India's wealthiest city, it's not immediately apparent to the eye. Even in the most expensive sections of South Mumbai, buildings are crumbling around their tenants. I am told that this is because there are rent control laws in Mumbai, so landlords get no return from improving their buildings; it is more profitable for them to allow their buildings to decay and fall down so they can then sell the land or rebuild at market rates.

Of all the slums in Mumbai, Dharavi is its most famous. Though the natural Western instinct upon seeing a slum is pity, it is not entirely appropriate. Yes, the residents are poor, but they are also industrious; there is an entire economic world in the slums, making every possible scrap of resource commercially viable.

South Mumbai's skyline.

There're no permanent gay bars in India. The only one Russ and I got to on this adventure was a monthly event held at an otherwise Chinese restaurant. Though Mumbai won't be competing with the capitals of the Western world any time soon, it was a viable gay bar and a good time.

[The Life of Shaun #441] The Taj

2011-12-15T11:00:00.000Z

A quick check-in from India to send a photo: I went to the Taj yesterday; I think that means I've officially visited India now. :-)

Cheers,

Shaun

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Shaun H. Coley | New Delhi | India | www.nocirc.org

[The Life of Shaun #440] Mumbai

2011-12-02T10:04:00.000Z

Made it safely to Mumbai and my hotel (see, Mom, I told you it'd be fine!) - view from my room attached!

Showered and refreshed - off to explore!

Cheers,

Shaun

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Shaun H. Coley | Mumbai | India | www.nocirc.org

[The Life of Shaun #439] Slumdog Thousandaire

2011-12-01T17:44:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've cheated on London; except for two small indiscretions to Madrid and one to Berlin, I have been a faithful Londoner since my Big Gay Cruise in February.

Tonight I am leaving by belovéd again, to sleep in the arms of the Raj.

Russ and his mother will be meeting me in Mumbai, and from there we will have a whirlwind tour of the jewel of the Empire: Mumbai, Colombo (Sri Lanka, but still), Bangalore, Kolkata and finally Delhi with an American-style day trip to Agra for the Taj Mahal.

Very excited - I've wanted to go to India for ages!

OK, of to T5. Next time you hear from me, I'll probably have Delhi belly!

राम राम,

Shaun

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[The Life of Shaun #438] Re: New York/London flat swap

2011-11-20T19:15:00.000Z

Sorry, I have to rescind this - at least for these dates! I thought the Olympics started in August, but someone let me know they start 27 July. Oops - sorry about that!

May come back with other dates, so if you might be interested, still let me know.

Cheers,

Shaun

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On 20 November 2011 16:45, Shaun H. Coley <scoley@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

It's too early for most people to plan their 2012 Summer holidays, but I know I have to be in New York next Summer around the week spanning 26 July. I was thinking of doing a flat swap with one or more people in New York so my flatmate and possibly a friend could come too.

We have either/both:

- Two bedroom flat in Shadwell (E1), two double beds and a sleepable couch
- One bedroom flat in Kentish Town (NW5), single bed and a sleepable couch

So if anyone in New York would be keen on some time in London next Summer, reach out to me. Could do all/part of the week, even a long weekend.

Feel free to mention this to trusted friends!

Cheers,
Shaun

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Shaun H. Coley | Shadwell | Tower Hamlets | London | UK | www.nocirc.org

[The Life of Shaun #437] New York/London flat swap

2011-11-20T16:45:00.000Z

Hi all,

It's too early for most people to plan their 2012 Summer holidays, but I know I have to be in New York next Summer around the week spanning 26 July. I was thinking of doing a flat swap with one or more people in New York so my flatmate and possibly a friend could come too.

We have either/both:

- Two bedroom flat in Shadwell (E1), two double beds and a sleepable couch

- One bedroom flat in Kentish Town (NW5), single bed and a sleepable couch

So if anyone in New York would be keen on some time in London next Summer, reach out to me. Could do all/part of the week, even a long weekend.

Feel free to mention this to trusted friends!

Cheers,

Shaun

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[The Life of Shaun #436] Unrealpolitik: The end of the White Swan?

2011-09-25T23:48:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

Apologies for the very off-topic eMail, but I am doing a little bit of local politics here and want to get the word out.

There's currently a proposal that's been put forth in Tower Hamlets to ban all "sex" establishments. Though I am against such a ban on principle alone (I've not yet been forced to give my custom anywhere I don't want to, so prosper and let prosper), this proposal is especially broad and could close down my local, and the East End's oldest gay establishment, The White Swan, as they have an amateur strip contest and dancers on the weekend.

Please fill this survey out, wherever you live - it will be good for them to know their decision is being watched widely -, but especially if you live in London, and East London in particular.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SexEstablishments

The survey's short and you're not required to fill in comments, though I chose to.

Thanks for your helping Tower Hamlets not become London's Texas if you do - and hope all is well and freer wherever you are!

Regards from "over-sexed" (apparently) Tower Hamlets,

Shaun

"Deeming what is fit as a proper mix for any one area smacks dangerously of fascism, something this borough has fought in the past and should continue to fight today."

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A Clockwork Thing (or a Beautiful Orange)

2011-08-15T17:59:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I headed South to Clapham for the Clapham Street Party (essentially Clapham Pride), but ended up coming home at an embarrassingly respectable 11:45pm, so I was left woke refreshed this Sunday morning. I was enticed out into a warm, clear, blue sky to do a London exploration. Today's destination was Thamesmead, in Southeast London, the setting of both A Clockwork Orange and Beautiful Thing. Both films are very good at making the housing estate appear vast and dire, so naturally I was drawn to it.

I had trouble finding it as, though the estate is in Thamesmead, it is in South Thamesmead. I was actually about to get back on a bus into central London when I decided to do a little more research on my iPhone before giving up. Two very unpersonable roundabouts later, I had arrived.

Through the lens of a camera, the estate looks immense, isolated and empty, its central manmade "lake" hard and severe. In person, it is much smaller; not snug in any sense, but certainly not the windswept plains of concrete I'd expected. The central towers protrude skyward a bit, but most of the estate is modest in height, and the whole thing is hemmed in by bog standard inner suburban housing. The area is even respectable enough (or demand for housing so high in London, or both) that there are newbuilds going up right in the middle of the estate. I didn't see any mention of A Clockwork Orange in the marketing material ("A droog's flat is his castle!").

All in all, the place is not nearly deserving of its reputation as a prime example of post-war planning gone wrong. It's not an aspirational postcode by any means, but I've seen a lot worse. Must get to the estates in Elephant & Castle before they're all gone.

Cheers,

Shaun

Photos:

01) Thamesmead09 - The main towers of the estate, bordering Southmere Lake

02) Thamesmead11 - Binsey Walk, along Southmere Lake. This is the spot of the scene where "Alex reasserts his dominance over his fellow Droogs by dumping Dim in the water and slicing his outstretched hand".

03) Thamesmead20 - Not something you see often on a housing estate...

04) Thamesmead21 - A pedestrian flyover ramp - with stairs (Just to make sure it's not wheelchair accessible?)

05) Thamesmead26 - The estate shops

06) Thamesmead28 - Here you can see one of the "walkways in the sky". The whole area was inundated by flood waters before it was developed, so the original developments of the "city for the 21st century" put the housing and shops on the first floor and up, leaving the ground floor for parking.

07) Thamesmead30 - Balconies of the type seen in A Beautiful Thing

08) Thamesmead31 - New development within the estate

09) Thamesmead32 - A view of the new abutting the old, with Tavy Bridge separating the two.

10) Thamesmead33 - Another main building of the estate (seen in the background in A Clockwork Orange here)

11) Thamesmead39 - The prosperity of Canary Wharf beckons in the distance to the West

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Merthyr Tydfil

2011-07-30T11:03:00.001+01:00

My friend Lottie sadly moved back to The Magical Kingdom of the Netherlands two months ago, but agreed to come back to Blighty for her hen do weekend to - where else? - Merthyr Tydfil, in the Valleys of Wales. We were accompanied by Kimb'uh, who would normally shun such an adventure, but acquiesced as it was the bride-to-be's choice. Lottie and I saw a show on Channel 4, or the like, which profiled the effects the benefits changes will have there as Merthyr has the highest proportion of people living on benefits in the UK. There are families with three generations - grandparents, parents and grandchildren - where none has ever had a job. This was somewhere we had to see.

After the lesson that was Middlesbrough, we were no novices to the harsh reality of post-Thatcher Britain, but we enjoyed Merthyr's own special take on British life outside the M25. Though poor, The Boro was bustling and everyone seemed happy enough to be living there. Merthyr was much sparser and absolutely everyone mentioned the bad state of the town and lack of good jobs in the town. I was quite surprised how many non-white immigrants we saw in the town. But the innkeeper where we stayed told us the immigrants come because they're OK to take the jobs "our boys won't do", so I guess there is opportunity for some.

We spent a long part of the day in the Gurnos Estate, one of the largest housing estates in Europe, and Wales' most infamous. There we took up like locals, sitting in a parking lot drinking beer bought from the Indian man running the off-license, buying chips from the Turkish men running the kebab shop. Then onto the Gurnos Social club where we ordered beers in a room that was the one place I've ever felt at risk in the UK - there was an energy of mischief and trouble in the air, so we quickly departed with our beers to the other side of the club which was more gender balanced and had a better vibe. Over a couple of hours there we enjoyed passing the time, and Kimb'uh made friends with an eleven year-old girl whose father left her alone in the pub (to speak to strange adults, apparently) and tried to convince her to go to university rather than get pregnant as a teen. Her brother's 17 and has two kids, and she's a gypsy, so her chances of being unwed and childless come 20 are pretty low.

Dinner at the town's best Indian restaurant, followed by drinks at the peerless Vulcan and Merthyr's only club, the Kirk House, both of whose patrons fell short of the fashion standards of Middlesbrough, but outshone them in natural gruffness. Not too late a night for us, in bed about 1:30, full on beer, curry and shock.

Cheers,

Shaun

The trip was preceded by Lottie's hen weekend drinks and dinner at the Charlie Chaplin and Castle Tandoori

Me and another Merthyr Tydfil-bound passenger waiting for the train

The countryside around the town is actually very beautiful - it reminds me of interior Alaska.

But the town planners saw to a different aesthetic for the people of Merthyr

Lottie passing a couple of ladies with benefit boosters

The Trevithick Monument - In doing research for Merthyr, we came across a picture of this lonely, forlorn monument amidst a scene of general decay and immediately put a pin in our Google map of places to visit.

I assume this closed as no one lives to a pensionable age in Merthyr anymore.

The entrance to the Gurnos estate!

Drinking in Gurnos centre parking lot, local style

Out on the town

The town centre was completely dead (and the 24-hour Tesco closed) in the morning

Says it all...

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[The Life of Shaun #433] SF leads the way (again)

2011-06-14T19:09:00.001+01:00

Leave it to the guardian to say it better than I could! Maybe I should rethink my journalistic loyalties. And kudos to SF!

(SFers, has this been much in the newsphere there?)

Cheers,

Shaun

Time to ban male circumcision?

If passed, article 50 will ban genital cutting for boys in San Francisco, with profound religious implications for Jews and Muslims. But isn't it time to oppose all circumcision?

Neil Howard and Rebecca Steinfeld
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 June 2011 14.46 BST
larger | smaller

A Muslim boy during his circumcision in Bulgaria. Voters in San Francisco, California, have been asked to ban the custom, much to the anger of Jews and Muslims. Photograph: Stoyan Nenov/REUTERS

San Francisco voters will decide later this year whether, like its female counterpart, male infant circumcision should be outlawed. If passed, article 50 — the "Genital Cutting of Male Minors" — would make it unlawful to circumcise, cut, or mutilate the foreskin, testicles, or penis of another person aged under 18. The bill includes an exemption for cases of medical necessity, but not for custom or ritual, which has profound implications for the many Jews and Muslims who consider it an essential part of their religious or cultural practice.

Unsurprisingly, the bill has attracted considerable controversy. Some regard it as a modern manifestation of western antisemitism, while certain feminist groups consider the idea of comparing male and female genital cutting to be both offensive and unsubstantiated.

Neither the World Health Organisation nor the UN oppose male circumcision, and given that the procedure is so unquestioned that 33% of American boys still undergo it, one might think that they have a point. But is it really so simple? And are the differences between male and female circumcision really so straightforward?

According to research, the sexual damage caused by female and male genital cutting can be extensive. Female genital cutting, which can involve removal of the clitoris, may reduce the likelihood of orgasm and cause complications during childbirth. Similarly, male circumcision can result in excruciating pain, nerve destruction, infection, disfigurement and sometimes death. Like the clitoris, the foreskin serves a sexual purpose, and it protects the "head" of the penis from outside elements.

Both male and female genital cutting can have profound psychological consequences. Circumcised women often experience trauma, stress and anxiety, and can have relationship problems. Some circumcised men describe feelings of loss, anger, distrust, and grief, while others have reported problems with subsequent intimacy, long-term post-traumatic stress disorder, and a sense of powerlessness.

With female genital cutting, the desire to control female sexuality remains key: believed to reduce a woman's libido, the practice is said to help her resist "illicit" sexual acts, thus aiding the maintenance of premarital virginity and marital fidelity.

Male circumcision has similarly been associated with managing sexuality.Maimonedes, the great Jewish sage, believed it counteracted "excessive lust", while as a secular practice in the US, it was first promoted as a means of preventing "harmful" masturbation. Now, the discourse of cleanliness is crucial – and one frequently hears that "a cut man is a cleaner man".

In Judaism, male circumcision, carried out eight days after birth, is essential, according to religious law; male circumcision is also practised in Islam, though the necessity of female genital cutting is contested among Muslims.

Clearly, significant similarities exist between male and female genital cutting, and the question asked by those behind article 50 is: why the legal difference between boys and girls?

What about the health argument, that male circumcision is "cleaner" and prevents HIV transmission? There is a body of research that claims a correlation between circumcision and reduced transmission rates, and this is not to be taken lightly, since it represents the strongest case for male genital cutting – at least in Aids-ravaged regions. But such research is heavily contested. A 2007 study by Dowsett and Couchasserted that insufficient evidence exists to believe that circumcision does reduce transmission, while Gregorio et al's later analysis cast doubt on correlations between circumcision and transmission of HIV and STI's more generally.

Wouldn't a mass information campaign represent better public health policy than widespread pre-emptive circumcision? If we favour removal of body parts to reduce risk of disease, why not remove breasts to prevent breast cancer? Or pull teeth, in the name of cleanliness, to ward off plaque? Though health and hygiene are important, less intrusive and equally successful means clearly exist to ensure them.

What about religious freedom? Certainly, the ability to freely practise one's religionremains a vital component of any liberal democracy. But should this trump an individual's right to their bodily integrity? And shouldn't such a principle be extended to all those who, by virtue of their age, are too young to decide on which body parts they would or would not like to keep?

Some may point to state overreach here, suggesting that a ban on child ear-piercing will be next. But it is the irreversibility of circumcision that invalidates such comparisons. Instead of dismissing article 50 as either antisemitic or anti-feminist, therefore, we suggest that it should perhaps be considered as no more than the consistent application of legal principles to both sexes.

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights outlaws the kind of "harm" that circumcision can cause; article 14 forbids the discrimination that prevents baby boys from enjoying the same protection of their genitalia as baby girls. In the 21st century, it is time to remember that men, too, can be victims of unjust hegemonic systems tolerated in the name of tradition, culture or religion. If we oppose female genital mutilation, has the time not come for us also to oppose male genital mutiliation?

Neil Howard and Rebecca Steinfeld are doctoral students at Oxford University, specialising on issues related to gender in West Africa and the Middle East respectively

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[The Life of Shaun #432] Babel or babble?

2011-05-09T23:09:00.000+01:00

This is off topic, but a lot of my friends and family are similarly nerdy to me, so I know this will be well enjoyed. So for them - enjoy! The rest of you, sorry about the extra delete I'm making you press today.

A side note: ‎My friend Kimb'uh had a baby two weeks ago. The birth was a bit hard on the baby as he tried to come out with a hand next to his head - it led to a lot of stress on the baby's head and neck. So the NHS sent a cranial osteopath to their flat a few days later to make sure all was well and ease the tension in his neck and head. I was so impressed by this. I love the NHS!

Cheers,

Shaun

The evolution of language

Babel or babble?

Languages all have their roots in the same part of the world. But they are not as similar to each other as was once thought

Apr 14th 2011 | from the print edition

WHERE do languages come from? That is a question as old as human beings' ability to pose it. But it has two sorts of answer. The first is evolutionary: when and where human banter was first heard. The second is ontological: how an individual human acquires the power of speech and understanding. This week, by a neat coincidence, has seen the publication of papers addressing both of these conundrums.

Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, has been looking at the evolutionary issue, trying to locate the birthplace of the first language. Michael Dunn, of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, has been examining ontology. Fittingly, they have published their results in the two greatest rivals of scientific journalism. Dr Atkinson's paper appears in Science, Dr Dunn's in Nature.

Travellers' tales

The obvious place to look for the evolutionary origin of language is the cradle of humanity, Africa. And, to cut a long story short, it is to Africa that Dr Atkinson does trace things. In doing so, he knocks on the head any lingering suggestion that language originated more than once.

One of the lines of evidence which show humanity's African origins is that the farther you get from that continent, the less diverse, genetically speaking, people are. Being descended from small groups of relatively recent migrants, they are more inbred than their African forebears.

Dr Atkinson wondered whether the same might be true of languages. To find out, he looked not at genes but at phonemes. These are the smallest sounds which differentiate meaning (like the "th" in thin; replace it with "f" or "s" and the result is a different word). It has been known for a while that the less widely spoken a language is, the fewer the phonemes it has. So, as groups of people ventured ever farther from their African homeland, their phonemic repertoires should have dwindled, just as their genetic ones did.

To check whether this is the case, Dr Atkinson took 504 languages and plotted the number of phonemes in each (corrected for recent population growth, when significant) against the distance between the place where the language is spoken and 2,500 putative points of origin, scattered across the world. The relationship that emerges suggests the actual point of origin is in central or southern Africa (see chart), and that all modern languages do, indeed, have a common root.

That fits nicely with the idea that being able to speak and be spoken to is a specific adaptation—a virtual organ, if you like—that is humanity's killer app in the struggle for biological dominance. Once it arose, Homo sapiens really could go forth and multiply and fill the Earth.

The details of this virtual organ are the subject of Dr Dunn's paper. Confusingly, though, for this neat story of human imperialism, his result challenges the leading hypothesis about the nature of the language organ itself.

Grammar or just rhetoric?

The originator of that hypothesis is Noam Chomsky, a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr Chomsky argues that the human brain comes equipped with a hard-wired universal grammar—a language instinct, in the elegant phrase of his one-time colleague Steven Pinker. This would explain why children learn to speak almost effortlessly.

The problem with the idea of a language instinct is that languages differ not just in their vocabularies, which are learned, but in their grammatical rules, which are the sort of thing that might be expected to be instinctive. Dr Chomsky's response is that this diversity, like the diversity of vocabulary, is superficial. In his opinion grammar is a collection of modules, each containing assorted features. Switching on a module activates all these features at a stroke. You cannot pick and choose within a module.

For instance, languages in which verbs precede objects will always have relative clauses after nouns; a language cannot have one but not the other. A lot of similar examples were collected by Joseph Greenberg, a linguist based at Stanford, who died in 2001. And, though Greenberg himself attributed his findings to general constraints on human thought rather than to language-specific switches in the brain, his findings also agree with the Chomskyan view of the world. Truly testing that view, though, is hard. The human brain cannot easily handle the connections that need to be made to do so. Dr Dunn therefore offered the task to a computer. And what he found surprised him.

Place your bets

To find out which linguistic features travel together, and might thus be parts of Chomskyan modules, means drawing up a reliable linguistic family tree. That is tricky. Unlike biologists, linguists do not have fossils to guide them through the past (apart from a few thousand years of records from the few tongues spoken by literate societies). Also, languages can crossbreed in a way that species do not. English, for example, is famously a muddle of German, Norse and medieval French. As a result, linguists often disagree about which tongues belong to a particular family.

To leap this hurdle, Dr Dunn began by collecting basic vocabulary terms—words for body parts, kinship, simple verbs and the like—for four large language families that all linguists agree are real. These are Indo-European, Bantu, Austronesian (from South-East Asia and the Pacific) and Uto-Aztecan (the native vernaculars of the Americas). These four groups account for more than a third of the 7,000 or so tongues spoken around the world today.

For each family, Dr Dunn and his team identified sets of cognates. These are etymologically related words that pop up in different languages. One set, for example, contains words like "night", "Nacht" and "nuit". Another includes "milk" and "Milch", but not "lait". The result is a multidimensional Venn diagram that records the overlaps between languages.

Which is fine for the present, but not much use for the past. To substitute for fossils, and thus reconstruct the ancient branches of the tree as well as the modern-day leaves, Dr Dunn used mathematically informed guesswork. The maths in question is called the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. As its name suggests, this spins the software equivalent of a roulette wheel to generate a random tree, then examines how snugly the branches of that tree fit the modern foliage. It then spins the wheel again, to tweak the first tree ever so slightly, at random. If the new tree is a better fit for the leaves, it is taken as the starting point for the next spin. If not, the process takes a step back to the previous best fit. The wheel whirrs millions of times until such random tweaking has no discernible effect on the outcome.

When Dr Dunn fed the languages he had chosen into the MCMC casino, the result was several hundred equally probable family trees. Next, he threw eight grammatical features, all related to word order, into the mix, and ran the game again.

The results were unexpected. Not one correlation persisted across all language families, and only two were found in more than one family. It looks, then, as if the correlations between grammatical features noticed by previous researchers are actually fossilised coincidences passed down the generations as part of linguistic culture. Nurture, in other words, rather than nature. If Dr Dunn is correct, that leaves Dr Chomsky's ideas in tatters, and raises questions about the very existence of a language organ. You may be sure, though, that the Chomskyan heavy artillery will be making its first ranging shots in reply, even as you read this article. Watch this space for further developments.

[The Life of Shaun #431] Taxes and surcharges

2011-04-14T20:25:00.000+01:00

We're all getting used to increasing taxes and surcharges for flights, and when I am paying £15 on taxes and charges on my 1p ticket to Belfast, I am fine with their proportion of the ticket price. But I was particularly aggrieved today; I bought a pair of tickets for Mary and me to go to The Netherlands for my friend Lottie's wedding this Summer and this was the fare breakdown:

Fare excluding taxes : £42.00

Taxes and surcharges : £232.02

85% of the fare is taxes and surcharges! Outrageous! But at least I have another trip on the books, so the inner monster is soothed for now.

Thanks for letting me rant. That is all.

Cheers,

Shaun

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[The Life of Shaun #430] Desde Madrid, al Cielo

2011-04-05T00:20:00.000+01:00

"After Madrid, there is only Heaven."

This is the mantra of the Spanish capital, and though mine is still "Nach Berlin, gibt es nur den Himmel" (Hmm... doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?), I understand the dogged attachment of the Madrileño to his city. My first visit to the city was quite a surprise, as a close friend had recently sent a scathing review of the city. My second visit, though limited in scope, supported my taste for Madrid, and this third one has cemented it as my penfavourite European (in the British sense) city.

In my first visit, I was taken aback by how regal felt, how you are unmistakably in a European capital. And, admittedly, that was mostly through a taxi window and a long walk of shame. The second visit I delved into inner barrios, but this third was quite more extensive. Darrin set up a mostly-walking (!) journey for us that he thought I would enjoy: one building to represent each broad period of Madrid architecturally from the 15th to 20th centuries (I did the 21st on my own while Darrin tried in vain to get into the Prado).

Not every bit of the walk was inspiring as is central Madrid, but there was still the essence of the city to be learned around each destination. But as we did our reverse walk from outer to inner Madrid, we could see how the character of the city changed as it grew and aged, sometimes well-integrated, sometimes not. We saw some very untouristy things: council flats Madrid style, immigrant neighbourhoods, unimaginative blocks of flats. But we also saw new buildings tastefully and imaginatively integrated with old, locals enjoying long, slow lunches away from the throngs of central Madrid, and countless squares and random small personable places for people to sit, chat, converse, even if they weren't always picturesque.

I'm also understanding the nightlife a bit better, thanks largely to the help of friends and acquaintances there now, and Madrid is definitely aces in this regard.

Despite all its charms, I did feel a little surge of excitement to alight at King's Cross into the hectic, heterogeneous kaleidoscope that is London, and I am happy to be looking out my window over Crystal Palace in the distance. I don't have any trips planned for quite a while, and that's OK - it's good to be home.

Adiós,

Shaun

Pics attached, more at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=352301&id=713081334&l=e610c501da

01 - Madrid's newest terminal is stunning and massive; I took this view of just one part of the luggage return for its cavernousness, but the nuns in passing have stolen the focus.

02 - An example of Madrid's attention to detail and charm, street signs in the centre are art as well as information.

03 - No city should take itself too seriously (Are you reading this Paris?) and metro signs are a good start.

04 - Condo-style cemetery

05 - (One of) the oldest buildings in Madrid, not so lovingly cared for with a high-voltage power line, graffiti and disused prison as its neighbours.

06 - Random riverside park. In the distance is a very cool footbridge over said river.

07 - Statue and view from the grounds of San Francisco el Grande Basilica.

08 - Came across this building and adorning, deceptive mural; my fuzzy, hung-over head didn't suss out the illusion until after I took a photo.

09 - Another stop along our historic walk, another beautiful cityscape.

10 - Should you ever run out of Jesus dolls, I know just the place.

11 - Modernity creeps in. I had seen this building (Torres de Colon) in the distance during the taxi ride from the airport on both of my previous trips, but never saw it up close. When we spied it on our walk, we added it to the itinerary. It's so very odd - two separate, uneven towers with Palast-style gold windows connected with an art-deco-like, seemingly functionless cap; it became my favourite building in Madrid.

12 - But classic is never far away.

13 - This is the 20th century centro commercial, with the 21 century one behind it in the distance.

14 - Puerta de Europa, gateway to the new centro commercial.

15 - Torres Blancas. It beat out Torres de Colon as my favourite building.

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[The Life of Shaun #429] Berlin - Wieder und Immer

2011-03-28T19:12:00.001+01:00

Hey all,

Just got back from a lovely weekend in Berlin, this time accompanied by the lovely Darrin, who is visiting from New York.

It was a great weekend, for both Darrin and me - which makes me happy, as am a little posessive with Berlin, and I want others to see why it's so special to me.

Darrin's been before, but nearly twenty years ago (when he was two) as a poor student, so this was mostly a new exploration for him. I showed him some of my favourite bits, and then we went to a few new places (!), took walks (!!) and even went to a pseudo park (!!!) insomuch as the pedestrianised Tempelhof can be called a park. I added a couple of buildings to my list of Berlin favourites.

Some pics are attached, and some more at the link below for those who're interested, but I won't linger on about mein Liebschen.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=350267&id=713081334&l=bb545b723f

Next weekend we're off to my second favourite continental city - Madrid.

So in preparation for that: adiós!

Shaun

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Videos from the cruise

2011-03-08T18:10:00.004Z

Two videos from the cruise:

Dog tag tea dance (how I spent my afternoons):

Plane taking off at Maho Beach (interesting bit starts at 1:30):

[The Life of Shaun #427] Big, Big, Big

2011-03-08T18:03:00.003Z

I meant to post some pics from my Big Gay Cruise in the week after I got back, but fatigue and jetlag beat out ambition. I am home on this sunny(!) and warm(!!) Tuesday afternoon, so thought I could manage one semi-productive adventure (other than lunch), so I've posted some pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=344601&id=713081334&l=a81d3ac13f

(There are more party pics than necessary, but I have some friends who're keen to peek at them.)

Attached are a few of my faves from the bunch.

The cruise was a lot of fun; it reminded me a bit of the March on DC insomuch as it was this bubble of a week where the World was gay. Yes, there was a party every afternoon (The Gays love their tea) and night and early morning and sometimes beyond. But going to breakfast, having a stroll, a tipple or a nibble or a show, everyone was gay/gayphilic. And without sounding too insular, it really is a nice atmosphere when everyone's on the same pink page. When We (capital intentional) go on holiday, We're all in the same mindset - everyone just wants to have a good time, drops the attitude, and doesn't stress. Several staff told us how much more they were enjoying our cruise as we weren't complaining and everyone was smiling and just having fun*.

Still, for me it wasn't such an exceptional experience to justify the price tag again. Maybe that's because I live in London and a hedonistic weekend in Berlin is an hour and £50 away, but I'm not convinced I'd do another one, given holiday and fiscal restraints. If I do, I'll do a smaller boat - 2,500 is certainly enough to pick from, and the smaller cruises are half the price. But excursions like India, South America, the Arab world and Africa have a more pressing claim on my limited travel pounds in the immediate future.

The Big Gay Cruise was followed by three much-needed relaxing and recharging days with Natasha and Chris. It was perfect to see them again, and I really realise how much I miss them.

Next was the Big Apple; it'd be overkill to talk yet more about New York, but I got to see all the people I wanted to (who I miss also), got to eat Taco Bell and Pongsri Thai and saw seeds of my New York's revival below 14th, so all is good on the enchanted isle.

The last Big owes thanks to Alexi: a tour of Big Ben (or more precisely, the Great Westminster Clock Tower). Unfortunately, pics were strictly verboten, but everyone knows what it looks like. It was really quite cool to be feet from the bells as they chimed their hourly tune, and Big Ben as it chimed out twelve hours, to feel the vibrations in the ironworks and hear the harmonics in the reverberations. The clock faces are smaller than I supposed and are lit only by a collection of 80-watt (yes, 80!) bulbs. From the top I was able to see my building, which was a nice reversal of my normal view.

Post-holiday glow is over and am I am back in and enjoying London life. Lots of weekend pleasantries in the upcoming months, including forays to Berlin and Madrid, but mostly within the Circular, so I won't be giving my British passport much of a workout just yet.

Cheers from East London,

Shaun

*As long as the alcohol was flowing - which was always. An acquaintance who worked for a cruise line said the gay cruises go through 1/3rd the amount of food and six times the amount of alcohol as a normal cruise. In addition to all the set bars, they had cocktail waiters and mobile bars everywhere; I don't think we were ever more than a ten second walk from a bottle of vodka.

The Oasis of the Seas, home of the Big Gay Cruise, the world's largest cruise ship

Russ in our room

Me on our balcony, with the beautiful Ft. Lauderdale skyline behind

On gay cruises, people decorate their doors so passers-by know who's inside. This was ours.

One of the daily tea dances

Me at the dog tag dance

Gay cruisers also put up boards to leave and receive messages. Most of ours weren't appropriate for public consumption, but this is one from midweek.

A plane landing at Maho Beach, next to the airport. From Wikipedia: "The short length of the main runway at Princess Juliana International Airport, and its position between a large hill and a beach causes some spectacular approaches. Aviation photographers flock to the airport to capture pictures of large jets just a few metres above sunbathers (who are often blown away by the jet blast if they are standing in its path) on Maho Beach."

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[The Life of Shaun #425] 2011

2011-01-01T01:31:00.001Z

2011 started off great in Olde London Towne. I hope it has/does for all of you as well.

To a good year ahead,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org

[The Life of Shaun #423] Unholy Trifecta and Crossing Over

2010-11-23T23:29:00.002Z

So it's been a while since Russ was here for his visit on his return to the Silver State from his stint in Macau. We had a calm, cultural, relaxing time, as always.

First on the list was Manchester, which I have talked plenty about, so will just mention that it's suffering from Glasgow disease and I hope they get stricter on the door.

Second was Berlin: perfect, as always.

Third was our only new city of this adventure, Bucharest. I really knew nothing about it other than it's ex-communist, the first gay pride parade a year or two ago had violent neonazi protesters, and it has the world's second largest building, the Palace of the Parliament.

Bucharest is very odd - it used to model itself as a second Paris (and indeed had very close ties with France, pre-WWII), but much of that grandeur is gone. But neither is it a socialist canvass, such as Sofia. It's a large, pleasant enough, but not very engaging, city. I think I've not written about it because I've found it so hard to be inspired by it either in awe or horror. Perhaps if I knew more history, as in Berlin, it'd've leapt out at me more, but as it was... well, it was*. Pics below.

I can say it's desperately poor - we spoke to several people and they all said the average person earns €200-€250/month. It's cheap, but it ain't that cheap; it must be a truly dismal existence.

But, to something a bit more exciting (to me, at least), my friend Kimb'uh took a video of me at my citizenship ceremony. So, here it is, on 18 October 2010, the very moment I became British: http://mearsfamily.net/share/shauns-citizenship-ceremony.avi

Cheers,
Shaun

*I also think it was a bit of the travel overexposure I've spoken of before. "Bucharest? Oh. It's so... European."

Full pics at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309308&id=713081334&l=cde3676217

The view of the Palace of the Parliament from my hotel room

București cityscape

The balcony where Nicolae Ceaușescu gave his last speech, assuring the masses everything would be alright. He was apprehended and executed within hours.

Now that's what I want to see when I visit the East! This was the Ministry of Defence, or something similar.

This was another pile that Ceaușescu was building at the time of his death. My tourguide called it a mortuary, but I imagine he meant mausoleum.

Outside the Palace, leaning on the French connection

Palace of the Parliament

The new central shopping area. Tens of thousands of people were uprooted and their homes bulldozed to build the Palace and its new surrounding neighbourhood.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #422] Rule, Britannia!

2010-10-19T01:12:00.001+01:00

This is my first eMail as a British citizen. Yay!

I said before that being approved for citizenship felt like a natural progression, but actually having the ceremony and letting it set in a bit, it really is fantastic, and I am smiling.

I am off to bed; my friends took pics so I will send some later, as well as a bit on the unholy trifecta of Russ's visit. Attached are two pics: one approaching the Tower of London (where my citizenship ceremony was held) and one of my certificate.

So, with all its frivolity, but sudden legitimacy:

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #421] Gay Bucharest?

2010-10-05T21:44:00.001+01:00

Random eMail...

Have any of my gay friends been to Bucharest or known someone who has been? Russ and I go next weekend and, while we're not expecting a huge party, we're having quite a hard time finding any info less than three years old. Guess we might be getting the rest we need after Manchester and Berlin for a change...

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #420] The News Blotter of Shaun

2010-09-28T18:23:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since I sent one of these out. I've actually been quite busy, but more in a fulfilling way than dramatic.

I visited my family in Corfu. Mom, Dad and Lisa now live there, and Lara was over from her new home in Istanbul. It was a bit of a stressful weekend as we learned two days before that Emilio (Lara's oldest) had MD. Fortunately, in the time since, we've learned it's Becker's MD, the mildest form, so he's expected to have a nearly, if not completely, normal life and lifespan.

Rachel came to stay with me for a month, which was perfect. She (Amsterdam, Edinburgh) and we (Berlin) travelled a bit, but it was wonderful just to have her here as a fixture rather than as a fleeting guest. She plans to do it next year as well and both Marco and I hope she does.

I applied for and was approved for British Citizenship and had a (very successful, as my depleted supply of wine glasses will attest to) party to celebrate the five years in London that brought me to this point. I actually expected this milestone to be something that I waxed lyrically about, for far too many lines, how life, I and my London have changed. But this has felt like home for so long now that, happy as I am, it felt more like a natural progression than a victory.

The travel highlight, to the horror of my British friends, has been Leicester for Pride. Marco and I went with the (schadenfreuden and selfish) hope of a Middlesbrough-cum-New Delhi. We were surprised, and just a bit disappointed, to find out that it's actually a rather nice city and, despite the rantings of the BNP, still majority white. Also, unfortunately for us, the gaysians there haven't shed the cultural weight of the subcontinent and were much less numerous than in the street, or than in London. The parade itself was only about three minutes long, but it was really nice to go to a pride that actually meant something more than another way to advertise for the pink pound.

Russ arrives tomorrow from Hong Kong for two and a half weeks before relocating back to the States, during which we will perform the unholy trifecta of Manchester, Berlin and Bucharest. The first two are repeat visits, but ones which we love. Neither of us has been to Romania, so it will be a new adventure. And, from what we've foregathered, not a gaycation with parties till dawn and boys swinging from the rafters. But, as we age, we find appeal in different experiences than ten years ago. But don't worry - we're going on a Big Gay Cruise in February, just to keep grounded.

Attached are a couple pics from Leicester; there are more here if you wish to see --> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=294456&id=713081334&l=5ac9135435

(Also, including below for those who are interested, an article about my borough I quite liked.)

Cheers,
Shaun

1 - Our hotel. I'd taken a picture of the building before I knew it was our hotel, so imagine my delight when we rounded the corner and saw the Premier Inn sign attached.

2 - Pride in the park. No Brighton, but a damn sight bigger than anything in Vegas, despite being a much smaller city.

3 - The multicultural beat of Leicester.

4 - A very old tower next to a very old (and pretty!) building.

Life & Style

Bridging the culture gap: young Bangladeshis celebrate their heritage — but they are also a crucial part of modern Britain

Tower Hamlets: The rise of the new East End

Doug Sanders
16.09.10

To stroll East from Brick Lane 15 years ago was one of the most dangerous things a Londoner could do. You were entering the migrant-packed heart of Britain's poorest, most violent borough. Now, as I visit the second-generation immigrants who'd been children then, I find in Tower Hamlets deprivation replaced with university education, violence with an upwardly mobile community.

I've spent the past three years examining urban districts dominated by rural-born migrants, spending time in marginal neighbourhoods of London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris and Madrid. And I have found London's Bangladeshi districts offer important lessons — and some warnings — for the transformation of such areas.

In 1995, the East End was racked with bloody clashes between Asian gangs and neo-Nazi skinheads and stained with drug crime and extremism. It suffered a full-scale outbreak of tuberculosis, a disease that had been absent from London for a century and existed mainly in Third World slums.

The figures unearthed by the Evening Standard in 1995 when it exposed Tower Hamlets as Britain's most deprived borough were dire: a third of families lived on less than £4,500 a year. Two-thirds of children were poor enough to qualify for free school meals. Houses were all but collapsing on their residents, often packed four or five to a room, with three children sharing a bed — overcrowding was five times worse than the national average. The borough ranked lowest in Britain for standards of living, health and quality of education.

You will still find crime, religious conservatism and ill health — it's not hard to identify, especially among part of the young male population. But the larger picture is fascinating. In Tower Hamlets, and almost nowhere else in Europe, I found it easy to find families in which the parents had been born on dirt floors but the daughters are now university-educated civil servants, scientists and bankers.

The Bangladeshis of Tower Hamlets come mainly from one of the poorest corners of one of the poorest countries in the world: at least 90 per cent are from the thoroughly rural Sylhet district, where most families must survive on less than £1 a day.

Of half a million Bangladeshi migrants to the UK and their British-born children, half live in London, and half of these in Tower Hamlets, where they form more than a quarter of the population across the council and in some wards are a majority.

Success, then, needs to be measured against this backdrop. But it is genuine success: in Tower Hamlets today, 46 per cent of Bangladeshi students achieve passing grades in five GCSE courses, only slightly below the national average of 51 per cent, and far better than the 30 per cent achieved by the borough's white students. Indeed, sociologists and social workers now focus on the grandchildren of the cockney dockworkers, not on immigrants, as the main sources of deprivation and social tension.

But why has Tower Hamlets thrived while the Turkish core of Berlin and the high-rise outskirts of Paris, for example, turn more violent?

First, studies over the past decade show it is far easier for immigrants to start a small business in London than in other European cities. The explosion of curry-houses wasn't just a dining phenomenon, it was an investment in social mobility.

Another key factor is citizenship: the people who arrived in the East End over the past 40 years, like the Eastern European Jews and French Huguenots before them, found it easy to become full citizens and participate fully in the economy and politics.

A study by German sociologist Joachim Bruss found 82 per cent of Bangladeshis in Britain felt their ethnic and religious backgrounds have no effect on their job prospects — compared with only 54 per cent of Turks in Germany. In other words, Tower Hamlets has avoided the violence and misery of its European cousins by understanding that its residents aren't pathetic cast-offs. They are people who came here with a project and we have removed the barriers to their success.

If we jeopardise any of this — through middle-class urban policies that make it harder to open small businesses in residential neighbourhoods, through immigration policies that block the pathway to citizenship to newcomers — the gains of the East End could be lost.

Doug Saunders is the author of Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World, published this week by Heinemann. More information at arrivalcity.net

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org/
http://shaunism.blogspot.com/

[The Life of Shaun #419] British Mercury

2010-09-11T09:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I received the official letter from the Home Office notifying my my application has been successful. Turns out the other letter was the council's response to them being notified and reserving a ceremony date for me. Kudos to Tower Hamlets for being so efficient!

Not sure if Royal Mail was slow, or if the Home Office didn't post my letter right away, but it was printed on 27 August. I applied, in Tower Hamlets, on 16 of August. That means my application made it from here to Liverpool, was processed, reviewed, approved and over and done with in eleven days. I have some friends that applied for an initial visa to America that would have been overchuffed with 111 days.

Now, how quickly can they approve my applications for the dole and housing benefits... ;-P

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #418] God Save the Queen

2010-09-09T21:08:00.001+01:00

Received by Royal Mail today:

Dear Sir:

Your Home Office application to become a British Citizen has been successful you are therefore invited to attend a Citizenship Ceremony, details below.

Despite the appalling punctuation, it's fantastic news - I've been approved! I won't actually be British until the ceremony where I will swear my allegiance to the Crown, but the (surprisingly short) wait is over. Hoorah!

I would like to pontificate endlessly and wittily (allow me me the measure), but I am excited and hyped up. Gonna shower and then celebrate like a true British man: with a pint and a curry.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org

[The Life of Shaun #417] Tube Strike

2010-09-07T09:25:00.001+01:00

London is currently suffering one of its periodic tube strikes as its workers deem 48 days holiday, a 37.5-hour work weeks, and above-inflation wage increases during times of austerity, insufficient remuneration for their daily trials.

TfL (Transport for London) is doing what it can, but is, of course, failing in some of the most basic ways. Bank/Monument is entirely closed, severing a main link to/from East London, though trains are running through the station itself. And my friend Lottie took this charmingly contradictory photo at London Bridge this morning. It sums things up perfectly.

I, being a chosen Tower Hamlets resident, had no issues as the DLR is run by a separate company. The fate of Morgan Stanley rests on my shoulders alone today!

Cheers,
Shaun

NOTICE: If you have received this communication in error, please destroy all electronic and paper copies and notify the sender immediately. Mistransmission is not intended to waive confidentiality or privilege. Morgan Stanley reserves the right, to the extent permitted under applicable law, to monitor electronic communications. This message is subject to terms available at the following link: http://www.morganstanley.com/disclaimers. If you cannot access these links, please notify us by reply message and we will send the contents to you. By messaging with Morgan Stanley you consent to the foregoing.

[The Life of Shaun #416] Hello from Corfu

2010-08-01T11:57:00.001+01:00

Just a quick postcard from Corfu, the view from my sister's house. It's beautiful, but give me a dodgy bar or a cityscape any day.

Cheers,

Σηαθν

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #415] Thank you, (b)log!

2010-07-28T23:25:00.002+01:00

I have spent this week faithfully procrastinating finishing filling out my application for British citizenship, for which I am applying next month. The infamous Section 2 requires that you document, account for and tally all time spent outside of the UK since arriving on your settlement visa. Everyone who applies before you warns you to keep track of your travels; everybody ignores this advice and has to piece together half a decade of their lives from the careless, random stamping of listless immigration officers.

I fit things together as best I could from the stamps and visas in my passport, but had numerous holes where dates and destinations should have been. I am very thankful for starting this list and archiving it to the internet because every time I travelled I blogged something about it and Google handily stored and sorted all the entries by year and month. So thank you all for receiving, if not reading, these; you've saved me a lot of pain tonight and I owe you a drink when I see you next.

My travelling doesn't seem as prolific listed out on paper (or in Excel, to be accurate) as it does in experience. I suppose lists are never particularly impressive to behold, and this does omit intraborder travelling, but it still seems mediocre somehow. I suppose that is justification enough for taking more trips! Or perhaps I should just use a bigger font.

The stats, for those who're counting, near as I could figure:

- 34 trips abroad (including two planned ones between now and submitting my application)
- 6.8 trips/year
- One trip every 1.75 months
- A total of 208 days (or 11.4% of my British existence) out of the country

Cheers,
Shaun

Country Visited	Reason	Departure	Return	Days Absent
France	Holiday	19-Nov-2005	22-Nov-2005	3
USA	Visiting relatives	17-Mar-2006	2-Apr-2006	16
Spain	Holiday	21-Apr-2006	24-Apr-2006	3
Italy	Holiday	11-May-2006	14-May-2006	3
Sweden	Holiday	14-Jul-2006	16-Jul-2006	2
Ireland	Holiday	8-Sep-2006	11-Sep-2006	3
Bulgaria	Holiday	13-Oct-2006	16-Oct-2006	3
USA	Visiting relatives	22-Dec-2006	7-Jan-2007	16
Poland	Holiday	10-Feb-2007	17-Feb-2007	7
USA	Visiting relatives	6-Apr-2007	23-Apr-2007	17
France	Holiday	19-May-2007	21-May-2007	2
China	Holiday	9-Jun-2007	17-Jun-2007	8
Greece	Holiday	22-Jun-2007	2-Jul-2007	10
Germany	Holiday	30-Nov-2007	2-Dec-2007	2
Portugal	Holiday	28-Dec-2007	1-Jan-2008	4
Turkey	Holiday	31-Jan-2008	3-Feb-2008	3
USA	Visiting relatives	3-Mar-2008	9-Mar-2008	6
France	Holiday	18-Jul-2008	20-Jul-2008	2
Hungary	Holiday	15-Aug-2008	18-Aug-2008	3
France	Holiday	29-Aug-2008	31-Aug-2008	2
Israel	Holiday	19-Sep-2008	28-Sep-2008	9
USA	Visiting relatives	19-Dec-2008	5-Jan-2009	17
Italy	Holiday	6-Mar-2009	9-Mar-2009	3
Spain	Holiday	19-Mar-2009	22-Mar-2009	3
USA	Visiting relatives	27-Jun-2009	13-Jul-2009	16
Estonia	Holiday	11-Sep-2009	13-Sep-2009	2
Germany	Holiday	16-Oct-2009	19-Oct-2009	3
Spain	Holiday	6-Nov-2009	8-Nov-2009	2
Germany	Holiday	25-Dec-2009	28-Dec-2009	3
Germany	Holiday	22-Jan-2010	24-Jan-2010	2
Thailand, Cambodia, New Zealand, Australia	Holiday	19-Feb-2010	9-Mar-2010	18
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Macau, China	Holiday	25-Jun-2010	5-Jul-2010	10
Greece	Holiday	30-Jul-2010	2-Aug-2010	3
Germany	Holiday	13-Aug-2010	15-Aug-2010	2
				208

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #414] The Shard cometh!

2010-07-24T17:02:00.005+01:00

I was very sad when they began construction of The Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe*, and I realised that a tower block was hiding it from my view. The Shard will be taller than the council estate, of course, but it was still a bit disappointing.

As the tower has risen, it's been crowned with a very simple, but powerful, sign that simply says SHARD. This week, the appellation has breached the top of the offending tower and you can see "RD" poking out; nothing visually dramatic to the layman, but as foreshadow, it's thrilling to an urban/Londonphile like me.

So onward and upward! Next up on the London Skyline? The Pinnacle.

Cheers,
Shaun

*There's a taller building under construction in Moscow, if you must consider that Europe.

1) The Shard, as it will be (my building circled in red)

2) The sign at the top of the construction

3) The Shard arrives to my view!

4) Grainy close-up

5) The Pinnacle, the Gherkin's soon-to-be neighbour

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #411] Paloma Faith

2010-07-17T16:18:00.001+01:00

My friend Jim turned me on to Paloma Faith, and for those of you who like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, etc., check her out. Particularly great is New York:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvXeUqlfxhY

In unrelated news, Mary Keany arrived safely yesterday - yay! - and is busy making her flat into a home ten floors above me. It's great to have her back.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #410] Two strikes against DOMA

2010-07-09T07:35:00.000+01:00

A little off topic, but potentially important. There have been two decisions that say DOMA (the Defence of Marriage Act, which states that the Federal government won't recognise same-sex marriages, even if states do) is unconstitutional:

http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/its_official_the_defense_of_marriage_act_is_unconstitutional

Now an interesting question: will the Obama administration appeal the decision?

Love to know what the news (esp. Fox) coverage is like from the statesiders.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #409] Back from the land of the durians

2010-07-05T20:06:00.002+01:00

I sent out some postings while I was away, so just a short 'woof' (for The Office fans).

Hong Kong is definitely one of the most visually stunning cities out there; I am sure the comparison's been used countless times before, but it's like dropping New York on top of San Francisco. You have the concrete canyons of New York amplified from being built improbably over steep hills like in San Francisco. (Hmmm.... the Big Apple + the Big Martini = Big Appletini. I need to write a marketing proposal.) It's hustling and bustling and has all the life a (second tier) world city should have. But, that's not really why I go to Asia...

Kuala Lumpur was much more what I was looking for. The Petronas Towers are stunning, and there is a façade of modernity, but you don't have to go too far in any direction to see the third world coming through the cracks - sometimes literally: a heard of goats on the edge of downtown, holes in the sidewalk "fixed" by laying boards over them, a repressed and depressed gay scene. I know there is more to the city than we saw, but our brief time there was further truncated by severe rain, so we just had a taste -- but I can't say it left me wanting more.

Next was Singapore, which was my favourite of the trip. This is largely because we had a handsome tour guide, Prashant, who not only beguiled, but was able to make sure we were in the right places at the right time and drank and ate in the appropriate places. We were able to turn off and be led, which was nice. I had expected an island version of Canary Wharf, but instead got a city that, despite its antiseptic reputation, had a 70s edge to it that I adored and, due to its immigration policy and history, a cosmopolitan and, importantly and distinctly from everywhere else, integrated population that was more suitable to my palate.

Last was Macau, where Russ is stationed until the Autumn. "The Vegas of the Orient" is how it's billed - and in some respects it is. Old casinos crowd the original city centre, new megaresorts have sprouted on the outskirts. However, here the historic core is actually that, historic, and the resorts are emphasizing quality more than Sin City and so lack the teeming masses streaming between the machines and tables of Vegas's "resorts". We also popped over the border into mainland China to shop in Zhuhai, where as gwailo (Westerners) we naturally overpaid. It was still super cheap to us and, being lucky enough to be so much better off, it is only right that we did so.

Fantastic trip, and it was wonderful to see Russ again after missing his special day in April. I've loved getting to see more of Asia this year - it really is a different world - but think that's it for a while. So next year - India? Africa? South America? Middle East? First let's see how long it takes my bank account to recoup from dual antipodean adventures; perhaps 2011 will again be a year to see Britain.

Cheers,
Shaun

Attached are a few of my fave pics from the trip. For those who like this sort of thing, there are more here:

Hong Kong --> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=239170&id=713081334&l=10c48fefe1

Kuala Lumpur --> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=239177&id=713081334&l=8db9a6eae3

Singapore --> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=240320&id=713081334&l=902d5629f0

Macau & Zhuhai --> http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=240328&id=713081334&l=21825c2c97

01 - Tried to get a pic from our hotel with the Hong Kong skyline... kind of worked.

02 - Older tower blocks in Hong Kong. New construction is demonstratively glitzy, showing the global stature and wealth of the city, but the older stock is decidedly functional; however, the size and density shows the longstanding status of Hong Kong as a centre for business - and refuge.

03 - Bank of China building; not loved by many feng shui masters, but it is by me

04 - Hong Kong from Victoria Peak. Definitely one of the top urban scapes.

05 - Petronas Towers, at night

06 - Downtown Singapore. The trio of buildings with the new Sands. I loved it.

07 - Downtown Singapore, orderly and clean as expected

08 - Some of colonial Singapore, with the charming 70s punctuating the skyline

09 - The "Gherkin farm" outside Russ's flat

10 - Macau Island from Russ's flat

11 - Macau's central square

12 - Grand Lisboa, Macau's first (and for a long time, only) big casino

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #408] Coley-Petroni Economics 101

2010-07-02T10:35:00.002+01:00

Russ and I have learned that whenever we travel, regardless of how much we plan and prepare, we will do stupid things that will cost us more and take longer than they should. Paying £400 to take a car across the English Channel and back, rather than renting one on the continent, is a prime example. But this trip is proving to be exemplary.

We had a good candidate for the most profligate night when spent $150 each in Kuala Lumpur, where cheap isn't too hard to find, on a ridiculous tourist-trap restaurant with dancing performers followed by exorbitant drinks at a grimy gay bar. But we topped that today.

When we booked our flights originally, I gave Russ the choice of an early one or a later one and he chose early so he could get to work on time. Well, despite thinking ourselves quite smart by setting our alarms on our phones last night, while we were still sober, we managed to miss our flight this morning.

Somehow we turned off both our phones after the alarms went off, spoke to the front desk when they called, and went back to sleep without remembering any of it. Needless to say, our budget airline wouldn't just move us to a new flight, so we had to buy new tickets. S$600 ($430, £280) and four hours later, we were on our way. Small silver lining, though, in that we got to fly directly into Macau rather than into Hong Kong, saving us $30 on the ferry ride over. Frugal indeed!

Here's to hoping that this remains our most expensive day!

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #407] 100

2010-07-01T09:45:00.001+01:00

Just a short eMail here to mark a little milestone. Attached is a pic from crossing into Singapore from Malaysia; when I went through Singapore customs I received my 100th stamp in my passport*.

Having a great time down here. Hong Kong is stunning, as every tourist shot indicates. Kuala Lumpur is interesting for all the reasons that make it somewhere I wouldn't want to live. Singapore has more to it than I thought it would - I love the 70s feel of so many of the buildings and the organisation and Western standards are welcome after KL.

Macau tomorrow, then across the border into China for shopping Saturday morning and then one last night in HK before heading home on Sunday.

Cheers,
Shaun

*My third passport, I am proud to say, as an American.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #406] Just what Indochina needs...

2010-06-25T17:33:00.001+01:00

...one more invader from the West!

I'm off tonight on my second whirlwind tour of SE Asia. In the next ten days I will accumulate passport stamps in the ports of Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Macau and Zhuhai in mainland China. Very excited for the break, to see these cities and finally ring in Russ's X0th.

I'll do my best to not get thrown in jail or caned, but I can't make any promises.

再见/selamat jalan/cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #405] Dinner in the Gherkin

2010-05-31T20:11:00.001+01:00

Last Friday my friend Lottie got us a reservation in the Gherkin for dinner -- in a private dining room -- followed by drinks in the bar. I've waxed lyrically about the Gherkin nearly endlessly, so I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Cheers,
Shaun

Predrinks were at The Planet of the Grapes; each of these pictures are purported to be of people who died of alcoholism.

Fantastic bottle of wine! Buy it if you see it.

I don't care how many times I see it, it's awesome.

Security to get in is Heathrowesque.

Private dining is the way forward!

The dining room.

Kimberly looking out the best loo hallway view in the world.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #404] My 15 seconds

2010-05-18T22:20:00.001+01:00

When I lived in America, I listened religiously* to NPR's Marketplace on my commute home. They also have a weekend show, Marketplace Money**, that's a wrap-up of the week as well as an in-depth look at financial/economic matters. Before many of you start yawning, they cover things in a very topical, lively, entertaining, relevant and, importantly, light manner.

After last week's show I wrote in a comment about one of the stories and the producer wrote back that he thought it was a great suggestion. Tonight he called me and asked me to read the suggestion for the show. So, for the one or possibly two of you who don't already listen to Marketplace Money on the radio or by podcast, tune in this weekend!

Cheers,
Shaun

Marketplace Money: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/episodes/show_rundown.php?show_id=8

*Purposely chosen for its incongruity
**I can honestly recommend listening to this regularly. Those who are into this sort of thing naturally will be all over it. But even if you're not, it's a good way to keep up with what's going on and maintaining your financial literacy without getting bored.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #403] Collective plural

2010-05-09T22:04:00.000+01:00

This is for the grammar nerds amongst us; the rest can comfortably hit delete now.

Hopefully (ie, it is hoped) you watched this week's American Idol for a live example. If so, you would have heard when Simon Cowell said "The band were good..."

Very shortly after moving here I heard this construction, incorrect in the American vernacular, which I, rightly or not, call the 'collective plural'. I watched AI with a Dutch and an American friend (since no British people live in London) and Simon's comment triggered a discussion about this topic.

In America, we would say "The band was good", and here they say "The band were good." Garret (American) took it as a cultural grammatical difference, Lottie (Dutch) considered it just incorrect. I pointed out that they say it like that on the BBC and, therefore, it's correct (everyone agreed).

But the conversation got interesting (to those of our ilk) when I counterpointed their grammatical arguments with my thoughts on it. When I first heard a comment along the lines of "The team were on form tonight" or somesuch, my thought didn't wander immediately to the grammar. I thought "Oh, in America, when we refer to the team, we think of the unit. Here, they think of the individuals that make up the team." Different perspective.

And then I quietly went along, slowly and unconsciously adapting the collective plural, until the conversation came up tonight. Lottie and Garret had never thought of it in the same light as I had. So is it a grammatical difference, or a social/perspective difference? If the latter, there might be a PhD topic there.

Would love to hear thoughts from the aforementioned grammar nerds out there.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

E2

2010-05-03T02:05:00.002+01:00

Today I cheated on E1 and took a walk around the gem of E2, Bethnal Green. A couple weeks ago, the free Tower Hamlets newspaper published a walk of the month of the area, and I saved it for a day I felt like exploring.

I'd been to Bethnal Green before, for this or that, and definitely liked it, but I never really saw much off the high street. Turns out, it's quite a cool neighbourhood. It's urban at its core, but surprisingly bucolic for East London. Bethnal Green Road is a suture across E2, bringing together two realities of the East End; urban hipsters and hirsute hotties pour in from Shoreditch to the North, and the South Asian masses of Shadwell's Siamese twin, Whitechapel, come up from below. Trendily edgy cafés, diners and bars tactfully mix with kebab shops, pound savers and pubs (and a full-sized Tesco).

As you head North from the high street, the urban edge quickly gives way to lazy streets with stately stone terraced homes, trees and bushes more typical in W postcodes, and before you know it you are skirting along some of the East's premier destinations. Columbia Road Flower Market, Hackney City Farm, Broadway Market and (the heavily underused) Victoria Park hem in Bethnal Green from Hackney. The whole area is interspersed with parks, churches, plenty of housing stock that survived the Blitz and a relative dearth council estates. Shoreditch is a comfortable walk away, and there is a tube and an overland direct into Liverpool Street. What a lucky little corner of London.

Attached are some photos of my local ramble, full set at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=222493&id=713081334&l=7d6a6358a9

Cheers,
Shaun

Bethnal Green's Banksy

Hackney City Farm

Graffiti next to Haggerston Park

Where the übercool Broadway Market meets the Regent's Canal

An urban stretch of the canal

Ah, home!

Where London taxis go to die

Random small art studio on a back alley; how very East indeed

Entrance to Victoria Park

The canal goes green

About the park (it was opened in 1850 by Queen Victoria as a means to improve the lives and health of London's East Enders)

The park, if you're into that sorta thing

Duty, indeed!

Terraced homes of Bethnal Green

York Hall, opened in 1929 by the Duke & Dutchess of York. It now has spa treatments in addition to its original pools and gym

The tube

Bethnal Green Road

La Forchetta, a nod back to Clerkenwell

Shaun H. Coley

Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #401] And that's that

2010-04-16T23:50:00.003+01:00

Can't get to the West coast before Thursday. Long way to go for a Thu-Sun trip.

So new plan: going to see Russ in Hong Kong later in the year with a side trip to either Vietnam or Burma instead. Gutted to be missing the party, but I guess this is my year to see Southeast Asia.

All you West coasters -- guess this is just a sign it's time for you to come visit me here!

Sad, but alternatively excited,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org/
http://shaunism.blogspot.com/

[The Life of Shaun #400] Çürßèd Eyjafjallajökul

2010-04-16T22:22:00.003+01:00

The text/eMail/call has come in - British Airways flight 0275 from London Heathrow to Las Vegas McCarran is cancelled tomorrow. Mexican dinner is nixed. Holiday in flux. I am currently on hold with BA in America since BA Britain is, well, a no-go. Current estimated wait time? 64 minutes.

Sharing tonight with me is my friend Lottie, whose boyfriend was due back today to celebrate their one-year anniversary. He's stuck in Amsterdam. We're currently seeking comfort in Cobra beer.

Holiday interrupted. Wish me luck for tomorrow.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org/
http://shaunism.blogspot.com/

[The Life of Shaun #401] This is a public service announcement

2010-04-06T20:58:00.001+01:00

Non-Americans can safely stop reading here.

OK, this is a bit off topic, but I thought there'd be enough (American) people interested/fact-deprived to find these useful, so I wanted to share.

NPR's Marketplace Money show had an exposé on the health care bill two weeks ago. So, if you'd like an audio review of the main features of the 2,400 pages of health reform, you can get it here:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/episodes/show_rundown.php?show_id=8&start_date=03-26-2010

(If you click on the orange banner near the upper right that says "Listen to the Show", you can listen to the whole thing as aired, or you can just check out the individual segments below.)

This week they had a story on student loan reform, which affects all too many of us:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/04/02/mm-studentloan/

OK, enough Samaritanism - back to my normal hedonistic, oblivious ways,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #400] Lady Gaga (Feat. Beyonce) - Telephone

2010-03-17T00:12:00.000Z

Lots of you have seen this already, I am sure, but if not, this is possibly the best piece of pop culture to come out in the post-Madonna world:

http://vodpod.com/watch/3234181-lady-gaga-feat-beyonce-telephone

(Make sure you watch full screen.)

And who'd'a thunk Beyoncé'd be getting on the bandwagon; but there you go - she ain't no dummy.

Cheers,
Shaun

PS - I suddenly want a Diet Coke and to switch to Virgin Mobile...

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #399] Sunset in Shadwell

2010-03-13T08:20:00.003Z

I just came across this pic from January -- sunset from my flat.

Guess it ain't so bad to be home*.

Cheers,
Shaun

*It'll be even better when I can sleep past 5:30, but hey ho.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org/
http://shaunism.blogspot.com/

[The Life of Shaun #398] 29:04:48

2010-03-09T09:32:00.001Z

Twenty-nine hours, four minutes and forty-eight seconds total transit time from Rockwell Gardens, Potts Point, Sydney to Kelday Heights, Shadwell, London, but I made it. There was constant turbulance (literally, I mean) from Afghanistan to Ukraine, but other than that the flight was Xanaxful.

It's good to be home, but I see there have been sweeping changes in my time away; TfL has thoughtfully reclosed an escalator at Bank, deeming the 18-month closure which just ended a couple months ago too short, and one of my favourite local council estates is being torn down to make way for modern housing. You can't stop the beat.

Shower, start laundry, eat - my day's ambitions.

Hope to see all the London folk soon.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #397] Sydney Mardi Gras

2010-03-07T10:49:00.001Z

"They didn't sell out tonight, there'll only be about 25,000 people."

And with that, I entered the world's largest gay party. Three main halls, each one more substantial than most clubs I've shook my tush in, en suite with several smaller venues in a gated gay fantasia. My engaging, nurturing and handsome tourguide, Matt, shuffled me from venue to venue, ensuring we found the best nooks and missed none of the important shows. I saw George Michael and Kelly Rowland, but left before Amanda Lapore and Adam Lambert.

Completely singular event, and as I entered, I thought about how exceptional it was that this largest and most impressive party takes place in a relatively small city on the farthest fringe of the gay travel map. But, after a few more drinks and pondering, I thought that perhaps the enterprising, but pragmatic, denizens of Sydney realised that they had to throw such a singular and exceptional event to inspire tens of thousands of leisure-minded gays, lesbians, their friends and supporters and their disposable income to fly for the better part of a full day to their fair city, bypassing scores of closer, bigger gaycation destinations along the way.

With Sunday afternoon came the follow-up party, Toybox, at Luna Park, Sydney's 1960sesque, fun fair - actually the main event in a lot of people's books. Equally dazzling and certainly unique -- but I left after two hours. Sometimes you just know when you are done, and I was done. I'd had a good party, and I've had a great holiday, I was happy and sated. It was time to go home.

Not looking forward to 28 hours of travel tomorrow, apexing with a three-train ride from Heathrow to East London, but looking forward to getting home and, crucially, staying there for a while.

Homeward-bound,
Shaun

Pics: Just how far away Sydney is and the city from Luna Park.

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, NSW
Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #396] Shrove Sydney

2010-03-05T01:22:00.002Z

The last weekend of my Australasian adventure has arrived; tomorrow is the official Mardi Gras party and it's pretty much a nonstop progression of inebriation into hangover and onto the plane from there. So in that sense, today's my last day on holiday! Boo!

Sydney (and Mary Keany) has been a gracious and welcoming host. I came here in 2002, intentionally not for Mardi Gras, as I wanted to see the city as it was in situ as I was thinking of trying to move over. But I was newly in love with New York, and after the bright lights of Manhattan, Sydney, despite all its charms, couldn't compare.

I am not sure if it's because it's Mardi Gras, I am older and in a different place, that I have friends here now, or if the city's just matured - most likely all if it - but I am loving it this time. Had this been my first experience here, I could've had a very different noughties.

But lovely as it is, Sydney can't escape its one disabling drawback: isolation. It is so far from everywhere else. New Zealand, its closest neighbour, is 3.5 hours away. If everything and everyone you care about is already here and you are content with holidaying in the Blue Mountains, then well enough. But I am already too far from too many people, thankyouverymuch, and I'd live a life of penury satisfying my travel compulsion here.

And, alas, as great as the hypothetical of another week or two here sounds, it is time to get back to my London. I've had a few pangs of homesickness and am ready to get back in the saddle. Also, life is falling apart without me there - Marco is buying wine from Iceland, Kimb'uh and Lottie are exchanging recipes rather than hangover cures, XXL is wrapped in a cloak of sadness and Alexi and I are down to five months to achieve our 2010 aspirations. My friends and city need me and I need them.

But first I have a hangover to get started on...

G'day
Shaun

Mary Keany's horrible building - it's been quite a hardship staying here. Her neighbourhood, Potts Point, is like a little antipodean New York - I like it immensely.

Equally as wretched, the view from down her street

On the left: the restaurant with Opera House views we wanted to eat at; on the right: the cruise ship they've parked in front of it. There was not a single customer inside. We ended up farther along the pier where we could have lunch with a view, but it meant A$40 fish & chips. Still? Worth it.

My unsuccessful attempt at taking the obligatory photo with Mary Keany

The improved version, thanks to a kind couple from Missouri

Dusk from the other end of Mary's street

And the city from her neighbourhood

Ms. Lapore made the rounds (she says "Hi", Mike! Well, with all the collagen she really says "Mmhhmm!")

Me and my Aussie girlfriend; she's offered to marry me if I change my mind about relocating.

And, summing up the week, me and Sue She after she did her reworking of "Bad Romance" entitled "I Think I Pooped My Pants" at a drag competition. She won.

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, NSW
Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #395] Jumper

2010-02-27T08:50:00.002Z

And for those who're interested in seeing one of the idiots jump off...

Cheers,
Shaun
Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com
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[The Life of Shaun #394] Tāmaki-makau-rau

2010-02-27T08:40:00.001Z

I've made it to the penultimate destination of my Australasian adventure - Auckland (distantly related, also the name of the street I mostly grew up on). When I came to Australia in 2002, I wanted to jump over here to see it, but there just wasn't the time. I figured this will likely be the last time I am in this part of the world for a while, so I better do it now.

Auckland must be about the luckiest city on Earth; nestled between two separate bays, so nowhere's far from a beach, tucked between over 40 green mountains and hills, moderate weather, situated in a rich, Westernised, well-liked nation, urban, but not overcrowded, a diverse population - it's about as good as it gets. (At least on paper; if I were a W1 kinda guy, it might be nirvanic for me, but I am definitely E1 - I need a little grit, edge and vibrancy in my cities.) The style and feel of it actually feels like the nice part of LA around UCLA - I can understand why LA was so desirable before it grew into the unlovable cancerous sprawl it is today.

(Lottie & Argie, I wish you were here with me! There are a couple of bars here I really want to go to and you're the only other people in the world who would go with me!)

One more night out here, then it's off to Sydney in the early afternoon.

Cheers,
Shaun

1. IMG_0330 - Actually a pre-Auckland pic: my chariot from Bangkok and where it took me

2. IMG_0333 - Leaving Sydney

3. IMG_0337 - And arriving in Auckland - they look related, don't they?

4. IMG_0348 - Interesting self portrait

5. IMG_0357 - Just about wherever you are in town, you can see the Sky Tower (the tallest structure in the Southern hemisphere, as you will doubtlessly hear dozens of times). This is my view from outside my hotel.

6. IMG_0367 - Close up and underneath; the cables on the right hand side are used to guide down the idiots that pay to jump off the tower.

7. IMG_0371 - Central Auckland from the tower

8. IMG_0373 - And a view the other direction from the tower - you can see how the city stretches out to another bay.

9. IMG_0384 - Typical pleasant Auckland street

Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #393] Views from Cambodia

2010-02-26T08:58:00.005Z

Hi all,

I've posted four videos from Cambodia on my FB. I normally don't bother as videos tend to be too long and dull, as are these, but they're there for anyone who's keen.

Out into the wilds of gay Auckland - wish me luck!

The road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh

Entering Phnom Penh

Typical road in Phnom Penh

How to make a right turn in Phnom Penh

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

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[The Life of Shaun #392] Shaun H. Magellan

2010-02-25T20:37:00.002Z

I'm back in Sydney!

This time I've arrived from Europe via Asia, landing from the West instead of America and landing from the East as in 2002, and with this I have now officially circumnavigated the globe. Not a huge feat in this day and age as it once was, but still sounds kinda cool.

Flight from Bangkok was bumpy, but still a Xanax haze. Grabbing some Western food now (I see a McD's over there...) and then it's just about an hour till boarding for Auckland.

Loved visiting SE Asia, but glad to be back in the "West" - though I will miss Asian prices!

Cheers,

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #391] Kruising Kampuchea

2010-02-25T07:57:00.003Z

Seems I wrote a long one on my even longer layover at BKK. No hard feelings towards the skippers.

It was not with a heavy heart that I left Bangkok (and my current situation of laying over at BKK is not endearing me any more in the slightest), so I was ready to love Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat and my first stop in Cambodia. And Siem Reap happily obliged. From the moment you debark the plane to the tiny airport to pay for your $20 on-site visa (Cambodia is unofficially dollarised - the local currency, the riel, is only used for change - so they get hard currency in however they can) you are aware you are in a poor country, far away from home. But it's relaxed and pleasant and charming, in its underdeveloped way. I liked it immediately.

Our hotel was great, which helped, and the post-temple-touring nightlife was just on the right side of not being too touristy. SR is emphatically hippyish in the old Northern California style, full of backpackers who've stayed on longer than intended, whiling away the hours with cheap beer and live music. Not my normal scene at all, but somehow it worked here. There are hotels going up everywhere around the town, so I imagine this will be squashed within a few years, so if you have any desire to see the temples of Angkor Wat, I gently encourage you to do so soon.

Temple touring is also totally not my cup of tea, but the Angkor Wat temples are impressive enough that even I enjoyed seeing them. I was pretty much templed out after Angkor Wat itself and reserved the last of my tourist energy by doing drive-by sight-seeing until Ta Prohm, the "Tomb Raider" temple, which is cool as they've allowed it to remain as rediscovered, overgrown and wild. But several hours outside urbanity are more than enough for me, and it was quickly back to the gay-friendly Golden Banana Resort and its cocktails.

Sadly, I only had one day in SR (in hindsight I should've cut Bangkok down by one) and so on Tuesday I found myself on a bus with 35 new friends on the "highway" ('It's paved the entire way now' - Lonely Planet) to the capital, Phnom Penh. It was a six-hour Discovery Channel documentary on the daily life of the poor in the developing world. As I sat at my window, farms, homes on stilts, children playing in mud, emaciated cows being walked to pasture, markets selling the most improbable necessities and foods unpalatable to a Westerner, beggars, school children and an endless stream of scooters flickered across my live action TV.

Pulling into the bus station at Phnom Penh you are immediately encased by tuk-tuk drivers, so you pick one and head out into its swarming streets. There are practically no traffic lights (and apparently even fewer traffic rules), so any journey is a non-stop obstacle course through a river of scooters, cars and tuk-tuks. Again, I was instantly fond of Phnom Penh. Being put up in a schazzy house with a maid, cook and cleaner didn't hurt, but I loved the thirdy-worldy feel of the city, without the crushing weight of a megacity. It was chaotic, but manageabley and engagingly so. The people had a harder edge than the Thais (but they've also had a genocide within most of their living memories, so I forgive them this), but are still accommodating and genuine.

I saw the three requisite tourist sites: S-21 (the prison where the Khmer Rouge detained and tortured its enemies before sending them to site number two), the Killing Fields (less impactful than S-21, though that's due to the ill-thought memorials more than the gravity of the place) and the Royal Palace (a five-minute stop any any itinerary is sufficient). S-21 was really quite effective in getting across the three years, eight months and 20 days of Khmer Rouge rule. It's not overdone or overly graphic - some of it's comically underdone - but I felt queasy by the time I was in building B.

After all that (with a curry lunch personally prepared for me in the middle), it was onto the rooftops of the hoity-toity quayside for $1 drafts to wait for Mary Keany's arrival from the North. A lovely dinner at a restaurant run and staffed by former street children rounded out the night and my trip to Southeast Asia. I'm now leeching WiFi in Bangkok's airport waiting to be able to check in my luggage so I can go through security to find somewhere to plant myself for lunch. Overnight flight to Sydney, short layover there before heading out to New Zealand. Don't worry, I still have 58 Xanax left.

Choum reap lia,
Shaun

Me at Angkor Wat

Going into the top level I had to have my shoulders covered, so I used Mary's shawl. Very Middle East chic, I think!

Me in one of the trees at Ta Prohm, the "Tomb Raider" temple. They've left this one for nature to take its course.

Mary made the mistake of letting the market children outside the temples know she was comfortable with parting with her money and quickly acquired an entourage.

Standard Cambodian homes along the "highway" from Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. What was really odd, actually, is that along almost the entire length of the road, there were houses such as this or other rural structures. Only occasionally did the development expand more than one building back from the road, creating a town of sorts, but you could almost hand someone a letter in Phnom Penh, and that person could pass it to his neighbour, and so on, and the letter would eventually reach Siem Reap.

The charming market town we stopped in half way to Phnom Penh

Children playing in a mud pool outside the capital

A reminder that not all visitors to Cambodia have the purest intentions

S-21 (Tuol Sleng), a former high school turned prison where the Khmer Rouge held and tortured "enemies of the state" before taking them to the Killing Fields

List of rules for prisoners

The most disturbing, but effective, displays at the museums were pictures such as this. In many of the cells, a picture has been hung of who was found in the room (and in what state) when the prison was liberated.

Enemy of the state #24

Cambodia was a French colony, and you see their shadow in the architecture throughout central Phnom Penh

Shelves of skulls from the Killing Fields

Some of the holes left from the uncovered mass graves

The killing tree. The theory of the Khmer Rouge was that if you kill someone, you should kill the entire family, including babies - there's no gain in keeping them alive, and you risk them seeking revenge when they are older.

Traffic circle in PP

The first Western chain in PP is, surprisingly, not McD's (though considering I saw about 50 KFCs for every McDonald's in Bangkok, perhaps it's not so surprising after all).

Typical street in PP

The prime minister's understated house, discretely located on the main traffic circle in the diplomatic quarter of the city, overlooking the Independence (from France) Monument

If you ever have the chance to stay with someone with staff (esp. a cook), I encourage you to do so!

Royal palace (not where I stayed...)

Me at a rooftop bar (quelle suprise) overlooking the quayside

PP from the same roof. It's not yet a city of towering edifices, though they are starting to try.

Shaun H. Coley
BKK, after Phnom Penh, Cambodia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #390] Three nights in Bangkok

2010-02-21T15:50:00.003Z

"Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town --"

I realised on the second day here, as Mary and I were in a taxi, that I don't really feel like I am in Bangkok. This is because, well, there is nothing here to make you feel like you are anywhere specific. There's no Eiffel Tower, no Golden Gate Bridge, Big Ben or Empire State building, nothing that declares "You are in Bangkok." There is just nondescript, chaotic, disorganised and exhausting sprawl.

I hate it for all the reasons I expected to, and I love that. It's exactly what I expected a huge city in the developing world to be like. Beijing was soullessly (re)planned, but architecturally inspired. Shanghai breathes with the vibrant air of a world city. Bangkok, like dozens of others, I imagine, is an undefined, heaving mass. Energetic and frenetic, garish and flashy, but not easy to get a handle on. The steady stream of backpackers attest to the hedonistic reputation of the city, and the elderly men with much younger girls (and sometimes boys) lay bare the hard facts of life in Bangkok. But all this is what gives it its sultry, almost forbidden, exotic edge. You definitely know you've left the West when you are here.

The people are golden, however. Unfathomably friendly, courteous and helpful (excusing the punters at the tourist traps, but that's a natural part of a tourist's life). As Mary Keany said, you can feel the Buddhism in the people here, there's a very genuine kindness.

The food has been great. I am a Thai buff at the worst of times and we've had one good meal after another. I had the best green curry ever and som tom every day. My stomach will leave very happy.

Off to one last Thai dinner; ready for Cambodia and its food tomorrow.

ลาก่อน,
Shaun

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me

From "Chess"

Coming into Bangkok from the airport

Mary, Sean and me at the Grand Palace

Me at the Grand Palace

Me on the Chao Phraya River

Me, waiting patiently, where assigned, for the SkyTrain

The street where our hotel was

People actually queue where directed for the train

A building I particularly loved

McD's, natch

Wat Arun from the river (cute German on the left)

No sashaying at Wat Arun!

Looking South from Wat Arun

Stairs down...

View out our hotel room

Less glamorous quarter of the capital

Urban infrastructure piled high

Under our SkyTrain stop

And finally, can you find me? :-)

Shaun H. Coley
Bangkok, Thailand

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #389] Clarification

2010-02-19T18:00:00.001Z

OK, OK, before I get any comments, when I said "I'm definitely in Asia again", I was referring to the frenetic, chaotic, incongruous city that you just don't quite get in the West, even our buzziest epicentres of New York and London.

Mary Keany surprised me with a massage (at a spa, not with her own hands - she's a modern woman) as my arrival present. (The royal) We love Mary Keany.

Amazing green curry tonight. Off to bed, stomach contented.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Bangkok, Thailand

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #388] In the Big B

2010-02-19T11:21:00.003Z

Hey all,

Just to let ypou (especially you, Mammi-Spammi!) know that I've arrived safely in Bangkok. First impression? I'm definitely in Asia again. Which is actually kinda cool.

MK chose a great central hotel for us - heading out now to see what's there.

Sa-wut dee krup,

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Bangkok, Thailand

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

[The Life of Shaun #387] And I'm off!

2010-02-18T19:08:00.000Z

Well, the taxi is due in 15 minutes.

Once again, I have overpacked. I do this every time; I think I have packed moderately, and might toss in an extra shirt or two. Then as I am doing the 'final pack' to leave, I realise 200 things I forgot and my bag ends up bulging. But I have my tickets, money and passport (had to be said), so everything else I can manage.

I feel a bit odd right now -- I remember before such a big trip, there would always be an enormous ball of excitement. And I am excited - just not that excited. I don't know if it's because I'm older, have "done this" before, am exhausted, still not comprehending just how far and foreign I am going, or just still too caught up in London life to realise I will be in Bangkok, Thailand in about 16 hours' time. But I feel kinda like I am gonna wake up in Shadwell tomorrow and plod through another day. I am sure some authentic green curry and £5 massage will snap me out of that (OK, thinking about the food just gave me a twinge of excitement!).

Anyway, just wanted to send a quick note before I headed out. Here goes!

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com