Motion

Well, I'm about ready to kick off another journey.

The reason that I stopped writing this was that it had become a bit tedious. I really couldn't think of much of interest to write about, at least from my end.

Now that I'm set to hit the road again, odds are that at least a few interesting stories will come up. [For those who haven't read this blog before, the most interesting posts from my previous trip were from late 2005 to early 2006, so if you're feeling bored, I'd recommend checking that out to get an idea of how I write.]

Presently, I'm finishing up preparations. My cousin came to take my things to her place in Ottawa for storage, which was a huge help. I also spent Christmas there with her and her family. It was nice to have a traditional Christmas for a change, as last year I crashed my car after hitting some black ice, and ended up being stuck in Montreal for the holidays. The year before that, I spent Christmas in Albania, a very poor Muslim country. Anything but traditional.

I had my going-away party last week, and was surprised at how well it went. I was flattered that so many people came, including some friends that I hadn't seen in almost three years. We spent most of the night at an eclectic cafe drinking herbal teas, smoking shisha, and eating chocolate pyramids. It was nice to do something that felt different from typical bar gatherings.

About the only other thing that I've been doing is trying to transfer some songs onto my mp3 player. Ordinarily this shouldn't be very complicated, but for some reason things always go wrong. The first issue is that I don't own a computer. Yet every time I go to a friend's place or to a cafe, either the computer won't recognize the player, I can't rip the songs onto the hard drive of the computer, or the software won't label the tracks. In the end I've managed to get it half full so far, so I'll have to hold out till I can mooch a few songs off of random computers that I come across over the next few weeks.

My traveling will kick off on Tuesday, when I fly to Halifax for a few days to see some family. I'll hop around the Maritimes for a couple of weeks before heading to New York.

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And now for a rant about things that have been happening in the world. After all, it gets boring just talking about myself...

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a Pakistani politician, is scary as hell.

Unfortunately, people in the west tended to think of her as a savior, yet her past stints as prime minister of Pakistan weren't exactly amazing successes. Often times she ended up being caught in one scandal after another, even leaving office in disgrace in the mid 90's, amongst allegations of corruption.

Yet she was still a symbol of secularism in the middle east, with her being a woman perhaps more important still. Now there is a very real risk of a civil war breaking out in a nuclear-armed, volatile nation, and some people who are set to win from this are extremely terrifying. It is a very real possibility that hard line Muslims could come to power, or at least get their hands on some very ugly bombs. Perhaps the Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan will get some new toys to play with...