Off to HK

I'm on my way to Hong Kong today. I'll probably be there til Friday, then back to the UK for the weekend, then Spain.

Went to an excellent restaurant last night: St John, in Smithfield London. I've been meaning to go there for years, but never got round to it. It's Olde-school British food basically, and rather good too. Very unusual menu of mostly meat dishes, excellent service, the only criticism is the design of the restaurant was a bit stark. It made a change of my recent diet of Brazilian food, 3 Brazilian restaurants in 3 days in London, Marbella and Malaga (none of them any good incidentally).

I spoke with my brother about my dad yesterday. Things seem to have improved a little, he gets out of bed occassionally now and although his speech hasn't improved much, he does seem to be eating more and is fighting the infection well.

Thanks to everyone for all the kind posts and emails. I'm almost certainly leaving Asia unless something unexpected turns up in the next few weeks. I won't miss Macau, but I'll miss HK and I'm gutted I won't experience another Sunday afternoon in Laguna with my Indonesian friends.

I'm writing this at Heathrow airport, sitting next to an uncomfortably beautiful and young German girl, so gotta dash, I think from the way she's looking at me she's afraid for her life and about to make a run for it is going to ask for my number.

Update: scrap that. German girl just stood up. As well as being uncomfortably attractive she's also incarceratingly young, so I'll go back to my blogging.

After Europe I think I've decided to travel round S America again. Actually, I've already been to the places I had burning desires to go to: Salvador, Rio, Buenos Aires, Cartagena. So I'll either go to these places again which is not a problem at all, or I'll find some new places to get excited about. As I've told my friend Richard so many times, to the point he's begun researching the legal grounds for permissable manslaughter of friends, the most exciting part of travelling is the planning.

I have friends in Cartagena and BA, so if I can convince them to travel with me at short notice most of my travels will be in Colombia or Argentina I expect. After reading a little about Hugo Chavez recently and being a big fan of this blog, I'm quite tempted by Venezuela too. After all, Brazil is sooo 2004.

My last trips to South America were all party party party. I'm not really looking for that this time. I'd like to get healthier and I've got a lot of contemplation to do. I've made two job-changes in the past 10 months that, in hindsight, were mistakes. Not to say I didn't make the right decisions with the information I had at the time, but they were nevertheless mistakes. I've been relatively blessed with my career as a whole, been in the right place at the right time on several occasions and have progressed well considering my age, so I'm quite philosophical about the recent problems. I definitely feel that most people, and certainly me, benefit from a few kicks up the arse every now and again as a warning not to get too comfortable. Although I haven't begun really thinking about it seriously, I'm going to look at my options of Going It Alone. Something small and mobile, with minimal operational and setup costs would be ideal, but like I say these thoughts aren't very mature yet.