The Desperate Life of the Lonely Traveller

You know that you have spent too much time travelling for work, sitting in hotel rooms, departure lounges and aircraft when you pick up the morning paper in Jeddah and reading it over breakfast you notice a story about al Jazeerah finally getting around to starting its English language broadcast. They then give you a list of the reporters there and you notice names like Riz Khan and Veronica Pedrosa .

Apart from knowing the names, the desperation sets in when you think back and can remember Veronica Pedrosa presenting and anchoring the news on BBC Worldwide and CNN International. So travelling for business so long leaves your pin-ups and heroes global news presenters rather than sportsmen and such.

Definitely time to get out of this business :(

Saudi Censors

OK - I posted an entry to the blog here called A Test Post - Can I Post a Picture and posted it. I included a picture of two models of the Russian warship Poltava. It appears as though the post went through correctly and the upload of the picture worked as the link to the picture is http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/1101/1098274519422064/320/PICT2944.jpg.

However, whenever I click on what should be the image in the post I get a wonderful message from the Saudi Arabian Censors saying (in Arabic as well as English):

Access to the requested URL is not allowed!

Please, fill out the form below if you believe the requested page should not be blocked:

Form for URL unblocking request

Please, send other sites you feel should be blocked using the following form:

Blocking Request Form

Of course, I could list any sites that annoyed me and I am sure they would be blocked without checking.

I am not certain that I want to try the unblocking request yet - perhaps when it is closer to my time to leave.

More importantly, the Censors are blocking pictures posted to Blogger beta here ... but permitting access to pictures elsewhere, on other blogs hosted by other organisations. Seems that Google's influence in the Kingdom here is not as great as other American Organisations.

A Test Post - Can I Post a Picture?

This post is to have a further look at Blogger beta blogging and to see how it goes when I need to handle a picture. I really do not want to use Hello - I was not happy with it 6 months ago when I first tried hello and I really do not want to go back and use it.

OK, so some ships, my favourite past time. They should be showing at the top of this blog entry. The vessel is the Poltava.

Wonder how that went? If it worked you should be seeing a ship from the Russo-Japanese War, painted in both its pre-war colours as well as its during way colours. I can't check this but I will explain why in a later blog entry.

A Rainy Day in Jeddah

It rained four days ago. I awoke at 6 in the morning to the alarm then heard the thunder. Looking out of the hotel window I saw a lovely thunderstorm, thunder, lightning and rain. Had a shower, looked out the window again and the road at the back of the hotel (the Madinah Road) was flooded.

It then occurred to me, because it probably only rains once a year here no one worries about building a drainage system. In fact, walking around town I can't recall seeing a drain. This morning, therefore, it was like driving to work through a lake.

I've been coming to the Middle East on and off now for 15 years and today was the first day I have been here in the rain. The nearest I came before was arriving in Kuwait two days after it had rained. I look forward to the few days here to see what happens after the rain - to see how long things remain wet.

Oh, and actually the road out the front of the hotel is also the Madinah Road

First Post

I like playing around with new toys, new technology, new applications. Beta blogger is new so Thomo has to play. Today is 1 November 2006 so it seems like a good time to start playing. OK, so I have a well read blog in Microsoft Spaces. So what? I'll have a little play here and if I like this more than MSN spaces (and indeed if some of my BlogBunnies prefer it here too) then I may move everything from there to here.

I need to work out pictures, lists, referrals to Amazon so I can retire as a millionaire but all these things make it fun.

So, here it is - the first posting. For a while I will duplicate MSN Live Spaces here then make a final decision.