3 days to go before I am home on monday night. Looking forward to it. finished all my classes now, and we had a couple of parties to see me off, one in my Malay calss and one in my chinese class. Everyone has been so friendly. As I'm leaving a month earlier than others, I am getting a special send off. Noor, a guy from Pakistan in my Malay class brought in Chicken Biriyani for everyone, and we finished the calss half an hour early to eat it. I'd promise to sing a song in my Chinese class before I left, so I took the guitar in and did the tamil song from the indian festival and a chinese song my roomates had taught me. There are about 20 students in the class and me and Yong, from S-korea, are the only guys there, the girls had got a dictaphone and were recording messages for me when I walked in, then they recorded my fairwell speach, which I had to do in chinese, and then the songs which sounded really bad, as I hadn't practiced in a while, but a great memory.... people have been giving me loads of little gifts as well, which is really nice, I have a stuffed dog, a wooden merry-go-round thing that plays music, one of those oil dripping executive toys 2 flute whistles, a necklace, some stamps, a keyring and many other things, very nice to get so many gifts, just have to find the space to bring them home now... I hope I can bring the guitar on the plane without charge.

Also I'm wanting to buy a laptop here to take back to the uk as its slightly cheaper. I bought a vrey cool mp3 player and memory stick in one, for 50 quid, 128mb.

Had a leaving party at Aki and Elinas last night, nice to say goodbye to everyone, well, all the international students anyway. Not going to KL now, so I'm just relaxing in my last few days here in Pinang. Got 50 of my best photos from the last year printed. it's nice to have something physical to show people, rather than just images on a CD.

See you,
John


Went to a Mars party at Imm and Lim's house the other night, to celebrate its closest passing to the earth in 76,000 years I think. This photo was taken by Kenny the next night.

I want to sail around the world, I met a guy in Mexico who was doing it around central america, and another in Thailand, who had sailed accross the pacific, sounds cool. very cool. So thinking of getting enough money together after I graduate and buying a small boat with all the equipment, and then loading up a laptop with loads of stuff I'd always wanted to learn, like science, Maths, genetics, philosophy, astronomy, etc etc... and then just setting sail... I have become quiet a good studier when I have the time to devote to it, and no interuptions.

You can get auto pilots so you can sail through the night and a radar to wake you up if anything comes near to the ship, a GPS for navigation, and a windturbine and solar panel for electricity. The guy in Thailand also had a air compressor so he could dive anywhere and fishing gear and a stove. sounds cool to me... and if you get bored, you stop somewhere and go and travel, he'd been sailing for 28 years and the longest stretch was only 20 days or so. his friend was selling a boat with most equipment for 25k USD, so that's my target to save for.

got very drunk at a finnish vodka party on friday. some intersting photos will appear from somewhere I think....
John

Good evening,

The week after I got back from Mellaka was convocation, it was a nightmare, 5000 or so students graduating ceremonies in a week, too much traffic and too many people on a normally too-crowded campus... I stayed in my room most of the week, but cought up on a lot of work I wanted to do, so was good.

tom from hull university came up to visit this weekend, he is studying at NTU in Singapore, where I studied last year, and the international office in Hull put us in touch.

He came up to see Penang, but after a drunken night out on Friday, at 3am we decided that we'd go upto Thailand for the weekend, which, if you are reading this from most other parts of the world, will sound really cool. and it was...
We left 8.30 saturday morning, and arrived in HatYai at 1pm, after changing the clocks forward an hour. I can't remember if I said before, but last month when I went upto Bangkok to visit Julian, I met a Thai couple on the train, who invited me to come and visit their home near Hat Yai and the border to Malaysia.

So I took them up on the offer. and as they had said I could bring friends along, I invited another friend, Hendrich, from Germany who we had met on the bus ride up. I first visited Thailand 3 years ago, and came away with a bad impression, I was almost scammed into buying "gems" in the infamous Bangkok Jewelery scam, and all I saw was a land of too many tourists, too many prostitutes, and too many dirty old western men. Whilst all 3 groups have probably doubled in number since then, I thought it would be nice to experience "normal" Thailand, and that's what we did, Hat Yai is a normal town, there are no big tourist attractions, and nothing particularly there, although it is "a commercial hub of southern thailand" according to the lonely planet... Anyway, Anna and her husband Petchalat and her Mum, live in a cool little house next to a monestary in the hills outside Hat Yai.

We hung out, chatted with the monks, walked up into the hills, ate lots of fruit and took lots of photos. In the evening we headed into town to a festival at the Hat Yai University, after doing some shopping at the local Tesco lotus store! The collection of photos of Tesco shops in S-E asia is getting quite sad now. At the festival we ate the best Thai food I have had, and better than the Malaysia festival food I'd eaten during Convocation at USM the week before. We headed back afterwards for an early night, as we were getting up at 6.30 to give the monks offerings of food. That was cool too, but the language barrier makes it a little annoying. Anna has a sister in London and she can speak some English, but it would have been nicer to say a bit more than please and thank you in Thai, but that's a start I suppose. Anna's mum was chinese, and spoke Mandarin so with my chinese and Anna's English we got by ok-lah. Buddism is cool, hope to find out more about it.

We left this morning and they took us out to the beach in Sonklah (?) and another couple of giant buddah statues which scatter the Thai landscape. it started to raina bit about midday so we headed back to the centre of Hat Yai. Because of the weather, we decided to take the early bus back to Pinang and left at 12.30, to give us a bit more time for Tom to see Pinang before he went back,we left Hendrik to stay another night in HatYai, and Anna and her Husband to go back home again. they were so friendly and hospitable to us it was amazing, a very different side of Thailand than I had seemn before... and some friends for life I think.

On the way back to Pinang met a U.S-chinese guy called Lewis, who had been sailing a sail-ship around the world and was living off Malaysia at the moment. Very inspiring for the future...

Tom headed off by train to Kuala Lumpur tonight and will spend some time there tmrw before going back to Singapore for classes on Tuesday. He has the same Law teacher I had when I was at NTU, Valerie Low, who is also the friend of two of Sarah's (my sister) friends from Cambridge.

Ok, now I am being bitten by Mosquitoes, so its time to stop.
goodbye.

Hello,
Back at USM now,
4 days trekking in Tamen Negara was cool, following Elephant footprints in the mud and being attacked by leaches, but all in all a good experience. Spent 3 days at Lee Qian's house (one of my roomates) eating Durian and touring fruit orchards. Was about to head back to Penang and off to Indonesia when I got a text from Charlie another friend who lives in Melaka, he invited me down there, so off I went. Been there before but it is nice when you have someone to show you around, stayed in his Kampung (village) for 4 days. Saw a different side to Melaka than before, when I just saw the tourist part and china town, it seems a very rich city, big shopping malls and lots of young streetwise Malaysians hanging around trying to look different from everyone else, people holding hands and many women without the Tudong, (muslim headscarf).

Around the University nearly all Malay girls wear headscarfs, but it seems not everyone does outside the uni, I think thats from peer pressure. Malaysia is made up of Malays and other indigenous 58%, Chinese 24%, Indian 8%, others 10% (2000 CIA world fact book) and about 55% of the population is Muslim. You may have seen on the media the clamp down by 2 particularly muslim states in the north on beachwear and holding hands in public and singing in bars. The PAS, islamic party is the main opposition to UMNO the national party headed by Dr Mahatir, the PM here since a long time. He is teppig down this Oct and elections follow next year. PAS support looks like it may be growing, and the more liberal parts of Malaysia are getting worried.
decided not to go to Indonesia (again) and not sure if its because of the foreign office warnings (car bomb killed 10 people in Marriott hotel today in Jakarta) or because I'm tired, or scared of travelling. I still find it very tiring to travel and am counting down the 4 weeks left here to come home, I think I just need a break from Asia to Appreciate it again. But I don't know when I'll be back and wan tto visit Indonesia, I sort of feel like I should go just to check it out, but, looks like not this trip....

Johan, from NTU Sweden is flying back out here afterr 2 months at home, he's flying into Bangkok then heading down here and then back to singapore before he flies to Beijing to study Chinese there for a year, sounds fun.

My FYP, final year project is next year at Hull. Dr Grey is my Supervisor and Mobile computing is the subject particulary online voting from Mobile phones and devices, should be interesting, really looking forward to it.

Adios Amigos, John