20.03.10: So I had nothing important to do today, it was a big public holiday in Baku and the main road through town were shut. I was looking forward to meeting up with Lala again later on and she had kindly offered me a couch at her brother's flat. I imagined I'd go to the port, talk with somebody who knew what was going on, find out that the next ferry for Kazakhstan would be leaving in X-many days and have to wait it out. If I was lucky, it would be leaving before Tuesday. If I was REALLY lucky, it might be leaving tomorrow. To be honest, I really couldn't be bothered, what with all the celebrations going on, but I walked down the hill from Nick's to the Metro station, filled up my 'oyster' card (at 20p a trip, it's value for money HEAR…

19.03.10: I called Alex (whom I met at the Irish Pub the other night) and asked him if he could get in touch with the Uzbek embassy to see if there was any chance they might be open after 4pm today. To my shock and surprise, they were - they were open until SIX. This is pretty unheard of where I've come from (which I guess is the rest of the world) - most embassies open for a couple of hours in the morning once a century when the moon is in the Eighth House of Were. THANK YOU ALEX!! Struck with a new sense of urgency (I was firmly convinced that I would be going to the Uzbek embassy on Monday morning) and seeing that yesterday's storm had passed and the skies were bluest of blue, I headed over to the Kazahk embassy to go…

18.03.10: The Caucasus – it’s where us whities get our rather daffy pigeonhole ‘Caucasian’, a term lampooned by Lewis Carroll in his nonsensical Caucus Race in which everybody wins a prize - sounds like modern schooling to me. I would say that when it comes to describing the breeds of human, the term ‘Caucasian’ should be left to describe white skinned dark haired buggers (generally sporting a monobrow – think Noel Gallagher) while us fair and red-haired lot get our own categories… something to do with Vicky the Viking or Groundskeeper Willie would be nice. Gallagans, Vicks and Willies - that would sort the men from the boys. Or maybe we could just do away with the whole system of putting humans into different categories and just have one big box marked ‘human’, you know, separate us from the dolphins in the dole queue. Oh do…