Note to self

Local beer - Just because it’s cheaper than a bottle of water does not mean that you can drink it like water and not expect to get ridiculously drunk.

Manners – apparently telling your colleague that you are wearing bathers because you ran out of clean knickers is uncouth and will result in head shaking, laughing and being labeled a dag.

Zoos – is life inside a hotel room, without the company of people you care about, without vistas, without normal hot and cold extremes, without food you have to go seek out or help prepare, without movement, without ritual, without challenge – but with the addition of no privacy, and the patronizing comments of strangers - is this the experience which brings about that deadened eye glaze of animals held captive to be stared at in zoos? (Speaking of which..)

Vegetarians – don’t eat fish, or chicken curry. I have failed at being a vegetarian on this trip.

Fatty boombah – nothing quite beats clothes shopping in SE Asia to make you feel like the hugest hulking Viking with ridiculous curvy bits which fabric wont quite accommodate. You will also feel hot and sweaty at the same time, accentuating the lumbering notion of body. Makes you half-heartedly regret the last 10 years of cumulative tim tam eating. Until you find something nice that fits, and then everything ok again.

Go to uni at Cambridge – it makes you feel kind of defensive in some completely infantile and egomaniacle way when older people who have studies overseas wax lyrical about Cambridge. Makes you feel like you are full of potential not actuated. Maybe having studied somewhere fancy would allay this feeling. (Or…)

Get over the fact that you haven’t studied at Cambridge – fairly self explanatory.

Rats – next time someone says they’ve seen a giant rat in or near the restaurant you’re in say ‘but of course, it’s good food, what do you expect – would you trust a place with skinny rats?’