Thinking of you

The autumn leaves are falling like rain.

Although my neighbors are all barbarians

and you, you are a thousand miles away;

there are always two cups at my table.

Abandoned

Just down river from where we're working there are two ships close to each other. This one didn't listen and was sunk. The other one hit a mine, and is lying on it's side.

Skipping stones

I still kick the round ones to the compound and back, but since we sculpted the beach with these I've re-aquainted myself with the joys of skipping rocks. Childish I know, but I'm at the shore at dawn when the water is like glass and there are a million flat stones just waiting there for me. How can a man resist? My childhood record of 8 skips has now improved to 13...... and my men reckon I really need a break right now.

Southern Cross

If you grew up south of the equator, you’d recognise this. And you’d know where to look to find it. It’s the first thing my Dad taught me about the stars – and it made an impression on me all those years ago.

All those years of living in the bush, sitting around the campfire in the middle of nowhere, I always knew – if I followed the Southern Cross, I’d get home. I may have to walk for months, but I’d get home.

I’m on the wrong side of the equator now, and the sky is foreign to me. But every evening before I go to bed, I go outside. And I look to the south..

Global vagrants

I am but one among a vast army of bold adventurers who have chosen between a life of certainty on firm soil, and a life of surprise on shifting sands. We are the troubadours, seafarers, merchants and explorers of our age. We are vagrants and vagabonds. We have no houses: the world is our home. And wherever we go, we envision. We instruct. We construct. We forge alliances across continents and oceans. We beat the drum to the great march of progress - Kuberkat

Life in the Garden of Eden

The Shamal is blowing, turning the whole world into sepia and covering your life in layers of fine dust.

The elections have resulted in a toal security lockdown. Movements in and around Iraq are virtually impossible. And of course the main contractor forgot to renew their contract with the security company so technically we don't have security to protect us.

And one of the "thick as two planks" excavator operators drowned his piece of equipment in the Euphrates. Took two days of $150,000 a day time to get it out. Needless to say thick-as-two-planks is on his way back home already.

This is the border between Iraq and Kuwait.