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Time (among other things) appears to be against me since my return from Africa on Friday. Ironically, I have suffered both a worse internet experience (thanks to an inexplicable failure of my router as soon as I switched the bastard thing back on) and a worse case of the squits (thanks to I'm not sure what, but feel that the bizarre offerings on the flights back must have been a contributing factor) than anything that happened to me while I was in Ethiopia.

My notebook is staring accusingly at me, filled with ten days' worth of drivel, but I am not yet in a place to deal with it. As a result of the above-mentioned internet hassles, it has taken me the last couple of days just to get the majority of my pictures on to Flickr, and all of my grand ideas for scanning the various bits of Amharic memorabilia, integrating some YouTube videos into the text, and giving you all a rich multimedia rendering of my time in the New Flower are at the moment so much dust.

Like a bogey man, the prospect of work in the morning is lurking in the shadows, and I await the dreaded moment when I switch the BlackBerry on for the first time. Part of me says that I should wait until tomorrow morning, for there will be nothing I can do about the assorted bullshit on there this afternoon, especially if I have another Pastis whilst listening to the Rags, but I am becoming increasingly itchy and feel that I will need to take the step before too long.

All that in mind, I will present you with some key words to sum up my visit:

street life; begging; pollution; unparalleled beauty; terrible sadness; the human stench; hungry eyes; joie de vivre; curry for breakfast; tej; ishi; driving; ennui; reverence; smiling.

I hope that I will ultimately recover from the reverse culture-shock I am currently undergoing and translate my notebook to post or posts for your delectation, but in the meantime, please excuse me while I spend the afternoon doing jack shit.