Out Of Here
Thursday, December 14th 2006 - 6:56 AM
It's not snowing!
Of course, it could start in the 8 hours before my flight's due to leave, at 3pm. But my chances of getting out of here and being in Dubai by evening are looking fairly hopeful now.
I've packed everything - more or less - which was a pain in the arse as always. I'm taking everything i've got with me, as i've learnt the lesson about leaving stuff in places where you're sure you'll be going back to. There's nothing worse than having stuff stranded somewhere - and having to make a special trip there to pick it up.
I'm sure i'm going to be coming back here - but i've been sure about things like that before, and it hasn't turned out as i expected. In January this year, i finally got the last of my stuff from Mandorah, in the Northern Territory (just across the harbour from Darwin) - i left there in 2001 for a few weeks in Brisbane and Sydney, and never ended up going back!
I'm really glad to be moving out of here now, too. The generator has been playing up really badly the last few days - stopping for no apparent reason every so often. It will usually start again, and run for anything between a few minutes and several hours, but it's guaranteed to die again sooner or later. It's a fuel line problem, but i haven't been able to work out exactly what's causing it.
And the hot water's stopped working. There's a pressure pump in the roof, which - for some reason i don't understand - is needed to make the hot water work, and it seems to have died. It's probably an electrical problem, but the wiring's such a mess, i can't tell what it is without further investigation - which i don't want to do.
Who knows what else will go wrong in the next few days...
All in all, it's feeling like a good time to be getting out of here. I really hope that flight leaves as scheduled!
You can see some of my photos of Afganistan at
WillKemp-Photos.com/afghanistan