Photos of my Guatemala City apartment and the view from my balcony. Photos 112.

Hi allWell we're home now safe and sound and seem to have adjusted to the different time zone after a few nights of broken sleep We're both enjoying looking back on on the blog and on what a brilliant time we had in Oz so thought we would wrap it all

Well I'm back here after spending the summer at my apartment in Paris with side trips to Marseilles and the Calanques county Dorset on the south coast of England London and oAmsterdam . On the way back to California I stopped off for a week in Bost

The weekend was very full as I had my allday program beginning at 11 a.m. and finishing around 9 p.m. In that course of time we practiced breathing techniques sang an old Rogers and Hart song to be prepared for next class engaged in all sorts of mo

Well we successfully cycled over San Bernadino Pass and down into Italy biked on to Milan and spent a few days in Italy Lake Maggiore and Tuscany being the highlights. I couldn't really post any updates for a number of reasons Internet not availab

There is a strange thing that happens when you live overseas. People take weekend trips to Vietnam or Japan or Korea or in my case Thailand. In the states this would be like taking a trip to Florida or California or just to a random city in the midwest.

We are home now but this didn't stay posted for some reason so I am reposting it just to have it there.Hi Sitting in a truck stop cafe that has free wifi...no internet for a week so no blog to post. We are well and continuing to have a good time

This is a frightening thought but I may be the most photographed person in all of China In my first few days here I kept catching people taking pictures of me on the sly and when I looked at them I noticed them waving but thought they wanted me to

So now we are lying in our Holiday Inn room in a nice big King Bed at Los Angeles International Airport HOW EXCITING But what has happened up until now To be honest not a lot so here goes.....Left Cairns at 430am on the 2nd October to fly

Here is a short video taken by my Canadian good friend Mark Takefman. We were on our month long trip from Delhi to Leh back through Spiti Valley. This was just one of a number of challenges we faced on the socalled roads. Mind you there were wonderful

The morning was a lovely day and so after breakfast we set out to lake Cocibolca for a bit of kayaking through the tiny islands near Granada known as Las Isletas. When first touring these islands it's best to do it on boat which I had done 6 weeks before.

Hallo zusammenSo ich bin wieder zurueck vom Lares Trek. Es hat mir super gefallen. Leider war das Wetter nicht so optimal aber wir hatten Glueck dass es immer erst anfing zu regnen wenn wir bereits unsere Zelte aufgestellt habenSodeli von Anfan

sorry if you got 2 msgs re previous post Blog site said unpublished so did againthis is written the day after and its noon in Bruxelle as I was just so tired after yesterday that beauty sleep I referred to a catchup day mostly setting an alarm

Our feet are firmly set in the US still but only for a few more weeks. We are checking our lists of things to bring and Ranjit's mom has a list of obscure favorite items we'll be searching for prior to the trip. Jeet and mom have decided that we'll be vi

Onboard Queen VictoriaYou know that feeling you get when you are in your bedroom laying down after just waking up where you have this moment of intense thinking and all you can imagine is how small you are compared to everything else in exi

THE BASICS We're still amid Utah's gorgeous national parks. We have progressed from Zion to Bryce to Capitol Reef and now are in Moab to enjoy Arches and Canyonlands.THE FLUFFAt the end of my last blog I commented on the women I had seen wearing

Day 5 30th September 2010Breakfast outside and then away to the Steppes for more headwinds and a puncture in my front tyre caused by those wicked prickly roadside plants. Furhter down the road I repaired a puncture for Kristine. which was the four

So this post will be a bit of a different one from the norm. I haven't done much poetry writing since I've been here but for some reason walking to school the other day I looked around and truly came to appreciate how gorgeous it is here in the fall. Next

Onward we go to the last known city on our itnerary ParisWe boarded a train from Nice to Marseille and then Marseille to Paris. I have to say having been a feast for mosquitos the last dew nights I was kinda glad to be out of Nice that morning.

Tonight at BSF I had a wonderful experience that I thought I would share. One of the questions readWhy do you think being carried off to another land would be a good thing for the peopleI took this question at face value since we are studying Isa

Sometimes I cannot believe that I actually live in this Central American country. It has been raining and raining and raining since we came home from Managua on Friday. Like the pants 7 pairs 3 mine that I washed in the rain on Saturday morning

Hello slight break in the blog and alots been happening......so the journey continues onto Franz Josef glacier. There was some poetic licence in the description of the 'rain forest canopy' but the tree hut was very nice and comfortable and the

The past 6 weeks have flown by and tonight I'm off on Part 2 of my travel year. Although this is meant to be a travel blog it is also meant to document my 2010 journey. Let's just say that if I didn't record some of the highlights of being home I would mis

Big ShoesAfter eating lunch at Relish today Maria Scott and I took a taxi to the big shoe store. I found an address in the back of Chengdoo magazine. Since my flip flops broke I haven't had anything to wear with my black clothing so I needed some b

Okay so I haven't yet skyrocketed to the top of the Chinese Alist and I don't think the foreignerdirected jeerscatcalls on the street invariably a snickering hoot Hellooo Yeah nihao to you too jackass these days are any different from

Hello from Sri LankaOur trip here has turned out quite well actually. After a fairly slow start at the beach town of Unawatuna we ended up climbing Adam's Peak or Sri Pada. It was the top of the mountain where Adam when thrown out of heaven landed a

When you are homeless jobless and penniless there are few options open to you but to return to the family home even if it is in Australia With a degree behind him and a spring in his step Cieran tried so hard to start his career and settle into the next

When I got to Arequipa a white city within view of three volcanoes in the middle of the desert I was really feeling the absence of Conny and Jennie. It was odd to suddenly be on my own again after 2 weeks of being part of a three. And for the four month

Sydney's northern beaches ist ein beliebter Urlaubsort fuer Sydnysiders. Die northern beaches erstrecken sich von Manly bis nach Palm Beach.

It was a surprisingly long flight to Sydney from Bangkok around 9 hours. So we were pretty sleepy when we got there and after the bus back to the hostel we just chilled out and got our bearings. It was a bit of a party hostel and we were in a dorm but lu

I had not had a real vacation since April 2009 and I was going crazy for warm weather. Jason knew how badly I wanted to get away and gave me one of the best Christmas presents a girl could ask for a CRUISE I'm apologizing now for the lack of detail

Hi AllSo I'm on holiday for a week for the national day celebrations. We went out for a ride on our bikes on Friday and Saturday and here are the photosEnjoyJah Bless

Hello everyone hope you're all okOur first night of hostel living was interesting quite a noisy and interrupted night so didn't get a lot of sleep no chance of getting over the jet lag there I really don't understand people who have showers at 4am

Cape May is a city at the southern tip of Cape May Peninsula in

Weather was going to turn on us to get to the next destination so our Captain decided to leave Newport early to bit the storm. The boss drove the rental car and took the ferry while we took the yacht Pretty odd. They got in to a little adventure that w

Got the wonderful suggestion from my boyfriend James that we start a travel blog together and keep a track of our trips and travels and of our expanding adventures as we get to see and learn more about our mysteriously beautiful planet. Being a bit of a

Premiers FishChips neozelandais face l'ocan de Raglan C'etait aussi le soir d'une clipse totale mais comme je suis hyper doue je l'ai pas vraiment vue et je ne sais donc pas quoi a ressemble

Premier jour Taupo.. o il ne fait pas spcialement beau L'occasion pour moi de revisiter mes premiers jours en NouvelleZlande

The 28 or so hours traveling here has proven to be more than worth itWhile the flight from Houston to Santiago was overnight and in the dark the three hours from Santiago to Punta Arenas were spent winging over the Andes. Amazing is a word overused i

Facebook's emotion study reveals it is hopelessly disconnected from emotional reality: that people get upset when people they care about are unhappy

• Alex Hern: The final straw for Facebook?

This weekend we learned that Facebook had deliberately manipulated the emotional content of 689,003 users' news feeds as part of an experiment to see what kind of psychological impact it would have. For one week in January 2012, some users saw chiefly positive stories (kitten videos, brownie recipes and assorted LOLs), while others were force-fed despair (breakups, health woes and seal-clubbing holiday snaps). And guess what happened?

"The results show emotional contagion," decided the scientists.

The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers bill is the most tedious outrage ever, right down to the dreary acronym. But oh, the horrors it will bring …

David Cameron cares about your safety. It's all he ever thinks about. It's his passion. He's passionate about it. Every time David Cameron thinks about how safe he'd like to keep you, passion overcomes him and he has to have a lie down. With his eyes shut. A bit like he's having a nap and doesn't care about your safety at all.

Right now he's so committed to keeping you safe, he's rushing something called the Drip bill through the House of Commons. Drip stands for Data Retention and Investigatory Powers and critics are calling it yet another erosion of civil liberties and … see, I've lost you because it's just so bloody boring. Maybe it's just me, but whenever I hear about some fresh internet privacy outrage my brain enters screensaver mode and displays that looped news footage of mumblin' Edward Snowden and I automatically nod off only to be awoken shortly afterwards by the sound of my forehead colliding sharply with the table.

Ukip has made thousands from merchandise on its online store. What could the other parties learn from it?

It can't be easy trying to fund a political movement in the current climate, when politicians are about as popular as a wasp in a submarine. You'd have more luck organising a whip-round for President Assad. That's why politicians are forced to suck up to billionaire donors, who expect them to tailor their policies accordingly, thereby further widening the gulf between parties and the public.

But wait. Not all parties are alike. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that, last year, Ukip made a whopping £80,000 from flogging branded merchandise to the public from its online store.

I decided to introduce my son to video games. We soon found one he liked … and I mean really, really liked

So I decided to introduce my two-year-old son to the world of video games. Before you accuse me of hobbling my offspring's mind, I'd like to point out that a) television is 2,000 times worse, so shove that up your Night Garden and b) I also decided to counterbalance the gaming with exposure to high culture. For every 10 minutes of Fruit Ninja during daylight hours, he'd get 10 pages of a critically acclaimed novel at bedtime. We're currently halfway through The Magus by John Fowles, which he's enjoying immensely. He finds some passages so moving that his protracted sobs drown out my reading completely, and when I return to the beginning of the chapter to start again, he leaps up screaming, trying to snatch the book out of my hands with delight.

Like any self-respecting 2014 toddler, he can swipe, pat and jab at games on a smartphone or tablet, but smartphone games aren't real games. They're interactive dumbshows designed to sedate suicidal commuters. And they're not just basic but insulting, often introducing themselves as free-to-play simply so they can extort money from you later in exchange for more levels or less terrible gameplay. Either that or they fund themselves with pop-up adverts that defile the screen like streaks on a toilet bowl.

Russia v Ukraine, Isis, Boris Johnson, Cliff Richard and Ebola – there's not much to be cheerful about right now, though the ice bucket challenge is working overtime

Ah. Right. Looks like I picked a bad week to draw inspiration from current affairs for this knockabout comedy column. The news is rarely a warehouse of carefree chuckles but at the moment it's like an apocalyptic playlist on perpetual shuffle, with one harrowing crisis overlapping another. Palestine, Libya, Syria … it's all horrifying and upsetting. Not a single nice thing has happened all year, except the recent stealth launch of Cadbury's Wispa Biscuits, and even "stealth launch of Wispa Biscuits" sounds like a terrible euphemism for breaking wind.

The planet is currently playing host to countless alarming crises. There's the nail-biting tension of Russia v Ukraine, a depressing standoff overseen by facial-expression-avoider Vladimir Putin. I don't know if all the strings connecting Putin's face muscles to his brain were accidentally severed during a tragic smiling accident years ago, but I've seen brickwork convey more emotion.

The first rule of panic mode is you don’t talk about panic mode. And this is purely for personal reasons, but I don’t want Scotland to reject us

It used to be unthinkable. Now it’s thinkable. In fact, in some minds, it’s already been thought. Scotland might be voting yes to independence and splitting from the rest of the union. I’m not Scottish, and I’m therefore powerless to intervene, although I would personally prefer Scotland to stay – but only for entirely selfish and superficial reasons. Reason one: I’d rather not be lumbered with a Tory government from now until the day the moon crashes into the Thames. Two: I quite like Scotland and the Scottish, so it’s hard not to feel somehow personally affronted by their rejection. Why did you just unfriend and unfollow me, Scotland? What did I ever do to you? What’s that? Sorry, you’ll have to slow down a bit. Can’t understand a word you’re saying. Don’t you come with subtitles?! Ha ha ha! No, seriously, come back. Scotland? Scotland?

Apparently the consequences of a split in the union could be calamitous. The skies will fall and the seas will boil and the dead shall rise and the milk will spoil. There will be a great disturbance in the force. Duncan’s horses will turn and eat each other. Starving ravens will peck out your eyes halfway through the Great British Bake Off. Your dad will give birth to a jackal full of hornets. And in London’s last remaining DVD shop, Gregory’s Girl will quietly be re-categorised as “world cinema”.

The all-new iPhones and Apple Watch can be easily avoided but there’s no escaping iOS 8

The past few weeks haven’t been great for Apple. First they were implicated in the stolen celebrity nude photo disaster, which reminded everybody how easily clouds leak. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the iPhone is generally marketed as a diabolical timewasting device with the potential to wreak a grotesque and devastating invasion of your personal privacy. They tend to focus more on all the cool colours it comes in.

Then they launched the horrible-looking Apple Watch, which does everything an iPhone can do, but more expensively and pointlessly, and on a slightly different part of your body. Only an unhealthily devoted Apple fanatic could bear to wear a Apple Watch, and even that poor notional idiot would have to keep putting their iPhone down in order to operate the damn thing. It’ll scarcely be used for telling the time, just as the iPhone is scarcely used for making calls. It’s not a watch. It’s a gaudy wristband aimed at raising awareness of Chinese factory conditions. Or a handy visual tag that helps con artists instantly identify gullible rich idiots in a crowd.

Exaggeration is the official language of the internet. Only the most strident statements have any impact. Oversteer and oversell, all the time

The other day I was talking to a music fan who’d recently gone to see one of Kate Bush’s widely praised live appearances. Naturally I was keen to hear a first-hand account of this era-defining event, so I asked what it was like.

“The first half was great,” she said. “But the second half got a bit boring.”

It’s a stealth adventure with nowhere to hide and hundreds of respawning enemies waiting to attack you the moment you stand out in any way

I haven’t always been the kind of man who plays videogames. I used to be the kind of boy who played videogames. We’re inseparable, games and I. If you cut me, I’d bleed pixels. Or blood. Probably blood, come to think of it.

Games get a bad press compared with, say, opera – even though they’re obviously better, because no opera has ever compelled an audience member to collect a giant mushroom and jump across some clouds. Nobody writes articles in which opera-lovers are mocked as adult babies who never grew out of make-believe and sing-song; obsessive misfits who flock to weird “opening nights” wearing elaborate “tuxedo” cosplay outfits.

If the fashion industry truly cared about the future of our planet, it would issue a solitary line of unisex, one-size-fits-all smocks, then shut down for good

So then. Alongside “eating a sandwich” and “holding up a copy of a newspaper”, we now have to add “wearing a T-shirt” to the growing list of Ordinary Things Ed Miliband Somehow Just Can’t Do. The other week he was pictured in Elle magazine wearing the Fawcett Society’s “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt. Last Sunday the Mail claimed those T-shirts are stitched together in a Mauritian sweatshop by women earning 62p an hour.

A T-shirt. He can’t even wear a T-shirt without somehow condemning both himself and any surrounding witnesses to ridicule. What’s going to trip him up next? A doorknob? Next week he operates a doorknob so badly he fractures his wrist, and as the medics wheel him to the operating theatre, they accidentally knock an ageing war veteran off a waiting room chair, leaving him groaning in pain on the floor, at which point Miliband insists they stop his gurney so he can lean over and help the guy up, but he forgets about his fractured wrist, so as the 96-year-old decorated-war-hero-and-humbling-inspiration-to-us-all gingerly grabs his hand, Miliband abruptly screeches a barrage of agonised obscenities directly into his face, causing him to hit the floor again, fatally this time, in front of the world’s media, oh and also Miliband does a frightened little wee at the end, and they film that too.

From flooding to Benefits Street, the rise of Ukip to the Apple Watch, the year was filled with huge, grim events. We could all use a lie-down over Christmas

So 2014’s almost done, and unless you got married, or had your firstborn, or won a Subaru filled with Maltesers in a radio phone-in, it’s unlikely to be a year you’ll remember fondly. It was filled with huge, grim events. So is every year, of course, but in 2014 it seemed there were fewer light moments to offset the enveloping dread. And everyone seemed angry, all the time. A whole planet, gritting its teeth. Hundreds protesting. Thousands marching. Millions waiting to attach their internalised rage to a hashtag at a moment’s notice. We could all use a lie-down over Christmas.

The year started badly for Britain when the sky decided to waterboard the lot of us. It rained incessantly throughout early January; big grey raindrops the size of cupboards. The government issued snorkels to anyone under 5ft 4in, while areas of Devon were submerged for so long the residents evolved gills and blowholes.