Hmm, my Zoroastrian contact didn't turn up in the end, but that's no big deal as I've grown used to not having everything (anything?) going to plan. Luckily I also had Plan B: football. Long live the World Cup. Although I'm not so sure about that after today. One of the great advantages of being multinational is being able to spread your net farther and wider when it comes to sporting events and to choose ones nationality depending on the different countries' sporting fortés. However, today I was to learn a painful lesson from this "eggs in different baskets" tactic, and that is that if all the baskets should fall then the resulting mess is more nerve-wracking. Today both Iran and the Czech Republic were in action and both lost badly in front of my angst-ridden eyes. This only realistically leaves me with England as a representative of the UK (though it pains my Scottish sensibilities to admit it) before I have to start casting my allegiances out further after more tenuous links. I should probably just plump for Brazil now and save myself the bother, although knowing my jinxing ability that would probably cause them to immediately lose.
OK, that's enough football talk for now. I'm sure you're all curious as to where I am now and what I've been up to (though the more brutally honest of you are just waiting until I finish my rambling so that you can get on with something more interesting. At the moment I'm in the southern town of Kerman. It's a pleasant place with the requisite collection of mosques, traditional brick and adobe houses and rambling bazaar, but nothing out of the ordinary. I am, however, getting a taste for these traditional bazaars, the 17th century precursor to shopping malls, but with soul. Not only do they often have sumptuous architecture (domes, stalactites, frescoes) that often goes overlooked among the throng of people, but they are a cool retreat from the heat of Summer. Oh yeah, and you can buy almost anything there, from kitsch plastic, Chinese-made toys to 2m-wide copper saucepans. Kerman also has a nice collection of neighbourhood mountains which I took a few hours to explore today after my relative inactivity in Yazd. I've also got myself another contact here who has promised to show me round some of the more remote and obscure sights of the area. It should be fun, and in case he doesn't turn up, well there's always the football.
OK, that's enough football talk for now. I'm sure you're all curious as to where I am now and what I've been up to (though the more brutally honest of you are just waiting until I finish my rambling so that you can get on with something more interesting. At the moment I'm in the southern town of Kerman. It's a pleasant place with the requisite collection of mosques, traditional brick and adobe houses and rambling bazaar, but nothing out of the ordinary. I am, however, getting a taste for these traditional bazaars, the 17th century precursor to shopping malls, but with soul. Not only do they often have sumptuous architecture (domes, stalactites, frescoes) that often goes overlooked among the throng of people, but they are a cool retreat from the heat of Summer. Oh yeah, and you can buy almost anything there, from kitsch plastic, Chinese-made toys to 2m-wide copper saucepans. Kerman also has a nice collection of neighbourhood mountains which I took a few hours to explore today after my relative inactivity in Yazd. I've also got myself another contact here who has promised to show me round some of the more remote and obscure sights of the area. It should be fun, and in case he doesn't turn up, well there's always the football.
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