Showers And Dictators

So I'm trying to get back into things over here. I've started getting onto the whole job-search malarkey, though I suspect it may be a while before my efforts start paying off in interviews and offers.. Otherwise it has been somewhat hard to slip back into polite society, for several reasons I suppose. Renewing contacts with friends isn't always that easy because whilst I've been away they have carried on with their lives (which is self-evident) and so have their routines and it is difficult to slip seamlessly into their already well-arranged lives. Plus what do you talk about? I don't want to sound like a broken record talking about my trip all the time, but then it was the last three years of my life, so what else have I to talk about? Then there's the physical sorting of my belongings and accumulated junk. Unfortunately our house here in London is rather small and I share my room with a lot of my brother's stuff and so am unable to properly spread out and organise my flotsam and jetsam, much of which is squirreled away either in our attic or garage in piles of boxes. I therefore feel as if I'm still living out of my backpack somewhat. And finally over the course of my trip personal hygiene wasn't really much of a priority when camping and staying in tatty hostels (although people who know me would probably say that hygiene has never been a priority for me), but I'm having to make the effort to remember to shower more than twice a week. To help me somewhat I've gone ahead and shaved my hair very short, which makes it more manageable and easier to maintain (I hadn't cut my hair in over a year and it was beginning to show).

On a completely separate note, and somewhat belatedly, I was thinking about Burma/Myanmar the other day. It seems as if there are no problems there anymore judging by the number of column inches the newspapers and airtime the TV news channels are devoting to the situation there nowadays. I was mulling over the political situation there and how it compares to Iraq under Saddam, and honestly I can't for the life of me find any great difference. The repression of ordinary Burmese, their general quality of life (or lack thereof), the extrajudicial killings are quite possibly worse under Than Shwe and his clique of generals than what the Iraqis experienced with Saddam. So what justifies the very different ways in which the two regimes are handled by the international community. Could it possibly have something to do with the huge reserves of oil in Iraq? Well, that would be a far too cynical world-view, wouldn't it...