Dahab, Egypt. For now.

Egypt, with a balmy winter climate and the lure of Red Sea diving, what better place to go for a few weeks at the end of a contract?

Got here a couple of days ago with the well thought out plan of, er, doing some diving and for once seeing some things above water. First part of the plan was easy enough to sort with a quick trip up to Dahab a home away from home for me. A rapidly changing home away from home mind you... a lot of the restaurants between the lighthouse and the bridge such as Al Capones have at some point in the past 18 months been turned into proper sit down places rather that the old slouch down on rag rugs with cushion covered palm trees to lean on style.

Two days of diving have followed, alas no photos yet as my camera housing is not too reliable at the moment. Hopefully get some in a couple of weeks. Diving done for now, the dive center is looking after my kit as I set off for Luxor, Aswan and other places in the deep south. Unfortunately, in order to even try to be back and diving for my birthday I need to set off now. I say unfortunately as the only practical way for me to travel is a 16 hour overnight bus journey. Of course, with a little over an hour to go my stomach seems to have turned to mush. Looks like I could be in for an "intersting" time. This Valley of the Kings malarky had better be worth it, I could be doing the Canyon and Bells to Blue Hole today.

Here I go again...

A word on why no words for a while. I've been busy being busy for the past few months. Finding a job after my last cycle trip turned out to be somewhat more difficult than I'd hoped but I did land a contract eventually, running an outsourced test team working on a mobile music applications being delivered to a major operating company. Only possible downside was that it was in London, but even that proved to be no real hardship. Whilst the streets were disappointingly more paved with broken class than gold (worse for punctures on the bike but gold almost certainly presents a major slip hazard in the rain so about even there), there were other compensations. To start with, the weather is genuinely better in the South. London seems to a couple of weeks better off than Manchester and a couple of degrees warmer. London also has a wider range of cultural activities going on.

Alas, all good things come to an end and this job has abruptly ended on two weeks notice delivered last Friday. I had been told, and hoped, that it would go through until the end of February or early March, but I wasn't that surprised it ended early. Our client weren't the most efficient company I've ever worked for, with a tendency to disregard as unimportant such details as design documents or even org charts. I had been due to move into a room in Putney having been due to pay in over £1000 of rent at 12:30 on the Friday. I was given my notice at 12:00 so that was pretty damn good timing all things considered.

Two weeks notice and on the job market again for late November. Not the most auspicious time to be looking for work as the market tends to wind down towards Christmas. So... so, given I've had one day off since July I'm minded to organise myself a little outing when the contract ends, provided the next two weeks don't through up a job of course. I had been planning on going diving around now anyway so that would be the natural choice, except the buddy I was organising it with happened to win a free weeks diving for two when we were at the Dive show in Birmingham a few days ago. The dates it's available means we'll be going in late January (yay! I'm the plus one!) so I'll be getting some diving in soon anyway. Still, it's my birthday in a month and it'd be good to be somewhere with decent weather for it, or so I was thinking. And then I got to thinking the closer I get to Christmas the less likely of walking into a job. In which case why not take some more time off, get a flight into Aleppo, say, in Northern Syria return from Cairo (£390 for the flights with Turkish Airways) and get a month cycling in in the Middle East? Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and maybe Israel. Very tempting, very very tempting.

Still, we shall see. I have two weeks of work and job hunting left which if unsuccessful will give me a couple of weeks to decide between a months cycling or a couple of weeks of cheap diving. Actually slightly less than a couple of weeks to be realistic as I'd have to sort out a Syrian visa which will take a few days.

As they say, watch this space.