Thursday 19th September 2013
Once again, it was round to Leo Skelly’s gaff at 9am for a jolly day of website creation. Leo is great at coding and I’m good at layout, so we muddled something together which must have somehow worked, because you’re reading this now!
I also received some terrible news from my friend Kendra in Egypt. A few days ago she posted a news article on her Facebook feed about a Frenchman who had been arrested in Cairo for breaking curfew. He was beaten to death in the jail cell by his fellow inmates. We worked out today that the victim was Eric, the crazy Frenchman we went out drinking with back in January 2010.
Egypt: Frenchman dies in police custody amid rising tide of xenophobia
Jailed Canadian pair on hunger strike while Syrian refugees bear brunt of anger towards foreigners in wake of Morsi ousting.
Poor Eric. He must have been terrified. I was just writing about him the other day as well, for an article on interesting people I met on the road. Kendra still lives in Cairo. I’m now thinking it’s high-time she gets the hell out there. Egypt is not the place it once was.
This awful event brings into stark relief how during the lowest points of The Odyssey Expedition, I was damn lucky to get out alive.
This new blog had to be up and running at the end of today because I’m going to New York at the weekend. Not a jolly, sadly – I’m being interviewed on CBS This Morning next week. But what’s going to be BRILLIANT is that I get to see my old muckas Monica and Oscar and meet Cesar Kuriyama, a fellow TEDster who made this jolly video:
Cool eh? Well, it led me to make this video:
Which went crazy viral over the summer and (at time of writing) is posed to hit 1,000,000 views – and is the reason I was interviewed on BBC News… and Japanese TV…
AND the reason CBS is flying me to New York!
I reckon I owe Cesar a drink, don’t you?!!
Amanda Newland liked this on Facebook.