But, let's not be negative shall we, because the assholes of the earth always turn out to be the most interesting folks. I will let Gok have his moment of fame. In any case, I have more pressing matters on my chest. For example, it is time to leave Iceland, and that leaves me with an empty feeling. It is time to bid farewell to Iceland. I will be back soon, in spirit or otherwise! And in the meantime, plenty of adventures await me, back in Japan!

I was at Kofi Tomosar one Monday night (in downtown Reykjavik), it was about 9pm, cold and windy outside (the sky was a kind of whitish grey mess which passes for a summer night in Iceland.) For some reason the staff kept opening the door to let the cold wind in, and if someone closed the door, one of the staff would immediately open the door again. On the other side of the room, there was an Eskimo woman, an African man, and a Muslim man sitting at a table. (I first thought the Eskimo lady was a Filipino because of the animated way she was speaking, but then I heard her say that she came from Greenland.)

The Eskimo lady says to the Muslim: "Aren't you going to drink something?"

The Muslim didn't reply, just smiled self-assuredly.

The African man, perhaps more worldly than the typical Eskimo, chipped in: "He can't drink alcohol because he is a Muslim."

"I don't give a fuck about your religion," the Eskimo woman said. "Drink!"

I walk into a bar or cafe. Sit down. Sometimes later, some guy sits beside me.
HIM: Hey man, where are you from?
ME: I am from ~. (The truth be told, I no longer have a home.)
HIM: Oh yeah. So what do you think of Iceland?
ME: It is not so bad at all. What do you for a living? HIM: Me? I am the guitarist/bass player/triangle player with ~.
ME: No shit! I have heard your music before, I have downloaded your tracks from the Internet. I really like your song "Japanese Policeman in Scandinavia". That's one mighty song.
HIM: I didn't know we had that much of a following. If you are in town next week, you should come to our concert at the ~.

I was recovering from what could only be considered a highly successful debut in Iceland, and as I drank the hair of the dog in the common room watching the World Cup, the only thing that mattered was getting back into the runtur madness again -- and thank god it was Friday! This time I wanted to try a new approach -- instead of flying solo like I did the night before, tonight I was going to take advantage of a service offered at the Reykjavik City Youth Hostel to find fellow revellers to go out with. The idea is that on Friday and Saturday nights at about 11pm, people interested in experiencing the nightlife of Reykjavik together assemble in the lobby, and then head downtown. It saves lobbing oneselves into bars alone (although I did this often in Iceland and enjoyed it. Nonetheless, it is always good to have companions with you.) So, that is what I did -- at exactly 11pm I assembled myself in the lobby of the Reykjavik City Youth Hostel, to find my wingmen and assorted crew. Eventually a small group gathered, comprising two Australian girls (including one from my old haunt of Wollongong, NSW -- and she was cute as well, I enjoyed hanging out with her), and some Brits and Canadians. Or were they Scots and Canadians -- I can't remember. Anyway, they were to prove mostly irrelevant to the conduct of the night -- I spent most of my time with the Australians, from my homeland of Australia. And it was so good to hear an Australian accent after so long in the wilds, especially in such an alien land as Iceland. We first went to Barinn (The Bar), which I had visited last night. After a few drinks we headed down the street to The Sirkus, which I had also visited last night.

According to Wikipedia: "Sirkus is an Icelandic TV channel that airs shows like Smallville, X-Files and Friends (reruns). Sirkus is owned by 365 ljósvakamiðlar, a company which is a part of 365, the biggest media corporation in Iceland." Their own website is on minnsirkus.is.

But that is not the Sirkus I am talking about here, and which I visited tonight -- I am talking about the bar. Young Icelandic writer Hugleikur Dagsson claims this is "the only bar in Reykjavik", which is a bold claim considering the number of drunk pissheads wandering the streets of the city on Thursday and Friday and Saturday nights. But he has a point, in a way -- Sirkus is the only cool bar. In that it is an underground bar. From the puffin birds adorning the entrance, to the kids playing cards at the bar, to the minor rock stars upstairs -- Sirkus is the place to be in Reykjavik on the weekends. And it was the place that I found myself, with my two Aussie chickfriends. And the place was packed with people, and the place was really happening...

So I drank with the Australian girls for a while, and everything was cool and dandy. It felt so good to be back in Iceland, after a three-year hiatus. But soon the urge for change came over us, crept upon us --we had to try something new. And where do you go if you want to go to take a rest from the bars and clubs when you are doing the runtur, and get some sustenance?: try Bæjarins Beztu down near the water. This is one of my favorite places to refill when doing the runtur on weekends. The last time I was here, I joined the queue with two Australian girls I had been hanging out with -- one of them only five-foot-tall but kind of cute, and I had the feeling she liked me. It was about 3am; the sky was white (this being late June). Gulls wheeled raucously overhead. A wind blew. Abruptly, while I was standing there, the guy serving the hotdogs announced that there were only five left (and there twice that many people in the line!) They had sold out! Out of desperation or merely a desire to flirt with foreigners, this stunning blonde Icelandic girl grabbed me from behind and said: "Are you going to fight for me? Are you going to fight to get me a hot dog before they are all gone?" And as she wrapped herself around me she added something like: "We Icelanders are so crazy, aren't we?" I have to concur with that. And if you want to see crazy Icelanders at their craziest, visit the lines on weekend nights at Bæjarins Beztu... either under a swirling aurora or milky Midnight Sun, you can't go wrong.

And if you have ever imagined what the Midnight Sun looks like in a city under its domain, in the heart of summer, as the gulls wheel overhead, then here is your cue -- here are some pictures of how it looks, taken in the old city of Reykjavik, in the middle of summer (June) 2006:

On this particular Thursday I went on a tour to see this glacier in the south, and after arriving back in Reykjavik, I decided I couldn't bear going back to my hotel, because the people there depressed me so much. So I went for a walk around town, looking for something which might be happening. Some of the streets were indeed deserted, but that is nothing special in Reykjavik -- but I did eventually find one place which seemed lively, and that was a bar called Barinn. (I think it means "The Bar" in Icelandic -- which is something of a presumptious statement to make, since many locals regard the nearby Sirkus as "the only bar in Reykjavik." Nonetheless, Barinn is a good place to hang out, and I had a lot of happy times there...) When I went inside I found the place packed with Generation Y'ers, squads of cute girls who came in and out, up and down the stairs, slamming doors, DJs who looked like they were fresh out of high school playing electro, and outside the evening twilight just went on and on, all night long. I sat down and amused myself by drinking and pretending to read Icelandic gossip magazines (plenty of stories about a certain Bubbi or Bubba, the current king of the Icelandic pop scene and a former punk). Before too long I was feeling drunk and the little bottle of Japanese Royal Jelly I had consumed earlier in the day came online, and then suddenly the music and the general busy vibe of the place began conspiring to lift me up, up into a higher state of awareness. There is something about the trippy wallpaper in Barinn, combined with the windows full of Midnight Sun, which can have a strange effect on the mind of a man. I got drunk and gradually lost my inhibitions. At one point I got approached by this old gay guy who tried the usual gay pickup routine (Barinn used to be a gay bar at one point in time):

HIM: Are you gay?
ME: No, I am not gay. My cousin is a lesbian though, and I think my old girlfriend might be one as well.
HIM: I am not interested in your cousin, and I am not interested in your old girlfriend. I asked about you. Are you gay?
ME: No. But my cousin is a lesbian.
HIM: Why do you talk about your cousin? I'm not interested in her. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't like lesbians. I want to know about you: are you gay?
ME: No.
HIM: You like girls?
ME: Yes.
HIM: You like any of the girls in here?
ME: Actually, the girls over there (point) are pretty cute.
HIM: Ohhhh... those girls? They're friends of mine. Let me introduce you to them...

Iceland -- what a country, even the gays will try to set you up with gorgeous women! Anyway, by this point I was so drunk that my memory seemed to get a little hazy -- I believe I moved on to another bar which seemed happening, just down the street. (This place was called The Sirkus.) This was the point where the night started developing a legendary nature (it is going to be legendary in my mind, at least.) I started talking to an Icelandic guy (or maybe he started talking to me) and he asked me why I was in Iceland. I blurted out some drunk talk shit like: "I just lurrrrve this fucking country!" Another guy appeared, and suddenly my friend said: "Hey man, do you want to buy some cocaine? We're about to go in for a deal... do you want to join us?" And I blurted out some drunken shit talk like: "Cocaine? I've never tried it before, but I can't think of a better way to celebrate being in this beautiful land, than by getting completely high. So let's do it!"

In the end the cocaine deal didn't come through, for reasons I couldn't completely fathom (due to my poor Icelandic language skills.) So, what happened instead? Even though my mind became progressively disabled and my memory porous as a piece of Icelandic volcanic rock, I was stunned to realize that all my Reykjavik dreams were coming true. I was finally achieving that what I had long wanted to achieve: the acquisition of cool Icelandic friends! I was invited into my first home in Iceland. Kind of stylish and Scandinavian in a minimalist way, nice view of the sunny midnight streets, red soap in the bathroom. Why didn't I take a photo inside the house? I guess it is good to keep some things an enigma, especially an enigma to yourself! Two girls promised to take care of me and escorted me home (we went by taxi!) I saw the sunrise (one of the many early morning sunrises -- the most definitive sunrise at least!) out of the cab window at 3o'clock in the morning. Cocaine didn't come through -- I wonder how much that would have costed! Alien scenes on the þorsmörk tour!

Some Icelandic characters courtesy of the free Internet computer at one of the city banks:

þ
æ
Æ
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On their website 12 Tónar proclaims:

If you can't make it to Iceland and you like Icelandic music, you can listen to some of 12 Tónar's artists online here. Some of the artists to be heard include Eivør Pálsdóttir (from the Faroe Islands), Slowblow who seem to be one of the biggest homegrown groups in Iceland, in the underground scene at least, Ulpa, the aforementioned My Summer as a Salvation Soldier, Hudson Wayne, Singapore Sling, and so on, and on. Go to this site and you can learn about one of the most innovative music scenes in the world -- and one of the smallest!

I got the flight from London to Reykjavik, and I must say, that was one of the best flights of my life. It was worth it coming here, just to have experienced that flight. It was like 10pm but as we headed north, the sun got brighter and brighter. By 11pm, the plane was being bathed in dazzling sunshine. Down below, the clouds were moving in strange riverlike patterns... there were rivers of clouds flowing one way, rivers of cloud flowing another. It is the kind of cloud dynamics you would imagine seeing on another planet (like Jupiter or Saturn), but I have never seen anything like it on Earth. Suddenly, as we approached Iceland, I saw another wonder I have never seen from a plane before... rainbows. Not the kind of rainbows you usually see, but these were rainbows being viewed from ABOVE. They went on for miles and miles, twisting and turning in a modulating way, like the movements of a snake... or an Aurora Borealis. I have never seen that before, just as I have never seen the Midnight Sun before as well. But the best is yet to come. I was about to behold a view which must rank as the most beautiful thing I have ever seen from a plane before.

The plane I was in suddenly dived down through the clouds like a sword, and once we punched through the blanket, there stretched out a landscape which was almost alien, like the kind of landscape you would find on one of the moons of Saturn. Imagine a burning orange sea, waves of surf rolling in to pound a black black shore. Though everything was being bathed in the warm hues of sunset, you could feel the cold undercurrents burning through... the cold hand of death beneath the fire. We punched through another layer of cloud, and I found myself flying just above the vast expanse of a black lava plain, cut up with fissures and pierced with volcanic vents. An alien view to be sure... but I felt a strange sense of homecoming all the same. It is good to be back, after all this time. And things just keep getting better and better! It is going to be a good holiday!!

Earlier in the day, I had walked around London a bit, got the train over to Westminster and cut through Soho to take in Oxford St, which was hot and crowded. I passed the department store Top Man where my old Elephant and Castle buddy Man Like Jez used to work back in the Jungle hardcore dayz of 1994. Even more amazingly, I found that one of the symbolz of the 1990s Jungle movement -- the MASH shoes and clothing store -- was still open and still playing loud Jungle and Drum&Bass. That was cool. I thought to myself: "Why did I have to leave it so long to come back here, when a piece of my heart has always been in London?" Back in the old days, it was hard to be an International Vagabond or global traveller without having significant amounts of cash -- but it is getting easier every day. If my new job in Japan (clinical trials volunteer) pans out, I could have both the time and money to travel the world indefinitely. I could visit London at least once a year -- and keep up with trends here, go to clubs here, make friends here. And I would of course find the time to shop at MASH at least once a visit or more!

MASH UP THA PLACE! Let me restate it all again, in case you missed it first time around (think of this as a rewind): Around midday today I was walking along Oxford Street which was just busy busy busy, and I the weather was almost Mediterranean (I hope I spelt that right!) While there were still plenty of clouds around, the sun would occasionally streak through in vivid blazes of northern gold, enrapturing my soul, and lifting me up into a higher state of being. Threading myself through the crowds, I stumbled upon a place I used to visit way back in 1994 when I discovered Drum*n*Bass, and it was called Mash. Heading downstairs and now positively perked up on the Royal Jelly I had consumed earlier in the day, breakbeat on the soundsystem and cool street clothes on the racks, I thought to myself: Why can't I come to London all the time, at least once a year, so I can keep up with the scene here? It is a big world I know but travel is keeping cheaper all the time, so there is no need to stay stuck in Japan for 11 months of a year. I can find a way to earn enough money to live, and travel the world -- and the answer is medical testing! I am hoping that in the year of 2007, I commence the Second Stage of my International Vagabondist lifestyle... and I am sure I will be able to make a return visit to London in that year. (I can catch up with Kel again when I am here!)

I should add here that I used to live in London, for a couple of months back in 1994, and today I wanted to revisit some of the sites which I had frequented back then, and reminisce. Earls Court was actually the first place I stayed when I moved to London in 1994, and I worked for a while handing out flyers at Earls Court Station. My plan for today was to walk across town, maybe stop off in a pub or two to drink a beer, and eventually reach the other place that I hung out in when I lived in London -- Elephant and Castle, down in the slums in the south. And after that, I wanted to scoot up to the much leafier and more middle class area of West Hampstead, to see my cousin Kellie. Now I have to admit, Elephant and Castle is a scary place, and not a nice place to live at all (especially compared to West Hampstead). Nonetheless, Elephant and Castle is special to me because this is the place where I discovered Drum&Bass music, and it is also where I discovered the beauty and potentiality of mindaltering drugs. I wouldn't be the same person I am now, if I hadn't lived in Elephant and Castle, back in those dark and desperate days of early 1994. So I knew I had to go to Elephant and Castle today, and imagined what my life could have been like, had I stayed here in London beyond 1994, instead of scuttling back to Australia as I did in April of that year. But to get to Elephant and Castle on foot would take hours, and I didn't want to shell out money for the train. But what a beautiful city London is to walk across! and how so many attractions and famous monuments and auspicious places are there on the way, to punctuate one's walk! So I set off east, towards the city, taking plenty of photos on the way, and remembering and remarking on my previous experiences in the locality!

And these are some of the many attractions and famous monuments and capitalist centers and sundry streetscapes that I came upon, photographed, and passed, as I made way crosstown, down to the home of the Drum&Bass:

Today was to be a case of breakfast in Tokyo (well, I drank a bottle of green tea at least, on the dank and humid early morning streets), lunch in South Korea, and dinner in London. Korea was sunny and the sky and land just as yellow-tinged as I remembered it on my previous jaunts there, while London was hot and anarchic. It was World Cup time after all, and the height of High Summer. At the end of the day I touched base with my cousin K., who I am hoping to see tomorrow. As the day went on, I found myself forgetting more and more about my failed relationship with C., and K. drove the final nail in the coffin (as I talked to her on a public payphone near Battersea Power Station) by insisting that I can do better! K. said that I deserved honesty in my relationships, and honesty was something I never received from C. Perhaps she is incapable of true honesty... but anyway, that is her problem, not mine. As this holiday continues, I hope that I can get over the bust-up with C., and start looking forward to a more exciting future. Because that future is there and it is very exciting and it is close, but the drama with C. has distracted me so much, I can't give it the attention it deserves.