FRAUDSTERS IN TALLINN - PLEASE CIRCULATE

Greek conman tryng to hid his face in Olumpa hotel, Tallinn

I had an interesting but disturbing situation recently, which i dont mind sharing, even though the fraudster may be reading this (but the more people who know about this the better!) After a very long story 2 years ago involving a team of Italian mafia fraudsters in Milan, a bag full of money, and some near death experiences (all of which is another long story) I found myself that this gang of fraudsters were a little bit pissed off at me (i think connected to me taking 1500 Euros from them) After a few months, i started getting phone calls from all over Europe from perplexed people saying that they just met with a dodgy looking geezer who said his name was ME, and had my passport and was selling real estate from my (legitamate) website, but they wanted to do the deal in some strange way involving cash (which is the 'sting' that they use - they want to make a forex transaction with sleight of hand where you lose all your money or get shot dead if you dont) Anyway, I understand one (quite silly) woman in Greece handed some money over to a guy in a hotel (really, who the hell does that?) and we got the police involved, who of course it being a real crime, were not remotely interested (it didnt involve speeding tickets you see)
Anyway, after changing passport and putting out warnings etc. for the banks, i didnt hear anything until yesterday, when by some lucky coincidence, one friend told me that a guy called him (thinking hes some random investor) saying he worked for me, and was selling real estate (from my legitimate website) and WAS IN TALLINN. So what an opportunity for a sting. The TV was interested, reporters interested, in fact everyone except those dozy cops were interested. Anyway....best i dont say anything more yet, but here is the main member of the gangs mugshot, above  - please circulate this post and if anyone has seen or heard of 3 sleazy Greek guys with fliers on real estate deals, pretending to work for me or any other real estate business, please let me know - THEY MAY STILL BE IN TALLINN, so if anyone has any details of where they stayed etc. it would be very good information.

And watch this space!

What Really happened in Venezuala - 2 - Los Llanos

Me and the guys and a 6m long Anaconda

One other interesting area of Venezuala is Los Llanos  - its in the south of the country and is difficult to get to, but despite sounding like a boring big wild piece of grassland, it was worth the trip. We got ourselves there anyway, and decided firstly to find a Giant Anaconda snake, as they hang out round here. So we saw a tail hanging out of the water for a metre or so, and thinking it was a reasonable size one, me and two local guys decided to swim across and inspect closer. It turned out to be the longest they had seen for a long time, (6m long!) so we got a rope round it and swam across the water back to the tourist group (of which i was ostensibly a member) When we got back, i found that the water was full of Piranhas. What a way to die! So we fished them and ate them - id say the best tasting fish ive ever eaten, full of flavour surprisingly. But just look at those teeth!!

Piranha fishing

Hungry Croc

There are loads of 'wild' kind of things to do around here, like horseriding and hunting crocodiles, and the food is all local and fresh and delicious. We even ate a large local guinea pig, which not surprisingly tasted like pork. English isnt spoken at all really, and the place doesnt really have towns as such, just isolated farms, so sorting accomodation is better done in Merida or Caracas via the inevitable tour guide hustlers that you meet there.

CHI RUNNING (and the fact that the solution always comes when you are on the toilet not thinking about anything in particular)

I had an interesting conversation the other day about 'The Secret' and how it does seem that if you really need somthing, then somehow there is always a lifeline thrown your way. As soon as that one door closes then the other one opens and you look back and realised that you should have actually closed that door ages ago anyway (you all know what im talking about!)

Anyway one thing happened to me recently that illustrated this, my Ultramarathon training had been proving...well basically impossible. Ultramarathon means you have to train long long distances, and these longer runs are great for bringing out niggling injuries (im no spring chicken anymore remember)- if you are pounding a pavement for 150km a week then the repetition with normal or 'power' running totally breaks you. Its ok to run through the pain, but it was beginning to get to me, how the hell am i going to run 254km straight, if after 30km i get such pain in my knee that i can hardly walk never mind run? Well i suppose its at these times when you simply dont have a solution, that you get totally depressed - what kind of idiot would i be to mess up my health just for a stupid run?

To be honest this was almost what i wanted - its always easy to look for excuses so you dont have to do somthing difficult, and its just when things look too difficult that all those demons come out to tell you that you dont have the strength to go on. Its the same with any challenge. However instead of giving up and looking like a dick, i searched and searched and finally found the perfect solution (or rather it found me) - Chi Running.

Its a technique where you use gravity and your core muscles to run. You use about 30% of the energy you normally do and you dont get injured. Win win! If you are even half serious about running, i suggest you buy this book (or cheat and read it here for free)  The most important chapter, if you are browsing, is to read chapter 4 which is on p58
Chi Running Book

It means i can go out, get drunk on friday and saturday, and still run 25km on a hot and humid sunday afternoon (the true story of my weekend)

But more importantly, here, the moral of the story is that, from out of nowhere, just as i was thinking i was totally fucked, a solution provided itself, and now i actually know i can do this race. Now all i need is the same thing to happen in all the other messed up parts of my life ;o)

What Really happened in Venezuela - 1 - Lake Maracaibo

So i know i did write a lot of crap about Venezuala in previous posts. And  despite being mildly humourous , im afraid it wasnt true. What did happen was that we cruised around some really amazing part of the world that, (thankyou Mr Chavez), doesnt get visited very often, expecially not by tourists, and (thankyou Mr Chavez, actually sincerely this time) especially not by Americans, who are told not to go, thanks God.

The delights of Caracas

I dont think theres much to tell about  the capital Caracas except for that is a hot and humid and very dangerous place. Well, actually i didnt see any trouble at all and i did stay in some shady areas but i think nightwalking is quite out of the question here, even for idiots like me.  Just think of city of God withouththe police presence. Well i dont think my girlfriend at the time would have stood for me being kidnapped / eaten so i gave that a miss. I did however firstly force her on an adventure of a lifetime. The most surreal and beautiful place i'd say was certainly  Lake Maracaibo on the Northwest End of the country. Its a little bit of a wild west place, as its where the oilfields are, the most patriotic Venezualans, and of course the disputed boundary with Guyana (Esequibo). So again dont be popping out for that midnight drink in the any of the Barrios of the cities there, you just never know what kind of kidney cutting adventure you may end up in. 

The lake itself is amazing and beautiful - i dont think ive ever swam an a more beautiful environment.

 

The middle of Lake Maracaibo

We got a small and fast boat across the lake, and in the middle, jumped in for a swim, and some dolphins joined us. Its quite shallow but i dare you to try to swim to the bottom, i certainly couldnt. At the West side, is a small remote fishing village on stilts, which is one of the strangest places i've ever been.

Church on stilts

Anyway, the population of about 150 seriously inbred looking specimens, survived fishing on the lake, living totally on these houses built on stilts (pardon the bad photos, ive lost that camera so dont have the originals any more). There was even a church built on stilts here. But the even more surreal thing about here is that, (until strangely it seems January this year) there was basically a permanent lightning storm. Every night, without fail, the sky would crackle and shards of light would stab down on some distant (or dangerously close) tree or boat. Catatumbo lightning tells you more about it - its the most prolific lightning storm in history and has gone on for centuries.

Catatumbo Lightning (stolen from the wikipedia website, thanks guys)

To be honest though, im afraid i have to dash the dream of all you budding ethnically aware eco warriors out there - these little buggers who live in these villages couldn't be described in any way as noble savages.  They live like and act like pigs. We stayed on hammocks outside a little hut, and im sure if we hadnt a guard they would be in there stealing our stuff. They also dropped all their crap into the river which they fished, including plastic things and so on. Doh! I mean piling it up somewhere wouldnt have been that hard guys. Talking of pigs....

This photo will be ruin my career one day

Punk in Estonia

Can't you feel it right now? It's in the air, thats for sure. The deep down nervous energy, the boiling resentment - Im sure its not just me, its everywhere. Id say if you want to grow a cult army of disenchanted followers to start the revolution, then NOW, dear boy is your time.
 
Punk im sure of it, is about to take off on a second wave - what with a whole generation of disenchanted feminist mindfucked youngsters, thanks God for extremist fagins who can warp these young minds into a frenzy of hatred, be it against government, parents, blacks, whites, businessmen, gays, nazis, muslims, chinese or just more general hatred. Well I suppose it gives them something more interesting to do than World of Warcraft.

I've been more than a bit (pleasantly) surprised this last week by the punk offerings in a small city like Tallinn. Twice this week, i've had the pleasure of full on Punk gigs, complete with a proper moshpit. First with Kaptain Korsakov on Friday then tonight a whole bunch of bands in Von Kraal, headlining, the (pretty unimpressive) Psychoterror.

Friday i cant tell you much about, i understand it was good but i also understand that the evening began with us finding a very cheap Vodka place and drinking it in a Tallinn Law students leaving do (i think that was it at least) And the vodka was even cheaper at the party, which led to 3 days of not needing to top up (great training for the Marathon De Sables)

Tonight i was sober (since its thursday and actually i dont really drink so much) Von Kraals selection was two small and hungry bands - the first was so so - then when second band, Guiseppi Perverdi (what an awful name) came in  i was just asking myself, why the hell do people go to a punk gig to 'dance'? Fortunately, like a dream come true that amorphous brawl of a moshpit appeared.

For those of you who dont know, a moshpit is what happens at the front of a punk/thrash concert, its at its best when someting fast and thumping comes on. I suppose its a combination of people jumping into each other and pushing each other with some force and energy and  hoping that when you jump, there are other people to crash into, otherwise you end up on the floor, feeling like a dick. Although it looks violent (and ladies, please keep off there, its not clever and you just get in the way) its not so bad, and is usually good natured unless you get the odd nutter who does actually start a fight (no one usually notices though to be honest) but the adrenilin rush from a good band is unbeatable, the energy, slipping on a beer stained floor and still managing to stay up, or jumping off the stage into a pile of random people who's name you will never know, or in a larger one, surfing on top of the crowd until you get to the stage then jumping off.....well, thats the kind of 'feedback' i miss in cold hearted Estonia, so these times really made me see that there is a heart beating under the thick layers that smothers the passion in any typical Estonian.

The 2nd band had to stop as they broke their drums (Rock and Roll!) but the final headline band (this Psychoterror were, if im honest, disappointing. I kid you not - they had sheets with the lyrics on them that they were reading from! If i was a teenager, id say FAIL. (but im not) Also, they just didn't have the energy of the 2nd guys, althugh they did get a good moshpit going, but the floor was slippy by this time (mainly from a watermelon that randomly found its way being torn apart in the moshpit)

Anyway, seems punk is not dead after all - i even got some bruises to show it - can see the start of somthing big here so watch this space!

Holy Shit, you dont really exist !

Ok so everyones talking about this film 'shutter island 2' or sorry i think its called 'Inception', so it seems there is a big interest now in 'who are we' and 'what the hell am i doing here?'and possibly 'why do nice girls hate me?'

Ok on the first two - Personally i think these guys are only touching on the edges of the subject - the whole thing has already been worked out - how? Well firstly lets assume

1. That we are all, along with all objects in the visible universe made up vibrations. ie we dont really exist.

2. That our real existance therefor is not in this 'plane' of existance, but somewhere else.

Woooa hold on you might say, crazy stuff to assume but dont worry ill come onto these more later - just bear with me. Lets now think that what is the logical conclusion to come to if above are true? Well...heres the obvious ones.

1. Our souls truly are immortal, since we dont actually exist in this life, we exist somewhere else, or in fact many different places at once.

2. Time doesnt exist as we know it.

3. So no point in fearing death, failure, pestilence, or being turned down by that hot chick that works in the HR dept.

Ok. So can you imagine that everyone in the world knew this? That no one any longer feared death? well there would be some crazy suicides and wars sure, but also people would actually see the world in a much more positive perspective. Imagine that you didnt fear failure or rejection, becuase it doesnt actually matter? Well im pretty sure you would do ok.

This is the real Bible code guys, all our religions are telling us this but just asking us to believe it with blind faith, whereby in reality science is actually proving the whole thing.

This is a difficult subject to grasp, i know - the current search for the 'higgs bosum' is also at the heart of 'string theory' and its offshoots which is a whole quantum physics subject of its own, but ill try to explain the basics firstly behind the assumptions. Lets take a step back and stop trying to pretend we understand what i just said then....

On the assumpitons -

1. WE ARE ALL VIBRATIONS - String theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory  is a quantum physics theory that is rather dull, but part of its basic idea is that atoms are like little 'strings' which vibrate at different frequencies and therefor take on different existences.

For example if you vibrated at a different frequency you would become a tomato. Or a higher frequency then you would have a different thought pattern from say someone with a lower frequency, who was a criminal. It also means that everything you see is also simple vibrations at different levels. This is the basis of the idea that you get 'good vibes' from a place for example. The most important part of this is that if you split an atom (subatomic particles are called electrons) then they have the same reaction, EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY BE AT THE OPPOSITE END OF THE UNIVERSE (See we all are the same person ) ie the theory is that was all part of the whole universe, if that makes sense)

2. WE DONT REALLY EXIST - Atoms only exist when conciously measured. Otherwise they dont seem to exist. Strangely enough this ties in with Shamanic teachings on Spirits - Spirits only exist when your concious mind visualises them. So in theory then they are as much of existance as you or I, who are simply vibrating  atoms which dont really exist if we arent conciously seeing them. This link gives you some interesting background on the main theories behind this -  objectiverealitydoesnt exist

To check the facts - im sure you want an easy read, so check  'The holographic universe' by Michael Talbot) or if you are even more lazy watch this little short movie -  howtoscareaquantumphysicist .

So there you have it guys. This is the true truth behind the universe and the next piece of knowledge which will, i suppose herald the next big wave in human development - remember you read (and misunderstood it!) here first!!!!

 ps be sure to read the additional info if its all too complicated, or if you want to get to sleep.

pss on the third 'why do nice girls hate me' question, its because you are a dick.