I'm visiting the Information Access research group at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam for a week.

I walked around a bit, and discovered that a lot of roads look like pavements, or pavements don't stop being pavements even when they cross over a junction a car can turn down.

Also I keep looking the wrong way when crossing roads and cycle paths.

Fortunately all of the cars and bikes I've stepped out in front of so far have been going very slowly.

Also I don't know if there's a heatwave or if I'd just acclimatised to Scotland more than I thought. Everyone else is going around wearing coats, but I'm sweltering.

I've been here before in 2008, but only have vague memories of tourist attractions and the city hadn't left a lasting impression on me. Hopefully I can pay more attention this time.

Expect more posts about my research-related adventures soon.

For easy navigation of my gibbering.

First impressions of Madrid (6th and 7th, #travel)

Mon 8th: Research in theory and practice, and where on earth am I?

• Notes for keynote by Frank van Harmelen (questions we couldn't have asked 10 years ago)
• Notes for Introduction to Linked Data by Mathieu D'Aquin
• Notes from invited talk by Manfred Hauswirth (linked data streams)
• Notes from poster session

Tue 9th: Collaborative ontology engineering and team formation

• Notes from Lynda Hardman (telling stories with media)
• Notes from Natasha Noy (ontologies and Protégé)

Wed 10th: Practical semantics, and human nature.

• Notes from Harith Alani (Social Media Analytics with a pinch of semantics)
• Notes from Tommaso Di Noia (recommender systems; tools and techniques)

Thu 11th: Social semantics and serendipity

• Notes from Fabio Ciravegna (situation awareness via social and physical sensing)

Everything from Friday 12th July

• Notes from Peter Mika (Yahoo!; semantic search)
• Notes from Raphael Troncy (semantics at the multimedia fragment level)
• Notes about our mini-project (Evaluating Serendipity)
• Summer School for Semantic Wizards (video)
• A cruel joke, a great party and a late night.

Final impressions of Madrid (14th, #travel)

Harith Alani talked about using semantics to solve problems around evaluating the success of social media use in business.  The SIOC ontology is widely used to describe online community information.  It's not as simple as measuring someone's engagement with a brand's online presence - people are 'likeaholics' on Facebook, so you have to look at someone's whole behaviour profile to judge whether their like means anything or not.  It's no good just aggregating your data and spewing out numbers - you have to browse the data and try to understand where it came from.

He mentioned how little work has been done in classifying community types.  Most of the work that has been done seems to be with social networks internal to an organisation.  A bottom-up approach to community analysis can handle emergent behaviours and cope with role changes over time.  Looking at behaviour categories and roles can help an organisation to decide who to concentrate on supporting and how in order to sustain the community.  The results they have seen so far suggest that a stable mix of the different types of behaviours are needed to increase activities in forums - but they don't know what causes what.  They're reaching a point where they can use their behaviour analysis to guess what's going to happen to a community: how long it will last, how fast it will grow, how many replies a certain type of post is likely to get, etc.

Next they want to be able to classify community types, and be able to look at activities within a community over a period of time and automatically discover what kind of community it is; it might be something different than what it was set up for.

They created an alternative Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to correspond with activities seen on forums, and found that most people are happy to stay at the lower levels of the hierarchy.  For example, join a community, lurk for a bit, ask one question and leave.  Not everyone wants or needs to be a power user.

Papers are being written that find patterns in individual datasets for a particular community in a particular context.  Harith and his team are getting tired of this; they want to generalise across communities.  So they took seven datasets and looked at how the analysis features differed as well as comparing the results across community types, randomness (vs. topicality) of datasets, and compared similar experiments.

Upcoming work includes the Reel Lives project, in which UoE is involved.  They're taking media fragments - photos, videos, audio clips, text recorded as audio - and creating automated compilations to tell a story.

Another is social methods to change energy consumption behaviour.  LiSC in Lincoln did something in this area back in the day.. an app that posted that you were listening to an embarrassing song on your facebook feed if you left your lights on.

Notes from Harith's talk are here.

SSSW 2013 - Feeding Recommender Systems with Linked Open Data from Tommaso Di Noia

From Tommaso Di Noia's talk, I learnt that recommender systems have a lot of maths behind them, especially for evaluating things, and reinforced something I already knew: I don't maths good enough to be taken seriously by most of the Informatics world.  I think I understand the principles behind the maths, but when something is descried in just maths, I have no idea what it relates to.  I'll work on this.

Real world recommender systems use a variety of approaches, including collaborative (based on similar users' profiles); knowledge-based (domain knowledge, no user history); item-based (similarities between items); content-based (combination of item descriptions and profile of user interests).  Linked Open Data is used to mitigate a lack of information about entities, and helps with recommending across multiple domains.  You do have to filter the LD you use before feeding it to your recommender system though, to avoid noise.  Notes here.

Tommaso's talk was followed up by a hands-on session, where we got to poke about with some of the tools he mentioned, including FRED (transforms natural language to RDF/OWL); Tipalo (gets entity types from natural language text); and using DBpedia to feed a recommender system.

Then we worked on our mini-projects for the afternoon.  We made some progress towards breaking down the concept of serendipity and working out what properties we might need to represent as linked data, and how we could observer a user and work out if/when/how they were having serendipitous experiences without intruding too much.

In the evening we took a coach to 'nearby' historical town Segovia.  Apparently an extremely motion-sickness-inducing two and a half hour coach journey around twisty mountain paths is 'nearby'.  Fortunately I was distracted from this horrible journey by a conversation with Lynda Hardman, which I wish I had recorded.  Lynda challenged various aspects of my PhD until I could explain/justify them reasonably, including:

• Why digital creatives? (I'm used to that one now).
• What is the outcome?
• Why Semantic Web for this?

She also recommended a number of resources, including theses of her recent former students to help me with a structure for my own, and advice on maintaining a healthy balance between thinking and doing.

Plus she used to live in Edinburgh, more or less across the road from where I live now.  Cool.  Thanks Lynda!  You haven't heard the last of me :)

#travel

Once we got to Segovia, we had a guided tour of the ancient Roman architecture, interesting building façades and local legends.  It was a very good tour, but too hot to really focus.  Then they took us to a restaurant for a local speciality.  I was all set to write a whole individual blog post surveying the barbaric nature of human beings, but I didn't do it straight away and now the passion has faded slightly, so I'll leave it at a paragraph.  Some people watched the local 'ceremony' out of morbid curiosity I imagine, but it was the fact that so many people took so much pleasure in the idea of violently hacking up bodies of three-week-old piglets that really bothered me.  Fortunately the surging standing crowd allowed me (and only one other) to inconspicuously sit it out.  The veggie option was tasty, but it was difficult to really enjoy the rest of the evening whilst wondering vaguely about the states of minds of most of the people I was sharing a table with.

The 10th Summer School for Ontology Engineering and the Semantic Web

Sunday

Arriving by train into Cercedilla, north of Madrid, we immediately encountered other confused looking folk with poster tubes.  So we shared taxis (EUR 10) from Cercedilla station to the summer school residence further north, in the forest.

After getting keys for our pleasant, single, en-suite rooms, arrivals congregated in the shade by the building  to introduce ourselves.. Again, and again, and again, as new people continuously arrived over the space of a few hours.

A really broad mix of people are here in terms of nationalities and places and levels of study, but I still haven't quite got used to the fact that answering 'Semantic Web stuff' is not specific enough in this crowd, when someone asks you what your research is about.  Nobody needs convincing that these technologies are useful!

Later we received schedules, maps, ill-fitting t-shirts* and very helpful name badges, and headed for dinner at the bar down the road.

As is traditional when I write about my experiences in new places, I will describe the food every day.  It has become apparent, at this residence at least, that variety of ingredients is not ordinary, so in this respect meals are simple.  Dinner that first night started with a salad (lettuce, olives, tomato, onion, shredded beetroot and a single slice of hard boiled egg; no dressing), followed by - for the majority - slices of meat (beef? Pork? I dunno..) and fries.  Mine was a plate of mushy green vegetables with a little seasoning, that was pretty tasty.  Dessert was a single pear, delivered with ceremony, but otherwise unadorned.  Healthy, at least.

Yet we were all (those I sat with at least) were left feeling a little unsatisfied.

I shared a table with a French, Spanish, Italian and Irish guy.  Conforming appropriately to stereotypes, and setting up reputations for the rest of the week, the French and the Italian shared the bottle of wine on the table; the rest of us went without.

I returned to bed after a couple of hours of socialising and enjoying the cool air in and around the bar.

* For next year, they could ask for t-shirt sizes when they ask for dietary preferences?

Monday

The day started early, and with no hot water or wifi for anyone.  Breakfast was combinations of sweet pastries, coffee, tea, juice and bread.

Punctuated variously by coffee breaks, the learning began in earnest.

During the introduction by Mathieu D'Aquin, I found out that I am one of 53 students selected out of 96 applicants to attend this year's Summer School of the Semantic Web!  I had no idea it was that selective, or that there had been that much competition.

The first keynote was by Frank van Harmelen, about all the Semantic Web questions we couldn't ask ten years ago.

Slides:

Semantic Web questions we couldn't ask 10 years ago from Frank Van Harmelen

Frank started by saying that the early Semantic Web vision has morphed into the more manageable vision of a Web of Data, or a Giant Global Graph, and outlined the principles of the Semantic Web as they appear to stand at present:

1. Give everything a name (entities).
2. Relations form graph between things.
3. Names are addresses on the Web (so we inherit properties of Web like AAA).
4. Add semantics.

Frank pointed out the advantages of the fact the Linked Data crowd, grown naturally and not designed, is now so big we don't know how many triples it contains, nor how fast it is growing.  Companies and organisations (like Google, NXP, BBC, DataGov) are using Semantic Web technologies to achieve their own ends, for a variety of different use cases, without caring much about the Semantic Web, and this is contributing to the growth.

This growth has given rise to a number of research areas that were impossible to realisitically ask questions about ten years ago, including self-organisation, distribution of data, provenance, dynamics and change, errors and noise (how to deal with disagreements).

Frank asserted that rules and structures, algorithms and patterns in data, exist whether we are looking at them or not.  He used the analogy that OWL is our microscope, and it may be the tool that distorts our vision of the information universe rather than properties of what we are looking at (for example, structures in data presenting themselves well in some domains but not others).

He went on to promote the roll of the Informatician to be to test theories, hypothesis and falsify, as scientists rather than engineers.  To discover, rather than build.

I struggle with this view of the world, and feel instinctively that theory and practice are intrinsically linked; one can't exist without the other, not just in the grand scheme of things, but in day to day work and research.  This is one of the main points of contention with my own PhD, and I've no doubt there will be many more blog posts about this issue in the near future as I reconcile my need to create something immediately useful with the necessity of producing a contribution to knowledge at large.

See my raw notes here.

We had an Introduction to Linked Data by Mathieu D'Aquin (raw notes here), followed by a workshop.  We wrote SPARQL queries to populate a pre-written web page with information about Open University courses, sub-courses and locations thereof.

Lunch, similar to the previous night's dinner, was a starter salad, an entire half chicken (or something) plus fries for the carnivores and the most unappealing risotto of my life for (not that I'm ungrateful, but I have never been unable to finish a meal due to boredom before).  I went for a walk with some others to grab some fresh air before the afternoon's work, and missed out on watermelon.

Manfred Hauswirth presented some really exciting stuff about annotating and using streams of data.  Particularly challenging is how to integrate this with static data and make inferences over the lot.  Streams include sensor data, as well as ever-flowing social media streams for example; anything that changes over time.

They've built some systems to process this kind of data, and one of them is available as middleware.

My raw notes are here.

In the afternoon we had a poster session, where all participants pinned up posters about their work, and discussed at length with anyone who was interested.  Here's evidence that I participated.

And here's Paolo's:

I wrote a few notes about things from other peoples' posters that I need to look up.

The main feedback I received was about making sure I focus, narrow down my topic, and concentrate on some evaluatable deliverables that are PhD-worthy.

Questions like (paraphrasing) "why should we care about digital creatives?" threw me, because I thought the obvious answer - that they are people too, Web users, technology users, contributors to culture and an ecosystem of digital content and data - was apparently not enough from an academic standpoint.

I was simultaneously told to focus more, and to explain why the problem I'm trying to solve is applicable to all domains, not just digital creatives.  But some of the problems I'm looking at have been (or are being) solved in other domains (like e-health, biological research, education) and the reason what I'm doing is interesting is because none of these solutions quite work for digital creatives, and I want to find solutions that do, and try to figure out why.

I'm still stuck in some sort of struggle between theory and practice; thinking and doing.  And the long-standing problem of how to decide which doing actually worked.

I've started scribbling notes about the narrowing down problem.  I'll need to have this figured out before my first year review in August anyway, so stay tuned for another post all about it.

Then I sneaked off for a nap.

Dinner at the bar again; the usual salad, plus some eggy fish thing for most.  I got a plate of artichoke.  Artichoke is great, I love it, and I'm all for simple meals.  But I remain unconvinced that a plate of only artichoke constitutes an acceptable level of effort on the part of caterers.  And the sheer quantity made it start to taste a bit funny after a while.  But not to worry; we rounded off with a solitary peach apiece.

Further socialising, and appreciation of the night sky, before returning to bed write blog posts.

I'm super excited and inspired by the talks, work I've heard about so far, and the atomsphere of the place.  I'm excited to learn a helluva lot, and remind myself that I'm not facing impossible problems, and am not facing many problems alone.  I remember that I am instinctively passionate about the Web and the possibilities it holds (and indeed has already realised) for the empowerment of individuals.  I remember how lucky I am to be able to sustain myself through studying something I love so much, and to have the potential to make a change, and through my work maybe even facilitate others to be able to make a living doing what they love, as well.

I've never been to Spain, and for some reason the Spanish language baffles me.  It's the least guessable European language, in my humble opinion, and I can't get my head (/tongue) around the pronunciation.  I've never studied Spanish, but I can get by just fine with French and German, and when I've been in Switzerland, Holland and even Italy I could make a go of communicating to a reasonable degree, so I thought I'd pick it things up.

But apparently my brain is resistant to Spanish.

That aside, locals are very friendly and even when they don't speak English they don't seem to give you disparaging looks.

We arrived on Saturday evening (having successfully got our poster tube past various levels of EasyJet staff who would have been within their rights, if unreasonable, to tell us it was too big for hand luggage).  We were met at the airport by new friends, who we later accompanied into the centre of the city to watch the Gay Pride Parade.

The streets were packed, the heat was stifling, and the costumes varied and outrageous.  The party atmosphere filled the air with a tangible excitement.  The parade itself was slow to start, but eventually lasted for several hours.  We explored a little, taking in this version of the city as the empty streets of the Sunday morning to follow would have a very different feel.

But mostly we sat on the grass, chilling with our hosts and their friends, who were mixing cheap wine and lemonade and bobbing to the waves of techno, trance or cheesy pop that came by with every float.

The night was hot, but not unbearable; about 37 degrees, yet there was a slight breeze and no humidity which made all the difference.

On Sunday we braved the sun to do the tourist circuit recommended to us to take in as much of the city as possible in the time we had.

We deviated somewhat to explore various gardens (beautiful, although I was too distracted by the heat to really appreciate them) and pop into some impressive looking cathedrals (a nice break from the heat, but I find Christian art, architecture and interior decoration disturbingly morbid).

Never having thought about visiting Madrid before, and thus never having planned out what I might like to see when I got here, none of the monuments, buildings or squares stood out to me.  Architecture is pale and old-looking, and mostly very ornate.  Similarly pale sculptures, statues and fountains are in abundance.

Distinguishing vegetarian options in restaurants and cafes seemed more challenging than I had the energy for; not to mention, most didn't start serving food until at least one-thirty which wouldn't have allowed us time to catch our train, so I'm ashamed to say we grabbed snacks from a supermarket instead.

We (eventually) caught a train from Atocha station in the centre to Cercedilla (EUR 5.30).  And thus began the Summer School adventure... Continued in another post.

So I got behind with the blogging.  As in, I didn't do any.  I will rectify that over upcoming days!  But for now, I will reflect on my Pre-Oz quests.

1. Find the resting place of my Uncle David.

Achieved, debatabley.  I found the Herb Garden, South Yarra, which was part of Melbourne's amazing Botanic Gardens (and conveniently pretty much across the road from where Jamie lived).  However, it has never been legal to scatter ashes there, and there definitely aren't any headstones.  It doesn't mean he wasn't scattered there though.  So I took lots of pictures.  That's the best I could do.  It is beautiful.

2. Forge ties between Edinburgh and Melbourne Open Knowledge Foundations.

Well, I went to #govHack and had an amazing time.  Pete and I discovered we'd already been to one of Flanders' hacks in the UK, and another hack that had derived from it (Dev8D and DevXS).  So we were well received.  Also because we'd travelled 11,000 miles to be there.  And I got to know some things about Australian data.  Stay posted for the official blog.

Check out some of the places my Mum and her family lived.

I found a caravan park in Palm Cove where she lived 38 years ago, and the creek where she learned to swim!  The change in the town from how she described it was immense, but walking the same beach she walked as a child was a really surreal experience.  I also dangled my feet in Mossman Gorge in the Daintree rainforest before I even knew that she used to swim there.

I saw a sign to Toowoomba near Brisbane, where she lived too.

Maybe attempt to bump into relatives or family friends.

Wasn't expecting to achieve this.  But I saw my cousin in Perth!  That was awesome.  And it was very good of him to pick us up from the airport, give us a super fast tour of Perth at night and let us sleep on his floor for a few hours, before returning us to the airport for 5am.  Thanks Luke!

It almost made up for the ..ahem.. additional expenses incurred.

See Ayres Rock.

Check!  It wasn't all that.

But the road tripping was amazing.

See the main cities on the east coast, like Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra.

Check!  But only just.  Brisbane and Canberra need more visits.  I wrung quite a lot out of Sydney, made new friends (one of whom was feathered), ate some really tasty food, and learned to love the Domestic Airport.

Two freelance projects, due on 5th June and 1st July.

Succeeded the first (with some hiccups) and failed at the second (pending..).

Finish my PhD literature review...

Haha.  That was ambitious.  It didn't get a look-in.  I feel bad.  There was no wifi though!  Anywhere!

Make a poster for the Semantic Web Summer School.

I didn't do that whilst travelling, but it is done now.


Meanwhile, whilst you wait for my full blog posts, here are our tweets, nicely collated:

I have been on no fewer than thirteen planes in the last four weeks or so.  I've already made my apologies to the environment.  If it's any consolation, it makes my ears really hurt every time.  It's only four days, after that, until I get on a flight from Edinburgh to Madrid.  It's becoming as normal as going for a walk.  (A walk with earache and slight deafness).

Presumably, if using electronic equipment during takeoff and landing, and mobile phones at any time, was actually dangerous there would be some sort of machine to detect if any passengers did have things turned on, and electric shock them (or something).  And there would be a degree of consistency in how these things were handled between airports.  In quite a few airports in Australia, we were asked to turn our phones off altogether before stepping onto the tarmac to approach the plane.  I saw a couple of people who were walking and tapping their screens get pulled aside and refused boarding until their devices were safely off and pocketed.  No planes were crashing in the background.  And nobody checked that out-of-sight gadgets were switched off.  So you only pose a risk if you get caught?  And in Zurich, the crew were happy with people making phonecalls right up until the plane started trundling.

Security is inconsistent too.  And a massive hassle, so in an endeavour to minimise unpacking and re-packing time at the gates, I gradually reduced the number of electronics and liquids I removed from my hand luggage.

A timid and inexperienced flyer before this year, I used to think it was standard procedure to remove everything with a glimmer of metal or a drop of liquid for an x-ray in its own separate tray.  So out came the chargers, headphones, coins, cards and soaps, along with tablets, e-readers, laptop, phone and clear bags of 100ml containers of liquids.

Before the start of this trip I'd figured out that was excessive, and silently pitied those who unloaded all of these things still.

Time to see what else the security guys don't give two shits about.

Kindle.  That was fine.  Nobody questioned a Kindle left in my bag.

Tablet was the next to stay.  My Nexus 7 caused zero concern.

At this point I'm just unloading a laptop and liquids.

So I left the toothpaste in.  That was fine.  Then I found out one of my travel buddies had been inadvertently passing through security gates with a 250ml bottle of suncream in the side pocket of his rucksack.  Apparently not an issue.

At some point on the trip I acquired small scissors; so weak they could barely cut thread.  They made it through security in Sydney the first time just fine, but in Alice Springs my bag got pulled back.  I thought it was the toothpaste, but no.  Once they had confirmed that these scissors were such that they'd buckle before piercing skin, they let me have them back.  Same again in Cairns, and Gold Coast.  By Sydney round three, the scissors had broken into two parts.  A very concerned looking lady asked if she minded if she threw them away rather than let them on the plane.  I didn't.

By this point I was sending 50ml nasal spray and deodorant through, because what the heck?  They were also cool with our massive jar of pasta sauce, and whatever we happened to be drinking at the time.

So within Australia, I was just removing my laptop at security (and phone from my pocket).

In Singapore, signs actually advised that we keep phones, tablets and e-readers packed, so only the laptop came out there too (my liquids were in my hold baggage by this point).

Zurich, however, are nuts.

No liquids still, and I got out my Nexus and Kindle straight away because someone ahead of me was getting yelled at about an iPad.

Apparently that wasn't enough, and eager staff sent my bag back through three times, unloading more on each round.  Out came chargers, headphones, bags within bags, chocolate.  I was almost ashamed of how much crap I was carting around.  For the final round they dug deep to extract a a sealed bar of soap I bought someone as a souvenir from Cairns.  That seemed to do the trick.

So then I had to hold up the line re-packing.

How does x-raying soap on its own make it less of a threat?  Or easier to detect the threat?  Serious question.  Anyone know?

I'm just pleased I left my Vegemite and teas in my hold luggage.

I'm lucky enough to have some quests to complete, or achievements to unlock, during my month in Australia.

1. Find the resting place of my Uncle David.

My Mum and her family moved to Australia for a few years when she was nine.  They moved around a lot, and eventually came back to the UK.  Her older brother returned to Melbourne when he was 17, and died there (very suddenly I think) at the age of 28, of a brain tumour.  He only visited the UK once while he lived in Oz, and though he stayed in touch with his family, information about his life is sketchy.  Until recently I thought I was going to have to trawl through various records to find out where he might be buried, and I'm not even sure what year he died in, let alone where he lived.  I talked to my Grandma the other day though, and she knew more than we thought - that he was cremated, and scattered in the "Herb Garden, South Yarra" and that he has a headstone there.  I'm not sure how accurate this is; the Web isn't being very forthcoming with useful information right now, but it's more to go on than I had before.

2. Forge ties between Edinburgh and Melbourne Open Knowledge Foundations.

Since there's an OKFN Hack days after I arrive in Melbourne, and not even far from where I'm staying, I've registered to take part.  Should be fun.


And some less questy, more general things...

Check out some of the places my Mum and her family lived.

I have a pretty long list of addresses across Victoria and South Australia, to see which still exist and what they're like.

Maybe attempt to bump into relatives or family friends.

This will be tricky though, as my UK family don't seem to know where anyone on the upside down side of the world is any more, how to contact them, or whether they'd be interested in meeting.  The ones we do know are in Perth, which I'm not going to be able to get to.  There are quite a lot of them around in Australia and New Zealand though, so hopefully more data will emerge.

See Ayres Rock.

Duh.

See the main cities on the east coast, like Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra.

Expensive and time-consuming, but doable.  I also want to go to Tasmania.


And things that need doing that aren't to do with being in Australia:

• Two freelance projects, due on 5th June and 1st July.
• Finish my PhD literature review...
• Make a poster for the Semantic Web Summer School.
• (Eep).

We got up early on the final morning with the intention of cramming as much of Cairo in before our flight as possible. No-one would take us to Tahrir Square, and the Metro wasn't running. Taxis claimed to drop us off at the famous market, but we struggled to find anything much... We wandered many backstreets, and concluded that it was just early (for Ramadan) and everyone was probably not quite up yet. Cairo streets are covered in gunk and litter and smelly things, and they're tight and winding. I love them. The high walls and narrow paths created an effect the closest to being hugged by a city I have ever felt.

We visited a couple of churches that we were ushered into by locals, before stumbling across the Mohammed Ali Sibel and learnt about its history. We climbed down a ten metre shaft too, and wandered around in the dark beneath the building. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Heather and I had to head back for midday, and we enjoyed a whirlwind taxi ride. Our driver stopped to ask directions from pizza delivery boys, other taxis, policemen, passers by... We saw a huge amount of the city in the hour it took us to find the hotel, with criss-crossing, elevated main roads providing the perfect viewing platform.

Cairo has perhaps the best cityscape I have ever seen. Sprawling and uneven and huge. Bright colours, haphazard shapes, buildings that are jostling for attention. Windows that churn out flapping bedsheets, streamers of electrical wires; low roofs beside high walls, supporting slouching heaps of sand, bricks and mud. The feeling that everything is always moving and the overriding sensation that something is always happening in your peripherals.

Needless to say, a half day was not enough. I will be back.

Our predicted hour-and-a-half journey to the aiport took barely half an hour. Free wifi at Cairo International could sure teach Heathrow a thing or two... The airport was near enough a ghost town during the late afternoon. Staff were laid back and friendly, and most of the queues we stood in were probably unnecessary. I walked the wrong way down a conveyor. I had THE BEST TIME. One lifetime ambition fulfilled.

The flight, which left a bit after 5pm, was uneventful and we landed at 2125 in Heathrow, to 15 degrees, or what the pilot described as 'a standard British summer evening'.

I am counting down to my next adventure.

It's not planned yet. Donations welcome. Watch this space.

We had plenty of space on the train; big seats and air conditioning. I was woken often by jolting starts and slamming doors, but all in all it wasn't too bad.

Carrying all of our stuff, we stumbled out of the station and onto a minibus in Giza. Dave left us in the hands of a new guide, who was distinctly more interested in getting us to the pyramids than letting us eat or use the loo. We comprimised with pastries and juice from a fuel station shop and recovered enough to be on our way.

We wandered around the pyramids, and then the Sphinx. Underwhelming, all things considered, and the Valley of the Kings is far more impressive. Also, definitely aliens.

Most people did the cheesy holding-the-pyramids photo thing. I took pictures from the wrong angles of people posing these. This is far more entertaining.

We had streetside falafel for lunch before visiting the enormous Egyptian Museum. There's
some cool stuff in here, again with the giant walls of heiroglyphics, and I lost everyone
else for a while.

We were dropped at the Havannah Hotel. We thought there must be some mistake. This place was SHINY. Huge rooms, clean, functioning bathroom facilities... (for about £10pppn) A classy end to the trip. I passed out for a couple of hours before we all met downstairs again at 6. The place Dave wanted to take us for dinner was absolutely packed, but we were directed to another restaurant a few doors down who promised to serve us food from the first place. Interesting business technique, but it did the job. I had the vegetarian version of f.... I can't remember what it was called but it definitely began with f. Might have been fattah. Someone help me out please, the Internet isn't doing yet. It was an extremely filling rice yogurty dish with fried flat bread and peas in it. Suuuper tasty, and almost equal to kushari. The non-vegetarian versions had liberal amounts of shredded beef or chicken on top.

After hanging out at the hotel for a bit, thus concluded the final night in Egypt.

Our felucca was a small boat covered in a foam matress, a few cushions and little else. There was a cabin at the front for the guys who were both sailing the thing, and cooking our food.

Thus, we lounged around.

That is all.

The toilet was amongst riverbank bushes, and the shower was the Nile. The Nile is exceptionally refreshing, by the way. We moored for breakfast, lunch and dinner; local food, prepared and cooked by the felucca crew, was among the best we'd had on the trip.

Lounging, for those wanting more detail, consisted of reading, writing, sleeping, playing cards, listening to music, sleeping, reading, playing cards and sleeping. This challenging routine was broken up by jumping into the Nile and holding onto a rope that trailed behind the boat. Then climbing back onto the boat to dry off in the sun and resume the lounging.

The morning after the second night on the felucca, we had arrived about an hour's drive away from Aswan. Nev picked us up with the truck, and we drove all the way back to Luxor. En route, we stopped at Edfu Temple for an hour. This quickly ranked as my favourite one. It was huge, plenty of places to get lost in, and enormous walls covered in heiroglyphics.

After lunch in Luxor, we spent a few hours at Rezeiky Camp (where we stayed previously) thoroughly cleaning the truck. When that was done we headed into town for dinner - more kushari! Without getting lost, this time.

Back at the camp we jumped in the pool for a bit (the pool which is distinctly more of a funny colour than the Nile, and into which you cannot see further than a few inches). we cleaned up, packed everything, and headed to Luxor train station, saying goodbye to Nev and the truck for the last time.

An hour later than scheduled, the eight-hour overnight train journey commenced.

We were all excited by massive the lie in we got for a 9am start that morning. We saw Philae Temple, with Hatshepsut's cool obelisk. Another place where those darn Christians ruined a lot of carvings.

After lunch on the waterfront, I slept for a few hours. It was good.

We regrouped at 4 and took a boat to a beach on Elephantine Island. Took a dip in the Nile and survived. It's clean and clear around Aswan, contrary to popular rumour. We had a tour of a family home in the Nubian village, and Mona, lady of the house, cooked us a fantastic dinner. The houses are made of mud brick, but painted brightly and strategically in yellows, blues and greens to maximise heat and light potential year round. The house we saw was also enormous, even for a family of five. During the summer months, they all sleep on the roof, but there are an excess of indoor bedrooms for guests, and two huge reception areas. In the village, there are no locks on doors, and the sense of community is such that friends can wander in and out of each others' homes at leisure. While we were there we had a few drop-ins from neighbors and local kids, including a woman who henna'd up everyone except me. Even Al got a hardcore eye-pyramid thing on his arm. Manly :)

An enjoyable and stress free day, in preparation for the next few days of uber-chilling on a felucca...

SOMEONE* ordered a wakeup call for everyone without telling us. At 4am, a phone you don't recognise ringing next to your head from a table of all of your charging electricals is one of the most confusing phenomena known to man.

*It was Dave.

We drove three hours to Abu Simbel and marvelled at giant representations of Ramses II and his cohorts. The whole lot had been moved to save it from the rising Nile a few decades ago, which is pretty impressive. At quarter to ten we regrouped to join the return convoy (they don't trust tourists driving alone in the desert).

Lunch was even shadier than last night's dinner. There was no written menu so the guy reeled off what he had. Not feeling particularly hungry, Kathryn and I ordered spinach soup. It had the texture of dried spinach, herbs and garlic in oil. Our resident professional chef (Al, for those of you not keeping up) whisked it for a bit and concluded it was egg white. It tasted sort of okay with bread dipped in. But I wouldn't recommend it.

At 4, a local gave us a tour of Elephantine Island. The place is so chilled out. There is an enormous sense of community and 'the simple life' amoung the Nubian people.

After dinner on the waterfront we went for an aimless wander that turned into getting lost in the winding streets of Aswan. It was nice to see some entirely tourist free areas, but we were also knackered. Eventual collapse at the hotel.

We started our day at 4am by catching a hot air balloon from the other side of the Nile. On the boat across, we were unexpectadly supplied with coffee and Twinkys. We shared the balloon with Japanese tourists and a pilot with a sense of humour. I hadn't expected the fire part of the balloon to be so close to our heads, nor so loud.

The wind took us away from the Valley of the Kings and across the Nile. We upped and downed a bit, with the pilot explaining that flying close to things (the Nile, tops of trees...) is more fun. We saw the sunrise, and lots of Luxor from above. We almost landed in someone's field but a disgruntled looking chap on a donkey waved us away. So we landed in the next field, with a ground crew of local kids, who had been chasing the balloon's progress for the past ten minutes. The pilot warned us not to tip the kids or we'd have to pay them all, and to keep hold of our bags. We stayed in the basket whilst the balloon was haphazardly bundled away before traipsing through mud to the waiting minibus. An experience of a lifetime. I got some cool photos.

Back at the hotel we slept for an hour before digging in to the remaining birthday cake and heading out to Karnak Temple by horse and carriage. Karnak is huuuuge. Afterwards we went back to bed again before lunch.

Al and I set out on a hunt for the kushari shop, which should have been a couple of minutes walk from where everyone else went for lunch. En route we encountered a young man desperate to sell his shoe cleaning services to Al, who had jut stepped in something disgusting. This proved to be at a crucial point in the journey as the distraction meant we missed the turning we were looking for. Next we met the infamous Christian Mike, a toothless carriage driver wwho misdirected us and we walked for a further forty minutes or so into a distinctly tourist free area. Fortunately we didn't get charged for this pleasure.

Eventually we circled back and found an enormous tourist information centre. The friendly staff directed us around the corner where finally! Kushari. A big takeaway tub for 10LE. That's about a quid. As expected, finding our way back to the cafe where the girls' were took two minutes and we all returned to the truck.

Cue: four hour drive to Aswan.

We checked into the Orchida St George Hotel, where they welcomed us with cold karkarde. Score.

That evening we ventured into Aswan town. The tourist stuff is mixed in with the locals' stuff and veryone is much more laid back. We still got about the smae number of 'hello!', 'where from?', 'welcome!', 'spice girls!', and Al got plenty of 'lucky man, five wives!', but people seemed marginally less desperate to sell us things.

We did struggle to find somewhere to eat though. Eventually we went into a dogy looking cafe which we decided was definitely a front for a secret mafia related organisation. It was run by a stoney-faced fellow who didn't seem as thrilld about having customers as other places have been. The food arrived incredibly fast and there was definitely evidence of it being fetched from down the street. It was hella cheap too though, and by the end the guy running the joint seemed to have cheered up. Out of nowhere his mate arrived with something sweet on a fork and inserted it into Lizzie's mouth. He had a small selection of apparently complimentary sweet coconutty things which he insisted we finish off. They were tasty.

And thus ended the longest birthday ever. I was starting to get depressed about the impending end to the trip, especially with all of the UK riots news that was trickling through. Everyone we had encountered in Egypt was friendly and welcoming, providing contrast to what at the time felt like the country full of thugs to which I belonged. But let's not dwell. We went to bed early for yet another 4am wake up.

A 6am start for the Valley of the Kings, where a ticket allows entry to three tombs. We saw those of Ramses third, fifth, and ninth. Pro tip: EVERYTHING is half price with an international NUS card.

The quality of the preserved colours and carvings in the tomb is stunning, especially upon remembering that they are thousands of years old. Colours in the tombs in the Valley of the Workers were even more intense - the workers had one day off a month to work on their own family tombs, and put much more effort into the art.

After napping for a couple of hours we regrouped for lunch at a cafe in town. My growing karkade addiction (did I mention this yet?) was satisfied and more shopping commenced. We spent a while in a no-haggle statue shop and learnt how to tell machine- or Chinese-made from handcrafted Egyptian wares, as well as getting a demo on holding a naked flame to the black statues to prove they are plastic and not the stone they are sold as on the street. We hung out in the jewellers again, and were given more karkade. I then bought a ton of dried hibiscus so I can make my own every day for the next year.

Later that afternoon, H, Lizzie and I joined Dave on a visit to the SunShine Orphanage, a charity sponsored by Oasis. Wewere covered in adorable drooling toddlers for a couple of hours before our return.

We all ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Nile. At the end of the meal, an enormous chocolate cream birthday cake appeared bearing the message 'HAPPY BIRTDAY AMY' (sic). Thanks everyone! The best surprise. We ate about a third of it then stored it in the hotel's freezer.

To bed ready for an exciting 4am start...

After our sandy night, we had another drive day. We were all pretty grimy. We spent a majority of this journey learning interesting and enthralling 'facts' from a quiz book we found on the truck. This consumed hours.

We stopped for lunch and supplies at La Senza Mall; made up for some great purchases at a super cheap Carrefour by spending the same amount on a single coffee at an overpriced chain. Totally worth it.

We arrived at Rezieky Camp in Luxor late afternoon. First things first, we all upgraded to hotel rooms instead of the campsite. Secondly, we got in the swimming pool. Slightly disturbing that we couldn't see deeper than a few inches into the cloudy water, but we were all so filthy ourselves we were well beyond caring. After showering and cleaning up properly, Dave took us into town.

Luxor may be the hassle capital of Egypt (reserving judgement on Cairo for now). In a jewellers shop, the owner of which was known to the crew, we were brought kushari and cold hibiscus (karkade). This may be my new favourite meal in the world, and sparked the beginning of a slight addiction to karkade from this point onwards. Unfortunately we were told that the ability to make kushari well is a rare skill indeed. But I'm going to damn well try.

Later we met our Luxor guide who took us that evening to Luxor temple. The temple sits in the middle of the city, integrated with the local surroundings like no other. A lot of Luxor is currently being demolished by the government to make way for new excavations, as there is still apparently plenty left to be found.

Luxor temple at night was stunning, particularly due to the distinct lack of other tourists in an area that we were told would usually be packed. Notably we learnt about Hatshepsut, the only female Pharaoh, and why lots of her likenesses have been erased in various temples. (Hint: her stepson hated her).

Afterwards we walked back through the market and did some shopping. We got no end of attention from sellers and locals alike. As we haggled here, we quietly realised how royally ripped off we had all been in Dahab.

Overlanding means lots of driving, and driving means a vehicle. A vehice means a confined space, which in turn means patience and cooperation. The Oasis trucks are built to house 24 people, plus a tour leader and driver. We are fortunate in that there have been only eight to nine of us in total on this trip. We've been able to spread out,sleep across the seats and have had plenty of storage space to ourselves.

Storage is in an overhead rack and in space below which we access by removing our seats. Seats are along the edge of the truck facing inwards. Beneath the floor in the central walkway, food and various communal things are stored. There is also a selection of books and games. The truck is air oinditioned by means of entirely open windows. Plastic sheets roll down the side in the event that it does need sealing. In our current location, these have a serious greenhouse effect.

When we tire of sitting or lying on the regular seats, there's the beach. This is an open space behind and just above the truck's cab. It is usually both really hot and windy up there and is a great spot for a view. It can get violently bouncy up there on desert roads; of course we are strictly not allowed up there whilst we're moving..

When the truck stops, the kitchen unfolds. Sheets of metal surround a blackened, gas-powwered hob, and cooking is generally done in a series of enormous saucepans. The kettle is usually boiled over an open campfire for tea and coffee. Stuff is prepared on a foldup table, and three washing up bowls are ritualistically laid out (water, bubbles, disinfectant). Food is brought locally or taken from the stash of tins or dried food on the truck. Cook groups (pairs in our case) were assigned at the start and everyone pitches in with their own washing up, which operates a lot like a production line and is extremely efficient. Travellers may often be seen waving plates and pans and cutlery around for minutes at a time. This is a highly sophisticated pot drying technique known as 'flapping'.

So far we've managed to not get in each others' way and have clicked wonderfully. It doesn't take long to adapt to living like this and I think adjusting back to 'normal' life may be harder.

This trip, and my new friends, have opened my eyes to a world of new travelling possibilities and cemented my desire to explore. When the time comes, I won't be ready to come home; but when I do, I'll start planning my next adventure.

An idle day.

I sat around the hotel writing a lot.

H returned from her kitesurfing course mid-afternoon and we had a mosey around town. We regrouped with everyone else for dinner in a nice sea-front restaurant that was a lot like all of the other nice sea-front restaurants we had eaten at. Apple moussaka was good.

Then we drove to Sinai. About an hour from Dahab.

And we climbed the mountain.

Our local guide consitently told us to take it easy. We were all already exhaisted, so the climb was slow and steady and probably took about two hours. The night was hot and thirsty and our way was was lit only by our torches. The trail consited mostly of a gentle slope with steeper parts being roughly stepped. There are a number of huts selling cold drinks at gradually escalating prices en route.

At the top, our guide reccommended to us his favourite rock and we settled for a bit. Sitting still in a high place became chilly but we al fell asleep for an hour or so. Based on what we had learnt was possible in Israel, we decided that we were napping in the EXACT spot that Moses recieved the Ten Commandments.

The sunrise took ages, and by this time a massive group of Australian and Italian pilgrims had arrived at the top, singing and praying obnoxiously (in my opinion) and somewhat disrupting the notion of a nice peaceful sunrise.. Many also seemed to be intrigued by the fact we were camped out on a ledge below the peak, to the extent that they started taking photos.

Once the sun was firmly above the horizon our guide summoned us and we opted for the 3000 steps route to the bottom. This meant no other annoying tourists, and plenty of shade. Not to mention some awesome views of heaps of rocks.

We got back to the truck around 7am where Dave and Nev had French toast and beans waiting for us. Then, we drove. And almost exclusively slept.

We stopped for lunch at Pizza Hut (vastly superiour food and prices compared to the UK) as next to nothing was open because of Ramadan.

We camped in the desert that night. I opted to sleep outside again although it was particularly windy. Heather and Kathryn made a concoction with soya mince and vegetables and pasta. Worse things have happened.

The night was disrupted firstly when a potentially crazy Bedouin chap appeared and shook all of our hands enthusiastically and, we think, tried to invite us to sleep in his hut. We politely declined.

Much later I was woken by Lizzie dragging all of her belongings back into the truck. It emerged that the Bedouin man and his friend had decided that outside the girls' tents would be a great place for a lengthy chat. After some persuasion by Dave, they ledt eventually. In hindsight this incident was hilarious.

I woke up with sand ingrained in my skin. Mmm. But so did everyone who had been in a tent. So I had been no worse off.

We drove to the Israel border on a coach full of Russians, two Italian-Romanians,two Italians and a French-Moroccan family with two impossibly well behaved knee high children. Us Europeans teamed up and were delivered approximately one tenth of the information that the Russian-speakers recieved. Being in the language minority was definitely a unique experience.

At the border, after queuing for an age, we queued some more, then did some queuing. We made it through eventually, with only the minor incident of Alan's passport being temporarily confiscated.

We continued to drive, until we were suddenly unloaded at the Dead Sea. We sat around blearily whilst other tourists set to work covering themselves in mud they had just bought from a shop. This Dead Sea beach was long and white, with showers and seating and shops. From the people in it, the water appeaered less buoyant than we had seen in Jordan; we could see pipes pumping in fresh waste water from the showers, and there was a whole section signposted for no swimming, with the implication that they were polluting that specific bit. All in all, I think we preferred our off the beaten track, clamboring down a cliffside, Jordanian experience.

Back on the coach, our English-speaking guide arrived. He was friendly and knowledgable, if less talkative than the Russian one. He also had some weird affliction of the skin that caused random patches on his arms and then head to bleed unprovoked. He seemed fine, though.

We stopped at a high place to see all of Jerusalem before visiting the Wailing Wall (pro tip: you don't turn your back on it, evem whilst walking away). We spied on some praying Jewish people for a while, before moving on.

We followed a Jesus-related trail of locations, conveniently sequenced for the maximum touristic experience, in both Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These included the slab on which Jesus was lain after crucifixion, his tomb, and the patch of mud on which he was born. I may have become even more skeptical about certain aspects of Christianity as a result of this tour. What was far more interesting and inspiring were our walks through the streets, seeing markets and people, and such a crossover of cultures and religions side by side. At one point our guide mentioned how tolerant and accepting the people of Bethlehem are. When cultures coexist it seems understanding is crucial; disputes spring from ignorance and an inability to empathise with beliefs and people that are not your own.

Despite having not yet been provided with a promised lunch by 4pm (the Russians were becoming cranky) we entertained ourselves at a horrendously tacky souvenir shop, where our fellow tourists spent a small fortune on bizarre crap. Finally we were ushered into a restaurant and consumed a mediocre buffet that didn't sit right with anyone. Falafel off the street is probably a much better bet in future.

And thus we returned. After, of course, losing a number of Russians in the duty free at the border crossing for far longer than was polite. We got back to Dahab around midnight and a few of us checked out the pizza shop opposite the hotel. The guy had to go buy most of his ingredients fresh as he was about to pack up shop and visit his parents in Cairo for a month. But he as glad of the custom, and showed us how he makes Egyptian style pizza - superior to Italian in my opinion. Not to mention vastly cheaper. Sweet pizza was on the menu and I enjoyed a peanut one with sugar and milk. Curious.

I woke up in the early hours of the morning with a gecko on me.

Another fantastically lazy day, with everyone doing their own thing. H went to learn to kitesurf, and Al, Lizzie and I caught camels for half an hour to The Blue Hole, a prime scuba diving and snorkling spot.

My camel was distinctly tetchy and easily distracted,but overall highly entertaining.

I snorkled for a bit, but had a dodgy mask so it wasn't nearly as enjoyable as last time. I think we were all a little underwhelmed by the Blue Hole. It can't have helped that it was brimming with tourists.

H joined us later and we lazed about, eating, drinking and sleeping until we were collected at 5. For anyone still reading this because Chris pointed you here, he was diving all day. You'll have to ask him about that.

We regrouped for dinner at a classy looking Indian/Thai/Chinese place.

At ten, six of us were picked up from the hotel on a minibus for our next grand adventure...