hey everyone

hey again,
sorry for being a little slack on the email front but i guess ive not that much to write about as im still in koh pha ngan and into my little routine of island life!well i think its been about a month since i last wrote just before my 27th birthday!
following up on the camera saga,and the fact that i had broken my new camera a week or two after i had bought it on the day of my birthday i had got up usual time and set off for the other side of the island at 8am for my morning yoga class.on my return the heavens opened and it rained for hours and evading offers for a birthday beer i was still planning to attend my afternoon yoga session and brave the torrential downpours nevertheless!that was,until i decided to give nikon a call about my broken camera that i had sent them (bangkok) to fix!they then told me that i didnt have a warranty (sly buggers!) to cover the broken lense and that it would cost me an added 4500baht (about 70pounds)to replace the lense!nice birthday treat i must say!that then was all it took and a great excuse to then accept the offer of a birthday cheers beer on the balcony of our little abode and to drown my sorrow at the thought of parting with this unwanted newfound budget crushing burden that was now upon my shoulders!well,it went down quite well and the fact that it was raining cats and dogs gave me an extra little excuse not to go back to yoga!this i felt bad for and that my willpower was tarnished so easily but when its your birthday you can sweep those feelings under the carpet quite easily as it is indeed only one day of the year!so we sat there,me,ross and mr ong(our thai landlord)drank a few cold cheers beers,played guitar and sang merrily away for much of the afternoon!it felt like i was absconding from school which i guess i sort of was but it felt good!after that,once the sun had set and the rain had stopped we got our canoe and paddled over to the bikes fixed some water skis to them and sped over to the party centre of the island had rin to meet some friends for dinner!(minus the canoe and the skis but there was a lot of rain! ; )there we had a lovely dinner in which i ate waaaaaaay too much and to my suprise my friends had bought me an assortment of birthday cakes for me to devour complete with tiresome magic candles n all and after that i must say that i was still full when i woke up the next day!so the rest of my birthday consisted mainly of me sitting on the beach huffing and puffing and rubbing my almost bursting little belly!not much i could really do after that but weeeeeeeeeell it was me birthday!up until the last week we've been hit by some amazing and hefty storms and it rained near constant for what seemed like weeks and weeks as we got the after effects of a typhoon in the south china sea which was nice!!!me n my trusty poncho became very familiar over that time and it was like being back home having to get up early against my will don my poncho,get on my bike,freeze my little toes off(well not quite but it was cold!)and try to see through the torrent of rain drops stinging my eyelids at about 3000 mph!one day i left the house with clear blue sky,the sun was hot as fire and the day looked to be a glorious one as i got half way to my destination there it was,well,maybe i should say there it wasnt as i came to the brow of the hill i could no longer see the end of the road or for the next 50yards even as a storm had quietly breezed in without my knowing and was waitin for me with a smile it seemed!totally poncholess and nowhere to run or hide it hit me face on and like a freight train,booooom,nice! i think by the time i had ridden 10yards i was soaked through to my quivering little bones and i have to say it made me laugh.about a kilometre down the road i found a little shack in which to shelter along with a couple of locals and i stood there with the biggest grin on my face and i just couldn't wipe it off even when people drove passed and looked at me all wet and sad looking i couldn't wipe it off haha sometimes you hate it when it happens but sometimes you love it and just give in to it!as neverthless everytime is unavoidable so you may aswell enjoy it!10 minutes later the sun was out again and off i went with a grin so big that i have stretch marks now!ive been told that aloe vera will get rid of them but im not so sure as its been a month now and they're still there and beginning to sag! : )
the yoga,apart from the odd slip in willpower here and there is going well and i feel alot better for it and if you'd believe it im not really eating much meat anymore still and not dinking that much either!which is great because when i do drink its alot cheaper as i need less!; ) full moon has just been and gone and i resisted the temptation to party but the last full moon party was the same night as the fa cup final so we watched the game in had rin with our friends matt and lou that live there on the mountain just planning to have a couple of small beers and enjoy the footy then home!of course things never go to plan and the game for a start went into extra time which meant more beer and so on and so forth!then cries of "to the beach" came from all directions and there we found ourselves back in the thick of things on had rin beach for yet another full moon escapade!we started off ok though and still watching our drunkenness and our budget we did ok until around 3am where everyone we seemed to know on the island just kept appearing from all angles with sangsom bucketsand allsorts to test the willpower to breaking point!although saying that we werent too bad as we then about 4am had to jump on the scooters and brave the had rin hills and the rest of the island to our home destination,which is probably near enough the furthest point on the island we could have lived!not to end it there 3mins in to my drive i see a thai guy soaked with sweat clambering up a hill with a desperate body language so i stopped and offered him a lift!man was he happy to see me!especially after a night on the sangsom,im surprised he even got that far over the hills i mean man they're bloody steep!if you've been there you'll know!anyway he was from bangkok and had to get the early boat back to the mainland so it was lucky i turned up when i did and he was so appreciative he told me to come and see him in bangkok and he'd look after me bigtime!it turns out that he owns three shops in khao san rd so he should be easy to find and although i don't want any return for the favour i'd given him it would be nice to have a friend in that area which is always handy and to be honest he was a really nice guy so alls well that ends well and i hope to see him again who knows,maybe he can get me cheap tickets (thai price)for the bangkok muay thai stadium or something!shortly after i had dropped him if i then proceeded homeward bound until i came across a young drunk and very emotional swedish guy who was close to tears and flagged me down with slightly slurred cries of "stop,pleeeeeeeeease,you have to help me!" so i stopped and it took me a couple of minutes to calm him down enough to actually understand him and i then discovered that he didn't have a clue where he was staying,as he'd arrived late the night before and headed straight for the full moon party without actually taking a good mental note of where he actually lived and owned only a door key with a number on it!hehe bless him he was beside himself and all he kept saying was "my brother is going to kill me!" in a slurred swedish manner hehe with a look of puzzled confusion as to how to act on my face i then helped him onto the back of the bike and began to search for his resort!with no name to it thus far!how the hell was i going to find this place!?i headed for the port town not far away looking for some kind of clue and assured him a hammock for the night and a sober trip back in the morning to search with a clear head whatever happened and my many replies were something again along the lines of noooooooooo'pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease you have to help me,my brother will kill me!" hehe i didn't really have much of a clue how to help the guy but i persisted and on our way down the high st he had a brainwave and remembered the first three letters of his resort!ok,now we're getting somewhere but even those three letters were slurred so not very far still!luckily for us then we saw two local guys sitting in the street and off he ran with the same cry!"pleeeeeeeeeeease you have to help me!"hehe by this time im in puzzled hysterics and pinching my arm to make sure i hadn't drunk too much cheers beer on the beach and was actually laying face down in the sand and having some kind of strange vivid dream!then,waheeeeeeeeey bingo the thai guys came up with a name of the resort and then we were starting to make progress from nothing to something and how,i don't know!off we went and to cut a longer story shorter we found his place and i dropped him off right at his door as from the sign at the main road to his resort down the long,dark dirt track to get there didnt fill me with confidence in him getting there and as it turns out,i picked him up about 200 metres from it!finally i returned home with a now sober and baffled smile on my face!hehe
not much really to report as ross is staying in koh samui with a friend for a few weeks so ive got the little house to myself and my two little dogs for a while.ive just been to bottle beach for the first time since 2002 for a little reunion with some friends who i met there all those years ago and it was fun and brought back memories.it took us four years but we made it back there in the end and i had a really nice night but maybe had one too many white russians!cheers benny boy,all the best mate and cheers will and sanette it was great seeing you have a safe journey home and be happy x
pretty much the last three or four days ive been stuck into some jewellery making once again as my last wood carving and necklace i finished months ago so i decided to make the most of the house and get creative,although the house is now a bit of a mess with tools and wood dust!oops but ive made two nice new ebony bracelets to show for the mess so its all good!and although for the whole time ive been sat on my rear in a dusty haze for so long i was being productive with it and its about time i made something again!my guitar playing is still slowly improving and im starting to compose a couple of my own tunes which im trying to put lyrics to but may be a while on that front but they're gtting there!
so far so good on the world cup front and lets hope we can continue to win our games into the knockout stages!the game tonight is on at 2am which is a little late then after,about 4am i then have to bike home for about a 30min ride then feed my poor hungry little hounds that'll be there to bite at my scrawny little ankles as they'll be starvin bless' em so no sleep for me for a while!up the engerland!!come on!!
anyway im soooo tired of meaning to send this email and never getting round to actually doing it and forgetting the good stuff and writing the boring stuff so im just going to send you this!
take care all
much love
dimson xxx

please read

Dear friends who care about our earth. Judge for
yourself if you want to take action.

In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in
Chileruns from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious
resource, and wars will be fought for it.

Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they
provide the second largest source of income for the area.

Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and
other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the
history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each
as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine's rubbish tip.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold.

The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whosemembers is George Bush Senior.

The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year, 2006.

The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got
a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will
not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process.

Every last gramme of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is.They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior.

Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice.

The world must know what is happening in Chile. The only place to start changing the world is from here.

We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text, paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book.
Please will the 100th person to receive and sign the
petition send it
to noapascualama@yahoo.ca to be forwarded to the
Chilean government.

This is no joke,
Please read an update:
http://www.tierramerica.net/2005/0618/iarticulo.shtml



No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean
Cordillera on the
Chilean-Argentine frontier.

We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the
Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3
glaciers, the purity of the
water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the
quality of the
agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the
quality of life of the Diaguita people
and of the whole population of the region.

Signature, City, Country

1) Katharine Proudfoot, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

2) Laura Cole, London, UK

3) David Platt, London, UK

4) Diane Platt, Manchester, UK

5) Tanya Corker, Manchester, UK

6) Nicola Hargreaves, UK
7) Nicholas Jones, UK

8)Johann Don-Daniel, Germany

9)Ashley Berger, Germany

10) Sarah Downie, Leeds, UK

11) Paula Delahunty, Bingley, UK

12) John O'Driscoll, Bingley, Uk

13) Jordan-Lee Delahunty, Bingley, UK

14) Claire Mulvey, Bradford, UK

15) Marie Malcolm Bradford, UK

16) Ann Clowes, Halifax UK

17) Jayne McGee, Brighouse UK

18) Jason Barratt Oldham UK

19; Lindsay Torrance, Rochdale UK

20 ) Maggie Ford, Rochdale

21) Barry Cook, Todmorden

22) Shelley BUrgoyne, Todmorden

23) Libby Ray, Shipley, England

24) Anne Meynell, Bradford, England

25) Jim Meynell, Bradford, England

26) Alec Knibbs, Kings Lynn, England

27) Suzanne Bailey, Valencia, Spain

28) Agnieszka Legierska, London, England

29) Rosanna Bennett-Moncrieff, Bristol England

30) Kirsten Bennett-Moncrieff, Bristol, England

31) Stephen Haley, Silsoe, England< BR>
32) Rob Smith, Bristol, England

33) Basil Anderson, Bristol, England

34) Jonathan Coles, Bristol England

35) Deborah Weinreb, Bristol England

36) Lucie Pemberton, Bristol, England

37) Joanna Kate Benson, Bristol, England

38) Aimee Hirt, California, USA

39)Deniz Oktay, New York, USA

40) Jeni Fujita, New York, USA

41) Carla Gomez, Georgia USA

42) Patricia Knight, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

43) Alyssa C. Fredericks, St. Croix, USVI

44) Yulette George, St. Croix, USVI

45) ChenziRa Kahina, St. Croix USVI

46) Carl Christopher, St. Croix USVI

47) Anubi Kahina, St. Croix USVI

48) Tehjrah Alvarez, New York USA

49) Robin Callahan, Moodus, CT USA

50) Joyce Bellis, East Haven, CT USA

51) Elaine Betoncourt, East Hartford CT USA

52) Kathy Meyering, Middletown, CT USA

53) Sue VanDerzee, Durham, CT USA

54) Janet C. Johnson, Concord, MA USA

55) Dale C. Nelson, Bloomington, IN USA

56) Cynthia D. Nelson, Bloomington, IN USA

57) Kathy Kraft, Bainbridge Island, WA USA

58) Nancy Kennedy, San Francisco, CA USA

59) Ryan Kennedy, San Francisco, CA USA

60) Maria Luisa Dangond, San Francisco, CA, USA
61) damien saul,suffolk,england

"I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." G.B. SHAW