 My name is Damian Pooley, commonly known on the internet as SurfingSpider.
I can be found on Yahoo! Instant Messenger if the PC has logged me on
without my knowing it, or when I elect to do so, or posting on message
boards that are related to my hobbies such as wargaming and weird
Japanese bands, or browsing through stories on fanfiction.net
or fictionpress.com.
If that doesn't work, you can always try wikiTravel,
as if I am not 'at home' then I am travelling through some country,
far, far, away. So far, from the beginning of my years, I have been to
twenty-eight countries outside of my own and taken a fair sized chunk
out of the world. Yet there is still much of the world left to see...
Where I have been to is as follows:
- Afghanistan
- Cambodia
- Canada
- China
- Egypt
- Fiji
- Hong Kong
- India
- Iran
- Israel
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
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- Malaysia
- Mongolia
- Nepal
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Singapore
- Syria
- Tajikistan
- Tibet
- Thailand
- Turkey
- United Arab Emirates
- United States of America
- Uzbekistan
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I think you can tell already the kinds of places I like to travel
to. So far, surprisingly, Nepal as been the most rewarding country to
travel to, followed by Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose similar
cultures and beautiful bare scenery I admire so much. Nepal has every
thing I look for in a country: snow caped mountains, plenty of guns,
and cheap places to stay and eat. They also have service, which is
rare in the sub-continent. I have been arrested twice, and countries
seem to fall into or out of rebellion or outright war after I have
been through them. Kyrgyzstan had a successful revolution before I
arrived, Uzbekistan had a failed uprising that was massacred a few
weeks after I was at that town (one of the places where I was
arrested), Tibet is an occupied land as are the Palestinian parts of
Israel - the intifada ceased when I was there but America invaded
Afghanistan, Cambodia still had the Khmer Rouge, Iran has its
government, went through all the middle-east during and after
September 2001, and Nepal has a Maoist insurgency as well. All of this
is covered in much more detail in my travel pages. By education I
should be filling shipping containers or scheduling deliveries for
Mayne Logistics or if I had some ambition, DHL. By trade I am a
software programmer specialising in Java and getting things done. My
trade supports my hobbies a lot better and what my degree would have
been able to in the same amount of time. I'd rather reach an
enlightened state through globe trotting than realising what a mistake
I'd made by belonging to some glacial corporation. My hobbies pretty
much define what and who I am, and this website is pretty much devoted
to the most important: my writing. To know me, you have to know my
stories.
- Damian Pooley, /\/\ss/\/\
Other pics:
National Geographic me:
portrait style taken by Tajik war-photographer Muburaksho. 4.2005.
Impregnable me: by some Kyrgyzstani
truck driver, near Pamirs and Chinese border. 5.2005.
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