The antikythera mechanism

Knowledge adds pain, as the Finnish saying goes. There is a limit on how much a bio-mechanical computer on a vacation, such as myself, can absorb information. It seems the more one reads about Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai, the more it starts to piss one off due to the limited timeframe in which this particular journey has to be done. Then this particular bloke starts to cut off doables from here and there until there is nothing but the very core of the trip to be done. What was all the point in printing tens of maps if you don't have the time to wander among the darkest bowels of the Beijing hutongs?

Indeed, I feel like there has been a "slight" buffer overrun on my so called vacation, when it comes to background research for this half a year endeavour.

On a more practical note, Huangshan is left further away into the future, and probably the recently discovered Hangzhou shall also be a thing of the later times. Shanghai is immense!

In Moscow we spend 2 nights. It would be nice to see at least the Red Square, Pushkin Square and the Kremlin. And maybe the park, which became famous due to a certain song from The Scorpions. (hint: Gorky Park). In Beijing it's ~3 nights trying a) to survive the chaotic traffic conditions and b) not to get conned by taxi drivers, street vendors or common near-do-wells c) not to get killed by e.g. food poisoning. Finally, to Shanghai probably for the time before the learning of the Mandarin starts.

Np. BT - Divinity.

As a side note, and maybe as an encouragement to others, I finally decided to give some funds for a Unicef-program called "Unicef-lapsilisä", which, I felt, would really direct the funds to those in need. There were lots of things to consider, but all things seem to add up nicely: Unicef does not get funding from the UN (the biggest scam organization of all time IMO), but the funding is raised from private person's and/or groups and national governments. 3/4ths of the Unicef funds are used for helping rather than to buy the black, big-tired SUVs (regards to Paju) for the big shots in some Unicef adminisrative boards. 75% is quite high percentage. Unicef also directs lots of funds for children, and what especially is considered is the education, which IMO is the best way to support the developing countries out of harms way. I couldn't help but to think that for 8 euros 50 kids would get a measles-vaccination, which is deadly in those parts of the world. I am probably anyway in the richest 5% (being a student in Finland; being an average-income worker in Finland would probably be in the 2% zone [just own evaluations]) of the world's population, so it's not that much away from me.

Countdown is reaching its null-point.. Sleeping on the floor now with only a bedtick beneath the floor and my back. Eating away the last of the last flours and salt grains. And writing a blog with my desktop computer, which shall not be moved out of this apartment until the very last moment :).