Izdihar - Magic Kingdom Escapology

It arrives in around 7 hours actually, of to grab us and our baggage and cart us off the Manchester airport at Stupid-O-Clock in the morning. I don't really mind being in any given place for a period of time, but I'm really not keen on the travelling in between part of it all. Taxi's at some god awful time suck, airports suck and airline meals they wake you for at 4 in the morning excel at pulling a golf ball up a hosepipe type sucking if you understand me. Not even is business class worth the indignity of being cooped up with ones fellow travellers in an alloy tube for 7 hours. When will they get round to inventing the Star Trek style transporter beam - how much would that help I wonder? No doubt my bags would still end up diverted to Dhaka by Heathrow baggage handlers.

On the subject of bags, they're all packed now and will hopefully escape the attentions of the BMI weight limit police on the check-in. Passports are at the ready, as are the tickets. The only thing to do now is to see if I can grab a couple of hours kip before the damned alarm goes off again. Guess I'd perhaps better sign off - next post from sunny Riyadh. See you soon.

It's 2009 you know. Welcome to a New Year on Izdihar.com

Picked this little beauty up yesterday, along with a hard-shell case. This is a Cort gb-94. Can't wait to give this a run through the amp when I get it back to Riyadh.

My bass playing is not exactly startling and I'd been looking for something with four strings, rather than the 5-string Cort I already have. I'm hoping this rather tasty little piece is going to help get me going again - I found the 5-string rather tiring on my fretting hands - this seems a much better proposition. Updates as we go along no doubt.

Today I've decided to write about someone who is probably the best striker Stoke City have had for years, but one that comes at a price, though not a financial one. The price is having someone on the squad who can variously be brilliant and imaginatively creative or as has been for the last two games, destructive and carelessly sloppy.

During the Boxing Day game against Manchester United, on a number of occasions he came close to breaking the deadlock that held over the first 70 minutes, but also lost his left boot on no fewer than 3 times. Can anyone explain to me how a Premiership footballer can't keep his footwear on? I could understand if he had been trod on from behind repeatedly, but that wasn't really the case - the first time it happened, he was one on one with Edwin Van De Sar and lost said boot in full flight. You don't half look stupid when that happens and more to the point a rare opportunity to get in front was missed. To then lose your boot twice more is past the point of comedy and suggests that your approach to the professional game is seriously lacking.

Today's incident at West Ham would be funny if it were not so serious. Having once more conspired to throw away a precious lead to a not particularly threatening West Ham team, our leading scorer decides that he's going to start having fisticuffs with the team captain, Andy Griffin. For his trouble, he then gets a red card and an early bath. There is something decidedly unsettling about Ricardo's temperament, as this is not the first time it has resulted in him being sent off. You understand that your defenders are sometimes going to pick up that extra booking in a last ditch attempt to halt the oppositions' progress, but when your strikers go for a walk because they can't keep their opinionated traps shut, it really is too much to keep quiet about.

I should at this point say, that I wasn't at the game and haven't yet seen it on Match of the Day. I can only go on my reaction to the Radio 5 Live reports I heard as I was travelling north from Peterborough.

I'll reserve final judgement until I've seen the incident myself, but at the moment, I'm thinking that Tony Pulis should be seriously thinking about letting Ricardo go during the January transfer window. Sorry son, but you are beginning to look like a bit of an extravagant liability.

Is now nearly over. It was pleasant enough though. Once I get back to Riyadh, I can look forward to installing CS4 Web Premium and having a bit of a play. The chances are that Photoshop will get most use, though I am looking forward to seeing what can be done with Dreamweaver and maybe getting my head around some Flash bits. I also have every intention of trying to learn how to do something useful with PHP and MySQL.

Aside from CS4, I also now have one of the Bose iPod speaker dock things. Not tried it yet, but I hear they sound quite impressive. It looks as though I'll be able to rig it so it is the speaker out for the Vista box in Riyadh. Whilst the HP 24" screen is impressive, the speakers in it are anything but. Also in this years' stocking was some nice Lindt chocolate with ginger (Yum!), a couple of golfy bits, some Boots skin products for the discerning gentleman (me that is) and just for a bit of fun a book full of Lolcats from ICanHasCheezBurger - I'm a little bit of a softy where cats are concerned.

I'm well and truly stuffed where food is concerned, courtesy of an Anthony Worral-Thompson treated turkey crown with all the trimmings.

I need to go and pack now, as it's off down to Stoke for the big match against Manchester United at the Britannia and use just the 2nd of my season tickets stubs - it was the only way of guaranteeing getting into the ground this season. After that, it will be yet another Christmas lunch at my Mum's before we head off down to my sisters' near Peterborough. More driving...

Time I went and sorted that bag out.