my name is peter carter, and i'm 20 years old.

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boy is it raining. i'm not going to say jurassic park rain, but it certainly is raining. i'm wet, we'll leave it at that. i almost said to arta before that a bit of rain never hurt anyone, but that is one untrue saying that persists in the world. rain kills millions of people every year! just ask poor old bangladesh. i suppose thats probably something that acquits to social awkwardness, but i cant help but talk about things like that. it's another little part of who i am i guess. phew, introduction out the way.

i'm in riga now, but i'm going to talk about my last night in parnu. i went for food, found a nice little restaurant and sat to eat. little did i know this was going to turn into one strange meal. i ordered my food (a pasta carbonara thing, whilst you ask), and waited whilst reading burmese days, which i've now finished. i hope i read something with a happy ending soon, because this whole living through books is getting a little depressing. would it have been too much to ask for flory at least to have a happy ending? anyway, the meal. as i was waiting, 2 estonian guys asked if they could sit at my table. i was at a 4 person table, and i'm only one meagre person, so i saw no trouble in it, although i instantly wished i had an excuse as to why they couldnt.

anyway, these guys introduced themselves and i was a little wary, being a paranoid brit and all that. i decided that because of my wariness/waryness, i was going to create a whole false life to talk to these guys about. so, months after conceiving the idea in bar cava, i finally became peter carter. had an interesting chat with these guys, and it is a lot of fun pretending to be someone completely different. as far as they know, my name is peter carter, i'm 20years old and i was born in a small welsh town called ystradgynlais. i chose that because any foreign person is guaranteed to find it ridiculous that a place can be called that. i played golf, tennis and i swam. my favourite film was dogma. as strange as it is, and believe me i know that is strange, i was completely more confident in myself whilst i was being someone else. not to say that i want to be someone else, i've got over that, but it was nice having absolutely nothing to think about when answering questions. anyway, i think peter carter was a bit boring to these people, so they soon left, so i guess that was pretty successful!

anyway, no sooner had they left and another family of 3 sat at my table. the father was pretty pissed off, something to do with the service of the restaurant, something that i genuinly had no complaints about. it turns out that this guy had been playing in an international bridge tournemount that weekend (i didnt even know bridge was an international sport, i thought it was something that was played in old books and old books only) and hadnt done particularly well. despite this, i thought it was wise to quiz him on bridge and it's status as an international sport. they soon left. good work john!

at the end of the day, it was a mediocre carbonara and 2 silly conversations, but it's definitely worth an entry. as i say, i'm now in riga (latvia), staying with the wonderful arta metzale again. always good being around arta, in a similair way to benji she always makes me feel funnier than i really am. spent yesterday catching up and all that, her family seemed pretty excited to see me too. her brother is getting older, and he still likes football, so it's nice to chat about that, even if he does support chelsea. glory hunter. finished burmese days, slept well. arta has gone to give blood (madness!), and i'm walking around riga taking the same photos as i did 10months ago. this is the start of the usual 'difficult' 2nd week, so hopefully i wont start crying in internet cafe's this time, cause boy did that suck. no suicidal men on trams either please.

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