Beards – attractive facial feature or unsightly facial fungus? Opinion on beards is divided to say the least. There are some parts of the world where wearing a beard is mandatory, and not doing so can lead to beatings. In many other contexts facial hair is forbidden entirely. But whether a beard is a good idea or not is not something that people can seem to agree on.

Now science has shown that (if you are Australian) wearing a beard will make you more attractive (to other Australians). From my experience though if you are looking to impress it is probably better to just buy flowers or something like that!

Today I feel the need to take my mind away from where I am and what I have been doing. Not that things are particularly bad, but they are not particularly great or particularly fun. So what I want to do is cast my mind back and write about a time when I was doing something considerably more diverting. Namely traveling around Asia.

I wasn’t exactly slumming it, but I certainly wasn’t doing things in gold plated style. I started out taking a flight to India. I had never been to India before, but I new that I wanted to get flights to Mumbai. Wow, those first few weeks were something else. The sights,the smells the noise.

It was quite a culture shock for a young guy who had never really seen much of the world. I certainly got into some scrapes. Within days of arriving in the country I had managed to get bitten by a stray dog in the street. This led to a lot of waiting round in hospitals, confusion with insurance and so on. It really was quite a farce.

Things got worse for me. It seemed like everywhere I went someone was trying to rob me or rip me off. Then something happened that turned things around. That thing was meeting little Sanjee. He offered to be my guide, and right away I knew it was the right move to make. With a little local knowledge and someone to translate and help me out, my fortunes were transformed.

Local knowledge is always what you need to get the best from a place.No doubt. Local eyes see a place differently, see danger and opportunity differently. In a way it is a good feeling to be somewhere, and to know nothing and no-one. Total blank slate. I sometimes wonder what happened to little Sanjee. Who knows maybe someday our paths will cross again.

Did you see it? Were you watching? Were you there when the spirit of a nation was crushed by 11 millionaires of breathtaking mediocrity? My gosh it was horrible wasn’t it? For those of you not quite following this I am talking about the England Germany World Cup game of yesterday.

When I look back at some of my posts it makes me sad to think about how excited I was about this world cup. I was anticipating such awesomeness, but instead what have we ended up with? Nothing but vuvuzela induced hearing loss and an England team catching flights to the UK early.

Well, at least it made HER happy.

England were truly abject as they slumped to their worst ever defeat at a World Cup. Conceding four goals and scoring just one. There was of course the disallowed goal that Lampard knocked in. Yes, that was a goal, and yes we should have goal line technology, but that is not the most important thing. What is significant is that England were really, really poor individually and as a team.

Some of the blame must surely rest with Capello. To fail as utterly as he did to get the team to play together cannot be the mark of a great tactician. Maybe he is just no good at communicating and motivating his players. Certainly he made some glaring errors regarding player selection. The heart of England’s poor performance however is surely the players. They should hang their heads in shame, book flights to Abu Dhabi, and go into exile.

Still, never mind, the end of the World Cup but not the world. And aren’t Argentina looking good?