I’m moving to Nepal! Tomorrow! This means you’re about to go back to reading about life in Nepal, which means fewer storylines revolving around me in my boxer shorts running away from mice.

It also means that this particular blog entry – my last before I actually get to Nepal and start doing this work I’ve been prattling on about all summer – is going to be different from the others. This is own little telethon for Next Generation Nepal, minus Jerry Lewis and washed-up celebrities. (If you’re not American, you will have to trust me that that was a very, very funny joke.)

I think we can all agree that this blog would be exceptionally lame (lamer?) if it were me asking for money - I personally hate being asked for money - so let me assure you that this is the last time I will make this appeal in 2006 and the foreseeable future. Then I’m going right back to detailing the Action-Packed Thrill-a-Minute Oh-So-Hilarious Craze-coaster that is my life.

But first!

In the week and a half since I left America, I’ve been to London, Brighton, Brussels, Sofia (Bulgaria), and back to Brussels. I have done almost no work in that time and have experienced virtually zero stress, except once in the airport when I couldn’t find my passport and had to hold back my own barf.

It was the most traveling I’ve done in a while – certainly all summer – and I felt a little rusty. It wasn’t just misplacing my passport either; I misplaced my own bag for a few moments at the airport, which is just about the worst thing you can do these days short of shelling the runway. I went from standing calmly on line to spinning around like a dog; the women behind me must have thought I’d suddenly gone totally bananas. My heart practically burst through my chest and landed on the other side of the departure hall – I was sure I’d only find my bag again by following the sound of a controlled explosion nearby.

But what really threw me off in my return to traveling, far more than missing passports and exploding boxer shorts, was trying to navigate the London metro system.

These last two weeks have been even frantic-ier than usual, which accounts for me not posting even a single banality on this blog. For those of you wondering what kinds of adventures I’ve been having while I’ve been out of contact, I think it can be summed up in sixty-seven words:

Not too much, really – just been insanely busy with that benefit that we had for NGN, finishing last minute stuff before I left the country, trying to convince Kinko’s that they really did have the capacity to make photocopies for paying customers (the staff appeared skeptical), and packing for Europe and Nepal, which I only remembered to do about three hours before my plane’s scheduled departure time.

To further summarize: no adventures.

Drinking tap water does not cure bronchitis – I know that now. I concede this may have been overly optimistic on my part, but it was based on some irrefutable logic, which is this: the Native Americans probably had bronchitis, and they must have treated it without antibiotics. They must have used what they had on hand – cornmeal, squash, sweet potatoes, roast turkey, pumpkin pie – that kind of thing. Ditto for tribes in deepest Africa – they used what was available. They certainly didn’t have modern medicine, anyway. So why couldn’t I do the same? We’re all human beings, right?

Like I said – irrefutable. I was eager to try a more traditional approach.

(Which is to say, I didn’t have any medical insurance.)

See that? That's what we're up to these days. The Little NGO That Could. My part in this is that I took those pictures; the rest was done by a rather astonishing group of friends who have been taking on this cause. When I wrote in a previous entry that I couldn't do this alone, this is exactly what I meant. You now understand better that this was not false modesty (is there any other kind?) – it was merely a verification of everything you may know about me from reading two years worth of travel stories that usually end with me either throwing up, getting bitten by dogs, or telling Hindu orphans that my favorite food is their God - ground up, char-broiled and eaten like a sandwich.

This blog has not been a pantheon of dignity.

It is generally taken as fact that that anyone planning to take over the world will need to get a few key players on board first. Starbucks, for example. And probably Google, and Sean Hannity, and somebody that knows how to assemble Ikea furniture. Few people, however, ever mention MySpace. And that, my friends, makes them all the more dangerous.

I’ve recently discovered MySpace, and here is what I discovered: MySpace has about fifty ways of getting your ass fired.

Tell me which of the following true statements seems least preposterous to you:

a.) In a story on CNN about how sweet young actress Dakota Fanning will play a rape victim in her upcoming movie, there was a banner at the bottom of the screen that read “Dakota Fanning: will rape = Oscar?”
b.) One hundred and seventeen men dressed as Santa Claus met at their annual convention in Copenhagen on Monday; according to their spokesperson, the most pressing point on the agenda was a debate on whether or not plain green Christmas trees are “a little drab.”
c.) President Bush, in describing Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, uttered the phrase “Everybody abhors the loss of innocent life. On the other hand…”
d.) Conor will soon be moving to Nepal to start an orphanage.

Tough, right?

I’m pretty certain that (a) and (c) have a few thousand web pages devoted to them, and line (b) pretty much says everything you need to know on the matter. Thus, I’m going to go ahead and tackle issue (d), which is arguably cause for the most consternation here, especially if you agree with me that children are the world’s greatest natural resource after oil.

This is how a decision to indulge in a late-night Thomas’ English Muffin™ last Thursday led to me crouching outside in an alleyway, middle of the night, wearing nothing but swim trunks and rubber gloves, brandishing a large screwdriver and hiding from local firemen.

Here’s how it starts: I melted the telephone. That was step one.

I was on the Yahoo! homepage on Tuesday – instead of clicking on my mailbox, as I usually do, on a whim I decided to click on the horoscopes. I have always been skeptical of horoscopes, and yet I am always willing to give them another chance – it isn’t like I have a lot to lose here, after all: my social life is already about as non-existent as a social life can get. Even calling it a “social life” is misleading – it’s more like just “life.” So I say: Bring it on, Stars! Talk to me! Unless my horoscope urges me to go bungee jumping in a pair of concrete pants, I have a hard time seeing how it can do any harm. I decided, therefore, that Tuesday’s horoscope would serve to guide me through my day.

My horoscope on Tuesday read: “Dated ideas will hold you back; try to, so expose yourself to cutting-edge thinking.”

WTF?!?

Last Saturday morning, I went down to the kitchen to have some cereal for breakfast. I keep the cereal in the pantry – I’ve always considered it to be pretty safe in there.

Before I opened the pantry door on that particular Saturday morning, I had thought of myself as a pretty unflappable kind of guy. I certainly didn’t expect to get flapped (?) that morning, when my itinerary had me eating some cereal and skimming the NY Times Arts Section for Keira Knightley photos. But it is exactly in these unguarded moments that God chooses to teach us valuable life lessons; He may do this by presenting us with a challenge to overcome, a moral quandary, or perhaps a friend who needs our help. Or, in my case, by tossing a live mouse into my pantry when I've just woken up and I’m reaching bleary-eyed for the Honey Nut Cheerios.