A combination of getting sick, not eating much, not drinking alcohol and playing table tennis has made me thinner!

Romania has incredibly fast internet, and the prices are unbelievably cheap. I’m currently in Bucharest and the friend I am staying with has upgraded her connection to 100 megabits per second – that’s the speed of a standard ethernet cable – and it’s costing her 7 Euros per month (GASP of astonishment!). The connection is made possible by Fibre To The Building (FTTB). The speed quoted above is theoretical, and depends of course on the speed of the site you are downloading data from, e.g. if Youtube is overloaded and you want to watch a video, then you will only get the video as fast as Youtube can send it. However an internet speed test showed us we were getting pretty amazing speeds:

This fibre connection allows us to download an MP3 music file in 1 second, or an 800 MB movie in 2 minutes! Amazing! Comparing these speeds to what is available in New Zealand where I’m from – the best we can currently get is ADSL2+ with a maximum speed of around 20 megabits per second, and a cost of over $100 per month for the fastest connections. By Comparison Romania offers 5 times the speed for around $12 per month!

Violeta and her close friend Iulia at a Really Bad Thai Restaurant in Bucharest.

We had just eaten some of the worst food I have ever had in my life. Think: giant pieces of partially cooked, rubbery squid mixed with the cheapest frozen seafood marinara mix you can find in your supermarket, the kind of marinara mix that gives you food poisoning just looking at. Incredibly the girls still look happy even after the disastrous meal

My brother Lex has been working on his portfolio site and has just added a masterful header image that had me clutching my sides with laughter.

I just love the way he has masterfully photoshopped the iStockPhoto logo over the top to make it look like a stock image – It’s a nice parody on the dime-a-dozen technology companies that use a generic stock photo of an attractive young man/woman answering the phone in their imaginary call centre. The only issue is if you look around you will find the same picture of the same young attractive person on any number of other sites. The reason for this is that people buy or grab a free picture from a stock photo site, possibly because they are lazy, or possibly because they have no attractive employees.

Anyway, Lex’s site is looking hot, and the green screen pics he has taken of himself in different outfits are priceless. Check it out.

This article details the unfortunate experience I had of a sebaceous cyst on my back becoming infected while I was travelling through Europe on vacation. I ended up being mostly confined to bed for some 3 weeks. I realise the pictures may seem a little graphic, and not particularly pleasant to look at, however I am publishing them because I found very little information online regarding the successful self- treatment of an infected sebaceous cyst, and I hope this will be useful to someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation.  I found that a cyst can be treated from home, and that it is not necessary to have it removed surgically, or have it injected with a corticosteroid or steroid to kill the infection, nor did I need to take antibiotics – although in retrospect surgery would have been a relatively painless option compared with extracting the cyst naturally. The picture below shows the cyst on my back in the early stages of the infection, it had become quite inflamed and painful, however the worst was still to come…

What is a Sebaceous Cyst?

A sebaceous cyst is not such a scary thing, It’s basically like a giant blackhead under the skins surface. Mine took the form of a small, reasonably solid lump on my back, although it had grown somewhat since I first discovered it a few years ago. When I first found it I was obviously concerned, however a visit to my doctor relieved me somewhat, I was informed that the chances of the lump being something other than a benign sebaceous cyst were 1 in a million, and that the cyst itself just contained a natural, fatty oily substance called keratin, trapped below the surface of the skin. My doctor said she could remove it easily, a shot of anaesthetic, a quick slice of the scalpel and she’d have it out in 5 minutes. My doctor also told me that most of the time a sebaceous cyst can just be left untreated, sometimes they even go away naturally. She counselled if it wasn’t really bothering me I could just leave it, so I did. Although in retrospect I wish I had taken her up on the surgery, as the cyst becoming infected while travelling was a far more painful and drawn out process of removal.

Fast forward 2 years to my trip to Europe and the cyst had grown slightly bigger over this period of time. I was in my last week exploring the Island of Crete in Greece when the lump started to get a little sore and painful. A friend whom I was travelling with had an apartment in Bucharest, Romania, and feeling a bit poorly and sorry for myself I decided to head there a little ahead of schedule in case things got worse, and I’m glad I did!

Within a day or two of arriving my back had turned into a volcano, and I was in a world of pain!

Infected Sebaceous Cyst Pictures

Sebaceous Cyst Treatment

In my particular situation it was quite difficult to get medical treatment for my cyst, I had just arrived in Romania and it was a few days before Christmas. I didn’t speak the language, and although I had a friend with me who could translate I was still plagued by visions of a foreign doctor pulling out his scalpel and advancing mercilessly towards my back muttering things I could not understand while I pleaded with him not to cut me. With this image in mind I decided to go for the self-treatment option and ride it out as best I could. It should be noted I was prepared to go to the doctor if things got any worse than they were, if I developed a fever, or if the infection appeared to spread beyond the localised area. My Romanian friend supported this thinking, but was also not keen to see me at the doctor or the hospital unless it became absolutely necessary – a relative of hers has passed away in hospital due to infection after an operation, and she thought it was probably attributed to poor hygiene standards. All of this made me very nervous about getting any medical treatment at all while abroad.

The home treatment involved placing a hot water bottle on my back regularly throughout the day for approximately 15 minutes per session. Some days I would do this 5 or 6 times and other days once or twice, depending on my energy levels. Once the sebaceous cyst started to drain I stopped the heat treatment almost completely.

The other major component of the treatment was “drawing cream”, a paste which can be applied as a salve, and containing an ingredient such as magnesium sulphate or ichthammol.  This should be available from your local pharmacy, just ask for “ichthammol” cream. This stuff really is magic, my back had become so swollen and painful I could barely move, and I really wanted whatever was inside the lump to come out – I applied the ichthammol cream and within 15 minutes the cyst started to drain, at first a clear liquid which was followed by many semi-hard white lumps which were the contents of the cyst. Unfortunately the process of extracting all of the contents of the cyst took some 10 days with the cyst flaring up and then receding numerous times. This may be unusual and I would be interested to hear in the comments what other people who have suffered this have to say. For me the lump would go down and a scab would form over the area – I would then think I was almost home free, but some residue must have remained and the lump would flare up again the next day and more liquid and pieces of white keratin (the cyst) would come out.

Below is a macro-shot of some of the semi-hard white lumps that came out of the swollen lump on my back.

From beginning to end the cyst took some 3 weeks to fully clear up, this is counting the days in the beginning when it became painful, right through to the final pieces of the cyst coming out and the inflammation going down to an acceptable level. It does not include healing time as I still have a wound on my back that needs to heal at the time of this writing.

However the great news is that the cyst on my back is completely gone! The skins is smooth and there is nothing that can be felt below the surface. No surgery was needed, and from what I can see currently there is no sign of scarring, which would have been inevitable under the knife. The inflammation has receded to the point I can lie on my back, and there is barely any pain or discomfort.

As an afterthought I should mention that panadol or ibuprofen are good to have on hand, and certainly helped to ease the pain when I needed to sleep. Whisky was also good…

I hope this is helpful to anyone who finds themselves, or a friend, in similar circumstances.

A photo I took from the window of a friends apartment in Bucharest, Romania just before Christmas, 2010. (Click to Enlarge)

The photo below is taken from the same apartment window after a large snowfall, just a few days after the shot above (Click to Enlarge).

I feel bad I have not emailed anyone back home with an update recently. I was hoping to organise this blog chronologically with pictures of my trip, however I’m throwing up a few pics of Agia Galini, Creta, Greece which is where I am now so everyone can see. I’ll post some pics of Athens and London soon.

Click the images for larger versions:

Below is the view from the OLD apartment in the morning as the sun came up on a slightly overcast day (it had been raining), we have a much nicer apartment now, and much closer to the sea

Below are some images that Violeta took of Agia Galini village:

Below is the Agia Galini village near Pantheon restaurant (Taverna)

One of the many hotels in Agia Galini (Below)

This is one of the first photos I took in London when I arrived a few weeks ago, It’s the gold statue in front of Buckingham Palace and is apparently known as The Victoria Memorial.
Some more info I dug up on this – it is a sculpture in London, placed at the centre of Queen’s Gardens in front of Buckingham Palace.

It was completed in 1911, the sculptor being Sir Thomas Brock. The surround was constructed by the architect Sir Aston Webb, from 2,300 tons of white marble. It is a Grade I listed building.

It has a large statue of Queen Victoria facing north-eastwards towards The Mall. The other sides of the monument feature dark patinated bronze statues of the Angel of Justice (facing north-westwards toward Green Park), the Angel of Truth (facing south-eastwards) and Charity facing Buckingham Palace. On the pinnacle, is Victory with two seated figures. The subsidiary figures were gifted by the people of New Zealand.

The whole sculpture has a nautical theme, much like the rest of the mall (Admiralty Arch etc.). This can be seen in the mermaids, mermen and a hippogriff, all of which are suggestive of the United Kingdom’s naval power.

There is a similar memorial to her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort outside the Royal Albert Hall.

I’ve just been updating a clients site who specialise in reviewing artificial Christmas trees, and while I was in their review centre I had time to check out some of the trees they have been testing lately. I must say I am completely amazed at how realistic some of these trees are! Back in New Zealand we almost always use real pine trees, which I prefer myself, and I like the smell of real pine needles. But for those who perhaps live in a city apartment where real trees are not available, or are simply too much hassle, then perhaps a plastic tree might be a good option. I could not help but be impressed with the little beauty shown in the pic. It only costs a couple of hundred and has 700 lights! This is pretty convenient for those who want an easy option, low hassle and low maintenance. I do miss the smell of real pine cones though….

A very good friend of mine has a beautiful cat, the breed is Russian Blue.
We were talking about her cat recently and it emerged she is part of a larger network of people who love and collect Russian Blues in Europe.

This friend is also a web designer and has built a really cute website for the cattery and Russian blue community.
Take a look: http://www.cendre-de-roses.ro/

If you were interested in buying a Russian Blue they are apparently very smart and good natured pets, and come highly recommended. The Cattery currently has Russian Blue kittens for sale, but get in quick as stock is limited!

I must say the kittens are unbelievably small and cute! Who could resist one of these!