All posts by cl@rks

Asia, Travelogue, Vietnam

Travelogue SEA 2: Halong Bay

HA LONG BAY

18 – 19 December 2011

We were greeted bang on time at the hotel in Hanoi by our guide, Thine, although the bus ended up only arriving some 20 minutes later. It was a chilly wait and we were worried that the damp cold was a sign of impending rain.

The bus to Ha Long Bay was a group of Japanese tourists (with their own guide) and us, so we had Thine to ourselves and he interspersed stories and tour guide info along the 4-hour journey, broken only by the usual obligatory stop at a souvenir store (where I bought rubies and Christian bought silk ties). The journey should never take as long – being only 160km, but the speed limits were 40 through the towns and 80 in between, with very few stretches where the foot can go flat.

Eventually reaching Ha Long Bay, we were merged with another tour of English speakers and ushered to our boat. We had booked a specific cruise on www.agoda.com based on its 2 day itinerary but were allocated to another boat, which we’d also seen on Agoda and which had the same itinerary but at considerably higher price. Bonus.

From comparing notes with the other travellers it seems that we’d stumbled on a gem with our booking site, paying similar value rates for our hotels to the backpacker types who booked as they went, but with the benefit of having a pre-planned itinerary to springboard from in these new and foreign places. We’d saved big $$$ by booking our Ha Long Bay cruise online!

Our cabin was lovely and spacious with a double and a single bed with fresh white linen and soft duvets, an en suite bathroom and neat decor with wooden panelling and silk curtains. Our tour guide (Dung, which he was quick to tell us is pronounced ‘Dzung’ not ‘dung’) kept reinforcing that this was a luxury cruise, although more in the context of not smuggling booze on board or buying from the endless stream of row boat hawkers that floated past yelling “you want buy somting?”, with ‘somting’ usually meaning an impressive selection of beers, wine, hard tack, cigarettes, chocolates, biscuits and Pringles (which seemed to also be the standard unit of currency in lieu of cash change).

First up was lunch, brought to the table in communal serving platters. Seafood soup, mussels, rice, tofu, beef and an apple-like fruit stirfry, Chinese veg and french fries. We were at a table with a Vietnamese couple and their 2 young kids who spoke with an Aussie accent and were only interested in the ‘chippies’, so making a meal of the central self-service platters was easy enough!

Then it was taking to the waters to see what Ha Long Bay is famous for. There are 1969 limestone mounds that form the ‘Descending Dragon‘ and have earned the area a place in the new 7 natural wonders of the world. A wonder within a wonder is Sun Sot (Surprise Cave) which consists of 3 enormous chambers that you can walk through and (supposedly) see all sorts of animals and shapes that time has eroded into the rock face, most notable of which is the finger/penis that points at a perfectly round hole in the ceiling of the second chamber.

It becomes a bit same same (only different) after a while and we were keen when we moved on from there to go to one of the floating villages to grab a kayak. The floating villages were pretty amazing. Individual houses or restaurants on pontoon floats with inflated barrels and polystyrene blocks keeping them out of the water. People going on with their daily lives, cooking, hanging out washing, peddling wares. Houses with TV aerials and satellite dishes and, it would appear, better cell phone reception than I have at home!

We grabbed a kayak and paddled around the Ha Long bay, getting a closer look at some of the rock faces, a little private beach and a lot of other tourists. The bay is very busy with lots of boats, junks and other (inexperienced) kayakers going in every direction and staking claim to right of way on a shared path. Lots of fun though and I’m glad I didn’t bail out on the activity (in both meanings of the word as I had almost passed on the kayaking because of the weather and for fear of getting wet and cold). I must just be a bit dramatic about cold though as the boys had a big laugh jumping off the top of the junk into the sea (maybe 8m below).

We’d gotten friendly with a pair of NZ’ers and an Aussie through the caves tour and we all hooked up on the upper deck for some pre-dinner beers (after a lovely hot shower – in a bathroom far bigger and nicer than the ones in either Bangkok or Hanoi!) with them and a Canadian couple.

The boat staff were quite intuitive and we found on arrival in the restaurant cabin that they’d moved us from the family table to sit with our new mates. Dinner was a buffet with shrimp chips, fresh springrolls (more like a wrap than the usual deep fried ones), rice (obviously), prawns, calamari with lemongrass, sesame seed pork, chicken stir fry and cabbage. Sweet cake for dessert. (Real cake, not Malory).

Back up to the deck and an endless stream of Tigers began. The Canadians brought out their MP3 player and speakers and we proceeded to ADD-DJ and cross-criticise each others’ music like old friends! … Except Roger from Manchester, who was the only one who was quiet and who took some heckling for not being able to contribute a story to the endless eclectic mix of anecdotes and repartee (peppered with a healthy dose of sauce and profanity). Although he did tell us that he’d managed to find a KFC in Hanoi when we’d marvelled over how franchise and fast food free the city was.

We’d brought some beers with us from the market at the harbour, so we implemented our own private Buy One Get One Free promotion. Aaron, one of the NZ’ers, managed to get a floater (hehe) to pull up to their cabin window so that he could buy a bottle of vodka and 2 litre Coke, which he cleverly served for himself in a beer can so as to go undetected. Beers weren’t that expensive at $2 a can, but the subterfuge is all part of the fun – and having our own supply also meant we could bypass the main cabin and bar where we would be subjected to Dzung’s drunken solo karaoke medley (of what sounded like Vietnamese love songs), belted out in a key I’m certain would be alien to what the songwriter intended!

He had the last laugh of course when we finally decided to hit the main cabin and have a stab at karaoke… Only to find that everyone had gone to bed and there were 2 crew members sleeping on the floors. To rub matters in further, there was a Party Boat within yelling distance of us that was still in full swing. We tried to convince the barman to drive us there (an obviously flawed plan in retrospect) but he wasn’t having any of it. Deflated, we called it a night.

MONDAY

Slept like the dead… Only to be woken at 07h30 by incessant knocking on the door and “breakfast! BREAKFAST!”. Clearly not an optional activity… And a lot of excitement over simple fried eggs and lots of bread, jam and cheese.

Well fed, it was back to bed. The greatest nap ever!

Felt a lot better waking up slowly and naturally an hour later and showered, packed and evac’ed to sit on the upper deck and enjoy the view on the long slow journey back to port (with just our NZ mates as the rest had alighted earlier to go on to another day of cruising to other islands and sights in Ha Long Bay). No beers. Although Tigers continue to be very forgiving and there wasn’t a green gill among us.

Lunch on the shore was good: rice, calamari with onions, fried lemon chicken, stuffed crab, fish in a thick sticky (yummy) sauce! French fries and a watery soup (that remained untouched).

A bit of a wait and then on the bus headed back to Hanoi. The bright side about land travel is that there’s a lot of time – like a lot a lot – to look around and take in the detail of daily life. Besides the obvious things like farmers in the fields – still donning traditional conical hats and still using water buffalo ploughs – we’ve spotted that  Vietnamese billboards and ads are strange. Most of the billboards are a long sentence of text in a single colour block letters on a plain background, some are just a logo with or without slogan, but very very few have pictures on them illustrating the product and/or lifestyle message. Store signage is cluttered with what seems like a detailed description of store offerings alongside the name and crude photo depictions. Streetpoles are dotted with vertical propaganda posters that look a bit like McDonald’s ads being yellow on red with a beaming happy face. The language is made up of mostly 2-4 letter words, some 5, very few 6 and no words of 7 letters or more.

It’s also odd that there are the renowned tube houses out here as well. They make sense (sort of) in town where it’s not uncommon to see stores 2m wide (but 30 or 40m deep) since they (used to?) pay taxes based on store frontage, so the stores (and the flats above them) are long and narrow to keep costs down. It also makes a bit more visual sense in town where the tube houses are squashed one against each other. Here in the countryside or when passing through a small town it’s very odd to see what looks like a sliver of a house in the middle of nowhere!

It’s all very interesting and fascinating and Vietnam (which, incidentally should be 2 words ‘Viet Nam’ because it means ‘South People’, as designated by China that lies north of Viet Nam and who believe they are the epicentre) has been a delight so far. Really highly recommend a visit – and we’ve only seen a splash of it!

The plan from Hanoi was for an overnight bus to pick us up from Mike’s Hotel to get us to Da Nang for tomorrow. The bus allegedly is double-storey with the upstairs dedicated to proper horizontal lie-down beds… But I’ll believe that when I see it.

Asia, Travelogue, Vietnam

Travelogue SEA 1: Bangkok & Hanoi

BANGKOK & HANOI

14-17 December 2011

After a mad panic and photo-finish to get everything done before leaving for our South East Asia adventure, we dashed to the airport, went through the obligatories and breathed a sigh of relief to be up, up and away.

An uneventful flight to Ethiopia, marred only by the lack of “…”  in the usual “… or fish” dinner option. So, fish it was. Sadly. Then nap. Gladly.

Addis Ababa airport is largely unremarkable, being a single circuit of duty free shopping (the same old booze and perfumes as everywhere), a few souvenir stores and coffee shops and bars. Really modest and warehousey and still allows smoking everywhere, which is a rarity these days to say the least. Squatted in the biggest of the bars and  tried the local beer, St George’s. OK, but pricey at US$4 each.

THURSDAY – BANGKOK

An overnight flight later and we were (very pleased to be) in Bangkok. A wall of heat as we left the airport in the early Thai afternoon and were greeted by the 31 degree summertime. Changed some currency, hailed a taxi and we were delivered to our hotel (for 800 baht, including a detour past the Vietnamese Embassy to drop off our passports for visas).

Well, delivered near our hotel. Turns out our hotel is one of a chain and we were deposited at the wrong one, but it was Day 1 excitement, so it was still all good schlepping cases around the crescent to the correct hotel.

As always, our room was the furthest possible from reception, but this time wasn’t so bad seeing as our luggage was a record-breaking 12kg (me) and 15kg (Chris)… not like having to lug our anvil cases up the countless flights of stairs in Zagreb the year before!!

Our room was only marginally bigger than the double bed it housed, so we had to strat plan our wardrobe changes to shift one suitcase at a time (onto the bed), grab clothes, rezip and replace and swap turns. All part of the charm though, eh? Hoping the novelty would hold for the shower-in-loo-cubicle combo as well!

Headed out on the town and took a walk around to get our bearings. We did a short loop around the neighbourhood and nestled in at a charming rooftop bar and restaurant to watch the sunset over the river and the boats and people getting on with whatever they were getting on with (with a lovely KFC coincidentally directly over the river from us, completing the perfect picture).

En route back to our hood, we found to our delight that we were one road away from the infamous Khaosan Road – the best of both being so close to the action, but far enough away to be able to escape the madding crowds, neon lights and infinite noise when we wanted to. Torn between wanting to sample local beer and check out the bustling roads, kiosks and shops, we split the difference and grabbed some roadies from 7-Eleven.

One soon turned into a pub crawl as we discovered there was a 7-Eleven every few hundred metres and they all had the same basics (Tiger, Chang, Leo) but there was some variety in the rest of the stock they carried. So we walked, shopped, marvelled, 7-Eleven’ed, drank, giggled and ogled for hours.

Much later we stopped for dinner – lured in by the promise of a Buy 3 Get One Free Tiger offer. Excellent Pad Thai in belly, Night 1 was done.

FRIDAY

Up bright(er than deserved) and early, we were ready to see the sights of Bangkok. Traditional breakfast was a bit disappointing being a starchy rice and water number with ground pork and some green stuff. Not really my scene, but hearty and filling and good fuel for the day ahead.

We started off with an on-foot trip to the Palace and our first temple, Wat Pho, which happened to house the world’s biggest reclining Buddha, which has fancy feet with Chinese pearl inlay. He is accompanied by the 4 Rama pagodas and a whole lot of contorted looking gargoyle type statues and pretty topiaries with little waterfalls, funny little folk and Buddhas.

Next was a boat trip, which started off with us taking the wrong pier and ending up with an accidental ferry river-crossing. We eventually got on the correct express boat and made our way up-river to the Dusit area where we discovered lots of important buildings, the zoo and the president’s residence.

Having a new found confidence in our bearings, we footed it back to Khaosan to find a Burger King for lunch. What an excellent idea! I had the Angus burger with smoky sauce, bacon and onions and Christian had the double cheese and bacon Whopper. Large is standard and quite a meal and all burgers come with an upsize option which is the same burger format with each patty twice the size. Hectic.

Fed and happy, we grabbed a tuktuk from outside the BK and negotiated a tour route for the bargain price of 40 baht. We moseyed deftly to the Golden Mount to see Wat Saket, the highest Buddha, with the temple on the hill offering amazing panoramic views of Bangkok. Then off to the Black Buddha for luck, which proved handy with the next stop being the Thai gemstone factory!  🙂 The tuktuk drivers get incentives for bringing tourists to the shop and we were more than happy to take the little detour so that our driver could get his tank of petrol – and the beautiful orange and naartjie citrines that I bought were an absolute bargain!

We had to get back to the Vietnamese Embassy to collect our passports, so the tuktuk driver dropped us at the skytrain, which would save us at least an hour travel time because Bangkok traffic is so crazy. Even with our rudimentary map, it was really easy navigate to the Embassy and move to another skytrain line to get back towards our neck of the woods. We opted to grab the train to the River and Express Boat back to our hotel so that we could see the last side of Bangkok that we hadn’t seen (but that had nothing worth exploring up close).

After a hard day’s sight-seeing we did what was necessary… hit the first 7-Eleven we saw! Beers in hand, we trawled the market streets, eating from stalls as and when things looked enticing. Very yum! After a few ABFs along the way – with progress retarded by the entertainment, the locals, the people-watching, Engrish menus and fun store-window marketing videos that included a tailor who proudly pronounced “happy to make custom dress for fat lady” – we finally got back to our hotel… much later than we should have.

SATURDAY – HANOI

The alarm went off what felt like moments after we had gone to sleep and we were up and out, ready for our 4am transfer to the airport. The driver was late and those 15 minutes dragged on for what seemed liked aeons, saved only by the loot we’d procured en route home the night before (from 7-Eleven of course). Our snackpack included Duck-flavoured Lays and 2 others with 2 flavours combined in one bag (calamari & chilli and pepper steak crinkle cut with BBQ plain cut). Life saver.

Probably a bit naff to complain seeing as the streets were as busy as any other time of the day so clearly Bangkok never sleeps. The driver made up for the delay and drove at breakneck speed to the airport, swerving and near-missing a few times. We ended up actually being early for the flight! … and sleeping through it…

… to wake up in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The tourist desk (and there were several) was very helpful, providing a map and key advice and info and arranging a taxi driver to deliver us to our hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi (for US$20).

I have never – and I mean nevereverever – seen traffic like this! Cars, scooters and bicycles moving in all directions. Over-taking, swerving, jumping red lights and doing exactly as they please, all the while hooting at regular intervals. We theorise that they hoot as soon as there is someone in front of them, not really to tell them to move or anything, just to alert that they are approaching. You can imagine the cacophony. And the chaos.

Our hotel (Mikes Hotel, 1 Hang Phen) was superbly placed and we dumped our stuff and rushed off to Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which we stumbled upon while flipping through a travel guide during the check-in process – and also discovered was only open until 11h30 on a Saturday. And it was 10h30 already!

Grabbed a cab and managed to catch it in the nick of time, arriving at 11h15 and needing to be in and out by 11h30. It’s a very sombre and formal site and they are very strict – no bags or camera equipment allowed in and you can only walk in certain places (not the grass or, oddly, the pavement). Uniformed guards glare instructions and nod disapproval to usher you to where you need to be to get trooped through to where the body of Ho Chi Minh rests. A weirdly (literally) awesome experience to be in such close proximity to such an epic character in some really dramatic history. He died an old man, but his embalmed body looks so peaceful that he appears to be sleeping.

Grabbed some lunch at a cafe in a hotel lobby and sampled Hanoi springrolls (pork, mushrooms, onion, carrots, vermicelli noodles) and then spent the afternoon whipping around the town (well, as much as one can whip around a town that has stores spilling onto the pavements from one side and motorbikes from the other, so that you are left dodging cars, bikes and people in conical hats with wares dangling from rods on their shoulders) checking out the famous buildings, museums, Lake Hoan Kiem and a series of pagodas.

Blissful afternoon nap and then maneuvered our way to the cuisine district to wonder and marvel at the street vendors, operating at knee level with pots and woks and all sorts of raw and cooked meat, veg and noodles being spun and dished. Pavement eating, drinking and socialising is the norm, and a modest affair with the standard being the types of little stools and tables you’d find in a nursery school.

We spent ages figuring out what meant what seeing as everything is posted only in Vietnamese and settled on a chicken, mushroom and onion dish (Ga Xao Nam Huong) and a beef and mushroom with fried noodles (Bo Xao Pho) with 2 large Tigers (beers, not animals).

Had a fab time doing our ‘Hanoi in 1 Day’ Tour, which is really all you need to see the sights (unless you’re the type to painstake over a museum, which we are not).

The next day we’d be off to Ha Long Bay for an overnight cruise to see its rock formations, caves and floating villages (UNESCO winner as one of the new 7 wonders of the world).

General

Being a good sport

I’ve recently started playing action netball (again) and have a fab group of girls that are spirited, committed, enthusiastic… and well-dressed thanks to our spanky new Hoopers tees, with the logo and slogan – ‘so refined, delightful in takkies’ – a spoof on Hooters. BUT, as yet, we haven’t won a game. Which means, yes, we’ve lost all of them.

I’m not a big advocate of the ‘it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game’ malarkey on the sports field. I’m competitive. And I would like to win for a change! Off the court is a whole different story – how you play is vital, games aren’t in anyone’s best interest and winning isn’t always what you think it is.

In my world that has been seemingly consumed by sport, I’m going to put all the constructive lessons into play in an effort to be the best sport I can be. No point getting teed off and tearing around parring for the course; no point in making craterous divots which could easily be nice little molehills. That’s just not cricket. The score’s Love all, but 3 strikes and you’re out. Do a little crouch, touch, pause, engage; do a lot of puck shit up; tackle some challengers and score a few goals of my own.

I’m on a good wicket. It’s playtime and I’m amped to bring the fun!

General

Frienemies and enemends

1 Comment

Why do they say ”keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”? Surely it’s effort better spent to get the enemies to disappear altogether?

The suffixes of the very words (enemy vs friend) give enemies jurisdiction over you and a doomed outlook on the prospect of friendship. Surely keeping the enemy closer just makes them a frienemy, when it’d be far more functional to make them an enemend!

Why do we waste so much energy on people that will just never fit into our life? Excess baggage that will always cause discontent by their very presence. If only the enemy could be banned from the future and stricken from the record. Deleted for good and feel good for deleting. Don’t build bridges that are better off burnt; right the wrong feuds and mend the right fences. Focus energy and action on the people that count. People that you care about and that care about you in return. Focus on the people that will be in the albums of photos you haven’t yet taken.

Bring back the good and banish the bad. Take out the frienemies. Bring on the good times!

General

Between mi and you

Anyone who’s had a migraine – meegraine as they say in English and mygraine as they say in American; no matter how you say it, right now the only thing explicit is that it’s mine! – would know that it’s not fun. It’s the cold cruel king of the headaches and usually hits you when you least expect it or can least afford it. It’s tiring and leaves you bed-ridden but high and dry of the one thing that would give reprieve… sleep.

Being a big proponent of sayings like “what’s bad for the body is good for the soul” and “the only thing worth doing in moderation is moderation”, I would be able to deal with it if it was a hedonist-ache rather than a garden-variety headache. It’s all fair in love and war if the ache is earned – and you can concede that no matter the plans, a good time was had by all. A headache out of nowhere, at the tail end of a busy day spent doing constructive things just seems so unfair, so unwarranted and so unnecessary.

But still, no matter how lousy it is, if i had to choose between mi and you, I wouldn’t wish a migraine on you because (even though you can be a pain in the ass sometimes) I’d know how your yougrain feels and that would make me feel twice as bleak as I do today.

General

Blogberry

I have been very remiss in my blogging of late, (largely) for 3 reasons: I went on holiday to Mozambique, my Blackberry crashed and I’m now not going into the office in the morning traffic (which I was using as blog time on my phone).

The getaway to Maputo wasn’t as anticipated, with our ‘fun in the sun’ style island daytrip getaway plans thwarted by dreary overcastness. We instead spent Saturday exploring the city and were disappointed to see how derelict it is, with spotty reminders of what its former glory must have been like. The locals are also a lot less hospitable than their counterparts in the many and varied destinations we have visited and we had to draw information out of hotel staff as if local tourism was a secret of national proportions. Nonetheless, we embraced the R&R value frittering away hours enjoying the lush hotels and their facilities, admiring the panoramic views from our famed hotel terrace, gazing out at the sea from Waterfront watering holes and ensconced in local frenzy in the city centre… all the while sipping on Laurentina (and the odd local favourite, rum and raspberry).

The holiday blush was short-lived and I returned home to immediate holiday hangover blues, finding that my Blackberry wasn’t any better than it had been when it crashed to white screen ( and wouldn’t even respond to an IT Crowd ‘turn it off and on again’ so I had suspected that something was serious, but had maintained grave hope that a weekend of rest would help). This had happened on Friday at the airport, while I was logging into Foursquare to try and get the not-everyday ‘on a plane’ badge – no such luck, crashed before I got there (although must remember that bright side is that perhaps rather have the plane badge crash than the plane itself!)

Being away without a phone was one thing – and probably for the best – but getting home to zero comms was very unsettling (sounds melodramatic, but for an obsessive communicator like me it’s like losing your left arm – you know that technically you can be perfectly fine without it, but ‘fine’ is a word you use mostly when you’re really not). Having arrived home on Monday night, there was no action to be had until Tuesday morning anyway. I took the phone into Autopage (phone in one hand and battery in the other) and was told that the software had to be reinstalled or somesuch and that it would take at least the rest of the day or might need an overnight.

The clerk said he’d ‘call me’ when it was ready. Oh yes? Call me where? He asked me for my ‘other number’ like it was the most natural thing in the world. I don’t have one. Said he’d call me at the office. I don’t go to one. At home? Nope, Telkom deems the area to not be ‘economically viable’ for landlines… because everyone has cell phones. I asked if they offer loan phones. Yes! (he beams) and tells me to fill in the forms, which he will then send to Head Office and they’ll call me and let me know in 48 hours if I can borrow one. Call me? 48 hours? Seriously?!

So I did what I should have done much earlier… I called my Mom. No problem, she says: she has my Pappy’s upgrade – a Blackberry – sitting in its box (as it has been for several months as they’re both petrified of the complicated procedure it takes to smart up one of these smartphones) and I’m very welcome to use it for as long as I need to. She even offered to drop it off, with lunch to sweeten the deal. Bonus.

The phone is a Blackberry Pearl, which has the old style keyboard with the 3 letters per number format instead of the QWERTY button-per-letter. I can’t believe how much I have unlearned in the last 2 years! I was rendered virtually impotent on this phone – and resigned myself to understanding that this was the most temporary of measures to see me through The Dark Time. Didn’t install anything, didn’t save any contacts and used it only for the most necessary of communications as predictive text clearly isn’t the forgiving type and punished me incessantly for being flirty with QWERTY. My blackest hours had become dark grey.

The Autopage chap had initially seemed quite positive that with the restore process, he’d be able to retrieve all my data, contacts and settings, but by the time I went into the shop a day and a half later, there was a deep furrow in his brow and the prognosis was bleak.

He’d had to reinstall the software 4 times to get it to complete the process but, even after 4 more quality hours sitting in the store (foursquare, four times, four hours, unfourtunate for me!) trying all sorts of plugs and apps, there was still no sign of my contacts. Eventually, I conceded defeat and accepted that we’d done everything possible and it was all gone.

The bright side? The clerk had ascertained that I was due for an upgrade and successfully processed it – even managing to get me a free upgrade on my upgrade! – so I now have a shiny new Blackberry 9300… that was super simple to set up seeing as there was absolutely nothing to carry across to it.

As for the lost contacts, I’m viewing it as a sign that the slate was wiped clean on, of all days, 1 September. I came out of an unexpectedly revelationary August with a new schedule and a new plan and, while this whole episode has felt really traumatic, the truth is that although this change isn’t as good as my holiday, it’s really not that difficult to reconnect with lost contacts these days what with email, Facebook, Skype, MSN, Twitter, email making most people a single message away.

But one’s phone is more personal; we have it appended to a palm most of the time, pat pockets feverishly when it’s out of sight and put barriers and locks in place to secure our content. I am admittedly a hopeless crackberry addict and have chosen to cell my soul, so to have a telephonic blank slate in a time of such contemplation for me is perhaps a blessing in disguise, willing an exercise in self-restraint and consideration of who I want and need a call away. A bit of a forced housekeeping exercise on who it is that I wish to maintain contact with moving forward; realising that my Contacts should actually be people that i do intend to (unapologetically) contact (irrespective of how frequently or infrequently).

It’s not necessarily ‘out with the old and in with the new’, more like out with the phonies, re-in with the valued olds and more discriminate about the news. Spread myself too thin now and the Spring-cleaning will have been a waste – as flippant and unfelt as unfriending, unfollowing, and BBM deletes.

It’s like pulling the PIN out of a grenade and exploding a mess of Messenger contacts; just retreading trodden ground and taking a whirl around the same old (friend) block. It’s about choosing the people worth recovering if there is a next time, which is apparently super-simple with Blackberry Protect that is pre-installed on the phone and backs up all your contacts and settings regularly and automatically… and which *everyone’s* telling me about, now that it’s too late! Fat lot of good my old contacts did on helping me with that one – the solution to all my problems was right there all along! – but I’m spreading the word to anyone who will listen to save them the trials i have endured.

The long and short of making a long story even longer, is that hopefully this September (20)11 Blackberry tragedy will do some good, and the crash will lead to building a plain and simple future. Viva la liberation! Viva la future!

(PS: Erm… Call me! 😀 )

General

Slipping out of Cruise mode

I have been away on an amazing cruise holiday but, as always, am pleased to be back in home waters.

The cruise was a week-long adventure in the South China seas, starting and ending in Singapore with visits to Thailand and Malaysia in between.

The format is awesome seeing as the ship travels overnight while you eat(eateateat), make merry and sleep, then docks in the port during the day so you can tour and sight-see.

The whole on-board cruise mode concept seems to revolve around food. There are several restaurants on the ship, both free and for own account. The 3 main eateries included in the cruise price are a big buffet canteen-style one adjacent to the pool (with first sitting at 6am and last at midnight!), a Chinese restaurant (that we never got to) and the Bella Vista which we ate at most often with a continental buffet and full English ticklist breakfast and 3 course set menu lunches and dinners. Several 24-hour terrace options filled the 5-hour chasm of potential foodlessness… As we found out, quite nicely with 3am baskets of chips and chicken wings big enough to have been sourced from small ostriches!

Day trips onto coastal spots are a bit ‘hurry up and wait’ being large groups in coaches with short temple(templetempletemples), local produce (cashew nuts and batiks) and museum visits (and the inevitable mammoth buffet lunch stop) being interspersed with the delays of re-communing and requisite drivetime between points of interest.

Was a great group though – really friendly bunch with none of the usual unwarranted complaints and illogical requests. Had such a good time that have come home with determination to get my ass back over to the Far East for my much-spoken-about ambition to see Vietnam and Cambodia.

Alas, haven’t gotten around to much… have returned to a swamp of To Do things – amazing how much can happen (in some instances and not happen in others, neither favourable) in such a brief absence! So, having covered the reacquainting with lost and reuniting with good over last weekend and having had yet another week slip by, I have realised that it’s become buckle-down time. Have to slip out of cruise mode and get down to DOING.

It’s August. It’s 2011. So much good intention but still so much stuff that’s been waylaid along the way in cruise mode. I seem to have flip-flopped my theory and practical. Have learned loads in practical workday life, but lost the plot with my PhD theory studies as a result; yet am taking a more theoretical approach to my midnight hours, having lost faith in instinct. It’s not all doom and gloom. I have made inroads in the immediate On The Table stuff, but am gravitating toward the need for a plan (end of month, end of year, end of next year, 5 year), then a corresponding action plan and then action.

And then (hopefully) happily ever after. 🙂

PS: They say that loose lips sink ships, but seeing as everything always comes out in the end there’s no point in harbouring the secret…

Boys are like cruise ships: they think from meal to meal, they can take you exciting places but as long as they offer the requisite array of onboard interests then no matter how exciting the coastal options it’s always good to re-embark, you want them to be especially stable when you hit stormy seas, and it’s always good to be a-shored that you’re their first port of call.

Dlogs, General

Happy Birthday Mickey and Malory!

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Today is Mickey (“The Mousse”) and Malory (“The Cake”) Mallett’s 12th birthday. We’ve come a long way (literally) since that kismet encounter at the veggie market in ‘Maritzburg. Mally was an instant hit when thrust at me and sealed the deal with a nuzzle into my neck… And first sight of Mick clarified unequivocally that they were a matched set that only the most heartless human would separate.

Their trip to their new home (several hundred kilometres away) was made in a box originally designed to house 5 reams of paper but, when lined with a fabric nappy, made for a premium puppy pad, complete with cotton wool bed, dining section, reinforced water and milk dishes and a sort of u-shaped seating amenity made from a rolled up facecloth.

They were SO tiny, each fitting into the palm of one of my hands. Way too small to be the outside dogs they were authorised to be. Night One they were allowed to sleep in the kitchen ‘to climatise’, but before long they were in the en suite… and then in the bed… where they’ve slept ever since (and, in fact, likely are right now as I type this).

Mick was quick to take Alpha male role, swinging off his big (Great Dane cross Labrador) step-brother Clyde’s jowels for fun and taking his responsibilities very seriously by doing a full perimeter curcuit in the morning to check that all was intact and then guarding the entrance of the Big Dog Igloo to make sure that they were up and manning the gates (Can’t call it ‘dogging the gate’. You know why)

Mal was all about adding to the décor. Looking beautiful and improving the aesthetics of any room she was in, simply by being in it. She never fettered herself with putting any effort into popularity, opting rather to follow a simple hierarchy of her mom… and then anyone with food and/or hands to tickle her with. Knowing that humans are less evolved, she’s quick to help us out with a nudge to the hand to remind us that we’ve stopped tickling.

Despite being as tightly wound as Scrat from Ice Age, Mally’s lived a charmed life, making the most of every lap, basket and bed opportunity (and there is always one of the 3 on the go) and enjoy the wide world of nature… through the sliding door from the comfort of the couch. She has had some troubles of late (too sensitive to be openly spoken about), but her rigid high fibre diet seems to be doing her the world of good.

Poor Mick hasn’t had it so easy. He had an unfortunate interlude with a BMW early on and was deemed a no-hope case by the vet several times over his recovery. But he’s a fighter. And he came back to life as good as he was before… but sans an eye and with some very butch war wounds. As if that wasn’t enough, he developed an allergy to dust (a real problem when your legs are 5cm), which went straight to his good eye. And if that wasn’t enough, the ophthalmologist found a lump on Mickey’s neck on his final visit, so he went straight from his clean bill of optical health to the vet to be checked in for removal of the growth. Although cancerous, it was benign and again, all was well. He’s had one last bout of cancer removal (lumps on his head), but besides that is a very happy and healthy little creature, with an air of sophistication from his premature greying, earning him the new mickname “Silver Fox”.

They’re a comical pair. As intro to birthday week, I took them to the Golden Harvest Park on Monday with the SA Gills. Mickey ran around like he was a Labrador in a perfume commercial, ears flapping all akimbo in the wind, leaping each step in the long grass. Every now and the he’d be in the distance and stop stock-still, look around, realise he had no idea where he was, he’d look left and right, then leftrightleftright, then whip around, looking everywhere for me. Of course I was shouting and arm-waving wildly… and as soon as he saw me he’d be off again.

Mal isn’t a huge one for the great outdoors – although she does like to win and is Rudolph-like in her dogged positioning as the lead dog when out walking in the neighbourhood – and isn’t subtle when she’s had enough. When she’d had enough at the park, she found an open car and hopped in. It wasn’t our car. It belonged to an ominous group of very suspicious looking fellows. Out in the park. During the day. On their phones. No sweat to Mal, she hopped in the car all happy and waggly. And then jumped into the back as I approached, as is customary (she doesn’t drive). I was horrified and mortified (especially seeing as we’d just come from the lake section so her feet were all muddy. But the men said nothing to my barrage of apologies and nervous giggles as we played the usual cat and mouse with her jumping in the front as I opened the back door and vice versa. And we’re still alive to tell the tale so no harm done really.

There are just so many anecdotes like the above. I wish I could jot them all down, but who has that kind of time?! It’s so busy at the moment that I’m postponing the Annual Hotdog Party even (who can forget the first one with wall-to-wall mattresses in the garage floor so everything was on the ground and the big dogs could party with us, the Barney tableware and conical hats, the hotdogs, the presents, the bunting…. Ah!) We’ve been through so much! I hope we have another 12 happy years together!

General

Blogging the i and not crossing the t

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In the (hilarious! must watch!) sitcom, ‘Community’ (perfect to inhale a season in a single Sunday), one of the characters gets accused of cheating when crib notes are found and the little circles she uses to dot her i‘s are the distinguishing trademark that points the finger at her. Being Community and not CSI, they didn’t call in a graphologist to analyse the script, font, pressure, content, copy (still not sure why copy is called copy when mostly it’s supposed to be original?) and it still ended all smiles, laughs and happiness.

Made me think about “dotting one’s i’s” in the proverbial sense. I stopped literally dotting my i‘s in my early teen years. Seemed like a wasted nanosecond to stab the page when, if correctly scribed, the letter was perfectly recognisable on its own. Clearly, I was never the type to embrace the curly hooded a, elaborate g and y tails, Pacman-looking e or who’d finish the word and then retrospectively have to go backwards to dot and cross, as one would do in cursive. Instead, my script represented my preference for the quickest and most practical output.

The proverbial, as always, is not as simple. Is dotting the i really about tying up all the loose ends? How much i-dotting is enough? Can there be too much? Am I the i? And is there such a thing as getting one’s t’s cross(ed)?! Maybe the broader answer lies not in the way things are written down, but from the clues intrinsically in the words present themselves in. Putting the i into words I want to write, like happiness, smiles, patience, choice and communication (a two-way street so it needs 2 i‘s). Keeping away from t words like past, temper, tantrum, teary, tacky.

I also managed to squeeze in a half season of Gossip Girl (on Saturday), where the sins and tales of betrayals always seem to be pegged on trysts. Ex-oh ex-oh. Yup, ex uh-oh. No good ever comes from lots words with ‘her’: either, neither, slither, wither, dither, disher, fisher, poacher, encroacher, another, the other, why bother?! Complicated and emotional scenarios where the secrets and lies could have been eased by making the illicit (with 3 i‘s, definitely a crowd) explicit (although still 2 i’s and an ex, so still not easy). Expelling the ex as excess and putting the u in truth and trust. It’s a case of needing u and i to build a bridge and communicate; deciding whether you’re wanting to put the ‘am’ into drama or family.

But that’s all best-not-dwelt-in TV melodrama and I’m glad I’m pencilling my future and not penning my past. I think the answer to a question I was innocuously asked yesterday is that I’d rather be a ‘never was’ than a ‘has been’ because in my world, dotting my I is not a ‘make the circle bigger’ affair. I’m not just jotting down copy in a cheap attempt to put my am into famous, but am working at creating stories that are quality and lasting content. I’d like to think that there are bigger and better things to come all round.

General

White Lies Bigger Than Us

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I have been ‘in a relationship’ with music for a meaningful amount of time. It gets me and I get it. Or at least I think I do. It’s bigger than us.

I’m the kind of person that gets immersed in a band / a song / a lyric and often feels like I’ve found a song that speaks my very soul.

Recently I have fallen prey to White Lies. Being a fan of Ritual at the best of time, this latest offering takes on new levels of invaluable at times of turmoil and strife. Peppered with the right combo of happy, sad, forlorn, baleful, determined and bravado.

It’s a very chick thing to fall in love with the depth and meaningfulness of the lyrics, but am starting to realise that it’s a little naïve to think that the ‘signs’ were always there, but disguised as mere lyrics until you needed them; like the song undergoes some sort of emotional metamorphosis to get you at just the right time.

Clearly, sometimes the ‘advice’ is perhaps best evaluated in the cold hard light of day – especially when you’re looking to White Lies for the answers to complex questions. Is “gonna write your girl a letter / it’ll make everything better” really the answer or will that just stir up a whole new hornet’s nest, giving his misguided girl leverage to bleat about?

Somehow “You find some best friends / we’ll hold each other / and I’ll turn the bells” leads me to believe that you’re going to be left with just you and the bells, honey. And while you’re so busy turning those bells, hopefully this isn’t ringing others: “If I’m guilty of anything / it’s loving you too much / honey, sometimes love / means getting a little rough / this is not bad love”.

Besides the ambiguities that are thrown out for the sake of romantic clichés, to keep you guessing, make things applicable to a broader audience or just plain thrown in for poetic licence because they rhyme, there are the malleable homonyms, where you read into it exactly what you want to. Like is “past tense” meaning it’s history? Or like uber-tense, just really angry? Are the “headlights on the hillside” a welcome wagon or heading to gun you down?

But I still make space for the White Lies. Because they’re wrong when they say “There’s nothing stranger than to love someone”; it is stranger to love the messages you know are so obviously off-base. But I do love them. And I do enjoy them. Especially where it’s intimate and personal, like alone in my car when I can’t do anything but drive. Because it feels like “It feels like coming home to stay”.

And I sing the same songs telling tales of betrayal and deceit, of loves found, lost and thrown away. Yelling out how “I’ve got a sense of urgency / I’ve got to make this happen”, when all I experience is the opposite. And anyone who claims they don’t do the same (with their own ‘inner voice’ band) would be the delusional to whom I would say “You’d be the one to turn your back and cast the first stone”.

But it’s a one-way street and White Lies doesn’t hear me. Doesn’t hear my silly songs that aren’t lyrical manipulative merde, and probably that make me look more like a country song than an anthem. And so, because this is indeed Bigger Than Us, “I pray for tomorrow / and wait listening out for a reply”.

(… which i would probably get sooner if Harry McVeigh was still my friend on Facebook. Shame, the poor dear probably didn’t understand social networking when he set up his personal profile and unwittingly accepted my friend request. Sadly, now has deleted me, but if he hadn’t I’d expect that his comment on this blog would be something like:

“The only thing I’ve ever found / that’s greater than it always sounds / is this blog” )

I think i’m overdue for making a mix tape!  😉