Musings on the fly

So it seems I have been away from the blog for an age. What can I say? Time passes differently for me than it does for others.
But enough excuses. At the end of May I wrote a series of tweets about a fruit fly. They went largely unnoticed and, after a waiting what I thought a suitable time, I am yet to be proclaimed the fruit fly laureate. So I thought it time to share with you.

• There has been a fruit fly fluttering around me for the last hour. I have named him Gordon. Gordon likes fruit but says there's more to life.
• Gordon is complicated. Gordon appreciates slow jazz and debates Nietzsche. Gordon likes beaches in the Spring, but not Summer. Gordon loves rain. 
• Gordon says he's never met a Gordon he didn't like. Gordon has never met another Gordon.
• Gordon says "the only thing that money can't buy is abject poverty." Gordon might be right #FruitFlyPhilosophy
• Gordon is a fruit fly with interests outside fruit.
• Gordon doesn't like to wax lyrical. In a quiet moment, Gordon confesses that he doesn't know what wax lyrical means. He knows about wax fruit though.
• Have you ever noticed that the more you write Gordon, the less it looks like a real word? I ask. Gordon disagrees. 
• "If Gordon was made-uptional," says Gordon "I'd know about it." And Gordon, being a Gordon, might be right. 
• Is anyone else worried that they might be having a fruit fly-based breakdown?
• "No. Just you," says Gordon, and flits off to flutter round the light fitting. Gordon likes alliteration.
  
   

Camels are less exciting than you'd think...

Following @TheLastHatGirl's decision that she'd like to ride through the desert on an horse with no name (though he was later renamed Whisky due to his colour). I thought I'd dig out the tale of my ride through the desert on a camel named Colin for you to read. 
So here it is. 
Any grammatical errors of sections that don't make sense can be blamed wholeheartedly on the fact that I was recovering from what, I thought at the time, was the sickest and the closest to death I could ever be in my entire life. As it turned out in the month to come, I was quite, quite wrong...

24th November 2003

Hello. Not written for a few days due to unforeseen circumstances. We've both been ill. I was very sick and the Fluffy One decided that she had to go one better and get extremely sick. It was very scary for a while but we have some medicine (I get 6 tablets a day and Ros has to take so many she rattles when she walks) and we are both recovering nicely now. 
Today is our first day out of the hotel in a while. Ros decided she was well enough to go out for a walk. So here we are - emailing.

When I last wrote to you we were in Jaisalmer. This email finds us still in Jaisalmer. Don't know if I mentioned it earlier but we've both been ill.... I can see from your faces that you know it already so I'll move on.

Since we last spoke we've been on a camel safari, the start of which was postponed by a day as I’d gotten sick the night before we were meant to leave. But I had, it seemed, started to get better so we set off anyway. 
That morning we breakfasted, checked out of the hotel, took a jeep driven by a madman out into the desert and waited on a dusty road for the camels to arrive.

Luckily we weren't bored as some local children, idling on their way to school, and an elderly goat herder arrived to try and poison us with berries from a nearby bush. Ros palmed hers and only pretended to eat it. I wasn't so smart. It tasted like a very under-ripe cherry. Shan't be eating one of those again in a hurry.

Finally the camels arrived, accompanied by an enormous band of French Canadians. Luckily the Canadians were at the end of their safari and we escaped with only having to talk to one of them. 

Getting on a camel is really easy. You simply climb on it and sit still. Staying on the stupid beast is wholly different affair. They're lumpy, awkward, they move in bizarre directions and they stand up in stages - jerk, lurch, jolt, jolt, jerk. You must lean back or plummety doom and a mouthful of desert awaits you.
Luckily I was leaning back when mine "leapt" up. 
So we got up and we set off (not pausing to say goodbye to the Canadians who were still resolutely insisting on being both French and Canadian in the same sentence). We walked - or rather the camels juddered - to a watering hole where some local women pissed themselves laughing at the westerners (that's us) and tried to get Ros (that's Ros) to carry some water for them.

Then we led the camels to the nearby village where some very bored looking locals let us look at their houses and take pictures of them. A baby cried. It obviously knew that our safari wasn’t going to get much better...

So back onto the camels. Juddery jolt for an hour or so to a clearing where we stopped for lunch. It was here that I realised I still wasn't well. A point several forays off into the desert, to dig little holes, confirmed for me. I was, it turns out, doing better than the Fluffy One who had started to look a little green...

Soon after we set off again. Ros had come to an understanding with her camel. She would give it instructions and it would flatly ignore them and drag her through bushes. My camel (who I decided to call Colin - as I couldn't remember the name the guide had made up) had taken to stopping randomly so that the camel behind walked into his bottom. No one knows why...

more plodding, interspersed with dung beetles, random straw structures, a crop circle and trying to convince Colin that left was rubbish and he should actually go right like all the rest of the camels, and we reached a big sand dune. This is where we to set up camp. It was also, it turns out where we to cut short our trip.

Night fell quickly. Fluffy fell ill. Very, very ill. The guide very helpfully decided she was scared of the dark and ignored her plight. The guide tucked us up in blankets and left to go have fun with the other guides from all the other parties that were staying in various places on the dune. Racked with pain and constant sickness Ros tried to sleep. 

She managed about 1 hour all night. In the morning after several very odd conversations I finally persuaded the guide that he should go for help. 
He left.
Without telling us.

Leaving us alone on the dune. Whilst Ros tried to sleep in the shade of a spiky-death tree I busied myself with exploring the dune. It was big and sandy. Much as you'd expect.

It was then I hit on the ultimate entertainment. I found a wild dog sleeping nearby and decided to bury it in sand. After some initial consternation from said animal it agreed to lie there and be buried. In total I managed to cover about a third of the beast. I think if there were a world championships I would be worthy of at least a bronze medal for that little effort.

Eventually, after 3 hours the guide came back and said that the jeep was coming to collect us. So he sulkily loaded up the rest of his camels. The jeep duly arrived and we rode our camels the 200yds to where it was parked (partially so that we can say that we both began and ended our safari on camel-back, but mainly because the Fluffy One couldn't walk 5 paces unaided, let alone down the sheer, slippy side of a big, sandy dune).

Then we were rushed back to our hotel. Or at least that was the plan. Unfortunately they'd sent a jeep driver who couldn't actually drive a jeep - which makes me think he was in the wrong line of work and perhaps his job title should be changed to something more fitting like "bloke with moustache". 
Luckily he was able to flag down a passing vehicle and get them to ferry us back to our hotel, where we were met with friendly, if a little panicky, faces, our own room from the day before (replete with a shiny new TV set) and big fluffy duvets. 

We didn't sleep at all that night. Ros was very ill and what seemed like every Indian and his brother had gathered outside our room for an all-night shouting contest. Well they had to shout as their TV was so bloody loud they needed to yell to be heard. So it was fair enough really.

Next morning I asked for a quieter room. I was shown an equally noisy one. I asked for a quieter room. Eventually I convinced the manager that the quieter room upstairs would be quieter as it was further away from the source of the noise. He didn't look convinced but said that we could move upstairs after the boys had finished cleaning the room.

We moved. There was no TV. We stared at the walls for a few hours. The monotony happily broken by mad dashes to the toilet and feeling sorry for ourselves. I went and asked for a TV.
A 3 man comedy team turned up with a TV and a table. Much hilarity ensued. To tell a long story more succinctlier the power cable on the TV was too short to reach the power outlet. 3 Indian brains did battle with logic trying to work out how to plug it in. Logic won. A new TV was fetched and all was right with the world.

Some days passed. I began to feel much better but Ros' health was rapidly deteriorating. We were both really scared. A doctor was summoned and prescribed half a pharmacy for her. Finally she started to show signs of improvement...

So now, here we are. Out and about. Emailing with gay abandon. One more day of pills left. Both on the mend. Didn't get to finish the camel safari but like I said camels are less exciting than you'd think. So we don't mind all that much.

Anyhoo another email session has wended its way to a close. I'll write again soon (hopefully with less near death experiences in the next one)

Bye for now, stay healthy
love and hugs
1 not so sickly Cantus J Fraggle

Gay Hungarian Cannibals

As As Mr @comedyfish is jetting off to glorious Singapore for a week or so soon I thought I’d find my travelogue from there, but it’s gone missing. So here instead is one from the Philippines (that mentions Singapore a little bit) instead.

Sun, 07 Mar 2004

OK so we left the Philippines and we're in a whole different country (Singapore). But I did promise you a report (I also promised some of you postcards but who's counting?)

Right brief history lesson. The Philippines were invaded and ruled by Spain - bizarrely from Mexico rather than Spain like you might expect - for about 500 years. This means that a quite a lot of the language has a Spanish feel (but because they were ruled by America for a while too they spell everything phonetically/idiot fashion). Despite this and having a variety of their own languages they, for some reason, insist on using English numbers. This can be clearly seen when they conspire with each other as to how to over-charge you thinking that because all the other words are in Tagalog that you won't recognise your own numeral system....funny people.

Their national pastimes are also curiously odd ones:

1. Cock-fighting - the real thing with razor blades on the legs n everything. Thankfully we were never privy to a fight, but we wandered through China town in Manila just prior to an impromptu cock fight.
   It seems that the cock fighting tradition stems back to tribal times when they would have a cock fight before they did battle with another tribe to see if they would be victorious. They kept up the tradition, however, because they're nasty, vicious and bloody thirsty little bastards. 
2. Karaoke - I need not tell you of the true horror of karaoke (the Japanese word for singing without talent). But let me say that unless you've been in a place where they have coin-op karaoke machines in every fast food/eating establishment, outside people's houses, on street corners and at the top of mountains, then you've been let off very lightly my friend.
   Karaoke faves are Kenny Rogers tunes, selected Bon Jovi hits (and misses), Winds of Change by The Skorpions, My Way by Frank Sinatra and Hello by Lionel Richie. All sung in the wrong key, sometimes at the wrong tempo and always. always, always too bloody loud! 
3. basketball - odd thing for a race of people collectively shorter than 5ft to aspire to play a game where everyone is about 7ft tall.

They believe that their ancestors are very wise people. So much so that they keep doing things simply because that's how it's always been done even though it could be achieved much simpler another way. Some of it's fairly cool stuff like the way they treat the dead in Mountain Province, North Luzon; leaving the corpse outside their house for a few days to make sure that the spirit has left. A guy sits with it in vigil watching it and trying to ease the passage to the other side as best as possible. That way it can't get grumpy being trapped in a coffin and hang around getting prissy with people for all time. 
If a person is murdered however they leave it sat in a “death chair” but no one looks after it and it is often ridiculed and shunned. All in an effort to get the spirit all riled up so it can take revenge on its killer. Quite clever I thought.
But stuff like walking 2 miles out of your way up a mountain because that's the way your dad did it seems a bit bloody daft to me.

There was actually only ever one Pilipino who had an original thought. His name was Joseph Rizal. He wrote some books explaining how Pilipinos should strive to think for themselves, not follow leaders and seek to be educated. 

The Spanish shot him.

It's a primarily carnivorous country. They eat meat. Tons of it. Not much vegetation. Just meat. Usually killed in a cruel and unusual way. For instance they will beat a chicken to death very slowly, with a hammer, so that the meat is more tender. 

Another culinary treat to be avoided is partially-formed duck foetuses, or, if you’re very lucky, partially formed crocodile foetus. Apparently they're very good for your knees. I didn't find out how....

I didn't get sick once in the entire time I was in the Philippines - thus proving that it was the all vegetable diet in India that was bad for me. 
If you're a vegetarian planning to visit the islands then you might starve (or at least get very sick of plain rice) as even the vegetable dishes are cooked using animal fats. So watch out.

Anyhoo, we arrived in Manila at the end of January to discover that no-one wanted to buy our travellers cheques from us and that our bank cards didn't work in any ATM's at the airport. A nice man from the tourist board place arranged a taxi for us at the extremely unreasonable rate of 400 piso (1 pound = 100 piso approx) from the airport to find us someplace to get some cash. 
Cue a mad dash round Metro Manila failing to find working ATMs and being turned away by the seediest Black Marketeers. Until, at last, we found an even seedier Black Market place where they would give us a really shite exchange rate. So that was good.

Oh and I forgot to mention that it was hot.

Damn hot.

And it looked like down town America. The streets were thick with fast food outlets, 7-elevens and elderly American men with their teenage Philipino wives.

we found a guesthouse that was a small impersonal place run by an alcoholic guy and his 5 stroppy daughters. 
We hated Manila.
We left as soon as possible. 

Next we went to 100 Islands. Of which there are 123. And they’re more like rocky lumps with a weedy strip of beach, than the lush desert island paradise you might be picturing.
But nevertheless, we were able to charter a boat which took us out to what was to be our own private island for the day. 
So we spent the day snorkelling, swimming, spinning sticks, getting stung by invisible jellyfish (Ros) and getting sunburnt (me). 
Brief weirdness when a rich American and his Pilipino bride misunderstood the private island thing and landed on our beach for a few hours of splashing in the shallows, ignoring the 2 fraggles and eating their picnic (which consisted entirely of bananas and beer). They left again but not before completely failing to offer us any of their food/drink or even acknowledge our presence.

From 100 Islands we went north into Mountain Province and had a week or so having fun in the mountains stamping about on rice terraces, caving, looking for (and failing to find) headhunting tribes - they're out there. Although Christianity is doing its best to destroy them - and swimming in icy-cold waterfalls.

We had lots of fun. It reminded me a lot of Wales. As it was very hilly and it kept pissing down for no discernable reason.

then we went south to Manila. Remember Manila? We hated it....

Not this time. Firstly I figured out how to get money from the ATMs using a process of stalking them throughout an afternoon. So we had no more money issues then....

we found a magical place. 
A respite from the outside world and all the horrors and karaoke that that entails. A place called the Robinson's Mall. We ate @ BK (my first time ever) and window shopped to our heart's content.

From Manila we went to the port and caught a ferry to Cebu. The ferry journey took 24 hours and allowed us to make friends with some Cebuites who advised us that the guesthouse we were going to stay at was in a really nasty area and we would hate it and/or get killed there.

We ignored them and had a really cool time.

we wandered about in the downtown area - which has the rather unfortunate name of Colon - well into the night, visited the cinema, watched a chess tournament, avoided the transsexuals (who wanted to play with Ros' dreads and erm I don't know what they had planned for me....) and generally didn't get killed or robbed.

From Cebu we got another ferry (this one was a superfast catamaran) to the island of Bohol. On the way we watched The Last Castle on DVD but as the ferry was super fast we only got to see half it.....

In Bohol we stayed in a place called Nuts Huts near a town called Loboc. We stayed in a cabin on stilts above (and slightly to the left of) the river. We spent our days swimming up the river, swimming back down the river again, visiting Chocolate Hills (which aren't made of chocolate) and visiting the tarsier sanctuary - teeny little monkeys, big eyes, tiny brains. A sort of primate version of Natalie Imbruglia.
And our nights were spent our nights lying awake wondering what the hell that noise was and trying to decide if it was big enough to eat us. Jungles eh? Noisy bloody places.....

After that we went to the divers' paradise of Panglau. A tiny island just off Bohol. Now the problem with a diver's paradise is that it's chock full of divers. And they're horrible people. Worse than Israelis – see previous travelogues - loud, arrogant, obnoxious and often drunk....

So we found a quieter beach and had some snorkelling fun before travelling back to Cebu city for a few more mugging free days and death free nights.

then we spent a few nights on the island of Malapasqua (which roughly translates as Shitty Christmas). Where we were annoyed by more divers and a Welsh bloke promised us free beer all night if Ros spunned fire. so she spunned and we got drunk. Then there were some cocktails and a few arguments with a different Welsh bloke, a fall, some nasty cuts that got infected, a flight to Manila and then a flight to Singapore.

Quite a lot really. 

So here I am in Singapore. and my net time is at an end.
Bye for now. not sure when I get to talk to you again.

Hugs n stuff
Cantus