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defrogDay 3 synopsis:
PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® etc
Pretty much like Day 2, except (1) sunshine, and (2) teh Internets works fine now. I’m guessing this is no coincidence. (In fact, I’m sure of it. I’m assuming they use a microwave or satellite link to get to the Internet backbone – both are susceptible to rain fade, a common problem in Southeast Asia. You can tell I have to write about this stuff for a living, can’t you?)
We finished up around 3pm. I got through it okay, though I did find my brain zoning out occasionally and dreaming up pirate scenarios. Which is what I get for staying up until 3am watching Mythbusters.
Here’s how I spent the rest of the day (transcribed direct from my notebook):
There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting at a table by a Malaysian beach at the edge of the world reading Chinese travel diaries and sipping rum-based drinks whilst watching middle-aged tourists in bikinis wade in the surf or read potboilers as they bake themselves silly in the sun and their kids snorkel or build sand castles or tease sand crabs. The crickets squeal and whir around us. Some of them sound like sentient power tools.
“Out here on the perimeter there are no stars.” Jim Morrison said that. He knew the deal. God knows why I’m thinking of that now. It’s only 4:30pm ...
I did five or six laps around the pool atrium, then hit the sand and took a walk to one end of the beach, then to the other end, and back again. What is it about salt water constantly washing over yr ankles that brings badly needed peace to yr brain? Maybe it’s some genetic memory, a throwback to when we all had gills and lived in the water, lurking and waiting. Or maybe it’s because, like nature, I am naturally rhythmical. Yes. I was born to play drums in a funk band.
Whatever. The sea calls to us. I spent 30 minutes in the surf just floating on my back – an effortless activity in salt water. I could have stayed there for hours. But I would have burned. Like Woody Allen, I don’t tan – I stroke.
I am better off here at my table ten meters from the waterline, drinking rum that sets my ears on fire.
Look around you. There are no monkeys here. Waiters dance back and forth ferrying burgers and Singapore Slings and empty plates and glasses. Japanese secretaries smoke Marlboros on deck chairs reading books on their Nintendo DS consoles. Shirtless telecommunications engineers guzzle beer by the pool and guffaw at insider jokes about wiring cabinets. An arrogant Young Couple play grab-ass and gratuitously rub sunscreen all over each other even though it’s cloudy. A lizard the size of a schnauzer approaches the table and bums a ringgit off of me for unspecified purposes.
Someone further down the shore is banging a gong in deep, insistent tones.
It is time to go.
Well, it was something like that. Rum tends to give me delusions of grandeur.
Not much more to tell. Wrapped up the day with dinner – a nice Malaysian oxtail soup and some good old fashioned Nasi Goreng Kampung – and filing my report. There probably won’t be much action tomorrow – I might go for another swim after breakfast, but then it’s packing and off to the airport. And the swim will depend if the weather holds out.
During the above soliloquy, a waiter struck up a conversation. I asked him if was the rainy season. He said not really, but with climate change rewriting the rules, who could say?
BEST STORY OF THE DAY: In the ballroom they had twin projection screens on either side of the stage. The one on the left was faulty – it wasn’t projecting any red color. So some of the AV guys prepared a sacrificial plate of food and placed it behind the screen as an offering to the Rear Projection Gods. Half an hour later, the projector worked fine.
Final words tomorrow.
In the lap of the gods,
This is dF
PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® PowerPoint® etc
Pretty much like Day 2, except (1) sunshine, and (2) teh Internets works fine now. I’m guessing this is no coincidence. (In fact, I’m sure of it. I’m assuming they use a microwave or satellite link to get to the Internet backbone – both are susceptible to rain fade, a common problem in Southeast Asia. You can tell I have to write about this stuff for a living, can’t you?)
We finished up around 3pm. I got through it okay, though I did find my brain zoning out occasionally and dreaming up pirate scenarios. Which is what I get for staying up until 3am watching Mythbusters.
Here’s how I spent the rest of the day (transcribed direct from my notebook):
There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than sitting at a table by a Malaysian beach at the edge of the world reading Chinese travel diaries and sipping rum-based drinks whilst watching middle-aged tourists in bikinis wade in the surf or read potboilers as they bake themselves silly in the sun and their kids snorkel or build sand castles or tease sand crabs. The crickets squeal and whir around us. Some of them sound like sentient power tools.
“Out here on the perimeter there are no stars.” Jim Morrison said that. He knew the deal. God knows why I’m thinking of that now. It’s only 4:30pm ...
I did five or six laps around the pool atrium, then hit the sand and took a walk to one end of the beach, then to the other end, and back again. What is it about salt water constantly washing over yr ankles that brings badly needed peace to yr brain? Maybe it’s some genetic memory, a throwback to when we all had gills and lived in the water, lurking and waiting. Or maybe it’s because, like nature, I am naturally rhythmical. Yes. I was born to play drums in a funk band.
Whatever. The sea calls to us. I spent 30 minutes in the surf just floating on my back – an effortless activity in salt water. I could have stayed there for hours. But I would have burned. Like Woody Allen, I don’t tan – I stroke.
I am better off here at my table ten meters from the waterline, drinking rum that sets my ears on fire.
Look around you. There are no monkeys here. Waiters dance back and forth ferrying burgers and Singapore Slings and empty plates and glasses. Japanese secretaries smoke Marlboros on deck chairs reading books on their Nintendo DS consoles. Shirtless telecommunications engineers guzzle beer by the pool and guffaw at insider jokes about wiring cabinets. An arrogant Young Couple play grab-ass and gratuitously rub sunscreen all over each other even though it’s cloudy. A lizard the size of a schnauzer approaches the table and bums a ringgit off of me for unspecified purposes.
Someone further down the shore is banging a gong in deep, insistent tones.
It is time to go.
Well, it was something like that. Rum tends to give me delusions of grandeur.
Not much more to tell. Wrapped up the day with dinner – a nice Malaysian oxtail soup and some good old fashioned Nasi Goreng Kampung – and filing my report. There probably won’t be much action tomorrow – I might go for another swim after breakfast, but then it’s packing and off to the airport. And the swim will depend if the weather holds out.
During the above soliloquy, a waiter struck up a conversation. I asked him if was the rainy season. He said not really, but with climate change rewriting the rules, who could say?
BEST STORY OF THE DAY: In the ballroom they had twin projection screens on either side of the stage. The one on the left was faulty – it wasn’t projecting any red color. So some of the AV guys prepared a sacrificial plate of food and placed it behind the screen as an offering to the Rear Projection Gods. Half an hour later, the projector worked fine.
Final words tomorrow.
In the lap of the gods,
This is dF
