More Michael Moorcock Than You Can Swing a Runeblade At...

How many of these (scroll down, but later) magical masterpieces of Swords and of Sorcery have you read? 

E@L has x-ed (and reddened) those he has ploughed through (27 is it?), and y-ed (and purpled) those he owns but hasn’t got around to yet, not in this realm anyway. You’ll notice that he has mainly done the pre-1980 novels and stories as he eventually turned away from such childish fun and adventure, thanks to pressing concerns, and became a boring old man at the age of 23. Maybe he overdid the fantasy schtick at the time… Maybe the guilty indulgences stole his S&S soul?

Anyway, E@L temporarily embedded his blade into Moorcock back in 1977/78 at the urging of a fellow unworldly student radiographer (who went on study for a real job as a dentist while E@L hung around on the cusp of unemployment and failure). 

They are so easy to read, these slim volumes, and so much fun, at least once you get a delightedly morbid taste for soul-stealing swords and demon infested nether-realms and lots of gruesome and bloody deaths, and those dead who don’t stay dead, but aren’t zombies either, thankfully, as that would be, like, hey, a cliché. 

E@L means, hey, if you're 20 years old, working full-time, studying on the evenings, are newly married and with a young baby to focus on, why wouldn’t you retreat into a fantasy world at every opportunity?

You weren’t free to go surfing on a whim anymore, at the drop of an on-shore wind and the rise of a solid swell…

~~~~~~

[Many years later]

So bring on the black mists and the intrigue of the gods and elementals! And get out your guitar and play some Hawkwind songs (if you know any; E@L doesn’t!).

Let’s scour the realm of second-hand bookstores and of charity store like the Salvos or Vinnies, submit ourselves to the fates of heretical churches and their sly fêtes. 

Let’s overflow E@L’s already well fucking overflowing bookshelves with the adolescent fantasy dreamworld of Michael Moorcock!  

More Moorcock! More Moorcock!

If you’re wondering WTF; E@L is listening to the audiobooks of the Elric saga on his morning walks, and loving them, hence this post. 

~~~~~~

E@L considers his poor — perennially on the knife-edge of failing -- performance in his initial career (radiographer, as mentioned) due to being distracted by these stories of eternal champions like Erokosë, Jerry Cornelius, Dorian Hawkmoon, Corum, and, of course, the pale, thin-blooded, reluctant, emperor, Elric of Melniboné (not MEL-kneebone but Mel-NIB-onay) with Stormbringer, his runesword, the stealer of souls! 

It was not just the family stuff.

E@L means, hey, like, awesome, right?

~~~~~~~

E@L attributes his poor performance at high school to his being distracted by those surfing whims when it blew off-shore and tide was right and swells were a solid 4-6ft  (or lower)…

~~~~~~~

E@L attributes his poor performance  at surfing (he was OK, but not a star) to his mother being reluctant/unable to buy more and better surfboards for him. And for him being shit-scared of big waves. He could only afford a decent board when he left school and got a job, but see above re-marriage and progeny and work and study, and guess how well that worked out for him.

Not that he is bitter, twisted, and has his hand on the rune-encrusted obsidian pommel of his otherwordly blade…

No, his hand is on a double G&T.

~~~~~~~

- [ ] The Elric of Melniboné series (1961–2022), including:
                  - [ ] The Dreaming City (1961)
                  - [x] The Stealer of Souls (1963)
                  - [x] Stormbringer (1965, revised 1977)
                  - [x] Elric of Melniboné (1972)
                  - [x] Elric: The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976)
                  - [x] The Weird of the White Wolf (1977)
                  - [ ] The Vanishing Tower (1977)
                  - [ ] Elric at the End of Time (1981)
                  - [y] The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
                  - [y] The Revenge of the Rose (1991)
                  - [y] The Citadel of Forgotten Myths (2022)
- [ ] The Dorian Hawkmoon series (1967–1975), including:
                  - [x] The Jewel in the Skull (1967)
                  - [x] The Mad God's Amulet (1968)
                  - [x] The Sword of the Dawn (1968)
                  - [x] The Runestaff (1969)
                  - [x] Count Brass (1973)
                  - [x] The Champion of Garathorm (1973)
                  - [x] The Quest for Tanelorn (1975)
- [ ] The Erekosë series (1970–1987), including:
                  - [x] The Eternal Champion (1970)
                  - [x] Phoenix in Obsidian, aka The Silver Warriors (1970)
                  - [ ] The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell (with Howard Chaykin) (1979) (graphic novel)
                  - [ ] The Dragon in the Sword (1987)
- [ ] The Corum series (1971–1974), including:
                  - [x] The Knight of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The Queen of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The King of the Swords (1971)
                  - [x] The Bull and the Spear (1973)
                  - [x] The Oak and the Ram (1973)
                  - [x] The Sword and the Stallion (1974)
- [x] Behold the Man (1969)
- [x] Breakfast in the Ruins (1972)
- [ ] The Time Dweller (1969)
- [ ] Sailing to Utopia, comprising:
                  - [ ] Flux (1962)
                  - [ ] The Ice Schooner (1966)
                  - [ ] The Black Corridor (1969)
                  - [ ] The Distant Suns (1975)
- [ ] The Wrecks of Time, aka The Rituals of Infinity (1967)
- [ ] The Sundered Worlds, aka The Blood Red Game (1965)
- [ ] The Fireclown, aka The Winds of Limbo (1965)
- [ ] The Twilight Man, aka The Shores of Death (1966)
- [ ] Kane of Old Mars (1998 compilation volume originally published as three books in 1965, 346pp)
- [ ] The Lost Canal (novelette) (2013)
- [ ] The Chinese Agent (1970)
- [ ] The Russian Intelligence (1980)
- [ ] Michael Moorcock's Multiverse (1999) (graphic novel)
- [ ] The Metatemporal Detective (2007) (collection)
- [ ] A Nomad of the Time Streams:
                  - [ ] The Warlord of the Air (1971)
                  - [ ] The Land Leviathan (1974)
                  - [ ] The Steel Tsar (1981)
- [ ] The Dancers at the End of Time sequence (1972–76):
                  - [y] An Alien Heat (1972)
                  - [y] The Hollow Lands (1974)
                  - [ ] The End of All Songs (1976)
- [ ] Legends from the End of Time (1976)
- [ ] The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming, aka A Messiah at the End of Time (1977)
- [ ] Gloriana (1978)
- [ ] My Experiences in the Third World War (1980)
- [ ] The Opium General and Other Stories (1984)
- [y] Mother London (1988)
- [ ] Casablanca (1989) – short stories
- [y] King of the City (2000)
- [ ] London Bone (2001) – short stories
- [ ] Kaboul (first published in French) (2018
- [ ] The Jerry Cornelius quartet of novels and shorter fiction:
                  - [x] The Final Programme (1969)
                  - [x] A Cure for Cancer (1971)
                  - [x] The English Assassin (1972)
                  - [x] The Condition of Muzak (1977)
                  - [ ] The Cornelius Quartet (1977 compilation volume, 974pp)
                  - [ ] The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century (1976)
                  - [ ] The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (1976)
                  - [ ] The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, aka Gold Diggers of 1977 (1980)
                  - [ ] The Entropy Tango (1981)
                  - [ ] The Alchemist's Question (1984)
                  - [ ] A Cornelius Calendar (1993 compilation volume, 554pp)
                  - [ ] The New Nature of the Catastrophe (1993 anthology collecting Jerry Cornelius stories by Moorcock and others, edited by Moorcock and Langdon Jones, 448pp)
                  - [ ] Firing the Cathedral (novella) (2002)
                  - [ ] Phase 1:A Jerry Cornelius Story (novella) (2008)
                  - [ ] Modem Times 2.0 (novella) (2011)
                  - [ ] Pegging the President (novella) (2018)
                  - [ ] The Fracking Factory (novella) (2018)
                  - [ ] The Wokingham Agreement (novelette) (2022)
- [ ] The von Bek sequence:
                  - [ ] The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981)
                  - [ ] The Brothel in Rosenstrasse (1982)
                  - [ ] The City in the Autumn Stars (1986)
- [ ] The Pyat Quartet:
                  - [ ] Byzantium Endures (1981)
                  - [ ] The Laughter of Carthage (1984)
                  - [ ] Jerusalem Commands (1992)
                  - [ ] The Vengeance of Rome (2006)
- [ ] The Second Ether sequence:
                  - [ ] Blood: A Southern Fantasy (1994)
                  - [ ] Fabulous Harbours (1995)
                  - [ ] The War Amongst The Angels (1996)
- [ ] The Elric/Oona Von Bek sequence:
                  - [ ] The Dreamthief's Daughter (2001)
                  - [ ] The Skrayling Tree (2003)
                  - [ ] The White Wolf's Son (2005)
- [ ] Doctor Who:
                  - [ ] The Coming of the Terraphiles (2010)
- [ ] The Sanctuary of the White Friars
                  - [ ] The Whispering Swarm (2015)
                  - [ ] The Woods of Arcady (2023)
                  - [ ] The Wounds of Albion (TBC)

~~~~~~~

Phew! Busy guy that Michael Moorcock!

~~~~~~~

Sigh.

E@L considers his poor history with girlfriends (only JUST plural) and wife (singular) to being obsessed with surfing. And himself. And being obsessed by obscure (to many) books, and to only ever learning four songs on his guitar and playing them on heavy repeat for 50 years yet never remembering the chord changes correctly.

And just being a selfish, ignorant dickhead in relationships, with zip EQ (see previous paragraph for pathetic excuses), and so here he is at 67, still alive despite the best effort of the invidious fates, the anger of the chaotic gods and spirits on this realm and others, only by having used the Mechanical Magic of Modern Medicine to confound his destiny and his malicious DNA, sitting alone on his balcony with a double G&T and an iPad, a thorax marred with multiple scars, a gurgling colostomy bag, and a list of the millions of books he hasn’t read, not to mention the one he hasn’t written. 

Pleasant enough, right?

~~~~~~~

But, oh, this post has gone off the rails suddenly, hasn't it? 

But like, hey! What more could one expect from that plate of cheese and crackers, that (second) double G&T, and

E@L

Days Of Past Futures: Parte the Seconde

[Please check Parte The Firste first.]

“Oh no, no no, you don’t need to apply for PR. That’s not necessary,” said HR person at another ambush [E@L means "meeting"] the following week.

~~~~

Over the prior weekend, E@L had pressed SEND on a letter to the CEO and the HR person about his situation regarding the Expat Package he’d been on since he negotiated it and they (the same *they* as they ever was, in the sense that The Four Tops are still The Four Tops despite complete personnel change several times over) had signed it nine years earlier.

E@L suggested in his email that the CDHCC4 (CosmoDemonic Health Care Company #4*) make some changes to the offer that had been thrust under his nose the previous week, specifically to support him in a belated request to the Singapore Family Government for PR (Permanent Residency), the successful receipt of which would provide them with a more benign way of castrating his lifestyle. 

Would they support his application for PR, and/or, OK, wait until Xmas to implement said changes even if PR had not completely come through, he suggested by way of reasonable compromise. 

Only then all those wonderful features that make life worth spending on would be cast asunder. The money that enabled him to buy delicious craft beer as his drinking cohorts wallowed in such mass-brewed poisons as Tiger, Asahi, or even Carlsberg (“I am not a pauper,” he would say as he paid $20 for a small bottle of zesty craft XPA or sour while they paid a bargain $9 for 2-4-1- pint of their shudder-inducing brew.); that enabled him to travel to Europe for a fortnight each year; that enabled him to put money away for a rainy day, such as the financial tropical thunderstorms that deluge one should a serious illness occur (again, heaven forfend). 

PR had some benefits - he would be able to stay in Singapore for 6 months without a work visa, should the bottom fall out his employment (ha, as if), and look for re-employment (maybe CDHCC#2 would have him back?). He could legitimately win the lottery, or buy an apartment (shoulda bought a place in 2005/6) with lower stamp duty. He could get cheap health-care. (As if he's gonna need that.)

PR had at least one limitation - he would have to contribute a fair chunk of his already greatly reduced salary to the CPF (Central Provident Fund), the country's pension. And by all accounts it would be difficult to get it all back, if and when he decided to leave Singapore.

~~~~~

But HR person cast his suggestions for support  in a PR application and a delay until Xmas aside with an amount of eagerness and urgency, E@L thought in retrospect eighteen months later. 

“No no no, you didn’t need to apply for PR! That’s not necessary. 

"After considering your letter, we agree it is a too sudden a change for you [You smug, overpaid, under-performing leech - E@L could hear under her voice], and we have decided to delay the retraction of your housing allowance and utilities allowance until the end of this financial year. So you will still have your allowances for another six months, and that will give you time to find a cheaper apartment. However, [pause]... we will be stopping your business class flights.” 

Shock horror. He hardly travelled anymore anyway since his change of role. [Did E@L mention that?] 

Of course E@L didn’t wish to lose E@LGHQ, and said as such, without the acronym. He explained that he had already sent an email to his USA-based landlord asking for rent reduction due the CEC (Current Economic Climate), and if a sub-let of one of his bedrooms could be made official. The rooms were already taken on part-time/full-time sub-rosa terms, but he thought he should make at least one room official. The landlord later replied in the affirmative for both suggestions, allowing a 15% cut in rent - down to merely outrageous - and he just needed a work-permit for the proposed "new" tenant, to check over, for legal reasons, with the condominium’s management.

HR lady and silent CEO were fine with this. "We're OK with you staying wherever you can afford. It will no longer be our concern."

~~~~~

A reprieve, therefore, temporarily, for 

E@L

* OK all you smarty-pants, what's the reference?

Days Of Past Futures

The link to Expat@Large.blogspot.com is the eight tab from the left on the bookmarks bar of his browser. E@L is not sure why it remains in such a prominent position as it never gets a hit these days. 

Has E@L nothing to report? Has he no opinion on anything? About getting his coffee order correct? About troublesome taxi drivers? About toasters that require three runs through? About books and movies? About the rise in populism, and political insanity. About both conservatives and liberals being painted into unreasonable, irrational positions in the corner of their ideologies by the sloppy brushes of social-media propaganda, a shaken and stirred paint can of silliness from the radicals at the extreme ends of the colour chart (this is E@L stretching a ridiculous metaphor to its breaking point with his hasty thought of RED OR DEAD through to WHITE POWER: it's not a racist comment)?

What about work? Yeah, what about it?

What about his health? Heart attacks, and major surgery? What about major new health issues, and staring into the abyss yet again? Indeed, what about it? [Abyss says, Hey E@L, you back again?] 

About leaving Expatriatdom for good?  About - shudder - riots and plagues? Read on McDuff... 

~~~~~~~~~

In Oct 2017, an suspecting E@L was invited into the Lair of the Black Demons, one of the meeting rooms next to the CEO’s office, to meet with the relatively new CEO and the HR person. Uh oh, he thought. And appropriately, because uh oh is what happened.
Softly, contracting her cheek muscles to elevate the sides of her mouth (is that a smile?) HR person said, "We have decided that it's best to bring you in line with the other staff..."

Uh oh.

"So, E@L, you have been a valuable employee for nearly 14 years, but it’s best that all CAS [clinical application specialists] are on similar contracts, so from the end of this month [THIS MONTH!!]...

... we will be removing your housing allowance... [inevitable really, E@L has been riding this caboose of the expat gravy train for way too many years - not that he is complaining!] 

... and your utilities allowance... [turn off the freaking air-con and live like you're in a kampong!] 

.... as well removing your business class flight privileges... [NNNNOOOOOOOOO!], 

.... and ending the repatriation clause in your contract.” [was that still in there?] 

Uh fucking oh. Expat in name only for E@L. He slumps to the desk, slides to the floor...

"We understand that this potentially would require you to downsize your apartment [AAAaaaarrrrrrghhhh! Not E@LGHQ!]. We can help you to obtain a real estate agent to find a less expensive place for you."

"Did you say no housing allowing from NEXT month? NEXT month?"

HR lady retracts her risorial musculature slightly again. “Yes.” CEO says nothing. He has said nothing thus far for the meeting, which is worrying, until E@L remembers that he can’t speak English.

“Do you want me to resign, is that it? Or is there a package? Can you offer a redundancy, same as you did for  ******.” 

“No, E@L, we don’t want you to leave, we really need you. We just want to pay you less. It’s not been a good year. Please sign this document to show you understand and agree to these changes to your contract.”

E@L, in shock, shakes his head, asks for some time to think and excuses himself. He returns to his desk.

~~~~~~~

First thing he does when back at his desk is look for a copy of his contract. He has kept them hidden in a secret cache in an envelope labelled ‘contracts’ in the middle drawer of his desk. He should remember to lock that drawer. He should try to find the key.

When he subsequently reads his contract for the first time in years (unlike the new CEO who has a highly marked-up copy on his dartboard), he sees a paragraph that states that all of the benefits he is being asked to rescind, to be stripped of, would have been automatically lost if he had taken up permanent residency (PR) or became a Singapore citizen, presumably by getting married. He quickly discarded the thought that the recent discussion with HR constituted a subtle offer of matrimonial bliss. 

E@L was writing an email to point out this (PR, not matrimony) when said HR person came to his desk and placed the document in front of him again. 

“Could you please sign this.”  

HR person actually did this. [In subsequent occasions, such as when E@L was unwell, HR person provided excellent and personable support. But not this day.]

“I’m not signing that!” cries 

E@L. 

(to be continued) 

  

Inspiring Nexts

Unusually for him [cough], E@L was a little bit muddled a few weeks ago, somewhere in a foreign country in the middle of a conversation with someone he can't recall for legal reasons.

Hmm.

Anyway, point of story: E@L had stated that Hitachi, the company with which E@L may or not have a passing employment-oriented relationship, made Japan's Shinkansen trains.

And the other guy said, "Yeah, along with Toshiba."

E@L was certain he was unsure about this, but being always polite, did not challenge this assertion. More than that, he assented to it. "Yeah..." he said, semi-agreeing enthusiastically (beers had been consumed and the mood of the moment was positive) but quickly changed to a subject he felt he might be certain about being certain about - which is to say he shut-up and glugged another beer.

E@L's First Trip To Japan, contemporaneous with his First Fuck-up In Photoshop
~~~~~~~

It's been bothering him though, because he had probably looked this up years ago. Fuck, the past is a foreign country, which is fair enough, as most of it happens in foreign countries. And besides... He has a vague memory of someone in Japan telling him about the Shinkansen, perhaps on the ride from Tokyo to Osaka.

Certainly Hitachi made the early models, as organised by Japan Rail, he is sure about that, but did they make ALL of them. Did Toshiba kick in at some point in time and go into a joint venture, or did Toshiba even make one or more of them completely?

JFGI. JFWI.

Well yeah, screw you, Hitachi made them, along with Kawasaki and Japan Rail. All of the mainstream models are Hitachi.

Toshiba didn't get a fucking look in.

~~~~~~~

E@L thinks he's mentioned this aside before: Each year, Hitachi sponsor the Christmas lights on Orchard Rd.

And each time E@L goes through the gaudy (Singapore is nothing if not meretricious) show in a taxi, he asks the uncle if he knows who sponsors the lights. Do they even notice?

If they don't know, he tells them. If they do know, he asks them what products Hitachi make. They usually don't know any, or they say things like, "Toaster?"

One uncle said, "Diggers", which is true. "Very good. But Komatsu* better."

Going...

...going...

...gone.

Hard work that, getting out of bloody pond. Think I need a lie down."

As does

E@L

* Not that Komatsu don't get into their own spots of bother...

Distracted

I have a task/meme that has been put to me by Philip Willey, who may or may not have once blogged under the pseudonym of Dick Headley, to answer some question about my blogging (or more appropriately, the lack thereof). I have been working on this, Philip, and I promise that before I die or maybe soon thereafter, I will submit this to my vast reading public to add to the circle of responders.

~~~~~~~~~

In the meantime I have been finally, as in at last, hit with a load of genuine, employment related work, as in preparing some training PowerPoints, most of which have been written already and just need translating from Japglish into Australglish. The question for me is what the fuck are these people talking about, mostly.

Example: "Both X and Y are possible to cope with different purpose." It is almost understandable, but not quite right. What is purpose? Do they mean situation? Aiyah! This is one of ten lines on an over-crowded slide (this is not an iPhone launch) and I have maybe 150 slides to rewrite.

~~~~~~~~

There are two training sessions. One is two days of new product introduction to be given to our distributors. This was meant to be held in the sunny, smiley land of Siam in May, but political matters have intervened at the cusp of our triumphant "press this button then press that button" sessions. So the initial numbers of 80+ will probably drop to about 30 as the venue has shifted to our office in outer sticks of Singapore. Pain in the arse.

Secondly, I have a day and half to teach salesman of one of our partner companies about the basics/advanced physics and technology of ultrasound - something that took me 12 months to study and 30 years to, um, master - as well as do the "press this button then press that button" routing on a machine from my parent company that I have hardly ever used. Sigh.

For this second session, I have become bogged down continually rewriting a presentation that I started 14 years ago to explain visually quadrature phase detection so that I can talk about it without getting lost and without having more than 50% of the audience start snoring. That's a tough job, even though... zzz... zzz...

~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile I have been asked to run this week's Pub-Quiz at the salubrious venue of the Sportsman Bar in Singapore. Come one, come all. The spectacularly predictable task is for me to set up a series of obscurely-themed questions that make me sound smarter than I actually am (not a difficult task), ask the questions to the hopefully full-pub (maybe 30 people), get the results tabulated, and then announce the winning team - they get a free drink! Whoopee! - all in a suitably E@L-style of flamboyance, intellectualness and culturality. And to avoid mumbling throughout.

But being much more a visually communicative person (see above) than a non-mumbling person, I am putting all the questions and answer into -- wait for it -- a series of PowerPoint presentations. To show my style I have used several of the default PPT themes. Awesomely crap.

~~~~~~~~~

So guess on which of these tasks I have been spending the vast majority of my time?

~~~~~~~~~

First Round, Mysterious Persons:

Q1: Who and why is...


E@L

Design and Discrimination

E@L and some of his colleagues were in a meeting all afternoon yesterday with two Head Office bigwigs (head of design, and ex-president) who were there to tell the wonders of what they had been doing all these years to justify their stay at the Fullerton Hotel while the our corporate profits tank. [No, they're not tanking, actually. Stock prices are up 15% in the last three months. You should have bought in 2008, as should have E@L. 300% recovery. Anyway, /digression.]

They only spoke Japanese, but their slides were in English. Nevertheless they read each line, or E@L gathered they did by the tracks of the laser pointer, in Japanese. Then each phrase they had spoken had to be translated for us, and the translator also used a laser pointer to go over each point on the slides carefully. Tedium. Once, the speaker and the translator got a bit lost / confused. They chattered on in Japanese while they perfected the oral translation -- for 4min and 35secs. For the ONE SLIDE - and it was already written there in English. How do I know it was 4:35? One of my colleagues who i thought was taking notes but was actually working on next week's training schedule, timed them. E@L was wondering which of us would get shot when we were the first to stop clapping after one of Stalin’s four hour speeches.

~~~~~~~

Turns out these guys weren’t all that boring, deep down. After a tea-break they got into some much more interesting freestyle speeches. AND it turns out one of them could speak English moderately well after all! (There’s 4:35 of my life I’ll never get back.)

They had graduated up to near-god status in the medical ultrasound world from their base experience designing washing machines, all those years ago [Tom Stoppard reference]. This caused a suppressed snigger up the back. Not because there is anything wrong with this company's washing machines, they’re quite good in fact, it’s just washing machines don’t have printers, and neither does our latest ultrasound model.

However the main guy said, interestingly, that he went to design school with the most famous unknown legend you’ve never heard of, Fukuda Tamio, who was the key design consultant whose famous(?) 1993 report to Samsung triggered a major turn around in their industrial philosophy, by pushing for higher emphasis on design for convenience, not just better technology. This was in their mobile phone business - back when they were battling Motorola (remember them) and not Apple.

According to legend, as recounted to E@L yesterday, Samsung Electronic’s President, Lee Kun Hee, read Fukuda-san’s report on a flight from Seoul to Frankfurt and was so charged by it that he called for a meeting of 200 executives from around the world in Frankfurt in just two days time, to discuss its implications and the turn around in thinking it demanded.

“Change everything except your wife and children,” he famously said, in a what we would now call a sexistually [new word!] discriminatory speech, to the jet-lagged execs on that landmark day.

And the rest, E@L’s acquaintances, is history.

~~~~~~~

Speaking of discrimination...

~~~~~~~

Yeah, so there had been 18 odd people of various ethnicities sitting, fascinated, in the room. A dozen approx at the boardroom table and six less important types (like E@L) up the back in chairs against the wall, passing secret notes and giggling, like at the washing machine and printer hilarity. When the slide said “circuit bore”, it was not a self-disparaging comment on the travelling roadshow lifestyle of the speakers, but a misspelling of “circuit board”. Stop laughing, ow, my jaw hurts, my belly is in cramps from this punitive tsunami of amusement and jocularity.

This morning E@L sees one of those people, a guy from the adjacent office, walk through OUR office on a short-cut to the toilet. Sigh, They do it all the time. One day, someone’ll catch E@L in mid snooze…

E@L asks his cute (but married) Chinese colleagues - who had been sitting next to him at the back wall yesterday - if she knew the name of that senior guy, the Indian man, who E@L sees all the time but could never remember his name since they were first introduced two years ago, who works in the office next door, important, finance maybe, the man sitting to Yai-Wan.

CBMCC: What Indian man?

E@L: You know, the Indian guy. The balding one with glasses. Is it Danesh?

CBMCC: There was no Indian guy there yesterday.

E@L: Of course there was. The guy next to Yai-Wan. [In this instance E@L’s memory was clear - Yai-Wan is also cute.]

CBMCC: That was Takazumi-san.

E@L : No, there was an Indian guy BETWEEN Yai-Wan and Takazumi-san.

CBMCC: There was?

E@L : … You just don't see brown people, do you? They're not real to you. It's like they’re some sort of non-people.

CBMCC: Noooo (laughing)... I didn’t see anyone, because Tim was in the way, that’s why. I really couldn’t see him.

E@L : I KNOW you couldn’t see him! That’s my point! It’s because he’s of the melatonin enriched races isn’t it? Because of the colour of his skin! He might as well not be there. Singapore will have 9million in 2125 and you won’t even see 3million of them! You Chinese are just so… so fucking… so racist!

She was pissing herself laughing at this btw (it's the way E@L tells 'em), couldn't believe she didn't see him, but it was due to where she was sitting. Yeah, right. Like there were thousands of people crowding the room.

E@L: Oh Singaporean, why li dat so racist one?

CBMCC: (hitting at E@L with her tiny fists) Nooooo! It’s not like that!

~~~~~~~~


Ooooooh, yes it is.


E@L

Shy And Retiring

At a large table with a subdued Thai-patterned table-cloth in a Pizza restaurant in Chiang Mai [that's in Thailand] sat six ageing, balding, male farang, in shorts, short-sleeved shirts and sandals with white socks. Nice rattan chairs, very comfortable - OK, four were sitting, two were standing. They were playing a board-game, which as E@L realised as he looked over discreetly, was backgammon. They seemed to be at the crucial stages of the game with most of the pieces in the home positions.

It was something of an interesting tableau for Chiang Mai. Backgammon. Pizza. The old city; moats, temples and ruins.

The two men playing were taking the game pretty seriously, in their own ways. Pieces were coming off and going on in the typically extended endgame of good players. [E@L hasn't played Backgammon for ages, excuse any naivety as he describes what he thought was happening.]

The farang facing more or less towards E@L was slender, with a long face accentuated by receding fair hair swept back from his already high forehead. He was wearing dark framed glasses. He seemed to be frowning all the time and obviously took it the game very seriously. He took the leather cup and rolled the two dice with a brisk, short shake, let them fall onto the board. All the farang looked at the resulting numbers and murmured. He clenched up a bit, his whole body tightened, or so it seemed, and he frowned again. He slowly reached across and moved a piece that was sitting on the edge of the board back IN onto a spare space of his opponent's Home. Then he picked it up and moved it again, four spaces out into the next area. A brief conversation started and after a pause he moved the piece back two spaces, admitting he had made a counting error. He struck E@L as having once having been a history teacher, had that mien of someone keen on certainty, accuracy and significance and quietly angry at himself by his mistake. He spoke clearly in an English accent, not formal but not broad or working class either, but as if he was used to talking to those less educated or a lot younger than himself. No doubt, from that subtle tone of voice and the way he held himself erect, he considered himself the intellectual of the bunch. The collar of his check shirt was ironed crisp, it was buttoned to the hole below the top and he sat bolt upright throughout his moves.

His opponent was in the ironic way of things, his opposite. Solid, round and calm, arms held slightly out, perhaps because of man-boob fat rolling under his armpits [doesn't E@L know that] in his easy-care check-shirt (E@L couldn't see, but there were probably two or three buttons undone): with elbows propped on the table he sipped his Diet Coke and he played with a pleasant, relaxed ease. As E@L watched he kept holding back the certainty of his determined opponent's victory with a cheerful goad after this mistake, or when he was able to make a frustrating block with a lucky throw of his own. When he rolled the dice it was a more open shake, larger in stroke, and when he released them, the dice clattered around, nearly going off the table. His accent, when joked about the dice running away, revealed his origins from a different part of England, somewhere they scorned toffee voiced snobs. E@L imagined he would once have taught metal work or car maintenance to the working class lads in a forgotten era when not every one wanted to be in finance (or history for that matter). And he would have been brilliant at it because it came easily to him, as did most things that interested him. For example, he knew how to play a good game of backgammon.

Sitting at that same side as the history teacher, with his chair turned slightly towards the game, leaning forward every now and then to watch each move with a slightly slack-jawed interest, sat a third farang, balding, perhaps a bit younger, with another British accent: E@L's guessing they are all Poms. He smiled often as he offered his commentary about the miscounting, the scattered dice, and it all seems directed at the History Man. But the history teacher either ignored him, perhaps concentrating so as not to make another mistake, or just plain ignored. He took this (assumed, E@L is projecting maybe) negativity in his stride, and seemed almost happy just to have them acknowledged. E@L could not help thinking about the small cartoon mutt skipping along side the great British bulldog Ralph. "We'll go chase dem cats, huh Ralph? Huh?" "Ah shaddup!" and a brisk back-pawer sends the little guy flying, only for him to come back panting for more.

The others man at the far end of the table, sitting back, hand on chin, watching or chatting to the standing two, discussing the football on the TV, was not always 100% on the game. E@L could not hear much of what they said, but it seemed to be a bout the football.

And then E@L's pizza came, handed to him by the English accented Thai man who ran the place.


"Looks like fun," said E@L, indicating the table and smiling.

The manager/owner smiled back and lifted his eyebrows briefly. "Sure does."

E@L took his pizza (not bad) across the road to his hotel (there's a pool in the room! Amazing!) and set up his computer with the large screen TV by HDMI cable, and watched two episodes of Elementary (excellent).

~~~~~~~

"... the tradition of the connoisseur tourism that had been around since the Grand Tour [...] still predominates today; its paradigm as we have seen is the gourmet who selects certain dishes (places, people) without any motive but the satisfaction of the palate. It is a form of travel that may increase knowledge and refine taste but that leaves the traveller's basic assumptions undisturbed. To a large extent the tourist remains insulated within a national bubble that preserves intact the familiar distinctions of language, class, race, wealth, education and so on. 'Many English travellers remain four or five years abroad,' wrote John Moore in 1779, 'and seldom, during all this space, have been in any company, but that of their own countrymen.' Bishop Hurd had observed the same tendency of the English 'to flock together into little knots of their own countrymen'. In similar vein Lord Chesterfield satirised the young Englishman abroad who complains that his bearleader is 'always plaguing me to go into foreign companies'. In truth, he suggests, these tourists never leave home, for 'they go into no foreign company, at least none good; but dine and sup with one another only, at the tavern'. To Lady Blessington it appeared that the English travelled 'not so much for the purpose of studying the manners of other lands as for that of establishing and displaying their own'. "
Ian Littlewood, Sultry Climates - Travel and Sex, Da Capo Press, 2001.

~~~~~~

The 15th anniversary of E@L's Tour Of Duty in Asia will come up soon. He started his tentative expat-dom in Hong Kong on April 1st, 1998. An impressive stint? Well, impressive for some, but hardly that of a true Old China Hand, those lifers who are propped against the bars in Wanchai still would consider. His recent (9 months ago now) heart troubles (The Great Angina Incident of San Gimingano) have successfully instilled the moment mori attitude in him (part of the reason for the lack of blog postings - a couldn't give a fuck attitude he hopes is ending). Those medical interventional intimations of mortality; he knew they were coming; but of course not quite so soon. You are never ready for it, never seriously expecting it, never expecting it to be all that bad, never expecting to, like, find yourself coming close to, you know, hard to say the word... Dying…


With The Ever-Sensitive Nurse Odette
And so a man's thought turn to the contemplation of taking it fucking easy for here on in. Doing a David Bowie and resting on your laurels for 10 years.

E@L wonders where he will doing that ease-taking, should he live the Bowie years, deo volente. Would he end up in Chiang Mai, playing backgammon?

~~~~~~

All sorts of things to consider about retirement, not just the scenery. Health care being a major area of interest, d'uh. Where you want your bypass done, E@L? Cebu, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Brisbane (just a thought - no, it floods all the time) or Melbourne? And why? For the medical skill or for family support? Or is it the "English spoken here", unlike say, Sienna, his resting place after San Gimingano? Non parlo Inglese.

It's not that he's so cheesed of with work that he wants out as soon as possible, it's just hey, if an opportunity came up that could make him really financially comfortable, he'd take it.


Like, someone buys my shares for $10million...

Like, work's not that tough...
And the cost of living has to be considered. And the preferred weather. And an easy lifestyle. Nice food/restaurants? What about family, if he should he become a grandfather? And friends like the good old-fashioned flesh and blood, shake real hands, kiss real cheeks friends from the good old days in Victoria ( Australia that is). Sure he has great friends here in Singapore - but the expat world is a transient world and relationship are quickly quite deep, just as quickly they might end. Like a night-market - it's here; it's gone. Friends? They're here; they're gone.

So should he go back where he came from, as the Singaporeans wish?

But money? Without any big boost, it's a worry because Melbourne is one of the most expensive places in the world to live: it comes in at No.5. His income would be low for Australia, and the Australian pension...? Ha! He'd be forced to live off savings and that would drain away very fast, particularly if (when) he becomes sick again and doesn't want to wait for the public health system.

But if he stayed in Asia? Firstly, obviously he couldn't stay in Singapore or Hong Kong - see Melbourne re:cost of living.

So where? Would anyone care if he married a Philippino or Burmese, or a Thai lady [he is not getting married to anyone by the way] and bought a bar in somewhere like Pattaya and lived in Asia? Would he care what people think (and he does, believe it or not)? But where would he be happiest? Where the food is fresh, brilliant, delicious and cheap?


Som tam and gai tot - S$3. Awesome
Why shouldn't he get married again? He's single, of goodish fortune; he must be in want of a wife? But they'd say, "Dirty old man, gone troppo, look at him, such a young girl. Why doesn't he marry an unattractive, un-sexy, bitchy old woman who would give him hell and tie him down to a household of boredom and psychologically induced erectile dysfunction?" Just for someone to look after him in his dotage?

"Why not marry a pretty, sexy younger lady who would also give him Viagra-supported hell-fire and tie him down with fur covered chains and lightly whip his wobbly white butt?" he asks back. Joking! He doesn't want the spanking: he is not English. [And then have her real husband toss him out the window of that Pattaya condo three years later, once she has control of all his money.]

So, would he end up joining the History Teacher and crew? Would he find a benign, cheap place where he could live out his diminishing days on his substantial cash reserves? Could he survive in a culturally isolated enclave near tropically lush golf courses, with his well-ironed shirts, his backgammon and his cheap pizza? And other great food? And then he could fill the rest of his time with trips all around the world with SPG and family and friends? (Barcelona and then Brussels Belgium and Holland this year)

Or could he live in rain-drenched Melbourne in what amounts to another culturally isolated, racist, enclave where the restaurant are great if expensive - and though everyone speaks English, of a sort, but where intelligent conversation has in general shifted substantially to the left of the bell-curve from that which he is used to here (where the employment filtering allows in moderately to highly successful expats only. (Not, of course with E@L's friends back home, but go outside into the pubs, the streets and the malls - or the hospital staff tea-rooms - OMG the banality!). Back to where entertainment means TV, and that means reality TV and Add-Cheese-For-Instant-Fame-And-Riches shows. And the golf-course are public and under-tended, and at night what he plays is Word With (Facebook) Friends on whatever gadget passes for a computer in those times.


Soufflé at Woolies, not exactly Melbourne yet...
But there is also Aussie Rules football, the excitement it gives him - watch the ticker, E@L ! - and he could use his membership of the MCC (did E@L mention he was a member) more fruitfully - membership came through after a 12 year wait almost to the day he left for Asia, d'oh! April Fool, all right.

He has no idea what to do. None whatsoever. E@L is confused, as you can tell by the thoughts leaping around randomly in these sentences, and he is conflicted.

So he'll ride it out for the moment - he's feeling fit enough to live for a long time yet - and hope something pleasant comes along to force his hand.

E@L


(No doubt a lot of typos there in draft no.1 - I'll come back tomorrow)

Microemboli

- Taxi rank, it's just on the street out front, says the concierge.

- Ta, brilliant, says E@L and he skips (slowly) down the steps in the chill wind down the easy winding, brick-paved walking steps to the road. There are four taxis. E@L considers jumping into the last one, but hey, don't be a smart-arse prick E@L.

The driver in the front cab, somewhat sullen, says nothing; no 'Good morning,' nothing. He starts the car, puts it into D and starts to pull out.

- H***** hospital, please.

The driver looks at him. His foot lifts sightly off the accelerator. They are already out of the rank's demarcated confines.

- Which H***** hospital?

- The H***** hospital. The Royal? Hang on let me check.

- Which hospital? the driver repeats. There are several.

E@L drags his man-bag onto his lap and pulls out his Tab.

- Yep, the Royal H***** Hospital, he says looking at the email from his colleague.

They are slowly (this is H***** at 8am: there is no other traffic) passing through the first intersection.

The driver points up the road to a squat grey, white, glass, mulit-blocked, multi-temporal building two streets away.

- That's the Royal H***** Hospital, just there. Shit man, you pulled me out of the rank. You could have walked.

- Well, OK, so it's not far. I'll know for tomorrow. You can drive me there. Like, it's you job (E@L mumbles this.)

They are up to the next block, and the driver turns right.

- Shit, man. Which entrance. I'll drop you up here on A***** St.

- I'm meeting someone on the coffee shop on E****** St.

- That's around the corner.

He keeps moving out of the drop-off bay and back to the road, where he immediately turns right, to the road behind the hospital. This side of the hospital is partially obscured by scaffolding. Half the earth seems to be under construction, have you noticed that? The driver drops E@L at a closed sandwich shop on the next corner.

- That's the only cafe on this street. Must be this one, man.

E@L shuffles his wallet out from under his arse. Like everyone else, he only goes for his money at the last possible minute.

- How much?

- Man, I didn't even turn on the fucking meter. (No receipt then?)

- Here's five for your troubles. Buy a pleasant attitude.

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L meets his colleague, not at the coffee shop on the corner but, on the phone with her for directions until he sees her at the coffee-shop outside the north entrance to the hospital, waves, hangs up - hidden behind the scaffolding.

After introductions and small-talk about the customer's not-all-uncommon-amongst-gastroenterologists obsession with David Foster Wallace, she begins to walk towards the entrance. E@L hesitates, his tummy protesting, and asks:

- Breakfast?

- Haven't you had breakfast yet?

- Well, no (it was included in his hotel room-charge, but, hey, might as well be sociable), I was expecting, you know, as we were meeting in a coffee shop… You've had breakfast?

- I have. But sure, sorry, let's have something.

- Do we have time?

- Plenty of time. (Then why did I get out of bed so fucking early?)

The serving ladies seems your classic looking waitresses, slightly updated; homely apron (the word 'apron', interestingly, or not, has the same root as 'nappy' and 'map', btw - any rectangular piece of material), scarf (not sure how this fits with previous comment) tied back DFW bandana-like, and she is moderately unattractive. Could have been a body-double for the girl in Five Easy Pieces, except shorter by a little, but movies, TV, you really can't be sure, can you?

- How can I help? asks the shorter of the two waitresses.

- Oh, in lots of ways.

They crack-up for some reason. The waitresses can't help laughing, one has her arms on the counter, she lays her head in them. Never heard this one before, obviously. Stressed out; too many serious types this morning?

- What's wrong, asks E@L with a grin.

- Oh, nothing. We have dirty minds that's all.

- That's all? (They're still laughing. These girls go in the front row when E@L next does a show.)

- OK, what do you want to order?

- Ah, you're back. Flat white and some of that toasted banana bread. (Hold the chicken.)

- Thanks, have a seat. I'll bring it to your table. (She wipes away a tear.)

~~~~~~~~

They arrive in the Day Surgery, sign in as visitors, get some Ni-Viz stickers for their shirts and are 20 minutes early. The machine is ready to go, but they need a scope as his bloody thing won't let you do anything unless there is a full scope attached. The machine's probe is part of an endoscope and so it needs to be connected to the large fibre-optic camera - a stylish stack of cream and blue boxes from once respected company that has yet to completely negotiate itself through major legal/corporate issues back in Japan. The scope is still in the disinfectant and will be another 10 minutes.

They have another scope, they'll go get that. E@L fishes into his bag, pushes his hand around. Tries the secret compartment at the back. The secret compartment insode. Nope. He has left the USB thumb-drives (USB sticks, USB drives, what do you call them) back in his hotel.

Microembolism.

Shit.

A small clump of self-adherent RBCs have pulled out of his heart (the disjecta, the jetsam from an atrial thrombus?) or his leg (ditto from a long-haul flight induced soleal sinus DVT?), shot up the carotid, found an impassably small arteriole and knocked a few brain cells into ischaemia this morning: the integrated synaptic song-lines are interrupted and so a memory fades, an essential task is omitted, an anomic aphasia tips on the tongue, a name is list at a crucial career-making/breaking introduction, a forgotten lover's face coming towards you at a party. Hate it when that happens.

- Do I have time to go back to the hotel? (A short walk, two blocks away, don't need a fucking taxi, man.)

- Sure the Doctor is normally not in 'til about 20 to. (Then why did I…)

E@L puts his jacket back on (a jacket and tie, E@L? Unhealthy precedent, that) and finds his way past the anxious patients and the indifferent staff (stranger? shrug) to the lift, thence the street.

It is 8 minutes to the hotel he guesstimates, past interesting old buildings - 1889 built Theatre Royal, "Bare Witness" starts next week, "Crapunzel" still playing. A converted 1880's warehouse, Victorian style (the queen not the rival State up north); red-brick place, the old City Hall, with pale rendered pillars and two incongruous bell/observation-towers, weird, probably the stairwells. But no time/further-interest to look closely and sort this out.

E@L is in his room now, panting. The USB suckers were in his other briefcase. Sigh. He pockets them and heads back. It's an uphill gradient, only 1in 40 or so, but still, he nearly died a few months ago (Death on his holiday) so it's 10 minutes to get back. The scope is by then out of the disinfectant, the machine is on. He loads the presets and fiddles with them, a bit of tweaking.

Three hours later, they are finished all the scans, only one of the three patients nearly died, a good enough morning, and E@L has backed-up the further tweaks to his USB sticks. He has admitted only getting 70 or so pages into "Infinite Jest" but the Doctor has forgiven him, as he at least had completed "Ulysses," which he (the Doctor) agreed was more daunting in reality. "Gravity?" E@L nods. The Doctor nods back, approvingly. "IJ" is more of an endurance test, he said.

E@L's colleague had her copy of "50 Shades" carefully tucked deep in her bag, but she already left, gone back to M*********.

Which triggers the following aside: E@L wonders - Why would you fly down from M********* last night, stay for half an appointment, and fly out at lunch-time leaving The Talent (Phil Connors E@L) who has flown from Singapore - via, A*********, B*******, M******** epspecially to support and train her, and here he is on his own for the most important part of the commsioning/training. He is here merely to support you, beatch, not to do your job himself. Sigh. He shrugs, like Atlas - you're getting obscenely well paid E@L, STFU.

(She's not a beatch, just an over-stretched, under-paid (commission only 4.5%) little Greek girl.)

The doctor has more cases to do, not using the machine, but after lunch. Can E@L come back before they start agina, and do some more training, explaining, uncomplicating? Sure, certainly, that's why they're paying him so obscenely well.

~~~~~~~

A lunch at Cafe Sawak - Malaysian food in H*****! OMG, and they have Kopi! E@L, being shown a seat, asks the girl with the strong mainland accent, if they use the sock! Yes, she answers. He order the kopi, some water and the traditional, homemade laksa. The kopi is of course, densengauno inducing, disappointing: over-milked, too white, only warm. The laksa is OK - not brilliant - however just homesick defusing enough. Chili oil droplets, nonmiscible, on the creamy coconut broth, but not enough tofu, not enough "oysters" i.e. no clams, not really enough laksa kick. But hey, even in Singapore you can get just-as-shit kopi and a-lot-worse-than-this laksa.

- Salamat, shit. I mean telema kasih. Tsche-tsche (谢谢), Mm goi. Khap khun krup. Thanks. Fuck.

Microembolism.

~~~~~~~

The Instruction Manuals are on a DVD - large files packed with Japglish and completely unhelpful explanations ("Spatial Enhance Switch [a button] - This Switch To On and Off Turn Spatial Enhance." Yes, but what the FUCK does Spatial Enhance do?), but the customer wants to read them in hs computer to find out, not about Spatial Enhance (which E@L doesn't understand and therefore has hidden its "switch") but how to turn the system itself on and off, and how to do simple measurements. E@L offers to email some simplified instructional PDFs (2 pages, VERY simplified, we are talking about the limited capabilites of surgeons here) to him.

- Why not send them by Bluetooth?

Doctor fires up his iPhone and tries to pair with E@L's Android tablet. Of course, fucking iPhone, the Bluetooth on Apple devices is fucked proprietary and no files can cross the intangible ether from its OS to a rival OS. (Cue Dr Evil pinky: A BILLION dollars!)

Me, get an iPhone? You've got to be joking.

- Email OK?

E@L's files are in Dropbox and, and, they must be de-clouded before he can trans-etherise them via Gmail. He manages to pull the smaller file down but the larger one (12MB) is taking too long, via 3G, so E@L promises to send it that night. All done, great, shake hands.

- Oh, I have a case tomorrow afternoon. Could you come in about 1:30, 2? Have you read "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story," yet?

- Sure, sure. (Like who want's to go to MONA, the only reason he agreed to do this diversonary trip to T*********.) Tomorrow. Reading it now, actually.

~~~~~~~~

Back in his hotel room, E@L fires up his MacBook Air (yes he does have some Apple products, reluctantly) and looks in his jacket pocket for the USB drives to back up.

Hmmm. They are conspicously absent. In the pants? Nope? Shit. Man-bag? Nope. Hey, his Tab is not in the man-bag either. Not on the bed, not on the desk. Oh Jesus.

No USB sticks, no Android Tab. They are back in the hospital, the USB still in the machine, the Tab on the back tray.

Microembolism.

Shit. He pulls his jacket back on and heads for the door, steps out quickly in the corridor and as he walks away the door starts closing and he taps his pocket for the door-card. Top pocket, no. Wallet, nnnn…hey! No wallet at all, he lunges back at the door just as it firmly locks with a solid clunk.

Microebolism.

Walking in an anxious pace, in 6 minutes he is the hospital door, he hopes he doesn't send off a real embolus.

He has been thinking of the people who were in the room where he was explaining the system to the doctor. A chubby (fat, but not as fat as him) red/gray-haired nurse from the cleaning room, who waddled and was cheeky. A laconic theatre tech. Tall, in a decorative paper theatre hat somewhat like a DFW bandana, but slack-mouthed, somewhat dopey looking. But these are the smart ones, slow and measured, they know what's really going on, can anticipate. These are the ones you'd want taround if something went wrong, if some surgeon or nurse didn't know how to work one of the ping-machines. The smart, sharp briskly efficient and over-friendly seeing ones are, apart from being as a rule shorter, often as not, try-hard dumb-fucks, and desperately hard to reach a level of competence your big C or G dopey look guy has when he wakes up with a fucked-over hangover, a dozen bongs and a slab of beer downed during a re-run of Apcalypse Now last night. The sort of person who already knows how to drive E@L's machine.

The sort of person who wouldn't steal a guy's Tab.

And they are still there, where he left them.

Sigh.

Shit.

Microembolism.

E@L

Lame

I haven't done enough bad things in my life (please don't throw at me any of my old posts to try to refute this) to have earned such punishing pain. Ow. It must be shin splints, or tendonitis, or bone cancer, or something. Ow. Two weeks now,

There is some redness and some swelling - you can't see the veins anymore, and it hurts if I pull it back, pull it up like this, so the big toe points up. Yeah, it IS red. You can't see it now of course becasue I got sunburnt lying at the pool yesterday morning - I was doing laps, I can't walk too far, can't do my proper low impact exercise - but you can see the redness if you look from the right angle.

It's up on the lower part of the shin, roundabout here, Doc. More an ache, a deep ache, just under the surface. What do you mean that doesn't make sense? Where exactly? Hard to put a finger on. Well, it's easy to put a finger on my leg, but to say that this, this is exactly where it hurts is tough - it diffuses, reaches across from the front, right on the bone edge, to this side, and sometimes to that side. Or both. If I don't concentrate too hard on it I have a better, you know, idea of where it is, like looking at faint stars, best to look away. It's there, I can feel it alright, and I have the awareness that it is just there, roundabouts, but to say, you know, to place a finger-tip that's just... right... there... Well that's like I said, tough. And it's nearly two weeks, I've taking anti-inflamms and trying not to walk too far and, like I said, that means not getting all the calories that need to burned off burned off. Yes, so I swim.

So, yeah, Doc. Ow.

~~~~~~~~~

Colleague, Scottish girl, texted me this morning. "Will be late. Foot very swollen and sore. No sleep. Will be there at 11."

What! A sore foot! The shirker! The very nerve of her to find excuses...

Later, on the booth - and I am even later than her; locked myself out of my room, had to get let in by a cleaner, sigh, and she beats me to the small exhibition hall - I see her foot. Mother-fucking OW! It's shiny puffy and the toe is red and the whole thing looks like death. She can't get it into her shoe at all but doesn't want to wear sandals (Birkinstocks, which don't look professional) and sits instead with the shoe on the floor and her foot out in front. Like this is no much better than sandals...

She couldn't sleep all night, she says, the pain was intense, she couldn't get comfortable. Ended up on her tummy with her toes over the end of the mattress. After the conference BBQ last night, she was fine, she went back to her unit, sober, unlike me, and woke up at 1am in agony. The puffiness covers the top of her foot, down in her toes. Her big toe seems to be the focus though. She can't put it on the floor..

I get ice from the drinks bin outside where lunch on the lawn is due to start soon, and ask the helpers there if I can wrap it up in some of the gladwrap from the salad as there are no plastic bags. Improvise, sure, tie it up with baling wire, that's the Aussie way.

The conference reception people are lovely, they book a medical clinic appointment for her - earliest appointment is in the afternoon at 4.

Is it a spider bite I am wondering, some insect? Snake? Crocodile? (The crocodile-tail salad in the restaurant is very nice, I had it on my first night there.) Was it something she stood on at the beach on her walk before te BBQ? She trod on some of the hundreds of jelly-fish that had beached on the sand, she said. But aren't their stingers neutralised once they die? I dunno, maybe.

I ask: There were no... no... those things with the, you know. They really hurt. Sea...

She says: Anemones?

No no, what the Japanese eat, sea...

Horses?

No, they are hard-shelled and have those pointy things, god... Sea, sea...

Snails?

Oh God you know, with the spikes. What do they called it? Unagi. Or is that eel?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Sea, sea... urchins!

No, I didn't stand on one.

OK, good, not that then.

~~~~~~~~

We are in her car, I am driving her to the medical clinic. She worries that it might be gout.

Gout? Since when do women have gout?

She had a glass of red wine two nights ago, she reminds me.

True, I say.

What causes it? she asks. She's a nurse. I'm a radiographer. I shrug. It was along time ago. Uric acid, crystals. Tophi/trophi? Not necessarily in the big toe, anywhere really. Inflammation.

I try to get the car radio to play the music from my Android phone. It worked with my iPhone when I drove up from Brisbane, she says.

There is a different type of Bluetooth that Apple use, I say.

Different type of Bluetooth? What rot, she says.

I can only get the radio, harsh, no station defaulted here in this NSW rental (we ar ein Queensland.) The bloody thing just refuses to pair with the Samsung. Sigh.

~~~~~~~

She goes into the clinic, I wait on the reception chairs with her a while. I wonder if I should be ask to see the Doc myself. I look at her foot. It is frightening, even after half a day of ice to make the swelling go down.

It doesn't hurt anywhere near as much now, she says. But she is wincing, even when she moves it slightly.

I rub my shin, at the front. It sort of aches... I imagine my conversation with the Doc, compared to hers, and then I say see ya later. I wander out to the bottle shop around the back of the tiny shopping park. Absolutely shit wine. Nothing worth dying of gout for. When I come back she is not in the waiting room and must be in with the doctor.

I shrug and wait in the car and manage to get the car-audio to pair with my phone. It was a struggle - Bluetooth can find, can't find, is rejected, finds, confirms, pairs. I put on Carbon Based Lifeforms, ambient. Cool. Long bass theme. dududududuudaaaddadadadudududud, etc… a long low thudding, hypnotic, repetitive...



Half dozing, coddled in the warm sun, I wake to see she is out of the Doc's room now, standing by the desk. I go in to check up on the results so far.

Ambiguous, she says, uncertain.

What in this life isn't? I say.

There's a small blister, maybe two, underneath between her big toe and the second. The doc said it might be a bite.

What did I say? I said.

But it might be gout. Or inflammation of unknown origin.

Well, I say, we know that already, that it is of unknown origin.

She gets her prescription filled (to her satisfaction) at the pharmacy next door: some antibiotics and some Indicid but she must return for a blood test - gout? - in the morning.

We get back in the car but the music player won't find my phone again... Harsh noise, untuned radio. "Cannot Pair With Device"

You should get an iPhone, she says.

We drive back to the resort and I drop her at reception where a golf-cart can take her to her unit. As soon as she shuts the door, my phone clicks in, Carbon Based Lifeforms starts again. Sigh. I drive to the car park and place her car in the exactly the same slot it was in before. I un-pair the phone, close the car door, lock it and start to make the walk back to my unit, up past the golf practice range where a few men in chequered shorts are chipping and/or putting on perfect lawn.

I want to play golf. Ow. My leg hurts. It's a long way to my unit. I limp.

E@L