It Only Hurts When I Exist

Ow, moved my fingers to type!

Very stiff after a game of golf, coming from off a low base of exercise lately. What with slight chest infection and a sore back, E@L has been taking it easy fitness-wise for a month or two, and THAT was coming off a fairly low base as well! Combine this with the recent trip to HK, "working" 13 days straight and plenty of late nights, he wasn't really prepared for the twists and turns that golfing requires of an old body.

A stretch - oooh, crickety-crick - a swim, oops it's raining!, a trip to the library, and maybe a massage later today should help. Or to watch the crickety-crick cricket?

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Yesterday, a mate and I took the ferry to Bintan and played the Jack Nicklaus designed course at Bintan Lagoons which has a signature hole by the water. E@L bogied that relatively easy par 3 - he pulled something in his hip on the downswing which caused him to hit it fat and low, and which injury then restricted his game for the rest of the match. Probably a flexor tendon - rest, iced-beer, elevation (feet-up)... Sounds like a plan...

E@L is of the opinion that the ideal golf game should be twelve holes. Six holes, a rest/beers, six more, beers and a final massage - that sounds perfect to him. A counter argument, or rather an amendment was suggested: - six holes, beers, six holes, beers, six holes, beers and massage, for a total of the conventional eighteen holes... Maybe for the younger and/or more physically prepared.

Comment of the match: At the tee of the fourth, their sixth hole (started on the 17th due to crowded 1st and 10th tees), E@L looks at a scorecard that showed nothing but double and triple bogies or worse and poses a mathematical puzzle: -

6, 6, 7, 7, 8, ... What is the next number in this sequence?

Answer: turned out to be another of those par3 bogies - 4.

There was a comeback from this terrible start which peaked, with two pars in a row, leading up to the 10th (i.e. our twelfth hole for the day) and then rapidly declined, not only due to that tweaked hip on that the sea-side par 3 hole, the actual 12th... Out in 51 - back in 48, just made it into double figures (not counting the three lost* balls on our final hole as exhaustion had completely set in by then and it wouldn't sporting to include them in the tally).

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Slept-in this morning till eleven like the lazy, stiff and sore old bastard he is and was about to head to the library to join (42 bucks as an expat! free for a PR) to pick up that otherwise unobtainable copy of Wells' "Mind At The End Of Its Tether", but checked on-line to find that it is, as today is a public holiday here in Singers, closed.

OK, compromise - better instead to lie by the TV at my mate's place with more beers and watch day four of the Ashes cricket test (usually a five-day game) - but oh Australia have already won!

Suggestions? How about: Write a brief blog post about the week-end thus far.

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On Friday night, after watching day one of the test, at Molly Malones, E@L and his mate were in the taxi queue at Orchard Towers (the 4FoW) and somehow we struck up a discussion with some guy behind us (who looked A LOT like Doogie Howser - "I get that at least once a day!"). Maybe I'll save the rest of this for the novel but the comment of the year came from him: -

"You can't save all of them!"

Trapped in a classic case of 'martyr syndrome' - trying to save a hooker from her plight by shagging her as much as you can, while meanwhile your marriage crumbles and your kids grow up to hate you. This guy was worse than the one in Svend's "Wanchai Chronicles".

The people you meet. I kid you not.

E@L

* Not completely lost - I know where they are. In the fucking lake!