Just To Say "Hi"

Hi.

Out the window at my Niseko hotel, Mount Yōtei with a morning cloud on its head. Hokkaido Japan, last Saturday in fact, not today. Hotel? Pop-out, modernistic, serviced-apartment type. You could not find a less authentic rustic Japanese ambiance, except perhaps in an Ikea showroom. Bloody Australians running the place (properties all seem to be owned LJ Hooker, the slopes by Packer's group I am guessing.) Often, as one travels the world, one's pleasant Aussie accent is greeted with a smile and the risorial imitation of a kangaroo (or a T-rex?, Small paws, curled up in front?). But not here. The locals hate Australians. It's like being in New Zealand.

Snow was brilliant but E@L wimped out for a variety of excuses reasons, primarily those of being unfit and old and unwell and having a prolonged anxiety attack (fear of falling over) that only subsided when he was submerged in a steaming onsen.

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E@L is at home now, but unwell - chest infection from a generally hale and hearty ski-fellow who came down with it on Wednesday last and passed it on, the generous bastard, and today yet another burst of something unmentionable -- sorry must rush to the toilet for another squitter...

He can't get over the fact that he made it through a poverty porn tour of the Indochine and survived, yet has been knocked to his haunches by gastro twice in the last ten days, firstly in Japan (bad can of coffee from a vending machine?) and now in Singapore (Korean restaurant in United Square - a friend who dined with me is also suffering ["The world fell out of my arse this morning!"]).

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Maybe will finish writing something tomorrow, have many things in draft (you don't need to know this), gods of blog spontaneity be damned, but I was re-re-reading some of the very early posts on my old blog and now am feeling depressed. Not only were they funnier, they were less pretentious (and yet - eyebrow raised - strangely, MORE pretentious) while still exuding the wanky, boyish and arrogant charms of the truly insecure dilettante...

E@L