The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I remember taking the boys to school many years ago only to find that the road was blocked by an overturned tanker of Beaujolais Nouveau. At the  time I lived in France close to le Beaujolais. It was 7:30 on a Thursday morning in November, in fact  the third Thursday of November,  yea  the hallowed release day of Beaujolais Nouveau. The truck was bound for the lucrative Swiss Market but foundered on the rocks of Farges. There were rivers, pools, becks, streams, puddles,tarns, slaps, burns, lochs of wine, all purple in the early dawn light.

20 years ago Beaujolais Nouveau was a big deal in France.

The band played Beaujolais Nouveau

Today it is still a big deal in Japan. I am having a party on Saturday, which turns out to be an inauspicious day as many friends are going to Beaujolais Nouveau Parties.

As I write I am sipping, er, shnurting Beaujolais Nouveau. The shops are full of it.

How does this stuff get from Macon to Okinawa?

Do you believe this, “Poulet Pere et Fils depuis 1747?”
I think it is a scam.

Do they still do Beaujolais Nouveau elsewhere?

So, the last  few days.

I have a lunch on Saturday.

It is Julia’s birthday.

It is Hisashi’s birthday

The festive board

That night  is the 7th anniversary of the Smugglers Irish Pub.

Before the drink takes hold

Band members, the owner and bystander

The evening progresses

Here’s to you Mary, Tara and Laura

Some Hibisci

Tehilalla

Traynesha

Alondra

Brandisha

I get up the next day, Sunday, and go diving.

Underwater stuff

I go to Tokyo

Tokyo in the Fall

I come back again and go to the dentist.

OK? Pain?

Root canal girls

Less than 4 days.

I never really entertained the possibility that Obama would be beaten by Romney until a couple of days before the election. Then I was brought into the overall looniness by the lamentable media coverage. “To Close to Call! Neck and Neck! Romney Darling of America!”  ” I don’t like sponge cake!” fumes Romney.

Nowhere could I find, “Obama will win this.” Can’t be bothered to write much about this but this election was another example of media failure. People, they want you to buy their newspapers and go to their sites. It is not in their interest to state conviction on an election result. Plot, character, uncertainty sells.

Anyway I think Obama is a great politician.

Did you listen to his acceptance speech? It is uncomfortable for Europeans as he speaks with conviction about fundamentals. Hope, trust, unity, pride, humility are not easy for us to talk about. He does it.   He is sincere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKQV9bEcV28

So here’s to you Barack Obama – long may you reign.

Come to my party Barack. Bring Michelle and the kids.

So, I go to an event at Shuri Castle.  The limo driver does strange hand jive gestures all the way there and I worry whether he is about to have a breakdown. However I finally connect the gestures to his perception of imminent danger. Therefore at a junction he points his hand forward, to the left and to the right to indicate that he has checked there is no death of serious injury coming from those directions.

Shuri Castle

People are very nice to me and there is free food and a free bar!

There are all kinds of dancing and displays.

I think this was needlework

I dress up.

Lord High Executioner

If you grow a mustache in November it stops you from catching prostate or testicular cancer.

Good fun and the limo driver gesticulated all the way home.

These are the words that bounce around my skull as I head off to the paddy fields of Kin. What birds will I see, perhaps what new birds will I see? The day before I had been to Tokyo and back and the need to do very little was strong. Well, do very little not really as therein lies the conundrum of birding. Most of the time you are more or less motionless, trying hard to restrict your movement lest you scare the bird(s). But at the same time your senses are very charged with the ancient hunter’s instincts. My nostrils flare, my hearing becomes more acute, my vision is telescopic er because of the telescope, I rub mud into my scalp, I move like a Pointer. Not really but you get my drift.

White Wagtail

My brain!

What shape, what size, what colors, what markings, what legs, what bill, what tail, what time of year, what sex? All this is computing at very high speed to compare with established data in the book with the dreadful deadline of the bird flying away always there. It takes total concentration.

Eastern Yellow Wagtail in winter clothes, I think.

First winter white wagtail. Compare with first photo.

It is impossibly demanding. The Sirens’ song temptation to let standards drop by identifying a bird when you are not really sure is ever-present. What kind of man are you?

Kentish Plovers? I now think these are Ringed Plovers because of the yellow legs and ringed eye. However the bill is the wrong color. So in the end they are probably Little Ringed Plovers. The images in the book are inaccurate.

Black-Winged Stilt

Blue Rock Thrush

Japanese White-eye

Grey-faced Buzzard

Large-billed Crow

Common Snipe

Wood Sandpiper

Intermediate Egret

In particle physics you have well-known particles that are easy to identify.  Others, the Higgs for example, have many predicted plumages. Have I really seen a Wood Sandpiper or is it just experimental error or a statistical aberration?

Lots of Chinese Bulbuls

I get home after a wonderful day of standing still but going at a thousand miles an hour.

Pacific Rim Egret from my deck when I get home.

I love watching birds.

So I think I mentioned in a previous post that Tigh na Mara has no oven. Japanese don’t do ovens.  I have to have an oven.

I consulted  my learned brother Ian as to which way I should go.  Ian knows more about cooking outside than anyone and possesses an impressive array of exterior cooking things.

Notice umbrella to keep the rain off BBQ. It is London.

This one is really something.

He takes this stuff seriously.

Ian immediately gave advice that carried such conviction that my future instantly appeared brighter. Ian is a doctor and I understand his success.

He said “Cobb.”   http://www.cobb-bbq.co.uk/   He  also made it so that  a big brown- paper-wrapped parcel arrived in my office in Okinawa  today.

Wakarimashitanakitatanakagusuku!!!

I could not sit still all day. I was desperate to get home and try out my new machine.

There is something about cooking outside using wood that has always lit my fire.

Baja California

Death Valley

I finally get home an unpack the beast. My hands are trembling.

I don’t know but there is something about getting something through the mail, wrapped up in brown paper, that you then unwrap stage by stage that is guiltily stimulating.

Ingredients – notice cheap Chilean wine that now is readily available in Okinawa – also recondite Okinawan grass stuff.

Ready

Steady

I leave it for 1:30 hrs,  during which time I learn tunes on the flute and wonder at the media  frenzy on Hurricane, well not really, just a storm thing, Sandy. You wanna see the effects of a  real typhoon then get on Trans Love Airlines to Okinawa.

Cooking

Go!

Meat perfect, Aubergines perfect, Mushrooms yummy, Potatoes underdone. Maybe cut them into smaller pieces.

Thanks Ian.

Broom and Hibiscus

This time two years ago I wrote this.

http://spikekalashnikov.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/gigantes/

I don’t know much about Baseball but I will always remember the  communal joy and solidarity when the Giants won the World Series in 2010. I was there. I have the T-shirt.

Well they did it again! 4- 0 Sweeeeeap!

http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/SF-Giants-win-World-Series-3989059.php

and

http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/S-F-Giants-fans-delirious-with-joy-3989086.php

I raise a glass to you in Okinawa, Gigantes !

Sweeeeaaap!

The weather is perfect. No humidity, 28 degrees, blue, blue. I get up early and look at my new hibiscus.

Heap strange Hibiscus

I then motor the 3 kms to Cape Maeda, one of the great dive er spots, places, entries, zones, you know what I mean, in Okinawa.

I am underwater at 8:00.

Tiny dancers. Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
you had a busy day today

Inside the cave
In Plato’s fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion.

Big, fat Parrot Fish

Click on this photo and look at baby Clown Fish

Scale is difficult – this thing is about a metre long

Street Life

Anyway, one of the tedious things about scuba diving is that you should really rinse all your stuff in fresh water post dive. Tigh na Mara is perfectly set up for this with a mosaic sink on the deck. You just dump everything in it and turn on the tap.

I love my sink

Yesterday I spoke of Glenfarclas. Later that day a friend gave me a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin. I have not had a Gin and Tonic for 2 years. I did this evening.

Thanks Julia

Another nail in the coffin.

Last night I watched  a movie called “The Angels’ Share,” which is the story of a bunch of Glaswegian rapscallions brought to self-awareness through interaction with the world of expensive whisky. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1924394/

During a whisky tasting scene, some ponce drones on about a whisky named Glenfarclas. I remember that the first bottle of malt whisky I ever bought was a Glenfarclas. It was in St Andrews in 1970. http://www.glenfarclas.co.uk/. I muse:

Flow gently, Glenfarclas amang thy green braes,
Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;
My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently,Glenfarclas, disturb not her dream.

It’s no frae Islay but it’s whisky just the same.

Anyway, today I had lunch with my good friend Hideo Yamasaki. He is Vice-President of the University of the Ryukyus and a good bloke. He brings with him a gift from the President, the much esteemed Iwamasa sensei. It is a bottle of 1980 Glenfarclas!

An untypically unsmiling Hideo holding the object

Iwamasa sensei is a great connoisseur of malt whisky. He has given me the two best bottles I have ever consumed. https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/the-best-day-of-my-life/

Anyway, isn’t life great!

Thank you Iwamasa sensei

I think it is something about being British that makes me enjoy disdain. We revel in it. Best computer, football team, ski resort, band, brand of jeans, political party,whatever; I know the best and have disdain for those who think differently. One-upmanship is in our genetic make-up.

Thus I revel in reading about hurricanes in other parts of the world. I come home tonight to find that the top news story on the BBC web space is this.

Kid’s stuff

Category two!! Here in Okinawa we don’t even empty our noses on category two typhoons, but it is the top news story on the world’s most visited media site. Why is this? What does it say about the medias’ balanced coverage? Can’t be bothered to work out an answer.

So, that is the perfect transition into my Hibisci.

Second Hibiscus

Third Hibiscus

My sister Rosie, who is very learned in the ways of plants, suggested I get a Brugmansia, which is a flowering tree that smells nice in the evening, for the huerto sellado.

“Sure, sure!” says I, imaging the communication impasse as I try to explain Brugmansia in  Japanese.

“Just show them  a picture on your Iphone.” sagely states the sister.

I show the garden place lady this.

” Hai!! Wakarimashitanokitatanakagusuku.” she asserts and takes me to a table with loads of Brugmansia. I buy three because they are very cheap.

A bit peely-wally at the moment but I will show you more next Spring.

Thanks Rosy.