The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

I have a housewarming party. I plan a roof top, beach dance party  but forget it is getting on for the end of November and for once Okinawa lets me down by producing a truly miserable day. It rains, gusts and is chilly – a sub tropical chilly of  18 degrees.

Undeterred we have a great night.

Spot the banana

Irish women are the best. A pint of Okinawa Colon-Cleaner.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Some people go to the beach in the rain but most stay inside and do pyramids.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

I’ve always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.

Anyway the point of this tale is that I cooked roasted a leg of lamb and two lumps of beef, of which I ate not a bit. This morning I felt hard-done-by. I got another leg of lamb and cooked it just for me.

Meat candy

What pleasure, recover from very late night by walking up and down the beach collecting shells as the gigot cooks in the Cobb. Today of course the weather is beautiful and the wave are crashing into the reef with a very white whiteness. All is well in the world and tomorrow I meet the Emperor and Empress of Japan and catch a flight to Geneva.

Jatta!

Noah offered the MacNeil clan chief a place on the Ark, but the MacNeil turned down the offer, saying that he had a boat of his own.

The MacNeils clan stronghold is Kishmul Castle in  Barra. The castle is in a bay that is called Castlebay.

My Father’s favorite song was Kishmul’s Galley. He knew about half the words but sang it with great gusto, especially the stanza:

“Here’s red wine and feast for heroes

And harping too,
O hio hu!

Sweet harping too!

O hio huo faluo! ”

Costs a fortune to heat

Here is the whole song.

Here it is sung in Gaelic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrWpWsLgsvE&feature=related

I did not think the bongos were played much on Barra.

Anyway I now have a boat. My wonderful, previous neighbors, Jordan, Conni and Heidi have a sea canoe, which is now kept under my deck. They kindly allow me to use it. It is called a Cobra Fish n Dive.

Kishmul’s Kayak

I can just pull it down to the shore, paddle out to obscure parts of the reef in front of the house and er fish and dive.

Sailing homeward to Mingulay

I am very excited! Bright sunshine, warm azure sea, pull exotic fish out for my supper, flop over the side and dive down  to Turtletown, drink cold beer on the way home, sing Kishmul’s Galley.

Under the boardwalk

I do not actually have to do any of this.  I now have sufficient props to make the daydream a possibility. This is key.  I usually find imagining stuff is more fun than doing it.

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.