The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

Yesterday was the best day ever but today was even better. November in Okinawa is blissful.

7:00 am Sunday 13 November 2016

I remember that I still have the cover for the late and much lamented Dileas. As I survey my early morning flowers, I wonder if it might fit the Scaffie.

My plumeria has done really well.

The middle bit

Anyway I haul it out and stretch it over the Scaffie. It fits, more or less

24 C. Excellent North East breeze, calm indigo sea. no rudder.

I rig a long pole supported by plant pots judicially placed inside the Scaffie. This creates a tent effect, hopefully forcing rainwater to run off rather than pooling depressingly in the the concave cover.

Judicious

I stretch the cover as well as I can, trimming the rope with an I:XL knife I bought in Tarbert decades ago.

All that glistens is not gold.

During the manoeuvres, I called upon an aged neighbor to lend a hand. He is older than me by at least a decade but has the Okinawan sparkle in his eye. He takes me to his house to show me his crab trap. The concept is the same a  lobster pot. The hapless crab is lured into the trap by delicious bait, in this case chicken, but cannot get out again. Greed. I go on about creels in Scotland and he looks delighted. Try miming a lobster pot. He helps me with my boat and I help him position the trap in the low water just in front of my house.

I am sure that it will be full of crabs tomorrow. Tomorrow I work so will not see. Time I stopped working.

Covered Scaffie

I think this will work unless high winds get under the cover, by way of the openings at the stern, and rip it up.

What does this look like?

Pacific Golden Plovers just in front of the house.

Bad week but amazing day.

It is Saturday. It is the most beautiful day ever. I go to the Octopus shop to buy an Octopus.

Scenes inside the Octopus Shop

This is an Octopus

I cut it into chunks

Scallops are nonsensically cheap here.  I grate lots of cabbage.

I dredge some octopus and the scallops in magic powder.

I deep fry

Scallops and octopus a la poudre magique

I eat it. Actually not all as it is too much.

I know nothing

So what do I know about things? Clearly not much. I bet $1,000,000 that my compatriots would not vote to leave the EU. They did.

I did not have $1,000,000 by the way, so I had to borrow a lot to bet $5,000,000 that Trump would lose. He did not.

I can no longer give opinions on things political. I am clearly totally out of touch. I thought I was so smart. I am not.  The times they are a changing.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no telling who that it’s naming
For the loser now will be later to win
Cause the times they are a-changing.

Creepy.

We clever people have to swallow the bitter pill that we are the dumb ones.

To all of you who are agonizing as to when to visit Okinawa, let me make a pitch for November. It is cooler, but still in the 20s. The sea is no longer bath-waterish but still delightful for water stuff, both above and below. There are flowers everywhere yet a just perceptible autumness, probably engendered by  the rice harvest.

I go for a ramble. I at last feel well enough to do stuff other than lie on a rancid sleeping mat. You know how it is.

Esso Blue

My Plumeria

My Hibiscus

Great White Egret

Common Snipe

Birdies

What is going on in the UK and US?

Bird with long neck for grazing on high branches

Bird with long legs for running over desert.

Very rare Greater White Fronted Goose

First time I have seen these on the island. Hooray

This is how you dry rice.

Yep, a little constitutional around Okinawa in November is very, very pleasant.

Hey, the university is nearly 5 years old. The official birthday is November 19 so I ask you all to raise a glass of friendship on that date. I realize that this is post US election result date and things may be very freaky. All the same, remember OIST and be reassured that good things happen.

We have a big party to celebrate our 5th birthday. Premature, I agree but scheduling is the the worst of evils.

India we love you!

OIST kids

If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. Go Ruth.

My Home in Seragaki

Caramba!

A warm Okinawan night

You have to love Okinawa

The acts are, er,acted by OIST staff and students. Great night. What has been achieved at OIST over the last 5 years is incomparable. Believe me.

I rush home from work in a panic. Will I get there in time?  Tonight the meat man cometh. 10 minutes after I get back, the bell rings and there is the smiling face of the meat man clasping a box that contains a whole lamb. Er, a dead one.

When in need of a bit of purchase therapy, there is no better place than:  http://baticrom.com/index.php?route=common/home   It is such a great site! It takes no time to order a whole lamb and a kilo of mutton curry. I specify when I want it delivered and settle back into my chair with a gentle moan knowing that, this being Japan,  the meat man will show. The only risk is not his late or non arrival, but mine.

I love packages in the post

Pieter Aersten

Pieter Aersten painted pictures in Northern Europe in like 1550. I have always admired his butchery paintings.

Er, sorry vegetarian readers

Winter is approaching but I have lots of meat.  I fear nothing. Today I turned off the AC.

Aersten in Okinawa

So I think I have mentioned that I backed into a tree with the driver side door open. This twisted the door hinges so that it would not shut.  For months I bumble along using a sail tie to stop the door from swinging open. However Shaken time rolls in. Shaken is the very strict roadworthiness test here in beautiful Japan. There is no way that the Truckette will pass with a swinging door. She also makes tragic squealing and grinding noises.

Truckette with broken wing

I cannot envisage life without the Truckette so desperately walk around town, like Gary Cooper in High Noon, looking for help. Everyone has an excuse as to why they cannot locate and attach a door to a 15 year old Daihatsu HiJet.

Then Naoko introduces me to Jameson.

Jameson’s backyard.

He is my hero. He has a trillion cars in various states of decay. “You want a door?” He climbs over ranks of lonely cars that have been abandoned too soon by their heartless owners and returns with the object of desire.

Yay Jameson!

Anyway he fixes the truck, does the shaken, tunes her up, paints the bed and footwells with super resistant paint as what he got from a printing company. I did not quite understand the significance of the printing company but Jameson clearly thought it was very important.

HiJet to Hell. Check out new door and printer’s ink bed.

So the mighty HiJet is totally frisky and ready for adventure. Thanks Jameson.

I go to Tokyo to chew the fat with Cabinet Office.

7:45 I leave the house. Note antimassacars

Fly to Haneda. 2hours 30mins

Subway to Government land

Walk to Cabinet Office

Japanese Government meeting kit

I forgot to take a photo of limo back to Haneda.

Fly back to Okinawa

Limo back to house

I get home at 12:00

I have been ill for a remarkably long time. I have been in bed for 20 of the last 6 24 hours and frankly do not feel that much better. I go to work today but it does not work very well. I check in at the OIST clinic and the charming nurse, whose name is Islay, takes some of my blood and runs it through the strong ju ju machine.  Hara sensei turns to me with wild eyes and says, “The signs are worse than last week! You must go to the lair of the ENT  mundungu in Chatan. Take care Neil san .”

The great shaman of Chatan has much power. He shows me a picture of the inside of my head!

“Much pus! Very severe!” Apparently this all has to do with my sinuses. I thought I had the usual Gadfly ear.

I am lead to a side room where a handmaiden inserts a caterpillar that breathes steam into my nostrils. Strong ju ju.

With my left hand I cast knuckle bones.

I am fed up with this.

Muti

Job sat on a pile of ashes scraping the boils that covered him from head to foot with a potsherd. He had lost everything, his wealth, his family, his health but he refused to blame our redeemer – no more shall I.

Life in Okinawa. Notice spare potsherds.They wear out quickly as boil pus is highly acidic.

I am evacuated from Kyoto very early on Monday morning. I have head inflammation, ear inflammation, sinus inflammation, eye inflammation, fever all day and chills at night. I have pain. “But pain is perfect misery, the worst of evils, and excessive, overturns all patience.” (John Milton)    My brother Ian pointed this out to me.

I have not participated in the great Durbar nor danced with any of the tribal leaders who have trekked across the world in spiced caravans, in stately  Spanish galleons, in quinqueremes of Nineveh, in dirty British coasters, to be there. This chagrins me as I have been working on new steps to display to old friends.

The last flight to Okinawa, before the shut down of air travel due to Typhoon Chaba, is at 7:30 AM from Kansai.  It is a hot ticket. There is no guarantee that it will leave and should it do so, no guarantee that it will not turn back to the mainland. I am booked on it thanks to Naoko’s magic. Shuttle from hotel at 5:00 AM, very bumpy flight to Okinawa, limo to house. My condition overturns all patience. I leave my IPad on the plane.

Blake understood illness in typhoons.

The island, including  the university and all clinics, is shut down. I find old dentistry painkillers that I scrabble to disencapsulate and swallow.

My home internet stopped working when I was in London, ain’t got no rudder, ain’t got no camera, ain’t got no IPad.

Typhoon.

The next day I visit our university clinic. Hara sensei was a doc on a Japanese expedition in the Antarctic, which clearly makes him a very good doctor. Akiyo san is just all round wonderful. They reassure me that I am truly crank. I am so pleased as I always feel that I am skiving.

Strong medicine

I have been unconscious on my squalid sleeping mat ever since. I hope I am losing weight.