Week 14 - 4 September 2015 to 10 September 2015 - Koh Samui, Thailand
Koh Samui, Thailand
Friday (4 September 2015)
Woke up at 07:00 and without giving it much thought I turned around and fell asleep again, a very deep sleep indeed. Woke up again at 10:00 feeling very refreshed.
I started working immediately as today is publish day. I started typing away but found that when I typed " I got @. I typed “ again and got @ again. Huh? Then I typed @ and got “. It seems like the mapping of the two keys was somehow reversed, all the other keys seemed fine. How does something like this happen, and all on its own, ostensibly? There was a Windows 10 update last night, could it be that? I rebooted the laptop but was left with the same thing, weird. After a short search on the internet I found that somehow my keyboard was set to UK, should apparently be US. I changed it and all is fine again. Crazy, not sure how that happened, but I was once again typing away happily.
By the way, the brush cut I was bullied into last week Thursday is now just over a week old and some new growth is fortunately visible. Must admit, I'm sort of starting to get used to wearing it, just sort of, just starting.
Adri and I were both still busy working at around 19:00 and decided to stay in rather than go out on the town, it will have to wait for tomorrow night. I finally published the 13th week at around 20:30.
Adri in the meantime started supper which turned out to be a delicious cottage pie made with that excellent mince from Makro. We washed this down with the last of the rescued dooswyn of a few weeks back, so now we were ready for a new one, 5 litre, not 8 litre again, mind you.
We were both pretty tired after a long day at work and decided to chill and watch another episode of Burn Notice, I quite like this series and we are now at the end of the second series. If you’ve never watched it, do yourself a favour and watch a few episodes, real good tongue in cheek action, perfect escapism. Just on the side, in the pilot episode Michael Weston nearly gets killed in an operation in Africa, when he comes to he is in a room with his ex girlfriend. He raises himself on his elbows and asks Fiona groggily “where am I?", to which she replies with a smile “Miami”. This scene is one of a few included in the introduction to every episode. Sometimes I also wake up groggily and ask “where am I?” and Adri replies “Samui”. Same same.
I finished my book An Island In Greece: On The Shores of Skopelos by Michael Carroll. Must admit, I really did enjoy the book although it would probably not be to everyone’s taste. Even so, it is very well written and the way he describes everything, from scenery, to people, to situations, are quite engaging. In the mid sixties, Michael Carroll buys a boat, travels through the Mediterranean, looking for the perfect anchorage/bay. He found it at Panormos bay on Skopelos, where he eventually buys a parcel of land, builds a house and settles down, fully accepted by the Greek community. It gives a vivid description of all the surrounding islands, one meets all the interesting characters from the island and there is also a lot of Sporades history interwoven into the story.
Having been to Skopelos before, I was particularly interested in getting to know more about the island, and also the other islands within the Sporades island group, hence my choosing this title to read. Adri and I took a three week trip to Europe a number of years ago and spent the first one in Italy, the next in Turkey and the last we spent island hopping in Greece. During the island hopping week in Greece we spent three days on Paxos, one day on Santorini, one day on Naxos, one day on Skopelos and one day on Skiathos.
It was late September/early October and although the weather was still great it was slowly starting to morph into winter. We climbed aboard the ferry early in the morning on Naxos and got to Skopelos late into the evening. Being late in the season there were very few people on the gigantic ferry which stopped off at very few islands along the way and at some stage we realized that we were the only passengers on the ferry. We had the whole thing to ourselves but didn’t know what to do with all the space to we tried to sleep. The wind started picking up and as day moved into night it got progressively stronger. At some point the ferry slowed down and that was our cue to go up on deck as we had arrived at Skopelos. As we watched the ferry preparing to dock, we found it quite curious and unsettling as there were no harbour lights, street lights, taverna lights, nothing, nothing but darkness. The expected lights of Skopelos town was nowhere to be seen., all we could see was a deserted small harbour with nothing other than a one-roomed building and one or two abandoned containers in the one corner of the fenced off area. It was dark, it was late, it was eerily deserted, it was eerily quiet. I felt totally disoriented as this is not what I expected to see. I always prepare for each landing using the harbour maps provided in the travel book that we had with us. This way one has a good idea of what one should be able to see when arriving by sea, i.e. where one could go for a quick coffee, where the hotels are, and so one. Here was nothing, nada.
Then a semi-stream of relief flushed through me, when I remembered reading in travel book, while doing my preparation, that in instances where the Meltemi blows too strong, the ferry will not dock at Skopelos town but will rather continue on to a more protected little Harbour called Agnontas, which I assumed was where we were at that point. I am sure that this bit of crucial information would not be found in any other travel book other than the excellent one we had with us, i.e. Greek Island Hopping: The Island Hopper’s Bible. Note to all, don’t ever attempt island hopping in Greece without this book, it includes an incredible amount of detail, the way all travel guides should be written.
Still feeling a bit ill at ease, we were motioned off the ferry by someone on the quay. What could we do, so we gathered our belongings and abandoned ship. On solid ground we were approached by the captain who confirmed, in broken English, the re-routing due to the weather. But, we thought, how the hell are we going to get to Skopelos town, there was no-one around except the crew that were busy boarding as the ferry was about to leave again, abandoning us in this godforsaken place. Not to worry, the captain had already phoned a taxi for us. It was not long before that taxi arrived and took us to our final destination. When enquiring how much we owed him for the taxi ride he replied “not to worry, the captain already took care of that”.
It was late, very late, and we still had to find a place to stay. We asked the taxi driver to take us to a reasonably priced hotel. He informed us that he had a few apartments which he rents out, front line to the sea. He quoted us a very reasonable rate which we gladly accepted immediately, as we were dog tired and were not going to trundle through town looking for a suitable place to hang my hat. Wow, what a day, what an experience, what an end to that experience.
Saturday (5 September 2015)
Opened the sliding door to greet the day but was instead greeted with... the saddest music I have heard in a long while coming on over the breeze, seeping into our apartment from the unit across from us. It sounded something like a 1950’s song, one of those dragging, nagging tunes, with words “You don’t love me anymore darling, You have that faraway look in your eyes, darling...”. Slicing my wrists came to mind but Adri hid the knives, so I turned to the next best solution, I put on our own music, fast... and loud, so as to drown out that morbid music. I scrambled for the music remote and Gloria Estafan’s Greatest Hits received the play button. Suicide watch cancelled.
One thing that I have never done while here is wash the bike. Scandalous, I here you say, well... OK, fair point. I filled up a plastic bucket with water, added a few drops of washing-up liquid soap to the mix, and armed with a few rags I bravely walked down to where the bike was parked. Fifteen minutes later it was “shining like a National guitar”. I stole that line from Paul Simon’s song Graceland. Man, check out those National guitars and you’ll see what I mean.
First stop on the brand new looking bike was to pay Ian our motorbike guy for the next month’s rent in Chaweng. We took the long road through Choeng Mon which is always a pleasant ride, with the air-conditioner going full blast. As we got to Ian at Ozo he was busy signing up a Chinese client, but did not recognise me at first. Then it hit me, he had never seen me with my new-look brush cut. He then looked at Adri and a flicker of recognition found its way into his consciousness. He readily accepted the baht and wished us well until we meet again next month.
The day was neither cloudy nor sunny, both came and went. When we set up shop under our tree on Chaweng beach the sun came out in its glory and we had a wonderful swim and spent a relaxing two hours there. Once our beach threshold was reached we went for an ice-cream and then off to the Tops supermarket for a few things. We did plan a shopping trip to Makro as well but the energy levels showed a sudden downward trend so we decided to go back home rather.
We had a wonderful snooze until early evening, got up and I realized Adri was starting to get panicky about the water situation. The cupboards may be totally devoid of food but if there is no water Adri starts getting jumpy. So, we jumped on the bike and ran a quick water errand to the water dispenser up the road.
This little water trip made me think of a real life, hugely heartbreaking episode that took place in the 1980’s. A friend, Terence, part of our circle of friends’ sister was at varsity in Cape Town and drove there from Johannesburg after her holiday break spent back at home. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but it seems that she ran out of petrol somewhere in the Karoo, nobody stopped to help her so she got out of her car and started walking into that barren landscape, ostensibly looking for help, petrol and water, which she did not find. They found her body lying in the sand, deep into that barrenness, a day later where she was overcome by thirst. What terribly sad news that was.
Once we were stocked up with water we showered and got ready for our evening out. We decided to go back to the Chaweng food market, the southerly one, as we have not tried their food before, only their cocktails. As we got there, while walking along all the stalls trying to decide what was going to be had for supper, I got myself a loopdop (walk drink). Here a loopdop takes on a very different meaning than in SA, i.e. not the last drink of the evening but rather a drink while ambling along.
I ended up ordering a cheeseburger and chips from the stall called Devil’s Burger, not sure what the relevance of the name is. The owner mentioned that his meat comes from Australia and that if I was not satisfied with his creation he will gladly reimburse me. I got the impression that he really meant it. The meal was delivered in good time and I must admit, the burger was pretty good, not Black Duck good but much better than the drivel served up at Burger King. The chips were a little overdone and when I acknowledged the burger’s positive rating with a thumbs-up to the owner he noted that he felt the chips were too crispy and asked whether he could prepare me a fresh batch. I declined, I was happy.
The owner is Belgian, stayed in Brussels until he was 27, moved to Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands for 10 years and then moved to Samui which has been his home for the last five years. He seems like a great, happy go lucky sort of a chap, instantly like-able… just nice.
The owners of the temporary stalls here, which are not under roof, started putting plastic hoodies over their stalls even before the wind started picking up. They instinctively knew rain was coming, and so it did, just after we managed to get to the Save Water Drink Cocktails pub. We finally found out the name of the cocktail Adri has been enjoying there for the last few weeks. The waiter did not know what Adri wanted, he did not understand Adri’s explanation of “you know that cocktail with Sang Som”. He called over the barman and he quickly identified it as the rum Collins, essentially a Tom Collins cocktail with the gin replaced by rum (Sang Som). Mystery finally clarified. I of course had my planters punch again, life was good once again while waiting/sitting/drinking out the rain. We also drank a toast to us being on the island now for three months, seems like we’ve been here forever, it feels very much like home.
Once the rain subsided we went to the Chaweng northerly food market for dessert. That delectable treat of crepe with choc chip ice-cream, chocolate sauce, banana, a sweet and a biscuit wafer, was as good as we remember it from the previous time.
Got home and I tried to start reading a new e-book (Vanilla Beans and Brodo: Life In The Hills Of Tuscany by Isabella Dusi) that I identified which is about a couple that upped sticks in Australia and moved to a small village in Italy, starting a brand new life there. The book irritated me from the get go. The author, according to her writings, was a high powered interior decorator that moved relentlessly up and town the east coast of Australia for all her high level assignments. Not happy with ensuring that everybody no knows that she is very successful, she goes on to call herself the iron lady (ooh, now I’m scared). When buying a car once they arrived in Italy she could not remember when last she let herself be dominated by a man, she says. Seems like she got zlatanered! This was due to the fact that she wanted to buy a cheap little Fiat and he a Maserati, apparently they cost the same price, and they ended up with the Maserati. The first chapter was more of a history lesson, maybe it would have been best to leave the history lesson for a bit later in the book and interweave that into the rest of the story, much like the book on Skopelos that I had just finished reading. But maybe there was another reason for it, I did not care to find out, she lost me at that point.
Sunday (6 September 2015)
Hmm, the main news this morning obviously still concerns the immigration/refugee crises in Europe, which I referred to on Wednesday, 2 September 2015. I found the following article on the CNN web site and it seems like someone is finally waking up and speaking some sense.
Addressing reporters after Saturday's Luxembourg meeting, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Europe is finally starting to see the problem for what it is -- not just affecting certain EU states, such as Italy and Greece, but a Europe-wide issue. "We also have to start using the right words. It is partially a migrant flow, but it is mainly a refugee flow, which puts us in a different situation when it comes to our legal and moral duties," she said. It's also a situation that is "here to stay," she warned. "The time for blame games is over," Mogherini said, and EU states need to find common ways of sharing responsibility for the influx of migrants and refugees, rather than leaving only a few to shoulder the burden. More must also be done to tackle the networks of people traffickers exploiting migrants who seek to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy, or to travel from Greece via the Balkans to northern Europe, she said. Restoring stability to Libya and finding a political solution to the war in Syria are key to resolving the issue longer term, she said.
This morning the wifi played up again so I went downstairs to Root to bemoan my problem. Root and I reset the router I normally use and it’s now working, only just, so for the meantime I am using another router instead. Just as a matter of interest, the router we reset is situated out in the garden in a metal box attached to a palm tree, as per picture. Quite quaint, just hope it is 100% waterproof.
A while ago I wrote about the extortionary prices MTN charges for roaming. This morning I received the following SMS from them regarding roaming rates through DTAC, which is their Thai cell partner:
Calls/min - Local R15.00 - SA R30.00 - Receive R12.50
SMS - Local R7.50 - SA R7.50
Data/MB R300.00 - Data increment R7.50/kb
Please read that last line again carefully. Can that be correct, data at R300 per MB ?! And look at that data increment charge, surely this is impossible?! Consider that for R260 one can get 2GB of local surfing. So, for roughly the same price, you get 2000 times more data when surfing locally than you’d get when roaming. These roaming charges are stratospheric and simply cannot be justified. I truly hope I am reading this thing all wrong, please let me be wrong.
And just when I thought things could not get worse, MTN add insult to injury by sending me the following SMS:
Yello! Kindly note roaming rates are higher than South African rates (duh). Please monitor your data usage (duh). Credit limits may not apply while roaming (huh). Regards MTN.
By the way, I added the “duh”, “duh” and “huh”. Wow, so even if you set a credit limit in SA they “may” not apply those while roaming. Man, just so glad I converted to Pay As You Go before I left. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Adri continued working a bit while I went down to the pool, seems like the roles have now been reversed. I lay down on one of the new sun-beds which were introduced a month or so ago, just wonderful.
Back in the apartment I poured us a gin and tonic and we listened to Huey Lewis and the News followed by Hot Chocolate with old favourites such as You Win Again, which incidentally was also a big hit for Copperfield in SA, followed by You Sexy Thing, Love Is Life, You’ll Always Be A Friend, Emma, I Believe In Love, I’ll Put You Together Again, Man To Man. These guys were great, truly great, truly soul music.
I started reading a new book called An Italian Home: Settling by Lake Como by Paul Wright. One of the reasons that drew me to this book was the fact that we visited Lake Como in the late 1990’s. I was at an SMDG (Ship Message Design Group), or as Mikey calls it, Small, Medium and Donners Groot (small medium and very big) meeting in Antwerp the previous year. At that meeting I got chatting to an Australian delegate who spent seven months a year travelling to and from meetings and consulting jobs, so he really has seen most the world. The conversation inevitably turned to travelling and I asked him what the most beautiful place is he had ever been to. Without having to think about it he answered “Lake Como”, looking at his wife who emphatically confirmed it with a vigorous nod.
And that’s how we came to travel to Lake Como the following year when the SMDG meeting was held in La Spezia on the Italian Riviera. We actually stayed in a town called Lerici which lies just south of La Spezia, a beautiful town with gorgeous old buildings and a captivating harbour front where fishing boats lie anchored neighbourly to mega yachts. After the week of meetings we rented a car and travelled around Italy, France and Switzerland for about 10 days, and of course Lake Como was on our itinerary. Lake Como forms an inverted Y, and where the two legs of the Y meet, on the western shore, is where we stayed one evening, a beautiful little town called Menaggio, as per pictures. After spending the evening there we concurred, Lake Como must surely be one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Adri insisted that we watch a Thai movie called Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior which she read about and was available on Netflix. We started watching the movie with an open mind, not bad, but take some getting used to.
Monday (7 September 2015)
Adri is heavily involved in her TEFL course and will be completing the test for Module 6 probably tomorrow, so there is quite a load of studying to be done today. After that, modules 7, 8, and 9 will be tackled with the 10th and final module being more of an assignment on lesson planning that one has to complete and hand in for assessment. So there is still a lot of hard work ahead but at least Adri is moving in the right direction. It truly is a lot of hard work.
Washing day kicked off after coffee, news and breakfast, after which work commenced. Once I was up to date and thus completed work for the day, I decided not to gym but to rather try the swimming exercise thing for 45-50 minutes. I went down to the pool at 15:30 where I first read a bit just to get the mind in the right mind, and then did about 40 minutes in the pool. Man, I was sweating in that water.
I met up with Tom at the pool whom we last saw at the Secret Garden a week back. We were under the impression that he took a weeklong side trip to somewhere exotic, but not so, he was sick and holed up in his apartment all week. He is now spending double-time in the sun to ensure that a nice suntan appears, “else friends back in London will never believe I was on Koh Samui”, he says.
A while back Tom told me that he likes to go to the movies in Thailand, apparently there is quite a nice movie theatre at the Tesco shopping Centre in Chaweng. I have seen it before but was not sure whether they would have any English movies there. Tom confirmed that they do indeed have English movies with Thai subtitles. I wondered at some stage whether they may have English movies, dubbed into Thai with English subtitles, which would have been quite awkward, wouldn’t you say? Safe to say we will take in a movie sometime soon. Adri and I used to go to movies and supper mostly in Sandton City, sometimes in Rosebank, at least two to three times a month on a Friday evening, but that was a number of years back. We probably have not seen the inside of a movie theatre for five years, life just got too crazy.
Adri also joined the swim gym a bit later and completed her exercise by playing ball with the cleaning ladies’ little boy that she had just fetched from pre-school. The little lad would kick the ball into the swimming pool, Adri would fetch it, throw the ball to him, he would kick.... you get the idea. Not sure how much exercise was gained though.
We biked down to our sewing lady to fetch our slightly smaller, slightly tighter clothes which we should have fetched last Friday already, but we were just too busy you see. From there I was going to give Adri another riding lesson but when we saw the sunset developing in the west we decided to stop off at the Boat Bar for a beer, I mean a sunset... or was that for a beer. As per the pictures, Nature did not disappoint. While we were sitting there, slowly sipping our beers, there was a pleasant breeze blowing, not cool, not warm, just pleasant, wonderful.
Once the sun said its final goodbyes we upped and went to the Tesco minimarket across the street to pick up a few things we needed for the evening. We had a wonderful supper of pepper curry and by 21:00 I was in bed reading, Adri was still phoning relatives via Skype. During my reading I had a good chuckle when I found the following piece on a link from CNN to lolot.com titled “20 Things Wrong With The USA”:
The fact that Donald Trump is allowed to place himself on the bid to be a Republican candidate is appalling in itself. The fact that he is leading in the polls is absolutely abysmal. He is the epitome of everything that is wrong with America. He is masochistic, offensive, racist, and conceited.
Ouch, that’s quite harsh on the USA, but definitely true about the individual in question.
Tuesday (8 September 2015)
Work continued today and when the time came for exercise I decided to do the swim gym thing again. There is a clock on the wall at reception that one can use to time oneself. I planned to do 50 minutes, which I did, but let me tell you, that clock seemed to come to a complete standstill during the entire time I spent in the pool. Anyway, I got out of that pool dripping with sweat, or so it felt.
Today I decided to activate the online Wordpress course that I purchased a short while back. I scrolled though some of the course topics and it looks pretty good, but will officially start the course, in due course.
We met Eran at the pool and she looked to be in a bit of a quandary. She explained that she was advised by her friends and family from SA that, according to reports in the Sunday press, the government will no longer allow dual citizenship. She explained that her daughter, Sian, who is a South African citizen, and intends to get Philippine citizenship as well, will now no longer be eligible to do that, hence throwing all their well made plans into disarray, leaving them not knowing how to proceed. I mentioned that I was not aware of any such decisions but will check it out. I checked the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) web site and immediately found the following media statement titled “on review of Citizenship Legislation”, published on 8 September 2015:
Pretoria – The Department of Home Affairs has noted reports on the suggested review of South Africa’s citizenship legislation emanating from a story in Sunday Times (8 September 2015). The Department is presently not considering any policy change in this regard. Our law only restricts dual citizenship for those who apply for naturalisation if their countries do not allow dual citizenship. The Department of Home Affairs is a key enabler of access to basic rights and services, including the right to citizenship.
Adri went down to Eran to bring her the good news, all’s well that ends well.
The chef was in anti-cook mood, or mode, once again and suggested we go to chef Samui down the road for dinner. Excellent idea as we have not been there for quite a while. We were welcomed like old friends and the English menu was proudly planted in front of us. Adri already had her sights on the spicy papaya salad while I continued to scroll through the menu. My eyes alighted when I spotted the chicken and vegetable stir fry with cashew nuts, which I ordered with steamed rice. Man, was this good, chef Samui had a heavy hand on a number of different types of mushroom, I was not complaining.
Wednesday (9 September 2015)
I breathed, I twisted, Ouch, I turned, I breathed again... only just. But let me start at the beginning.
As you may recall, we have postponed the start of our yoga initiation for a while now having a varied list of excuses at the ready for whomever may happen to ask. The last time that Sylvie asked us about our starting date I blurted out Wednesday next week, not sure where that came from at the time. That was Monday a week back. Do the calculation, it brings us to today.
We got up at 07:00, had coffee in bed, trying to shake the early morning cobwebs from where they had formed during the past night. This is where the rubber meets the road, no way out of here. We got dressed in what we assumed would be good enough gear for a yoga session and set off to the Absolute Sanctuary.
The first session, which starts at 08:00 daily, is the meditation session or Pranayama which is the Sanskrit word meaning "extension of the prana or breath" or "extension of the life force". We entered the Jungle Room and there was only one other lady, American by the sound of her accent, in the room for the meditation session and we got chatting to her while the teacher was still outside. On hearing that this was our first yoga class ever she gave us some very good pointers and I commented that she should be a yoga teacher. She replied “actually I am a yoga teacher back home”.
The American lady left after the 30 minute meditation session as she was definitely not going to sit through the beginner’s yoga session, which started promptly at 08:30. This session is called “Beginner’s Hatha/Intro To Yoga”. Below is a description from the web of what that would mean to me, the yoga layman personified:
Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises (known as asanas or postures), and sequences of asanas, designed to align your skin, muscles, and bones. The postures are also designed to open the many channels of the body—especially the main channel, the spine—so that energy can flow freely.
Anyway, in walked a mixed bag of about seven people, all probably staying at the hotel.
For the next 60 minutes we twisted, we bended, stood up, lay down, feet forward, feet back, on back with legs over head, twisted some more, breathed some more and ended with a long inhale followed by a long “Ommmmm” on the exhale.
After the session our baht bought us a month’s worth of yoga classes, with unlimited access to all the classes. Obviously we would limit ourselves to those classes designated as either being for beginners or all/general. This week we will stick to the morning classes but as from next week we might try and fit in a few sessions in the afternoon as well. By the way, the price had gone up from what was advertised on the web site but they now have a special on the new price which includes one extra week for free. So, essentially the price per day stays the same, we paid more, but we get and extra week of classes, so all good and fair.
We bought a baguette at our newfound bakery, also bought a skilpad brood (tortoise bread. As kids we used to call it thus due to its shape) with sesame seeds. The baguette eventually got loaded with egg, tomato and cheese, with a second piece containing cheese, tomato and black olives also making itself comfortable on my plate. The baguette was actually not bad at all, probably the best we’ve had thus far on Samui.
My eyelids were starting to slip so I made a beeline for the bed and took a well deserved, I thought, one hour shuteye.
We rode down to the market to get some veggies for supper tonight. Sweet potato, sweet peas and long beans were duly bought. These long beans are justifiable called just that, averaging around 30 centimetres at a guess. On the way back it started raining so we stopped off and covered ourselves with our very cheap plastic raincoats, which once again did a sterling job of keeping us dry, just.
Supper was served with Chicken encased in a wonderful sweet basil aroma, chips, sweet potato and beans (now not so long) with onion. Man, a feast by anybody’s standard.
Thursday (10 September 2015)
Today was our second day of yoga. We started with the Pranayama at 08:00 where we were joined by about 10 people and then moved into the 60 minute Detox Yoga session at 08:30, where the class grew to about 20 people. Man, we need to get our heads around some of these yoga moves (poses), but that will come with time and practice.
After breakfast we were off to do some shopping, stocks were starting to run low. We normally use the ghost road to go shopping but the northern part of the ghost road, just before it gets to Bang Rak, is closed for road works. After the last few weeks of rain it seems like the road got drowned and they are now busy resuscitating it. We thus ambled on towards Fisherman’s Village and on to the ring road.
Once on the ring road we remembered Patrick telling us about a South African couple that runs a business along this road so we stopped off there to see whether they were in. We met up with Thea, then her son walked in, and later we were joined by her husband, Andre. What a delightful family they are. They have been on the island for ten years running a successful business and loving it. Shows you what perseverance and hard work can achieve. I asked about the boerewors situation on the island and Thea confirmed with “ja, dis Johan van Lamai wat die boerewors maak”. (Yes, it’s Johan from Lamai that makes the farmer’s sausage). We got the directions and will probably head out that way soon.
Adri has been trying to obtain coconut flour for some time now. Can you believe, with the abundance of coconut trees everywhere there is no coconut flour in sight, does not make sense. On the other hand though, the guys over here are not that big into baking, so in that sense I guess it does make some sense. But Adri’s search continues... Thea did mention that we may find coconut flour at a specific store in Lamai which she gave us the directions for, so I guess we now have two reasons to head out that way.
Eventually I found one, just one ! I found my first Samui dog **** on the sidewalk off the ring road, as we were about to board our bike, as per pictures. You will recall that Didier mentioned a while back that he has never ever seen dog **** on Samui, now at lest we have proof that dogs on Samui do have a **** from time to time, but only one? The search for more information continues.
Then we were off to Big C where we first had a cappuccino at our favourite coffee shop in the food court, still the best I am happy to report. Then on to shopping proper where I got to the coffee shelf and there was this guy, having a full on conversation with me regarding the pros and cons of the various coffees on display, which one was the strongest, which was the weakest, which was the best quality versus price. He also somehow slipped in that he was on holiday here for three weeks. I have no idea what language he spoke, but somehow I got the gist of his monologue. I just smiled and nodded. It was quite an entertaining chat though.
Not sure what it was, but somehow people singled me out today for a chat. We got to Makro and while Adri was having the veggies weighed and priced, I planned ahead and went to the butter section, yes, for butter. There a man and his wife, I guessed they were Filipino, approached me with their neatly typed out shopping list, pointing to the butter rack and in good English asked where they could find the peanut butter. Not sure, but not here, I thought. When I told them to follow me, away from the butter rack they were non-believers. When I showed them the peanut butter on the shelf next to the honey etc., they became true believers. OK, next on their shopping list was skim milk, where could they find that. I showed them to the milk section and pointed to the low fat milk which I thought should do the trick well enough. Later on I found them around my favourite section, you know the one I mean, and the man’s wife said “please sir, the last one”, pointing to where Perrier water was listed on the list. I showed them to that and my job there was finally done.
Our planning today was a bit off the mark though. We intended to buy another dooswyn but when I loaded that baby into the trolley my eye caught the notice that says one may not purchase alcohol until after 17:00. It was now just a tad after 15:00, so I reluctantly lifted that baby out of the trolley and carefully placed him back on the stack, where he continued screaming for me to take him home with me. But, alas, sadly it will have to wait for another time.
Got home, Adri unpacked and then retired for a snooze. I on the other hand had some work to do with a Tiger placed firmly in my hand. After about an hour the effect of the Tiger came to the fore and I also succumbed to a deep doze.
Later on I put on Dire Straits’ Love Over Gold, in my mind, their second best album after Making Movies which I consider to be their best, but then, they had so many great albums. Love Over Gold contains only five (extended) songs, i.e. Telegraph Road, Private investigations, Industrial Disease, Love Over Gold and It Never rains, each a great song in its own right.
Some news from SA, today it was announced, extract below, that my ex-boss was appointed to head the following initiative:
As part of our 2018 ambition, Discovery’s intention is to expand our business model into banking, and to establish a brilliant, innovative full-service retail bank in South Africa. To help us achieve this vision, I am very excited to announce the appointment of Barry Hore, who will be leading this initiative. Barry is one of SA’s leading fintech experts, and brings with him a wealth of industry experience. He spent over 20 years at Nedbank, including as Chief Information Officer, and then as Chief Executive of the bank’s Technology and Operations. In 2006, he was approached by the then SARS Commissioner, Pravin Gordhan, to drive the South African Revenue Services (SARS’s) modernisation strategy. As Head of Strategy, Modernisation and Technology, and then as SARS Chief Operating Officer, Barry was responsible for the bulk of the operations, transforming SARS into one of the most successful and efficient government institutions.
Barry was a tough task master, trust me, but I truly believe that Discovery could not have made a better appointment.