plus ca change and all that

Go away for a few weeks and my how the world changes. Solomon Islands erupts in civil chaos again, Bush thinks about targeting some other Muslim nation and a friend sneaks off and gets married.
In fact my friends unbelievably seemed to have carried on with their lives as normal without me. They didn't seem to listen when I said I would be gone ... there were emails wondering why I wasn't answering the previous one. I mean I don't expect my students to listen but ... And they don't return my calls now that I back.

catching breakfast

and now that you're back

So back from the islands and I'm freezing ...
Here's what happened.
I got bit by a dog. It tore my jeans and there was blood. I had to hold my pants on.
I got to the village.
Somebody stole my shoes ... and I left my glasses there. I received my first livestock gift. Africa, the chicken. Got invited to be circumcised and become a real man ?!?
On the way back from the airport here in the grad. I asked the old fella driver about one or two of the buildings we passed. There is this beautiful old art deco factory called libertyland which apparently and possibly paradoxically made women's undergarments in the recent yesteryears. They moved if from G___ St, back in the day. Speaking of G____ St, I asked him about the buildings htat were turned into the polytechnic. He told me they were the old technical insitute which was where working class kids were sent. POsh kids went to the high school. He went there, but it turns out that his brother didn't. He further reveals that his brother turns out to be a reat humanitarian and founder of a program that delivers free optical care to the people of developing nations, a truly great man.

I also forgot to mention that I got wicked cold in the tropics (Again with the !?!?). Flying home .... air pressure meets snot and renders me deaf. Ont he flight back to the 'grad. I couldn't hear a thing adn consequently pissed of an air hostess who was trying to tell me something about something. After that I had to pretend I was deaf for the rest of the flight cos she kept trying to make her words more lipreadable. By that stage hearing came back in one ear, but I didn't reallyh know how to break the news to her as she was doing a great job. So when we land and we all file off and she stands at the door, I pull my hand to my chin, and then move it towards her, the NZSL sign for 'thank you' and try and make my mouthed response as lipreadable as hers were ....

okay, thanks ... bye

So I got drunk with sailors last night. That was kinda fun and ... odd. My lord were they frank about their ladies all over the world and how much it costs to have a monthlong wife from the Phillipines... hmm

Today ... eventually ... to the village. This will involve planes, taxis, trucks but mostly waiting.

drums in the suburbs

I wrote this last night ....
I'm listening to Muum, and want to be sitting in the dark while doing it but I am writing this. I'm in capitalville, the islands, so its a strange place to listen to the soft Icelandic stylings of a band obsessed with swimming pools.

Outside, some distance away is the amplified voic of a fire and brimstone preacher. Hoarse and clearly cranky, the creole makes it all sound like voodoo.

I gotten bitten by a dog today, It shredded my jeans, and I will have to buy a belt tomorrow as I have discovered my shorts are too loose. I have been a bit paranoid about tetanus ever since the incident involving the dog ... psychosomatic sore throats.
Modernity has reached the islands and it has taken the form of coffee loyalty cards....

I also managed to watch the first half hour of Alien versus Predator?!? i.e. to the point where most of the humans had been gored and made surprisingly mucus-y, leaving the feisty ice expert woman and the charming professor who seems to have no problem reading Mayan and Egyptian glyphs.... I was startled to realise that the premise had been borrowed wholesale from a book I have just been reading ... I end up reading the strangest things here ... that both Egyptian and early Central American cultures where profoundly influenced by a lost civilisation possibly in Antarctica ... So it was nice to see a little debate about diffusionism though in a somewhat odd context ....

Tomorrow to the village, where, speaking of Antarctica, I will show them the dvd of march of the penguins ... they will find it hard to believe that such icy places and animals exist.