April 2007 Archives

In just a few days, sleeping will be done on this here rock, diving by day, and hopefully spotting turtle vulva by night. Then comes some serious botanising, trekking jungle and mountain ridge for the greater part of three months with festering clothing and missing tent-pegs for company.

My former stomping grounds have more internet cafés than Seattle does Starbucks outlets, so one or two updates could be forthcoming from any of the unmarked (but frequent) stops on the itinerary below.

And that's that. Which leaves me to ask that you people take care of yourselves; I can't look after your interests from 7200 miles away.

Bye bye!

I walked straight into a plate glass window on Friday.

It wasn't the highlight of my week, but seems fitting a party to the strange syndrome of behaviours offered up to me by my body these four days gone by. Mild disorientation, sensorily unique headaches, neck pain, considerable body heat and a couple of aggressive mood swings in the testosterone-driven raging-silverback-gorilla sort of direction.

Transparent walls aside -- apparently this marriage of biology and silicous oxides runs in the female line of my family -- these are the mild symptoms of mild brain inflammation caused by a vaccine, and the thought that there's two more shots of this intravenous liniment to go isn't the most exciting thing in my Universe.

Still, if the antibodies are already on the go, then tomorrow's shot will either result in few further symptoms, or complete anaphylaxis. While occasional drama spices up the daily run, I hold out for the more probable scenario.

I've decided that things will be back to normal today, though the likelihood of my body agreeing with my stubborn mind makes the temptation of staying in bed, in the buff, all day long, the most attractive recourse possible. Alas, stuff beckons.

Oh, but it was strange.

Out in the sunshine, walking father Thames in the fresh air and awash with summery vibes, there were moments when I wanted to curl up and cry on the pavement for no good reason, punctuated by my own amusement at the fact that this sudden volatility of mind so isn't me.

Then anger and frustration, and wanting to smash my knuckles into the piles of broken rock and glass on the beaches at Battersea to put my mind elsewhere, toward a crimson decoy, something tangible. Preservation algorithms threw slag at the low tide instead, a limitless volume for transiently limitless feeling.

Then on the street, miles down the road, I chanced upon a proverbial angel, and my inconstant choler, as capricious and fickle as she was potent, fled with her burgundy skirts hitched above her ankles in the face of his genial smile and allusive embrace.

Once in a while, friends will pitch up at just the right time and place to crush a demon, unaffected in manner, straightforward and sincere, unaware of how you feel and utterly resplendent for it.

And whether or not you let them know it, they become heroes.

Being the statistic of me in London.

It's kind of nuts, really, to try to fathom just how many people that actually is. It mightn't be all that high a figure in the grand scheme of things vis. Chongqing with 31M, Mumbai with 13M, Sao Paolo with 11M, or Seoul with 10M, but it's pretty staggering all the same. We're just a smidgen behind New York, though in terms of community, I get the distinct impression from my Atlantic-straddling friends that it's a lot less easy to feel isolated in London than it is in New York.

Give me a sense of community any day.

Yesterday, I undertook the everyday task of walking from London Bridge all the way west along the river to Wimbledon. This took about four hours at a friendly pace, since the river route is quite a bit longer than the direct one, but it was incredible fun, and perhaps all the more so for being alone. Not to suggest that I didn't want the company -- I really did -- but it was nice to get in some me-time with my favourite Big City, and my how she roared in the hot Spring sunshine.

There was talk and laughter, food and drink, some of the best street musicians I've ever heard in this city, and even a whole lot of gaïety to boot. According to Google Earth, the walk home was a respectable 16.7 kilometres (10.4 miles), and during that time I passed at least four gay couples holding hands, and handful of less obvious candidates too.

I guess the warm-gooeyness must have got to me, because a pair of men took me to task on my smile -- they evidently misconstrued it as my thinking that they were an amusing sight to see, a pair of men holding hands.

"No," I said, "I'm really very jealous - I think it's totally lovely, but the hand I usually hold is stuck behind an office desk today!"

"Don't mind him; he's just a bit militant", one apologised.

And fair enough; some people do smirk, and for various reasons, but most of the looks all of these guys were getting seemed to be positive.

It's always a reaffirming thing to see. Even if it was only because they were all plain gorgeous.

Stocking up on pills and vaccines is a real eye-opener toward the rape of us innocent Europeans by pharmatechs out to make a quick buck.

A case in point is my incipient requirement for anti-malarials, in this case, Malarone. In the United Kingdom, £35 to £40 for a box of twelve one-per-day tablets. On the continent proper, they get off a little easier at €45. When the nurse told me this, I told her exactly who the drugs were produced by.

"How did you know it was GSK?"

"Oh, just a wild guess" - Glaxo charge the earth and the moon in the UK. I'd like to think that it's because they need to offset the reduced costs of their products in countries where people haven't the means to pay sky-high prices, but that's really not true.

So rather than pay over £120 for the course I require, I paid £32 in total.
By buying Malarone in Kuala Lumpur.

Six recommended vaccinations, £7.50 total. Great, hit me - all done and dusted.
Japanese Encephalitis B, £140 pounds on its own, and rabies only slightly less. I'll import them too, thank you very much.

If it wasn't illegal to import medicines and prophylactics on a commercial scale, I'd have my career path sorted once and for all.