The Case of the Elusive Ectotherm

OR...

Somebody stole my bloody fish!!

(Disclimer: This pic ISN'T of the fish. This is a pic from Wiki Images. MY fish, I didn't take pics of, as it was earmarked to be cooked. wrapped in bananna leaves, with ginger, shallotts and garlic. Which I was unable to achieve. Due to its STOLEN status.)

so. I've moved haus. No more Petyon Place, No more illegal bus stations right outside my bedroom window, with PMV drivers shouting "Lae, Lae, Lae, Lae, Lae. Market, Market, Market, Market, 2 Mile. 2 Mile, 2 Mile" from 6am to 8pm. No more living in the only street in Lae City that provides ingress (and illegal egress)  from the shopping heart of town to the main thoroughfare. No more neighbours playing their music at 11  on the stereo, from 9.30pm to 3am on Tues Wed AND Thurs nights. No more BBQ's with freaky weirdos telling me about Lae's Swinger's Club (whilst furtively licking their lips). No more visits from 2 Kina maris.

No more gun shot victims moaning outside my back door, on their way up the ramp to the 24hr Medical Clinic, No more rock-fights between gangs of Highland and costal boys.  No more waiting 6 months to get the cracked toilet seat changed. No more dealing with the compound managers who refuse to believe that a swimming pool requires chlorine and maintanence to function, and must believe that swimming in custard-thick green slime that smells of effluent is the way we expats like to take our leisure.

Every time I drive past the old compound, I break into my own version of Rose Royce's "Love Don't Live Here Any More":

"Just a vacancy, 

I don't live there, anymore"

CanI have a resounding "HELL YES!!" With a follow-up "BOO-YAH!!"??

So. I've moved to down-the-hill, right at the back of the staduim. Where I swam in my fresh and lovely non-slimy pool and watched the Independence Day fireworks go off RIGHT ABOVE MY HAUS!!!

I have 3 storeys of polished floorboard happiness, 4 bedrooms, 5 staff, a spectacular view across to the Yacht Club and out over the Huon Gulf. I have my quietude broken only by the sound of the next-door-neighbour's kakaruk crowing to greet the gloaming, and the satisfied snurfle grunts of my dog, as she chases skinks in her own back yard. With grass.

I earned every last second of this life, and now I have a haus that I can be safe and happy and content in. It matches my safe, happy and content life. 

EXCEPT, as I was unpacking everything I've accumulated over the past 8 months, a vague feeling of unease washed over me. Now, that in itself is not unusual, given my penchant for conspiracy theories and thet fact I live in a malaria-rich environment, but it's taken my up to a week to identify the case. 

Last night, while nomming on BBQ seafood (mussels, prawns, calamari and fish goujons at the Yacht Club), I realised what was causing this underlying sense of "un profond sentiment de malaise"

When I unpacked my freezer, I hadn't seen my fish.
 

This fish wasn't just ANY fish. This was a 3kg schnapper, caught for me off the reef at Salamaua. This was a fish I was keeping to really show-case my fishy-cooking skills, and share at the housewarming I'm planning. 

This was a fish caught to SHARE. Destined to be handled with love and anointed with organic garlic, lemongass, ginger and shallotts. THIS was a fish I was even thinking about whole frying Asian-styles. (or wrapped in plaintain lif and served with roasted kau kau and fried bananna.. THis fish hadn't made up its mind yet.)

This was a fish with a destiny, people. This fish had POTENTIAL.

This fish is no longer in my care. This fish has been relocated.It could have been one of the movers, on of the plumbers, one of the electricians. ANY one of the 30 or so workman who've been swarming over the haus, helping me move and getting the solar/airconditioning/sliding doors/paint up to standard.

To whomever unburdened me of making decisions on behalf of the fish, I hope it was freezer burnt and you choke on a pinbone. I hope that as you crawl up the ramp of the 24hr clinic, clutching your throat, gasping for breath, the last thing your conscious mind registers is the smell of rotting vegetation from the pool at 4th Street and your ears are assaulted by a cover version "Back In Black" on  loop,

I'm  piscean, man. You do. not. fuck. with. my. fish.

Bah.

Needful things

I'm not a particularly aquisitous person. I like beautiful things, but I don't often have a need to own them. I'm in the UK right at the mo (as evidenced by my STUNNING pic of The Crescent in Bath, above), so maybe the post shouldn't be 'needful' so much as 'meaningful things'

I was in Oxford the other day. At the Ashmolean. And with all the hooplah here over yesterday's Royal Wedding, the place was almost deserted.

I spent a full half hour alone with the Stradivarius's 'Messiah' (and if you have to Google that, you're an idiot who's parents clearly didn't love them enough to educate them properly and when my Revolution comes, you will be retrospectively aborted based on my drive-by eugenics programme, where stupid people will be dealt with al la 'Soylent Green')

**the irony that some people who read this will, in fact, google some of the above, simply out of envy and spite does not escape me**

Anyway, I digress.

I got the most delectable look from a docent, when I lay on the floor of the pre-Raphelites room, and just allowed tears to pour down my cheeks, all the while feeling just a little like Millais' Ophelia.

I saw a real kore (and silently thanked Miss Passmore for the finest classical education I could ask for)

Anyway, the point is, at no time did I actually wish to OWN any of these things. The mere fact that they exist in this world, and I have seen them with my own eyes is enough.

The fact that I didn't have to share the experience with anyone, let alone gormless American tourists or snotty public school children, was the gilding on the pre-raph frame.

**side note.I DID come across a gormless American couple in the Fauves Gallery, the woman declaring loudly I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE BIGGER. YOU KNOW, LIKE WE SAW IT ON THE TELEVISION'**

**sigh**

So, finally, to the point of the post.

When I relocated to PNG, I wrote a maudlin, rambling post on what I'd decided to keep and what I chose to throw away. Read it here if you are so inclined.

What I did choose to keep.after 45 years, those things I chose? They were MY needful things. Some were beautiful, some were practical.

And some were both.

And even further, some were priceless.

 And some, no matter how heavily insured they were, can NEVER be replaced.

You'd think a container filled with cups and saucers and glass bowls and vases.. well, you'd be a twat if you thought that you'd get it from Melbourne to Lae with no breakages.

So then, please tell me , oh moving company, WHY the only two items to be damaged, were my two most beloved, favourite NEEDFUL, irreplaceable things in the whole world?

You know, the things I SPECIFICALLY TOLD THE MOVERS TO BE CAREFUL OF, AS THEY WERE UTTERLY IRREPLACEABLE.

My great-grandmother's marble pastry slab, used by 4 generations of women in my family, the slab on which I created my own wedding cake, the slab on which I knead the bread to make banana and nutella bread for my beautiful (step) daughter, the slab on which I taught my son to make chocolate cornets and pastry, and how to test the temperature of caramel, the slab I told the Herald Sun Food interview that 'In a fire, I'd rescue my slab before my children... and they know this and are perfectly alright with it'

THE SOLID CARRERA MARBLE SLAB, WEIGHING 8KGS, GIVEN TO MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER AS A WEDDING PRESENT IN 1899.

Yup.You guessed it.

smashed.

And the other thing those useless arse-wad, douchenozzle oxygen thieving ANKLES destroyed?

Two wrought iron table lamps given to me, bought for me,... CHOSEN for me by my beloved hobbit.

If you'd lined up every single one of my needful things, and picked the three I'd die for, well, the movers got 2 of them.

I AM LIVID.

Lost.

This is the coat of arms of Saudi Arabia.. the place I am planning to move to sometime in the next few months. We've expatted before.. the last time to PNG. Where, and I kid you not, you jump on a plane with your Aussie passport and turn up at Port Moresby airport, wherein you ask the customs man "May I buy a visa, please?". You hand over 100K (that's Kina, not short hand for thousand) and off you go. In fact, they are so laissez-faire about it, that on my first trip up there, they didn't have change, so HAND WROTE IN MY PASSPORT.. "Please buy one on the way out".



I kid you not.



So we were HORRIBLY unprepared for the lengthy hell that is the Saudi visa process. Furry was offered the job, signed the contract more than 3 weeks ago, and to date, we STILL don't have a date for him leaving.



Our paperwork has yet to be submitted to the Embassy.



We've spent the past 3 weeks collecting various bits of information about ourselves to submit for perusal by the Saudi Embassy, who will then decide whether we are fit to enter The Kingdom. Then and only then, will the employment contract become binding. So, right as of now, we're still no better off than we were a month ago.

**sigh**

So far we have had to provide chest x-rays, blood tests, urine and stool samples, original documentation of qualifications, prove our HIV/AIDS status (which will be re-tested again once we enter Saudi, just in case ). We've been tested for bilharziasis, had malaria screens, had our eyes, our ears, our stomachs poked and prodded. I've been fitted for and bought my first abaya (being 5ft 9 was a bit of a problem, cos with the abaya it's ALL about the length)

And all just to get in to The Kingdom.

Friends I have made on various Saudi forums tell me this is par for the course, but it's driving me batty.

And we STILL haven't received the requisite paperwork from Saudi to even begin to submit all of the above to the Embassy.

And now that Furry's generic blood screen has thrown up some odd LFT's. we have to get a 2nd opinion from an heptologist as to why. (Don't sweat it, its all elevated because of his cholesterol meds!)

Meanwhile, we're packing up GW and plan to rent it out ($400 pw, if you know anyone) and are re-housing the pups (again, if you know anyone...)

So, if you wonder why there has been so little activity here, that's why. I am lost in the ongoing and never-ending hell that is organising a Saudi visa.

Hopefully, soon, I'll be back posting more on my ongoing learning journey to master Saudi food!

Oh, and I can't possibly post here without some reference to food, so:

Did you know that nutmeg is illegal in Saudi as it is considered an aphrodisiac?

Everything I know about life, I learned from Ferris Bueller

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. —
Ferris Bueller

For those of you who haven't heard. Furry got the job in Saudi Arabia. Got home from Dubai on Friday with nothing on the table. Got an email from a PNG contact on Friday afternoon. WAS flying out to take up the PNG role on Monday, but got an offer from Saudi on Sunday.

"When Cameron was in Egypt's land...let my Cameron go" - Cameron Frye

And while it's not quite Egypt's land, it's pretty freakin close to it! So far my research has thrown up the way to survive Saudi is to get out often, and the money they're offering makes that so very doable. There are four-wheel drive tours into Qatar, cheap flights to Cairo or Rome, all sorts of things to do.

"My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."- Simone

The serious stuff is pretty damn serious. Gender segregation, wearing abayas, living under Sharia law. Nothing to be sneezed at, but everyone we know whose been there says that the biggest threat is the boredom. Compound living makes the transition somewhat easier, and while Furry's working away, I'll do what I do best.. and that's network.

"The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude".- Grace.

I've already got myself invited to a coffee morning, and have several numbers for my new Saudi phone, when I get it. For me to survive over there, I need to have people to play with. And just like our time in PNG, I've already made contact with some other wives over there. And at the end of the day, we're not the first wide-eyed Westerners to do it. If other people have gone to Saudi and survived, we can do it, to.

"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people. " - Ferris Bueller

I was a bit worried about not being able to drive, until I realised that in Saudi they drive on the US side of the road. Bugger that.. I'll have me a driver, thanks, or take the compound bus. After 2 weeks in Florida, driving on the other side of the road, my head hurt. And that was just as a passenger. The Sharia law is also a worry, but I promise you all, that I won't get deported for distributing feminist literature. There's too much at stake here. And JUST like PNG, we're going to think globally and act locally. Of we can affect empowerment in one single other human being, then we've done out job. And one needs to move away from the First World-centric notion of empowerment for that statement to make sense.

Look, to all my nay-sayers.. and there ARE a few of them, it's a BIG move.. big in all sorts of ways. Culturally, economically, spiritually... but the rewards are so very worth it. Financial freedom by 50. Getting to experience one of the great cultures of the world, being within 5 hours of Europe. And the food.. Man, I am going to be living near a spice souk!! All that Kabsa I can poke down with a stick! Weekends in Dubai. And what my nay-sayers have to remember is that Furry and I are FAR from idiots. We've done our ground work, we've spoken to people with hands-on experience in Saudi... specifically Riyadh.. we're aware of the issues, both good and bad, and as adults, we're making an informed, rational and educated choice.

Oh, and Nurses over there are in HUGE demand and earn a freakin MINT!! Hello, a week long holiday in a villa in Tuscany. Hello, a garden tour of Lucca! Hello, a week in an Algarve B&B

"Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive. " - Ferris Bueller.

So, my dear readers, very soon, AGITK will be coming to you LIVE from Saudi! Stand by for further adventures!