Roots Chapter II Warms The Cockles, Coconuts & Yogis

Warms The Cockles

I consulted my Lonely Planet and planned out a proper, living out of a suitcase, epic adventure, travelling all around Sri Lanka.  We did not have time to do the very north but we covered as many of the main sites as we could.  

I was looking forward to it.  Ever since we moved to Singapore everyone we met had been chuffing on about how chuffing brilliant Sri Lanka is with its beaches, wildlife, temples, hill country and colonial history.  There was no question it really did have it all.  I had forgotten about my personal horrible histories when I started planning this trip.  

It probably helped that I was no longer going through puberty as I think some scientists say it can skew your judgement a little.

I was advised to get a driver who you can hire for the duration of your trip and they take you wherever you want to go.  I was put in touch with an old family friends’ son who has a travel agency in Sri Lanka and he sorted me out with a lovely driver.  We popped to the office to meet my friend on arrival. 

I have to say those twenty minutes of talking to him warmed my heart.  The group of children of my parents’ generation (all of us in our 40s & 50s now) who remained in Sri Lanka use the same hilarious vernacular and nobody did it better than my pal Nishad. 

The finest way to illustrate this is the Sri Lankan’s I know, when discussing their children, never refer to them by their name but instead use the following lingo:  “the big fellow is in Melbourne”, “the small fellow is at home”, “I have to be home in time to feed these people”, “those jokers are playing cricket”, “that child is at piano lessons” and “the other fellow is asleep” or “that bugger, I haven’t seen him in ages”, “what a morose beggar that bugger is” and the like.

This brief conversation made me so happy.  As my parents’ friends are slowly thinning it warmed the cockles to know their voices were not gone and still existed in their children. 

While I sport a hoity toity London posh pants accent, you should know that I can slip into this very specific Sri Lankglish chit chat pretty easily.

Coconuts

One cousin on my Father’s side, one of my parents’ dearest friends and my Mother’s brothers remain for me in Sri Lanka.  Everyone else is gone of this earth or abroad.  I hadn’t seen two of my Mum’s brothers since 1988 and we popped in to see them on the day we arrived. 

This time I was without a banana clip and see through poncho but instead brought with me a refined English gentleman husband, two small mudbloods and myself, the coconut (you know, brown on the outside, white on the inside). 

This is a popular and derogatory term for the children of Sri Lankan immigrant parents who after moving to Europe, Oz and North America had their brown offspring who developed very un-brown accents and for quite a few of us, a rather poor level of understanding and knowledge of our origins.  

Do note however that this derogatory term was not hurled at us by skinheads in the streets in the 1970s, but was instead coined by our parents as a means of ridiculing our lack of cultural identity with the motherland.

Might I add, the fault of my lack of language skills and cultural awareness is entirely due to my parents’ lack of interest in teaching me anything about it.   

When being criticised for not sending me to Tamil lessons or learning traditional dance, my Dad softly laughed and said I have no need for that and encouraged me to learn the European languages of which I did French, German, Italian and Spanish through my high school and university years.  You will be delighted to know I speak none of them and can just about manage English on a good day.  I should have done Tamil.  At least I can do the accent.

Eat, Pray, Love.  Now Bugger Off

If you follow my sporadic blog regularly (how is that for crap word usage. Told you I should have done Tamil) you may remember I entitled a previous blog post with the above moniker.  I am afraid I am going to repeat myself, as I am incensed.  

At my last health check up, it was qualified medically, that I am in fact, a woman.  Therefore, as a woman I am allowed to berate other women.  I am not into all this sisterhood and "bigging" each other up IF IT IS NOT DESERVED!   

Just like the Bali birds which spawned the vitriol in my previous Eat, Pray, Love post, Sri Lanka with its booming tourist industry has now attracted the same sort of floaty idiot woman to its shores.

In the middle of the country is an incredible rock known as Sigiriya or the Lion’s Rock.  It does hold spiritual significance for some and has proved a slight mystery for archaeologists as to whether it was a monastery or a fort. As we are not spiritual or Indiana Jones we just wanted to climb it because it was a big rock in the middle of a very flat landscape and it looked challenging, scary and would provide us with incredible views of the surrounding countryside. And it was there.  So there.

I was suffering with a full blown hypo that morning but through total bloody mindedness, the shakes and atrophied legs I climbed to the top.  The last section of steps with a sheer drop is not for the faint hearted.  That said, my 9 and 6 year old ran up it while I was trying very hard not to pass out.  Strangely, heights only bother me climbing up.  I am less bothered when I can see how far I can plunge to my death and have no issue standing on the edge of cliffs.  However, like Kung Fu Panda, climbing stairs is a terrifying challenge.

Maybe it was the stress of the climb or the lack of glucose to my brain but as we sat down in the quiet and peace of the early morning to take in the stunning views, our vista was fouled, fouled I tell you, by some chick who had carried her yoga mat up with her and was now doing her full yoga routine in front of us.  

Now this really gets my pants in a bunch.  Is this really necessary?  Is this just not exhibitionism?  Showing off?  Look at me, I climbed a huge rock and now I am rocking this Hindu Buddhist stuff.  Check ... Me ... Out.

I certainly was checking her out and contemplating how hard I could kick her toned bottom, as she did her downward dog in front of my burning eyes.  

I have the same issue with tiny dogs wearing FBI jackets. Before you go all animal rights dog day afternoon on me I am not alone in this as I was with a very nice friend who unlike me does not have a single mean bone in her body and even her reaction to the canine FBI agent was, I wonder how far I can kick that.  Anyway, I digress again.

Isn’t spirituality quiet, private, personal?  I don’t know.  I am neither religious nor spiritual.  That said, while I do not believe in it myself, I do respect other peoples’ religions and beliefs.  

Well, that is actually a lie.  I don’t really. 

Case in point.  When we were at Colombo airport on our way back home a huge group of what I thought were Sri Lankan Nuns came through the airport, fully clad in white from head to toe.  I suddenly noticed that there were men too and then realised they were pilgrims.   

Shortly after check in, one of the elderly lady pilgrims took a massive tumble on the first bit of the escalator.  We all rushed forward to help but she was quickly assisted by her fellows.  They helped her via the stairs and when we got to the top of the escalator her sandals were there but she was still making her way up.   

About five minutes later we heard another massive clatter as another one of these people fell down the escalator.  There was a small part of me that genuinely felt the reason they kept falling on the escalators was because and only because they were pilgrims.

There you go.  I am not fond of religion and my reasons are valid.   

Religion is incompatible with escalators.  And escalators are very important, particularly when it is hilly and the climate is hot and you have luggage.   

Anyway, as if the lady yogi on Sigiriya wasn’t enough, when we spent a couple of days at the beach towards the end of our holiday, we learned our lovely little guest house hosted Kundalini yoga sessions in the morning from 8 until 10am.   

I can’t say I didn’t groan.  

Midway through my breakfast we had to listen to them all shouting “Sun” “Sun” “Sun” “Sun”.  Now I am aware of the yoga position, the sun salutation, but I didn’t realise you had to shout “sun” for 5 minutes while doing it.  This was all news to me and I have to say, it put me off my eggs. 

I have many friends who practice and even teach yoga and I do apologise if I have offended you.  Well, actually I don’t apologise.  Do your duty, pull these rebel yogis in line so they stop blocking the sun with their downward dogs asses and upsetting the most important meal of the day.

Even though I am a woman I am now going to attack holidaying men too because I like to be fair and not show any gender bias.   

On one side we have the prescribed spirituality of the daffy 30 something single woman and on the other side you have the European male out of his natural habitat and sporting a sarong. 

Now I am all fine with getting into the culture and spirit of the locals but do your research.  If you are going to wear a sarong you have to commit to it buddy!  That means no pants no pants no pants. 

A sarong is basically the Lankan version of a kilt but far more risky as it is tied with a knot, has no areas within which one can conceal a little knife and there is no sporran behind which you can hide your packed lunch. 
 

Generally, I have been told the older the sarong the better as it is much softer, silkier and therefore provides better ventilation.  It also therefore has the downside of being more transparent.  

My Dad’s sarong was threadbare and he did not wear any pants under it.  Admittedly, he is my only point of reference in which case maybe he was just weird.  Still, it was his night time attire, hence, no pants.

Anyway, I saw countless westerners strutting around in their sarongs while clearly wearing pants underneath.  It does not count if it falls down or you cross your legs at the bar and we can see you are wearing your speedos underneath.  If you are going to do it, commit to it or go home you damn Guylian's (you know, white on the outside, brown on the inside).

Oh and Sigiriya was fantastic.  You should go.

Next Time: Roots Chapter III Little Britain & Curiosity

Roots Chapter I

History

I hated Sri Lanka. 

I had nothing positive to say for the place.   

My relationship with the homeland of my parents consisted of three previous holidays and I use the term “holidays” loosely. 

The first was in 1977 when I was two years old.  My memory of this trip was being unable to put my feet down in the bathroom.   

Most bathrooms in Sri Lanka are wet rooms.  These are all the rage now if you read Living Etc, but for little old me, used to our carpeted bathroom that was the height of practicality in the 1970s, a wet floor in a bathroom was outrageous.   

Much crying and screaming ensued and I had to be carried like The Last Emperor onto the toilet every time nature called.    

On our second trip to Sri Lanka in 1979, I remember sitting on a wicker chair at my Father’s family home in Colombo.  As I sat on the verandah having my drink, I noticed these weird little white bugs crawling out from one of the walls and crawling up my chair leg like army ants, ready to attack me, eat me, digest me and then regurgitate me back out for their fat globulous white Queen.  

Much crying and screaming ensued. 

Another memory from 1979 was my Fathers family taking us on a beach trip somewhere tropical and beachy.  There are a multitude of photographs of me crying on a boat to the beach, crying as I am being carried by my Uncle at the beach, crying as he takes me out to sea to stand on a rock and crying on the boat on the way back. 

This was due to the fact I was petrified of the water.  Not just standing water in a bathroom.  Oh no, sea water too!  I found out recently when visiting my Dad’s brother in Melbourne last year that none of them could swim and still can't.  Not a single member of my family could swim.  I think my 4 year old instincts were spot on given if we fell out of that boat or off that rock, none of these jokers would have been able to save me and we would have all perished in the Indian ocean, albeit it the nice turquoise bit and not the brown cloudy bit.

The third trip was the nail in the coffin for me.  In 1988 my Mother and I went to Sri Lanka to see my maternal Grandmother who was in Colombo.  I was 12 at the time. 

We arrived at the airport to be met by my Dad’s cousin.  In 1988 there was no super, fast, straight, flat expressway that whizzed you in from the airport to Colombo.  Oh no, there was a winding, stop start road, choked with traffic that caused the journey to take over a jerky hour.   

On arrival at my Uncle’s beautiful home, I proceeded to dash up to the bathroom and dry wretch for ten minutes.  I have never suffered from motion sickness but once again Sri Lanka brought out and up the worst in me. 

We then moved to a rented house where my Grandmother was staying with the rest of my Mum’s family.  We were under strict instructions from my Dad not to travel anywhere.  The political situation was a little shaky in Sri Lanka in 1988 and while my family urged us to go on a little adventure around the country my Mum’s ridiculous superstitions kept us grounded in Colombo.   

She believed that if she went off travelling when Dad had specifically said not to go anywhere, something would definitely go wrong and we would die.  This is always the outcome if we go off piste when Dad has asked us sweetly to consider not going off piste.

 

As a result we were stuck in Colombo for 11 days where a stream of family and friends came to visit.  While this was nice for my Mum, it was less so for me.  I was bored and tired of everyone saying (and you will need to adopt the lovely sing song accent of a Lankan for this), “Iyo, you were such a sweet little thing in ’77, what happened to you, you got so black?” 

Simply put, in Sri Lanka, it is preferable if one is not of a duskier hue.  Even amongst the most sophisticated and educated set this little nugget still runs deep.  This wound me up no end and during my teen years I would deliberately lie out in the sun to get as dark as possible to illicit these reactions so I then had the ammo to chastise them for their unfair prejudices.  It didn't work as more people kept asking me "Iyo, why has this child got so bloody dark?" etc etc 

I also got bitten by a mosquito and the following morning one of my arms was covered in huge spots.  I have mentioned my Mum’s family are very superstitious.  I forgot to add to that they are also hypochondriacs.  My Mum’s eldest brother deduced from this that I had contracted chicken pox which scared the hell out of me.  We got a doctor out who reckoned I had an allergic reaction to the mosquito bite, hence the weird one armed spot attack.  He assured us it would subside in a few days.

So apart from the polite insults about my looks, the chicken pox and the thousands of visitors I did not know, we did spend a day at Colombo Zoo looking at some emaciated tigers and everywhere I went people were staring at me.  I don’t know why I was such a weird anomaly.  I was with my family.  We are all dusky and yet I got very persistent stares.  

I wondered at the time if it was because I looked like a sophisticated London urbanite but now when I think back, I reckon it was more to do with the fact in 1988 I used to wear a banana clip in my hair.  For those of you who are fashion forward you will remember the banana clip as a device that enabled young girls to have a Mohican without shaving the sides of their head.  

I also wore a batik poncho and didn’t realise until later that it was a bit transparent.  Add to this the onset of puberty, my ugly white trainer bra that you could clearly see through my poncho and the wispy growth of teenage girl moustache on my upper lip didn’t make me look like a Sri Lankan or a Brit but more like I had been adopted following my early years spent working in the circus.

One of the good things about that trip was my Godmother who knowing I loved prawns, made me grilled and curried prawns nearly every day over the last few days of our trip.  They were delicious.   

Then as we sat in Colombo airport waiting for our flight home I developed the galloping trots and a fever and was ill for the 10 hour flight home to the UK.

I feel it is important to qualify why I hated Sri Lanka and I think my reasons are founded and why I did not set foot in the place again until March 2016.

Twenty-seven years later, I am pleased to report I have changed my mind about the place entirely.  ENTIRELY!

Next week: Roots Chapter II Warms The Cockles, Coconuts & Yogis

Squatter

We have one and when I say squatter I mean it in both senses of the word.  Yes, this individual occupies our apartment and he neither, owns, rents or has otherwise lawful permission to use said apartment.

The second definition of squatter which this resident has great skill at is that he regularly unloads his bowels in my kitchen, on the breakfast bar and in various places across our white tiled floor.  By morning when us legal tenants have woken up I have the joy of scraping heated and dried poop off various areas of the apartment.

This war of attrition has been going on for three months now and as of this weekend I now feel like I am on the losing side and I need to remedy this by going on the offensive.

You are possibly wondering what foul tenant could possibly be doing something has grotesque as doing their toilet anywhere but the toilet.  Admittedly, I have a tendency to exaggerate so don't be concerned, we aren't living with heroin addicts.  I am dealing with an efficient predator, lightening quick and extremely agile.

I have a big gecko.

He lives under my fridge and he is the one who comes out each night to defecate all over my apartment and I have honestly had enough!

This all began in May after moving into our new old apartment which is not air tight and has lots of cracks, crannies and open areas whereby the tropical wildlife in all their variety can enter and find somewhere warm to settle.  Wikihow explains that geckos like warm places to live.  We live in bloody Singapore.  Why do they need the underneath of my fridge to keep warm?  30 degrees every day outside isn't enough? Huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Anyway, going back to May.  Shortly after we moved in my husband decided to meet a friend for a drink at our local bar.  About 30 minutes after he left I went to the fridge to make my sixteenth gin and tonic when something black and fast darted just by my foot and disappeared somewhere in the kitchen.  There was no question in my mind that it was a mouse.  Black, long tail, nippy.  I left the fridge door open, ran into the living room, stood on the sofa and phoned my husband.  Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation:

Me:  Help, you have to come home now. 
Him:  Why, what's happened?
Me:  You have to come home, there is a mouse in the apartment.  Come home now?
Him:  Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  I am not coming home.
Me:  Why are you laughing?  This is serious. I can't live here if there is a mouse.  We need to go back to the old apartment or back to England.
Him:  Hahahahahahahahaha.  Stop being silly.  We can't move back home.  I am having a drink with David.  Grow a pair and deal with it.  What do you want me to do anyway?
Me:  What good are you? 
Him:  Stop being silly.
Me:  Dial tone

Chivalry is dead people.  If this had been the 1500's he would have jumped on his horse, rode straight back home and within an hour that mouse's head would have been mounted on my wall.  

I blame the feminists.

I managed to go back into the kitchen with my eyes closed to shut the fridge door and then decided at 8pm to go to bed as it meant I could keep my feet off the floor and wasn't anywhere near the kitchen.  I then decided to message my friend to get some sympathy.  Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation.  It is redacted in compliance with NSA guidelines:

Me:  Jo.  There is a mouse.  I want to cry.  I have to move out.
Jo:  No way, not up there.  Where.  How?
Me: I don't understand.  We have only been here two weeks.  I can't live with a mouse. Snakes, geckos, spiders, roaches but not mice, not mice.
Jo:  My friends' hamster committed suicide off her balcony.  Your mouse might do the same.
Me: Don't make me laugh.  This is very serious.
Jo:  Are you sure it wasn't a cockroach in fancy dress.  It might have been a rat?  I did see pest control outside your apartment block earlier.
Me:  Wonderful!, I wrote to you for comfort.  Bloody Rob wouldn't even come back to help me.
Jo:  Seriously, what a meanie.  You might be eaten alive.  I can see it in The Straits Times.  Girl eaten alive by door mouse.
Me:  It is not funny.  It is serious.  I will need to be carried around the apartment so I don't have to put my feet down.
Jo:  Why don't you use the kids scooters then you might run it over while you are scooting.
Me:  "You have left the conversation".

Now in fairness I have never seen a mouse again in our kitchen but I did see a very big gecko under our fridge shortly after this incident. Which does make me think perhaps Jo was slightly right in that it was a gecko in a mouse costume. 

I don't really mind geckos.  They are handy, a bit like bees with their honey making.  Geckos eat mosquitoes and insects and will in theory keep our apartment free of that other annoying tropical killer, dengue fever.

I am quite happy to co-habit with geckos as long as they are passing through but not when they set up residence under my fridge and jump out at me on a regular basis and more importantly shit all over my apartment.  (I apologise for my fruity language but like I said, this is war).  I appreciate we are all animals and bowels need to be moved but did you know that gecko faeces contains salmonella.  Now you do not want that spread around your kitchen when you are making chocolate chip cookies.

Over the last few months I have spent every morning cleaning up gecko poo and on Saturday night it was the last straw.  Within minutes of turning the lights off and going to bed the big gecko under our fridge was out.  I know this because I forgot my phone in the living room so hurriedly ran back in and turned the lights on.  Within a split second I saw him on the wall and he quickly scurried behind the bookcase.  Within this second I also managed to step in a fresh poo which smeared across the tiles and remains stuck on my white flip flop.  That was it.  I was after blood.

In my desperation, at midnight on the same Saturday, I decided to turn to the Internet trolls otherwise known as the Singapore Psycho Wives / Singapore Expat Wives.  They have two Facebook forums.  One known as Singapore Expat Wives and the other the Real Singapore Expat Wives.  Basically the only difference is the Real Expat Wives are bitchier.  I decided to contact the Real group on Facebook as I had every intention on that night to kill the gecko and didn't want the limp wristed hippy do-gooders on Singapore Expat Wives telling me about God's creatures and blah blah blah.

What can I say?  There are a lot of expat women awake at midnight keen to discuss geckos and within half an hour I already had a variety of strategies.  Through a combination of Wikihow and advice from the ladies on the forum I had some super ideas.  The most stupid method was Wikihow's idea to hold a box near the gecko and "encourage it in".  This would work brilliantly if the gecko had no legs or was already dead.

There were a variety of humane methods suggested such as using egg shells, as the gecko sees them and thinks there is a predator nearby or spraying the area with chilli or pepper mixed with water.  Or placing onions or garlic around the gecko's neighbourhood.  Using such things would make us move out before the gecko.  And besides, I was not interested in removing him with ingredients for bolognese.

It seemed the most effective way of catching these creatures is with sticky glue paper.  There is something in the glue that attracts insects so when they get stuck the gecko wanders onto the paper too and also gets stuck.  Wikihow said it is an effective method but not terribly nice as if you don't check the papers regularly the gecko can get caught and then starve to death.  It did advise that you can remove the gecko by pouring vegetable oil on it and that loosens the adhesive from their feet.  So it is sort of humane with a little bit of torture as well.  I assume just to punish the gecko for its nerve.

I discussed this method with my unchivalrous husband.  He refused to help me with it as he thought it cruel.  The transcript as follows:

Me:  I think we should use these sticky glue pads.  Only way we will definitely catch it.  But I am squeamish so need your help to get it off the glue pad.
Him:  I am not doing it.  Imagine if it gets caught early in the night.  It will suffer until morning before we can let it go.  How would you like it if you got stuck on a sticky mat?  What would you do?
Me:  I dunno.  Wait till someone arrives with vegetable oil.  Besides when would I ever get stuck on a sticky mat?
Him:  Well, I wouldn't wait.  I would be so scared I would be wriggling and writhing and pooing myself in fear
Me:  Well, you did that on the last day of our holiday in Vietnam so what's the big deal?
Him:  I am not helping you
Me: What good are you?

I then Googled glue mats and the first thing that came up was an article by PETA entitled "How Glue Pads Ruined by Childhood" with an accompanying photo of a sticky mat with a mouse, two cockroaches and two sparrows stuck to it.  Admittedly I was rather sickened.

Yes yes, this is why I am not a vegetarian.  I like the meat but am not prepared to butcher it myself.  I want the vermin out of my house but am not prepared to pick up the mousetrap with the decapitated mouse in it myself.  I need (sorry to say it ladies) a man to do it for me.  And unfortunately I don't know any.

So, after all my shouting, swearing and posturing. I decided to go the namby pamby route.  I am trying the egg shells.  So much for wanting blood!

On Sunday however, we had a bit of good fortune. While talking to my Mum on Facetime I noticed a very big gecko scuttling along the wall heading back to the kitchen.  I dropped the phone thinking this is it, we are going to get that fridge dweller. Between the four of us we managed to catch him.  It did involve whacking him with a broom.  Chasing him around the floor and the walls and then finally my husband caught him in a Tupperware box.  I was still keen to throw him out of the window (21 floors) but my husband who is looking at me increasingly with doubt as to whether he did the right thing by marrying an axe murderer said he would put him outside in the grass.

Anyway, you cannot imagine the joy of knowing he was gone.  I still laid out the egg shells that night as a warning to any other interlopers and went to bed happy knowing I would not be scrubbing black poo off the kitchen surfaces.

I woke on Monday morning to find the egg shells carefully moved aside and three poos on the kitchen surfaces.

I have decided to get the sticky glue mats, as cruel as they are.  I did suggest to my husband that if we did catch one and you didn't have time to pour vegetable oil on it and carefully prise it off before you go to work, we could put the mat face down and I can drive over it with the car then at least its death will be quick and painful.  I don't want it to starve to death.  I am not a monster!

This whole experience has made me realise that I am unfortunately not a murderer as much as I really want to be.  I really want to kill that gecko but I just don't have the cojones to do it.  I am going to get the sticky mat and perhaps wait until my in-laws arrive in a few weeks.  They live in the English countryside so are used to equatorial geckos.  If we happen to catch one while they are here.  I will feign illness and stay in bed and they will get rid of it for me because they are nice.  Unfortunately, I think they read my blog so perhaps I shouldn't have said any of that.

Wow!  That was over 2000 words on my gecko.  Perhaps I should read him this blog post.  He might leave of his own accord.

Hamstrings

I have often thought the word hamstrings a rather odd term for a part of the human body and in all honesty it is only in the last two years that I am certain of what my hamstrings are and where they reside.

Generally I think we are disinterested in our bodies until something goes wrong with it.  For example, I paid little attention to my fallopian tubes until I got pregnant at the age of 32 (20 years after sex education at school).  After all, how often does one think about ones fallopian tubes.

Anyway, my hamstrings hurt.  They hurt very badly and seem to be getting worse.  This is somewhat embarrassing at Pilates given I am probably the only person there who has been doing it for four years plus and while all the other ladies are doing the splits on the reformer stretching their hamstrings, I am standing there like a human tipi stretching jack squat (NB. jack squats, something else I can't do without setting my legs on fire).

I don't understand why after so many years of this particular type of exercise I seem to be getting so much worse at the basics.  My instructor who is also a qualified physiotherapist advised me to do a particular type of stretch at home to loosen my hamstrings but my actual doctor on www.yahoomedicaladvicebyunqualifiedidiots.com said the best thing to do is rest the muscles, use ice packs and heat compresses and watch TV.

I am in a bit of a bind.  I don't want to be one of those people who stretch in public.  I am happy to do my stretches at home if it is going to help but given I am not stretching enough prior to exercise, I think I will have to do some stretching in view of other people.  I am sure this is pre-exercise basics but people who stretch in public are .. well .. wangs.

I think I am being punished for my recent spate of mean thoughts and as is the way with divine punishment it is always going to be a humiliation related to the mean thought thunk.

The children go to a lovely swim school on Sundays.  The teachers are excellent, great with the kids and the lessons are a cracking workout and lots of fun.  Furthermore, the teachers at the swim school are perhaps the only men I have ever seen who can carry off Speedo's and believe me, I very rarely say that.  Not that I am looking at their budgie smugglers, I just mean they are very tall and fit.

In case you have not guessed, tall, fit, friendly ... they are Dutch and the swim school is Dutch owned.  Up until now spending time at the swimming pool watching the kids has been a wonderful thing however over the last three weekends a chap has appeared every Sunday morning to conduct this kind of public stretching exhibitionism pool side in front of the kids in his speedos and even though he is Dutch, he is not tall and cannot carry off those tight trunks. 

The stretching itself as I said is right in front of my daughter's swim lanes and not far from the entrance to the pool where all traffic enters and exits.  He stands here with his legs in some sort of splits thing and then bends forward in his speedos so we get to see his meat and two veg from the front and back.  This goes on for a good ten minutes and is truly vomit inducing.  Frankly, I should really phone the police as I believe it is bordering on child abuse and most certainly retinal abuse.

I don't understand it.  There are plenty of places to stretch that are discreet.  I am sure I have mentioned in previous blogs the bizarre exercises that people in Singapore do in public however, I genuinely don't think they are doing this out of any sense of exhibitionism but simply because they don't care what anyone thinks and I do like that.  So, while I do walk past a variety of exercisers doing things like hopping arabesques, chicken head nodding, arm flapping and pelvic thrusting (all true), I think they believe they are getting a good workout even though they look like berks but it is all about the exercise and there is no element of showing off.

Therefore, as a westerner I find the behaviour by Mr Splits very peculiar.  

My husband and I discussed this in depth and I was trying to fathom this exhibitionism as it has to be bordering on a type of arrogance.  My husband being the type to never make broad brush statements about any particular nationality believes it is because he is Dutch and that is why he is arrogant. Of course like all good racists I should preface this with "some of our best friends are Dutch".  

I don't buy this as every Dutch person I have ever met has been lovely.  My husband agrees and only puts any display of arrogance down to the fact they are tall.  

I think I concur with this theory as I know if I was tall I would be a complete asshole.  The reason I am so self-depracating and diffident is because I can't reach most wall shelves.  Who would have the confidence to do public stretching when you have to ask a 12 year old at the supermarket to get you some bread.  But this Mr Dutch is not tall so I think he is just an exhibitionist.

We think he might actually be friends with the owner of the swim school so we unfortunately cannot kick him when he is bending over and my goodness, the temptation is overwhelming.  When you see a huge big black speedo bottom in the air and a poor little girl standing at head height with it, all you want to do is kick that sucker out of the park.

Our solution to this is to get our daughter to complain to her instructor that he is putting her off her butterfly but given she is a chicken she will not do it and we will have to put up with this fool for a further three weeks before we leave for the UK.

I don't really care what anyone thinks of me but I don't really want to be despised or get kicked in the bits by a stranger but maybe I am the minority here.  I am the only one too embarrassed to stretch in public and now I have busted hamstrings whereas everyone else in this country has no problem clucking like a chicken or having someone hit them in the face with a kettle ball in public if it means they do a good warm up prior to their real exercise.

Of course my hamstring problem could just be due to the fact I am going to be 40 this year and my body is increasingly readying itself for inevitable paralysis.  Either way, I had better get over it.