As it happened, I rolled home and straight into an exercise! I’d like to say I swapped my ‘Battle Rattle’ for a chemical defense ensemble, but rather the chemical defense ensemble went on underneath the Interceptor body armor.  Mercifully it’s been a cool June here in northern Japan. 

     It certainly was fun to get a few flights in, too, even if the weather obscured everything but the Pacific and the Sea of Japan. 

     Now back to the grind!

     Finally! Something that ought to be worth watching in the intellectual sense coming out of Hollywood! I hope this works!

     Thank for the tip, Mr Patriquin!

     At the leader’s signal, everyone would commence eating.  Did I mention everyone eats with their hands? Yes, the glass was the only utensil available, and you ate the food straight off the banana leaf.  In the past, whomever ate the fastest literally got the most, so in that sense it could get to be a kind of fight.  Today a roasted pigs’ head made an appearance at the table, it didn’t last very long!  In my handful of experiences with Boodle  Fighting, there has always been more than enough food.  Sometimes our hosts have to go find someone else to finish eating the food.  It’s certainly a fairly quick way to eat a lot of food. 

     Now for the food critic portion:  I usually eat the rice and the noodles.  The noodles are about like spaghetti, just cut shorter.  Today the cook put some sort of spice on them which tasted great! I like the adobo, but the cuts you tend to get here contain a lot of fat (not much goes to waste in this country).  Without utensils it’s difficult to trim the fat, so I didn’t eat a lot of the adobo today.  The fish and calamari was reportedly good, I didn’t fight very hard for the seafood, though. 

     I’m thinking about importing the Boodle Fight home.  I think I’ll use some sort of finger food to substitute for items we Westerners tend to eat from a dinner plate, though.  I’ll probably use pizza and finger sandwiches. 

     The second significant event today occurred while I was making coffee at the team house.  I’m not normally at this particular station, but I’ve been here several times a month or so ago, and I’m always billeted at one particular team house here.  As I poured water into the coffee machine, one of the guys who lives here more permanently asked if I’d looked into the reservoir before I’d poured.  

     "Of course I hadn’t," I said.  "Who does that?" I figured something was up, that seemed like an awfully odd question. 

     He then explained that last month they’d found a dead gecko in the reservoir.  Apparently it had become trapped, died, and it’s spirit had slipped away some time well prior, as the poor lizard was fairly well decomposed before one of them found it.  One of the co-workers complained of being sick for two days just due to the mental image.  One of my teammates mentioned there’d been a film on the coffee and a slightly odd taste.  No one really suspected anything, though; they thought it was just the water.    

     Naturally I asked if it’d been in there the last time I’d been here, and they assured me it certainly had been.  So there you have it, my teammates, co-workers, and I had all been drinking dead gecko coffee for who knows how long! 

     I think I’ve just developed another new habit–I’ll check the coffee machine before pouring the water into the reservoir! At least while I’m still in this country!

     I think I’ll be redirecting my search efforts. 

     – Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Kiwanis International Convention in St Louis, MO; 21 Jun 1951.  From Speaking My Mind.  New York:  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1989; p. 20.

**20080607 Update:   I found the photo my friend sent me where I was pointing at the spider.  You have to click on the photo to see it in its entirety (meaning both my smiling mug and the spider itself). 

     This place is no different, although I’ve had to adjust my tactics.  There is a field I have to traverse to get to work sometimes.  It’s not a very big field, and it has varying grass heights.  Parts of it get mowed, other parts are kept short by roving goats, and other parts rarely get cut so the grass grows about knee-height.  Some of my friends pointed out that sometimes people have found snakes in that field.  Snakes? Cool!

     Oh! The snakes are often cobras.

     I’ve stopped walking across that field. 

     . . . at night, that is.  Let’s not get unnecessarily frightened here.  I would love to see a wild cobra! From a relatively safe distance, anyway.  I figure I’ve got the goats as an early-warning indicator during the day when they’re out.  I just stay away from the tall grass where I can’t see anything. 

     . . . At least according to him! You know how these young folks can be brash sometimes.

     You’re doing great work, AJ! Keep it up!

     The fried ice cream was pretty good, I don’t think it was a honey glazing though.  There were some fruits to the side, which was really tasty.  But the ice cream was coated with creamed corn! It wasn’t bad, but personally I don’t think of creamed corn as a dessert component.  Come to think of it, I don’t think of any vegetable as dessert, and usually not fruit, either.  I can practically hear my wife cringing right now.