Today..

.. didn't start well.

but

I face-booked my woe; collected cyber-hugs and some towels, and strode forth into the autumn sunshine to do battle with gremlins inner, outer and overall.

I had a very good toasted sammo.

I only bought one packet of biscuits.

Dear ones in the family spent time with M while I was out; I returned to a much happier M and felt glad to be back.  Throughout it all, I wore...

a 

fixed

grin!

(sorry)

The other day...

I heard
half a conversation
he
pink-cheeked
intent
she
fierce
small
folded in on
her drama

claw-hand clutched his
as
engaged
willing
he leaned toward
her

I heard only him
every
earnest
"ok'
tightened the grasp
her hair
shook
against his willing words

interesting
the more
he tried
the harder
she resisted;
no simple solution
would fit

I left;
thinking
however easy
the answer
how hard
to accept it
and give up
the satisfaction
of such
concentrated
regard.

Breathing a little more slowly..

I have now found a Net cafe which doesn't charge by the wounded bull .. but still can't spend as much time as I'd like, cos we only gots one key to the hotel room and M needs to sleep soon.

Seoul? Well... hard to say. I've never been in a huge Asian city as clean as this one, which is a good and very impressive thing, given that this city is home to about 10 million people, and purrhaps could be furgiven a bit of grot. The smog is fairly light, even thought the traffic is heavy. But the downside is that people still have the habit of spitting, something I find really disgusting. It makes me feel icky enough to be unable to eat, if there's too much of it. As for the charming practice of blowing one's nose without use of a hanky or tissue ... irrggG.

We've been very slow to do much here, as our jetlag from Finland is still striking at unhelpful hours - one can't do day tours when one's internal clock says day is 2am - midday. Neither is room service quite possible, when it's not available 24 hours a day. I woke at 3am this morning, all fired up and ready to knock off a palace or two, and I couldn't even dial up a cuppa tea. Our hotel is not the most salubrious, even tho we're in the centre of the city. For a start, I think it's probably more focussed on Korean guests, as the possibility of English anything is fairly low. And our room has a wet spot... and the only truly edible thing on the room service menu (although this shows their excellent priorities!) is the coffee, which is served with cream unless you really DEMAND milk instead.

Seoul is so huge I don't know where to start - the night lights are spectacular, especially the 40 storey high graphics projected onto specially built panels all the way up a nearby hotel. The old palace grounds are across the city square from us, and this afternoon we wandered through them on our way to an exhibition of 20th C Latin American mural art. Most of the temples/residences are either 'new' copies, or radically revised/altered versions of the original, either because of something like fire, or something like a Japanese or Northern Korean invasion. I think it ends up a bit like the old axe story - I've had this axe for 30 years; I've had 5 new blades and 4 new handles, but it's still the same old axe.

I've tried to have some things made at the tailor, but apart from the cost, which is NOT Thailand-esque at all but rather expensive, I missed out when they underestimated how much fabric was needed for a coat BIG ENOUGH TO GO AROUND A HUGE WESTERN GODZILLA-GRRL LIKE ME. Oh, sorry, was I shouting??

Tomorrow we are going on quite a long tour around Seoul's hot spots, ending up at a huge street market. We walked through this same market yesterday, spending a couple of hours shuffling through the 'everything you could possibly imagine' stalls and tripping over the displays on the pathway... I didn't buy a single thing, I was too overwhelmed. And somewhat annoyed that the ONLY thing I didn't see was fabric. No point looking at clothes for miniature wimmin, or ceramics and glassware, or souvenirs (I'm truly over souvenirs).. or amazing displays of foodstuffs I can't identify. The fish market has species in it I reckon are actually plasticine models made by the local kindies on their sci-fi days.

I had a purrfume accident leaving Helsinki, so I'm not even looking at that here. Also, I have found in the past that Asian purrfumes tend to be either strong gardenia, or strong lily, or green tea. None of these scents are tempting to me, spoiled as I am by my very early venture into lily of the valley via Dior's 'Diorissimo' (and my good taste was vindicated when I read that it was Princess Diana's favourite). And green tea is a DRINK fagodzake!

I seem to be a bit speechless. News from home about springtime and the badness of the cats on the home front is just killing me. All I can think about is that, come Tuseday next week, I can begin a long period of deck therapy, with my fatty catty nearby in case I need to wuffle my face in his tum, and my Miss-chief Mummy-Mangler ambushing my ankles and returning them to their usual happily scarred state...

Today brought to you by large Asian city eau-de-rotten cabbage mingled with top notes of exhaust and dust, and a long after-whiff of 'orrible drains. My blasts of Magnifique are completely useless as a force field. I can't smell it at all, which is a bummer considering the city purrfume is up me nose with a vengeance. That is one of life's little nasal ironies...

Brain-dump, Monday 25th August

[Finally I've found a WiFi cafe near the hotel]... just reading good wishes from many people, who have taken the time to send me/us lovely messages of good health and hugs and gin and humour, and one hilarious story of a huge cat fart - I’m rolling around the bed giggling at that one, thanks Toni!

M has had a rocky few days - yesterday he was very bored and irritated (as was I, a long story behind THAT which might make it into this immortal blog).. today he was fine in the morning, and we decided after seeing the doc [she reported good blood tests but made it clear that she wanted him to stay in until Wednesday morning for further treatment, they want to be QUITE sure that a) his liver is ok, and b) his blood pressure is under control - it’s been up and down so that’s not stable yet]... that we would both have afternoon naps. I had quite a good snooze in spite of a lot of street noise; then got started on umpty phone calls to sort out new bus and hotel bookings. The travel ppls in Tallinn in particular were very impressive, double-checked all my arrangements made over the weekend and even discovered (or organised, I’m really not sure) that there would be no ‘late’ or ‘no-show’ fees. Wunderbar!

But at 7pm M was sounding very pale on the phone; I quickly had my Net fix and then loped over to see him. His fluctuating blood pressure has given him some headaches, and tonight it was very bad. He was upset and worried and anxious and in pain and impatient and irritated and sad.... I held his hand, and nipped out to ‘get a cuppa tea’ for which read ‘take the nurse aside and ask her if he could have something to help with the anxiety’ ... she (Xenia) is a very good nurse; she’s been the only one who’s stopped in just to chat and see that he’s ok for little things.

[Here is a rundown on Russky/American Klinik praktices - no changing of ze bed or towels since M was admitted; much less attention to what I consider to be good antiseptic practices... the nurses don’t take away rubbish of any kind (including the umpteen little pill cups and bits of gauze/tape/needle cover bits); they don’t tidy the bed and make the sheets smooth again; no attention to if M has enough water; no waterproof wrapping over the bandages on his wrists to help him shower (he’s had cannulas in both wrists, cos the first arm vein packed up after 24 hours; it was moved, then moved back, the poor man is pretty sore now)... I guess we could make more fuss and perhaps get more care, but it seems not only a big effort, but rather ungrateful. Yesterday was especially difficult because M’s nurse had no English, which was very trying for him when he was asking for help with a headache, and then trying to tell the nurse that it was no better..]

Tonight he had had extra b/p meds, but had a bad headache and was really not himself. He had a shot of something, then a godly doktor arrived - he patted M’s hand; gripped his shoulder in a manly sort of way, and assured him that there is nothing badly wrong and that he was NOT to worry and all would be better in the morning, including the problem of the fluctuating blood pressure. M was briefly cheered by this, but his headache was still bad, and eventually we asked for more help. He had another shot, and diazepam of some variety to help him relax, and he was finally ready to let me tuck him in and leave him to try to rest. I really do hope he feels better in the morning, *I* may not be able to stay cool and stoic if he’s still in pain and Wednesday’s possible departure gets question marks all over it...

I dined on 2 cheese sammos, thanks to finding a small superette on the way home, and having just enough roubles left to buy a packet of sliced cheese. I also have a packet of rather nice poppy seed crackers, an endless supply of extremely fake-o apricot jam, butter and condensed milk (thanks to the hotel fridge), a bit of chocolate, and coffee. My most important supply was the remaining small tin of gin and tonic, which is MY version of a valium and a little lie-down! I shall now invoke the latter part of that statement and see if I can collapse. It’s windy tonight and my door is rattling; it sounds JUST like someone trying the handle to see if it’s locked, most annoying. And a little while ago, we had the fourth lot of fireworks in a row - every night, comes the revolution! I do wish they’d get ON with it!

G’night. Seeya on the webs tomorrow. I can feel a major fix coming on, along with my must-do list which includes buying a blood pressure machine, going to the English book shop again, buying some more washing powder, and having a proper meal if I can. I ought to be eating my main meal at lunchtime so the evenings can be spent at the clinic with no worries about cafes being closed a la last night, when I leave M to come back to the hotel; but I can’t fancy hot chicken and oily fried veggies at that time of day. I want a toasted sammo! Such a thing has not made itself evident to me here, yet. The pizza I had for lunch was pretty good, nice thin crunchy crust, and good veg. Spoiled by the many people aiming for early-onset emphysema over their desserts. Oh yum, tiramisu and a fag.

Ickkkk.

Happy little Vegemites...

... and whirling dervishes have something in common, they both make me feel like toast.

Orright that's got the bad joke out of the way... sheesh I'm BUSY.  Getting ready for two trips away, one this Saturday, for a week.  To Cairns, with friends.  To be warm and snorkel and see lots of budgies and nature stuff and spend monies and be relaxed and go 'huh??' when the locals say it is too cold to swim when the water is only 25 degrees.  We south coast NSW types are made of sterner stuff when it comes to sea.  If it doesn't burn with cold, freeze our knees into giant goosebumps and make us regret ever getting out of bed, it doesn't count.

I think Cairns is gonna be great.  I went there two years ago, at much this time of Canberra winter, and it was lovely, balmy, so green while we were in severe drought.  Mind you half of Innisfail and the hinterland had just been mown down by a cyclone, so you have to keep your purrspective.  This time, instead of just friend and myself, we are taking her bloke and my M along.  We're staying in an apartment rather than with family, and we'll have our own car.  I think what we finally end up doing, as group decisions and individual choices, will be very interesting.   And maybe this time friend and I won't need to spend the entire trip home in stunned silence after a rather intense and overwhelming amount of the family factor!

My week so far has been spent getting ready for a much longer trip, to Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Korea. We leave for this trip only three weeks after we return from Cairns, so there's a need to get little things done, like passports and visas and accommodation bookings and convincing the specialist tour advisors that when we say 'First Class rail overnight' we don't mean 24 hours on a clapped-out pre-Iron Curtain bus with no seats and a soused driver.  Yeah, yeah, call us picky.  But at my time of life (older than you think) I prefer to know in advance I won't be spending endless hours standing up with nothing but a hat-rack full of chickens to hold onto.  I likes my comforts.  I likes my hotels with lifts, bathrooms on the same floor, doors which stay closed, and beds which don't mysteriously part in the middle in the night, as the bottom sheet loses what ever force it had to keep two single beds on castors together.  Hotels which don't have a corridor full of over-excited Romanian schoolgirls intent on slamming every door seventeen times before 2am.  Hotels where you go and stay and the everyday comforts of western civilisation are yours for the price.

We discovered on our previous long European trip that small things CAN'T be taken for granted, like lifts, or porters in railway stations, or even (once) booked seats in first class on a train.  That train was overfull of people going to the next city for the next World Cup soccer game, and there wasn't no way they was gonna give up a seat booked to a mere Aussie bleeder in sensible shoes and Prada purrfume.  Nup.  We hung on, swaying and cursing, for an hour and a half, until the slimey limeys and wanker yanks got OFF.  I emoted.

But what am I really talking about here?  The power of small things, to make or break a day, or the difference between essentially comfortable and essentially miserable (try no hook for the shower spray, so you can't have a shower without drenching the entire bathroom, soaking the towels, sending floods onto the carpet, and endangering your dicky knee on the slippery floor).  When Il Sardonico, the night manager in our Roman hotel, greeted us by demanding to know how much we'd paid the taxi driver and then laughing at us for getting ripped off (reading my post earlier on said driver, you'll realise we were still astonished we made it to the hotel alive!).  Like, hey dude, a mere hello would do!  Mind you we relented later when we met Ms Charming Roman day-shift manager, who spoke to us about the hotel cats, "Tritticano and-a his wife".  Awww..

Small things have taken up all my brain space, breathing space, and most of my desk (dammit, most of my study) for days.  I have listed, tracked, hunted, deleted, dealt with and despaired of eleventy tiny things.  I feel most achievable, I really do.  I also know that if I don't do this in excruciating detail now, I'll spend  the first three weeks of the trip saying, regularly and triumphantly:" I KNOW WHAT I FORGOT!" and I will drive M mad.  I will also drive myself mad trying to shop for whatever these critical items are, because the law of international shopping in strange cities is that whenever you go to find nail polish remover, it will be hard to find, miles away, unidentifiable in Swedish form, four times the going price for diamond dust, and available about 50 metres away in the other direction with a huge sign on it in English saying ON SALE.

Another small thing is the delight of a Strawberrynet parcel which arrived yesterday containing a new purrfume.  So the scent trail for today is "Aigner Woman" by Etienne Aigner in Leather.  Mmm, leather....