April 3rd, 2012
Way back in late November I was sitting in the Olive Garden restaurant and lo and behold, who walked in?!? It was Martin from Sweden whom I had met here last year! What a great surprise.
He and his girlfriend Ida stayed in the Classic Huts over the New Years last year and they had shared in the hilarious game of charades with the Russians from Vladivostok in the wee hours of that night. They then returned in February from traveling south to Kerala and Naomi and I went with them to the Anjuna market. It was a great surprise to see him as I didn’t know that he was coming back to Arambol.
He sat down for a beer and we caught up our lives from the last 9 months. Martin was planning to stay in Arambol until April with the goal of writing a book, a fiction comedy about the nonsense of borders, the imaginary lines that we humans draw on maps to segregate ourselves. He was focussing on the Swedish/Norwegian border. Unfortunately he planned to write his book in Swedish so I wasn’t going to be able to read it. Meanwhile Ida would be staying in Sweden to focus on a new job in a fancy restaurant where she was in charge of the wait staff but she would be visiting for a couple of weeks from Christmas through to the new year.
Martin was staying in Classic Huts again and I was all but ready to move there at the start of December without even knowing that he was there. I had been staying in one of the buildings run by the Om Ganesh Guesthouses since Naomi and I returned from Kerala back in mid October. The price of the room was going to be at least double over the holiday season so I thought it made sense to move back to the cheaper huts. I had moved most of my stuff (I have definitely been accumulating things while I’ve been here) to the Olive Garden in the previous few days but on my last evening Martin finally accepted my invitation to come over for a game of chess around sunset time.
Well he was gobsmacked by the beautiful view and peacefulness of the place and suggested that he should move over here instead. We spoke with the pot-bellied manager Raul and worked out a price of 450 rupees ($9) per night for the entire season provided we stayed through the quieter months of March and April. Classic Huts’ rate was 350 so for $2 extra per night, it was a no brainer. Unfortunately an older guy from Finland or Norway had just moved in next door to me and was planning to stay a month but I think thanks to some slight influence from Raul he switched to a downstairs room and a couple of nights later Martin moved in next door as my neighbour.
The building consists of two floors with two rooms on each floor. The top floor has a nice balcony running the length of the front of the building that looks out at the ocean through the palm trees. I was quite excited to stay here for the next 4 months with a neighbour who is a good friend. Soon after moving in, Martin dubbed our place: “The Magic Villa”.
The Magic Villa - My room is on the top right:
Looking down at the Villa from the ridge:
I had recently purchased a hammock from the Olive Garden and Martin decided to get one too. This became his “office” for writing his book. Later a Swiss guy downstairs who had acquired a fridge from an Indian friend left and we moved the fridge to our balcony as a nice addition to our little piece of paradise.
In the first few days we decided to hunt for a decent chess board as we were both interested in playing. Most of our dinners together became venues for all out warfare on the black and white squares of the playing field. Initially I was winning all of the games but thankfully Martin took it in stride and stuck it out and finally on our tenth game he won. As the months passed, we became equals in the game.
One of many heated chess battles:
I also introduced him to Yaniv, an Israeli card game that I had learned in Manali last May. It’s a great game in that whether you are two people or five, it still works and is fun to play.
This was followed by what became one of our staple games, Tropic Euro, which Martin preferred to call “Plantation Nation”. It’s a game I downloaded for free to my laptop and it mimics a board game that I used to play with some friends back in Canada called “Puerto Rico”. The concept is that each player has an island with plantations of various goods such as bananas, cocoa and coffee. You plant various crops but also construct buildings that can either gain you money or victory points. To stop short of fully geeking out here, it’s a cool little game and Martin seemed to agree. Many of our evenings either started or ended with a game of Plantation Nation.
Ida arrived on Christmas day and it was wonderful to see her again. She is a kind, intelligent, beautiful Swedish blonde and I think that Martin has hit the jackpot. They’ve been together for over 3 years and they really suit each other.
Ida stayed for the next couple of weeks and I was soon introduced to a new card game called Halsta, a Swedish gem that is not widely known as it has been passed down from generations to generations in Martin’s family. Poor Ida has had to rise to the challenge of many a game in Martin’s family’s summer cabin where heated and wine fuelled games test the mettle of all. Friendly yet intensely competitive games combine sly play with blatant propaganda. I think she proved herself a worthy partner of Martin’s to his family with her card play. I hope someday that I’ll get to experience an Eklund family. If one successfully gets rid of all of their cards in one go (which isn’t too common), they get to exclaim “Nu Ar Ni Dar!”...roughly meaning “Now you are there”. I can’t wait to introduce my Canadian friends and family to this serious yet entertaining pastime.
Ida and Martin enjoying the view from the balcony:
Ida’s time in Arambol was short but it was great to celebrate a second New Year’s party with her and Martin, even though this time we were missing the charading Russians. It was sad to see her go but her
Ida's last night:
Our wonderful seafood dinner at the Outback restaurant:
Martin and Ida at the Olive Garden:
Ida's sendoff:
On one trip to Mapsa I decided to pick up a new game for Martin and me to play....Carrom. Back in Canada, my friends and I play a variety of games, one of which is Crokinole. It’s an octagonal board with a round playing surface where you flick these little pucks with your fingers and thumb. It’s kind of like mini curling or shuffleboard...yet slightly different. Well Carrom is the Indian version of this Crokinole.
Carrom is almost like pool or billiards crossed with Crokinole. It’s a square board with pockets in each corner. There is a “shooter”, a heavier, bigger puck than the other black and white pucks...oh, and there is one red one known as the “queen”. You flick the shooter at the other pucks with the intent of sinking them in the pockets. There are two main types of games with Carrom and we started off with the basic one where black pucks are worth 5 points, whites 10 and the queen 50. It’s simple in that any puck can be hit by either opponent. We eventually graduated to the more complex game which is more like pool where one person plays the black pucks while the other shoots for white. In the end we found this game more entertaining yet definitely more challenging. Martin and I were fairly evenly matched in this pastime but I’d have to give him a bit of an edge over me.
Playing Carrom:
Nice shot Martin!
This is Smiley, one of our canine friends who would visit us (I think the cookies and water we gave him helped). He gets his name from the smile he gives when he first greets you...it scared Martin at first as it looks like Smiley is baring his teeth but it really is just a smile:
Not everything is happy in the Magic Villa...at least not for this gecko:
I moved the gecko out of my room where the tiny ants were feasting on him and when we returned from supper, the big ants had almost finished him off:
By the end of his four month stay here, Martin managed to crank out over 120,000 words for his book and was very close to finishing his first run through of the story. He says it will take him a fair amount of time to edit it but I was impressed with what he’d produced (even though I couldn’t read it!).
Martin relaxing in his Ali Baba gear:
Then Martin decided to get us matching outfits for our gaming sessions...and no, we did not go out into public looking like this:
Martin leaving for lunch one day:
Martin with Cock's Town waiters Vijay and Sunny:
It was sad to see Martin go as he was a good neighbour, fun opponent in a variety of games and a great friend. Take care buddy and hopefully we’ll catch up for some more gaming one day...
Our parting shot:
Way back in late November I was sitting in the Olive Garden restaurant and lo and behold, who walked in?!? It was Martin from Sweden whom I had met here last year! What a great surprise.
He and his girlfriend Ida stayed in the Classic Huts over the New Years last year and they had shared in the hilarious game of charades with the Russians from Vladivostok in the wee hours of that night. They then returned in February from traveling south to Kerala and Naomi and I went with them to the Anjuna market. It was a great surprise to see him as I didn’t know that he was coming back to Arambol.
He sat down for a beer and we caught up our lives from the last 9 months. Martin was planning to stay in Arambol until April with the goal of writing a book, a fiction comedy about the nonsense of borders, the imaginary lines that we humans draw on maps to segregate ourselves. He was focussing on the Swedish/Norwegian border. Unfortunately he planned to write his book in Swedish so I wasn’t going to be able to read it. Meanwhile Ida would be staying in Sweden to focus on a new job in a fancy restaurant where she was in charge of the wait staff but she would be visiting for a couple of weeks from Christmas through to the new year.
Martin was staying in Classic Huts again and I was all but ready to move there at the start of December without even knowing that he was there. I had been staying in one of the buildings run by the Om Ganesh Guesthouses since Naomi and I returned from Kerala back in mid October. The price of the room was going to be at least double over the holiday season so I thought it made sense to move back to the cheaper huts. I had moved most of my stuff (I have definitely been accumulating things while I’ve been here) to the Olive Garden in the previous few days but on my last evening Martin finally accepted my invitation to come over for a game of chess around sunset time.
Well he was gobsmacked by the beautiful view and peacefulness of the place and suggested that he should move over here instead. We spoke with the pot-bellied manager Raul and worked out a price of 450 rupees ($9) per night for the entire season provided we stayed through the quieter months of March and April. Classic Huts’ rate was 350 so for $2 extra per night, it was a no brainer. Unfortunately an older guy from Finland or Norway had just moved in next door to me and was planning to stay a month but I think thanks to some slight influence from Raul he switched to a downstairs room and a couple of nights later Martin moved in next door as my neighbour.
The building consists of two floors with two rooms on each floor. The top floor has a nice balcony running the length of the front of the building that looks out at the ocean through the palm trees. I was quite excited to stay here for the next 4 months with a neighbour who is a good friend. Soon after moving in, Martin dubbed our place: “The Magic Villa”.
The Magic Villa - My room is on the top right:
Looking down at the Villa from the ridge:
I had recently purchased a hammock from the Olive Garden and Martin decided to get one too. This became his “office” for writing his book. Later a Swiss guy downstairs who had acquired a fridge from an Indian friend left and we moved the fridge to our balcony as a nice addition to our little piece of paradise.
In the first few days we decided to hunt for a decent chess board as we were both interested in playing. Most of our dinners together became venues for all out warfare on the black and white squares of the playing field. Initially I was winning all of the games but thankfully Martin took it in stride and stuck it out and finally on our tenth game he won. As the months passed, we became equals in the game.
One of many heated chess battles:
I also introduced him to Yaniv, an Israeli card game that I had learned in Manali last May. It’s a great game in that whether you are two people or five, it still works and is fun to play.
This was followed by what became one of our staple games, Tropic Euro, which Martin preferred to call “Plantation Nation”. It’s a game I downloaded for free to my laptop and it mimics a board game that I used to play with some friends back in Canada called “Puerto Rico”. The concept is that each player has an island with plantations of various goods such as bananas, cocoa and coffee. You plant various crops but also construct buildings that can either gain you money or victory points. To stop short of fully geeking out here, it’s a cool little game and Martin seemed to agree. Many of our evenings either started or ended with a game of Plantation Nation.
Ida arrived on Christmas day and it was wonderful to see her again. She is a kind, intelligent, beautiful Swedish blonde and I think that Martin has hit the jackpot. They’ve been together for over 3 years and they really suit each other.
Ida stayed for the next couple of weeks and I was soon introduced to a new card game called Halsta, a Swedish gem that is not widely known as it has been passed down from generations to generations in Martin’s family. Poor Ida has had to rise to the challenge of many a game in Martin’s family’s summer cabin where heated and wine fuelled games test the mettle of all. Friendly yet intensely competitive games combine sly play with blatant propaganda. I think she proved herself a worthy partner of Martin’s to his family with her card play. I hope someday that I’ll get to experience an Eklund family. If one successfully gets rid of all of their cards in one go (which isn’t too common), they get to exclaim “Nu Ar Ni Dar!”...roughly meaning “Now you are there”. I can’t wait to introduce my Canadian friends and family to this serious yet entertaining pastime.
Ida and Martin enjoying the view from the balcony:
Ida’s time in Arambol was short but it was great to celebrate a second New Year’s party with her and Martin, even though this time we were missing the charading Russians. It was sad to see her go but her
Ida's last night:
Our wonderful seafood dinner at the Outback restaurant:
Martin and Ida at the Olive Garden:
Ida's sendoff:
On one trip to Mapsa I decided to pick up a new game for Martin and me to play....Carrom. Back in Canada, my friends and I play a variety of games, one of which is Crokinole. It’s an octagonal board with a round playing surface where you flick these little pucks with your fingers and thumb. It’s kind of like mini curling or shuffleboard...yet slightly different. Well Carrom is the Indian version of this Crokinole.
Carrom is almost like pool or billiards crossed with Crokinole. It’s a square board with pockets in each corner. There is a “shooter”, a heavier, bigger puck than the other black and white pucks...oh, and there is one red one known as the “queen”. You flick the shooter at the other pucks with the intent of sinking them in the pockets. There are two main types of games with Carrom and we started off with the basic one where black pucks are worth 5 points, whites 10 and the queen 50. It’s simple in that any puck can be hit by either opponent. We eventually graduated to the more complex game which is more like pool where one person plays the black pucks while the other shoots for white. In the end we found this game more entertaining yet definitely more challenging. Martin and I were fairly evenly matched in this pastime but I’d have to give him a bit of an edge over me.
Playing Carrom:
Nice shot Martin!
This is Smiley, one of our canine friends who would visit us (I think the cookies and water we gave him helped). He gets his name from the smile he gives when he first greets you...it scared Martin at first as it looks like Smiley is baring his teeth but it really is just a smile:
Not everything is happy in the Magic Villa...at least not for this gecko:
I moved the gecko out of my room where the tiny ants were feasting on him and when we returned from supper, the big ants had almost finished him off:
By the end of his four month stay here, Martin managed to crank out over 120,000 words for his book and was very close to finishing his first run through of the story. He says it will take him a fair amount of time to edit it but I was impressed with what he’d produced (even though I couldn’t read it!).
Martin relaxing in his Ali Baba gear:
Then Martin decided to get us matching outfits for our gaming sessions...and no, we did not go out into public looking like this:
Martin leaving for lunch one day:
Martin with Cock's Town waiters Vijay and Sunny:
It was sad to see Martin go as he was a good neighbour, fun opponent in a variety of games and a great friend. Take care buddy and hopefully we’ll catch up for some more gaming one day...
Our parting shot:
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