It looked somewhat promising for flying today as the wind was in the right direction but it wasn’t quite strong enough. I did hike up to the launch and managed the longest of my “2 minute” flights, making about half a dozen passes of the ridge. Unfortunately with each pass I lost a bit more altitude than I gained and eventually I had to head out to land on the beach. No police hassles this time. It was a lot of effort for minimal flying but anytime I get in the air and land safely is a good thing.
That evening I started to play a game of chess with Panna at the bar, our first duel. Just before a first move could be made, a Russian looking fellow who I’ve seen hanging out in the restaurant over the past few days walked up to the bar and examined our board. Uh oh, we’re going to have an expert hovering over our game, dissecting and analyzing each move. Well, actually no, we won’t. He picked up one of Panna’s pawns and made an illegal move with it (moving it as if it were a knight). Panna and I exchanged glances, not sure what to do. He then did a similar illegal move with one of my pawns. Okay, thanks, and we moved our pieces to their starting positions and told him that we were starting a real game. The man, by now appearing a bit more intoxicated than I first realized he was, watched for a minute and then disappeared.
It was like an alien appeared at the bar:
But it was just some kind of preying mantis bug...very cool:
This was just the appetizer of “crazy” that was on sale at the bar this evening. The next course was served up in the shape of a skinny, bronzed and wrinkled firecracker of a French woman named Penny. Penny built a house on Arambol Beach 8 years ago when there was hardly anything else around. Now the bars and restaurants have encroached on her property and about a week ago I witnessed one of her tirades on a couple of the bars for playing loud music with thumping bass late one night. Well tonight she was in a happy mood. By this time Panna had just finished me off in chess. I had made a couple of silly moves which proved to be too costly to recover from.
Penny:
Penny sat down at the bar close to me and began to chat with us. She asked me “What eez zee worst zing in zee world?” Well, that might take me a little while to ponder...but I wasn’t offered this opportunity as she almost immediately answered “It’s shock!” Hmm, is that the “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that” factor or having an electric current pulse through your body? It was the former. “You zink you know someone for tree years, but zen ‘Bam’, in your face, you are...you are shocked!” she stated in a French accent with her low, raspy smoker’s voice. She continued to talk in non-specific phrases and it was tough to know what I could answer back so I just sat back, nodded and gave the odd verbal affirmation and tried to enjoy the ride. It didn’t take long for the conversation to move to stranger topics with Penny claiming that she was “connected with the Universe” and somewhat clairvoyant. Okay, let’s see where this goes. She gave me some examples to prove this but to me they just seemed like coincidental dreams to events in real life.
Manu modeling Penny's purse:
She talked about some paranormal guru who claimed that he had a vision that he was lying in a bed surrounded by his disciples. He was extremely sad and even in pain because he could tell that his followers really couldn’t understand what he could understand. Well, Penny said she could totally relate as many people who don’t understand her give her a headache. Since I’d already disclosed to her that I wasn’t religious or spiritual and definitely didn’t believe in the paranormal, I couldn’t help but ask her whether I was giving her a migraine! Unfortunately my words were lost on her.
-- Insert break in blogging here...guess who showed up as I was writing this, Penny of course, asking whether I was writing about anything interesting...of course! Okay, it’s now the next day and I’ve gone to a restaurant where everyone doesn’t know my name...back to the blogging --
And now for the main entree in craziness...a man entered the Olive Garden and caused Penny to say “Uh oh, here he comes...he’s crazy.” Whoa, you think he’s crazy? This should be interesting. The man’s beach blond dyed hair was spiked up. He was wearing some mirror sunglasses with some strange plastic ring around his neck. He had fingerless leather gloves on with some black arm bands which made it almost look like he was about to go rollerblading.
As he approached Penny (much to her dismay), I saw it as my time to escape and slunk off to a nearby table where Panna was sitting with an Israeli woman Zohar. Well, a couple of minutes later Penny opted for the same escape route came and occupied the last vacant chair. The man sidled up to our table and asked whether he could join but Penny told him that there was no space so he went off and sat at a nearby table. That didn’t last too long though and soon he managed to be seated with us. Having eavesdropped on our conversation, he stated that he was quite interested in what I had to say...well at least for about a minute. This guy was out there...I mean out there. It was a time that I wish I carried a concealed microphone because there was just so much nonsense and incredulous comments that it was almost too much to take in.
“Erik the Terrible” (as he proclaimed to be) happens to own half of the universe yet later in the conversation he wanted to charge me 100 rupees to answer a question of mine. I guess he doesn’t own any part of the Earth and hence his financial issues!?! I desperately wanted to get a photo of Erik so I thought it was best to start with one of Penny and then ask him. As I took the photo, he whipped off his sunglasses and insisted that the pic had to be with his eyes rolled back in his head...lovely. I agreed, only if he then let me take a picture with his sunglasses on. Here’s the result:
Erik the Terrible:
But first he made me take this pic:
Thankfully there didn’t seem to be any “crazy dessert” on this evening of insanity as I was full already. An option could have been this Chilean fellow, Juan, who I’ve seen from time to time dressed up in a cowboy hat, sunglasses and a dress...but I guess we can’t hog all of the craziness at the Olive Garden...
No comments:
Post a Comment