NIE FEDER LAHM SCHULE 2

NIE FEDER LAHM SCHULE 2

(With interjections and explanatory footnotes by Alfred)

And on the eve before the party

People had already gathered

Clustered in the marquees’ shelter

Sheltering from the Irish summer

(‘Summer’ being ‘Irish Summer’)

Swapping jokes and telling stories

Just like at the Tower of Babel

After God had sent them packing.

Cousins meeting for the first time

Familiy and friends remeeting

Bonhomie and friendly laughter.

And as the day passed into darkness

Ruairí kept himself most busy

From the marquee to the kitchen

And the kitchen to the marquee

Bearing food and filling glasses

Walking a familiar pathway

Which proverbs tell us breeds contempt

The pride that comes before a tumble.

And as he reached the kitchen doorway

His eyes not fixed upon the pathway

An obstacle his foot encountered

Fixed and rigid by the doorway

Causing him to fall quite heavy

(‘Heavily’ is better English

But it doesn’t fit the metre).

‘Twas on his left knee he landed

Cracking ribs and skinning elbow.

Lying in the dark of evening

Feeling pain but mostly foolish

But not so foolish as to try to

Stand up on his feet unaided,

Knocked politely on the doorglass

Seeing there his nephew Mikey

Asked politely for assistance.

Mikey gazed into the darkness

Hearing voices disembodied

Hearing pleas for his assistance

But seeing only trees and twilight

Until he happened to glance downwards

Saw the figure of his uncle

Sprawled in seeming relaxation

On the ground outside the kitchen.

Erect again his wound he studied

Seeing only cuts and bruises

Hoping it was nothing graver

Critical or semi-fatal

Major, dire or consequential

(Please stop using that thesaurus)

Resolved to limp on through the evening.

But morning saw the knee most swollen

Not unlike a largish grapefruit

Or indeed a smallish melon

(well, a smallish watermelon

Or a normal cantaloupe which

Is much bigger than a grapefruit

So maybe we don’t mention grapefruit).

NIE FEDER LAHM SCHULE

Our recent holiday in Europe was mainly to attend my mother's amazing 75th birthday party, which was held on the 9th August. In honour of the occasion I offer my very own poetic tribute, modelled on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Hiawatha. This is the first section - more will follow.

(Alfred: For those not aware of the fact - without wishing to spoil the suspense or anything - Ruairí managed to fall and hurt his knee quite badly during this event. So. Just so you know. OK? Might help with understanding the title (if you speak the appropriate language) and will definitely help with the first footnote.)

NIE FEDER LAHM SCHULE¹

(With interjections and explanatory footnotes by Alfred)

I

By the Rock of mighty Cashel

Tipperary’s fertile heartland

Lies the house of Ruairí’s mother

By trees and flowers all surrounded

(Seriously – quite surrounded

More trees than you can shake a stick at

Should you want to be so stupid)

Family and friends did gather

For to² celebrate her birthday

Really a momentous birthday

Seven and a half full decades

Since her birth in lovely Paris

(Capital of France is Paris

Home of poetry and wisdom

Boulevards and famous buildings

Museums and the Eiffel Tower

Degas, Monet and Picasso

(Yes, Picasso lived in Paris!)

Fresh baguettes and milky coffee

La Marseillaise and Edith Piaf

Jacques Chirac and Quasimodo -

Maybe that’s enough on Paris).

Preparations had been started

Months and months before the birthday

Marquees booked and traitors³ ordered

Extra fridges in the garage

Invitations by the hundred

All the family invited

Coming from the world’s four corners

Delaware and fair Ohio

Bogotà and Amazonas

Philippines and farthest Thailand

Greece and Germany and Laos

Switzerland – and even England!

France and Spain and many others⁴

Salmon poached, (a lot of salmon)

Lasagnas baked to feed the hungry

In the days before the party

And the days after the party

And even on the day of party

Just in case there was a shortfall

(Irish people⁵ hate a shortfall).

Footnotes by Alfred

¹           This was originally going to be entitled ‘The Ballad of Wounded Knee’ until I pointed out that  a) it wasn’t a ballad but a poem in trochaic tetrameter based on the famous poem ‘Hiawatha’ by Longfellow and    b) wittily naming your poem after an infamous massacre of native American Indians – however clever the play on words – might just come across as a tenny-weeny bit insensitive. Not that I want to be a killjoy or anything. 

As for what the actual title means, all will be revealed at the end. You could try putting the title into Google Translate if you want to.

²           With apologies to Pegeen Mike in Act 1 Scene 1 of ‘The Playboy of the Western World’

³           OK, if you don’t get this look up the French word for ‘caterer’

⁴           I think we can all see what he is doing here. Nice try, Memory Boy.

⁵            As opposed to which people that love a shortfall? Maybe Mongolians – after all a shortage of fermented yak butter has to be good news, yes?

VISAS, DOCTORS and TRAINS

VISAS, DOCTORS and TRAINS

Well, the ongoing saga of our visa application continued for rather longer than expected. Having been recommended to a certain Mr Sai of Saiawardz Real Estate and Consultancy Services as a 'fixer', I had recruited three more people to apply jointly with Martine and me on the basis that the more of us there were the cheaper the price we might be able to negotiate. So our Italian friend Maurizio and our two new German friends, Rob and Tina all trooped off to the office, filled in the forms, handed over our passports and paid over our $600 each. Mr Sai assured us that our work visas, residence permits and ID cards would only take a couple of weeks.

(Alfred: part of the requirement was, of course, passport-sized photos for the various documents. But Lao people must be very fussy about these photos because when the documents did eventually materialise, the photos had been extensively Photoshopped to make them more 'professional'!)

                              

Now, I have previous experience of bureaucracies in many countries: Rwanda, Ireland,  tried to post a parcel in a French post office. I've even been to Belgium! So we were prepared for a longer wait than that promised. But a long wait it turned out to be!!

And then, suddenly, we needed the visas extremely urgently. One of the very few downsides of moving here is the almost complete absence of a reliable healthcare system. There are hospitals but very few expats - and quite a lot of Lao - are not particularly keen on visiting them. There are two small clinics run by the French and Australian Embassies respectively and a new Thai hospital has recently opened near the airport which may (or may not) be dependable.

Anyway, this meant that when Martine was stricken with severe ongoing abdominal pains, the French clinic said we had to go to Thailand for tests! And not just across the border to Nong Khai but to Udon Thani, about 45 minutes from the border by car and considerably further by bicycle! And, without passports or visas, impossible!!

We did ask whether any of the hospitals in Vientiane would suffice and the Belgian doctor explained that, if he was sure - or even reasonably sure - what was wrong, there were hospitals here he would trust for specific problems: orthopaedics, malaria etc. But abdominal pain being such a vague symptom, a hospital in Udon Thani was the only trustworthy option.

It is funny how life works sometimes. Here we were with no visas or passports and no transport. Within fifteen minutes, both problems are solved. I ring Mr Sai and explain the problem. He says that he 'has just received' the passports and will drive over to meet us with them (Alfred: And kudos to Ruairí for keeping a straight face, both on the phone and when Mr Sai arrived). Then I ring my friend Maurizio and he says he will come immediately and drive us to Udon Thani! (Alfred: More on the debt owed to Maurizio later). 

Shopping centre beside the hospital (Big Macs!!)

And then I ring the VHI. Before leaving Ireland we had decided to sign up for the VHI International cover, partly because it was the only plan that allows you to transfer back into the Irish system without undergoing a new health screening. And I just want to place on record here that the VHI were absolutely brilliant - when we arrived in Udon Thani they had already arranged everything with the hospital, they rang every day while we were to check everything was OK, and made two folllow-up calls when we were back in Laos. Thanks, Lindsay! (Alfred: Or maybe Lynsey. Lyndsey. Whatever). And they were also great when the hospital began suggesting additional procedures that were not really necessary!

The hospital let me stay in the room and I also wandered around Udon Thani a bit (Alfred: Not a place you would choose to go to on holiday). Apart from one friendly family restaurant, it was a bit grim and I gave up on finding a bar where one could have a drink without fighting off constant unwanted professional female attention (Alfred: Nicely phrased).  The hospital diagnosed intestinal parasites and gave Martine the necessary medication and, after two nights in Udon Thani, we were able to go home.

And this was the really great part - we went home by train!! Yes, train! There are three trains a day (Alfred: Maybe four, it's hard to say) from Udon Thani to the border crossing at Nong Khai. As you can see from the photos the trains are old and battered but were spotlessly clean inside and the fare was about 50 cent for the two of us. It was so nice to see a bit of countryside, rice fields, trees and wide open spaces (Alfred: Mind you, there are less extreme ways to get out of Vientiane).

Udorn Thani (that's how they spell it here) railway station

 

  

Alfred: Of course, after a few days the symptoms reasserted themselves but the French Clinic were able to give a slightly different medication that - eventually - sorted out the situation. Intestinal parasites it was and stubborn buggers too).

RAINY SEASON
Worrying is stupid. It's like walking around with an umbrella, waiting for it to rain. Wiz Khalifa

The rain it raineth on the just

And also on the unjust fellow.

But mainly on the just because

The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

(Charles, Baron Bowen 1835-1894)

Well, the rainy season isn't quite as bad as we had expected, though when it rains, it really pours. Roads disappear under centimetres of water (Alfred: meaning you can't see the potholes) and you are drenched to the skin regardless of what you may or may not be wearing. One night cycling home from work I actually had to stop because I couldn't breathe with the volume of water pouring into my nose and mouth. Having done that, I realised that almost all the cars had likewise stopped as their wipers couldn't cope with the rain!!

The important difference (as we found out when we were back in Ireland in a chilly August) is that the rain is warm! So even if you are soaked, at least you don't feel miserable and frozen. (Alfred: And it was really cold, not quite monkey-asking-for-directions-to-a-welder cold but ridiculously cold for August). Of course, now that we are back in Laos, even Martine is hovering under the air conditioner as our bodies try and readjust.

Hiatus over!!

Oh dear. Given how often I have had to apologise in the past for the breaks in service, I am running out of ideas for new excuses. Suffice to say that today, the day we returned from our holiday in France/Ireland, will mark a new beginning in blog commitment – because, if I don’t, Alfred and my Aunt Máirín will gang up on me and exact a terrible revenge (Alfred: Yeah, that’s about it in a nutshell.).

And this is only some of the family (Alfred: Ruairi was off
buying bread in Lidl when this was taken!)

In the days (Alfred: 'days'? Don't be coy. It has been exactly ninety days - NINETY DAYS) since my last entry a lot has happened, some of it vaguely interesting but much of it not. Chiefly, Martine and I went back to Ireland (and also France in her case) for about three weeks. Alfred minded Obélix and the house, ably assisted by our friend Michael Headen (Alfred: And I too have stories to tell!). My mother threw the best birthday party of all time, lasting four days and with something in the region of 160 people. And I managed to wreck my knee and spent most of the holiday with my leg up on a cushion waiting for it to heal (Alfred: And a fine relaxing time you had too!!). 

So, it's off to bed and recharge the batteries and tomorrow, we shall start to catch up!!  Film and book reviews, the saga of the cat in the attic, waterboarding Lao-style, fruit updates, some bad jokes (Alfred: The History Channel +1 - where History repeats itself) and much, much more!!