Another birthday has whizzed past.  Fifty-seven and counting.  I spent this one with Sue and a group of her mentor colleagues at a karaoke bar in Sarikei, our nearest largish town, where we go to buy things like yoghurt and margarine, when there is none to be had in Saratok.  You enter the place through an anonymous door in the high street and go up a flight of stairs to a single large room with a bar and some beaten up tables, chairs and sofas. It's the latest happening place where the coolest dudes in town hang. The attraction for us English speakers is that they have a grainy selection of English language karaoke videos.  These mainly comprise people with 1980s clothes and hairdos singing songs we've never heard of whilst walking around middle European towns.  Still we did manage a passable version of "dream, dream, dream" to the backdrop of a black and white film of the Everly brothers and "don't cry for me Argentina" supported by someone who I w...

It was Sue's birthday on Tuesday and she got home in the afternoon with leftover cake from a surprise birthday party at one of her schools.  In the evening I had my regular class of nine year-olds and little Ivy brought yet more cake.  Sue cut it and brought slices into the classroom for the kids as we worked on making pictures of "beautiful clean" and "ugly polluted" beaches.  The nine year-olds are a delight to teach and my relationship with them is becoming more and more relaxed as I get used to being around little ones and they get accustomed to being taught by a big pink old man.  I was especially impressed with Qian Hui's "ugly polluted beach", which included a rabbit on its side with its eyes closed, obviously dead and a mysterious lump with some squiggly lines emerging from it, helpfully labelled "smelly vegetable". Yesterday evening Sue invited our neighbours' children to come into the house and play.  Jasper, Jason and F...

One of the problems of teaching English in Sarawak is that almost all of the readily available material is very Europe and US centred.  This even applies to the climate.  Brits are famous for talking about the weather and English textbooks are full of it too.  Whole chapters are devoted to the seasons and the way they change, but then we have a lot of weather to talk about.  Not so in Sarawak, within spitting distance of the Equator.  There are just two seasons here - "rainy" and "rainier", the annual variation in daylight hours is about ten minutes and the annual temperature range is about fifteen degrees, from 25-40c, day and night.  God knows what the locals do for smalltalk. Earlier this week I was preparing a lesson for a sparky group of nineteen year olds and the textbook had some photos of the Beatles and the fall of the Berlin Wall as teaching aids.  I assumed they'd have heard of the Beatles and I decided to use the material to see what re...

Life's been a bit of a struggle for the last couple of weeks.  I've had some sort of virus which has given me a sore throat and a feeling of listlessness.  Then last weekend a stomach bug on top of it, which left me immobile for twenty-four hours.  I know it's been bad, because I didn't feel like running for days on end (except for the occasional sprint to the toilet that is).  I finally staggered round the local running track yesterday morning and began to get the feeling of slowly starting to come through something. While this has been going on I've continued to take my English classes, on the basis that it's marginally easier to carry on than to cancel them.  Mostly they've been fine, although I'm coming to understand why thirteen is regarded as such a difficult age - for sick teachers to cope with at any rate. Sue has had the same bug whilst working twice as hard as me.  Because of our schedules we hardly seem to see each other during the week...

It's hot, hot, hot, right now.  Even for Borneo.  The last two or three days have been almost cloudless, allowing the Sun to suffuse the countryside with a buttery yellow light and making the temperature almost unbearable.  Yesterday evening Sue's colleague Catherine invited me on a cycle ride to a nearby longhouse which she had visited recently and where there was a promising bike trail. About ten kilometres out of Saratok we turned up a backroad which quickly became a dirt track.  It was hard work with the Sun still above the tree line and passing four-wheel drives throwing up clouds of dust, their occupants peering at us inquisitively, then smiling and waving.  Eventually we came to a turning off the track down to a longhouse, which to my surprise turned out to be the one of which my friend Ambrose is Headman.  I had been taken there by Ambrose about three months ago and could not  remember the way back.  The picture above was taken ...

In the UK I felt in the grip of two opposing forces - guilt and concern for Dad on the one hand and on the other the desire to get back to Borneo as fast as possible to carry on with what feels like my "real" life.  After two weeks the dynamic equilibrium shifted from Lincoln to Sarawak and I felt able to book my ticket back.  I arrived in KL on Thursday morning after a twelve hour flight from Heathrow feeling tired, bewildered and very old.  Sue had been spending a few days with a fellow Mentor, Catherine, in the Cameron Highlands, high in the hills of the Malaysian Peninsular and the plan was to spend the night together in KL before flying back to Sibu the next day.  I got to the hotel at about 9am desperate to get some sleep and crashed out in a sun-lounger by the pool until our room was ready after lunch. It was good to touch base with Sue that evening.  We're both finding that the variety of experiences we've had over the last ten years is making us det...

Suddenly the emotional string that connects me to my Dad got pulled too tight and I had to step on a plane, well several actually, to see him.  After six months in hospital following a pointless knee operation, which he wheedled out of the NHS with great skill and determination, he was discharged home with an "intensive home care package" and from our 'phone conversations it sounded like he was struggling to cope. In fact, by the time I got to Lincoln, tired and jet-lagged following a thirty-odd hour journey, the initial crisis had passed and he was beginning to adapt to his new wheelchair bound existence.  Far from being a sick man awaiting my succour, he greeted me as if my arrival was a pleasant surprise motivated by my desire to see him rather than by his desperate circumstances.  I felt conned and manipulated like I have been so many times before.  Then I felt guilty for feeling exasperated that he didn't seem more sick than he was. I've given myself ...