Nenya.net

Puncture and Paddy's night

So really, my weekends are getting somewhat monotonous-at least for you to read about and I don’t think my week days are getting much more exciting. I’ve started playing squash more regularly, which is fun- tho’ the court is not air conditioned, so it’s kind of warm when we’re playing. I’m slowly getting a bit better, fortunately I’ve found a friend who’s about the same level, so we’re able to ‘share’ winnings rather than just have one person exhausted and the other ‘unexercised’.

Well, in case you hadn’t guessed, I went on the walk this Saturday morning and then went for a swim, the leader of the walk noted that obviously the walk wasn’t tough enough and he needed to make sure we had a faster pace in the future. My response was along the lines of however hard he made the walk, even to the point where I would be collapsing, I’d still swim afterwards (tho’ may have a rest first), because swimming (at least for the amount I do), isn’t particularly tiring unless I’m really trying to exercise and therefore pushing myself to swim faster.

Friday night (lets not do this chronologically), several of us went down to Shanghai restaurant for supper- was v amusing because whenever anyone walked into the restaurant they basically did a walk round all the other tables to say hi to everyone else who they knew and then went over to the table where they were sitting- I did this and so did everyone who came in after me. It’s really amusing to be able to walk into a restaurant and know most of the people in there. This was pointed out to me when I was out eating with a friend who was in SL on a shortish consultancy, he said that it seemed like I knew everyone in the restaurant, it wasn’t quite true, but I did know a lot of people there and as they came into the restaurant they came over and said hi. I guess that shows how small the expat community is here (or how few places there are that people eat out at!)

Anyway, on Friday night (to get back to my original story), I had a puncture (v. common in SL). Now, my guards spotted this just as I was about to leave the compound (it was already quite dark) so I went down to the restaurant with one of my housemates instead. Anyway, I found that I did have all the necessary tools to change a tire in the back of the car, tho’ it take us (me and the guards) sometime to work out how to put the jack down.

Punctures happen fairly regularly in Freetown (and in general in SL), fortunately my mechanic was available on Saturday afternoon and took the (now punctured) tire into town in order to get a new inner tube fitted. I do need new tires as the ones I’ve got work, but could be a lot better than they are.

Saturday was St Patrick’s day, so the Irish community (having been practising Irish dancing all of last week) threw a huge party and invited most of the expat community, plus several locals, to a party on Saturday night. Was good fun- they even got some of the non Irish people attempting to do Irish dancing, wasn’t too hard, tho’ is exhausting after a while and seems to be fairly similar to English country/barn dancing but with three steps for everyone one or two that would be done in barn/country dancing. Was a long night most of my friends got home about 5am and I wasn’t home much before that.

Sunday was definitely a day of rest and in the afternoon I accompanied a friend down to Bureh beach. (I’ve been told that this is the correct way to spell Bureh, although one map that I have spells it without the ‘h’). The beach was deserted (well, there were about 2 other people there, plus those who sell the food) and very pleasant. We had barracuda and rice for lunch, which was delicious. I’ve had oysters there before, which are also very nice.

That’s probably enough babbling from me for the moment, next weekend may be slightly different- perhaps staying overnight at one of the beaches, but nothing’s definite yet.

Labels: beach, bouray, boure, bureh, car, puncture, squash, St Patrick's day, swim, walk

posted by Nenya @ 3:51 pm