Run To The Future

At night on the concrete slab by the guest house, under the flourescent lamps hanging in the trees (put there to ward off spirits, Cathy tells me) miniature frogs jump around, heading for the darkness. And the lizards scurry on the wall. At the Pakistani restaurant last night, it felt like the walls were alive, insects kept falling off the ceiling onto the meal and the walls crawled with lizards. I'm in this Internet cafe, slow connection of course, and they keyboard is very stiff. It's slowing down my typing, and now I'm wondering if they have deliberately installed these stiff keyboards to slow people down and make you buy more time. Is that possible? Am I too paranoid? I watched a film the other night, "Control" about Ian Curtis (Joy Division). I didn't know much about him except I knew he killed himself (by hanging it turns out). It was one of those ex-pat nights. Everyone there was a whitie. I always said I hate ex-pat scenes and want nothing to do with them (hardly saw any whities during my time in Malaysia), but at least you get to have decent conversations in English with them - even the little frogs speak good English! (And as you can imagine, there are a lot of little frogs in Vientiene.) Cathy told me about her dentist's (the butcher of Vientiene, I could hear his drilling through the wall as I waited for the doctor) grandmother who "gave up on life" and hanged herself in the closet. She was 104.