Through The Keyhole

It’s been a long time since I mentioned my knee. I injured it playing football in April 2003. I landed awkwardly and it felt as if my lower leg went one way while my upper leg went the other. It swelled up a treat, so I went to the local hospital the next day and waited around for five hours before being given a pair of crutches. I was told I’d probably torn a ligament and that I should rest and come back in two weeks.



Two weeks later, it was still slightly swollen and my doc said I’d either torn a ligament or torn some cartilage. I’d need keyhole surgery. I would also need physio. They’d be in touch.

A few weeks later, with my knee still swollen, I went to a private physio, who got rid of the swelling after just a couple of treatments – ultra sound and some other tingling electrical procedure. After a few weeks of private physio and a few months of doing things I hate like swimming, I was finally back to full fitness and started playing football again. Six months after the original injury, when I was back playing again, I got a call from the NHS physio telling me they were ready to see me. Useful.

Six games later, the knee had gone again. I was back at the end of the NHS waiting list.

I decided I should stop playing football until I had proper medical treatment. With no medical insurance and no money, I had to wait for the NHS. In January of 2004 they booked me in for an MRI scan – the earliest they could see me was August. Between that January and August I got the job out here. I flew out to live here 10 days after the MRI scan took place. The scan was inconclusive.

Before I left, I asked my doctor how long I would have to wait for an operation. He said about 18 months. I couldn’t stay on the waiting list while I wasn’t living in England, though. It seemed that I would have to rejoin the list when I finished my jaunt in Singapore.

My employers here pay for medical insurance but, of course, my condition was pre-existing, so they wouldn’t cover it. This year, though, I had to change insurers and, for some reason that I still can’t quite fathom or believe, they are quite happy to pay for the operation that I need, despite the fact that the injury occured three years before they took me on.

Not a moment too soon, either. The knee’s creaking a bit and my doc says I should get it done asap or I’d have to have a “whole knee done”.

The operation will involve taking a hamstring out of my leg and using it to create a new ligament in my knee, all via keyhole surgery. My doc showed me a video of the procedure, which I hadn’t wanted to see at all, but he seemed to laugh when I said I didn’t want to see it. The op takes place in about 3 weeks. Apparently, if all goes well, I should be playing football again in 6 months.

This is extremely good news for me. I was pretty fit when my injury first happened, but can't be bothered with playing sport unless it's a ball sport or something similar. Swimming and going to the gym, for example, leave me cold. Consequently, I'm probably 3 stone heavier than I was back when I was playing centre midfield once a week. By the time those 6 months of recuperation have passed I'll be 32. Still in my prime, eh?

I’m going to have a general anaesthetic, which is a relief, to be honest. As soon as the doc told me that I started to relax a bit. Sure, it might hurt a bit afterwards, but at least I won’t experience the drill entering the knee, or hear the sound of the surgical scissors snipping the hamstring.

Bizarrely, I’m actually much less nervous about this than I was about the dental treatment I had recently.

Please don’t leave any comments that might make me more nervous. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.

Where Have I Been?

After a few weeks of frenzied blog action, it's now been over a week since my last post. Why?

Let me tell you why.

If you view my profile above, you'll see that there's a link to "mikeysmovies", which, when you click on it, takes you nowhere.

This isn't just some kind of postmodern statement on the futility of life or anything like that. It was actually intended to be a working site, with movies made by me on it. I've been making movies for just over a year, but haven't found out how to post them on the internet. Also, none of the movies I've made so far have been appropriate for an internet audience. In the main, you see, I've made movies for school. So far, I've created a news programme, a version of American Idol featuring teachers singing badly and, the latest, a documentary about a school trip.

Editing movies is a very meticulous, time-consuming excercise, especially if you're me (extremely anal). I spent about 20 hours last weekend editing my documentary, which left me with six minutes of actual documentary.

I store my footage on a portable hard disk. Late two Sunday evenings ago, I dropped the portable hard disk. The file that had taken me 25 hours to make wouldn't open. It was corrupted, apparently.

I started again, saving work onto another portable hard disk while someone in Paris Hilton (my local electrical shop) fixes my old one. Nothing could go wrong this time. I'd learnt my lesson. I would take extreme care to avoid the circumstances that led to me dropping the hard disk. Everything would be fine.

So, this weekend just gone, I worked on it all day Saturday. Then I think I must have pulled the USB lead out of my computer while it was saving, because, after 8 hours work on Saturday, the file refused to open.

So, all day Sunday and for as much of Monday and Tuesday as possible, I've been editing the film for the third time. Fortunately, it gets quicker every time because I kind of know which bit goes where. This time, too, I decided that it might be an idea to save something which is known as a "backup file", or something. Of course, nothing went wrong. It never does when you save a backup file. I finished a first draft of it today. It's 12 minutes long and will probably be shown once in assembly.

It has taken me about 50 hours.

No one asks me to do these things. I quite like it, actually. Gives me a chance to be a bit creative. I get the impression, though, that most people think that I just record all of the footage in order and edit it as I film. That's rather galling.

Anyway, that's where I've been.

Victuals

Singapore is a pretty good place to eat. There’s plenty of variety and it’s extremely cheap – it’s often cheaper to eat out than it is to go to the supermarket. Having guests here has ensured that I’ve got out a bit, and I’ve revisited a lot of my favourite places in the last three weeks.

As well as the usual curries, noodle dishes and rice dishes, I’ve had a couple of these beauties. It’s an Indian Muslim dish called the murtabak. It’s made of thin dough and contains vegetables and your choice of meat filling. It tastes like a cross between a pizza and a pancake.

I’ve also been to a steamboat restaurant a couple of times. As you can see, you get a large container of soup in the middle of your table which has a gas hob underneath it. The soup keeps bubbling away while you go off and collect your raw food. They’ve got the works there: noodles, veg, prawns, beef, pork, offal, eggs and tofu. You chuck it in the soup and leave it to cook for a couple of minutes before ladling it out. It’s $12 and it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.

That’s a mere four English pounds. Bargain.

It’s not the tastiest though, sadly. This is probably because we’re unused to the timings, so don’t always scoop everything out until it’s too late. Vegetables, for example, have been known to disappear without trace.

You also get long detached prawn antennae mixed up with your noodles if you're not careful.

The meat’s not quite A grade either, but then, what do you expect for four quid?

Looks like washing up on Scouts camp, doesn't it?

Cabbie Logic

Ubin is a tiny, sparsely inhabited island just off the coast of Singapore. You get there via bumboat, which costs $2 for the 10 minute trip and you can cycle around the island after hiring a bicycle which costs $2 for a day. It takes about 25 minutes by car to get from my house to the jetty to take the ferry to Ubin. I don’t have a car, so I take a taxi. This doesn’t cost $2.

Appallingly weak link as that is, our taxi driver who took us to the jetty where we took the ferry to get to Ubin was, to put it politely, rather garrulous. Taxi drivers in Singapore are generally fairly quiet and leave you to take your journey in peace. This, I suppose, is because there isn’t much to chat about. There’s no bartering to be done as all taxis are metered. They don’t try to offer to take you to silver shops so that they can get commission. They don’t give opinions on politics very often either. Every now and then, though, you get one who wants to chat, and these chatty ones tend to make up for all the chatting not done by any of the others.

Chatty ones tend to focus on one of the same three topics: football, titbits of information about Singapore or the long hours, low pay and high cost of cars for taxi drivers.

On the first topic, most of them are Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea fans, which is probably no surprise to anyone. However, I did meet one once who was a Luton Town fan, so we had a nice chat about David Pleat’s all-arms sprint across the pitch that time they got promoted and before his face turned into rubber.

On the second topic, the titbit of information about Singapore that I’ve had proffered to me most frequently is that there’s a section of expressway which has a very wide central reservation full of plants. According to the cabbies, these plants can be removed in a jiffy by some mechanical means in order to turn the expressway into an emergency military runway in case of war. This is a state secret, known only by taxi drivers and all of the people who listen to them.

On the topic of low pay for cabbies, I've been informed that they have to make $90 a day before they start making profit. A 45 minute journey (and there aren’t many longer journeys on this tiny island) cost me about $25 the other day, so they’re working for a few hours before they make any money. Most of them work at least 12 hours a day. Some do this 7 days a week. Nasty.

I once had a taxi driver who taught me a few words in Mandarin too, which was quite good fun and a bit of a change. However, I didn't like him very much because, after I'd had a few goes, he told me that it wasn't a language you should speak in a cissy way like I was.

Today, we had the taxi driver to beat all taxi drivers. He spoke very quickly. In fact, I’ve never met anybody who has spoken quicker. So rapid was his delivery that I only managed to pick up about one word in fifteen. Trying to work out what he’d said was like trying to work out a cryptic crossword clue when all you’ve got to go on is the one word answer.

In fact, he reminded me very much of a not-drunk-or-old-or-fictional Rowley Birkin QC from The Fast Show, a character who incomprehensibly slurred his way through most of an utterance with only a phrase or a word pronounced clearly.

This cabbie was talking about religion, I think. This is what he said:

“Lkfdsjdsk f jkds jfds dsk fds dsjiofwej God is love. Fdskl fdjfds fdsjlkdfs jasloif as fds sf my wife is my God my children are my angels. Fakl ahjie a f foif af fjhld saji fail fdsa religions cause wars. Jsfsal fsjkl fsajklfs lskj fsakjfs lks whoever causes religious wars deserves to die. Kdsfih saoi fdsjiosa fdsaoijsa Christians, Hindus, Muslims. Dsakj flfdsa fdk fsa hfi aifhsdi fsdi fsai if anyone did that I’d get a hammer and smash their face with it. Fskalfs fsjdfd s fdsjifdsojsfd sai fdsi Muslims, beards, hats.”

So, as far as I could work out he was preaching a message of love and peace and death and destruction to all men.

What did I do as he was speaking at me? I did the smiling, nodding thing with the occasional "yeah, yeah", thrown in for good measure, of course.

When we finally got to Ubin I took some more pictures.

Upside-down Tree 

Pots (Lots) 

Rusty Leaves 

House By The Sea 

Flower 

Pool For Insects 

Three Little Cups 

Shrine Before Sea 

Shrine 

Duck, Dive, Wheel, Weave

For the May Day bank holiday weekend I went to Bangkok with my parents who are visiting at present. It’s only about a two hour flight from here and flights are cheap cheap, so this is, I think, my fourth visit in the last couple of years. Each time I’ve been, though, I’ve been with someone who is making their first visit to Bangkok, so I do the same things.

So, I made my fourth trip to the Grand Palace, where I tried to get this photo right for the fourth time. I made my fourth trip to Wat Pho with the giant reclining Buddha. I made my fourth trip in a long-tailed boat down the canals of Bangkok, buying my fourth beer from the one-boat “floating market”. However, my parents’ enthusiasm ensured that it was anything but a chore to revisit these places. Actually, the places themselves are well worth at least four visits anyway.

The highlight of the weekend, though, was probably the tuk-tuk journeys, which started off being rather hold-tight-and-close-your-eyes kind of trips for my folks. By the end of our second day, though, they were saying “shall we take a tuk-tuk?” every time we had to take a journey. Indeed, on our last night, the meal at the restaurant was just something that happened in between tuk-tuk journeys.

I love taking tuk-tuks myself, which seems a bit odd seeing as I hate riding pillion on a motorbike. It’s probably the fact that in a tuk-tuk there are three wheels rather than two or something. Bangkok is a sprawling town-planners’ nightmare in which it’s very easy to become disorientated. On the street where our hotel was, there were five lanes of traffic heading one way and only one lane of traffic heading the other. Tuk-tuk drivers weave in and out of the lanes, often turning back on themselves or driving at right angles to the traffic in order to change lanes. As you sit in the back seat, you’re forever thinking “He’s going to hit that wall! He’s going to hit that wall! Actually, no, he isn’t. He’s simply pulling off an improbable three point turn.” All this ducking and diving and wheeling and… er… weaving through the traffic just adds to the disorientation.

Agreeing on a price for a journey is a tricky matter, as is agreeing on a price for anything. Quite often, while agreeing a price, a small group of spectators made up of other tuk-tuk drivers will form and they’ll always laugh once a price is agreed, no matter how high or how low it is. I usually manage to get them down to at least half of the first asking price. Experience has taught me to make sure that I laugh as soon as a price is agreed too. This doesn’t achieve anything other than parity in the “I-know-something-you-don’t” stakes.

The journey is a close-to-the-ground, smog-in-the-face experience. The tuk-tuk engine is a deep, throaty belch which vibrates through the seat. They have a top speed of just under 40 miles an hour, but feel like they go twice that speed.

You race down a street, turn a corner, leaning out to help the vehicle keep balance. You reach some traffic lights. The driver turns the engine off to conserve fuel. He asks you where you’re from, says “David Beckham” or “lovely jubbly” in response to the fact that you’re English. He asks you whether you want to go to a silver shop and you turn him down graciously. Then it’s off again, the driver occasionally catching your eye in the mirror and smiling. By the end of the journey, you like him so much for being friendly and for letting you ride in his tuk-tuk that all that bartering at the start is rendered a complete waste of time and you give him his first asking price.

That’s the way it goes for me, anyway.

Here are a few more photos of Bangkok. I didn't take many this time, probably because I already have four sets.











As well as going to Bangkok, I’ve also been out and about a bit more often in Singapore recently due to the fact that I have visitors who want to see it. It’s not a bad place. Here are some photos.

A Fruit Vendor's Homage To Norwich City 

Is This Sad Or Brilliant? 

Chewing Gum Tree 

Spiky Branch 

Anyone? 

Rooney Miscellany

Very briefly, Wayne Rooney's injury is very distressing. I had a small inkling that he would be injured for the World Cup, but, fortunately, Sven doesn't care and will play him anyway.

Something occured to me in between watching him writhe in agony and bawling my eyes out. Do you remember when Michael Owen burst onto the scene? Commentators kept talking about how we, the tv watching public, should remember that Michael Owen was "just 18". These reminders went on for about five years. Wayne Rooney, on the other hand, was "just 17" at the start of last season, when he scored that goal against Arsenal for Everton, and all of a sudden they're expecting me to believe that he's 20! Has anyone else noticed this strange twist in the fabric of time? Michael Owen was 18 for ages, wasn't he? And Wayne Rooney hasn't been around for four years, has he? What's going on? At this rate, by the time of the next World Cup, Rooney will be older than Owen.

I was pleased to notice this morning that, according to the BBC, Rooney is being "philosophical" about his injury. I wondered whether this meant that Rooney had been reading up on Descartes or Derrida. Maybe he has, as the BBC's first paragraph revealed that Rooney felt his injury was not "the end of the world" and, fortunately, he feels that "life goes on".

Other highlights from Rooney's philosophical musings include the bombshell that "any player wants to play in the World Cup". Most shocking of all was the depth of thought shown in his comment that he was "disappointed to get injured".

Still, it's heartening to read that he's a "strong lad", isn't it?