overlap

This whole alien culture thing is quite something. My body clock is so far out of whack it's not true, and being in this hotel is a whole other world of bizarre. I'm really not accustomed to an environment where I can get half a dozen goes at 'how are you, have a great day!' in the twenty yards between the lift and the front door. Where a guest with a birthday gets six or eight staff approach their table in the restaurant, rattling a tambourine and singing 'happy birthday', and gets it more than once. Perhaps it's after every course, I don't know.

Leaving aside the obscene way that just four nights here more than covers my mortgage for a month, and the total cost of my trip will equate to eight or nine months' mortgage, and all because getting rid of my job will save a few quid. It does seem rather arse-backwards.

The wall of heat effect is noticeable, and it is easy to understand that the equator is not that far away. I know I live in a place where rain is common, but this is something else. I could see the torrential rain outside from the airport when I landed, but on roads where it seems all bets are off and flashing your headlights at anything and getting within inches of every other vehicle appears to be the norm, whole lanes inches deep in rainwater is beyond my experience!

I guess there's some kind of perverse pleasure in doing work at 5am because I have already been up a couple of hours, but today I am staying up in the hope I will be so knackered by this evening I can't help but sleep. Meanwhile I've established that the plane lost off Brazil is the same model I was flying on the day before. Which is reassuring!

* 'look at me here overseas' is from The Wonder Stuff song 'Ten Trenches Deep'