Denniblog

It’s like this: as soon as you decide to take people along on a trip, everybody’s plans have to mesh and a ton of excuses crops up. Trip planning (for those who believe in such things and don’t just hop on a plane) is work. You must really want to go to make it happen, and if you feel at all insecure, it probably won’t.

That’s why we didn’t go biking in Scotland (my fault: it would have cost as much as flying to Thailand unless we’d elected to camp in the rain every day. Of course the weather turned out to be glorious), why we’re still not going to Thailand (here it’s because of job applications and other uncertainties that need to be sorted) and, probably, why I’ve never heard a peep from the OUEC (I had some hope for the Facebook Group but Facebook groups are disappointingly lame).

Face it, to get a bunch of undergraduates to do anything is like herding cats, and trying to do it at a distance is probably impossible. It’s a miracle that any expeditions ever take off, and those tend to be run by clubs, are long-standing projects or consist of a group of mates with a very clear idea what they want to do.

Here’s how it was for us. The 1989 Venezuela River Dolphin Expedition wasn’t my idea. In fact, me and a mate in Germany wanted to check out transect surveys of cetaceans in the Strait of Gibraltar and—if memory serves—I travelled to London to visit an open day about expedition planning at the Royal Geographical Society. There I met a fellow who wanted to canoe down the Casiquiare Canal from the Orinoco to the Rio Negro and was looking for a scientific objective. I just happened to know that the lower tributaries of the Orinoco are prime dolphin country and I’d always wanted to go back to study river dolphins (albeit in India) and hey presto: the expedition was born.

At one point we numbered sixteen members, perhaps more. But most of the student members dropped out after just a few meetings (and a fair number when the medical side of things came up…). Even our organiser ran into difficulties, although he came out with us. But it took a looong time to set things in motion and in the end we had to radically change our plans. Changing plans comes with the territory and it’s always good to have an easy-as-pie idiot-proof fallback option, such as a place with guaranteed sightings.

Long story short: we ended up with just two members, and the expedition was our honeymoon. And it resulted in me having an Erdős number

So no, as far as manatees and diving in Thailand are concerned, I’m not holding my breath. But I’m not yet quite ready to set off on my own either. The weather hasn’t been bad, winter is reluctant in coming, the Xmas-madness hasn’t yet started and, sooner or later, we’ll have to move house. Plus I’m doing OK with the edit of my second novel, so perhaps I should pursue that in earnest now.

In honour of our upcoming Thailand trip (yay!), I’ve made a banana pancake:

The recipe couldn’t be simpler. I do this by sight: sift about a cup of flour into a bowl, add 1 tsp baking powder, a pinch of yeast (adding a pinch of yeast apparently helps it along), a pinch of salt, a beaten egg and enough milk to get the consistency of pouring cream and put it in the airing cupboard to rest for 2hrs.

Bring a knob of butter and a slug of oil to the sizzle, add a good spoonful or two of pancake mix (enough to comfortably cover the bottom of the pan when swirled) wait for the base to set and then add the sliced bananas/apple/blueberries/whatever to the still liquid batter on top, pressing them down slightly’ and fry until just set before flipping over.

BTW: it’s best if the slices of banana end up covered in a little batter to avoid the pancake getting soggy.

Serve with fruit, syrup, sugar or chocolate sauce (for recipe see picture link):

I would blog from the Square Festival in Borth, but it will take several hours to upload my photos and, well, I’d rather go to the Festival.

Xandros Linux on the EeePC sucks hard

I remember not long ago the sun was shining, I was reading Ian McDonald’s Brasyl and thought happy thoughts about Trinidad & Tobago, and further back, Venezuela.

In Venezuela we ate black beans nearly every day. They have since become a staple in my kitchen. I vaguely remember trying my hands at Feijoada once, Brazil’s national dish, without much success. The version a friend of ours cooked was delicious, but I wasn’t going to try again—not that I have the right ingredients anyway. It was time for the next-best thing: black bean chilli.

Now the clouds have returned, the air is clammy and I’ve lost my appetite for hot chilli and samba rhythms. But I can always fit in a spotted chilli square, a great way of using up leftover and some of the cheapest grub you can make (works great with veggie chilli or dhal as well).

Take a tortilla wrapper, spoon on some chilli (chilled works best) and shape it into a square, then fold over edges until they just touch, covering the filling.

Press flat and fry, folded side down, in a little oil until crisp underneath. Turn with a wide spatula and fry the other side, then turn out onto a plate.

Serve spotted with Chipotle sauce.

Best eaten piping hot, crispy and greasy. The tortilla wrap doesn’t actually absorb the oil (most of it stays in the pan), so this is healthier than it looks/feels.

My recent surprise contact from somebody who knows of our 1985 exploits involving Ganges dolphins (Platanista gangetica) has resulted in me searching for more info on same (the area we visited is now a dolphin sanctuary), and some of my other haunts as well.

And behold, there is a blog dedicated to the dolphins of Sarawak. Apparently, Irawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) are still relatively common in the area, although by-catches and pollution pose problems. There was a fledgling dolphin watch enterprise in operation while I was there (I never noticed it) and—even better—a local kajak enthusiast who might even have set me up for a field survey! If only I had known *sigh*. But there is now a research initiative and a conservation movement in place and proper guidelines will hopefully ensure responsible dolphin watching which will bring income to local operators.

Read through Pesut’s blog and—if you can—book a trip with FH-2-GO, the kayak operator. I’ll envy you!

[EDIT: with regard to my previous post, this is what I consider fair and responsible eco-tourism. I doubt that any of the local operators would ask for “thousands of pounds”. I also have a feeling that a discount is on the cards if you want to go out every day for a week in order to make notes ;)]

Recently, I watched a two-parter on the BBC about a woman and her plucky field-tech who studied red-capped mangabeys in Gabon. (The tech was the ingenious one, but he kept referring to his boss as ‘the doctor’ as if she was some female time lord). The woman was virtually rubbing her hands at the thought that people would pay “thousands of pounds” to come and see the monkeys.

I hope not, because if they do it would almost certainly destroy the small local community. But they probably won’t. People are paying thousands of pounds to interact with chimpanzees or gorillas—red-capped mangabeys or manatees don’t come even close. Unless, perhaps, you let them play with the pulley system that draws water from the stream and allow them feed in a few bits of data so that they, too, can feel like real adventurers and scientists.

And there is the problem with tourism, be it eco or otherwise. We’re expected to turn up, hand over fistfuls of money, and in return the operators/locals will put up with us for a few days and then we can kindly piss off again.

My problem is that my money is short and has to last a long time. I’m a winter refugee. I just want somewhere to stay that doesn’t give me SAD and the flu. If there is something interesting to do—or if I can contribute in some way—so much the better. But I don’t want to ‘contribute’ by handing over all my moolah to some dubious eco-charity. Even if I had any to spare, I’m tired of the tourist traps and the touts.

If I don’t go to Bangladesh this winter, you’ll probably find me on the west coast of Thailand or somewhere in Cambodia (although the idea of having to do Angkor Wat is putting me off). I want to chill for a few months and be left alone. That’s all.

When it comes to nose-to-rail eating eating, I’ve done badly with nose and heels, but I have used my share of heads and trotters.

Now it’s the turn of the tails.

Oildown is a dish I have heard much about, but never tried. Luckily, there are many recipes online. The dish seems to be simplicity itself, once you’ve sourced the ingredients!
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Elderberries are good against the flu and colds. Recently, the centuries-old lore has been backed up by clinical studies of Sambucal, of which I now own two bottles. However, they didn’t come cheap at nearly ten quid each for what amounts to a 3-day-course.

Thankfully it would seem that the elderberries’ curative properties are at least partially preserved after heat treatment, and it is not necessary to concentrate them overmuch, so I am looking up recipes for wines and cordials to help us through the winter. But it will be many months before the berries are ripe for the picking.

Prompted by a (harmless but annoying) summer cold, I’m casting around for alternatives. According to Wikipedia they produce a type of brandy in Hungary (bodza pálinka) which is made with 50kg of elderberries per litre. The online price (£ 1.85/40ml) would reflect that. But I’m reasoning that the stuff’s cheaper in Budapest.

However, according to a Google image search, the spirit is clear. Part of the beneficial activity of elderberries is due to the pigments (anthocyanidins, comprising 0.2-1% of the berries and a whopping 0.5% in Sambucal). There are darker incarnations, which I suppose aren’t distilled from quite as much fruit (more like wines), and these may be just what I’m looking for. One more reason to conduct some field research

I reckon there should be a EU-wide initiative looking into the benefits of elderberry drinks, which would boost the economies of several eastern/central European countries.

Nobody has been back in touch about the manatees (which I find a little rude). The expedition club has been in touch—fingers crossed that some members will be interested!

A large population of Irrawaddy dolphins has been discovered around the Sundarbans. The only relative refuge for this species which I was previously aware of (aside from a very sparse distribution in rivers in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Phillippines and along coastal areas in SE Asia) was in the Chilka lake in Orissa. The population in the Songkhla lake in Thailand has dwindled significantly.

With Platanista gangetica apparently thriving right around Dhaka (I’ve previously suspected that they are scavengers) a visit to Bangladesh may well be on the cards next winter.

Actually, the fledgling AI wasn’t on the list of trends I wanted to discuss. Talk about the elephant in the room.

It’s probably because hubby and I had a row about his working hours. He must have come close to a hundred a week. I’m not kidding. He summed it up thus, “Last week I clocked up sixty hours of CPU time.”

“So what? I clock up a few myself when Firefox freezes or Jarte goes into a sulk because I type ‘control-t’ for a new tab and it tries to access the online thesaurus instead.” It’s ‘control-n’ for new file. Jeez.

“No, I mean I clocked up sixty hours of meaningful CPU time on an eight core machine. It was processing.”

“Hrmph.” I shrugged.

“You never take any interest in my work!”

“Now wait a minute! I thought we had agreed not to talk about work. Every time I—”

He dismissed me with a wave. “I still know more about any of your projects than you care to remember.”

That is true. I don’t have his memory. “Yeah, but compared to computer programming, biology is easy to understand. I need a degree in computer science to follow what you do. Biology’s intuitive. But doing it is another matter.”

And that brings me neatly to the next item on the list.
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