Quickie

I just watched "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and... I think we just need to all take a minute and contemplate just how beautiful Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are. Separately, together, any way you like them. Perfection.

Also, I have to confess that I really liked it. Then again, I'm starved for English these days, and it's raining, so I would probably like a movie featuring wet ferrets dancing, as long as it was in English.

Off now to attempt to read Russian Cosmo with the help of my trusty dictionary... hilarious results!

Of booties, rears and heinies (however you want to spell that)

I had a nasty man pretend to bump into me in order to grab a handful of my left ass cheek on the street today... who then had the gall to waggle his eyebrows at me when I turned around in shock, trying to figure out how to scream "Ass-grabbing pervert!!!" at him in Russian. I had to settle

At least I still get some attention amidst the supermodel wannabes, even though it appears to only be from sex-offenders-in hiding.

Butts do seem to be the focus of this vacation, though, for some reason or other. The girls in Madagascar, specifically the not-officially-prostitutes-but-getting-paid-for-it-in-some-manner-by-nasty-old-men at the Les Sirenes nightclub on Nosy Be, had the most perfect behinds I have ever seen on a human being. I must admit, I openly ogled, and I am a straight girl. It was impossible not to. They had... little oranges in their pants or something. Round, perky, and impossibly small. A whole new standard in buttitude. Finished on either side by teeny waists and pretty legs, but the butts were just so transfixing, it was hard to look at anything else. And they knew it too, and certainly knew how to waggle them about. A girl in a short bright orange dress clung to a fence just behind us and just started shaking it a thousand times faster and better than anything in a rap video, for no apparent reason. It was so enthralling that Jon and I just stared at her butt fixedly for a good minute or two before returning semi-shamefacedly to conversation. At the next table over, a group of very Anglo boys were trying to cover their shameless ogling and obvious desire with serious conversation about post-colonial culture and the grossness of the sex trade. The dirty one with dreadlocks eventually gave in and found himself a girl. The other ones looked on with impotent dismay and jealousy.

Later that night, one of the hussies (no other way to term them... they had their asses hanging OUT of their pants and were eyeing up MY MAN) asked Jon to do up her belt while he was in line for the bathroom. I was mistaken for Malagasy twice, which I'm going to attribute to my butt (even though it's not composed of happiness and bouncy round things like those girls' are) and not the combination of my having a tan and the inquirers being drunk (though one was actually Malagasy... the gay best friend to all the girls there. Very flattering. The other guy was French, sixty, bald and disgusting.)But that has very little to do with butts, and more to do with the strength of the rum made there.

Back to Regular Programming (with digressions galore!)

I'm sitting in Heathrow Airport for what feels like the millionth time in the past few days, which is actually because I had to spend, oh, 8 hours here on Sunday between getting in from Antananarivo/ Jon rearranging his plane ticket to India/ waiting with bags for the guy at whose apartment we were staying to get in from playing cricket. I was afflicted with a lingering case of generic Tropical Stomach Nast (where you just generally feel queasy and like you're going to die for, oh, three-four days.) It was minorly debilitating since I rarely get sick, so when I do it knocks me out, and the combination of shooting pain in my abdomen and my immensely huge suitcase was not a fun one. Luckily, Jon stopped being grumpy about the fact that his travel plans had been thrown into disarray, and realised the reason that I was being bitchy was that I was in pain, and carried some of my stuff for me, like the wonderful gentleman he is. I have to admit, he looked rather fetching carrying my pink handbag. It provided a pleasant contrast to his terrible grey zip-off travel pants (ugh!) After much arguing and making up and holding of stomach and hauling of bags, we stumbled on to the tube and took the loooong ride to his mother's boyfriend's brother's house, where we were to stay. Said mother's boyfriend's brother turned out to be a lovely Brit, with a penchant for ranting about anything in particular. He fed us wine and curry (my stomach having been miraculously cured by a loooong nap on the Tube) and we stayed up until 6 am, at which point I began to fall asleep during sentences.

All this to say that it's rather tedious to be back at Heathrow, but since it means that I'm actually finally doing something with myself and leaving this country, I suppose it has to be a necessary evil. Jon has gone on to India, which is rather sad, since it's the first time I've been without him for more than the couple hours he spent in Tana negotiating for his new Indian visa at the consulate ( spent alternately clutching my stomach and reading A Cafe on the Nile by the unfortunately named Bartle Bull, an amazing swashbuckling story set in 1930s Africa, featuring a Goan dwarf and an English hunter raised by gypsies... what else can you read when you're sick?) or half-hour exile imposed on him for Excessive Silliness When I Am Trying To Get Something Practical Done. I miss the boy, and have a.) realised that he's the only person I could have spent this much time with, basically one-on-one, and not have killed and b.) this is that last time we'll be able to spent this much time together until this summer. I'll see him in ten days, though, when he comes to visit me for twelve days in St. Pete's, and we have our cross-country road trip at the end of the summer, so it's not like we're war-time sweethearts penning letters to one another across continents, but it'll be hard during the school year. We'll see. I remain hopeful, though. And blissfully happy.

Anyway, immense digression aside, Jon being gone meant that I got to wander solo, at least in the time I was not standing in line for my visa at the Russian Embassy. That was a mob scene in itself-- I got there promptly at 8:30, opening time, and foudn myself at the tail end of an immense line. Much kerb-sitting later, (thank heavens I had brought a fat trashy book) I was let in the door at 11:45, shortly before it closed at 12. How tragic for the people who decided to arrive at 8:45!

I was meant to pick up my passport at 4, so I decided to stroll around Notting Hill and the general Portobello Market area, to look at funky shops and find a lovely place to have lunch. I was all dolled up, having donned my cutest blue polkadot dress to try and flirt the Russian consulate workers into giving me a fast visa, and this apparently was a somewhat noteworthy ensemble, as I was stopped and photographed by a team doing a piece on summer fashion for the Evening Standard! The piece comes out on Thursday, so I won't be able to see it, but Jon's pseudo-stepuncle reads it, so has promised to cut out the photo and send it to me. Hurrah for fifteen... seconds of notice!

So, between that, and being actually possessed of a visa to Russia and having had a generally nice day of wandering around and randomly meeting people, it was a rather perfect day. I was befriended by the cutest campiest gay couple in a vintage store, who made me help them pick out outfits for one of their's 40th (shhh!) birthday party, and then insisted I try on pretty dresses from the 20s and 60s (if I only had 900 pounds to throw away, I would now be the proud possessor of a BEAUTIFUL pink flapper dress) and then turned my head with compliments. Later, a lovely Dutch boy helped me out with my immense suitcase coming into the Tube, and I met a couple other of nice people, including a lovely girl who was my line buddy twice over for the embassy, and a sky-diving Indian dentist. So nice to meet people randomly. Don't get me wrong-- this does happen when I'm with Jon (although we only meet other couples or boys, because I tend to shoot daggers at any hussies who dare approach my man) but it was just flattering to have everyone be so friendly and lovely on such a beautiful summer day.

Anyway, I need to go check in at long last, but there may be another update later, if I get bored enough. Regardless, I have returned to the land of the regular internet access, so all rejoice!

And regarding photos-- Jon may have lost his camera, so there may be no photos, beyond those my stepfather took. So sad! Here's hoping we find them.

Quick update

I am writing from Antananarivo. I should not, in fact, be in Antananarivo. By all rights, I should be in the air between Paris and London, getting ready to spend the night at Jon's mother's boyfriend's brother's place and then part ways until the 28th. The gods, however, decided that actually sticking to the set plan of things would be far too easy, so the night before last, while my household was having a big party to celebrate Italy's victory in the World Cup* someone decided to take advantage of the fact that one of the watchmen was dancing in a throbbing mass of Malagasy butts in front of my stepfather's bungalow, and the other watchman was standing and looking at the dancing with a dumb look on his face, and sneak into our bungalow and steal Jon's pack, containing his wallet, various papers and tickets, his credit cards in another holder, $2000 in travellers' cheques and his passport. The papers, tickets and the credit cards were all found scattered along the road leading from the house in the morning by Sabin, the day watchman, but the passport and cheques are definitely MIA.

Cut now to Tana, having spent the past twenty-four hours in and out of offices, as the flight I could have taken went by overhead. We were initially deposited in The World's Most Depressing Hotel, "Le Motel de Tana", with nasty pastel decor, chipped linoleum flooring, a highway on all sides, and a complete lack of heating. For some reson, despite it's mountain location and freezingly cold winters, most places in Tana refuse to believe that anywhere in Africa could actually require heating leading to things like poor tourists like me wearing a jacket, two cashmere sweaters and assorted t shirts to stay warm. Awful. Anyway, Jon and I looked at each other in despair, consulted our guidebook, and realised that one of the best hotels in town costs about the same as a good ol' American roadside hotel! Long live former colonies! And hooray for giving in to one's bratty side in times of distress! Now, we are ensconced in luxury-- hot water, clean sheets AND heating-- and even have a flight out of town for tomorrow and a passport for Jon, so once we figure out our connections, all should be well. Hurrah!

Oh, in other news, pictures shall have to wait until the end of August bc Jon's camera is not compatible with my computer.

* Well played, though, France. And for shame, Zidane.

There's a law in the tropics that stipulates that the further away you go from conventional civilisation, the less attention is paid to conventional logic regarding cars and their supposed physical limitations. Four wheel drive only road, consisting entirely of mud pits, mini-ravines and arbitrary mounds of gravel? Nothing that an ancient beat-up Renault can't solve. Seven people in a car? A normal load for said Renault. Bear in mind, though, that the seven people should have been picked up at random points along the road and have no relationship to one another, regardless of how many elbows are jammed into others' faces. A good course of conduct is also, having hired a taxi driver for the night for the princely sum of 20,000 Ariary (ten bucks), to turn around suddenly in the nightclub to find him a.) in there b.) downing a massive rum and coke and c.) with his hand down the back of some chicks' pants. Later, as he drove us back over the aforementioned awful road, I tried my best to forget how much I had seen him drink and forget the random girl in the red dress riding shotgun and just concentrate on getting out of the whole deal alive.