NOODLE SOUP WITH SPARE PARTS
February 6, 2013
Hungry, back in Kunming, after a cross island night bus from Pontianak, as usual without food and drink before or during the trip, I went to a small restaurant. The menu in English, had, among other delicacies, Noodle Soup with Spare Parts? (Found out later from an English speaker, it is here a common term for a meal of innards; lungs, heart, eyes and other such "spare parts"). I went for the soup with vegetables and primary parts of pork - even though these were ground up, hence ...
I am back in Kunming because there is no road from Kalimantan to Sabah, and no direct flight either (I'd have to walk or fly via Jakarta or Surabaya, either trip a huge detour). From Pangkalan Bun I took a flight back to Pontianak, the city that that sits smack on the equator - and it feels like it too. ?There is one downpour after the other and the city's streets make the place look like Venice - with a vastly different architecture. My glasses keep fogging up, so I am functionally blind.
The flight took much longer than the scheduled one-and-one-half hour. The small propeller plane circled over the city, again and again - as if in an aerial sightseeing excursion. My seat neighbor told me it is because of wind shear, pulled out his Blackberry and showed me what happened on his flight the previous week. The picture was of a plane's landing gear with three of four tires shredded.
"We landed with cross wind and that is what happened," he said. "The plane taxied to the airport building on bar rims."
Keep circling the city, I said to no one in particular. I can't imagine how wind shear would do such a job on tires, but hey, circle all you want.
The bus station, where I have to find out how to kill eight hours 'til departure, turned out to be but a little store front. I found nearby a place with a decent chicken curry and saut?ed morning glory. As usual after a meal, I had to find a place to go. The restaurant had a toilet, although, even to me, it was pretty scary looking. ?As I crouched down to do my business over the porcelain lined hole on the soggy floor, my camera fell from my shirt pocket into the yellowish, brownish soup within. The camera is water proof, but is it also sh*t and p*ss proof, I wondered. I fished it out then, assuming It is at least soap proof, I washed it and my hands with a little pouch of shampoo I'd taken from the hotel in the morning - and that still happened to be in my pocket.
With my discovery of the swallow - they call the birds swifts - nest towers, and their super beneficial effect on the environment as a perfect insect control, and the resulting edible nests, the consumption thereof creating extreme health and longevity - if you believe the hype - a thought was born. Like my daughter Jade and her husband Nick's new business of raising shell fish who, as they grow, clean the water they live in, and become healthy human food, or with worm farming that reduces agricultural byproducts into rich compost, both, the worms and the compost readily marketable commodities, there are quite a few other such symbiotic procedures.
If I was younger, and in need of making money, I'd like to start a business with such earth and humanity enriching production. Apart from the already mentioned birds nest/ insect control, and compost/worm farming, there must be quite a few more such procedures. Algae growing comes to mind, where surplus carbon dioxide that needs to sequestered, is used to produce protein, or carbs, or renewable fuel. There are probably many such already existing techniques that I've never even heard about.
If a firm was created with an earth friendly, catching name, such as e.g. Sunny Earth, that produces nothing but such symbiotic products, lots of free publicity from media would be virtually guaranteed. Many people, the world over, would want to be part of such endeavors - by buying and using the products.
But, I am not "younger and in need of making money".
Now, back in Kuching I have to plan the journey's continuation. I have heard, in a by the way fashion, about a town on Sarawak's north shore, called Miri. A booming petroleum extraction industry, and its attendant roustabouts, has brought with it an active night live. Ot course, Lonely Planet makes only spurious allusions to such things, but it describes the town's surroundings as well worth visiting. So, before heading for Sabah and Brunei, I'll probably check out this place to, at least in one instance, search out what I, albeit facetiously, came to investigate in Borneo.
The bus ride will be long, about fifteen hours, but, even though the north shore of Borneo is described as an environmental wasteland; petroleum, gas and coal extraction, gold and other mineral mining, palm oil and rubber plantations where rain forest used to be, I want to see it with my own eyes - well, make that "with my own eye".
Not so long ago, even pristine remote reaches of our planet have started to be raped for the benefit of a constantly growing human population that demands more, and more, and more ... of everything.
Does the pope - and other such leading head honchos of the world's many religions - still forbid birth control? Do those "Right to Life" proponents realize they are steering mankind towards mass suicide? Mankind might be able, through gene manipulation and other scientific methods, to produce more food even in increasingly depleted soil, but what about water, breathable air and living space?
Got a ticket for a bus to Miri, the town near the border with Brunei. Tomorrow morning the bus leaves at 08:30 AM from Kunming and arrives in Miri some time after midnight. This being Chinese New Year vacation time here, I could only get a standard ride, on a bus without toilet and non-reclining seats. In Miri, I suspect, will be one of the times on this trip when I'll search out one of the best hotels, just to be sure I'll have a toilet, a shower and A/C.
Source: http://hittingtheheadwithahammer.blogspot.com/2013/02/noodle-soup-with-spareparts.html
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