Life's A Beach And All That

We were talking the other day about our lives this time last year. I'd recently spent the whole of the sunny Labor Day weekend inside transcribing tapes for a story that was set to be my big break, until the national women's magazine who'd wanted to publish it dropped it at the last minute due to "lack of space"---or, more likely, lack of interest. Consequently, I'd been moping around on the sofa for the last week or so, eating entire bags of Hersheys Nuggets in one sitting and watching far too much reality television while oscillating between weeping and questioning my self-worth.

For his part, Sean was juggling a career teaching nuclear power to Navy recruits, the completion of his graphic design degree, a freelance assignment shooting the photographs for this travel book, and a six-week Navy initiation program that was supposed to turn him into a Chief, but seemed to me to consist entirely of Hazing Lite and weird do-at-home projects more befitting of those in the fifth grade. I distinctly remember him having to carry around a carton of eggs for a week, having drawn uniforms and individual faces on all twelve of them in order to make them his "team." You may think that the fine upstanding men of the United States Navy are keeping the country safe and sound, but really they're standing in their kitchens at eleven o' clock at night, drilling small holes in the tops of eggs in order to drain them of their yolk, and being shouted at by their girlfriends for always having to do things at the last minute.

So anyway, in light of the way things were this time last year---hectic, depressing, and exhausting---you'll be glad to know that our lives seem to be looking a whole lot rosier twelve months later. And I do mean looking. Because while the view I gazed up on most often last September was either the concrete of my office parking lot, or my empty back yard which had recently been robbed of all its garden furniture, the view from the front door over the last few days has been a bit more like this:

And also this

And that, of course, makes me very happy.

It would, however, make me just a little bit happier if, in my obsessive application of sunscreen, I'd remembered to get the tips of my ears. And also that bit where your bottom meets the back of your thighs. Yeah, you know what I mean.

Sean, as you can imagine, is very happy too. Mostly, however, he would just like that man on the right to move out of the damn picture already.

But let's not talk about this! Let's talk about Vietnamese karaoke! On our last day in Nha Trang, we signed up for this all-day boat tour, which was to take us to four of the surrounding islands. Having read in the Lonely Planet that a lot of these tours were just glorified booze cruises, we tried to pick carefully. Apart from anything else, it just didn't seem wise to be mixing tequila slammers with snorkelling. I find it challenging enough when I'm sober.

We'd been on board for an hour or two when we realized that our guide was single-handedly making his way through the drinks cooler, and appeared to be on his sixth beer. At eleven in the morning. Each time before he opened one, he'd say "anyone want a beer? A beer? No? A beer? Ah, a beer! A very good idea!" and then snap off the top of the one he'd taken for himself and drink deeply. It soon became obvious, however, that he was about to be in dire need of a little dutch courage. Because "now we are to have karaoke!" he said, when the plates had been cleared away after lunch. "With a live band on board!"

And sweet cracker sandwich, if a drum kit didn't suddenly appear from the bowels of the boat, followed by a man carrying an amp and an electric guitar. The tour guide grabbed the microphone and serenaded us for the next half hour with his versions of a number of terribly cheesy love songs, the crowning glory of which was "Boulevard" by Dan Byrd. We all watched with a combination of disbelief and amusement wondering if he might at some point hand over the songbook and, in the spirit of karaoke, offer someone else a turn.

I took a video. You can thank me later.