Spotted on Indonesia's roads...

It is now something of a cliche that the humble motor-scooter is used as a cargo vehicle on Southeast Asia's roads; nonetheless the following are all pictures I've taken from the car in the last few days rather than being borrowed from existing websites.

Among the things we've seen have been a mobile restaurant:

A year's supply of snacks:


A delivery round's-worth of electrical appliances:


And an entire village's fuel supply:

Misfortunes - the complete set of three...

Just when everyone had either assumed my demise or lost interest, here I am again after what seems to be turning into Last Django's customary spring break!

As I dolefully predicted in January, my much-loved mother-in-law steadily declined and messages urging us to go and see her "as soon as possible" piled up from the family. Mrs Byard duly went out ahead of us leaving me to trail in behind her (and stay on afterwards, to cover more possibilities). This meant I had all the fun of keeping the two-year old Guthlac happy during a 20-hour flight. Lucky me.

As it turned out we were too late - she passed away two days before my wife arrived, although at least Mrs Byard could attend the funeral (something she'd happily have passed up for five minutes with her mother, of course). Anyway, we duly trailed in and had to visit graves and carry out the ceremonies demanded by Chinese tradition, the highlight of which was Guthlac picking up a packet of cigarettes that had been acquired for offering on his grandfather's grave to be told forcefully "Just take one!"

Mrs Byard and Guthlac then trailed off back to blighty, leaving me and Djangolina to go round and do some things that can't really be done with toddlers in tow. The first day of this odyssey I had a few abdominal pains and took an immodium figuring it was just the normal travel bug-type thing. The next night the pain was getting worse and I took some painkillers. By noon the third day I couldn't stand up and could no longer urinate properly. At this point I was rushed to hospital, where an ultrasound scan revealed that my urethra was blocked by a kidney stone the size of a Glaswegian's liver and that my right kidney was swollen to double its proper size. After a day of extreme pain and discomfort, an x-ray revealed the bloody thing was stuck and refusing to come the normal way, so and endoscope was inserted, and the offending mass removed. (Lest anyone think this is a play for sympathy, let me assure you that a) I know my readers better than that, and b) kidney stones are eye-wateringly painful without being a serious health threat - they are the stuff of black comedy rather than tragedy).

This was followed by 72 hours on a hospital bed attached to assorted drips and catheters, at which point I found out misfortune number three - thanks to the Icelanders being as careless with their volcanoes as they were with their banks, I couldn't return home on time and was facing a further fortnight of enforced holiday in Indonesia. Frankly though, were I to choose any country to get stuck in through no fault of my own, it would be this one - so this stands as the tail-end sweetener to a catalogue of visits by the cock-up fairy. Onward and upward, eh?

Oriental women - widely admired, widely misunderstood...

All things Chinese have been much on the mind recently, what with the dawning of a new Year of the Tiger and what-have-you. I brightly greeted Mrs Byard on Sunday morning with "Kong hee fat choi!", to which she responded by furrowing her brow and replying "Did you just call me fat?"

Djangolina - or Liem Kwee Lee as she is now styled in connection with all things Chinese - is quite fired up by this being the Year of the Tiger, which is her birth year. Having established my credentials as one cohabiting with 1.5 (ethnic) Chinese women, let me share a few intriguing observations for those watching from further afield.

The popular stereotype of a delicate, tottering, parasol-twirling "Lotus Blossom" character is utterly, utterly wrong. Chinese women are very, very tough in all kinds of unexpected ways.

I have already had cause to mention Mrs Byard's capacity for eating palate-scorchingly hot food and shaming "hard lads" in the process. Last year, we were served a platter of seafood at a restaurant in Indonesia which included whole crab. After a while, the following dialogue took place:
Her: "Aren't you going to eat your crab?"
Me: "Um, I've got nothing to open it with."
Her: "What are you on about?"
Me: "Well, in Europe you'd get crackers and a pick to open the shell up with so you can get the meat out."
Her: "Oh give it here, for goodness' sake..." (Picks up crab claw and cracks it open with teeth)

We have had similar conversations back at home - steered elegantly toward the conclusion that I am a useless wimp - over my pathetic attempts to find oven gloves rather than just pick up a roasting tray fresh from a prolonged stint in a hot oven with my bare hands.

I have encountered little old ladies - albeit in Indonesia, but I'm credibly informed by a Sinologist friend that China has an extensive supply too - capable of carrying loads on their backs you wouldn't believe. I once felt very proud of myself having scaled a relatively modest volcano in Java, to find at the top an entire drinks stall which had been carried to the peak, in its entirety, in a scarf wrapped around a 70-something lady shod in flip-flops.

I paid her an exhorbitant sum for a luke-warm bottle of jasmine tea (the legendary Tehbotol - Indonesia's finest soft drink....) and slunk back down the mountain feeling duly humbled. Which is no bad thing, after all...

New programme ideas for 2010

In the effort once more to catch the attention of the major channels, I shall offer up again some programme ideas that would be at least better than half the appalling drivel that graces my screen.

Britain's Got Talons - A show in which birds of prey from all over the UK compete in a series of falconry and singing challenges, the winner of each (species-based) round being decided by a combination of phone-vote and Simon Cowell's toupee being carried off by a Golden Eagle.

What's in that Rock? - Palaeontology quiz hosted by geomorphologists' crumpet Hermione Cockburn in which professionals (e.g. Shubin, Conway-Morris, Fortey) would be teamed with celebrity fossil enthusiasts (e.g. David Attenborough, Alex James, Mark Gattiss etc) to identify fossil-bearing rocks on camera. I'd watch it...

Police, Camera, Action-Man! - Teams of policemen compete to make stop-motion animated films featuring action men.

Cashews in the Attic - A camera follows Mrs Byard and myself for a fortnight as we struggle through our overcrowded loft to try to find a bag of nuts we were sure we'd left up there.

Hannah Monsanto - Miley Cyrus gets genetically modified.

The Top 100 Polkas - Three-hour countdown show mixing old footage intercut with amusing reminiscences and witless fan-speak from radio DJs and stand-up comics.

Serious offers from channel heads only, please.

Nude X-factor Big Brother drugs terrorist Avatar

Earlier this week, I attended a training event on the subject of Search Engine Optimization, which is basically the matter of spiking your interweb offerings with terms that you think enormous tits will be typing into their free viagra search engines, thus ensuring that a form of virtual guaranteed penis enlargement takes place in your page rankings and numbers of visitors.

I hoped the trainer would start by showing us the Robert Pattinson-Zac Efron gay sex tape, but apparently no such thing exists. The same could be said for the hardcore pics of Angelina Jolie which also failed to appear. We did talk a little about the uncensored Roswell/Area 51 film and the proof that 9/11 was a conspiracy engineered from a UFO powered by a perpetual motion device though. Actually we didn't; I just made that bit up...

Americans - what the **** is wrong with them?

My generally positive view of our cousins in the rebellious colonies - which rose sharply a year ago with the election to the highest office in the land of a man whose intelligence placed him well above the cnidarians for a change - has taken a double whammy in the past 24 hours.

I mean, I'm not, deep down, anti-American. I love many things about the United States (in America), not least among them jazz; the optimistic, can-do attitude; Neil Shubin; the Marx Brothers and much else. But there are times when you have to wonder.

Whammy No 1: A firm supplying gunsights for US and UK troops in Afghanistan is putting Bible references on their products. I mean, Shrubya calling the war on terror "a Crusade" was bad enough; handing a propaganda victory to anyone who wants to see things in black-and-white 'clash of religions' terms is just downright stupid. Furthermore, do the fundamentalists at Trijicon realise how dangerous it is to hand such an obvious feedline to people like me? New Testament sniper sights? I mean, come on guys... "I am the night-vision goggles of the world"..."'WWJD?' 'Aim off a little to the right to allow for the wind'"...

I am not a Christian as such, although I do sing in church for the music. As such, I've heard quite a lot of the Bible and seem to remember JC being quoted saying things like 'turn the other cheek', 'blessed are the peacemakers' and 'put up your swords'. I've honestly never hear the bits from the Sermon on the Mount in which His followers are reminded to conceal themselves against a light background to make muzzle-flash less obvious or told "blessed are they who aim high at long distances to allow for gravity acting on the round".

And one final thing - if the founder of Trijicon was so devout a Christian, shouldn't he have found something other than weapons to make?

Whammy No 2: And then, the people of Massachusetts managed to go one better and elect a Republican senator, almost guaranteeing that health-care reform will be mired in an insanely complex and expensive legislative gridlock. How come - and I ask this in a spirit of affectionate puzzlement - when Bush brought forward major policy initiatives like "invade Iraq", "remove all environmental protection" and "let our Wall Street cronies smeg up much of the global economy", Congress sat supine and allowed them through on the nod; yet will fight tooth-and-nail to oppose Obama's big idea of "shouldn't it be possible for the world's richest nation to provide afforable medical care for all its citizens?"

Dark clouds on the horizon

Reviewing last year's posts on this blog thingummy, I notice a distinct trend of tales of international travel, flippancy and bad puns which turned a little darker at the end owing to the loss of a beloved aunt.

This year promises to be worse, and more serious overall, with the Byard vardo heading towards metaphorical bumpy roads and barricaded campsites. We recently had news that my mother-in-law has been bouncing off various doctors with contradictory diagnoses of her breathing difficulties, varying from "nothing at all to worry about" to "advanced lung cancer". Eventually my sister-in-law accompanied her to Singapore to see a more reliable doctor, who confirmed the worst case scenario of advanced lung cancer. We are now preparing to get out to Indonesia at Easter to see her for the last time. I know that looks melodramatic but it's the exact truth, unfortunately. We are still struggling to cope with the awful finality of knowing a loved one is going to die in the very near future.

Less awful but also not at all frivolous - Djangolina moves up to secondary school in September. Guthlac is in the midst of toilet training, I shall turn 45 and Mrs Byard 40. My Open University studies are moving onto a couple of courses which I don't particularly like the look of but which I have to get under my belt to move on to what I want to do, but on the bright side my own parents will be celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, with my sister and I united in an attempt to convince them to have a 'do' at a hotel *we* like.

Rather than dwell on the bad news and forthcoming grief, I shall conclude by sharing with you instead the worst yodelling ever committed to film (from 6'45" in this short film):