Writing times, Macabre the eBook - plus Spider Goats!

I've had my bum firmly planted in my seat lately, writing away til the wee small hours of the night when it seems I'm the only one left alive in the world. With so much silence surrounding me, the writing has been going well. Heck, I've even managed to cram in a short story, almost ready to submit. Got two others burning holes in my cranium in order to get out so I really need to write them down before I fill up with water next time it rains.

Novel 2 is coming on strong and it's an action-packed joyride into psychosis and paranoia, and maybe a dash of a global conspiracy, too. It's been fun to write, and far more up tempo than my usual psychological style. I wonder if this will come across in future short stories?

The eBook version of Macabre is well and truly a happening thing so expect this within the next month or so. All the contributors are on board and it will be great to see the anthology released in this format. It will make it far more accessible to the wider public as I know postage costs have been causing headaches for some, especially those on the other side of the world. I'll post more on this in the lead up to its release.

And now for something truly different. Spider Goats! Awesome. Yes, I know they're old news but I love 'em. It seems as if there is a new use for the silk gene that has been introduced into goats, and that is to use it to make bulletproof skin for humans! A wonderfully wacky scientist is working on this, and even plans to replace the keratin in our skin with spider silk so our bodies become bulletproof!

Sometimes it's like I fell asleep and woke up in a truly weird place...

The Frightningly Awesome Past Part II

Me being the nutty doctor that I am, with a geekish like of all things dinosaur and geologically past (as I've said once before, where better to get wild and crazy ideas for monsters?), I came across an article in one of my geeky science magazines on some new species of Mesozoic crocodiles.

The one that really caught my eye was this beastie:

It's called a 'BoarCroc' and it lived in the wetlands of the Sahara about 100 million years ago. Nasty looking fella, right?

This chap stood upright and would've been about 6 meters long, with 3 sets of fangs that jutted above and below his snout when it was closed. The BoarCroc has been described as 'rough and tumble,' and as 'a sabre-tooth cat in armour.' It would have also feasted on dinosaurs that came to waterholes to drink, charging up on land to get them.

This thing is awesome--but I'm glad it's extinct...

Disturbing Dinner

So do you fancy your (raw) squid dancing when it's dished up to you?

No? Me either. But it seems that's one option available these days (although maybe not in Australia as the method is banned). This is a Japanese delicacy known as odori-don (dancing squid rice bowl). You get served the squid (have I mentioned that it's raw? No? Oh, well, it's raw) sitting on a bed of rice and when you pour soy sauce over it, the squid comes alive. ALIVE I tell you!

Ckeck it out...

Apparently it's the sodium in the soy that causes the neurons to fire, giving the impression of life. It's all a bit disturbing for this horror writer though. I like my food dead, well cooked, and not moving, thank you--and before you call me a piker, I have tried raw crabs and live shell fish during my trip to South Korea, so I say again, no thank you.

I read about this on news.com.au and one paragraph in their article stood out: "Of course, the dish is definitely not for everyone and will probably get us into no end of trouble should alien squid monsters ever decide to invade planet Earth like in a manga movie."

Well, we'd probably deserve everything we got...

Frightening Critters

I just finished watching the last few episodes of season 5 of Primeval, and they had the return of my favourite beasties, the Future Predators. This got me to thinking about some of the other awesome critters that have appeared recently on-screen (or in books); I'm not talking about human monsters, and forget about the classics like Freddy and Jason and Frankenstein and Alien and Predator and Godzilla etc. No, I'm thinking of newer monsters, supernatural or not, that for one reason or another struck a chord with me.

These are the ones I came up with (in no order):

Future Predators (Primeval) - highly evolved vicious (and carnivorous!) descendants of future bats (kind of), that use sonar in place of vision, have their ears on the front of their face, are extremely agile and strong, and lightening quick on their four clawed legs. They just look cool.

The Gentlemen (Buffy) - these ultra creepy demons gave me nightmares when I first saw them on Buffy; bald, pale, human-like things that are always grinning to expose horrible teeth. They wear black suits and don't walk, but float gracefully over the ground. Oh, and they each carry a satchel with a scalpel in it so they can cut out hearts. Damn graceful creepy bastards.

Weeping Angels (Dr Who) - probably the most original and terrifying creature I've come across for a hell of a long time. They are an ancient race of winged humanoid aliens, their origins unknown, who feed off the potential time energy of others--they can send you back through time with a touch, and feed off the energy left behind. The Angels are "quantum-locked," appearing as statues with their hands over their eyes, only able to move when they're not being observed. And then they can move silently and quickly, unsheathing fangs and claws to attack. Just awesome. Once they've seen you, you have to keep staring at them to keep them in the statue form. Whatever you do, don't blink...

Wraiths (Stargate Atlantis) - a vampire-like, telepathic race of aliens who feed off the life-force of humans. They are highly intelligent and technologically advanced, who feed using a feeding organ on the palm of their hand, which they place over a human's chest. Their prey ages when being fed upon, quickly becoming a dry husk. Ruthless, cruel, smart--everything you want in an enemy (on TV). Plus their green greasy-looking skin just adds the final horrible touch.

Clover (Cloverfield) - the giant (25 stories tall) amphibious, semi-quadrupedal "baby" alien that destroys New York (like any good alien should). It's covered in dog-sized vicious parasites that scatter about town to further add to the chaos. The beastie is all the more frightening because it's only seen in glimpses.

There must be others but I can' think of what they are right now (it's too cold, my brain's freezing up, and I really shouldn't have any scotch tonight). I struggled to think of any I'd come across in books I've read recently, too. But then most of the long lasting monsters become immortalised through film, don't they? I mean, when you think of Dracula, it's Bela Lugosi you think of; Hannibal Lecter, it's Anthony Hopkins; It, Tim Curry etc.

Dance Power!

Ever heard of piezoelectrics? No, it's not some new fandangled static-filled meat pie, but materials capable of converting pressure into electrical energy. Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne have worked out how to use piezoelectric thin films to turn mechanical pressure into electricity. This means by typing, you could power your laptop, iPad, or iPhone. Built into shoes, each step could help charge your mobile.

A nightclub in London recently built a piezoelectric dance floor, so nightclubbers, by dancing, generate 60% of the power to run the club. What a cool idea.

I wonder if you could add piezoelectric thin films to car tyres. Then you'd have a way a charging your electric car without having to plug it in once you got home.

Piezoelectrics... look out for piezoelectric devices in a store near you soon(ish)...

Stop procrastinating Dr Young!

The Next Big Project...

Something is stirring...

When I stepped down as President of the AHWA last September, I needed to get right away from everything and recuperate. Catch my breath. Spend time on my own writing. Read some books—read lots of books. Just have fun.

And I’ve been doing this, and it’s been going well, and I want to keep doing this—but maybe a couple of months ago now something started stirring deep down inside of me, where I thought I’d poured enough scotch to kill all living things for the next decade at least.

Whatever it was, it continued to grow, making me unsettled, unable to relax. Anxious.

The Next Big Project, that’s what it is. I’ve now seen the top of its ugly head, seen its hideous eyes staring up at me from the dark. Felt it kicking as I lay there trying to sleep.

So, knowing it won’t go away, and knowing that, in line with the demented side of my nature, I don’t want it to go away, I’ve slowly but surely been drawing my plans...

Oh, I’m not alone in this madness, I have co-conspirators, friends to help raise this demonic child of ours. We can’t give any details just yet but stay tuned, that’s for sure. Because it’s going to be huge.

On another more wacky note, I posted in December about how a retired NORAD officer had predicted UFO sightings over Moscow and then London. Well, it turns out he was mostly right. They’re the Galactic Governance Council’s ships, apparently... Honest. There’s going to be a cosmic intervention within the next few years. Serious. The aliens are going to save the world because our ecosystem is on the verge of collapse. I kid you not.

I’ll be out there in my tinfoil undies, waving my sign, ‘Take me! Take me!’ Ah, it'll be grand.  

Being Prepared

See? This is what I've been afraid of... it's bad enough waking up in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which you're being chased by unrelenting zombies--especially when the neighbours' dogs are barking madly--but when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begins taking the possibility of a zombie apocalypse seriously you know there's trouble coming. The CDC even released an emergency plan of what to do in such an emergency.

Ah, it's all going to end so badly...

On another note, a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Richard Harland for winning an Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story with his brilliantly creepy tale "The Fear." Well done, Richard!! "The Fear" was first published in Macabre and also reprinted in Ellen Datlow's US anthology Best Horror of the Year #3. It's a top notch story, that one.

Congrats also to Kirstyn McDermott, for picking up a gong for Best Horror Novel with Madigan Mine, a truly excellent book. If you haven't read it, go git yerself a copy. Go on, do it. Well done to everyone else, too--a good night was had by all, so the photos would suggest...

And on just one more note, Amazon recently announced that the sales of e-books topped print books for the first time, with 105 electronic books sold for every 100 paper books now. Kindle e-books are outselling hardcover books two-to-one (not really surprising there). The times, they surely are a-changing.

Alan Baxter posted an interesting post on how it is now vital for us, as readers, to provide some kind of quality control over what's published. With the advent (and success) of Print-on-Demand and e-books, anyone can write a book and get it published, regardless of how good--or more likely how bad--it is. Read his post; Alan makes some very good points.

Now then, I'm going to tuck my tail between my legs and slink off with my exhaustion... Damn that Amanda Pillar and her hubby....... Damn their bacardi.....

Wait! What? Oh, that's okay then.

So I got up the other morning at 4:30am and trundled outside in me undies to stare up at the sky. And there I saw Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, all bunched together as if they were commenting on what I sight I was.

Even had a number of shooting stars joining me in this pre-dawn steak (the eta Aquarid meteor shower). For a space geek like it, it was quite something.

A time like this gives you an interesting perspective on the world; most sensible folk are still curled up asleep, blankets and doonas tucked in tight and pulled up under chins to ward off the cold, the streets are silent, the world pretty much yours and yours alone--other than the billions of stars above (oh, geek coolness number two: the Photopic Sky Survey - a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures! Just awesome).

Under such massiveness, all the little things seems petty. It's almost like a cleansing of the soul; left alone with yourself and your thoughts--and those untold stars and their planets and who knows what life that flitters and twitches on them--it really is quite liberating. You just shuck off all the arguments and problems and worries, and enjoy the moment for what it is and what it only ever is--a moment in time. And when you're given such a stunning backdrop in which to live that moment, why on Earth--or anywhere else--would you want to fill it with turmoil and bitterness?

Well shit, that was deep. BBBUUUURRRRPPPPPP.

On another note, I've just ordered The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction - 792 pages (it's bigger than Macabre!) covering 150 years' worth of the best science fiction stories. It has 52 stories. That should keep me entertained for a while.

The countdown to the UK and Germany is on--15 days til this wee lil' fella goes and gets lost somewhere in the land of beer steins and pork. Oh woe is me.... It's going to be, well, just terrible.

Run! Flee! Cthulhu is Coming!!

I was off to get lunch yesterday when I stumbled across this frightening looking thing lurking in the garden at work:

Aargh! I thought to myself. It's the Great Cthulhu, come again! Run! So I fled back to my office, my rumbling tum no longer of any concern, thinking only of condemning those blasted warlocks who'd been trying to recite forbidden spells from dangerous books without any thought to the rest of us.

But as I hurriedly packed my survival kit in preparation for said fleeing, I learned that the monstrosity peeking up from the garden bed was actually an Octopus Flower, A Cuttlefish Fungus, Anthurus archeri.

It puts off a stench like decaying meat or rotting fish, but it's no ancient deity being summoned back into out world. So everything's fine. Carry on.

For all those Evil Geniuses out there...

Ever wanted to take over the world but haven't been sure how to go about it? Well, with a few household items, now you can! It's as simple as one-two-three.

Step 1. Get a fibreglass satellite dish and line it with 5800 small mirrors all focused into one spot. And just like that, you now have a solar death ray, capable of burning holes in paint tin lids, cutting a soft drink can in half, even melting rock and concrete! Serious, some kid in the States did just this and then presented it on YouTube. Check it out.

Step 2. Go find the Scientists who have recently made a paper clip invisible using calcite, use your newly created solar death ray to kidnap them, and get them to build you an invisibility cloak (apparently this new invisibility technique is only limited by the size of the calcite crystals, which can grow up to 21ft long so this isn't really a problem).

Step 3. You are now invisible and you have a weapon of destruction (presumably also invisible as a satellite dish walking around by itself would look a bit obvious). It's time to take over the world. Good luck. May the Force be with you.

Better hurry though as I imagine the military will be in on the action pretty quickly...

Damn Zombies Nearly Got Me!

So I was indulging my muse last night by watching The Walking Dead episode 2. Now this is a cool series (episode 1 was all kinds of freaky!), but I'm going to have to give my shifty sideshow freak a talking to after what happened.

After the show, I trundled off to my study to do some writing, feeling all inspired and motivated as always happens when I watch something cool. A few minutes later I hear the unmistakable sound of the side door off the internal garage creaking open. I thought the old wifey had gone outside to check on the horses or something like that. Only a few seconds later I hear her cry out from the lounge; "MARTY! MARTY! MARTY!"

Major crap in a bucket! The zombies were here!

I grabbed the biggest thing at hand (a torch) and charged the garage. Whipped open the door, all ready to split open the zombie's head, even if I didn't give my torch much chance at helping out here, being plastic and all. Still, if I could get past the first one, I could reach the axe or mattock hanging patiently on the wall to defend us from the horde of walking dead I knew had finally arrived. Didn't even think about getting a knife from the kitchen...

But fortunately, no one was there.

I checked under the car, knowing full well that zombies that can't walk can still crawl, but all was clear. So quickly, my plastic torch at the ready and my heart pounding (I wasn't scared, dear, honest), I hurried to the side door and closed it. I made damn sure it was locked.

I think the ol' wifey and I were lucky it was so windy last night cos what I believe happened was that this zombie had managed to open the door, but having dead legs and all, he lost his balance in a strong gust of wind and fell away from the doorway. This gave me time to close the door and avoid the zombie apocalypse that nearly unfolded last night. I heard the neighbours' dog barking shortly after, too. Poor zombie, he wouldn't have stood a change against Digger the Great Dane.

Close call though.

I'm not sure I want to watch anymore zombies tonight...

Super on two accounts

Super Number 1) The edits on my novel are coming along very well indeed. Parkton (my fictional town) is coming alive; I can see the streets and the shadows spreading across the roads as the sun goes down. I've even come up with a rich history, something I can definitely build upon in future Parkton stories.

(And I've just gotten a copy of Charles L Grant's The Hour of the Oxrun Dead (his first Oxrun Station novel) and am looking forward to visiting...)

Super Number 2) WE ARE THE ARMY, THE BARMY ARMY! England have won the Ashes, beating Australia 3-1 (yes, I'm a pom today).

Let's go Number 11!

So welcome to 2011!


A whole new year, as yet untainted by our daily tread (well, okay, a few days marred now, but still pretty shiny). Let's hope we can all make our year sparkle--but not in a gay vampiric way...


Might as well start the year with this - zombie ants!! Check out this wild YouTube flick by Sir David Attenborough. Nature's so cool. 


I've begun '11 on a high with an acceptance, but more on that shortly. For now, i still have 2 days holiday left, still some books to read, some scotch to drink, and my hammock to enjoy...

And now for something completely different...

First thing first, I survived NaNoWriMo! Go me. I've written just under 60,000 words of a new novel, and think I have about another 30k to go. 60k in one month. Not bad, if I do say so myself. It was great turning off my internal editor and just writing.

I'll also be heading to the States shortly to spend some time in the setting of one of my novels in order to soak up the character of the place. That should be fun, too.

Anyway, as the title of this post says, And Now for Something Completely Different...

Me being the geek that I am, and being massively interested in alien life (take me! Take me!), I have to admit to being one of those caught up in the excitement of NASA's announcement:
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p. m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.

Boy, hasn't that given folks something to chat about. There are all manner of rumours circulating cyberspace, such as arsenic-based bacteria, evidence of alien life on Titan, extraterrestrial life discovered in an ice meteorite...

When I first read this press release, my immediate thoughts were, brilliant! They've discovered alien life!! But although we won't know until tomorrow morning (my Aussie time) what the announcement will be, a lot of people think it will be about the arsenic-based life forms. And if it is, this is still huge news. As The Telegraph says;

If we found a microbe that used arsenic as a substitute for phosphorus, that would be a very exciting development. It might mean that, instead of evolving from a common ancestor with the rest of life, it developed in a second, entirely separate moment of biogenesis: that it is a limb on a “shadow tree of life”. Since this would mean that life has evolved twice on Earth alone, it’s reasonable to think it might have evolved elsewhere in the universe as well

I've always said alien life would be just that, alien. In every sense of the word. Planets we think totally inhospitable could very well be perfectly fine for alien life. It's naive to suggest otherwise.

Well, that was all rather deep. BBUURRRPP!!

Mmmm... pork...

I love bacon. It's delicious. Roast pork too, with all that crackling. Then there's ham, a whole leg of ham. What a wonderful animal this is. What did Homer once say? 'Porkchops and bacon, my two favourite animals.'

Homer: I’ll have the smiley face breakfast special. Uhh, but could you add a bacon nose? Plus bacon hair, bacon mustache, five o’clock shadow made of bacon bits and a bacon body.
Waitress: How about I just shove a pig down your throat?
(Homer looks excited)
Waitress: I was kidding.
Homer: Fine, but the bacon man lives in a bacon house!

Problem is, I love animals and while I have a huge vege garden, there's no way I could have pigs. No way could I go out to Mr Piggy and slice off a bit of his hide  for my Sunday roast each week. It just wouldn't feel right.

It would be so much better if pork grew on trees. Then I could just plant it with all of my other veges, the corn and carrots, spinach and spuds, capsicums and cucumbers etc. Just imagine, a bacon tree. How wonderful would that be?? I wouldn't have to worry about garden gnomes nibbling my toes, only Homer living there.

Okay, that's my Dr Suess moment over for the week. Back to the writing.

Dragons are real!

Well whaddya know? It turns out dragons really did exist - at least according to one Mike Hallett, discoverer of the Hallettestoneion Sea Zoria Dragons.

These creatures were apparently the biggest (100-300ft) and most advanced marine reptiles to have ever existed on Earth, going extinct around 540 million years ago - although 'latest results' date these beasties at 484 million years. Their teeth were 3 foot long (see below), which would make T-rex look like a vegetarian.

But, er, the remains look like rocks. I'm a geologist so I know what a rock looks like. But that's okay cos it's all about Zoria Repeat apparently, which I don't know about. Once you understand this, you can see things in the rocks. Wouldn't that make my day job fun?

Here's what this Mike fellow has to say:

What nobody is doing today, in the paleontological scientific communities is addressing the real scientific questions related to explaining the origins of the specialized configurations of stones (Seazoria remains). Basically the common school of thought is 'rocks are rocks because rocks have always been rocks". This is the 21st century and it is now time for science to evolve a grater understanding and explanation of why these particular stones are arranged in the exact configuration's of large scale extremely advanced prehistoric sea dragons. Yes it is much easier to to just label the Hallettestoneion Seazorias are rocks but where are all the scientists that want to get to the bottom of the Seazoria prehistoric biological mysteries. The global scientific community should be explaining accurately the triggering event that caused the creation of the specialized configurations.

I can hear my pal Bones getting all excited over this...

There was another fellow, and this is going back some years, who was convinced he had discovered a microscopic race of humans. Apparently he found evidence of them while looking at some microscope slides of spores and pollen. Little tiny humans, all about 50-100 microns in size (there are 1000 microns in a millimeter).

Man, I'm obviously not taking enough drugs--or scotch. Better ramp up my intake...

But hey, I'm more than happy to be proven wrong on either of the above.

The Monstrous Military

Came across an article today worth posting about. It's from www.mania.com:

Back in the 1950s, psychological warfare planners within the American military began spreading tales of blood-sucking, monstrous vampires being on the loose in the Philippines. The reason: to terrify the superstitious, Communist Huk rebels that at the time, were engaged in an uprising in the Philippines.

 

The operation was a truly ingenious one that was coordinated by a certain Major General Edward G. Lansdale. Born in 1908, Lansdale served with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War. Then, in 1945, he was transferred to HQ Air Forces Western Pacific in the Philippines; and, in 1957, he received a posting to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, working as Deputy Assistant to the SoD for what were vaguely termed as “Special Operations.”

 

At the specific request of President Elpidio Quirino, Lansdale was assigned to the Joint United States Military Assistance Group to provide assistance and guidance in the field of Intelligence, to the Philippine Army, as the latter sought to squash the Huk uprising. And it was while lending assistance to President Quirino that Lansdale had the bright idea of exploiting a local legend for psychological warfare purposes – namely, that of the deadly, predatory and monstrous Asuang Vampire. A very strange “special operation” had well and truly begun.

 

In his own words, Lansdale would later say that: “To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psy-war squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Asuang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks.”

 

Lansdale continued: “When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Asuang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.”

 

And, as a direct result of these actions, key, strategic ground was taken out of the hands of the Huk rebels.'

Good thinking, that...

The Bitterness of Being Human

Feeling a mite bitter with mankind today so I thought I'd pen a poem. Something a little different...

People are strange
Jimmy Morrison said,
but they're more than that,
worse than that;
People are human,
and there's no end to what
humans can be...

Yeah, okay, pretty crap, but it does the job.

Sometimes people amaze me and I'm amazed at that. After all of this time, to still be shocked and stunned by what people do... No wonder our poor planet is having an identity crises, hot and cold flushes; it's revolving around so many people...

So then, what's next..?

South Korea needs to learn how to cook their food. What's with all the raw stuff?? The fish was good - even ate something people thought might've been whale (it probably wasn't, and I hope it wasn't cos it really did taste good). But the raw crab was a bit much. You had to suck the flesh out of the shell like drinking through a straw. And the still live shell fish...... urgh. Oh, and the fermented cabbage - phew.

Glad we had rice wine to force it all down with.

All up though, it was a good adventure; saw a bit of the island, experienced the culture, and discovered the people to be rather friendly (even if I had no idea what they were going on about).

So now then, seeing as how I've forgotten this is a horror blog and have been blabbering on about my somewhat chaotic travelling of late, I might as well harp on about what's next...

Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur to be exact. On Monday. And this one is only for 4 days. That'll make my 3rd big trip is about 6 weeks... (which is silly, really). But the good thing about this trip (apart from the 5 star hotel I get put up in - jeez I'm becoming a hotel slut), is that last time I was there I discovered a cool secondhand bookstore that had a monster spec fic section, and sold their books for the equivalent of AU$1.

Awesome. So I'm packing light this time in order to fill up my suitcase.

And even better? This is my last overseas trip til August next year, and that rocks cos frankly, I'm all a bit sick of cattle class...

The Adventures of a horror writer pretending to be a scientist

It’s always an adventure when I head for the planes...

This time I find myself in South Korea for the IODP STP meeting, via a 4 hour stopover in Hong Kong, then to Seoul, and finally to Jeju, the island down the bottom of Koea where the 3-day meeting is being held (my trip to Malaysia has been postponed til Aug 31). The airport wait wasn’t too bad; I found a luxurious sofa/bed thingie shaped like giant lips and fell asleep for about an hour.

But my flight from Seoul to Jeju was cancelled. And because they couldn’t get a hold of me, I didn't find out til I was standing at the check-in counter. So I had to take a 40 minute bus ride across Seoul to Gimpo Airport to try get onto a flight there. Not good when you’re still wearing the same undies you were two days ago.....

And Seoul is a mad place; I thought it was just sky-scrapers as far as I eye could see til I realised they were high-rise apartment buildings. We were still 18km from the city. But the pollution!! At one stage, you see this massive bridge spanning a huge bay, but it fades out into smog halfway across (damnit again! I really do need to learn to take my camera everywhere). It’s 33 degrees, pretty humid, and as smoggy as hell. And again I’m so very tired...

These high-rise apartment buildings were all the same too; 15+ stories with a giant number on one side, each one like a great big letterbox number.

It’s a pity I didn’t get to see the city of Seoul itself cos it must be something - if you like that sort of thing (millions of people, traffic jams, pollution, noise...). Personally, I'm looking forward to the field trip on Sunday afternoon up the 1,950m Mt. Hallasan to see the lava tubes, but then I'm just a geek...

Still, all the aches and tiredness faded to insignificance when I reached my hotel in Jeju. I'm staying at the Hyatt Regency, and wouldn't you just know it? My room has a pretty cool ocean view. Completely unobstructed (the view below is looking away to the left).

Plus the toilet in my room has a wild looking control panel on the side of the bowl! Some of the options are: Air Drier; Front Cleansing; Rear Cleansing; Nozzle Position; Water Temperature.

I had to give these a go, no matter how tired I was.

I pressed the Rear Cleansing button... A small nozzle, about 10mm in diameter, slowly came out from the back of the toilet bowl. When it protruded about 15cm, it stopped, then sprayed a jet of water up into my face.

After drying myself off, I did what any sensible person would do and sat on the loo. I really had to give this a go.

Boy it tickled!

I'm going to try the Front Cleansing button tonight :)