December 21, 2012

The ancient Mayans built lots of pyramid-shaped temples in the Yucatan peninsula. Millions of yucky-tan tourists with sweaty temples travel to this hot-spot from far and wide to gawp in astonishment. And some, if not all, of these temples are perfectly aligned to Cosmic Phenomena.

Not to be outdone, the Canary Islands have the Pyramids of Guimar. The long sides of these pyramids follow the direction of both Solstices. I’ve been there on the Summer Solstice, and seen a double sunset – with the sun dropping behind a mountain top, after which it miraculously emerges from behind the mountain and sets a second time behind another peak. You get a bit boss-eyed watching a double sunset, and most ancient Mayan astronomers were boss-eyed.

The Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, who sailed his Kon Tiki raft for 4300 miles from South America to the Tuamoto Islands, became convinced that the Pyramids of Guimar were a notorious watering-hole on voyages made between ancient Egypt and the Maya civilisation in the Yucatan. Thor even set up home in Tenerife to pursue his research.

This got me thinking about my apartment in Tenerife, which I bought shortly after Thor died. It is on two floors in a pyramid-shaped block, but the apartment itself is hugely bigger up than down. Sometimes I think of it as an inverse pyramid within a pyramid – reminiscent of the glass images in the Paris Louvre as seen in the film The Da Vinci Code. These images symbolise the male and the female.

Now I’m no pagan historian or astrophysicist, but this sort of stuff sends my inquisitive mind into frenzy. Could my home also be perfectly aligned to Cosmic Phenomena? What about the male-female symbolism? I immediately blew up my inflatable raft and set off to investigate.

My first port of call was Olaf, owner of the local Norwegian bar, who sent me home by taxi after two double rounds of his home-made Vodka “Thor”. Later, whilst sitting on my balcony, I observed not one, but two inverse crescent moons. Perhaps I was onto something.

But it was months later, on the night of the Winter Solstice, when my researches hit the jackpot. I’d bumped into Olaf by the beach earlier in the day and he sort of relented; he said he’d lift the ban, and would be happy to see me again in his bar to celebrate his new Buy-Two-Get-One-Free offer. Amazing how a recession changes commercial attitudes.

Later, having consumed three double rounds, I found myself back on my balcony. I can’t remember how I was transported there, but I witnessed the slow traverse of not two, but three inverse crescent moons across a night’s starred face. And I saw my girlfriend moving towards me holding huge cloudy cymbals, and I feared I had ceased to be before my pen had gleaned my teeming brain.

And now for the really horrifying bit – did you know that the ancient Mayan calendar stops on December 21, 2012, when the Mayans believed the world would end?

But I’ll be all right, because I’ve got the T-shirt. It is emblazoned with Mayan phonetic hieroglyphics which loosely translate into Armageddon Outa Here! - or something that sounds like that. Olaf gave me the T-shirt when he said goodbye.
:-)

PS. If you suspect that your home may be aligned to Cosmic Phenomena, please get in touch now. This research must continue unabated, and we have so little time.

Island Eyes Syndrome

I’m doomed, I am, like all foreigners who live on sub-tropical islands. Slowly, we all go crazy. I’m saying this now, after all these years, because I think it may be happening to me. And I need to tell you now, before my worst fears are realised. This way, you’ll remember, won’t you, that you read it here first?

I know you are are willing me to fast forward quickly now, but first I’ve got to do a quick rewind, back to the time when it all began. Halcyon days, they were. You see, I walked everywhere on this island. I was all legs, proudly striding out and about with thigh and calf muscles rippling in the sunshine. Then I bought a bicycle, and I was reduced to oscillating knees with my feet moving around in tiny circles. And then, last year, I bought a car, and I was further restricted to almost imperceptable movements, with only my feet pivoting on my heels and occasionally pressing pedals A, B, or C. That’s Accelerator, Brake, and Clutch for the technically minded.

The thing about an island is that you can only travel in circles or near-circles. Basically, there are only two choices – the coastal road all the way around, or up and down the volcano, which involves one double hairpin bend after another. Road markings are virtually non-existant, since they fade at the same rate as the paint dries under the intense sunlight. I won’t even mention the road signs, which nearly always point to where you’ve just been.

But its the roundabouts that make you crack. Roundabouts here are a recent import from civilisation. And nobody knows how to drive around them. You can sense the thoughts circulating in the brains of other drivers as they approach a roundabout - It looks like a racetrack, so it must be a racetrack! Is the fast lane on the inside or the outside? Is straddling the two lanes preferable to zig-zagging? What are the correct finger signals?

So when you start driving here, the blood drains from your legs and rushes to the brain. Your over-excited brain, with zillions of thoughts wizzing around, does strange things to to your behaviour.

Yesterday I dropped Kathy off in the narrow one-way road outside the post office and slowly circled around the block to pick her up five minutes later. We have giant blocks here, on account of all the grand hotels and apartments sitting in their own grounds with swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, and private parking lots. 5 minutes is about average to circle around a typical block.

But 5 minutes for an over-excited brain is easily more than enough to allow all sorts of distracting thoughts in. One of the major benefits of this island is the semi-naked women ambling curvaceously along the pavements. Crikey! The guy in front, with his head rubbernecking, actually braked!

So it’s 6 minutes later, and suddenly I’m wondering where I’m going, and why. Dammit, I passed the post office one minute ago and didn’t even notice. Hopefully, there was a long queue in the post office. So I carry on around the block for a second time. 5 minutes later, I realise I’ve overshot the post office again by that same one minute. My thoughts had been elswhere again.

I’m ashamed to say I repeated the above circular sightseeing tour once more, before I was brought to a sudden stop by the sight of Kathy in the middle of the road, arms wide outstretched, with tears pouring from her eyes.

Luckily, they were tears of laughter. “You are completely, utterly NUTS!!!” she exclaimed, as she leapt into the car. So I gave the obligatory finger signal to the tooting mad lunatic behind me, and off we drove. Our next stop was to drop her off for a quick 5-minute visit to our local bank branch......

:-)

Cunning beats Brains

People with very high IQ’s are silly. I came to this controversial conclusion in my last year at college, when I spotted an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph that launched my brilliant career.

Yippee, I thought, when I read what was on offer. Oodles of dosh (I was skint), plus three months of residential training (I was homeless) together with 11 other young people who would be hand-picked from the crème de la crème of UK science graduates (I adore cream).

However, there were issues that seemed to put the prospect beyond my reach. The opportunity was in something called third-generation computing, which at the time was considered hugely wizzy and revolutionary and only for the exceptionally gifted (this was back in the early Sixties). And successful candidates would have to pass some exceptionally wizzy and revolutionary computer aptitude tests. Alas, I had no idea what a computer aptitude test involved.

Of course it was the elitist tone of the advertisement that got my gander up. I’d spent three miserable years studying Physics, being the dunce of the faculty, surrounded by very brainy tweed sports jackets and blue stockings who looked down at the prospect of any career other than teaching. How I wished I'd enrolled in the nearby Arts College; no "smart informal" attire, and the lady students were scrumptious...

But I digress. I sent in my application, and got busy finding out about computer aptitude tests. But there was no information, anywhere. My college didn’t have a computer. There was no information in the college library, nor in the public library. And I didn’t know anyone who worked with computers. I was stumped.

Then I had a cunning idea. It came to me shortly after I learnt the date and venue for my interview. The advertisement had mentioned a series of interviews stretching over several weeks. Mine was was scheduled to be in the final week. So I borrowed a tweed jacket, tie, and grey flannels from a fellow student, and started to hang out just outside the central London venue.

I struck lucky almost immediately, as I mingled with a batch of tweed-jacketed mirror images of myself emerging from their aptitude tests. “Wow – that was fun - let’s have a coffee and discuss” I suggested, pointing to a café just across the road....

In the ensuing conversation, I gleaned a lot. It seemed to me that the computer aptitude tests were startlingly similar to standard IQ tests. Next day, and for the following week, I esconsed myself in the Marylebone Public Library poring over as many IQ tests with model answers as I could lay my hands on. I came across three IQ tests with questions that were the same as the ones I had heard discussed in the café. Fan-dabby-dozey! I swotted, and learnt all the answers in the tests by rote.

To cut a long story short, I attended my interview in my borrowed gear, and my self-confidence was impressive. And just by chance, I sat two so-called “computer aptitude tests” that were identical to two of the IQ tests that I had learnt by rote. My scores were as close to 100% as I thought would be reasonable without arousing suspicion.

99.99% did the trick.

"Chance" is something one should never leave things up to, don’t you think?
:-)