A waking vigil...

That title sounds good enough to me. That may be because I haven't slept very much.

Here's why:

Attempting to get to bed at 'a reasonable hour' last night, I managed to be in bed sometime shortly after 12 listening to some podcasts.

Snug. Warm. Comfortable. Drifting away...

I must have got some sleep because I was woken to a drowsy, semi-awake state at about 2.30 by scratching sounds. Little harmless scratching sounds. The little, innocent, harmless scratching sounds of a cockroach in my bed, next to my head.

Alas, the rhyming nature of my situation didn't make it any more pleasant.

All of a sudden, I was fully awake and looking for my nearest available whacking-thing. I then spent the next hour or so hunting and (eventually) destroying this incredibly dangerous and menacing creature (Dan, it's ok. I didn't eat it). By the time I emerged victorious from battle, I was fully, fully woken up and unable to relax again. So, I checked my email and spoke to some of you on the computer.

It was nearly 3.30am.

While on the computer, checking my email, I discovered that, as alluded to in an earlier post, I am indeed to be stranded in Kuala Lumpur for 3 days on my return journey. After some email correspondence with my travel agent and mother (hello mother) and determining the likelihood of my being detained at Malaysia airport due to my 'unusual' luggage (not very likely, apparently and fortunately), I managed to wangle the situation so as to have my hotel and breakfast paid for, along with some small cash to cover other food, transport and the like. So, while still being a pain in the arse, I guess this means that I will have a mini-holiday in a nice hotel in Malaysia on my way home.

Could be worse.

By now it was after 4.00 and I figured I really needed to try and get some sleep.

So I went back to bed, relaxed, thought of a Malaysian poolside and began drifting...

and then heard scratching sounds.

With some naughty words and thoughts, I very reasonable and calmy figured that I would just stay awake.

THAT'LL LEARN YOU YOU d*&ING COCKROACH! I'M NOT GOING TO SLEEP, TAKE THAT! YOU LIKE THAT!? SCRATCH AROUND NOW, FOOL!

So, yeah. Now I'm tired and semi-incoherent

Bye.