I've been sick (again) and I've been travelling. Yes, at the same time. I have also overcome my fear of driving on the other side of the road, with unfamiliar road signs, in a country where I don't speak the language. Oh, well, at least the hand gestures apear to be universal.

My grasp of the language was called into question when visiting a soup-and-sandwich place near work. Unlike other such shops that tend to offer one "meat" soup and one "veg" soup, this place has a "bold" and a "simple" soup. The day I went in the "simple" option was spicy carrot and coconut, the "bold" was corn chowder. Perhaps it is simply my own outmoded ideas of cuisine but the notion of coconut in soup is at least bold, and even daring. So it does seem that I do not speak the local language as well as I had hoped.