Today's a bit of a beachy day, so not much to report for Captain Slog. However, we have become aware of a bizarre scam which we'd like to tell you about...
You're walking along when suddenly you're approached by a man who just happens to be passing. He points at your ear. "Soap" or "Cleanng" he will say exctedly, having apparently discovered that your ear is in desperate need of a good de-waxing. He produces a piece of paper which clearly identifies him as an official medically-qualified ear-cleaner. My, but isn't this just your lucky day, meeting this chap just when your ears are in such a state!
Should you wish to take the transaction any further (and believe us, we have seen some who have) then he will proceed to push and poke a stick in your ear to clean it but will, in all probability simply end up pushing dirt into it. You will then be asked to pay hansomely for the privilege.
The other thing we've noticed is the prevalence of Plastic Santa gangs. They've become endemic as Christmas approaches. There's no doubt a healthy rivalry between the various gangs as they try and extract you hard-earned rupee, but we don't know if they actually come to blows. We have visions of Plastic Santa gangs beating each other up behind the beach shacks and stealing each others takings!
On Tuesday night we went to a restaurant we hadn't been to before called Martin's Corner. There was some good music and we ended up having a bit of a dance, much to the amusement of the other diners. So we thought we'd go back there this evening too.
We get there early, and the singer sets up his equipment while we're eating. It's the usual synthesiser and keyboard. The management have clearly asked hm to play some Christmas songs first up, but although he's got all the backing tracks to the likes of Jingle Bells and White Christmas, he obviously doesn't know how to actually play the keyboard. He stabs at various keys until he gets the right note, and sometimes he gets completely out of sync with the backing track. Every so often he selects another instrument from his computer, so instead of the piano it might be the flute or organ. But he still can't actually play it! Quite frankly it's awful, and we wish we'd been able to record it. But we look around and it seems other diners are oblivious to this. We mention his inability to play the keyboards to our waiter. "Oh he'll be better later when he plays his usual songs" he replies.
Sure enough, once he finishes with the Christmas songs things improve markedly. The reason for the improvement is obvious from where we're sitting - he isn't actually playing anything at all. All of the music, including the tune, is being generated by the synthesiser, but he's pretending to play the keyboard. It's nothing more than karaoke. In his favour he has got quite a good voice though. Local acts don't have much of a repertoire, and we tick off the usual songs from our list; Lady in Red, Sultans of Swing, Beautiful Tonight, etc.
Then he takes a 'short' break which turns out to be half an hour, but no sooner is he back and has played a couple more songs than the kitchen has his supper ready, so he goes off to eat! At this stage we notice that the staff have set up a couple of tables on what had been the dance floor, and diners have sat at these. By this time it's around 10pm and it's apparent that we're unlikely to get a dance in tonight. He's obviously not commissioned to sing many songs because it's nearly 10.45 before he starts up again, but the dance floor is still unavailable. We decide to call it a night - a bit of a fizzer really, which just goes to show that if something is spontaneous it's often more fun that if you try and plan it.