Having a beer

04 July 2008 2.45 am

Aaron and I sat out on the benches in the middle of the garden. It was dark now and we were supping on some ice cold Singha beers. The suds were to celebrate the fourth of July in the US and to celebrate my more successful second teaching class. Some of the other students had long ago retired to their rooms to either study quietly or hit the sack. The rest of them were in the resource room preparing their lesson plans for tomorrow’s classes. I had sat up to four o’clock the previous morning working on my lesson plan and there was no way I was doing any more tonight. I was offline by this stage. There was nothing left in me for the day.

We talked for a bit, discussing each other’s day, then sat quietly for a while listening to the frogs and cicadas form crude harmonies in the still night air. The night watchman’s radio, down by the lake, could also be heard issuing forth music that at times sounded Arabic, at other times Indian. The warm wet grass felt good between my toes. Sometimes I could feel something run across my bare feet but this did not bother me. I was relaxing and the world was a safe and warm place to be right now.

What happened next occurred within the space of a heartbeat. I turned to Aaron to say something. He was staring intently over my left shoulder into the darkness. He lunged forward from the bench he was sitting on and pushed me to one side. As I slid bodily down the bench something shot by within a centimetre of my nose. It was metal and recently rubbed with oil, I could tell from the smell; it was that close.

The many pointed metal star barely made a sound as it embedded into the soft wood of the bench. It was then I could see it for what it was. ‘Ninjas’, I exclaimed. ‘Move’, hissed Aaron. Instinctively I dropped to the ground and rolled over flat on to my stomach. I moved in a serpentine fashion towards the bamboos growing beside our, until now, peaceful haven. A foot pressed down on my head attempting to force my face into the wet grass in order to smother me. Most of these guys have very short legs. My arm was longer and my fist crashed into his groin immediately putting him out of action. I grabbed his sword and regrouped with Aaron. ‘How many’? I asked in a surprisingly calm voice. ‘Seven in total’, he said, ‘Six left, thanks to you’.

‘Why can’t the fuckers just come to class like everyone else?’ I joked. I pulled the mini Maglite torch, that my buddy Steven had given me, from the pocket of my Bermuda shorts and shone the light around a full 360 arc. Now I had my bearings. I turned the torch off and ran quietly to my left. It is my policy never to kill a ninja as it is more painful for them to be defeated in battle and have to live to tell the tale. When I got back to the bench Aaron had taken care of three of them. The other three I had despatched over the perimeter fence.

The night watchman appeared then, giving out to us in Thai. We tried to explain but the guy has almost no English. He pushed us towards the main compound. ‘You leave, you leave, make sleep, sleep’, he kept saying. ‘I want my fucking beer, man’, demanded Aaron. ‘Leave it ‘, I said, ‘it will be warm by now’.

I will have to make some sort of start on my first assignment tomorrow morning.