The Dancing Queen and Other Watery Delights

     First off, I need to explain why the preceding blog was published prematurely.  There are a couple very good reasons.  The first has to do with the scrambled eggs served for breakfast on our descent into TPE.   I warned Sandra against the eggs, having had an experience twenty years ago that culminated with a MacDonald’s hamburger bag being used as an emesis basin and shortly thereafter exploding against the side of my speeding Nissan station wagon.  The dauphin, who had accompanied me on safari, easily mistook the bag in which his hamburger had arrived for an air sick bag, which had served him so admirably a few hours before.  How was I to know that he was still suffering from food poisoning
courtesy of Air TseTse Fly?  Or how could I be so stupid?  I mean, the kid looked like he needed a hamburger.


    Anyway, I warned my beloved against the huevos, choosing for my own Air China breakfast slimy rice
with three tiny shrimp.  Yummy.  Not!  But I didn’t get sick.  Anyway, Sandra wasn’t at my side to do the editing.  Rather, she was back in our Bayu Cottages suite, hors de combat.  We have a very nice W.C., by the way.  Part of it is open to the sky with potted plants growing atop a bed of coral.  Balinese to the max.  And perfect for whatever comes out of either end.

    The second reason has to do with Google Blogger as it appears in Indonesia.  At first glance, it looks the
  same.  Closer scrutiny reveals that all the buttons are labeled in Bahasa Indonesia.  While blogging in the morning, I asked one of my long lost friends, Wayan Menise, to show me which button meant “save.”  At 8 PM, I was both tired and full of hubris, a bad combination.     Willy nilly, I chose the wrong button.  I should have consulted another Wayan...the vast majority of Balinese first children are named Wayan, both boys and girls, so there are literally millions of Wayans.  Like every fourth person is named Wayan!   Sheesh   Regardless of Wayans, or Ketuts for that matter, I hit  Publikasikan instead of Simpan……   And Whamo!  What you see is what you get.

     I actually think that it’s a pretty good blog.  Suffice it to say, I now realize that Freddie Mercury sang for Queen, the actual song, Dancing Queen was performed by Abba.  And there are substantial differences

between the two.  It should be noted in my behalf that there was that cloying refrain Mama mia, mama mia in Bohemian Rhapsody.   And, of course the kids from Stockholm made a bundle with the same phrase.  Sometimes in life you have to hang onto a single thread, tenuous as a hair thin strand of vermicelli.  Mama mia, indeed! 

    I blame it all on those airborne scrambled eggs.

     Moving right along,  first in this rogue’s gallery, you are treated to four shots of the immature Oriental Sweetlips, aka the Dancing Queen,  gyrating in about a foot of slosh near the shore of Lipah Bay.  If you would like to enlarge these images, just click and, like McDonald's circa 1990, you get them super sized. Here is a link to ABBA sing Dancing Queen on YouTube.  As you listen you can imagine that you are in the Java Sea with the Dancing Queen herself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62OlGvC-bk

The next picture is a really cool shot of a Speckled Damsel.  They were plentiful during my evening swim, but wasn’t it lucky that I got this choice close up?   Wouldn’t it look great on the wall above your desk?  In a subsequent blog I will give you an address where you can order a giclee on fabric ala Costco.  Tres chic.

    Space is limited, so for my last watery delights I am presenting the nudibranch Phylidia coelestis, who was foarging among the algae on a lump of coral rubble.  I actually picked up the chunk of rubble to take the picture.  It tended to neutralize the motion of the surf and the sea slug didn’t give a hoot, as far as I could tell.


    Well,  you got an explanation wrapped in a story and I remain an enigma.  I think Winston Churchill said something like that.  But I believe he was referring to Joseph Stalin.  And, even at my worst, I’m not that mean.  Must be time to go find some more underwater delights for your consideration.

    Last but not least, how about this close up of some tiny sea squirts, probably of the genus Calvelina.  Aren’t they precious? 

 
jeff