The Homer in me… [J11]

There are two things about me. I love English breakfast and I never learn from my mistake (a phenomenon called the “Homer Simpson’s syndrome”)

Each time I have the opportunity to eat an English breakfast (like today), I eat too much. Who could resist to sausages, bacon, fried eggs, beans and potatoes anyway.

Then, I am sick the whole morning.

I spent a week in England years ago, jumping from B&B to B&B and every single day it was the same story:

ME: hummm sausages

MPW (my patient wife): Do not eat too much; you will be sick… again

ME: hum miam slurp hummm hummm

Then 15 minutes later (in the car)

ME: I had too much sausages… I am sickkkkk

MPW (ironic): really?

ME: ahhhhh… tomorrow I will just have a toast and jam

MPW: (…)

 

So I keep making the same mistake again and again. My last day in Disko island was another good example.

The lesson is quite simple and based on simple math:

Beerⁿ+ Lack of sleep + Boat(rough sea) = Sick

So the first thing I did was to finish my stock of Greenlandic beers in the fridge and then celebrate the last day by more beers (thanks god they didn’t had any Kahlua… I was ready for “white Russians”) in the local bar (looks like a soldier bar but with ABBA as soundtrack). We all came back around 4.00 AM with a local guy and two girls (one was obviously the mistress of the guy and the other had view on one of the researchers… I am quoting her: “where is mine???”) singing a kind of unofficial Greenlandic anthem. Of course, I had to wake up early to finish the packing and I was badly hangovered.

I was kind of confident for the 5 hours boat trip to the “mainland. I am not that happy on boat but most of the time, I am not sea sick. I spent the first hour taking my last pictures of Qeqertarsuaq and 1 hour working on my data.

   

That is when I started to feel quite bad. The sea was rough and the boat was moving a lot. The worse thing to do is then to concentrate on a computer screen (what I was doing of course).

I decided to go outside to take the fresh air… didn’t work.

I ended lying in the back of the boat, listening to episodes of “Arrested development”.

The good thing about sea sickness is that it ends as soon as you put your foot on the land. One minute you feel like if you gonna die, the minute after you are ready to go to the pub to celebrate the end of the torture.

Anyway, everything was close and I went to bed.

There may me a god after all…

Advertisement