Ok so in the van, the driver had the sniffles. You know
where you sniff up the snot or boogers or whatever back into your nostrils? I tend to think that when your body tries to push something out of it, it should stay out. But whatever snifflers, do what you have to. Except he was doing that every 2-10 seconds. Like VERY frequently.
And I’m a nose blower, I get it. I blow my nose a ton and I’m
very self-conscious about it, especially around new people cuz you don’t know
how people are going to react. Once I was loudly scolded in an African American church and
I was very embarrassed because, here I was, a guest in a holy place, and I
disgusted this person so much that she felt it was more appropriate to let me
and everyone else know how gross I was than to let it slide.
So I can understand how confrontation about someone’s bodily
habits may make that person feel even more uncomfortable. But here’s the thing,
as I’m on Team Nose Blower, I don’t know how you could possibly be OK with
sniffing for 2 hours straight. I frankly, find it disgusting, but I’m also
always packing (tissues). So now I have a dilemma, should I offer this man Kleenex relief at the risk of embarrassing the two of us? Or have
us both suffer for the next two hours?
I debated this for like twenty minutes before I decided to
offer him a tissue. I figured the worst that could happen is that he would be
confused. He probably wouldn’t yell at me. I made sure to offer with my right
hand as the left hand is considered dirty. But when I presented it to him he
politely declined! I didn’t even prepare for that response, a jolly respectful refusal.
What kind of person would want to live like this???? Baffled, he sniffled for
four hours round trip.
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| Klias River |
The nose of the Probiscus monkey is also very loud, in the
attention grabbing way. I didn’t get any good pictures because they were too far
away and I only have my phone for a camera, but they were there. And I don’t
want to brag, but I’m really good at spotting animals in the wild. I pointed
out the langur and macaque monkeys, literally double the monkeys the
professional guide did. Granted I didn’t know what they were, But I think I contributed greatly to the trip. I’d like to be an
animal spotting tour guide someday.
I ate dinner and met a group of Hong Kong Uni exchange
students. They were out for the weekend. Good weekend adventure.
Then we were back on the boat for the fireflies. I guess I’ve
seen enough fireflies in my life to have not been looking forward to this part.
But there’s over 2000 species of firefly in the world! And one of the species
we saw lights up in sync with the others in the group! Do you know how
difficult it is to get multiple people to talk or sing in unison? That’s
incredible. And they do it all night!
I went to the aquarium today. I know, I know. Classic Taylor. It was a small aquarium, but it was really cool because it was on the University of Malaysia Sabah’s campus (By the way, I just remembered I seriously considered applying there, I wish I had), so it was like a research aquarium where all the exhibits also had abstracts of the research. So cool! I really liked it, but it’s probably not for everyone.
I also discovered “100 Plus”. It’s like Gatorade but it
takes good and is fizzy. Its very salty and keeps in the water so I don’t sweat
as much. I instantly felt better when I drank it and was like “does this have caffeine?”
and it doesn’t. Pretty sure. I don’t know the word for caffeine in Malay.
