Bunnies and geckos are wonderful creatures. We love them both to death. Some of us back home even let bunnies roam the house free. Then they start crapping everywhere and it all changes. Geckos do the same thing. The difference though, is that you can choose whether or not to let bunnies live in your home. It's not so easy with geckos. I wake up in the morning before daylight in our spacious bamboo hut at the Kookoo's Nest and have to watch my every step. Ellen says it's no big deal, but she sleeps through the clean-up. She wants to stay here longer. Yesterday we quarreled. I said we could stay only if I could set traps for the little b*****s. She agreed. Then I found that there's no such thing as a gecko trap. She'd set me up. And to think I once wanted an iguana.

 The Kookoo's Nest is an hour-and-a-half ride from the island of Negros' provincial capital Dumaguete, but worth every bumpy kilometre. Aside from the damned lizards it's quite the little paradise. There's a reef right off the shore with coral and fish neither of us have ever seen before. Ellen bought me a dive mask with a built-in camera for Christmas. Yesterday I photographed a fan coral that had to be ten feet across. And parrotfish, bigger than I'd ever seen, chasing one another; fighting, maybe playing. I took at least two-hundred pics, but less than a half-dozen turned out. I'm hoping it was operator error on this first generation device from a company called Liquid Image. Today, I'll have another go. Hah, there I go, talking like the British owners of the KooKoo's Nest. How so easily I adapt.
  
A note regarding Japan: The odd looking photo to the left looks like a portal to a haze. The bathroom that we had at the hotel in Narita had no fan. After showering, the mirror fogged up, except for that wild looking space where one could see themselves as clear as clear could be. Innovative, those Japanese. Raw fish that tastes wonderful, cars that for the most part run really well, and now this. I wonder if they've patented it yet? 

I've also sent a couple of underwater photos. They're not National Geographic quality, but they are the best two out of about 1,500.

Whoops, there's more: I just finished what's called a drift dive. You simply go to the bottom of the sea and let the current have its way with you. It was kind of like one of those spaceship movies where a window breaks and the hapless astronaut gets swept away with his legs and arms waving about. It was just me and the Divemaster. He told me afterwards that we were travelling at a rate of about two knots. I have no idea what that means, but it scared the bejesus out of me.