Berlin is Back!

The other thing is that it's my Birthday. 46 years old FFS! There comes a point in these things where stop worrying about getting older (I never did actually) and start being impressed by it, "Fuck me, I'm 46, how old can I get?" sort of thing. Of course 46 isn't old. 106 is old. But I do think that this is the best time of my life - so far anyway. For one thing, the most interesting thing I am doing is opening up a new species on fly - the Giant Gourami. In the fly fishing world it's pretty hard nowadays to pioneer anything, let alone a bastard species of a fish that eat dry flies, and require Spectra (braid) for tippets because they fight so hard! I reckon I have 7-8 years of this - and Snakehead too - and all being well in my life - assuming that I'm still alive - I intend to move to the sea and live on a sailing boat. I do love Saltfly, particularly the imaginary tropical variey, but for a considerable while at least, the jungle is where it's at for me - chasing tropical freshwater fish.

The curious thing about this season is that the Monsoon appears to have forgotten itself, the lake is very low - I've mentioned this before - and instead of running a bar in the evenings I should really be fishing. So this week I've changed my working hours and instead of starting at 5pm and finishing at God knows what hour, I'm going to start at 8pm (Dark here is around 7.40pm) which will allow me to fish every evening and still manage the bar for an indefinite period of time. It would be better of course, to be fishing only, in the most remote parts of the lake, but this is really not an option at the moment - there is too much day-to-day Sexyloops stuff that needs organising; rod sales, customer service, components (don't start me on Torzites!) and I absolutely need Internet almost daily at the moment.

Talking of which we've just taken in a big shipment of blanks. I'm quite excited about that. Now that I'm back in Malaysia we can build a serious inventory. This year is going to be an excellent year for Sexyloops and we should sell around 250 rods which will be very good for the growth of the business. Talking of which I am changing the way we handle returns. This week we had a damaged rod returned that got stuck in the UK customs who then sent us bill for 250GBP to reimport a rod that we had sold! From now on, Internationally, all we will require is the top and bottom 3-4 inches of the damaged section popped in an envelope and we will fit around this (use a hacksaw). If the rings are still in perfect condition we would like these back as well, particularly Titanium Stripping Guides and Torzites which don't really wear.

I spent the last month looking at various houseboats. I'm quite happy living on a small tinny, but Ashly would like to have a hot shower and a bigger bed, maybe even a fridge! I've narrowed it down to two options, one is a really nice boat but with a fibreglass hull - I think I could replace the hull with something harder when I break it as I surely will - but I don't know how difficult this will be. The other option is to build one from scratch - this has its benefits but could potentially lead to problems when it comes to licensing it. One thing I know is that it would completely change our lives here. A houseboat and a second tinny would be very interesting indeed. Especially now that I am 46 and just coming into my prime!

And so back to where we started, Berlin is Back! You can see our first trip to Denmark here in Denmark or Bust, and here in the POD series... http://www.sexyloops.com/picofday/denmarkorbust.shtml and http://www.sexyloops.com/picofday/denmarkandbusted.shtml

Have a great week. I'm going fishing!

Cheers, Paul

PS Viking Lars is 106 tomorrow. Happy Birthday dude 

PPS POD = Fig Time for Gourami when the water level is higher. 

PPS Great thread on the Board, this one; http://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2127