The songbirds. A lifetime together spent annoying other humans.

I used to work in journalism, so I’ve encountered my share of whack jobs.

Recently, I endured two days of scuba diving in Mexico with a nutcase who brought stuffed Pandas on the dive boat.

Read: Diving with Pandas

Read: Diving with Pandas Again

The pair in this photo exhibited a different brand of weirdness I’d never seen before. (And until the Panda experience they occupied the top spot in Tank’s weird traveller list.)

I met them in Candidasa, Bali where our dive excursion tour company had booked us into hotels. They were in the last few days of a six week-long honeymoon.

I dove with them for one day only. Thank goodness. They annoyed me from the get-go.

• Despite being given a precise time to be ready for pick up, they were NOT ready. They made me, our dive guide and driver wait about 10 minutes for them. No apology.
• They had the annoying habit of spontaneously breaking into song.

That’s right. One would start singing, then the other would join in. They sang in the van on the way to and from the dive site, and on the dive boat.

Their sunny (and thankfully on key) rendition of “Kokomo” made me want to thrust a fork into my frontal lobe.

They performed other tunes during our six or so hours together. I think one of them was “Joy to the World.” Or maybe it was “Yellow Submarine.” Not sure. Thanks to decades in news reporting, I have the ability to blackout truly awful life experiences.

I have these songbirds to thank for fodder for this blog. I attract the strangest folks.