Look at that, Thursday and still no new Gunsmoke File. So much for "I will update The Gunsmoke Files regularly". Who knew that 1 particular client out of several dozen could suck up so much time.
Anyhoo, hang on a bit and I'll try to come up with something.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Mad dogs and Englishmen - and at least one Scot
If you’ve ever read my profile over on the left (go ahead and read it now if you need to...I’ll wait) you’ll know that I grew up in one of the damper areas of the already damp British Isles. Add that to the fact that for the last few years I lived there, I tended to take vacations out of season to go hitchhiking or cycling, and it’s fair to say me and the sun and me weren’t exactly on close terms. Although my face looked fairly healthy, the rest of me was, to use the Scots vernacular, a wee bit peely-wally.
Bangkok had been stifling hot, but cloudy and humid so despite having been in Thailand for over a week, I was still much the same putty-color I’d been upon leaving home. Not to worry though, here I was sitting on the cabin roof of a small boat threading its way among travel cliché pretty islands. A whole week before I had to be back in Bangkok for my flight to Australia and nothing to do but lie on the beach and work on my tan. Oh this was going to be great.
The boat ride was only two hours long, not nearly long enough, but as I had neglected to purchase water before leaving the mainland, and as it was rather toasty, I wasn’t too sorry when we finally arrived. I had no accommodations booked, but that was no problem. I just adopted the policy that stood me in good stead around the world and followed the prettiest girl on the bus. (She took off the next day, to join some friends further up the coast but no matter, she picked us out a breathtakingly beautiful beach hut complex.) Within minutes we were admiring the most beautiful beach you’ve ever seen outside a TV commercial.
“Go swim!” called the proprietor, “Unpack later.”
Sound advice that, and with cut-off jeans doing service for the forgotten-at-home swimsuit, I was soon wallowing in the crystal clear turquoise waters of the South China Sea. The water was hot. Not warm, hot. Too hot to be comfortable for more than a few minutes in fact, so before long I was back out again and lying on the beach. OK, here we go, time to start looking healthy. Sun, do your stuff.
Except, I’ve never been much of a beach sitter either (see above re: hitch-hiking and cycling) and it was some time further into my new backpacker lifestyle before I learned to unwind from always-on-the-go work habits. Sitting still wasn’t my thing. So, only a few more minutes passed before I was hopping up again and throwing a T-shirt over my shoulders, strolling down the beach on a mission of exploration. What a glorious life this is.
It wasn’t really until the following morning that I realized just how intense the Thai sun could be. I was burnt, but not only that, I was burnt in…interesting ways. You see on the boat, I’d been wearing a T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and socks. Yes, socks...I am British, you know. Then I’d spent around 3 hours walking along the beach with shorts on, and a T-shirt around my neck. Which meant that some bits of me were lobster red, others a glowing hot pink, while in certain areas I was still the same gray-white I’d been when I hopped on the plane at Heathrow.
This was not a good look for me.
I suppose on hindsight, what I should have done was stay in the shade for the next few days, until things settled down, and then invested in some good quality sun-block. But nooooooooooo, that would have been too sensible.
Instead I embarked on a project to try and even up the stripes by strategically placing towels, clothing and other strips of cloth over the parts of me already burnt in the hopes of allowing the rest to catch up and evening out the whole effect. By the following day I looked like the victim of some weird flagellation ritual, with angry red strips criss-crossing my arms, torso and legs. And pain? Oh dearie me, the pain.
I finally learned my lesson and established a routine of retiring to the bar during the peak hours of the sun, from where I sipped mineral water and watched the Germans, Italians and other, better prepared Brits turn themselves the color of tobacco.
We didn’t know much about skin cancer in those days, and looking back, I’ve had way more exposure to the sun than I’ll need for several lifetimes. I really was not at all used to the sun and staying out of it for that week was probably very smart.
Of course, the fun didn’t really start for a few days when all these red stripes began to peel. In case you’re thinking of trying this yourself, trust me...even pasty-white is more attractive than that look.
Bangkok had been stifling hot, but cloudy and humid so despite having been in Thailand for over a week, I was still much the same putty-color I’d been upon leaving home. Not to worry though, here I was sitting on the cabin roof of a small boat threading its way among travel cliché pretty islands. A whole week before I had to be back in Bangkok for my flight to Australia and nothing to do but lie on the beach and work on my tan. Oh this was going to be great.
The boat ride was only two hours long, not nearly long enough, but as I had neglected to purchase water before leaving the mainland, and as it was rather toasty, I wasn’t too sorry when we finally arrived. I had no accommodations booked, but that was no problem. I just adopted the policy that stood me in good stead around the world and followed the prettiest girl on the bus. (She took off the next day, to join some friends further up the coast but no matter, she picked us out a breathtakingly beautiful beach hut complex.) Within minutes we were admiring the most beautiful beach you’ve ever seen outside a TV commercial.
“Go swim!” called the proprietor, “Unpack later.”
Sound advice that, and with cut-off jeans doing service for the forgotten-at-home swimsuit, I was soon wallowing in the crystal clear turquoise waters of the South China Sea. The water was hot. Not warm, hot. Too hot to be comfortable for more than a few minutes in fact, so before long I was back out again and lying on the beach. OK, here we go, time to start looking healthy. Sun, do your stuff.
Except, I’ve never been much of a beach sitter either (see above re: hitch-hiking and cycling) and it was some time further into my new backpacker lifestyle before I learned to unwind from always-on-the-go work habits. Sitting still wasn’t my thing. So, only a few more minutes passed before I was hopping up again and throwing a T-shirt over my shoulders, strolling down the beach on a mission of exploration. What a glorious life this is.
It wasn’t really until the following morning that I realized just how intense the Thai sun could be. I was burnt, but not only that, I was burnt in…interesting ways. You see on the boat, I’d been wearing a T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and socks. Yes, socks...I am British, you know. Then I’d spent around 3 hours walking along the beach with shorts on, and a T-shirt around my neck. Which meant that some bits of me were lobster red, others a glowing hot pink, while in certain areas I was still the same gray-white I’d been when I hopped on the plane at Heathrow.
This was not a good look for me.
I suppose on hindsight, what I should have done was stay in the shade for the next few days, until things settled down, and then invested in some good quality sun-block. But nooooooooooo, that would have been too sensible.
Instead I embarked on a project to try and even up the stripes by strategically placing towels, clothing and other strips of cloth over the parts of me already burnt in the hopes of allowing the rest to catch up and evening out the whole effect. By the following day I looked like the victim of some weird flagellation ritual, with angry red strips criss-crossing my arms, torso and legs. And pain? Oh dearie me, the pain.
I finally learned my lesson and established a routine of retiring to the bar during the peak hours of the sun, from where I sipped mineral water and watched the Germans, Italians and other, better prepared Brits turn themselves the color of tobacco.
We didn’t know much about skin cancer in those days, and looking back, I’ve had way more exposure to the sun than I’ll need for several lifetimes. I really was not at all used to the sun and staying out of it for that week was probably very smart.
Of course, the fun didn’t really start for a few days when all these red stripes began to peel. In case you’re thinking of trying this yourself, trust me...even pasty-white is more attractive than that look.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
One Day in Bangkok
The toilets were playing up at work the other day. Nothing major, we could still use them, but a leak somewhere meant the place had a distinct 'stagnant water' odor. The strange thing was; I kinda liked it. Because every time I walked in there, I was instantly transported back to Bangkok. Bad smell, good memory - go figure.
In Asia, your olfactory glands are assaulted from all sides, every moment of the day. Not the just the ever pervasive stagnant water smell, but spices, and grease, and animals, exhaust fumes and damp vegetation. Some people found it made them queasy. I found it intoxicating.
It was my first day in this most exciting and exotic of cities and I was utterly lost, with a dangerously out of date guidebook and a bandage on my arm having already been biffed by a bus. I was jet-lagged and hungry, and had no clue as to how to find any of the tourist landmarks. I was having a ball.
Someone had told me the only place to buy an English translation map was at the Tourist Authority (not true) but despite the best efforts of the Thais I accosted, nobody could tell me how to get there. It was too far for lefts and rights, and the Thai script of the street names was untranslatable. So after a while, I gave up and resorted to wandering aimlessly. That wasn't as easy as it might sound, because Thais have a habit of falling into step next to you, engaging in conversation and then attempting to persuade you to "visit a genuine silk factory", "meet a nice young lady" or "tour a gemstone factory:. Naïve little twit that I was, I actually fell for this last one and you can read about it here.
However, I took advantage of all my new friends and used them as unpaid tour guides, having them direct me to the places I wanted to see. Using this method, I found the famous Grand Palace, a display of Thai dancing, and ultimately, a river barge tour. In Thailand, every purchase involves haggling, a process many enjoy but which I found wearisome, particularly after several months. ("It's a bar of soap and I'm not paying $20 for it. Just tell me the real price and I'll pay you that and get on with my life!")
The big challenge of course, is that when you've just arrived, you have no idea what the 'real' price is. Apparently $7 is way too much to pay for a river barge tour, or so the German tourist, one of my fellow passengers, told me in smug tones. He was also horrified at how much I was paying for my hotel and completely shocked that I had yet to purchase a map. I felt so ashamed.
But still, a river barge tour is something every visitor to Bangkok must try and in my opinion, it was well worth $7. The Chao Phraya is more than just a river to the people of Bangkok. It's a highway, a home, a grocery store, a Laundromat, and a toilet. (It's astonishing to me how every Thai schoolchild is immaculately turned out in snow-white shirts given that their clothes were washed in water the color of milky coffee.) We saw it all as our barge weaved us up and down the 'streets' on which countless thousands of Bangkok's residents live.
Our first stop was the National Barge Museum, which consisted of 6 barges lined up in a row, all very ornate but not exactly exciting. The next was a snake farm, to which I was looking forward, being something of a snake-ophile. However, the $2.50 entrance fee was "a rip-off" according to our German friend and as nobody but me was willing to pay; the consensus of the boat party was that we should give it a miss. Damn democracy.
Things livened up a bit with the next stop; the temple of Wat Arun. This is an unmistakable Bangkok landmark with a tall, multi-tiered pagoda, up which it is obligatory to climb. One heckuva workout for the calf muscles but the top was crowded with locals, tourists, school tours and pilgrims. I have very fond memories of the place after being swarmed by a troupe of breathtakingly pretty schoolgirls who wanted to practice their English. They each had a questionnaire and frantically scribbled down my answers to their questions.
What's my name, where am I from, how do I like Bangkok etc. Standard stuff but when the conversation turned to sports we learned that like me, they were all fans of (real) football. Now we're talking the same language.
At the time, Liverpool were the undisputed top dogs of the English leagues so I told them that was where I was from, (OK, so that's a fib - sue me), and they were in raptures. Sure I've been to the stadium, many times. Squeals of joy erupted. My German friend desperately tried to get in on the act, but it was me they fancied. He was crushed but I cared not a whit. Hah! Serves him right for not letting me visit the snake farm.
All too soon we were back on the barge and wending our way back to the pier. Pangs of hunger were reminding me that I hadn't eaten since the British Airways fodder over 24 hours ago and while I'd so far resisted the fly-infested charms of the Bangkok street vendors, I knew I was going to be here for some time and needed to eat. I didn't come all this way to seek out western restaurants so local food it was. Carefully, I selected a vendor based on his stall looking marginally cleaner than the others and perused the menu. Naturally, it was in Thai so I resorted to pointing, selecting some green stuff and some white stuff, swimming in some gray stuff.
I don't know if you've ever been to Bangkok yourself, but if you haven't, allow me to pass on the most important lesson I learned on that, my first day in Asia. If you forget everything else I've ever told you, remember this:
If a street vendor ever serves you some green stuff and some white stuff swimming in some gray stuff…whatever you do…
don't eat it!
In Asia, your olfactory glands are assaulted from all sides, every moment of the day. Not the just the ever pervasive stagnant water smell, but spices, and grease, and animals, exhaust fumes and damp vegetation. Some people found it made them queasy. I found it intoxicating.
It was my first day in this most exciting and exotic of cities and I was utterly lost, with a dangerously out of date guidebook and a bandage on my arm having already been biffed by a bus. I was jet-lagged and hungry, and had no clue as to how to find any of the tourist landmarks. I was having a ball.
Someone had told me the only place to buy an English translation map was at the Tourist Authority (not true) but despite the best efforts of the Thais I accosted, nobody could tell me how to get there. It was too far for lefts and rights, and the Thai script of the street names was untranslatable. So after a while, I gave up and resorted to wandering aimlessly. That wasn't as easy as it might sound, because Thais have a habit of falling into step next to you, engaging in conversation and then attempting to persuade you to "visit a genuine silk factory", "meet a nice young lady" or "tour a gemstone factory:. Naïve little twit that I was, I actually fell for this last one and you can read about it here.
However, I took advantage of all my new friends and used them as unpaid tour guides, having them direct me to the places I wanted to see. Using this method, I found the famous Grand Palace, a display of Thai dancing, and ultimately, a river barge tour. In Thailand, every purchase involves haggling, a process many enjoy but which I found wearisome, particularly after several months. ("It's a bar of soap and I'm not paying $20 for it. Just tell me the real price and I'll pay you that and get on with my life!")
The big challenge of course, is that when you've just arrived, you have no idea what the 'real' price is. Apparently $7 is way too much to pay for a river barge tour, or so the German tourist, one of my fellow passengers, told me in smug tones. He was also horrified at how much I was paying for my hotel and completely shocked that I had yet to purchase a map. I felt so ashamed.
But still, a river barge tour is something every visitor to Bangkok must try and in my opinion, it was well worth $7. The Chao Phraya is more than just a river to the people of Bangkok. It's a highway, a home, a grocery store, a Laundromat, and a toilet. (It's astonishing to me how every Thai schoolchild is immaculately turned out in snow-white shirts given that their clothes were washed in water the color of milky coffee.) We saw it all as our barge weaved us up and down the 'streets' on which countless thousands of Bangkok's residents live.
Our first stop was the National Barge Museum, which consisted of 6 barges lined up in a row, all very ornate but not exactly exciting. The next was a snake farm, to which I was looking forward, being something of a snake-ophile. However, the $2.50 entrance fee was "a rip-off" according to our German friend and as nobody but me was willing to pay; the consensus of the boat party was that we should give it a miss. Damn democracy.
Things livened up a bit with the next stop; the temple of Wat Arun. This is an unmistakable Bangkok landmark with a tall, multi-tiered pagoda, up which it is obligatory to climb. One heckuva workout for the calf muscles but the top was crowded with locals, tourists, school tours and pilgrims. I have very fond memories of the place after being swarmed by a troupe of breathtakingly pretty schoolgirls who wanted to practice their English. They each had a questionnaire and frantically scribbled down my answers to their questions.
What's my name, where am I from, how do I like Bangkok etc. Standard stuff but when the conversation turned to sports we learned that like me, they were all fans of (real) football. Now we're talking the same language.
At the time, Liverpool were the undisputed top dogs of the English leagues so I told them that was where I was from, (OK, so that's a fib - sue me), and they were in raptures. Sure I've been to the stadium, many times. Squeals of joy erupted. My German friend desperately tried to get in on the act, but it was me they fancied. He was crushed but I cared not a whit. Hah! Serves him right for not letting me visit the snake farm.
All too soon we were back on the barge and wending our way back to the pier. Pangs of hunger were reminding me that I hadn't eaten since the British Airways fodder over 24 hours ago and while I'd so far resisted the fly-infested charms of the Bangkok street vendors, I knew I was going to be here for some time and needed to eat. I didn't come all this way to seek out western restaurants so local food it was. Carefully, I selected a vendor based on his stall looking marginally cleaner than the others and perused the menu. Naturally, it was in Thai so I resorted to pointing, selecting some green stuff and some white stuff, swimming in some gray stuff.
I don't know if you've ever been to Bangkok yourself, but if you haven't, allow me to pass on the most important lesson I learned on that, my first day in Asia. If you forget everything else I've ever told you, remember this:
If a street vendor ever serves you some green stuff and some white stuff swimming in some gray stuff…whatever you do…
don't eat it!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Taxi!
BERLIN (AFP) — Michael Schumacher may well be the fastest taxi driver in Germany after the seven-times world champion shocked a cab driver by taking over the wheel in order to be on time for a flight.Schumacher, 38, flew into the aerodrome at the Bavarian town of Coburg on Saturday and took a taxi to the village of Gehuelz, 30 kilometres away, to pick up a new puppy - an Australian Shepherd dog called "Ed". But when the former Formula One ace, plus his wife and two children, caught a taxi back to the airport they were short on time and,after a polite request, cab driver Tuncer Yilmaz watched in wonder as Schumacher took the wheel.
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I’m afraid I’ve never had the pleasure of riding in a taxi being driven by Mr. Schumacher, or any other Formula 1 ace. However, I suspect I’ve been transported by someone who could drive with the best of them.
Several years ago, I found myself in Atlanta on a business trip. In those days I was a Corporate Trainer and spent a good portion of my life sitting on planes, winging my way around the country, spreading enlightenment to the masses. Or at least, to my company’s clients. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this was in any way glamorous. I usually just flew in, worked, slept, worked some more and flew out again; rarely having the time to see any of the places I visited.
Even if I had, the offices at which I was working were usually situated somewhere out in the ‘burbs, in a business park or beside a faceless highway and I was too low on the company food chain to rate a rental car, so there was little to see anyway. And, thanks to America’s headlong rush towards homogenization, one suburban highway tends to look pretty much like another so there was little to distinguishes this week’s trip from the last. Even today, I’m prone to gaze in wonder as I walk through America’s airports thinking “Wait a minute...I’ve been here before; I never knew I’d been here!”
For no particular reason, Atlanta seemed to be a common destination for my business trips, and I’d estimate I’ve been there about 15-20 times, although I’ve yet to see the city center. On the day of this tale, I was heading home after my second visit that month and had a third trip planned a couple of weeks later. I had plenty of time before my flight as I waited for the airport shuttle outside the hotel. The sun was shining and despite it being a Saturday morning (and hence, un-salaried time) all was well with the world. More for something to do than anything else, I pulled out my plane ticket and glanced at the details.
It was then I discovered that the 11:30 flight I was planning to catch was actually for my next trip. For this trip, I was flying at 10am. Exactly 50 minutes from now. And I was 45 minutes from the airport. It was clear; the yet-to-arrive shuttle wasn’t going to get the job done.
Grabbing my bag, I raced across the street, hopped a concrete barrier, and waved down a passing cab.
“I need to be at the airport 10 minutes ago – can you help me?” I asked desperately. The middle-eastern driver shrugged.
“If there are no police, I can help, if there are police...” the sentence required no completion. He was moving before my second leg was in the door.
“Thanks for doing this” I said.
“Don’t talk!” he replied. Obviously, he wanted to concentrate.
Atlanta’s rush-hour gridlock is rightfully famous and having sat in it many times myself, I’m well aware this trip would have been out of the question on a weekday. But today was Saturday and traffic was light. Light, but not non-existent.
Remember those video games at the penny arcades where you sit in a padded seat and pretend to race around a track displayed on the screen? This was kind of like that. Slow moving vehicles appeared in the distance and in seconds would fill the windshield while my boy deftly weaved his way around them. On the left, on the right, on the shoulder, flashing his lights to move others out of the way. If he’d had a siren he’d have been using it. The speedometer registered zero the entire way, but I’d estimate that we rarely dropped below 100mph, and at times must have been well, well above that. The engine roared, the suspension bounced and I don’t think my driver even once touched his brakes.
Me? I just held onto the door handle and tried not to look at my watch.
In what seemed like moments, we were pulling up outside Atlanta Airport and after thrusting an inordinately large tip into his hand with a word of thanks, I was running through the concourse.
The rest of the tale could go on and on and on. How I barged my way to the front of the security line while yelling my apologies (this was pre-9/11) and had to restrain myself from physically pushing the wee train along its tracks. How I took a wrong at the far end and ran 10 gates the wrong way. How the correct gate was naturally, at the furthest end of the concourse. And how the sweat was bouncing off me like a geyser as I panted up the last few yards. But despite the airline staff attempting to close the door in my face, I made the flight.
The connection was of course, delayed and I would have had no problem if I’d left Atlanta on the next plane, but I didn’t know that at the time. I made my flight and that was what counted.
But I wouldn’t have made it without the help of my nameless friend, who drove me across an entire city faster than I’ve ever been driven in my life. And there were no police.
So Michael Shumaker; you may be the greatest Formula 1 driver in history, and apparently you’re pretty sharp behind the wheel of a cab. But if you’re ever in Atlanta, I happen to know there’s a middle-eastern guy there who will give you a run for your money.
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