China culture clash

China culture clash, My first trip to China - part two

I am here in China for technical negotiations with a client on a large project.  I have been assigned an interpreter, named Jack, who is a bright, energetic young man.  He is very intent on telling me how nurturing the Chinese people are.  Jack says in China, the people will go out of their way to serve guests and make sure we are cared for.  Jack used the example that they took me to dinner and made sure I was served first.  He knows that in America, we would be nice to visitors, but would let them fend for themselves for dinner.  I am amazed he knows what happens in America, especially since he has never been there.  In China, there is an internet block on all social media so he would not be able to communicate with Americans casually.  He can’t use Facebook or go to my Intrepid Traveler blog. (very sad).  Yet he knows how we are.  He is only 23 and is excellent with languages, but he does not even know what he pays in taxes, so I really can’t expect him to know much about us.  How many others, like him, don’t know Jack about the U.S.?  This is something to consider when we are dealing with other nations.

I am doing my best to absorb the Chinese culture.  I am trying to fit in.  But I find it difficult to handle a cup of coffee with chop sticks.  Perhaps if I attached suction cups to the end of each stick.  I may be on to something.  I could patent it.  But someone here would just copy it and cheat me out of the profits.  I am trying to get familiar with what is happening here.  I am curious about stuff like where they stash their Political Dissidents, and who gets their stuff when the government imprisons them.  Also, I’ve asked the locals for the best place to buy tainted dog food.  I know that they are always sending tainted dog food to the U.S., so it must be a very popular item here.  And I’ve asked where I could pick up the bestselling Chinese cookbook:  “101 ways to Wok your dog”, but I just got a blank stare.  When I ask these questions I don’t really get the warm, caring responses that I was led to believe I would get from these Chinese.  Hmmm.

One thing that the Chinese are doing well is land transportation.  In this city, and other cities too, the roads and highways are very wide.  In the downtown, area where I have been taking walks the street intersections flair out to make room for turning lanes.  The pedestrian crosswalks are back away from the intersections and away from the turn lanes, which makes them safer to use.  And ALL of the thousands of motorcycles that I have seen are battery powered.  They are completely silent as they coast by.  All you hear is the tire noise.  It is eerie.  And the busses that I have seen run on CNG. (Compressed Natural Gas) and there seems to be thousands of them too.  They travel in caravans throughout the city, like unconnected train cars.  This makes much more sense than hard rail lines that are fixed in one location.  If the demand for bus service shifts, they just add or take away a bus from the route. 

I am not sure about the one child policy that we, in the west, hear of.  One of my hosts here has two kids and I think is expecting another child.  (Not him, his wife.  China has not that advanced yet).  As I walk thru the city, I am the only “westerner” that I see.  It seems like everyone is smiling at me.  Maybe I have food left on my face from my last chopsticks meal.  Or is it they know the U.S. has joined China on the dark side when we elected President Obama?

There is a lot that the Eastern and Western cultures could learn from the other.  Like the importance of freedom.  The Chinese don’t remember it and many in the U.S. we take it for granted.  The U.S. population has the right to bear arms.  The Chinese do not.   So, which of these two nations has free and regular elections?  Which nation has successfully eliminated diseases, like Polio, from humanity?  Which country has given the world Pee-Wee Herman and Vice-President Joe Binden?  Hint:  It wasn’t China.  But if they want Joe Biden, I think he will be available after the Nov. elections.  

Dumbest Man Alive – follow up.

In the mirror

Dumbest Man Alive – follow up

This is a follow-up to my column written May 13 where I wrote that I must be the dumbest man alive.

In response to what I wrote, I must have received thousands, or hundreds....OK,  two very kind notes from readers that told me I couldn’t be the dumbest man in the world, but could easily be number two.

Actually, both my daughters wrote loving notes to me telling me how smart I always made them feel.  I know the notes were from them because they were addressed, as usual, to “Dear Sir or Madam”.  I read their kind remarks many times so as not to miss any nuances to what they wrote.  I did not want to make the same mistake I did with one reader’s letter.  I thought it was an invitation when it was, in reality, a restraining order. 

That blog post that I wrote where I questioned my own intelligence was inspired by my frustration from trying to get my lawn tractor fixed.  My wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler, and I live in a rural area and we have lots of acreage around our house.  I purchased a riding lawn tractor in order to mow the grass quickly.  The drive belt kept slipping off of the mower deck and it eventually broke.  I do not have an owner’s manual because I bought this mower second hand, naturally, to save money.  So being a modern, tech savvy guy, I went to the Toro Lawnmower website to look up the part and find out where to buy it.  I could not find any numbers on the website that matched the serial number or model number of my mower.  I was getting angrier the longer I searched. 

I even wrote to the “Contact Us” address on the Toro website for some help, although I knew it would be days before I would get a response.  I told my wife of my dilemma, and that I could not find ANYTHING that remotely matched my mower on the Toro website.  “Toro?  Why are you looking on the Toro website?” she said in a perplexed voice.  “You have a Troy-Bilt” mower”.   Duh.  I had just wasted hours on this wild goose chase and worse yet, I knew that the Toro guys were gonna put my email up on the bulletin board as their dumbest question ever submitted. 

And the second stupid thing I did was to forget to include the Toro story in the very blog post which was inspired by that incident.  Had I included it, perhaps not even my daughters would have been able to overlook my folly.  No wonder both were so eager to get married and change their last names.

Again, thanks for the warm words of encouragement that I am sure you readers are thinking, but apparently are not sending.  I enjoyed reading all of the ones I did get, except one.  I definitely could have done without the note from the Director of Rusk State Mental Hospital, who sent me an Admissions Form.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

There is an entire family of Chinese living in my pants.

Lost in Space, My first trip to China - part one

Even though I am Your Intrepid Traveler, it does not mean I am eager to go to every country on the planet in order to experience new cultures and ethnicities.  Hardly.  I couldn’t care less about most cultures.  I don’t even understand my own culture.  I still don’t know why we need to set a table with salad and dinner forks.  Isn’t one enough?  And why two sizes of fork?  Our mouths don’t change size during the meal, so why does the fork need to change?

China is one of those countries that, as far as I am concerned, can keep its culture and its 5,000 year old history to itself.  I can’t be bothered.  I am very busy being ignorant.  Believe me, that is a full time job.  However, an overseas company approached me with a multi-million dollar project financed by the Chinese National Petroleum Corp, (CNPC).  We began a series of discussions which all led up to me going to Chengdu, China for face to face meetings with the decision makers of this massive project.  Suddenly, visiting China didn’t seem so bad.

It was a rushed trip and I barely had time to get a visa for China. I had to leave the Friday of Memorial Day weekend and would be gone eight days.  It is a long way to China, as you may know.  In fact, it is directly on the other side of the globe from me.  I always heard that you could dig a tunnel thru the earth and come out in China, but since I had to leave by Friday, I would not have time to prove out that theory.  I would fly instead.

To get there from Houston I had to stop in three other cities, Los Angeles, then Shanghai, then to Chengdu.  I landed in Shanghai after traveling over 18 hours with no real sleep.  I went thru Customs, since this was my entry point into the country.  Typically you have to collect your luggage, get cleared by Customs, then re-check your bag and get on another plane.  That procedure did not happen on this stop, but I was not concerned since United Airlines told me my suit bag would be sent all the way to my final destination.  (That should have been a red flag for me since the ticket agent in Houston said my bag would get to Chengdu, no problem)

Well, as you can probably guess, I arrived safely at my final destination, at 2 in the morning, but my suit bag, with all my clothes, did not.  I spent another hour filling out paperwork for lost luggage, and then headed to the hotel.  After only three hours of sleep, I had a breakfast meeting with my contacts in Chengdu.  We spent the entire day going over details of the project and completely missed lunch.  By 6pm my bag had still not arrived.  The airline now said they did not even know where it was.  I was still wearing the same hiking pants and fishing shirt I wore for traveling.  On the plane I dressed for comfort, not for style. 

My presentation to the decision makers of CNPC was scheduled for the next morning.  I HAD to go find some clothes.  So I told Jack, my interpreter, to find a shopping area where I could get something to wear.  I am tall and much larger than most Asians.  In fact, I think my shoes are larger than some Asian countries.  Jack was doubtful we’d find anything.  He looked at me as if I were a freaky Herman Munster sized person. I told him that in a city of millions of people, there had to be some store that had my size. He looked at me like I was crazy.  (I get that look a lot). 

We went to a dozen or more men’s clothing shops before we found a pair of dress slacks that would fit me.  The pants were found in the storage area where they keep the inventory that doesn’t sell.  The only reason these pants fit me was because the hemline was not yet tailored and there was plenty of length in the legs.  I did not ask the price, I just had them sew the hem and wrap them up.  We started the process all over again by looking for a dress shirt.  Finding a shirt had to be easier to find than a pair of slacks, right?  At least you’d think that.  But none of a dozen other clothing stores had a shirt my size.  I even tried on a 3XL size golf shirt which was made from stretchy material.  It felt like it was painted on.  No thank you.  I know that science fiction movies predict that all of us will be wearing spandex in the future, but I HATE tight clothing.  Finally, I found a store that had ONE short sleeve, button down dress shirt that nearly fit me.  But the fabric was so thin you could see my chest hair thru the shirt.  I would like to say you could also see my ripped abdominal muscles thru the shirt but they were with my missing luggage.  So, I reluctantly spent the $60 dollars, (ouch) for the polyester shirt, knowing that I would never again wear it after this presentation. 

I took my new “wardrobe” back to the hotel.  Then I realized that I had no underwear.  The hiking pants have built-in mess “briefs” so tomorrow I would have to go commando.  Oh, great.  When I stand up to do my presentation not only will they see my chest hair and flab thru the shirt, they may see more than that with those clingy slacks. 

I then had to get the wrinkles out of the clothes.  The hotel would not loan me an iron and the laundry was closed for the night.  I tried steaming the shirt in the shower but it was not helping much.   I went to bed, knowing that tomorrow I would be wearing jogging shoes with those slacks, no belt, and a wrinkled see-thru shirt while hoping to convince the big shots with CNPC that I knew what I was talking about.  Maybe they’d think I was eccentric and smart.  OK, maybe just eccentric.

I crawled in to bed, praying that the Magic Clothing Fairy would visit me in the night.  Of course, she probably wouldn’t have my size either.  But un-believably, Jack knocked on my door at one a.m. with my suit bag.  He’d called the airport one last time and sure enough, it had arrived. Now all I had to do was un-pack and steam the wrinkles from my good old trusty natural fiber, permanent pressed, wrinkle free, (probably made in China) men’s wear.  Underwear too!  So, the day came for the presentation, all went well, and I did not get arrested for indecent exposure.   Jack’s delivery was much appreciated, but I can’t help wondering what the Magic Clothing Fairy would wear?  And can I make her a red hot deal for a wrinkled polyester see thru shirt and unworn slacks?

                                                                                                                                           

Mother's Day, part Deux

 alleged parents

Mother's Day, part Deux

It occurred to me, with all of the articles written about Mother’s Day recently, that I too, have a Mother. I should have snapped to this fact sooner.  Both my daughters wrote lovely pieces in their blogs about their mother, the fetching Mrs. Traveler and what a positive impact she had in their lives.  (Oddly enough, she was also their parole officer).  And my wife, (again, the fetching Mrs. Traveler), wrote a lovely piece about her Mom.  And so her mom probably felt compelled to write a Mother’s Day message too, and so on and so on.  I would image that all the way up the female linage on her side of the family, there are angels writing nice things about their even more angelic mothers. 

So this brings me back to my mother.  She is senior citizen now, of course, and at last count was about 420 years old in Hamster years.   And she is quite tiny.  But to be clear, she’s not as tiny as a hamster.  I don’t even know why I referred to her age in hamster years.  I guess so I had an excuse to use my new natural gas hybrid electric hand held calculator.  (It was purchased with Obama stimulus money for only $50,000.)  She is a bit frail now, since she has broken nearly every bone in her upper body at one time or another.  We are trying to get her to retire from the Rodeo Clown circuit.  She has always been a tough, energetic lady.  I remember her famously saying:  “When I work, everyone works!”  Or “while you are resting you can…… (reader fill in the blank with a tedious, monotonous, or boring task)

Mom has kept up with modern technology.  She has a new printer and was excited to test it out.  So she told me she printed every single page of my Intrepid Traveler blog.  The printed version was like a magazine of incredible travel and life stories.  I wanted to see it to get a visual idea of my writing production.  She said she only saved the good stories, and handed me a half page of print. Wow.  Burned by mommy.

It turns out that I don’t come by my savvy ability to travel the world by accident.  I must have inherited it.  My Dad spent several years in the Navy before and during the Korean conflict.  He was gone for weeks, maybe months at a time, serving our nation.  (Dad must have served our nation too much because we all struggle with our weight now).  I remember seeing intriguing old black and white photos of him framed on the wall of his study.  One was where he was standing next to a dogsled in Greenland.  I think they were just about to hitch him up.  I hope he was wearing confortable shoes and the load was not too heavy.  Another photo was of him with a huge iceberg in the background.  In his hands were an ice-pick and a martini shaker.  He always dreamed big.

After my Dad retired, he and my Mom began to see the world together.  They went to Europe, South America, Asia, and many third world nations, like Louisiana.  I am sure if there had been such a thing as travel blogs back then, we would have read about some of their exploits.  Or at least seen the police reports.  Some of their trips were quite long.  I remember one time they were gone for more than 80 days.  We began to worry since so much time passed without hearing from them.  But, not to worry, we found them at home, in the closet. They were a little dehydrated, but fortunately they still had their boarding passes. 

When my oldest child was due to be born, Mom and Dad were on a trip in Australia.  We sent them word that the delivery was going to be any day now.  They dashed back to the U.S. as quickly as they could.  I really wanted my wife to wait for them to get home before giving birth, so I duct taped her legs together for the last 72 hours.  The technique worked and now there is one more thing that duct tape can be used for.

So, there you have it, Gentle Readers.  You can see that my  travel genes did not fall far from the gene pool tree.  So you can rest quietly with the knowledge that my traveling is an inherited trait.  And while you are resting, go back and re-read all my other travel stories.  I can’t think of a more tedious, monotonous, or boring task.

THE DUMBEST MAN ALIVE

The dumbest man alive

I guess they can arrest you for being stupid. Who knew?

I believe that I am or very close to being the world’s biggest dumbass. Sometimes I wonder how I find my way out of the bathroom in the morning.   My entire life has been littered with episodes of idiocy that demonstrate my lack of intelligence.  You be the judge.

Years ago, when my wife and I were young newlyweds, the wife went shopping with my sister.  She came home and proudly showed me her new earrings.  Without any malice, sarcasm, or intended insult, I calmly said something like:  “Nice!  Remember when those were in style?”

I didn’t turn in to a dumb ass overnight.  I think I was always this way.  As a youngster, I painted the neighbor’s car with house paint, I painted that same neighbor’s TV with wall paint, and I painted our newly installed hardwood floor with creosote wood preservative.  I was not old enough to know better, but these actions had to show there had to be a seed of stupidity growing in me.

A good example of being a dumb ass kid was back in high school, when we played a prank on our Biology teacher.   It was the winter break, just after Christmas.  Many people had already started taking down their decorations, and there were lots of Christmas trees that had been dragged to the curb.  We used my pickup truck and scavenged the entire town for discarded trees.  We particularly wanted the ones that still had a wooden frame still attached to the trunk to help it stand upright.  You see, our Biology teacher lived in a new subdivision, typical of the time, where there were no established trees growing.  The houses looked like toad stools on the prairie.  We had collected more than two pickup loads of trees and anxiously waited until after dark to deliver them.  We wanted to “help” our teacher with his landscaping, so we planned to stack up all those trees in his yard.  He would have an instant forest. 

He lived on a Cul-de-Sac, so I parked my truck on the other end of his street.  I left the motor running in case we needed to make a fast getaway. The night was cold, moonless and pitch black.  We were just about done when a shadowy figure approached me.  I thought it was one of my buddies.  He said “how many trees are you going to put here”?  I told him we were just about done.  Then I realized this was not a buddy, but the Biology teacher.  Busted!  We all scattered like rabbits.  I ran thru several back yards and it was a while before I could make it back to my truck.  When I got to it, the engine was off and the keys were missing.  I knew instantly who had the keys.  I had no choice.  I knocked on the teacher’s front door.  He opened it, not saying a word, just dangling my truck keys in front of my face.  He said I could probably get them back from the police.  Oh crap.  One of the benefits of growing up in a small town is that the police don’t take pranks like this too seriously.  All we had to do was take the trees to the police dispatcher’s house so she could use the trees for her rabbit farm.

Then there was the time when I was in Malaysia.  I was traveling with my agent and we had hopscotched across the tiny nation for a week seeing customers.  I was in a customer’s conference room waiting for the remaining attendees to arrive. To kill time I was studying a large map on the wall which was of South East Asia.  In the middle of the map was the island of Borneo.  I told the group of men who were there for my presentation that I always wanted to go to Borneo.  They all looked at me like I was a lunatic.  One of them said “you ARE on Borneo”.  His tone implied that I had to be an idiot not to know where I was.

A more recent example of dumbassness was when my wife and I were traveling by car.  We were talking about funny billboards we had seen.  I was remembering one advertising a bar-b-que restaurant that specialized in smoked sausage.  Their bill board used a clever word play on the word sausage.  It said “you never Sausage a place!”  But my rendition of it to her was “you’ve never seen such a sausage….” then I realized I was hopelessly garbling the message.  My wife thought I was intentionally botching it to be funny…at first.  Then it dawned on her that I was just being myself….stupid. 

I have never claimed to be the brightest bulb on the tree.  So saying stupid things, or doing stupid deeds, is just what endears me to the world, I hope.  I know my children think that, but they have been inoculated by my behavior for two or three decades.  Normal people don’t necessarily think it is proper or cute or rational for a grown adult to be a fool.  I hope by posting this message I can tell the reader that it is not with malice, or sarcasm or intended insult that I am the way I am.  They can’t arrest you for being stupid, can they?  You never sausage a fool.

That Burning Sensation

Danger:  HOT !  Do not touch !

That Burning Sensation

Greetings Gentle Readers.  Today’s topic is about burning wood.  Specifically:  burning the tree tops and branches left over from the logging operation that was done on our property.  We selectively harvested the lumber grade trees a couple of years ago.  And the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler and I are still cleaning up the remains left by the loggers.  It is hard, dirty work, but my wife feels lucky that she can do it.  I thought it would be helpful for me to offer my suggestions to you if you have a wife and have recently logged your property.  Here are some handy tips for assisting her in getting your property restored to a park-like condition:

Plan ahead

Check the weather report.  You can’t burn when it is too dry, too windy, too wet, too dark, or too hot.  In other words, you shouldn’t ever burn.  If you are like me, you look at bad burning weather as a dare by Mother Nature to ignite giant piles of wood in spite of the risks.  Since you can’t change the weather, just roll the proverbial dice and light it up.  Firefighters have jobs for reasons.  Keep them employed.

Start early

Since fires are hot, you don’t want to be standing near it during the heat of the day.  Start early in the morning.  But first take time to eat the hearty breakfast that your wife has fixed for you.  She can start working outside on the wood debris right after she tidies up the kitchen. Don’t rush her.  Use this time to read the newspaper.  You need to stay up on current events, you know.  And you can check the weather report.   Since you are the male, you are the one designated to light the bonfire.  There is a “Man Rule” written about this somewhere. This rule can be found in the same place where it says men should only do the cooking when outdoors; it is OK for men to smell odd; and men can scratch inappropriate areas of their body in public.  After you have ignited the pile of wood and know it is burning well, let your wife tend the fire.  It is time for you to take that richly deserved nap.

Use Mechanical devices

Since you are the male, you get to use the mechanical devices.  In my case, it is a tractor.  I drive it in to the forest where the debris is to be burned.  Since there is only one seat on a tractor, the wife has to walk.  But that’s OK.  It is good exercise and she wants to keep that girlish figure you fell in love with when you were dating her.  The tractor will do all the heavy lifting.  I use it to drag the big logs in to create a pile.  My wife is there to unhook the chain and re-hook it on to the next big log.  I have to do the real work of steering the tractor, which can be difficult.  This is a skill that a woman just doesn’t have.  Women drivers have a bad reputation for a reason.

Wear appropriate protection.

Your wife should have good leather gloves to keep her hands soft.  She should have a broad brimmed had to keep the sun from her face. And she should have long pants and shirt to protect her skin from scratches.  She’ll be the one crawling around the tree stumps and branches, so let her buy the proper protection.  A real woman would prefer to have the right gear so she can work hard but stay looking young rather than to use that money for dining out or on a new vacuum cleaner. 

Be persistent

I don’t know how it is in your forest, but our place has about 30 acres of wooded area that was selectively cut.  This means there is a huge number of tree tops and branches that are on the ground.  I know that nature will eventually cause this wood to decay but I can’t wait that long.  When I look out in to the woods and see a tangle of tree branches, it hurts my delicate sensibilities.  So it is important for me to instill in my wife the understanding that this job will take time.  She needs to plan her day around piling and burning wood.  If you anticipate ever needing to burn massive amounts of wood debris, you might want to marry a petite woman.  My theory is that they don’t have as far to bend over to pick the branches up.  I did not marry a petite woman.  I failed to anticipate this future need for my spouse.  I chose my wife, instead, on old fashion values:  how much money her family had.

And finally

If the fires get out of hand because you ignored the weather report or the burn ban, do not fret.  There are always excuses for the fire raging out of control and burning down every house in the county.  All you have to do is start a new fire near your neighbor’s yard and claim it started there when he was burning a printed copy of these instructions.  Or better yet, blame it on his wife.  Everyone knows women can’t be trusted with fire, unsupervised, unless it is safely ensconced in a kitchen stove. 

I know this is the age of YouTube and most people get their instructions from videos rather than reading them.  But taking the advice of my attorney, I did not do a video of how to burn tree limbs.  He said it could be “evidence” to use against me in a divorce hearing.  Divorce?  Why would I want to get a divorce?  I still have acres of wood yet to burn.

Very Tall Things

Burg Khalifa in Dubai

Very Tall Things

I write to you today from the city of Kuala Lumpur, which is in the country of Malaysia.  This is another hot and steamy South East Asian country where mildew is the official national flower.  I am here for a presentation but I left my laptop computer back at the airport in Houston.  I realized it when I was on the plane so I alerted the airline; they located it and put it in the Lost and Found for me.  I hope they find my brain too.

I booked this hotel based on a travel agent’s recommendation.  I told him I really didn’t want to spend a lot of money but I wanted to be in a specific area of the city.  So I got this sad excuse for a real hotel. It is a very modern high-rise hotel, but it has no exercise room, no pool, and no business office for guests to use.  Instead of a business office, this hotel had a COIN OPERATED computer at a table in the lobby.  You got five minutes of computer time for each half ringet coin deposited.  (about 15 cents).  I was re-creating my presentation (since I left mine with my laptop) and had to keep feeding this crummy computer these large token size coins in order for it to work.  I would get engrossed in what I was doing and suddenly the curser would stop moving.  I would struggle with it for a moment and remember to put another coin in the slot.  It was slow and tedious. 

The only form of “attraction” this hotel claims is “Fish Reflexology”.  This is where you put your bare feet into a fish aquarium where thousands of minnows eat the dead cells from your skin.  Along with the fish nibbling between your toes, you get a facial and a manicure.   I have big feet.  If I decided to dunk my feet in the aquarium there would be enough dead skin to feed Moby Dick.  The minnows would think they died and wend to fishy DisneyWorld.  (is this how Nemo got his start?)   This hotel’s restaurant features fresh fish on the menu.  I certainly hope their fish does not come from the Reflexology tanks.  Come to think of it, the facial crèmes they used looked like tartar sauce.

Normally I don’t care much about the hotel’s amenities.  I am very busy going to meetings or getting lost returning from a meeting.  But this time I spent three nights here for just one presentation.  The rest of the time I wandered around the area surrounding the hotel.  There are hundreds of tiny restaurants and unkempt shops wedged in to every available space along the streets.  There are an incredible number of retailers selling the identical merchandise:  watches, cameras, T-shirts and tiny replicas of the Petronas Towers.  Petronas is the National Oil Company.  To show off their oil wealth, they built a twin set of office towers which, at the time, was the world’s tallest building.  This was back in the 90’s.  You may have seen a cheesy Sean Connery movie in 1999 that featured the Petronas Towers as the setting for a high stakes heist.

Two decades later, the Arabs had to one-up Petronas by building what is the currently the world’s tallest building in Dubai, U.A.E.  Originally it was to be named the Burg Dubai. (Burg has a soft “G”, like in barge)  This thing is massive. (see photo)   It is over 2,000 ft tall; nearly twice as tall as the Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago.  The Burg Dubai was a financial fiasco.  The city of Dubai built it when they were flush with investor cash. They ran out of money and had to get bailed out by the city of Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. which is controlled by Shiek Khalifa. As a thank you for saving their financial “bacon” the developers re-named the building Burg Khalifa.  As of now the building still sits 80% vacant.  I like to call it the “Splurg Khalifa”.

I took a tour of it with a colleague last year.  We stepped in to the elevator, the doors closed, then nothing happened.  I looked over my shoulder and saw a computer screen displaying the floor numbers which were changing rapidly.  We had already started moving up at lightning speed but there was no sensation of movement.  I had a brief flash of concern that the brakes on this elevator would fail and we would be launched like a cannonball in to the Arabian Gulf.  (Editor’s note:  that did not happen)

This building was also featured in a recent movie.  You may have seen the commercials for it showing Tom Cruze jumping out of one of the upper floor windows of it.  I understand his frustration.  He was probably tired of feeding coins in to his “business office” computer too.

One last thing about my travels which is sort of interesting…on this trip I’ve been to Dubai and to Kuala Lumpur, both with two of the world’s tallest buildings.  Now if I go on to India as planned I will probably see the world’s tallest rubbish pile.  World travel can be memorable.

Mass Transit for Dummies

What is it about  }/{/&}];{ that you don't understand?

Well, here I am in another Asian country.  This time it is Thailand and I am in the city of Bangkok.  I hear it is a huge city.  But since I took the taxi from the airport directly to my hotel, and it was midnight, I really have no idea of how large the place is.  All I know is that it takes frikkin forever to get anywhere in a cab because of all the traffic.  This is a city of 12 million inhabitants.  They all are very petite.  They would have to be tiny because there is no way 12 million full size people would fit here.  Otherwise, some would flake off the edge of the city like an overstuffed pie crust.

They all look alike to me, of course, because I am a round-eyed westerner.  They all have dark straight hair, are about four feet tall, and have a blank stare on their face, sorta like democrats. (Editor’s note:  Careful readers may remember that a similar comment about Democrats was used in my story about Korea.  Since I never miss an opportunity to make fun of Democrats, I will continue to re-use this timeless bit of sarcasm.)  The citizens here are very nice, but it would be helpful if they could say their “V’s”.  There is another letter of the alphabet they don’t care to use either, but I can’t remember what it is.  Anyway, I digress.

I am here on business.  I am attending a technical conference and my company has an exhibit showing off our expertise.  This will be three fun days of trying to explain my designs to people who are probably just being polite by listening to me.  They barely understand “Engrish” and, with my Texas accent, I can hardly speak it.  It makes for either a long difficult conversation or a short quick nod of the head and a smile which means “I don’t have a clue what was just said”.

In my attempts to be a more cosmopolitan traveler, I decided to use the Mass Transit system from my hotel to the conference center.  But I lost a few “Man Points” by asking for directions from the hotel concierge.  He gave me a street map and circled where the hotel was and where I was going.  Easy enough, even for this Intrepid Traveler. 

The easy part was finding the train system.  It was the giant elevated concrete structure about a hundred yards from the hotel.  It was mid-morning and reasonably cool, but after lugging my computer case up four flights of stairs to get to the level of the trains, I already sweated enough to need another shower.  I now had to figure out which station I was sweating in, and compare it to street map I had been given.  But the train map had no resemblance to the street map.  I wasn't even sure the street map was for the same city. 

I made some uneducated guesses as to what platform I was to go to, but then could not figure out how to buy the ticket.  There were machines that took coins and there was a real live human behind glass.  I chose to deal with the human.  I thought I told him where I needed to go and I gave him paper money.  He gave me coins back and pointed in a general direction as added assistance.  He was pointing right back to the coin operated ticket machine.  Apparently all I had done with him was get exact change.

OK, I stood in front of this ticket machine that had a lot of squiggly lines (Sanscrit, or Hindu or graffiti; not sure) and numbers on it.  Fortunately, there was a British flag on one button.  I pushed it.  The squiggly lines became words.  Or I presumed they were words.  I think they were the station names.  But I found it impossible to know which station I needed.  They all sounded and looked so similar.  What station name did the Change Maker guy say I needed?   Was the name:   KNOT HEER, HOP SING, or BIC PEN?  Perhaps he said YAN QUI?  or U LOS?   I thought it had some K sound in it somewhere. 

As if standing there, like a goat looking at a light switch was not embarrassing enough, I had to be helped by a family from India.  They didn’t know where I was going either, but they at least could show me how to get the machine to spit out a ticket. Thus armed with a credit card sized ticket, I approached the entry area.  After four tries, I finally oriented the four sided ticket properly into the gate opening mechanism.  I followed the crowd of Petite People.  A train came in to the station and opened its doors. I squeezed myself in and hoped for the best.  The train doors closed and off we went.  I had a rough idea of what name to listen for as we chugged along above the city traffic, but the recorded voice announcing the stations was so faint I could barely hear it. 

After a few stops, I decided it was time to dis-embark.  I found another train map and started to do more comparisons with the street map.  I slowly started to realize that I had traveled in EXACTLY the wrong direction from where I wanted to go, of course.  I could keep relating more details of this sad tale of ineptitude, but the short version is that I finally did get to the conference.  At the end of the day I didn't feel my manhood could stand a return trip on the Mass Transit of Doom, so I took a cab back to my hotel.

Mass transit travel and I do not seem to get along.  Once, a few years ago, I was in Rome with my family.  I wanted to go see the Coliseum since we were leaving Rome the next day.  The family was too tired, so I went on my own.  My wife told me to take the Red Line, or perhaps she said take the Blue Line from our hotel to the Coliseum.  She said I couldn’t miss it.  Well, those four words always spell doom for me.  If someone says:  You can’t miss it, you can bet your boots I will miss it.

My wife was referring to me taking the Red or Blue SUBWAY.  Instead, I took the Red or Blue CITY BUS.  Poor decision.  After several hours of waiting for the bus to drive past the coliseum, I finally gave up (losing man points again) and asked the driver when we would get there.  He looked at me like I was a lunatic.  Then he said something in Italian, I suppose, then opened the bus door, and rudely gestured me out. 

They say necessity is the mother of invention so I wish I could say I came up with a clever solution to my problem.   But no. I resorted to pestering strangers for directions.  (losing more Man Points) Eventually I figured out where I was and what direction to walk.  It took me until dark to find the coliseum.  By then it was closed.  All I could do was stare at the outer walls of that magnificent edifice.  I felt defeated.  Like a Christian about to be fed to the Entertainment.  I was tired of trying to be a savvy consumer of big city mass transit.  I had more money than pride, so I wimped out and took a cab back to the hotel.    Some things in life just never change.

What's that noise?

What's that noise?

found in the archives and never published
Written Feb 2012

Hello Friends.  Those of you who follow this blog, and who are not incarcerated, need to find something better to do.  But, if you are a reader, you may know that when I am not gallivanting around the globe, I invest in income producing real estate back near where I live.  I buy foreclosed homes as a way to diversify my money away from the stock market.  I don’t like having all my investments under the control of some fat cat banker or greedy stock broker.  I would rather be the fat and greedy one and control my investments personally.

At the time of the incident to be discussed here, I had purchased four single family homes that had been foreclosures.  I fixed them up, and leased them out.  I have not had any major problems yet and I have been doing it for three years now. 

A new foreclosure came on to the market that I was interested in.  It was a very nice little home in a typical middle income neighborhood.  It was all brick, three bedrooms, two baths and had a nice back yard and was on a quiet street.   It had been recently painted on the outside and the inside looked good.  I planned to re-paint the inside and put in new carpet.  It should have been a painless, low cost rehab.  Since I am a guy, I think about the mechanical components of a house more than the floor plan or paint colors.  This means I focus on the HVAC system (This house had a new one) and  plumbing:  This house had copper water pipes which indicated to me that the original builder put in more quality in to this home than a home that just used galvanized steel water pipe.

The day I was supposed to finalize the purchase of this house I decided to swing by the property to check it out one more time.  I discovered that the outside air conditioner compressor was missing. Thieves had stolen it.  All that was left was the small concrete pad that it sat on.  Crap!  That was a problem.   I made a few frantic phone calls to see what it would cost me to replace the outside unit.  The prices ranged from $500 for a used unit, to $2,900 if the inside unit had to be replaced to match the new outside unit.  Crap again!  

I had my Real Estate agent tell the seller, a big fat cat banker, that if they did not lower the price by $3,500, the purchase was off.  They came back with their counter-offer, which was a $500 reduction.  I came back with a $2,000 lower price.  The seller acquiesced to my stern demands and reduced the price by $2,000.  HA!  Now I could buy a $500 used A/C unit for the house and have an extra $1500 to use for putting more tile flooring in the house.  What a wheeler-dealer I was!  So, I signed all the paperwork, and now owned this cute little house.

It was a few days later before I had a chance to go inside the property.  I was showing the house to my wife when, as luck would have it, the city water dept. worker stopped by and turned on the water for us.  We suddenly heard a loud gushing sound.  My wife and I look at each other.  “What’s that noise?”  It sounded like a water hose blasting the wall in the garage.

I ran outside.  The City worker said he turned the water back off since there was water pouring out of the attic and running down the outside brick.  NOT GOOD.  I was astonished.  I went in to the garage and saw that the water heater had been pulled away from the wall and all the copper pipes and connections to it were cut and mangled.  The power cable to it was also severed.  What on earth could have caused that?  How weird!  But that did not explain why water would be coming out of the attic.

I pulled down the retractable stairway and scrambled up in to the dark attic.  My flashlight zeroed in on the area where the water would have been pouring out.  Everything was soaked.  The insulation looked like a giant serving of over cooked linguini.  The sheet rock had a half inch of water puddled up on it.  And I suddenly realized that the source of the water leak was a ragged stub of copper pipe sticking out of the ceiling rafters.   I looked around and realized that all the copper pipe in the attic was gone.  Every bit of it.  And most of the copper electrical wires that crisscrossed the attic were gone too.  I was dumbstruck.

I slowly crawled back down the stairs.  My wife was standing in the garage, anxiously waiting for an explanation.  I could hardly spit out the results of my examination.  I told her what I found and she was dumbstruck too.  That often happens to her when I open my mouth, but that is something she has learned to handle, with the help of her psychologist.  

So, fast forward a few days later.  I found a plumber who could quickly replace the piping system.  Then I found an electrician to replace and repair the damaged electrical wiring.  Then I had to replace the water heater and rewire it.  The last item was to replace the outside A/C unit and repair the damaged inside unit.  All total, the cost for all these repairs were around $5,000.  Ouch.  That $2,000 I got deducted from the house price looks very inadequate right now.  The pathetic thing is that the thieves probably got less than $50 bucks for the scrap copper.

One of the contractors told me that the police were taking this sort of crime seriously, so I called the sheriff's office. A sheriff came out and took some basic information from me.  He asked why I didn’t report the crime as soon as it happened.  I told him I thought it was a waste of time.  I asked him what they would be doing to investigate.  He said they were too short handed to investigate, and it would be a waste of time. Arrrrgh.

But this tale did have a happy ending.  My wife and I installed a lovely tile floor in the kitchen and entry.  The painter did a great job patching the holes that the plumber had to cut in the walls to connect new pipe to the un-stolen pipe.  And, best of all, I found a nice family to move in and make a home out of the house.  They hope to buy it one day.   I just hope we don’t have to call the plumber, electrician, or the police again.  But I make no prediction about whether my wife should call her psychologist. 

Pulitzer Pride goeth before the fall.

South China Sea (the little floatie things are ships)

Pulitzer Pride goeth before the fall.

My goal today is to expand my readership and finally be nominated for that elusive Pulitzer Prize. (hint, hint). I have found a little known category so maybe I have a better chance if I get nominated for: Travel Writing - Sub-category: Hot, Sweaty Countries. Therefore I have decided to write about a past trip to the country of Singapore and surrounding lands.

In the late 1700’s Great Britain sailed all over the globe looking for stuff to bring home. They were the world’s first hoarders. In the process of visiting various geographic locations the Brits would “claim” those locations. Once I tried to “claim” a vehicle when I went into a Ford truck dealership. The results were less than satisfying when they chased me out with a tire tool. I guess I should have said it with a British accent. Anyway, Singapore was one of the nations that the British claimed. Singapore eventually declared its independence from Great Britain in 1963. In fact, nearly all of the countries under the control of Great Britain have since withdrawn from the British Commonwealth. This must have been a big blow to British pride.

The Independence movement was fueled by resentment to the Brits for starting the practice of driving on the wrong side of the road. What is it with the British and wrong way driving, anyway? It seems like most the countries in the world still go the wrong way. Not like here in the U.S. Can you imagine if we had to start driving on the left side of the road? Every fast food place in America would have to rebuild their drive thru area or figure out how to throw food across the passenger’s seat to the driver. This could have serious financial and culinary repercussions. Not to mention the mess.

Singapore is located on the very tip of the Malaysian peninsula. It is separated from the mainland by a channel of water. So Singapore shares her northern border with Malaysia and her southern one with the South China Sea. I don’t know if the sea actually “shares” anything with Singapore. It probably just tolerates the nation, knowing that it could easily flood the country, on a whim, with a minor Tsunami. But is there such a thing as a minor Tsunami? And who the hell thought it was a good idea to put a silent “T” in front of sunami? Probably the Brits.

Singapore has a worldwide reputation for having a government that keeps rigid control over the population. For example: littering is forbidden and if you get caught, you have to eat whatever you threw out. This explains why you never see anyone illegally dumping scrap tires.

Singapore may be the tiniest country in SE Asia, but I can’t be sure. I did not bring a tape measure. It is so small that Singapore does not allow Sumo Wrestling. There is not enough room for two wrestlers to be in the country at the same time. Interesting fact: Singapore invented the flat screen TV because of space limitations with bulky traditional tube TV sets. OK, I made that up. But the Sumo thing might be true.

Singapore’s economy is based on international commerce. They have a population of about 500,000 and they get 12 million visitors a year. This country is non-Christian, yet at Christmas time the whole place gets decorated with Xmas lights. I have never seen such elaborate decorations. A cab driver explained to me that Singapore decorates in order to in attract visitors and make them feel like spending money. Note to self: Do not allow the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler to visit Singapore.

The first time I visited Singapore, in 2006, I also visited Indonesia. I was traveling with our South East Asia Manager of Sales, who was a Frenchman. At the end of the first day, we took customers to a local bar. I don’t want to say we got drunk, but we were well lubricated. It was Karaoke night, and since we were feeling no pain, there were no inhibitions when the microphone was passed around to sing. You have not lived a full life until you have listened to an intoxicated Frenchman, singing “The green, green grass of home”, with a French accent, in an Indonesian bar.

The next day I paid dearly for being over-served alcohol. To say I was hung over was like saying the Titanic was a minor boating mishap. I was not in good shape. And as luck would have it, my French colleague had set up an appointment for us to go see someone that had an interest in my product line. Damn.

We went to the customer’s office, which was just a metal shack in an industrial area. He was on the phone when we walked in. He motioned us to sit. He was puffing away on a cigarette and there was an ashtray full of butts right in front of me. The smoke and odor from the ashtray was not helping my recovery. My stomach was queasy and my head was throbbing. There was a small window AC unit vibrating on the wall but the noise was the only indicator that it was on.

As we sat there, waiting for him to finish his interminable phone call, I could feel my skin start to prickle. I was imaging a nasty looking bug or something worse crawling up my shin. It felt very real but I tried to ignore it. Damn, I am never drinking again. Is this what Alcoholics experience? The creeping sensation became more noticeable. I could stand it no longer. I abruptly pulled my pant leg up and there was a large, nasty looking bug making its way up my leg. I quickly knocked it off, and felt a huge relief that I was not going thru some kind of hideous alcohol withdrawal.

After the bug incident, I don’t recall anything else memorable from the trip. I apparently made it home safely since I lived to write about it. Aren’t you lucky. And until I told the world of my bug incident, I still had some pride and dignity left in me. I know now what it feels like to be British.

When good beavers go bad

Bad Beaver, Bad !

When good beavers go bad

Back when I was a young kid, we watched a lot of cartoons. I vividly remember the ones of the cute little beavers, scurrying around a pond, working hard to build their dam. They would cut down little trees with their exaggerated teeth, and then stack them up in the pond. Then they’d use their broad flat tails to pack mud around the sticks and make the dam all neat and tidy. They were quite industrious. There was always happy music playing on the cartoon soundtrack and I think the beavers were whistling along with the tune as they destroyed the timber. Everyone loved beavers.

Looking back on that now, as a so-called adult, I believe these hardworking beavers were supposed to be our role models. These cartoons were subtle messages to us that we should all become productive citizens. But think about it….how could they REALLY be whistling to that happy tune with those humongous teeth sticking out of their heads? And just why was it OK for them to modify their habitat drastically like they did without an environmental impact study? And weren’t they prematurely releasing CO2 by killing the trees? What other lies and propaganda were they feeding us impressionable youngsters way back in the 50’s? Hmmmmm.

Who’d have thought that one day, some of these cute little beavers would show up in on my property, live in my lake, and cut down my trees. Between the severe drought that this area has experienced for the past 12 months, and the beavers chewing trees like crazy, I have lost dozens of trees just around my lake and the creek. The little buggers are targeting the Sweet Gum trees for some reason. Maybe the name Sweet Gum is the key to their choice, rather than the Chinese Tallow trees or the Pines. No one would willingly eat something called Tallow, I don’t think. And Pine trees just smell like automobile deodorizer and probably taste like Mr. Clean.

I don’t necessarily have any special affinity for Sweet Gum trees, but they do look beautiful when their leaves turn color in autumn. Most tree leaves in this part of the country just turn brown, shrivel up and fall off the tree. At least Sweet Gums make the effort to turn a rich dark burgundy color. Can’t the oaks and elms make an attempt to have some fall color? Can it really be so hard?

Another tree that these beavers have discovered is a Texas Black Gum or Tupelo. This tree is a hardwood that has a gorgeous bright red leaf in the fall. The Black Gum is a rare tree on our property but the damn beavers have found two of them. One will certainly die, and the second one has been eaten half-way thru the trunk and may be dead by next spring. AARRGH. I will try to rescue it by stapling mesh wire around the base of the trunk. This is the only way to keep the beavers from turning a perfectly good tree into wood chips.

The real question I have is why would these beavers have it out for me? I have always supported beavers. I think buck teeth are adorable… on someone else. I think being able to eat corn on the cobb thru a chicken wire fence might be a handy talent. And I am a devotee of Buckee’s, a chain of highway gas stations that sell coffee and snacks who use a beaver as its mascot. Why would these fur bearing buzz saws pick on my trees? Wouldn’t they rather go attack someone who drains swamps or makes beaver hats for a living? My friends ask me if I am going to exterminate them. I will not. You see, I live in a wooden house. And they know where I live. Oh crap, now I think I hear them whistling.

A Hike in Big Bend - July 4th

A Hike in Big Bend - July 4th 

this is a story from a few years back. I remember it like I wrote it yesterday. OK, I found it in my archives and had forgotten all about it, but honesty is not my strong suit. But you already knew that if you have read any of my other stories. Anyway, here is what I wrote back then:

This is your intrepid traveler, reporting ‘from the “Edge of Texas”, a term coined by my youngest daughter Ali, when she was a young girl. (I will shamelessly steal anything that is clever.) I am writing this as I rest up from my July 4th holiday weekend. I spent five days in Big Bend National Park where I was visiting my lovely wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler. We shall refer to her as Gwen, since that is what is on her birth certificate. It is from Hawaii, so who knows if it is a legitimate document.

Gwen is working as a National Park Ranger for the summer. The Park Service was looking for an Elementary School teacher who could help them write curriculum as an outreach to school age park visitors. The Park Service canvassed the entire nation for a suitable candidate and Gwen got the job. She found out later that she was the only person who applied for the job, but she was still the best qualified candidate in the country to do it.

During the time I was in the park, Gwen and I went hiking every day for a few hours. The weather was spectacular. In the Trans Pecos area of Texas, it is typically over 100 degrees F at this time of the summer. But in the park, where the elevation is over a mile high in some parts, the temperature was amazingly cool and pleasant.

The last day of my visit, Gwen and I decided to be bold and take a 12.6 mile round trip hike on the South Rim Trail. This is an all day hike where the trail gains 2,000 feet in elevation. The trail winds around rugged cliffs and picturesque woodlands in order to reach the South Rim of the park. I was packing enough water to supply a 6 mule wagon team for a week while Gwen had the snacks and first aid stuff. After we had been walking a while, we met up with a hiker coming down from the trail who seemed a bit spooked. He told us he had run across black bear at 4 or 5 locations along the trail. He was nervously wiping his brow with a red bandana and talking to himself loudly as we passed. We figured he was doing that to ward off the scary beasts.

As we approached the summit of the trail a rainstorm began, with lightning and thunder. With no protection from the elements we got soaked as we waited for the weather to pass. Gwen and I hoped we had not walked this far only to be struck by lightning. There were other hikers on the ridge with us, also unprotected from the elements. I hunkered down in the lowest place I could find. I am a tall person and I felt very vulnerable to the lightning, so I began singing the Star Spangled Banner. My ploy worked. The other hikers quickly stood at attention, in honor of the 4th of July. With them standing, I was no longer the tallest attractant for lightning bolts. I really do love being patriotic.

After the storm passed, we carefully made our way along the slick rocks on the edge of the mountain to see what we had hiked so many hours to appreciate. And before us was an astonishing display of the vast west Texas desert terrain, a mile below. We could see for more than a hundred miles into the distance. The rain shower had partially shifted over to the land below us so we were literally looking down on a rainstorm. It was really unbelievable. We were awed by the view. Reluctantly we turned and reversed our direction back down the trail.

It may seem easier to walk down a mountain trail than come up it, but by this time my legs were as weak as Jello shots at a Baptist picnic. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other as we trudged along. I was walking a few feet in front of Gwen when I suddenly came across a huge bear sitting on its haunches less than 50 paces from us. It is all a blur to me now, but I think I saw him wipe his chin with a red bandana, and casually sharpen his nails with one of the handy attachments found in a Swiss army knife. I heard an audible burp from the dangerous beast as he stood on his hind legs. Our eyes met. The massive creature realized he was no longer alone on the trail. He stared at us. I think he licked his lips.

Even though exhausted, I still had cat-like reflexes. I immediately dashed behind Gwen. My first thought, naturally, was to protect her rear from any additional bear that might try to sneak up from behind us. Those crafty beasts always hunt in pairs. I believe I learned that fact from a Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom episode. What would Marlin Perkins do right now? My mind raced, and I quickly analyzed the situation. I knew I did not need to be able to outrun this bear, I just had to be able to outrun Gwen. My legs suddenly had the strength of ten men as I glanced around for an escape route.

Gwen was unfazed by the giant claw-wielding menace. She immediately took control of the touchy situation. She used her best 5th grade teacher stare and glowered at the beast. One look from her and he meekly scurried off of the trail and into the woods. I think I heard him squeak out a timid whimper.

Still shaking from our close encounter, we continued down the trail. Knowing that we should make noise to ward off any further encounters, Gwen and I spoke in elevated voices. After a while, I re-gained my manly composure and said “I guess we showed him a thing or two!” And, feeling braver, I hoped to tempt the bear into a repeat appearance by announcing “I guess I picked a bad time to smear my body with honey!”. “And did I mention, Mr. Bear, that I am carrying a huge picnic basket?” But, despite my attempts to provoke another bear encounter, no more bear were sighted.

In order to expand the boundaries of known science I suggested to Gwen that we follow the bear to see if it really did shit in the woods. We could have put an end to this fabled speculation once and for all. But Gwen calmly convinced me my idea was without merit. She emphasized her point, by beating me on the head with her hiking stick. Apparently she was still a bit touchy about my notion to out run her. Just how did she read my mind?

Editor’s note: The events depicted in the above narration are true… sort of. To the degree that a hike was made, the scenery was spectacular, and a bear was spotted. The National Park Service claims no responsibility for any injury suffered by hikers from their wives, who happen to be Park Service Employees.

Follow up: I sent this story to Gwen via email while she was still working at the park. She showed it to her fellow Park Ranger colleagues and one of them submitted it to the Park Newsletter. It was published and was a big hit with the park employees who read the newsletter. On my return trip to the park later in the summer, I was an instant celebrity for having authored this story. Everyone seemed to know who I was. But the funny part (sad, really) of this was that Gwen had been working diligently at the park all summer, quietly doing thankless work that no one else wanted to do. But now she wasn’t known for her tireless acts of good works at the park, she was known as the lady married to the guy who wrote the story about the bear encounter. She is still bitter about that and carries that hiking stick around just to remind me that she can still read my mind.

Remembering my business trip to Colombia in 2001

How are those 72 virgins working out for you in hell ?

Remembering my business trip to Colombia in 2001. 

I was musing the other day on another of my business trips that could have gone terribly wrong, but fortunately for me, and my creditors, I made it back alive and well. Here is a tiny slice of what I remember from a trip to South America.
Back in October of 2001, a colleague and I went to Bogotá, Columbia for a business trip. This trip was less than a month after the devastating terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York City by the followers of the terrorist leader Usama Bin Laden, No one in my family was enthusiastic about me making any kind of airline trip since four aircraft had been high jacked on September 11th. And to go to Bogotá, of all places, was really pushing luck since Bogotá was notorious for terrorist activity.

My colleague and I were undaunted. We arrived safely and were soon making business introductions to the locals with our agent’s assistance. But I got the strangest reaction to the Mexican speaking Columbians when I said my name. “Hi, I’m Bill L…..”. Without fail, the person I just introduced myself to would give me a ghastly look of confusion and say “Bin Laden?” “Why do you say you are Bin Laden?” I thought this was a charming joke that the locals were trying to play on me until this encounter was repeated over and over again by nearly everyone I met.

In Spanish, the double LL sounds to the listener like an “N”, so I finally figured out that they heard “Bin” for my first name and my last name syllables just ran together. And given the terrible notoriety that the real Bin Laden had suddenly achieved, his name was in everyone’s consciousness. So, here I was, a tall, slim, bearded foreigner, who was either a lunatic claiming to be Bin Laden or I really was Bin Laden, and happily admitting, “gee, you got me. Here I am”. With most of the world looking to collect a $25 million bounty for the dead or alive capture of Bin Laden, I was not too tickled with this situation.

A couple of days later, after I had gotten used to the idea that I could be the world’s most wanted Mistaken Identity, I was traveling with the manager of the company we were in Columbia to work with. For this story I will call him “Edwardo”, because his name was, well…, “Edwardo”. He told me of past kidnappings of executives by the local narco-terrorists, where their M.O. was to stop traffic, pull the unsuspecting victim from the vehicle and spirit him off in the jungle. A ransom then would be demanded and the victim may or may not be returned alive. What a cheery thought.

“Edwardo” had driven me out to their manufacturing facility on the outskirts of town. We were headed back to our hotel when the traffic suddenly slowed and halted. We were in the middle of three lanes of traffic and were, for all intentions, trapped in the street. I suddenly heard several quick, loud explosions off to my left. I strained to see what the commotion was about and glanced at my driver. He was tightly gripping the steering wheel, and staring blankly straight ahead. “What is going on?”, I implored. I was not sure I wanted to know. He mumbled something very un- reassuring to me under his breath and continued to stare forward. The explosions continued. Then to my right, a platoon of riot police in full protective gear, burst forth, running quickly towards the sounds of the explosions. Panic began sneaking into my brain as I watched the soldiers bearing riot shields and AK-47s rush past me. “Oh great, my wife was right. I am going to die and she will get to say I told you so”.

After the wave of soldiers had past us, the traffic slowly began to move forward. “Edwardo” finally looked over at me and asked “were you afraid”? “Should I have been”?, I asked, in stupefying ignorance. He calmly began to explain what we had just witnessed. We were driving past the University when this incident occurred. And on occasion the students at the school stage mini uprisings. They protest all kinds of things, from the poor wages being paid to Juan Valdez to pick coffee, to protesting the food in the school cafeteria. One of the ways they show their displeasure is to insert some kind of tiny explosive into potatoes. They throw the potatoes at the police and when the spuds hit the ground they blow up. These were apparently harmless explosions, but very loud and scary, none the less. It had become a silly ritual. The police would look tough and disperse the students while the students got to act like activists and can brag to their socialist friends what great causes they were fighting for. It was a relief to hear this story since my mind was thinking much more serious thoughts, like how my loafers would hold up in a jungle hike.

Well, I finally did make it home safely to the U.S after all of this. I amused my children with the exciting tale of how I could have been killed by the horrible exploding potato bombs wielded by vicious anarchists. I naturally was expecting loving admiration from my fawning daughters for my courage. But all I got as a response from my children was the sarcastic comment “gee, seems like a waste of perfectly good potatoes.” I bet Bin Laden wouldn’t get this kind of disrespect.

Still not over the Cold War

Karl Marx welcoming the world to Fantasy Empire

Nov 2011
Still not over the Cold War
Hello Gentle Readers, I just landed in Russia. I have a short layover here at the Moscow International airport on my way to Singapore. I have never been here before but I am not technically here now. Let me explain. Unless you go thru Customs of a particular country, you really aren’t “in” that country. So, by that measure, I cannot claim I am in Russia. And by that measure it also means I have never been in France, China, Antarctica, or Mars.

I was sitting in a window seat as we neared Moscow. It was a bright sunshiny day, but oddly enough, no other passenger on the plane seemed to notice William Shatner, in a furry gremlin suit, out on the wing. I had a great view the countryside from low altitude as we made our approach to land. We were flying over a broad, flat rural region. It is a huge area. I don’t recall the unit of measure they use for land over here. Is it Hectares?,Voltaires? Éclairs?

Much of the area below me was a blend of forest and open farm land. There were a few lonely roads etched in to the landscape. I could see occasional smoke stacks that were busy spewing out dark gray plumes of smoke. The vapors created a long wispy line along the horizon as far as the eye could see. I guess this is what caused the thick layer of haze in the atmosphere that we flew thru as we came down land. Thank goodness I never see that kind of air pollution in the U.S. any longer, unless I am flying thru Washington D.C. airspace.

As I Looked down on the unplowed barren fields it was evident to me that the communist system just doesn’t work. No crops were growing and the grounds were empty. The Commies told us back in the 60’s they would bury us, but they can’t entice the farmers to produce food? Where were the collective farms that would allow proud farmers to feed the world? I guess profit motive for farmers may actually make them grow stuff. Or maybe there was nothing in the fields because it is mid-November? OK, I guess that could be it.

We landed. But I never saw ANY sign we were even close to Moscow. There were no small outlying communities that you’d normally see near the large central business areas. Where was that giant evil city that was the scourge of the free world during the cold war? Where was Red Square and the famous minarets of the Kremlin? Not to be seen. I have quickly adopted a theory that it was all just a giant illusion. Moscow, and the entire Soviet System was just a menacing cardboard cutout of power that the communists created just to fake out the west. I have learned to hate fakes. Like the fake Rolex watch I bought in Indonesia, or the fake heart transplant I had in Mexico City. (Not really. I am a Conservative. I don’t have a heart. ) History has shown, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, that communism did not work.The wall was more valuable when it was broken up in to chunks to sell to tourists.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see in the airport of the Capitol city of the former Soviet Union. Maybe I envisioned a chorus line Cossacks in furry hats doing a folk dance, or a KGB agent in a trench coat asking for my papers, or perhaps a vodka swilling bear eating peasants for the amusement of the tourists. As a side note, I’ve actually seen a performing bear in a rural area of India once. But it was not swilling vodka, it was not eating peasants, and it didn’t ask me for my papers. It was just a sad captive bear that had all its teeth pulled out and was working for tips and tips alone. Seeing this made me wish I had become that dentist I originally went to college to become. I’d grab the owner of that poor bear and pull his teeth out to see how he liked it. But, as usual, I digress.

I am a child of the 60’s who grew up under the threat of immediate nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union. I remember the agony of practicing “duck and cover” drills in elementary school. It seemed we spent hours doing the drill. We’d be sitting on the floor, bent over with our hands over our heads “for protection”. I wondered why it was OK for the teachers and faculty to be walking around and chit-chatting while the students were cowering in the hallway. They always seemed to let the drill go on a little longer each time. And they appeared to enjoy it way more than they should have. Now, thinking back on it, I am suspicious of what was in the drinks I saw them toasting each other with. At the time, I didn’t think about why they would have had olives and tiny umbrellas in their beverages.

Looking back now, as a mature adult (OK, age-wise mature, not mentally), I realize that these drills were not to protect us physically from a Rooskie sneak attack. These drills were designed by our government to make us think we were doing something to protect ourselves. It was rather silly to believe that covering our heads with our hands would do any good if we were exposed to a 2000 degree blast wave from a thermo-nuclear device.

I am beginning to have my suspicions that our government knew all along that the commies were not a problem. Our leaders just used that threat to get billions of tax dollars out of us. Never let a crisis go to waste. I thought that was a new term, but the concept behind it is as old as politics. We now are accustomed to the U.S. government using our money to buy million dollar toilets. I wonder if those toilets had built-in bidets? But, in fairness, those high dollar commodes must have done the trick. It turns out that we were never bombed by the Commies, or attacked by dancing bears wearing trench coats. But the KGB does ask for our papers, now, at the airport.