You can't pick up chicks in business class...

It's true. You can't. Business class invariably is populated by either chubby old dudes, chubby old chicks or families.

It sucks because there you are... sitting in biz class... seated prior to all the poor bastards who have to sit in cattle class feeling superior as you sip your orange juice and look up your nose at them as they file past you... looks of despair, envy, or in some cases - faked apathy... and then you see her.

She's young... beautiful... She radiates vibrant energy and complete confidence as she puts her hand on the seat to stabilize herself as the line comes to a halt. Your eyes meet... and there is a common understanding. It's as if you are speaking though no words are spoken...

"Hey there... wow... look at you..."
"Yeah.. I can see you are looking at me... could you please roll up your tongue and put it back in your mouth?"
"Oh... was I doing that in real life? Sorry... didn't mean to offend..."
"Yeah.. no.. it's okay... I get that alot when I pass through business class..."
"Oh... just passing through? I was hoping maybe you were going to be sitting here in 15B."
"Oh silly... don't you know? You can't pick up chicks in Business Class!", she laughs...
"Yeah... well.. I mean I knew that... was even thinking about writing about it now that you mention it... but yeah...was hoping you were gonna sit here..."
"Aww... Well listen, I'm back in Coach. That's where we all sit... you wanna pick us up, you gotta sit back there!"
"No shit... I'll keep that in mind."

And with that, the line starts moving again and she moves past me into oblivion...

Walking in India

If you ever get the chance to travel internationally, don't miss the unique opportunity to walk among the people in that new place. If, after taking this walk you don't come away with a different view of the people in that place, then you've either been there before, or you weren't paying attention. Sure... You'll see alot from the hotel car or the taxi cab. But you can't really know it until you've walked in it.

My impression of India before arriving was that it was overcrowded and dirty and filled with poverty-stricken, hungry people. I've never been here before but I do have a television...

Yesterday I decided to walk the 1 - 2 miles between my office in Bangalore, India and the hotel I'm staying at. Don't get me wrong... 1 - 2 miles between a hotel and an office building in Bangalore India doesn't make me an expert or anything close to it, and yet even this tiny experience has made an impact on my perceptions.

Walking in India

When a person is hungry they get a certain look in their eye. It's an intense, penetrating look conveying single-minded focus. It may be accompanied by a smile. It may not be. It doesn't matter. If you are paying attention, you can't help but wonder if the person looking at you is thinking he might like to eat you.

In India, you see this look alot. There is no hiding from it here. If you venture outside, (and you will have to go outside, after all) you will be surrounded by it, even in a city like Bangalore which, by Indian standards is doing well.

*** Time Warp ***

Okay... so I started writing that one and then stopped because I didn't have any energy to finish it (walking in India can do that to a person...) At this point, I really don't remember enough detail to actually finish it with any integrity at all. I figure I'll just wait until the next trip to India to finish it off.

Cheesy Girl Bands

One interesting aspect of travel in Asia is the apparent proliferation of very specific form of musical entertainment which I shall refer to as "Cheesy Girl Bands" or CGB's for purposes of this essay.

This is somewhat of a misnomer because at the heart of every CGB is a male seated behind a slew of keyboards, drum machines,mixers and a microphone. The rest of the typical CGB consists of 3 female vocalists dressed identically in outfits designed to maintain a suitable level of focus from the audience, which is almost entirely male.

CGB's are also characterized by some other common traits:

1. They cover everything from country to disco to current pop.

2. They alternate lead singer between each song. The lead singer rotates to the center of the trio and takes her turn and then turns it over to the next one for the next song.

3. Every so often, the guy behind the keyboard gets a turn to sing a song.

4. The girls have a choreagraphed dance for each song. The choreography appears to be very similar for every song.

5. The singing is very bad. Luckily for the girls (but not necessarily for the audience), the music, not to be outdone by the singing, is worse than the singing

6. The guy behind the keyboards is not actually playing anything. He's pushing buttons to trigger pre-programmed musical tracks.

During the sets, (but after the drinking has begun in earnest) the girls will exit the stage and ask various audience members to dance in front of the stage for brief intervals. Then, at the end of each set, they do an elaborate "flourish" and jump off the stage to go talk to people in the audience.

There has been speculation among the group as to whether they are using this time to setup "external contracts". In my experience they are simply chatting up the various middle-aged business travellers as part of the overall experience:

"How are you doing?"
"How is your trip going?"
"Have you been to Penang before?"
"How long will you be here?"
"Do you have a wife?"
"Can I come back to the United States with you?"

Just kidding Tina. They've never asked me how my trip was going.

Chinese Fire Stomach

Hello Everyone!

I had meant to write in another entry sooner, but my plans were thwarted by a bad case of the Chinese Fire Stomach. I know it's Chinese Fire Stomach as opposed to Malaysian Fire Stomach because I had not yet eaten anything in Malaysia when the troubles began.

I should probably back up. On Wednesday night of last week, we ate at a restaurant famous for "Hot Pot". Basically, this is 2 vats of soup (one spicy, one mild) heated in the center of the table. You then cook various meats, seafood, vegetables and eggs in the soup after it comes to a roaring boil. Let's say you've got a nice slice of schnauzer you want to consume. Just scoop it up w/your chop sticks and put it into the vat for awhile. Then, when it's done you pull it back out and eat it.

Spicy soup and mild soup. It's a relative thing. They are both spicy. But the spicy soup is VERY spicy. It's spicy beyond anything any Caucasian can possibly imagine. Think about rectangular vat of soup, about 6 inches by 18 inches covered in red peppers w/the diameter of your basic okra. These peppers have been cut up into small slices and the process of boiling them extracts the oils into the soup. Once you decide it's spicy enough (we let it boil for about 5 minutes) you then scoop out all the peppers and discard them… At this point you can start cooking.

Did I mention it's really spicy?

I ate exclusively out of the spicy soup with the exception of the shrimp balls, which got cooked in the mild soup.

All of this detail… really only one outcome: Chinese Fire Stomach.

The next day I had the worst indigestion I've every had in my life. Was it worth it? You're damned straight it was. Absolutely the best food I've every had in my life. I especially enjoyed the shrimp. These little guys are alive right up until the point you dip them into the vat. One actually hopped out of the bowl onto the table in a desperate attempt to make it to safety.

I guess I thought that would be it for the gastro-intestinal distress. I figure anything that hot would kill anything else. Unfortunately it was not to be the case. Over the next couple of days I ate literally anything and everything that came my way. I felt fine the whole time (once I was done w/the Chinese Fire Stomach). On Saturday morning I hopped on a plane bound for Penang, thinking I was free and clear. Once at the hotel, I felt a little more tired than I would have expected but I chalked it up to a day of flying and went to bed hoping to get up on Sunday to catch up on some work and maybe go out and about for a little bit.

It was not to be. I woke up on Sunday at about 7:00 a.m. with the worst diarrhea and vomiting I can ever remember. My day consisted of sleeping and purging, purgin and sleeping. I was unable to regulate my own body temp… either too hot or too cold… It was awful. I had to meet one of the Dell people at the airport at 5:00 and so I woke up and got a shower and made it without "incident" Then I went to the local clinic and got my hands on electrolytes, anti-diarrheal medication, anti-vomiting medication, anti-biotics and abdominal pain medication. The doctor admonished me to begin eating breads and porridge immediately and to drink as much water as I could because I was dehydrated to a dangerous level. She told me that if I did as she instructed I would feel fine by today.

Feeling fine is a relative thing. I feel fine if the baseline is how I felt yesterday. I'm able to keep down the food. I've not had any more "episodes". On the otherhand, I'm lethargic, I have a headache and I can't think very clearly. I don't know, but I feel like I may have lost several pounds. It really was a bad scene, but all seems to be better now.

God only knows what I ate that put me through it. None of the people from dinner on Friday night appear to have gotten sick, so I can only think it was something from the airplanes or the airports.

Anyway, that's it for now.

Live from China

It's Wednesday morning here in sunny Dalian, China. I'm finally feeling adjusted to the time zone. I woke up at 4:00am this morning as opposed to the 2:30 a.m. I've been waking up every night since my arrival on Sunday.

First things first. The flight over from US to Japan was interesting. I sat next to a man who I would later come to understand is involved in the defense contracting business. He had his laptop open through much of the flight and made no attempt to conceal his work which included words like "Raytheon" and "Kim Jung Il". He and I talked about business travel and it was interesting because he literally travels all over the world developing contracts with this or that small country who might need various and sundry hardware products for various and sundry needs ranging from crowd control to domestic defense to guerilla warfare.

He seemed like a nice man. We compared notes on travel from the hotel to the office in various parts of the war. Did I say war? I meant world. I described crazed taxi bus drivers and frantic pedestrians jaywalking into certain death in Brasil and Penang. He described commuting via armored columns in Islamabad, Pakistan and Dubai. We also had a good conversation about how the US has a responsibility to help build up 3rd world countries.

China is much different than I believed it would be. I thought there would be nothing but bicycles and motor scooters piloted by people in dark jumpsuits. I imagined they'd all either be either going to or returning from cumpulsory exercises and education sessions. It is not that way at all. Basically there's a bunch of Chinese people running around, living their lives - school, work, money… My understanding is that this city is relatively well-off compared to other areas of the country. There are plenty of BMW's, Mercedes, Lexus and other expensive vehicles, as well as plenty of smaller middle-class type cars. This isn't to say there isn't poverty, but on the whole, this is a fairly standard large city - at least from the outside looking in.

It's also a dirty city. But from what people tell me, it is clean relative to either Shanghai or Beijing. In anycase, the air is very polluted given the large number of coal plants and cars. China is basically going through it's industrial revolution. I guess I shouldn't expect it to be a clean place.

No birds… okay… some birds… 2 birds… Maybe they went south for the winter? (It is pretty damn cold here) Maybe they got killed off in a massive bird-kill related to avian flu? It's hard to say. All I'm saying is - there aren't a lot of birds around here. Come to think of it - there aren't a lot of animals running around. It's of no real surprise given what I've seen in the restaraunts here. Basically, if it was once alive, there's a decent chance you can find it for sale at a restaurant or food store. They don't really even have to have been alive. In some cases they are still alive while you select them. (I have only seen live seafood at this point, but I'm given to understand you can also pick out your dog or cat in some of the finer establishments…)

There is also plenty of access to crickets, spiders, beetles, worms and other forms of creepy crawlers to delight the pallete.

In an effort to jump the cultural divide, I have made the blanket declaration to all involved that I will eat whatever is put in front of me. Last night I was encouraged to order and eat "Fried Butt" but alas, they were not serving "Fried Butt" on the "all you can eat plan" we purchased. It turns out "Fried Butt" is nothing more than fried halibut or "flatfish" as it may be called by some.

Do I have anything else to report? OH… Television. Very interesting. I'm really not sure how the People's Republic is going to keep a lid on things. They allow hotels and foreign residents access to channels like CNN world, BBC World, Bloomberg and HBO. They are more restrictive of their own citizens, who only have access to official State-run television. One of these is in English. Very interesting stuff.

Strange to say that from my new perspective in China, Penang feels like familiar territory.

Back!

Okay Okay Okay.. I'm lame. Basically I forgot my blogspot login information. fuck you... how's that?

So what's been going on since we last chatted? let's see:

1. I have been working a new job (at the same place)
2. I recently returned from a trip to Penang and Tokyo
3. ummm.... I remembered my blogspot login info
4. ummmmmmmmm......... My kids had their 6th b-day. Actually it was while I was in Penang, but we had the party this weekend since I'm back.
5. ummmmmmmmmmmmm..... my poker buddies suck cuz they won't move the game this friday night to saturday night to accomodate an old friend who is working friday night

I guess that's it for now. I'm just glad I remembered the login information.

I know you are too.