Greetings, gentle readers.
And so, after much ado about many things, Jules and I made it to Minden, Ontario. Her parents, in addition to being thoroughly wonderful people, also have the stamina of blood-doped racehorses. I didn't subject my own parents to the sort of extensive slideshows of South Africa that I unleashed on these poor people. Into the wee hours of every night, twenty-three to the dozen, ground littered with the hind legs of donkeys, tiring the sun with minutiae until it falls out of the sky, I banged on about the most uninteresting things about Africa imaginable, and still these kind people feigned interest. Astonishing.
The grounds in Minden were also amazing. The lot opened onto the river, which flows rapidly and warmly (24°C) past the canoe and motorboat moored at the dock.
The verdant landscape and fantastic wildlife were not the main event, however. As the family reunion began to take shape, it became obvious that the people were going to be the curiosities and spectacles.
Cousin Dave, for example, might be considered to be a disaster-profiteer. Incidentally, the shuffles in family-relations are simplified for clarity. If I show the slightest interest in genealogy, I suspect that my family will ambush me and expect me to deconstruct the entire patrilineal side of my genetic heritage.
The family member that I really appreciated was Cousin Norm. Not only did he take control of the barbeque (to my enormous relief), but he did so with authority and ability. The fact that he was smoking cigarettes over cooking meat was a bit odd, but the man knew his business, and I was not willing to tell him off. He's also mastered more martial arts than I know languages, so I wasn't about to get uppity.
It wasn't until later in the evening that I got to play Cousin Norm at chess. If anyone has ever played me at chess, you'll know what I do. I don't lose, but I want to see what you do to try and win. Cousin Norm had a fantastic go with his queen before he accepted the draw. Julie's father was astonished. Wins are over-rated.
In any event, the weekend was a wonderful cascade of events that was ruined by two things: first, Lloyd was fired from Castle Rock. That rocked things in a number of ways. Jules and I weren't sure of the level of investiture we had in that decision, and how much we could have helped. The second thing was the way in which Ontario deals with toll-based roads. We had a rental car, which is apparently not allowed on toll-roads. No one actually spent the time to tell us this, and this led to a horrible route through ghastly roadways that led us back to Hamilton in just enough time to run to the plane before it started taxiing for takeoff. All of the good things that I had built up about the province were thrown out of the window. By the end of it, I was glad to be rid of the place. I still miss the people, though. Oh, and the ice cream.
Cheers,
—mARKUS
16 August 2010
10 August 2010
Greetings, Gentle Readers.
Newmarket is a quiet, sleepy suburb very reminiscent of Sherwood Park
Up at 0430h on Friday morning to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. After hauling the multi-ton suitcase of doom up Bellamy Hill and arriving (we thought) with a few minutes to spare, we discover that I’ve left my mobile phone charging on my computer. Since Jules was convinced that we need the GPS functionality of the thing, I sprinted back down the hill to go retrieve it. No sooner had I successfully grabbed the thing, hastily stuffed it into my jacket, and made it down the lifts and out the front door, the thing rang. Sure enough, it’s Jules. The news? The shuttle bus came early. Julie’s message for me? Hurry up. By the time I made it back to the Hotel MacDonald, I managed to sprint across the intersection at which the shuttlebus (containing Julie) was waiting for the lights to change. I hopped on board and proceeded to shed enough perspiration to fill the snorkels of every man, woman, and child in Belize
Tired, exhausted, and dehydrated, we finally got to the airport with enough time to check the gravitic anomaly that is the suitcase of woe onto the flight, grab a bit of breakfast, and board the plane in a leisurely fashion. Now, I’ve done a lot of flying recently, and my general conclusion is that North American airlines have been duelling over profits for quite some time, so they’ve cut out all of the frills, like free meals and headsets, and things like elbow room. That was the case for United as well as Air Canada
Packed like sardines to the point where I thought my knees were going numb from being pressed into the seat in front of me, we were informed that if you wanted food, or headsets, or oxygen masks, you had to pay for them. The bright point was the pre-takeoff announcements. I’ve heard dozens of these over the past few months, so I must confess to being a bit jaded. They went something like this:
“Allo, my name is Domenic, and if you don’t like my French accent, then tough, because we’re both stuck with it. I’d like to introduce you to your flight crew today. Behind the bulletproof steel door that only we can open is the captain, Charles. Sitting next to him, holding his hand and sometimes stroking his hair, is the co-pilot, Michel. In the middle of the aisle, you can see my new girlfriend – we just met yesterday – is the unforgettable... erm [aside: what was her name again?] Oh, yes, Melanie. And standing next to me at the front of the cabin is the handsome and very single Claude. He is taking numbers, so ladies, get them ready.”
“And now, it’s showtime as we start our safety presentation. In the event that the cabin [muffled whisper] decompresses, oxygen masks [muffled whisper, slightly more urgent] will descend from the [whisper: “Later!”] compartments above your heads [whisper: “I’m doing a safety presentation!”] For your entertainment on this flight, we have two bathrooms, one at the front, and one at the rear of the craft. There are six exits, which... erm... that flight attendant in the centre of the aisle is pointing at: two at the front, two over the wings in the middle, and two at the rear. Please try and locate the exit nearest you in case you need to use it.”
And so, despite the discomfort and the relatively inhumane living conditions, the little bit of levity went a long way towards preventing my cynicism and general grumpiness from spiralling out of control, much as it did on my last flight into Los Angeles
The flight was relatively uneventful, aside from the girl sitting next to me asking for a blanket and pillow. If “sitting” could be used to describe being shoehorned into a space unfit for a battery-farm chicken. Turns out that the plane was sold out of such amenities. I offered my scarf, marketing it as something that “acts as BOTH a pillow and a blanket.” She politely declined. I played a little “Heroes of Hellas” until Domenic returned to the airwaves.
“’Ello ladies and gentlemen. We are landing 20 minutes earlier than scheduled, which is clearly because of me, so let’s hear it. Clap, clap? [pause for applause] You are about to hear one of those phrases that is like a song in my heart: we are now beginning our final descent into Hamilton International Airport Moncton Hamilton
Interesting that Domenic, as near as I could tell, never made much attempt to put any zest in the French translations of his announcements. I got one half-hearted attempt at a joke, I think, but the rest sounded pretty routine, particularly since I’ve heard the same announcements en Français innumerable times on both sides of the Atlantic over the past two months.
The John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport
Looking around, I noticed that all the vehicles were somewhat squat and blocky. Trucks, jeeps, SUVs, sedans, station wagons, sports cars... all rather square and heavy. I suppose that since Hamilton
And so, armed with a printed Google Map and our functional but inelegant vehicle, we headed off north for Minden Hamilton and Minden
A cottage in Cottage Country apparently doesn’t mean what I thought it meant when I was growing up. A cottage now is a sprawling four- or five-bedroom, multi-story dwelling, each one with its own independent water, sewage, electrical, communications, and natural gas systems. The country is lovely. Trees grow in abundance along the river and lakeshores, as well in copses. The herbs and shrubs are numerous, the air is sweet, and the insects are belligerent and tenacious. The water in the dam-controlled rivers is warm and refreshing, and the sundowner times are pleasant and pacific.
But the next day, the placid environment was about to be overrun by members of the Dunn family.
And that is another story.
Goodnight England
—mARKUS
04 August 2010
Retrospectives and Recriminations
Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, I am now safely back in Edmonton and once more ensconced in my drab and pedestrian existence. Thanks to input from one of my senior colleagues, I now have a scheme afoot to make work a more tolerable activity, but other than that, nothing significant has changed around my office during my absence. The employee turnover seems overly high, training procedures seem spotty, and cliques in fiefdoms snipe at one another instead of cooperating. Looks like I'll have to do something, or else start farming out the resumé.
Thinking back on the trip to South Africa, and anticipating any questions, the best part of the trip had to be watching Germany dismantle Argentina in the quarter-finals in Green Point Stadium, Cape Town. The raucous singing of the German fans, and the torrents of quasi-intelligible shouting and raving by the Argentinian fans made for a lovely auditory as well as sporting experience.
A close second would be hanging out with the predatory wildlife, whether that be the sharks of Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, or the cheetahs and birds of prey at the Spier Estate, near Stellenbosch, Western Cape. The non-predatory wildlife, like the elephants of Addo National Park were also interesting, but not quite as fun.
Third place was an evening that constituted an aggregation of things.
A lot of people have asked me about the different laws and regulations in South Africa, and one of the things that hey are astonished to hear is that people are allowed to smoke cigarettes inside pubs, clubs, and bars. Granted, in the Chrome nightclub in Cape Town, there was a separate smoking area, away from the dance floor, but that was probably more because it got very hot and sticky on the dance floor, and mixing that with stale smoke would have been aesthetically disgusting, not hygienically so.
All that aside, I quite liked the local pub just down the street from my cousin Liesl's flat in Kenilworth. It wasn't too loud, the television was adequate for watching footy, it was large and airy, and the locals that I met were a solid bunch of terribly good blokes and ladies. Somehow, it also always managed to be the right temperature. Cape Town got cold often, and despite the doors being open to let air in, the warmth from the kitchen was always just enough to strike a comfortable equilibrium.
So it was that I found myself down at the local on the evening of the Deutschland-Uruguay match. It was being played in Durban, and there was a frog's chance at a snake symposium of getting a ticket, getting there, and as I later discovered, getting off your plane. A pack of private jets had blocked the runways, and a couple of thousand fans couldn't get to the game as their flights were diverted.
As usual, I found a couple of the local lads, and managed to shoehorn myself into the crowd at the bar. There were two people with vuvuzelas — one was a huge, burly, barrel-chested Springbok fan about two people to my left. The other was a woman in the darkened corner toward the exit. The two of them started honking/buzzing at one another, and the spirit of fun (and annoying noise) hung over the crowd like the ghost of Christmas Present. Everyone was getting into the spirit of thumping Uruguay, who were about as popular as the Totenkopfverbände at a Bar Mitzvah.
Uruguay had beaten South Africa 3-0 in the opening round of the World Cup, thus ensuring that even though Bafana Bafana thumped the French, they were still doomed to be the first host nation of the Cup to be dumped out at the first hurdle. Strike one. Then, after all of the other African teams had been dumped out of the competition, the last Africans standing (Ghana) were knocked out on penalties. By Uruguay. Strike two. How did that game go to penalties? Luis Suarez prevented a goal with his self confessed "save of the tournament." Problem: he's not a goalkeeper, and anyone else using his/her hands to manoeuvre the ball is committing a foul. It was cynical, and he was punished for it, but it denied Ghana the chance to be the first African nation to ever make the semi-finals. Strike three. TV commentators were remarking on the police escorts for the team as they went toward the stadium in Durban.
Not only were the phasers in the pub set to "party," the place was jumping, and the Germans were obliging the Africans with their clinical and exciting play. Around half-time, I managed to tear my eyes away from the gripping spectacle above me to glance around the pub.
There were cigarette girls. Honestly. They had the strap-around-the-back-of-the-neck deals, and the trays in front of them, with rows of cigarette packs. It was one thing that people were smoking in the bar, but this was something new. Or rather, something old. This was something I'd expect to see in "Carry on Spying" or some sort of French cabaret period-piece film. They moved around the bar, seeming to hover together like a trio of ladybugs, which didn't seem to make much sense to me if the idea was to vend their wares to as many customers as possible.
Eventually, they settled at the blank spot at the bar which had been vacated by my friend, who had run off to answer the call of nature. Coincidentally, next to me.
"Hey there," I said to the nearest (and shortest) of the three. "How much are you charging for those cigarettes?
It was about that time that I noticed that the cigarette packs in the tray were about half of the size of a normal cigarette pack. And what looked like the sample cigarettes had about half of the diameter of the cigarette dangling from the girl's hand. I looked from one to the other.
"Wait, you're selling these things, but you smoke a different brand..."
"Oh yes," she replied airily. "I smoke Camels. I don't really care for these ones."
That threw me for a bit of a loop. Some marketing genius was going to get lynched for this.
"So... if you don't like smoking them, how could you sell them to other people with any conviction?"
"We're not allowed to actually sell them," she said. "We are only allowed by law to be around and wait for people to approach us."
"That's easy," I said glibly. "You're very pretty. People must approach you all night, non-stop."
She blushed and glanced over at her two comrades, who were busy doing something else.
"No, really... it's not like..."
"Well, here," I offered, reaching in my pocket for some cash. "How much for one of those packs?"
"They're 27 rand," she began, before running through what I assumed was a rehearsed speech. She drew in a breath of air, not cigarette smoke and began. "We are prohibited from actually selling you cigarettes. What you can do is hand the money to the bar, the bar will give you a pack from their supply, and then they will change inventory with my friend here." She gestured toward the taller blonde behind her.
I'm sure that I had some sort of quizzical look on my face as I held out 30 rand, the barman took it, made change, gave some money to the blonde cigarette girl, then gave me my change and a 1×1×3 rectangular prism. Presumably filled with cigarettes.
I opened the package, and the brunette with the cigarette tray watched me closely. I suspiciously pulled out a needle-thin smoke, and look at her suspiciously.
"If I smoke this, won't people think that I'm a homosexual?"
She giggled slightly.
"I wouldn't worry about that," she said.
"Well, why do other people buy these things?" I asked. "Do they taste better? They don't look more efficient..."
"I don't like them," she replied. "They don't have enough in them, and you really have to suck to get anything out of them."
I looked coolly at her as I imagine James Bond would have.
"You mean, I ought to be paying you 27 rand for the privilege of watching you smoke one."
"Oh, you... you're making me blush." At that, she was off to the other end of the bar, her taller, blonder associates belatedly in tow.
In short, Germany was the good guy, I was some sort of quick-talking Lothario, and the world seemed like a better, brighter place the next day than it had the day before. Not a bad third-place finish, as near as I can tell.
Cheers, and farewell England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS
Well, I am now safely back in Edmonton and once more ensconced in my drab and pedestrian existence. Thanks to input from one of my senior colleagues, I now have a scheme afoot to make work a more tolerable activity, but other than that, nothing significant has changed around my office during my absence. The employee turnover seems overly high, training procedures seem spotty, and cliques in fiefdoms snipe at one another instead of cooperating. Looks like I'll have to do something, or else start farming out the resumé.
Thinking back on the trip to South Africa, and anticipating any questions, the best part of the trip had to be watching Germany dismantle Argentina in the quarter-finals in Green Point Stadium, Cape Town. The raucous singing of the German fans, and the torrents of quasi-intelligible shouting and raving by the Argentinian fans made for a lovely auditory as well as sporting experience.
A close second would be hanging out with the predatory wildlife, whether that be the sharks of Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, or the cheetahs and birds of prey at the Spier Estate, near Stellenbosch, Western Cape. The non-predatory wildlife, like the elephants of Addo National Park were also interesting, but not quite as fun.
Third place was an evening that constituted an aggregation of things.
A lot of people have asked me about the different laws and regulations in South Africa, and one of the things that hey are astonished to hear is that people are allowed to smoke cigarettes inside pubs, clubs, and bars. Granted, in the Chrome nightclub in Cape Town, there was a separate smoking area, away from the dance floor, but that was probably more because it got very hot and sticky on the dance floor, and mixing that with stale smoke would have been aesthetically disgusting, not hygienically so.
All that aside, I quite liked the local pub just down the street from my cousin Liesl's flat in Kenilworth. It wasn't too loud, the television was adequate for watching footy, it was large and airy, and the locals that I met were a solid bunch of terribly good blokes and ladies. Somehow, it also always managed to be the right temperature. Cape Town got cold often, and despite the doors being open to let air in, the warmth from the kitchen was always just enough to strike a comfortable equilibrium.
So it was that I found myself down at the local on the evening of the Deutschland-Uruguay match. It was being played in Durban, and there was a frog's chance at a snake symposium of getting a ticket, getting there, and as I later discovered, getting off your plane. A pack of private jets had blocked the runways, and a couple of thousand fans couldn't get to the game as their flights were diverted.
As usual, I found a couple of the local lads, and managed to shoehorn myself into the crowd at the bar. There were two people with vuvuzelas — one was a huge, burly, barrel-chested Springbok fan about two people to my left. The other was a woman in the darkened corner toward the exit. The two of them started honking/buzzing at one another, and the spirit of fun (and annoying noise) hung over the crowd like the ghost of Christmas Present. Everyone was getting into the spirit of thumping Uruguay, who were about as popular as the Totenkopfverbände at a Bar Mitzvah.
Uruguay had beaten South Africa 3-0 in the opening round of the World Cup, thus ensuring that even though Bafana Bafana thumped the French, they were still doomed to be the first host nation of the Cup to be dumped out at the first hurdle. Strike one. Then, after all of the other African teams had been dumped out of the competition, the last Africans standing (Ghana) were knocked out on penalties. By Uruguay. Strike two. How did that game go to penalties? Luis Suarez prevented a goal with his self confessed "save of the tournament." Problem: he's not a goalkeeper, and anyone else using his/her hands to manoeuvre the ball is committing a foul. It was cynical, and he was punished for it, but it denied Ghana the chance to be the first African nation to ever make the semi-finals. Strike three. TV commentators were remarking on the police escorts for the team as they went toward the stadium in Durban.
Not only were the phasers in the pub set to "party," the place was jumping, and the Germans were obliging the Africans with their clinical and exciting play. Around half-time, I managed to tear my eyes away from the gripping spectacle above me to glance around the pub.
There were cigarette girls. Honestly. They had the strap-around-the-back-of-the-neck deals, and the trays in front of them, with rows of cigarette packs. It was one thing that people were smoking in the bar, but this was something new. Or rather, something old. This was something I'd expect to see in "Carry on Spying" or some sort of French cabaret period-piece film. They moved around the bar, seeming to hover together like a trio of ladybugs, which didn't seem to make much sense to me if the idea was to vend their wares to as many customers as possible.
Eventually, they settled at the blank spot at the bar which had been vacated by my friend, who had run off to answer the call of nature. Coincidentally, next to me.
"Hey there," I said to the nearest (and shortest) of the three. "How much are you charging for those cigarettes?
It was about that time that I noticed that the cigarette packs in the tray were about half of the size of a normal cigarette pack. And what looked like the sample cigarettes had about half of the diameter of the cigarette dangling from the girl's hand. I looked from one to the other.
"Wait, you're selling these things, but you smoke a different brand..."
"Oh yes," she replied airily. "I smoke Camels. I don't really care for these ones."
That threw me for a bit of a loop. Some marketing genius was going to get lynched for this.
"So... if you don't like smoking them, how could you sell them to other people with any conviction?"
"We're not allowed to actually sell them," she said. "We are only allowed by law to be around and wait for people to approach us."
"That's easy," I said glibly. "You're very pretty. People must approach you all night, non-stop."
She blushed and glanced over at her two comrades, who were busy doing something else.
"No, really... it's not like..."
"Well, here," I offered, reaching in my pocket for some cash. "How much for one of those packs?"
"They're 27 rand," she began, before running through what I assumed was a rehearsed speech. She drew in a breath of air, not cigarette smoke and began. "We are prohibited from actually selling you cigarettes. What you can do is hand the money to the bar, the bar will give you a pack from their supply, and then they will change inventory with my friend here." She gestured toward the taller blonde behind her.
I'm sure that I had some sort of quizzical look on my face as I held out 30 rand, the barman took it, made change, gave some money to the blonde cigarette girl, then gave me my change and a 1×1×3 rectangular prism. Presumably filled with cigarettes.
I opened the package, and the brunette with the cigarette tray watched me closely. I suspiciously pulled out a needle-thin smoke, and look at her suspiciously.
"If I smoke this, won't people think that I'm a homosexual?"
She giggled slightly.
"I wouldn't worry about that," she said.
"Well, why do other people buy these things?" I asked. "Do they taste better? They don't look more efficient..."
"I don't like them," she replied. "They don't have enough in them, and you really have to suck to get anything out of them."
I looked coolly at her as I imagine James Bond would have.
"You mean, I ought to be paying you 27 rand for the privilege of watching you smoke one."
"Oh, you... you're making me blush." At that, she was off to the other end of the bar, her taller, blonder associates belatedly in tow.
In short, Germany was the good guy, I was some sort of quick-talking Lothario, and the world seemed like a better, brighter place the next day than it had the day before. Not a bad third-place finish, as near as I can tell.
Cheers, and farewell England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
