I’ve got out of bed plenty of times at a time with a “4” in front of it, mostly in the am. When you spend a lot of your working years travelling for a living, staggering to an airport at an ungodly hour, sometimes hung-over, to make a flight that will get you to a scheduled meeting is unavoidable. But I don’t think I’ve ever done it twice in three days. We had a flight to Sydney to catch on Tuesday and today, Thursday, we have a crack of dawn flight to Everest and back provided the weather clears.
Well that was a major disappointment. We took off, ascended into the weather then turned around and went back. I don’t care how good your radar is, flying blind at the Himalayas is not something I relished. It was bad enough that the highest mountains in the world were in the same (small) country, let alone the same neighbourhood so the disappointment was real but somewhat muted. Apparently we’ll try again tomorrow.
We were in the air for about half an hour and didn’t see a thing other than whiteness from about a minute into the flight. As far as pointless exercises go, that’s up there with me trying to get a tan (I have a viking’s complexion). A shame also because two flights were combined so we were on an 80 seater (everyone gets a window) rather than the usual 16 seater. You’d rather be aloft in inclement weather in a big plane than a little one.
The rain this morning, when we returned to planet earth was of biblical proportions. I asked our guide if it was the tail-end of the monsoon. He said the monsoon had finished. This was just bad weather. To which he added the all-encompassing comment “climate change”. As it is only day 2, I decided not to tell him I worked in the coal industry. And as we all know, if Australia would only close its coal industry, there would be no more bush fires or droughts or floods in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef would double in size and you’d be able to see its colours from space…or something. So if only Nepal’s neighbour to the south would stop burning coal there would be no more rain in October, the month we were told (by all the best guide books) was the best one to visit this country.
I thought this place would be quite similar to India, but it isn’t apart from the traffic (they have traffic lights but don’t bother to turn them on), some of the food, the preponderance of Hindus and, it has to be said, the place is a bit untidy. But the buildings are a veritable riot of colour unlike in India, walking the streets is a somewhat more private and relaxing affair (apart from the traffic) and there are no cows (or elephants) on the streets. Not an exhaustive list I’ll grant you, but take my word for it. Oh, and the two places smell the same. I’m not going to attempt to deconstruct that.
But one thing I was never able to achieve in all of the times I went to India was meet a real live God. The CB and I did that today. And we have the photographic evidence to prove it. More later.
In the immortal words of Willy Nelson who isn’t quite dead yet, the child bride and I are on the road again. It’s taken a while but here we are. We’re not anywhere particularly special yet – the airport hotel in Bangkok, the Touch Down Sports Bar, specifically – but we’re on our way to Nepal tomorrow to commence the Himalaya Hijinx. And while thinking about the next part of this essay, I confronted the first dilemma of this trip. Is “Hijinx” singular or plural? Is it “hijinx is” or “hijinx are”. This minor irritant would be a real problem if I was afflicted by one of the many conditions our young seem to suffer from these days, like ADHD and IPCC and UNHCR. But I’m not so I don’t, especially the second one which I’d only catch if you paid me, like most of those who have this affliction. So as far as the Hijinx thing is concerned, I won’t even mention it (other than in the titles), just like Fleabag has gone through two Amazon Prime series without naming a number of her main characters.
The CB and I like a tipple, it has to be said, so when told that the flight from Sydney to Bangkok only stocked one brand of red wine and one brand of beer (we were flying gorilla class so meh….) I was fine but the white wine and bubbles drinker CB was somewhat chagrined but as has been her guiding philosophy the whole time she has been with me, she grinned (grimaced actually) and bore it, as you do. There were, of course, other irrelevancies like water and soft drink and tea and coffee made from the water on the plane which they tell you not to drink so, red wine it was but up the back of the plane, if you push your luck by dinging that call-button a little too frequently, that fourth red wine in an hour may contain more than wine, if you get my drift.
Anyway, we’re here now – it’s taken me a day and a half to write this pathetic amount. The CB and I went for a wander around an area called Thamel this afternoon. Every European in Kathmandu did the same. We heard mostly German accents but also American, British and a few Aussies. More of that in the coming days. But tomorrow we go for a flight round Everest and other monuments to the geological process, provided the weather cooperates. It didn’t today and tomorrow’s not looking flash so let’s see.
One thing we did notice while sitting in the hotel bar (so you can be sure this survey has statistical legitimacy), is that there are many groups or shaven-headed (or bald) middle-aged men lurking about the place. They are either waiting their turn to walk up Everest (I think it’s like climbing Ayre’s Rock these days), or they aren’t and you can draw your own conclusions.
It’s a truism that if you want something organized efficiently, don’t get a bureaucracy to do it.
I was recently asked to travel from the city I live in in Australia to another city in Australia, in another state, have a meeting then fly back the same day. Pretty straight forward you would have to agree and not an unusual occurrence. In my full-time working days I did it regularly. But do you think I could decipher the reams of instructions and descriptions polluting numerous government websites in order to understand what freedoms I would have to forego to do this. Because this whole episode, world-wide has been an exercise in restrictions of “freedoms”
I use the inverted commas round the word freedom because freedoms, by definition, are free and not to be tampered with by busy body politicians and their cadaverous health bureaucrats. Unfortunately, that’s not what the word means anymore. Once inalienable freedoms are glibly given and taken and rationed. They are rewards for good behaviour given to inmates who have behaved themselves.
Our premier is a whiny socialist, typical of many politicians around the democratic world (there’s a major contradiction in terms in that last sentence). Listening to these people try to explain what we can and can’t do on a daily basis is something I have given up doing – life’s too short. They live for it, I know. I don’t. Notwithstanding, it makes the libertarian portion of my blood boil.
So back to my dilemma. After spending too many hours trying to understand whether I could take my day-trip without having to put my granddaughter up as collateral or leaving a few pints of my own blood (the non-libertarian part) for the inevitable transfusion I would need after returning from the home of the walking dead in the south of our country, I gave up. That is, I gave up trying to work it out for myself. The solution – ring your local member of parliament and get them to earn some of that salary they didn’t forego when most of the country was locked down and destitute. So I did. It’s been a couple of hours so even the people who wrote the manual don’t seem to be able to make any sense out of it. I found it easier to work-out the instructions regarding construction of an Ikea bookcase. And I haven’t got a degree in architecture.
Update
I have been advised by my local MP’s office that if I want to go to this particular state for a few hours then return, I have to be double vaccinated (I am) and while I am there, get Covid tested and return a negative then on my return, do two weeks in quarantine. This is for my protection because I am incapable of protecting myself. I need a whiny socialist to look after me apparently. And this brings us full-circle back to why you don’t want bureaucrats organising anything.
I’ve been to Iran seven times between 1989 and 1998. The first time was just after the Iran/Iraq war had finished so the Esfahan Steel Plant which I visited was still surrounded by anti-aircraft guns. My hosts also helpfully pointed out, from the panoramic viewing window in their board-room, the hill over which the Iraqi planes came when they bombed the place throughout the war. They had managed to keep the plant operating, to their credit, which is why I was there – to try to sell them some coal. But that trip’s not the reason for this post. There are plenty of incidents and experiences gathered over seven trips to write about but I’m going to tell you another story.
Getting to Tehran was problematic because there were so few flights so I’d waitlist on flights from Rome, Frankfurt, Vienna, London or Dubai and whichever one came up first I would take. These flights invariably got in early in the morning which allowed a few hours sleep in a cash only, once five-star hotel which had been Iranianized into a two-star. Then it was back out to the domestic airport to catch a flight down to Esfahan. Then would follow a lazy eight or so hours of shouting, fist banging “negotiation” then a flight back to Tehran to collapse into bed in the same hotel I had been in that morning.
After doing this a few times I decided to ask my hosts if we could negotiate our next deal in Tehran rather than Esfahan. They declined but to compensate, said I would be picked up at the airport and driven down to Esfahan thereby being able to sleep in the car. How kind.
Firstly, let’s consider the “picking-up” bit. On a previous trip they had “forgotten” to pick me up at Esfahan airport. The airport is on the north-east side of town and the steel plant is 45 kilometres south-west of town, in fact, that’s its address – 45Km on The Esfahan-Shahrekord Road. In the domestic airports back then there were no English signs and no English announcements. Also, there were no mobile phones and no public phones, just a phone call shop where I could have booked a call if only I could speak Farsi or one of the attendants could speak English. This prompted me, in desperation, to step away from the counter and shout into the terminal crowd “does anyone here speak English”. But that’s another story for another day.
As luck would have it, on the day in question, a driver was on hand to pick me up as I emerged from customs. Whether or not anyone is there at all is just part of the lottery and anyone could act as a taxi driver and most people who owned cars did. So you could be picked up by the local axe murderer if your luck was out. Being 4.00am after a flight from Europe where you had one or two gin and tonics because they’d be the last ones for a while and then wended your tortuous way through the airport formalities, you were fair game. But this bloke had a clipboard so was obviously legit. And he had another passenger – a German engineer who was also going to the plant.
So we set off in an ancient Chevrolet with four bald tyres on the four or five hour drive through the desert down to Esfahan. Now give the shah his due. He may have been a typical monarchical despot but he was our despot and he knew how to build roads. The freeway system round Tehran was pretty impressive although starting to resemble Ozzy Osbourne – visibly deteriorating. And the road to Esfahan was a wide-open highway. But that didn’t stop us getting a flat tyre.
So there we were – an Iranian who couldn’t speak English or German, a German who couldn’t speak English or Farsi and an Australian who couldn’t speak Farsi or German – alternately looking at each other and then the flat tyre. There was no spare – obviously – but there was a jack. Eventually our driver decided he would take the wheel off himself because the German and the Aussie obviously weren’t interested.
Way off in the distance we could see what looked like buildings so after removing the tyre and leaning it against the vehicle the driver jogged off into the heat haze, towards said buildings. The German and I looked at each other, shrugged our respective shoulders, found a bit of shade each and recommenced reading our books,
Eventually the driver materialized and without acknowledging us, stood the wheel up and commenced to roll it down the road in the direction from whence he had just come, occasionally batting it with his hand to ensure that it kept up with his steady jogging pace. Fritz and I went back to our books.
After another hour or so, the driver presented triumphally with a freshly fixed bald, fraying tyre and I swore to myself that I would be flying back to Tehran.
We eventually made it to Esfahan after passing through the city of Qom which is where all the religious heavies live. There were check-point-charlies on all roads in and out and security was somewhat ubiquitous. That is one place you don’t want to go for your holidays – smiles were as rare as golf courses and frivolity is a capital offence. And if applying for a job there, a sense of humour is definitely surplus to requirements on your CV.
The first hour of discussions with my hosts was taken up by trying to arrange how I was going to get back to Tehran. They eventually got me on a flight back that evening. Elimination of that source of stress allowed me to relax into the rough and tumble of hours of intense negotiation over a couple of dollars per tonne of coal for a 12 month contract. That was then, when the price was around $50/tonne. Today it’s $185/tonne and varies by up to $8/tonne daily.
Iran is a different world and today, so’s the coal market.
If you fly often enough you’re going to encounter the occasional “moment”. I remember a work colleague telling me of a discussion he had with the company pilot many years ago. The pilot told him that flying a plane is 99% sleep inducing boredom and 1% blind panic. Those of us sitting behind the pilot, preferably behind an internal wall and even more preferably, on another level (somewhat counter-intuitively, the bigger the plane, the less likely it is to go down) hopefully don’t experience all of those moments of blind panic but occasionally we do although to be fair to pilots, what causes us passengers to white knuckle our fingerprints into the metal part of the arm rest are probably just ho hum moments to those who’ve seen it all.
So there have been times I’ve contemplated rapid religious conversion and another time I would have taken up smoking again if the no smoking sign had gone off. Let me tell you about this episode – my first brush with a melodramatic death. But first a precursor to set the scene.
The night before, I was attending an Australia-India Business Council dinner at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi. The residence is a very nice building with beautifully manicured gardens, as you would expect. The dinner was taking place under a large marquee in the garden and everything was going swimmingly until a rip roaring storm stampeded through town. These storms charge in from the nearby Rajasthan Desert so orifice clogging dust and high winds precede torrential rain. As the storm picked up steam (and everything else in its path), the guests decamped from the marquee to the residence and watched the carnage as trees were stripped of leaves and what wasn’t nailed down disappeared into the distance, including the marquee. It finished up in Pakistan. Not the country but over the wall and into the back yard of the Pakistan High Commission which was and still is, next door. Afterwards the garden looked like the Pakistanis had bombed it in retaliation for launching surface to surface missiles at them cunningly disguised as a large tent.
The next night my agent and I flew down to Madras as it was known then and is still known now, by the locals. I think only cricket commentators and politicians call it Chennai. As luck would have it (or not as the case may be), we encountered one of these storms in a most inconvenient place – a few thousand feet above the ground.
To make matters worse the plane was rather old – a 737 1 Series which was so old it didn’t have overhead lockers; it had a luggage rack. Having flown many times before and having learnt what is a normal sound or movement (and by process of elimination, what isn’t), I felt and heard the plane take off at maximum throttle in a steep climb then after a short time, ease back on the throttle and lessen the elevation as we gradually began climbing to cruising altitude. Talk about being lulled into a false sense of security because a few seconds later, the engines roared back to life and the nose went up so high I thought we were on our way to the moon.
Then it began. And it seems a little wimpy looking back but I was pretty certain this dilapidated old plane was going to disintegrate and I didn’t have a parachute. I had never to that point and probably have only one other time since, experienced such mid-air violence as the plane was thrown around the sky. And the no smoking sign was on so I couldn’t take up smoking again and my agent couldn’t get the top off his bottle of scotch lest the contents finish up all over the surrounding passengers. And as I looked out of the window I could have sworn I saw a marquee fly past in the sandy gloom. I can only assume the pilot had decided that the best plan of attack was to spear right through the middle of this storm. Going round it or under it was for cowards.
Now my then agent and still good friend is a pretty cool customer who was quite used to the privations of travel round the Indian sub-continent as well as the vagaries of the weather. When I saw the look on his face I knew we were dead. But that was not to be because after what seemed like an hour and was probably ten minutes at most we hit clear air. The rattling rivets that were still in their holes relaxed back into place, ashen faced strangers silently started at each other, the relief on their faces palpable and couples pledged to never take each other for granted ever again, ever.
That first Oranjeboom went down like altar wine when we hit the bar at the Taj Coromandel a couple of hours later. The blood pressure was back to normal after about a week.
Since the CB and I decided to do a reverse tree-change and move from a semi-rural acreage setting to a townhouse closer to the city one thing we have missed is the view or in our case, views. There’s the horizontal (or slightly elevated) view to the hills in the distance and the vertical view to the incomprehensible splendour of the Milky Way. We hadn’t seen the Southern Cross and its Pointers for four years because of the blocking effect of city lights but a few nights ago, there they were.
Stanthorpe only has around 5000 people and we were out of town anyway so if he’d been there, Darryl Kerrigan would have been in his element – how’s the serenity. This piece of trivia would not have registered with those of you who haven’t immersed yourselves in the Aussie cultural equivalent of the Renaissance, a movie called “The Castle”. Watch it. Here’s a taste.
And I mention the Southern Cross because it’s very much part of the Australian psyche (and flag). And it and Orion’s Belt are the only celestial constellations I can identify.
Day 2 was a wine tour – all day. Four wineries and the Queensland College of Wine Tourism for lunch. That was about 38 wines all up. For professional tasters, that’s all in a day’s work. For amateurs like us it’s a serious challenge which was approached with all of the grit and determination we could muster. There were four of us (plus the driver) on our tour, the CB and I and a honeymooning couple who spent their time on the back seat of the mini-bus while the CB and I admired the scenery.
For the pros, wine tasting is all about the five “s’s” (pronounced “esses”), as in swirl, sniff, sip, swoosh (round the mouth) and spit. For us amateurs there’s a variation on this theme that goes swirl, sniff, sip, swallow, serve (the next one). And by the end of the day you might find the real amateurs doing the sip, swirl, swallow, sip, swallow, sprint, spew.
In these wine growing and wine making areas with lots of cellar doors you’d have to assume that, especially on the weekends and in high season there will be at least a few half pissed tourists on the roads. Which could explain the signs near all of the main intersections which tell drivers to stay on the left because this is Australia. Apparently these signs are all over the country but this is the only place I’ve noticed them and also apparently it’s because of the proliferation (in non-covid times) of fruit picking backpackers. In these covid times some fruit rots on the vines because our entitled youth and unencumbered older types are too lazy to pick fruit for $25/hour. There’s a strawberry runner farm in the area which employs about 600 people at peak times but….despair.
The CB and I would have offered to help out but with my dodgy back and her bursitis ravaged shoulder the best we could do was make a financial contribution so we signed up for wine clubs and bought a car full of produce, mostly of the liquid variety. And as previously mentioned, the Ugg Boot Lady got a couple of sales (four if you count each boot). And we bought Christmas stuff (and chocolate) from the Christmas farm because it’s May already and we don’t want to leave it too late.
Back at the cabin, after a long day supporting the local vintners, it was time to relax in front of the fire and not go to the bar because it had closed at 5.00pm. Incidentally, we did attempt to grab a cleansing ale at about 4.55pm but the lady behind the bar assured me that they closed at 4.45pm. I pointed in the direction of the reception area and reminded her that there was a sign there that said it closed at 5.00pm but she assured me it said 4.45pm. It didn’t and when I went to take a picture of it the next morning for this blog, it had disappeared like so many conservative Twitter accounts.
We had plenty of wine and beer but there was a principle involved here. After dismally failing to invoke the principle it was back to the cabin and the fire. It was then that the CB and I discovered we would make useless arsonists. It only took about four goes and a box of fire starters to get a decent fire going. I should know better because fires burn oxygen and as the oxygen content in the room drops, sleep creeps up. And that was that.
Well the xhild (her new pronoun – no, actually it’s a typo – the “x” is next to the “c”) bride and I have finally escaped, albeit for just a few days. Our travel plans were decimated last year for obvious reasons and this year hasn’t been any better. So we loaded up the car and hit the road. Of course any excursion that involves more than one night away from home rivals D-Day for logistical complexity because you never know when you might need…… (fill in name of appropriate item or inappropriate as the case may be, a truffle trowel, for example). We did however manage to leave enough space in the car for a few cases of wine and that space was duly filled because wine tasting was the primary motivation for visiting that particular part of the world.
We stayed at a rather rustic establishment that came with cabins and its own micro-brewery just outside Stanthorpe, a pretty little town (if rather rocky – it’s in an area called the Granite Belt) in south east Queensland once famous for apples and snow. It is just about the only place in sub-tropical Queensland where it does snow occasionally.
Incidentally the little town just outside Stanthorpe called Applethorpe has a school which they have self-titled “the coolest school in Queensland”. Applethorpe has the cold and the apples covered whereas (and here’s the geologist in me making a rare appearance), Stanthorpe is named after Stannum, the Latin word for tin which was mined in the area (in the late 1800’s) before they started growing apples. And those of you who remember any chemistry will know that the chemical symbol for tin is Sn.
Now onto more frivolous musings. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Stanthorpe is now known for apples, snow and wine.
Incidentally, back on the travel thing, just to show how out of touch the CB and I are, we went to a bottle shop in Stanthorpe on the first afternoon and as we browsed we separately asked the attendant if they had any local wines and he pointed us to the section which had a large sign over it which read “Local Wines”. Now as any regular traveler will know, it’s advisable to have your metaphorical antennae up when you’re out of your homely comfort zone. You need to be able to notice stuff. However this was Stanthorpe not Mogadishu but we have been out of practice so both claim immunity from accusations of stupidity. And why were we buying wine from a bottle shop when there were dozens of cellar doors within staggering distance? It was the first afternoon prior to visiting any local wineries so we needed supplies to get us through the next few hours.
But here’s the real reason we needed to stock-up. The place where we were staying had a very nice bar which shuts at 5.00pm. Let me say that again. The bar opens at 10.00am and shuts at 5.00pm. Not 5.00am but 5.00pm. The first day, we got there with enough time to order one drink. The bar lady asked me if I wanted a 10oz beer, a 15oz or a pint. Nice lady, stupid question. If she’d offered me a bucket after a day of driving and considerable stress, I’d have taken that.
Stress, you say. Yes, something happened between arriving in Stanthorpe and getting to our accommodation, apart from the mercy stop at the bottle shop. This was something I had never done or even contemplated in my many years of existence. I bought a pair of Ugg boots. These have long been considered, along with flanno’s and mullets as integral parts of bogan culture. And I wouldn’t or hadn’t ever contemplated such a flagrant act of cultural appropriation, apart from eating Indian (and Thai, Chinese, Japanese etc) food, driving German cars, drinking ….well any nationality actually….beer (apart from non-alcoholic Iranian beer which I tried once in Iran, funnily enough, and tastes like what I would assume camel’s piss tastes like) and on and on the list goes. Having said that, the inner bogan does emerge occasionally. My wife and daughter once scolded me for wearing jeans and thongs (the ones that go on your feet not in your arse). Who knew?
So a bridge too far, or in this case more like an elephant’s foot too far, had been crossed and I had succumbed to warm feet syndrome. I have never been a fashionista and I’m as likely to follow fashion trends as I am to go bungee jumping. And by buying Ugg boots, I broke the bungee.
It’s difficult to conceptualise this now but when Bob Hawke, Australia’s then prime minister and previously the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, sacked a bunch of airline pilots for striking, all hell broke loose. The pilots were members of a union and the number 1 card-carrying union member in the country told them to take a hike.
This was such a long time ago that one of the planes that was brought in to replace our grounded pilotless planes to help move people around, was from Yugoslavia. Astute observers of history will be aware that Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore. The Yugoslavian divorce started in 1991 and some would argue it’s still underway which doesn’t auger well for Bill and Melinda Gates who have much more treasure to divvy up than the Balkans ever had.
Our pilots’ strike was in 1989 and I remember the time vividly which is just as well because I am about to tell you a story to which the pilot’s strike was of peripheral importance and the geopolitical strife brewing in Belgrade was of no significance whatsoever.
However what I am about to relate to you has some significance to what’s happening today trade-wise but you’ll have to bear with me here because it may appear that I am drawing a very long bow. Long story short, China is busy blocking exports of various Australian products to its markets and other countries are stepping in to take up the slack. One of them is India which is taking more and more of our coal which is currently persona-non-grata in China. The Chinese also don’t want our wine (that’s a heroic sacrifice on the part of the Chinese authorities), our lobsters (ditto) and a whole range of other things, the latest of which appears to be liquified natural gas. But back to coal.
The groundwork for India’s growing imports of Australian coal was laid by a few intrepid Australian companies and a small band of marketing brothers back in the 1980’s. I was one of them. And the first foundation stone was laid in 1989. I fear the introduction to this story will be longer than the story itself but here we go.
Three companies and six coal marketers had been negotiating with the Indian Government steel authority throughout 1988 and 1989. The prize was the first long term coal contract that the Indian Government had ever signed. As it turned out they awarded five and our company got two of them. The business between India and Australia has since grown exponentially, hence the above reference to stepping in.
Now I don’t know whether it was naivety or mischievousness but our counterparts used to think they could call us over to India as if our office was across the street. Flights were few and far between back then so getting in and out at short notice was problematic at the best of times. And a visa was required.
So, it’s 8.00pm on Sunday evening, October 3rd 1989 and my wife and I are relaxing with a glass of wine (her) and a beer (me) when the phone rings. It’s my boss and he advises me he’s been talking to our agent who has been talking to our potential long term customer in India and they told our agent who told my boss who’s telling me that they want to sign the long term contracts on Tuesday October 5th. Did I mention that there was a pilot’s strike. And I didn’t have a visa. Or a signing authority for contracts the size of which I was being asked to sign. What happens next is called focussing the mind….or operating in a state of panic.
I had an Indian mate in Melbourne who was mates with the Indian consulate visa guy in Sydney (as luck would have it) so I rang him immediately and asked him for a favour – contact the consulate in Sydney, tell them what’s happening and ask them if I can drop by some time tomorrow (morning hopefully) and get my passport visa stamped. This process normally takes a week or two. I then rang our agent in New Delhi and asked him to book me a hotel room for a couple of nights. There was nothing else I could do that night so I either had eight more beers or went straight to bed – that bit I can’t remember.
First thing next morning I rang our travel agent and asked her to book me flights to New Delhi…..today. Oh and did I mention I need enough time in Sydney to go to the Indian Consulate in North Sydney to pick up a visa then get back to the airport (in south Sydney) with enough time to get an international flight. When she had stopped laughing and picked up the telephone off the floor she asked if I was aware that the pilot’s strike had somewhat restricted the availability of seats on planes. But being the professional that she was, she proceeded to get me a seat facing the side of a plane rather than the front. It was on an army C130 Hercules from Brisbane to Sydney. Sydney to Bangkok/Singapore/Hong Kong and Bangkok/Singapore/Hong/Kong to New Delhi were works in progress.
On arriving at the airport I rang my boss (no mobile phones back then kids) and asked him to organise a signing authority and to fax it (no email either) to our agent’s office in New Delhi and then rang my mate in Melbourne regarding my visa. He said it was being arranged. I got on the C130 and headed off to Sydney, not knowing if this adventure was going to stop there.
At Sydney airport I was advised that our travel agent had me on a flight to Bangkok (but Bangkok/New Delhi was still up in the air – yuk yuk) so I rushed off to the Indian Consulate, got my visa, rushed back to the airport in time to get on the plane and slump down in my (business class) seat with a glass of champagne and relax because there was nothing else I could do until Bangkok.
Eight hours later the nice lady at the transit desk in Bangkok airport advised that I had a booking on the next Thai International flight to New Delhi, in a couple of hours…..first class – love that travel agent. It had all come together in less than 24 hours.
What happened next was classic India. After moving heaven and earth and arriving in New Delhi in the early hours of Tuesday morning my agent and I fronted at the steel company office at 9.00am and were told……they weren’t ready for us and could we come back tomorrow. Now India can be a frustrating place at the best of times but in this case the prize was beyond valuable so we bit our respective lips and retired to the hotel to wait. Wednesday morning – same. Thursday morning – same. Friday morning they were ready to sign. But there was another twist and it didn’t involve travel because I had a bit of spare time to organise flights out and had taken the precaution of booking out on Friday evening, to be safe.
The other company marketing managers and their agents and me and mine were all pacing in the waiting room in which we had all spent far too much of our lives up to that point. After the contracts had been typed (yes typed) then checked and amended where necessary we would be asked in one by one to sign. After metaphorically drawing the short straw, my two contracts were numbers four and five in the queue. By mid-afternoon we were just starting on four. By about 6.00pm we were ready to start five when the steel company’s senior manager asked me if we could come back on Monday to do the last one.
Through gritted teeth I advised that in the circumstances I would prefer to not spend one minute more in that office than I had to. I may have said something a little more polite but the message was the same nonetheless. So at my insistence the typists and my counterparts soldiered on and we finished about 10.00pm on Friday night. Then the power failed so the lifts were out and we had to walk down 13 flights of stairs but I didn’t care as I had two contracts worth upwards of A$100million in my bag.
I don’t remember anything about the flights home but my log (which I kept for all of my business trips) tells me I came back first class on KLM to Singapore and on Qantas to Brisbane. I can’t remember if I was authorised to fly at the pointy end back than but that time, I didn’t care.
When I hear someone speaking Italian or Korean or Liverpudlian, I know what language they are speaking even though I can’t understand a word of it. So does a non-Italian deaf person know if someone is signing in Italian or does it just look like random hand movements (as performed by all Italians) like that fraud was doing at the Mandela Memorial in 2013? Just wondering because every time you turn on the TV there’s a politician or a doctor giving a lecture so there’s a lot of signing going on all over the place.
First we had social security then social justice then social media and now we have social distancing. Let’s hope this latest example of social engineering doesn’t become as permanent or ubiquitous as the others or social interactions at social gatherings and more intimate one-on-one social connections will be somewhat problematic and we won’t need a potent new virus to impose zero population growth on the populace.
I never noticed because it was summer back home in recent months but it seems yoga pants are now all the rage in cold weather. I’m told this item of apparel is more correctly called leisure wear although I’m pretty sure some of the people who wear them haven’t leisured in years. For others I say leisure away because it can be quite a fetching look.As a corollary to this, yesterday morning here in the UK there was a debate program (with participants seated a healthy 2 metres apart and no studio audience) on whether fat shaming is hate speech. We didn’t watch it because this offence mining is getting ridiculous. I have red hair (actually I used to, but most of it has changed colour) and the child bride would like to be three inches taller but no one that I am aware of is taking offence by proxy on behalf of rangas and short-arses. So where do you draw the offence-taking line? Way back at the start before all of this virtue signalling, identity politics bullshit started – that’s where.
The wedding we attended two days ago ducked BoJo’s ban on various public access hostelries by a matter of hours. The reception had just started when it was announced but news travels slowly in the backblocks of Lancashire and the Clitheroe pony express was lame so the festivities continued to a logical conclusion and when it’s a wedding in a brewery that conclusion should be obvious (everyone was suitably pissed, for those of you who don’t do obvious). Then yesterday, the hotel the CB and I are staying in prior to flying out today told us they had closed. But we could stay until check out time. So we were the only people in this grand hotel in Alderley Edge and a couple of days ago we were the only paying customers in the Swan and Royal in Clitheroe. And Qantas stops flying international at the end of the month. We were flying home on the 30th (on Cathay Pacific) originally but brought our return forward to tomorrow on Qantas. I can’t help but feel this virus has been snapping at our heels for the last week but we’re holding it at bay. If either of us eventually get this bloody thing I shall be extremely peeved.
I didn’t think it could get any weirder in the short term but now Singapore won’t let Qantas land so our flight from here is London to Darwin – now there’s a first. I wasn’t able to confirm that immediately as they wanted me to call them and I was put in a queue which was between 3 ½ and 4 ½ hours long. The Qantas operator was very busy today! A few hours later Qantas called back and they wanted to know why I called them. Eh?
I thought I’d seen it all but I hadn’t. Today, at Manchester airport the CB and I saw a lady in a full hazard suit – the white coverall type with head, face and mouth cover without even her feet outside. She wasn’t waiting to test a suspected virus carrier, she was a passenger waiting to get on a plane. Ours I think. It’s easy to say the world’s gone mad but I guess we all have different views on what are prudent precautions. Further to this, we are now sitting in Terminal 3 (the Qantas Lounge is closed – oh the privations) and there are hazard suits scattered across the main lounge area. I’m guessing most of them have Asians inside judging by the ones we’ve seen up close and personal. The cheaper versions appear to be those raincoat poncho things – there’s a few of them around. As previously reported we’re told that masks protect me from anything the mask-wearer may have. Hopefully on the plane we’ll be surrounded by a praetorian guard of hazard suits but unlikely. Japan Airlines or Air China will get them and we’ll get the gobby blokes in t-shirts.
And on that note, Tales from the Celtic Caravan comes to a close, unfortunately without a contribution from the Paddy Celts. Until next time.
Fortunately this little corner of the world the CB and I find ourselves in has a supermarket which may be bereft of bog rolls but has shelves stocked with Stella, Sav and Syrah. I think our home state of Queensland is the only political jurisdiction on the planet outside the muslim bit where you won’t find this. Since Boris announced yesterday that all bars, restaurants and pubs would close as of today, this has assumed life sustaining importance. So as I sit back in our hotel room contemplating the Alderley Edge Hotel’s empty carpark and the absence of any noise I am able to sip an ice cold beer and the CB can sip a Rosemount Chardie – a good value Aussie quaffer which costs as much in £’s as it does in $’s at home. Incidentally, that applies to just about everything here.
The family wedding the CB and I came over here to attend was completed in the nick of time yesterday. Today would have been a no-go. We were so happy for the bride and groom because the times were rapidly conspiring to make their big day a complete disaster. As it was, plenty of guests including two of the bridesmaids were unable to attend or didn’t want to attend. In less unusual times there would be severe recriminations for bailing out I am sure, but some people are following government directives to the letter so there isn’t really a case to prosecute. Notwithstanding, we have already encountered attitudes ranging from casual indifference to practical pragmatism to full-blown paranoia when it comes to avoiding COVID-19.
If you add the closure of most touristy places to closure of the pubs, bars and restaurants and the abandonment of everything sporting, this place has become instantly boring so it’s just as well we are heading home in two days rather than on our way to Ireland tomorrow. We can look forward to two weeks of isolation with logistics more akin to a spy swap than getting a cab when we land in Brisbane. Our kids have to avoid contact with us so our son will drive our car to the airport and our daughter will follow. Our car will be left for us to drive home and daughter and son will return to their respective homes in daughter’s car.
Bear in mind that we will have just spent 20+ hours in a crowded aeroplane so despite the best laid plans (of mice and men) and the imposition of restrictions the fun-police in Iran would be proud of, contact with other humans is unavoidable in some circumstances. And the people we encountered today in the above mentioned supermarket and in a coffee shop and at the hotel reception didn’t interrogate us as to whether we have participated in crowd forming activities recently. So it’s all a bit scatter-gun really.
Fortunately our son-in-law is manager of a supermarket so the fridge at home has been stocked this week and the local booze retailer home delivers. Netflix here we come.
