Bangkok, day one (part I)

Not my photo. Obviously.

Travel Truth #5: Take time to take time.

For what? Well, to relax. Or to get stuff done. Either one. Don't be rushing around trying to see everything all the time. You have to slow down and sacrifice some of your precious vacation to housekeeping. Or precious oblivion. Either one. 

The first half of my first full day in Bangkok was devoted to errands. Administrative stuff, such as: 

1. laundry
2. acquiring a tourist map, a pen, a small notebook (for taking notes while I'm walking around), floss, and sunblock
3. get a tuk-tuk to take me to Hua Lamphong Station to buy tickets for Malaysia
4. find a bookstore and pick up some reading material to replace The Catcher in the Rye, which I'd finished on the bus from Cambodia
5. eat Thai food, as much as I can hold
6. buy and send postcards, if possible

The second half would be devoted to...well, whatever the hell I wanted. I have a couple of things I like to do when I first get to a city, like:

• climb some high thing and get the lay o' the land
• take a stroll in the neighborhood immediately surrounding my lodgings and get a feel for it
• find out where the nearest bus, train, and cab stations are
• eat local food and people-watch

I'd picked up floss and sunblock and notepads and pens when I went to 7-11 last night for water, so that was already done. I dropped off my laundry at the front desk for 100 baht, picked up a tourist map, grabbed a tuk-tuk to Hua Lamphong, and bought a second-class sleeper ticket to Butterworth, Malaysia (only 1200 baht, or $40). 

I walked out of the station, ignoring the cries of the ravening tuk-tuk drivers who yelled that it was too hot and too far to walk anywhere, and crossed the canal. I'd intended to trek northwest to find Wat Traimit, the Temple of the Golden Buddha. I found it quickly, but unexpectedly found that I didn't feel like going inside. You have to pick and choose your wats carefully, you know. But here's where the day began to turn frustrating. 

Nobody in Thailand, or all of Southeast Asia for that matter, believed that (a) I knew where I was going, or (b) that I was capable of getting there under my own power. I stopped a street corner to ask a portly man in a dark blue security uniform about the way to the Temple of the Black Buddha, and he pointed me in the direction with no fuss. But after wandering around aimlessly down Charoen Krung Road for 30-45 minutes with no temple in sight, I began to get annoyed. I sat down on the steps of the Robinson Shopping Center and consulted my map. After a few moments, an elderly Thai gent stepped up to me and asked in perfect English "Where are you going?"

I told my balding, liver-spotted interlocutor that I was trying to reach the temples near the Chao Phraya River. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "You must hire a tuk-tuk. He'll take you around for the whole day for a very reasonable price. What did you want to see while you are here?"

I said, "I'd like to see the temples."

He told me that it was no good—today was a "Big Buddha Day" and all the temples would be jam-packed with celebrants and gawking foreigners. 

"You really must get out of the city," he admonished. 

"I don't know what's out th—"

"All of the most beautiful things are to be found there: the floating markets, the crocodile farm, the rose garden, and the ruins of the ancient capital."

"I don't think I—"

"You can hire a tuk-tuk to take you around the city for only 30 baht per hour!"

"I believe I'd rather—"

"You should also stop by the fashion district. You want to get new clothes, right? All the best tailors can  be found there."

"I don't need any—"

"Here, come this way. We'll hire a tuk-tuk to take you to a tour company where you can book a tour."

I tried to demur. I tried to protest. I tried to balk. All to no avail: the Thai gent took me by the elbow and steered me toward a waiting line of lime-green tuk-tuks at the curb, and fell to haggling in Thai with the driver, a young man with a shock of black hair and a paunchy stomach. Then, without knowing how, I was inside the vehicle and we were rocketing through traffic. A few minutes later I stood outside a blue-painted shopfront with five jaunty stone steps leading up to the threshold. In the dim interior I could make out other foreigners sitting at desks, and on the other side Thai clerks who were taking notes and making suggestions and gestures. 

Oh well, I thought. I don't really have anything planned for Day 3 anyway. 

I walked in. The kindly old lady behind the counter, her shoulder-length hair dyed ebony and her insectoid eyes magnified by thick spectacles, waited patiently while I pored over the catalog. I booked a tour to Kanchanaburi, the province northeast of Bangkok near the Burmese border: the River Kwai Bridge, the floating markets, and something called the "tiger temple." It looked promising and only cost 2,200 baht (around $70 at the time). The River Kwai Bridge was actually on my Thailand bucket list, but I hadn't figured it was so close to Bangkok. This was going to be exciting. 

Then the tuk-tuk driver took me to MBK, a fashionable men's clothing boutique in the tailor district. I didn't even set foot on the sidewalk. I'd been warned about this kind of thing. The doorman and the proprietor both came out of the glass doors to try to cajole me inside, but I stayed put. I looked my tuk-tuk driver square in the back of the head and said, "No way. I hate shopping. That was the old man's idea, not mine." I ignored every attempt by the driver and the shop owner to entice me from my entrenched position. Instead, I calmly and civilly requested to be taken to the nearest foodie neighborhood. That royally pissed off my driver. At the time, I wasn't sure why, but then I realized that tuk-tuk drivers usually get a commission from shop owners for delivering customers to their doors. I had just cheated my driver of his bonus, and now he was snorting and looking for any excuse to buck me off. Testily he drove me to the seediest, dirtiest, loneliest, most dubious-looking streetside eatery in all Bangkok: a few dingy tables with cigarette-scarred plastic tablecloths, meats fried into blackened oblivion, desiccated-looking vegetables, flies, heaps of refuse, scrawny women and sinister customers lurking in the shadows beneath rain-stained awnings. I was just glad to be out of the damn tuk-tuk, and the feeling was mutual. 

"After you eat, where you go?" the driver asked as I stepped out of his rig.
"Here," I said, pointing to my hostel on the map.
"Too far," he said.
Bullshit, I thought. I knew for a fact that we were in the Riverside district and it wasn't but a hop, skip, and a jump to Pretchaburi Road, my hostel's neighborhood.
"You get taxi," the driver continued. "I'm done with you."

That's fine, I was done with him too. I paid him the 100 baht he demanded was never gladder to see the back of anyone. Fuming, I walked a block and grabbed a (blue) tuk-tuk driven by someone who looked like the Southeast Asian version of Ernest P. Worrell. He was older than God and his rig in bad need of service. We coughed, wheezed, and lurched rheumatically through the streets back to Boxpackers, with me holding on for dear life and striving to hold back my temper and the contents of my stomach. The driver only gave me 40 baht change out of the 200 I'd given him, but I didn't care. I practically sprinted back up to my room and the air-conditioned sanctuary of my cubicle and my journals. My laundry was waiting for me, clean but stuffed unfolded into a plastic bag. 

It wasn't even noon yet. 

Angkor Wat and environs

I won't say much about the bus ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. It was long and dull. I wanted to take the speedboat up the Tonlé Sap Lake, but my timing was bad—the water wasn't high enough. Even during the peak season there's still a good chance of running aground, I was told. So I gave it up, bought a bus ticket and spent a rather dull six hours in transit. 

I stayed at the King Boutique Hotel in Siem Reap. I later found out that "boutique hotel" is a slightly more upscale and discreet version of a love motel in Southeast Asia. That explains the starkness of my room. No decorations, no paintings, no wallpaper, nothing. Just a bed, a bathroom, a nicked, gouged wooden wardrobe painted all in black, and four white walls. 

Anyway, I didn't come here to tell you that. I came here to tell you about Angkor Wat. 

It's laughably easy to get around in Siem Reap, folks: fifteen dollars to hire a tuk-tuk for the day, and they'll take you anywhere. You can tour the great ruins of the ancient Khmer capital of Angkor on either a full-day (large circle) tour or the half-day (small circle) one. I did the small circle, starting with Angkor Wat itself. 

Let me explain something: "wat" means "temple." "Angkor" means "city," so Angkor Wat is literally "city temple." I know what you're thinking: Why did the ancient Cambodians live in a city named "City"? Beats me. Maybe because the names "Dikshit" and "Long Dong" were already taken. 

My tuk-tuk driver was named Yot. He pronounced it "yutz," and I labored hard to avoid stigmatizing him on that basis. His English was barely comprehensible, but fortunately he was a man of few words. He had a sneaky, shifty air about him that I didn't like. Nonetheless he was capable and patient, and drove me around Angkor Wat, the Bayon, and Ta Prohm with a brief stop for lunch in between. We established a routine: he'd drive me to a locale, I'd hop out and arrange a time to meet up with him, and he'd go park in the shade and unstring his hammock for a nap. I'd wander about the jungle-clad temples, gawping like a moron, for 45 minutes or so, and then off we'd go again. In this way I saw the Bayon...

...and Ta Prohm, the so-called "Tomb Raider temple," because it had the grievous misfortune of having an Angelina Jolie movie made there. 

This place was far prettier and more astounding than Angkor Wat. 

I was told that I'd feel like Indiana Jones walking around Ta Prohm, and boy, did I ever. 

I have no idea who this guy is, but his girlfriend was standing right next to me, taking his picture. 

It was after we got back to Siem Reap that Yot lived up to his unfortunate name. I got out of his tuk-tuk and turned to find him standing there, hand held out. I forked over his fifteen smacks, but he remained where he was, palm-up. 

"Tip, please," he said. 

The nerve of this character, I thought. 

"We agreed on a flat rate," I told him. You yutz, I added in my head. 

"Tip," he insisted. "Twenty dollars."

To this day I'm not sure whether Yot was asking me for five U.S. dollars, which would have brought his total fee to twenty, or for a further frickin' twenty bucks, a 133% bonus. Either way, I was incensed. I told him, as politely as I knew how, to go take a flying leap on a rolling doughnut.

I felt an acute need for another human's company (and a chronic need for a beer), so I walked from my hotel to the Old Market and Pub Street. I was bitterly disappointed with both: nothing but crappy souvenirs in the former and overpriced, foreign-themed cocktail bars full of phonies in the latter. I bought the most masculine-looking notebook I could find (my previous journal being filled to capacity) and went home to catch some bad Asian dramas and a little shuteye before I bugged out for Thailand in the morning. 

Hokkaido diary: Tokyo to Sapporo

A quick aside before we begin: this is the Sententious Vaunter's 600th post. A big thank-you to all you lovely followers who've hung with me for even half that time.

2/3: 

• woke up at 4:30 a.m.; back hurts
• got some H2O
• packed up and left at 5:30
• walked a few blocks to Tokyo Station, mumbling to myself
• found out I can't exchange my voucher for a Rail Pass until 7:30
• went to McDonald's and ate a breakfast sandwich with coffee and watched the light creep into the sky
• allergies are giving me the business this morning—must be the capsule bedding
• Not content to sit in Mickey D's for 90 minutes, I stashed my stuff in a station locker. My rabbit fur hat, strapped to my backpack, was shedding all over it like a living animal
• I stuck my hands in my pockets and walked south to Ginza. The city came awake as I had—slowly, groggily, gray and uncertain. I tried to capture the freshness of the morning, but couldn't. A slimy haze, like last night's hangover, lay over all. I reveled in the cool and calmness, deliberately going against the grain by walking slow and looking happy—the opposite, as Theroux wrote, of most Tokyoites, hurried and worried. This is where I should stick some platitude about "the city was all mine in the predawn light" but that'd just be doggerel. I bought some sandwiches, mikan (tangerines) and water and fruit juices (plus my trusty traveler's fifth of Suntory whisky) at Lawson Station and got my JR Pass. Then I cracked my stuff out of my locker and threaded my way through the labyrinthine passages (flashing my pass at every guard at every turnstile) to the Tohoku platform 22 and the 8:20 Hayabusa to Shin-Aomori:
                 
                       8:20 - 11:19                Tokyo - Shin-Aomori
                        (179 min.)                   (Hayabusa Shinkansen)
                        15 min. transfer
  
                       11:34 - 1:44                Shin-Aomori - Hakodate
                        (130 min)                  (Super Hakucho)
                        29 min. transfer
  
                       2:13 - 6:14                  Hakodate - Sapporo
                       (241 min.)                   (Hokuto)
  

8:00 a.m. So, Steely Dan says you can't buy a thrill, eh? Try pulling out of Tokyo Station on a bullet train. Nothing else like it.

Hung my fur hat on a hook and used it for a pouch to hold things in (finally managed to put on some deodorant, too)

• Everyone else eating their breakfasts—bread or bento (boxed, compartmentalized meals)
• I ate one of my sandwiches (supposedly a BLT, bu really a BLEPT—bacon, lettuce, egg, pickle and tomato—and tried some perfectly awful vegetable fruit juice
• 8:35 a.m. Tokyo still had that slimy film on it that I'd noticed earlier
• 8:45 a.m. Brief stop at Omiya; sure is nice having 3 seats to myself.
• 9:45 a.m. Napped for an hour and woke up to Sendai
• 9:52 a.m. Stop at Sendai
• 10:08 a.m. Passed acres of farmland mysteriously steaming—at first I thought, panicked, of Fukushima and insidious, invisible radiation—then I saw the men burning brush and weeds, scouring the fields clean well ahead of planting season
• 10:15 a.m. Popped out of a tunnel and there was snow on the ground. Always happens like that on bullet trains. Rivers still running like iron bands across the white landscape
• 10:27 a.m. Sky beginning to clear
• Bluish mountains dusted with white rearing their heads in the distance; stopping soon at Morioka
• 11:00 a.m. Flatter now. No snow, just slush, tired-looking rail yards, clusters of houses and brown fields. Too many damn tunnels to see much. Read the Sapporo and Wakkanai chapters of Theroux's book.
• 11:06 a.m. Snowy again, from what I can see. Next stop is Shin-Aomori, the end of the line for the Shinkansen.
  
  Writers are snobs. We're just snobby about different stuff. Theroux is snobby about airplanes, manga, cellphones, computers, and people who walk and eat at the same time. I'm snobby about movies (at best a liberal brainwashing, at worst a cheap shell game, intended to bully, browbeat, shock, desensitize and amuse the populace into acquiescence) and music (hip-hop, created to make both the performer and the listeners think they're cool)
• 11:15 a.m. Will these tunnels never end? Sky's getting grayer. Shin-Aomori should be just minutes away.
• 11:30 a.m. Well, perfect. I suppose I should have expected this. Made a successful transfer to the Super-Hakucho 15 only to find the platform crowded with fatuous-looking foreigners—Americans in a tour group, all wearing name-brand coats and hefting fancy luggage and backpacks with names like "Arcteryx." Here for the snow festival, like me, and the ski slopes too, most of them. When did the outdoors become a penis-measuring contest? I suppose it has always been since the days of rich dentists and newspaper editors going on safari. At least brand names weren't so abundant and intrusive back then. God, there's nothing I hate worse than seeing knock-kneed, buck-toothed jackanapes with bulging eyes and protuberant Adam's apples taking pictures of an oncoming train with a smartphone. Ugh. I'm glad I'm only hear [sic] for the first day of the festival.
  
  Wow, speaking of snobby...
• 11:37 a.m. On the move, heading for Aomori proper. Lots of snow, heaped against buildings and on rooftops in spongy, sagging layers like week-old frosting on an angel food cake. 
• 11:52 a.m. For reasons which I would understand if I spoke Japanese, the train sat for an interminable age at Aomori, then started back the way it came—toward Shin-Aomori. Maybe we need to go back and switch tracks or something, or perhaps Aomori proper was just a branch stop. Ate another of my sandwiches. I have some tangerines, one apple juice and a full bottle of whiskey left. Morale is high. 
• 11:58 a.m. Yeah, we're on a different track now, passing white snow-clad fields with wisps of brown grass sticking up and crossing viscous gray-green streams. 
• I have an interesting map in front of me on the underside of my folding tray. It's a cross-section of the Seikan Tunnel under Tsugaru Strait, which this train will take to reach Hakodate on Hokkaido. According to the map, the tunnel curves at an obtuse angle beneath 140 m of water and 100 m of seabed, for a total length of 53.85 km, 23.3 of which is water (the rest seems impassibly mountainous). It will take us 24 minutes to traverse it. 
• We're just sitting again, this time in the middle of nowhere .I hope I don't miss my connection at Hakodate. I'm getting into Sapporo late enough tonight as it is. 
• 12:19 p.m. Rolling into Kanita, and BAM—there's the ocean off to the right—rolling, windblown, reflecting the gray sky. Snowy mountains across the water—my first glimpse of Hokkaido perhaps?
• 12:56 p.m. Nodding off and drowsing in my sleep. We've been in the tunnel for ages. The map shows some sort of station—Tappi, it's called—1/3 of the way along, just before water. We must have shot right by it. 
• 1:02 p.m. And we're out—still overcast but the snow is blinding after all that darkness. We must be on Hokkaido by now. Deep snow everywhere, piled high by doorways, just as Theroux described
• 1:09 p.m. Brief stop at Kikonai. Next stop, Hakodate. Much colder now. All the snow makes the plows and cottages look like cupcakes. Clumps of wet snow nest in the dead branches of skeletal trees like weird fruit.

2:05 p.m. Easiest transfer ever. The blocky, angular Hokuto 91 was directly across from us, engines rumbling. I bought some more snacks (plus beer) and now we're just waiting around 'til the darn thing leaves at 2:13 p.m. for the four-hour drive to Sapporo. I've got my Nook, my iPod and everything else I need for the journey. All the chuckleheads who got on at Aomori are in my car this time. Bummer. I don't have a window seat, but at least my seatmate (the first since leaving Tokyo) is a shy, retiring Japanese girl, maybe a university student. Okay, beer time. And snacks. I bought Yebisu Malt, some nuts in a small plastic bottle, more water and onigiri—a rice ball wrapped in seaweed and filled with salty tuna. The Koreans would surely think it Gimbap.

2:31 p.m. Somewhat distracted by my book, The Terror by Dan Simmons—getting good only 14 pages in—but must remember to look out the window. Real scenic out here, plains and woods and lofty mountains and the distant gray sea. Can't write too much, though. This contraption is the rockiest, shakiest, bounciest ride yet—worse than the Super Express with its wheezy, whistling brakes, worse than rattling, banging Amtrak. It's like being in a truck on a dirt road, and going through tunnels is even worse.

• 2:38 p.m. Brief stop at Onumakoen—foresty and drenched in thick snow, layered and crusty and flaky like pastry crust. 
• 2:57 p.m. Brief stop at Mori; sea and fog-strewn mountains to the right. This damned car is roasting hot—Why???
• 3:21 p.m. Brief stop at Yakumo
• 3:43 p.m. Brief stop at Oshamambe; young foreign couple got off here. The man had a Japanese sword stuck through the straps of his pack
• 3:47 p.m. Still following the sea around the arm of a great bay. Getting ridiculously snowy. Looks to be knee-deep in most places, and the mountaintops are simply caked with it. Sky and sea are leaden—a cheerless sight. How did the Ainu survive here?
• 4:11 p.m. Brief stop at Toya; Reading Simmons's book really makes you fearful of those cold northern wastes where ice and wind drive men mad and unknown terrors lurk.
• 4:24 p.m. Brief stop at Datemombetsu. Charming little station with a covered platform and a noodle shop.
• 4:44 p.m. Brief stop at Higashi-Muroran—rather big place compared to the others
• 4:53 p.m. Getting dark. Looks dang cold out there. Hard to believe I woke up in Tokyo this morning and it was 45 degrees. This ol' heap keeps wobbling and jerking back and forth and side-to-side. Wheels slipping on snow? Unsteady hand at the wheel? I don't know much about diesel trains but I'd swear this thing has a manual transmission. 
• 4:58 p.m. Brief stop at Noboribetsu. It's not just cold and wintery out there anymore—it's frozen. In the fading purple light I can see slush frozen into jagged ridges on the roads and icicles dangling from the eaves of the houses, which look hunched over against the cold. It's colder in the car, too—have they turned the heaters off, or is it just that nippy out?
• 5:40 p.m. Totally missed the last station. Coming up on Chitose now. I've read 160 pages of this book without pause. 
• 7:18 p.m. FINALLY in my hotel room (as you can likely tell from my neater script). We were delayed 30 minutes getting into Sapporo due to another train having mechanical problems ahead. After a lot of starts and stops, we finally squoze by and sneaked into town like a teenager who's stayed out too late. 

I KNEW those chucklehead foreigners were trouble—Americans and Australians both. I'm beginning to see why my mother and my fiancée both claim to hate people in general, and why Paul Theroux wrote that meeting another traveler is his (and every traveler's) greatest fear. What I should I see [sic] when I get off the train than this same stupid-looking bunch of people forming a gabby, impenetrable knot right at the top of the platform staircase. Fed up (and a bit travel-fatigued, I'll admit) I shoved right through them, gleefully relishing their bemused stares. Halfway to my hotel, however, I had a horrible thought. I remembered that, two months ago, I had by some miracle snagged the last vacant room at the Sapporo Clark. Upon rounding a corner and looking in through the lobby windows, my worst fears were confirmed: that same knot of gabby foreigners had beaten me to the punch. They were all standing in the lobby, yapping as they checked in. I kicked the two-foot-deep snowbank next to me and waited around for 15 minutes until they cleared out.

Now I'm in my room, cramped and lonely and with an iron-hard East Asian mattress. But THERE IS A BATHTUB. I'm going to go find something delicious and decadent to eat, come back, peel off my grimy clothes and stinking socks, and have the most gorgeous bath ever.

Next time, I won't come here when there's a festival on. 

cocktail review no. 72 - Gin Rickey

Okay, let's step away from vodka for a moment. I'll use the last of that godawful cheap bottle from Bucheon in my special penne-with-tomato-and-vodka sauce later this week. Then it'll be gone and I'll just have the lovely, quality Parliament-brand vodka that I got in the Russian quarter near Dongdaemun. I have nearly a full bottle of Gordon's, so it's time for some gin recipes.

The rickey was wildly popular back in the day, you know. It was invented in the 1880s, reached the height of its popularity just after the turn of the century, and remained prevalent enough into the 1920s that it was mentioned in several prominent works of literature, most notably The Great Gatsby. That means that F. Scott Fitzgerald knew about this drink, and likely drank a few. Awesomeness by association? Here you are.

But let's talk about the drink itself. Where'd the name "rickey" come from? And why are there so many variations?

Well, I'll tell you: drinks with names like "rickey," "flip," "crusta," and "sour" are actually written in code. "Rickey" is a codeword for a specific cocktail recipe, where the only variation is the spirit. The rest is just stock ingredients. There are gin rickeys, whiskey rickeys, rum rickeys, vodka rickeys, and bourbon rickeys.

In fact, the original rickey was made with bourbon: the Joe Rickey.

From Wikipedia:

In 1883, Colonel Joe Rickey was purported to have invented the "Joe Rickey," after a bartender at Shoomaker's in Washington, D.C. added a lime to his "mornin's morning," a daily dose of Bourbon with lump ice and Apollinaris sparkling mineral water. Some stories place the exact day as a Monday after Col. Joe Rickey celebrated his wager with a Philadelphian on the successful ascension of John G. Carlisle to Speaker of the House. Col. Joe Rickey was known as a "gentleman gambler" and placed many bets on the outcome of various political contests.

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Now, the gin rickey:

• 2 ounces desired liquor (in this case, gin)
• 5 ounces club soda (or mineral water, if you so desire)
• 1 lime wedge

Pour the liquor and club soda into a highball glass almost filled with ice cubes. Stir well and garnish with the lime wedge.

A few quick things before I get to my review.

Firstly, don't mix up highball glasses and rocks glasses (also called lowball glasses or old fashioned glasses). Capisce?

Second, if you live in a benighted, uncivilized country like South Korea that hasn't the faintest clue what a lime is, then you can just do like me and squirt some lime juice into the drink and call it even.

My diagnosis:

My goodness, I thought gin-and-tonics were refreshing and summery! The gin rickey blows every light, fizzy highball I've ever had right out of the water. It's easily the most cool, frosty, smooth and stomach-settling cocktail I've ever had.The mineral water does wonders for indigestion, the gin gives your head that pleasant, warm, humming feeling, and the hint of lime rounds the whole effect out. If you need to cool off, cool down, kick back or chill out, this here's your drink. And it takes roughly ten seconds to make.

You're welcome.

in which the Vaunter forgets something essential

Okay, so: apparently I'm a dumbass.

Remember that Canon EOS Rebel T3i I told you that I purchased? Specifically for the purpose of taking gorgeous photos of Japan during my nine-day stint there and putting 'em up on this here blog?

Well, I forgot to install the camera drivers on my laptop before Miss H took the installation CD and useless paperwork back to Korea in my extraneous suitcase. So, yeah. Here I am in Tokyo with an excellent camera and a wagon load of jaw-dropping full-color images on the data card, and no way of uploading them onto my Toshiba.

Sorry guys. I guess you'll have to wait until August 9 for me to update you about how Japan went. And give you those aforementioned pics.

I will say this: Japan is awesome. Like Korea, but bigger, wider, cleaner, neater, tidier, politer, more relaxed, less uptight, more confident in its own skin. It's expensive, yes, but I'm being smart about it, as you'll soon see. I'm on a shoestring here. I've done Tokyo for four days and I shall depart tomorrow for Kyoto, where I'll spend 48 hours. Then I'll head down to Kumamoto for another two days, and then it's to Fukuoka and the high-speed ferry. Don't worry, I'll give you the skinny when I'm back in Seoul and have the drivers installed and the photos on my hard drive.

Wish me luck. Sorry I'm such a dweeb.

channeling Dostoevsky

One of my favorite books—and the only one I didn't sell back to the Royal Rip-Off Club (the university bookstore, in other words)—is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I couldn't really tell you why I kept it, except that I like it. The protagonist of NFU is not a likeable fellow. He's a neurotic mess. Mind you, his environment has something to do with it. His job was boring and didn't pay well. His (few) friends are all better-off than he is. His butler is passive-aggressive. And to top it off, he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, which (Dostoevsky puts this quite delicately) is a frigid cesspool. Understandably, this unnamed protagonist is lonely, distraught, and used to be downright ornery (before the ennui overwhelmed him and turned him into an apathetic pile of dithering paranoia). His self-esteem is in tatters, and his perceived inferiority to others drives him to fits, so he takes this bitterness out on people. He acts solely out of spite. Everything he does is done out of spite. He even spites himself when there's no one else around. He finds pleasure in toothaches and liver pain. He was as nasty as possible to the petitioners who appeared before his desk. In his own words:

When petitioners came to my desk seeking information, I gnashed my teeth at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid folk: naturally—petitioners. But there were also some fops, and among these I particularly detested a certain officer. He absolutely refused to submit and clattered revoltingly with his sword. I battled him over that sword for a year and a half. And finally I got the best of him. He stopped clattering.

This novel entertains me. On the surface it's the depraved maundering of a nihilistic sociopath, who once would've liked nothing better than to set his hooks into you and drag you down with him. (Now, his soft insides hidden beneath a layer of calcified spite, he sits on the sidelines of social interaction and cackles like a demon at the artifice of it all.) Underneath it's one of the first existentialist novels, and a complete rejection of utopian socialism. It pulls no punches in presenting humans as irrational, uncooperative, uncontrollable beings.

Much as I enjoy the idea of a happy little world filled with soap bubbles and hearts and fluffy clouds, where everybody gets along and all are considered equals and nobody kills anyone else and whatnot, the idea is laughable. This is a central theme in my own novel, in fact.

Moreover...

It is ample justification for what I am about to tell you.

I once had a coworker whom I couldn't stand.

The man was an utter and complete idiot. He wasn't safe to work with, lacked any understanding of his trade, and worse yet, he would equivocate, exaggerate, downplay and flatter to avoid being called on it. He'd say anything to wiggle out of being blamed for mishaps he caused. (And he caused quite a few.) He undermined our supervisor's authority by calling the higher-ups behind his back. He treated near-misses nonchalantly, as if they didn't really matter. He routinely forgot (or conveniently misplaced) the most fundamental things. (I could list more of his transgressions, but I wish to avoid casting aspersion on the company.) Suffice it to say that this fellow was a piss-poor worker, forgetful, sneaky, inept, incompetent, and conniving—and his arrogant attitude compounded the problem tenfold.

So I saw nothing wrong with giving him hell on a daily basis.

I called him out on his errors. I raked him over the coals when he screwed the pooch. I sententiously bossed him around in the cockpit (remember who you're dealing with). I contravened his wishes (though never in an unsafe manner). I second-guessed his intentions. I challenged, I questioned, I snarked without mercy. In short, I submarined him any way I could. If he borked, he got an earful...and so did the supervisor, chapter and verse.

Got a problem with that? Sue me.

I was on a holy mission. The Royal F@#&-Up and I had to work together. His foul-ups weren't severe enough to get him fired. And I wasn't in a position where I could logically or conscientiously refuse to work with him. I had gone before the higher-ups and complained, and there had been problem-solving sessions and group discussions, but in the end, the Jerk was exonerated, and I had to suck it up and roll with it. But I didn't have to acquiesce to his stupidity, I decided. As the duly-appointed safety observer, it was my job to point out any issue I felt needed to be addressed. And did that. I was civil about it, too, mostly. But I didn't have to like the guy. I figured it was better for him to watch his ass when I near. I wouldn't tolerate failures or slip-ups. After all, if he balled up the airplane, I'd get splattered all over the countryside along with him.

I looked at this the same way the Underground Man in NFU does. There was a battle of principle taking place. The Royal F@#&-Up refused to submit and began rattling his saber. So, I vowed, I'd gnash my teeth at him until he quit.

I finally got him to quit. Or to crack, at least.

It started innocently. It may not even have been a hill worth dying on. We had a slight disagreement about procedures. Tomato, tomahto. He did something, I questioned him about it, he defended himself. I filed the matter away to be discussed later.

And when I brought it up...

He exploded. He used a rather naughty word. He threatened to quit, which made me quite happy, if only he could've known. He said he didn't need this kind of aggravation. He was the superior here, he insisted. He would do things the way he saw fit, the safest way he knew how. I could barely choked back the laughter. I leaned against the nearest wall and soaked it all up. I'd beaten him. I'd shaken his cool. I'd rattled his cage. I'd cracked the ridiculous veneer of professional calm which he'd exuded up 'til now. Victory was mine.

By and by he calmed down. He said that he didn't have a problem with my calling things to his attention, per se (odd, seeing as how that was what had set him off in the first place), but my delivery could use some work. I was nitpicking and hypercritical, he said. (Excellent, I thought, he picked up on it.) My tone came across as condescending, he said. (Oh good, he'd noticed.) I shouldn't stop bringing these issues to his attention, he said, but my bedside manner could be more polite. Delighted, I agreed. I'd continue my duties as safety observer, but I'd work on my delivery, no sweat. I was chuckling inside all the while. Sure, I'll be nicer. Now that I've knocked all the supports out from under you, and revealed you to be the pompous, egotistical, scheming nincompoop you always were. And now you know I've revealed it, too. And indeed, his manner was conciliatory. He seemed to regret his loss of temper and took pains to ensure that we had resolved the conflict—and by proxy, that I wouldn't report anything to the supervisors. I didn't report a thing. There was no need. I'd gotten what I was after: sweet satisfaction. I felt almost no guilt about it, either.

Undermining people's egos isn't something I've made a habit of since, largely because I've never again been forced to work so closely with someone I despised.

But now that I've done it, I can see the benefits (and potential harms) of it. And I understand Notes from Underground a lot better, too.

Because, to a substantial degree, I didn't need to do what I did to the Jerk. I'm not a malicious man, and neither was Dostoevsky's protagonist. We are not, by nature, spiteful or hateful or nasty or mean. We were just amusing ourselves.

Because it can be mighty amusing.

Who Goes There?

...is the title of a marvelous science fiction novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. It was first published in 1938 under Campbell's pseudonym, Don A. Stuart, in Astounding Stories. In 1973, it was voted, quite justly, into The Science Fiction Hall of Fame by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

For once I cast my lot with the majority. Who Goes There? is, without doubt, one of the finest science fiction stories ever written. All the elements are there. Campbell's story has a fantastic plot, a spine-chilling premise, is scientifically sound, and makes a very pertinent point about human nature.

You've probably never heard of it, though.

What you have heard about are the three movie adaptations they made out of it.

The Thing From Another World, in 1951, starring James Arness...

John Carpenter's 1982 remake of that, called simply The Thing...

And now this, supposedly a prequel.

[Ahem]

I'd like to share some thoughts with you about books, movies, and what gets lost in between.

Adaptation decay (blithely defined here) is what you wind up with after a particular work of fiction has progressed from print to movie to video game to novelization and wherever else along the way. Similar to photocopying a photocopy, the process is a piranha swarm of human input and rewrites and creative vision...which inevitably skeletonizes the source material, and results in something that bears little to no resemblance to the original work.

And that is exactly what's going on here, to my unending disgust. Campbell's immortal work is, once again, going to Hollywood's chopping block to be packaged and marketed to the masses.

This is nothing new. The same thing happened to Isaac Asimov's I, Robot; H.G. Well's War of the Worlds and The Time Machine; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth; and, to an egregious degree, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan. (George of the Jungle anyone?)

The reason I'm squawking now is because I can't stand to see yet another of my favorite sci-fi stories debased in this manner.

Who Goes There? is an excellent work, one that stands on its own. A bunch of American scientists holed up in an Antarctic research base stumble across an alien spacecraft buried in the snow. Their picks and mattocks are inadequate for the task, so they decide to blow the ship open with thermite. They don't realize that the alien craft is made mostly of magnesium; it goes up like flash paper. However, encased in the ice nearby is an alien life form. MacReady, the expedition' s meteorologist, surmises that the ship must've crash-landed in Antarctica millions of years ago, when the continent was just beginning to freeze. "The Thing" somehow survived the crash of its ship, stumbled out of the wreckage, and was immediately frozen solid.

Well, it doesn't stay frozen for long. The team chips the creature out of its ice grave and transports it back to their base. It thaws and awakes. The humans discover the alien in the dog kennel, and the huskies viciously attacking it. As they watch, the alien begins to change, assuming the form of a sled dog it had recently devoured. The men quickly kill it. With increasing paranoia, Blair (the biologist) theorizes that the Thing is able to absorb and imitate any organic creature by reshaping its own cellular structure. The Thing can either devour its victims or infect them like a virus. More than that, the monster can somehow telepathically absorb the target's memories and personality as well, rendering its mimicry absolutely airtight. Realizing the implications of this—that not only dogs, but humans themselves can be infected, and that any member of the team may already be an imitation—Blair has a nervous breakdown and is confined to a maintenance shack.

MacReady and the rest of the team have a gay old time trying to figure out who's who...

I won't spoil the ending, but you'll love it.

How Campbell could've written something so perfect, so suspenseful, so thrilling, so disturbing, and so sinister (particularly in 1938, when the scariest guys around were Nosferatu, Frankenstein and the Phantom of the Opera) is beyond me. But he did. And his story remains one of the most pivotal, influential and downright horrifying of the genre.

Freddy Krueger doesn't scare me. Jason Voorhees can't faze me. Face-hugging, chest-bursting aliens aren't that bad. Werewolves, vampires and witches just leave me underwhelmed. The Thing is the only creature that's ever truly scared me.

So how did Hollywood portray my ultimate monster?

They turned him into a plant.

Seriously. The plot of the 1951 movie was that an intelligent form of plant life crashed in the Arctic (not the Antarctic) and started sucking the blood out of the researchers stationed there, like some kind of fungoid mosquito. They finally killed it with an electrical discharge.

Puh-leeze.

The 1982 remake was perhaps the most faithful adaptation, but there were still some glaring discrepancies between book and film. In The Thing, a Norwegian research team found the creature first, and got massacred in the most gruesome way possible. The first our heroic American team hears of it is when a couple of half-mad Norwegians burst into their camp in a helicopter, throwing grenades and shooting assault rifles at an innocent(-looking) sled dog.

Things rapidly go downhill from there. MacReady is a helicopter pilot instead of a meteorologist, but he still plays a major role. The Thing is...quite gruesome. Perhaps even more gruesome than he is in Campbell's original story. In fact, the movie was universally panned for its gruesomeness. But I still liked it enough to get it on DVD.

And now the new film is coming out. Like I said, it's supposedly a prequel. It portrays the battle the Norwegian team has with the original creature, before the Americans find it. Although, for some reason, the Norwegian team has some Americans along with 'em. I guess the movie producers just don't believe that an American audience could root for a bunch of Norwegians in an Antarctic research base fighting an alien monster without Mary Elizabeth Winstead riding along as eye-candy.

This is adaptation decay. There wasn't a single Norwegian in Campbell's novella. Hollywood put a Norwegian camp into the story in 1982. Now, in 2011, they're doing a movie whose setting was lifted from another movie. It's a film based entirely on a preceding film. None of Campbell's original characters (except for the monster itself) made it into this 2011 release. It's a film based on a film based on a novella. A photocopy of a photocopy.

A complete piece of crap, in other words.

The movie industry is notorious for this blasphemy. The producers are past masters. They take a perfectly good story, and instead of adapting it faithfully for the silver screen, they choose to adapt it remuneratively. They mutilate, bowdlerize, varnish, cheapen, and over-simplify (all in the name of "mass-market appeal") until we're left with a shoddy,  unintellectual, action-packed, sensationalist, overblown, mutated excuse for a film, devoid of plot, theme, symbolism, statement, or any redeeming feature whatsoever.

I don't know why Hollywood does this. That green stuff called money is probably the reason. Part of me likes to believe so, anyway. But in the blackest shades of night, in my most horrifying nightmares, the eldritch abomination called the Truth rears its ugly head. The producers and screenwriters in Los Angeles probably think Americans like this tripe. It's likely they believe that most Americans couldn't digest the deep thoughts and intellectual horror of John W. Campbell's Who Goes There?, so they dumbed it all down and repackaged it as a cheap horror film (three times!). Tinseltown has become so accustomed to truncating, abridging, censoring, simplifying and regurgitating the best works of fiction that it's become ingrained on the industry's consciousness that Americans like these dull, trite, recycled hack jobs.

Why do studio executives believe this nonsense? I'm not sure. The truth of the matter should be self-evident: that moviegoers prefer a well-shot, well-acted, thoughtfully scripted, original film with practical special effects instead of a CG-filled gore-fest. But then again, human beings have a long history of believing strange things. They believe that aliens seeded the Earth with life. That dinosaurs coexisted side-by-side with human beings. That Dave Mathews can sing.

In short, I believe that the 2011 adaptation of The Thing is yet another hackneyed, money-grubbing, unfaithful and unnecessary waste of digital film; that it should never have been made, or even conceived; and that all discerning and tasteful movie-goers should boycott it with a vengeance.

That's if there are any discerning and tasteful movie-goers left, anyway.

I solemnly swear that if ever I became a successful sci-fi novelist, I will jealously guard the rights to my works. As long as I live, I will never allow Hollywood to get its vile, shameless, mass-marketing hands on them. Because I know what will happen.

The stories, my stories, characters I created lovingly, plot lines I slaved over, villains I kicked around, concepts I nurtured from birth...they will come out of the Gilded Mulcher looking like this:

Nuh-uh. Not happening. No way.

stranger in a strange sky (Airport Personalities, Part III - The Weird)

And of course, there are some people at the airport you just can't be too sure about.

You know what a Cessna Cardinal is?

This:

Four seats, 150-180 horses, high wings, tricycle landing gear. Produced from 1968 to 1978. It was meant to replace the wildly popular Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The Cardinal has a streamlined, futuristic sort of look, not to mention a few technological goodies like laminar-flow airfoils and cantilever wings. It wasn't nearly as good an airframe as its predecessor, though. Instability problems and (in the early models) an underpowered engine spelled disaster for the 177. Nonetheless, Cessna kept working with it and brought out some significantly improved variants in the 1970s, including the 177RG (pictured above), which had retractable landing gear. Many Cardinals are still flying today.

And that's what I want to talk to you about, in fact.

I like Cessna Cardinals. They've got nicer lines than the clunky old Skyhawk. They also have big doors, meaning I can cram my 73 inches inside without much grief. And the annoying support struts (which plague high-wing airplanes) aren't as much a factor.

There's this dude out at the airport who owns a Cessna 177. Lovely little machine. Blue, with white stripes. Skin's a bit worn but the frame's in good shape. Beautiful control panel and interior. Engine sounds pretty good. Even the landing gear has spats.

I don't know what the owner's name is, or where he came from. He looks to be in his sixties, drives a Volvo station wagon, and managed to procure himself a hangar within six weeks of moving his airplane to Apple Valley. That's quite a feat, considering there's other pilots hereabouts who've been on the waiting list for a hangar for over two years.
He's tall, around six feet. His white hair sweeps back from his forehead and temples in little waves, like a composer's powdered wig. His nose is Romanesque; his jaw square; his face is covered with freckles and blemishes. His spare frame is disguised by the billowy fleece he continuously wears. The cargo compartment of his Volvo is filled with boxes of spare parts, tools, old rags, and cleaning solution. It's a mobile repair shop; he pulls the car up to his hangar, cracks open the rear door, and sits there polishing spark plugs and connectors.

Irrespective of the man's outward appearance, it's his behavior I want to discuss with you. The guy's a wacko. He is planning to mutilate that little Cardinal of his. My pilot, JM-1, was conversing with him a couple of months back and learned all the dastardly things he's planning to do to his airplane. They range up and down the scale from unwise to downright ludicrous: telescoping wings, overpowered engine, retractable landing gear...

Heck, we've even heard rumors that this fellow plans to turn his beautiful little airplane into a remote-control drone.

Needless to say, we're horrified. This guy's a mad scientist. We don't know where he's getting the money for these modifications, nor why he's choosing to spend it on such madness. But we're all going to be sorry to see that cute little Cardinal cut up into itty-bitty pieces.

Stories of this gent and his brainchild have spread all over the midfield hangar block. They're met with a universal shake of the head. Nobody can stomach the thought of a perfectly good airplane being butchered, much less turned into a mutant cyborg. The old gray-hairs sitting in the lounge would pay money to get a line on Mr. Volvo's train of thought. I certainly would.

Fortunately this species of oddball seems to be rare enough. I don't know anybody else around Apple Valley who's planning to conduct scientific experiments on his airplane. Most of the rest of the weirdos at KAPV are the lovable, interesting kind.

Take Pete, for instance. You remember Pete? The master mechanic at M_______ Aviation? I don't think I've described him in adequate detail. He's on the short side; five-foot ten, I shouldn't wonder. I'm not mentioning this fact in advance in order to color your opinion of him; I'm well aware of the multifarious stigma which the vagaries of human consciousness may attach to a man's height. No, I'm merely describing him, laying out pertinent facts in their proper place. Pete's height has nothing to do with the impression he transmits upon meeting him for the first time; rather than drag him down, his stature actually buoys up his credentials. It's desirable in an aviation mechanic that he be the diminutive sort, since the business of repairing flying machines involves a great deal of crawling into tight spaces, cramming one's hands or fingers into minuscule crannies, and wiggling about the narrow tract between ground and fuselage. His reputation suffers no misfortune which stems from his size.

Pete's mustache is peppered with salt. His eyes, ringed with crow's feet, sit beneath weather-beaten brows in a deeply tanned face. His greasy long-billed cap is perched evermore upon the crown of his head; a blue cotton jacket, jeans and comfortable black tennis shoes (all oil-smudged) complete his ensemble. His voice never rises above the level of an office chair rolling across a carpeted floor. One is forced to lean forward and concentrate to absorb everything he says. When he speaks, all activity in the flight school stops; the secretary ceases shuffling her papers; the Dutch matron's fingers hover above the keyboard; the student will halt his rummaging through his flight bag; the instructors stick their folders under their arms and pause on their way out the door; the old heads reign in their tall tales and polish their spectacles. Everyone freezes to hear the mechanic discourse. I have heard of only one instance in which Pete raised his voice; and that was but a rumor. His hair, half-brown, half-gray, sticks out at odd angles from beneath the baseball cap which eternally adorns his head. I have no idea whether the pate beneath is bald or still clothed to some degree in brownish-gray fibers. The baseball cap is mum on that point. Pete goes through caps like a baseball pitcher his gum or a smoker his squares; they are purchased new and used until utterly unrecognizable. So caked do they become with oil, grease, and assorted shop grime that their original lettering, decoration, pattern or filigree will be completely obscured. The process is inexorable and astoundingly quick. Bets are taken around the premises on how long it'll be before Pete's brand-new cap will take on the luster and appearance of a rotten banana peel or a lump of coal.

On that same topic, when a screwdriver or a pneumatic wrench isn't occupying Pete's stubby, sunburned, oil-stained fingers, a lit cigarette invariably replaces it; and cigarette butts litter the titanic doorway of the repair shop hangar, where Pete and his trusty acolytes habitually toss them. That hangar, on any given day, is awash with the sounds of men at work: the whine of the pneumatic wrench, the growl of the electric screwdriver, and occasionally the lusty ring of the hammer. A fire bell rings in time with the telephone inside, notifying the men of an incoming call; the voices of Rush Limbaugh or Lauren Ingraham or John and Ken echo and blare through the metallic cavity, denouncing the Obama administration and the Qaddafi regime.

None of this is weird, of course; but I find it suitably eccentric, unique enough, let's say, that it warrants special mention in this blog post, which was intended to be as objective as possible.

I suspect every smallish airport has its own eclectic collection of rare, quaint, queer, whimsical, offbeat or aberrant individuals, much as any museum, no matter how small, will have its collections of tarnished farm implements, corroded fossils and incomprehensible paintings. These are taken as they are. The strange people at your local airport are no different. They are not to be blamed for their disparities, unless they interfere or impair others' ability to operate, in which case the bastards would be mentioned in the previous post.

No matter how aggravating their behavior may be, how perplexing their fancies, how inaudible their speech or wavy their hair...such oddballs are an integral component of flying itself, as much as any strut, wheel or rivet would be. They're indispensable to the process, like the ignition of the engine or the turn of the propeller (or rotor, or turbine). They complete the picture. They add a qualitative bonus to the overarching fun and adventure of aviation. They make the event come to life, bring it home in mind and soul, add another brick to the wall of experience. No trip to an airport is complete without meeting all the weird and wonderful characters who abide there, listening to their stories, observing their idiosyncrasies, shaking your head at their capriciousness, telling the tall tales to your friends back home. So long as they don't come winging out of eleven o'clock at you at 5,000 feet or cut you off on a taxiway, the wackos make life a little more interesting.

Won't someone just please think of the Cardinals, though?

British barbecue blues

There was hardly any time to breathe, let alone detoxify, after Jeff and I returned to Newcastle from Ireland on the 17th of June, 2010.

We had a barbecue to prepare.

Being guests from the colonies, we thought we'd repay our kindly English hosts by throwing them a little bash. Jeff and I would put our heads together and bring the best of our backyard party skills to the fore. I'd grill up some ribs and hamburgers and Jeff would do his famous cornflake potatoes, with some other side-dishes thrown in.

It sounded good on paper. How it actually turned out is something else altogether.

Adam took Jeff and I down to Morrison's (the big grocery store) the evening of the 17th to get all the ingredients we'd need...including the charcoal, and even the barbecue itself. Adam's mum didn't have one, you see. Living within spitting distance of the North Sea, she doesn't have cause to grill outdoors very often. They have that stuff out in England called rain, you see. I don't know exactly what it is, but I guess it has something to do with water coming out of the sky. I have a difficult time imagining such a miraculous phenomenon, but I can see how it would make fire-starting difficult.

So we picked up the goods, lugged 'em back to Adam's mum's house in a taxi, and set about getting the preliminary preparations done. I assembled the new grill myself, which I'm rather proud of. I'm not the most mechanically able, but give me enough time (and mulligans) and I'm usually able to work it all out. I got it done just before dark (at 11:00 p.m.) and we all sat around having a few beers and admiring the thing. It was the same shape as a typical tripod grill (wheels, tray, big black pot with a round lid, etc.) but about half the size. You had to stoop to flip anything grilling on it. It was about the size of the grill on the left in the picture below, here:

Again, I wish I could show you my own pictures (this one's from Wikipedia), but I have none. I think I tried to take some photos of the grill I assembled, but by that time it was dark and the pictures came out unrecognizably blurred and obscure.

We had a marginally decent night's sleep that night. When you get the bunch of us together—A, E, Jeff, and me, not to mention E's friend M—well, we have a tendency to bounce of each other and egg each other on, and what was supposed to be "a few drinks" and "an early bedtime" turns into yet another late-night lesson in debauchery.

The day arrived, and after an eleventh-hour dash to Morrison's for some forgotten ingredients, all was in readiness. The ribs had been seasoned and rubbed, the charcoal was resting comfortably in the tiny grill, the burger patties were lovingly shaped and patted down. Jeff, with E's help, had already mixed up and baked his cornflake potatoes, the recipe for which I shall not include because it is a sacred H_______ family heirloom, and to divulge it would bring the wrath of all Canada down on my head.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Jeff's preparations were now done, and he joined the rapidly growing crowd of guests in their cans of Carlson while I flitted between the kitchen and the backyard.

Things were not going as planned. I had two five-pound bags of charcoal at my disposal. The first one burned far too hot. Seriously, the burgers were being instantly charred. That was all well and good if I'd been preparing only the burgers, but I was trying to put together a whole course of meat dishes here. I only had one extra bag of charcoal and this one was burning up too fast. I was only able to dish up about five or six burgers before the heat died completely.

British barbecue: 1
Postman: 0

Daunted by a fast burn and low heat retention (on the part of the grill itself), I was determined not to lose to the second bag. I readied the remaining burgers and ribs, lit the last load of charcoal and prepared for some heavy action.

None came.

The second batch was far too cool. The inferno of the first bag never materialized. The second bag was slow to ignite and when it finally did burn, it was cool enough that I could place a finger on the bare metal of the grill lid and not be burned. The ribs and burgers just sat there, not even cooking, as pink as they'd been at the supermarket.

I was eventually forced to move the uncooked meat from the useless grill and finish it off in the kitchen oven.

Oh, the humiliation.

British barbecue: 2
Postman: 0

I did get a consolation prize. Everyone enjoyed the burgers, and even more so the ribs. Though I was slightly dilatory in serving up the goods, the assembled guests complimented my grilling prowess, and even commiserated with me.

"It's a British barbecue, mate," said N (one of Adam's friends), as if that explained everything.

Jeff's cornflake potatoes were by far the most popular thing on the menu, but we won't talk about that. I can't have it said that a Canadian served up a tastier dish at a barbecue than an American, can I?

Way to upstage me there, Jeff old pal.

Anyway, we made a jolly night of it. Once the cooking was done I was able to sit down, relax, enjoy a burger and a beer, and yell at the TV along with the rest of the guys as the English World Cup team played to a somewhat embarrassing 0-0 draw with Algeria. (The ladies sat outside with a bottle of wine, sharing some much-needed girl talk. Jeff joined them, but we won't talk about that either.)

After the game we all got drunk and partied until the wee hours of the morning.

Pretty good day overall, I guess.