Xmas Holidays - part one

Hello all.

Xmas holidays finally arrived and after lots of literally last minute organising I headed off down to the arport to start the long trek south. I was a little annoyed as I had been telling people for weeks that I was gonna be outta there on a certain date, but some persisted in trying to dump stuff on my desk an hour before I was due to go. 'Whaddya expect me to do with this thirty minutes before I go on vacation for the next two weeks?'..Jeez.

So it was Air France Geneva to Paris on a little jet and Paris to Singapore on a four engined Airbus. Nice enough. Departed on time and food OK.

Legroom on the long-haul was disappointing. I am 1.82m/5'11" and a long shanks. The airline had obviously decided to shave 3-4 cm off each row and squeeze just one more row in over the length of economy class. Hmmm...

Arrive around midnight in Singers. Love this place. The Singaporeans are so switched on, well dressed and polite. A lovely clean, efficient airport too. I walked literally off one aircraft down the hall 50 metres, cross over and get straight onto the next one. A Qantas code share to Perth. (They schedules these days are really getting tight...).

Qantas was all smiles, friendly and lots of little nice touches. Great food and enertainment. I watched several comedies and laughed my head off and had a few others in my little section right at the back of the plane switching channels...

The arrival in Perth was at the ungodly hour of 2:00am so after luggage and customs I popped out at 3:00am.

Just as I exited through the automatic doors some thirty-something blonde squeeled with delight, arms outstretched and shouted 'Hi!'. Now after 20+ hours on a plane, several times zone changes and a 3:00am exit, my mind was just a little mushy. So here's me stretching out my arms out of reflex and saying 'Hi!' All the time thinking 'who the Heck are you?!' It was for the guy right behind me though. Drats! She was quite a babe!

Back to the folks place and dozed on and off fitfully, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day...

Baghdad by the Lake?...

Since Iraq, I thought my time of pulling 12 and 13 hour days were mostly done.

But I’m going on holiday next Thursday afternoon to spend two weeks in the summer sunshine in Oz with the family and friends at Xmas and I have been working like a Demon for the last month trying to get everything in order before I go. Build cash budgets for 2008, get all the field offices paid in USD/EUR/GBP to fund them to early January. Doing the monthly accounting for one of the companies I take care of. Fixing electronic–banking problems, etc.,etc. The list (and it is a long one) goes on….

I worked last Sunday on my all too brief weekend,will probably work this Saturday and only had one ‘normal’ day last Thursday when my brain couldn’t fit any more numbers into it and went on strike so I went home!

The expectation is that since we’re paid big bucks the assigned tasks are ‘our’ responsibility come what may. But there comes a time (hopefully not one hour before you’re due to get on the plane!) when you just have to say ‘OK guys, I am going on vacation now. Y'all are gonna have to be responsible for this now ‘cos I sure as heck am not taking it with me!’

I do hope they don’t expect things to run by themselves. But you never know…

Cruel and Unusual Punishment...

In the U.S. constitution, there is a line somewhere forbidding 'cruel and unusual' punishment. Now after living here in Europe for a while and listening to their FM stations, I am wondering whether it is possible for Europe to borrow this phrase or put it in their own constitutions. Maybe even lease the rights to it for a monthly fee?

You see, whenever the tourist board talks about Europe, they talk about lovely castles, sparkling lakes, majestic mountains etc, etc. All valid stuff. But there's one thing that is conspicuous in its absence - the music. How can I sum it up on one word... Uhhhm it's just plain bad!

There's a few stations here and one is called Radio Nostalgia and is syndicated around a couple of countries (France/Switzerland) and I swear to God they must have a sum total of only 30 CD's - tops! Listen more than an hour or two and chances are you'll be hearing numbers 1-30 again real soon! It is spiced up with great tracks from the 80's and 90's by Anglo-Saxon artists, but just when you're getting down to Ray Charles with 'Unchain my Heart', or top-tapping to Rod Stewart and the Faces with 'Maggie-Mae', on comes Betrand 'Can't sing for sh*t' and strangles his way through a song with his (ripped off) guitar riffs. As U.K. expat Stephen Clarke said in one of his books, 'there's not much that would make me leap out of a nice warm bed in the middle of winter on a freezing Saturday morning, but local content blaring out from the radio-alarm does it!'

You see, some of these countries governments subsidise domestic artists to keep a percentage of local content on the airwaves of TV and radio. The taent pool is either pretty small or it is run by a pimply bureaucrat with a pencil protector in his pocket. Straining reedy voices. Dated guitar riffs that are a decade behind. Some of these folks last had a hit in the 70's and they're still dining out on that one song! I'm telling ya', even some of the contestants on Pop-Idol are better...

Any record exec from London to Sydney to L.A. worth his salt would gently put his arm around the shoulder of some of these wanna-be's and quietly say ' Buddy, how can I put this to you nicely?' 'Erm, you suck. Now not just a little mind you. No, you really suck'. Come back when you can play or sing - preferably both...' (Mind you, we won't mention anything about the Spice Girls or Vanilla Ice etc...).

Head off into the country regions of Switzerland and they're still playing Oom-pah music and Yodelling from the '50's. (No wonder the young folks all wear headphones?!)

I'm off to Oz for Xmas. Looks like I'll be getting an I-Pod and downloading lots of my albums...