Indiana Jones and the Teahouse

A short travel related scribble which will be published in InTravel Mag, May 2013:

In the absence of anything else we were done. Time to leave.

I turned and made the universal cheque, bill, l’addition, conto sign. I wrote on my hand in thin air with an imaginary pen in the direction of the young girl standing attentively nearby. Immediately she scurried away and I returned to savour the view for what remained of my time in the exquisite Chinese teahouse.

Our day to that point had taken us on a local taxi ride from our hotel in downtown Xi’an central China to the Lintong District of the city. We were deposited close to, but not exactly at, the entrance of the World Heritage site containing 8,000 life-sized terracotta warriors built to protect the first emperor of China. The close to drop off point was by design. A barely disguised local conspiracy to funnel the thousands of tourists heading to the famous site through a well constructed street seller ambush. From the drop off point there simply was no other way there. If you wanted to visit it you have to run the gauntlet and judging from the skin colour and girth of our fellow travellers most had travelled some way to be there. It wasn’t as if they could come back later when it was less busy.

In my experience the Chinese are only beaten by the Egyptians when it comes to selling. Persuade, talk, keep talking, be physical, angry, happy, keep talking. 'No' is simply not part of a street sellers vocabulary. It doesn’t register. Keep going, keep talking, keep pestering and eventually, if all else fails the customer will buy just to make it stop. Persistence is key and Chinese street sellers have this in abundance. 

‘Don’t make eye contact’ I warned sternly as I gripped my girlfriend’s hand and pulled her firmly down the centre. I could see in my peripheral vision tourists being picked off with ease but we didn’t hesitate or falter. We kept going, body swerving the stand in front of you tactics and ignoring the calls, shouts and a plethora of terracotta offerings lining the route. An avenue of naked dancing medusas would have struggled to catch our eye that day. We were seasoned travellers, we had the boots, we had the hats, we had the bum bags. I even had the beard and it would take a lot more than a few shouts or a good price to make us fall into such a well-worn tourist trap.

Arriving at the entrance with our self-esteem and our wallets intact we breathed a sigh of relief and wiped plaster dust from our clothes. Behind us it was a feeding frenzy. A massacre. A lone tour guide held a flag high above the crowd, her flock were being picked off as she walked, pulled away, chewed up and spread to the wind. She arrived next to us. Alone and smiling. Perhaps she was part of the conspiracy too I thought.

We spent four hours wandering around the various marquees protecting the warriors marvelling at the sheer scale and craftsmanship on display. Whatever it was he had done it must have pretty damn serious judging from the protection Qin Shi Huang took with him into the afterlife. Eventually though it was time to leave.

Once more into the valley I thought as we stepped out into the humid spring day but fortunately the sellers were gone. The stalls were deserted. There was the odd tourist left standing outside looking confused and holding a life-sized replica warrior but apart from that it was deserted. There were one or two taxi’s waiting hopefully for the odd tourist not assigned to a bus tour (us) so we ambled towards them.

Next stop the Huaqing Hot Springs and a cup of tea in a teahouse.

Some time later the girl returned with the bill. 

She spoke in Chinese to my girlfriend. Her voice was soft and she had a very appealing demeanour. Waif like. She handed me a small handwritten note with both hands, bowed and stood respectfully back. The note was littered with unintelligible symbols.

My girlfriend glanced at the note, looked at me and then said a few clarifying, sing, song words to the girl. Her expression was dark.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked

‘We’ve been charged about €15 for the tea’

‘How much?!’

‘€15’

We’d been had. Been got.

For all our experience and savvy-ness we had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Don’t turn on the meter in the cab then pluck a number from thin air at the end of the ride. Don’t mention the price before you pull away or consume, then inflate after the service has been performed.

We had fallen for it and I scratched my Indiana Jones beard feeling more like a British accountant on holiday than I ever had during our adventure holiday. The girl stood by quietly smiling. She was smiling an ‘I got you smile’, that ‘You are so far away from home, try complaining, just try it white boy’ smile.

We looked at each other, the look was enough and we both knew it. That sinking feeling, that realisation we were not as worldly wise or tourist trap resistant as we had led ourselves to believe.

I started to count out the notes onto the table. As I finished I handed them over with a glare to our sweet young thieving hostess. She bowed yet again, smiled and then spoke in a thick, heavily accented English.

It wasn’t the jetlag and it isn’t my memory playing games with me. I am certain that as she spoke and for the briefest of moments her eyes glowed a deep dark red.

‘Each’ she said.

A big boy did it

As I sit here writing the outside temperature is slushing somewhere between 1c and 2c. 

The roads have been gritted a nasty dirty brown, my garden is a thick blanket of white and my overcoat is rapidly becoming a threadbare embarrassing rag. Its been this way for some time now, not the coat, the weather. In fact as long as I can remember and even knowing I have the short term memory of a demented blowfish this is still a long time.

We have already Spring-ed forward, the days are getting longer and winter is supposedly over. Only problem being is it isn’t and as of today it shows no sign of abating.

Is this the beginning of a new ice age or a global catastrophe? A Hollywood style icy cold, icebergs covering Paris, Jeff Goldblum, Armageddon thing?

No apparently not. This is Global Warming.

Some time ago in another blog, in reference to an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano I suggested we might need a global naming body (GNB) to police the naming of things. Global warming seriously needs their help as it is someway away from adequately describing the weather outside my living room window just now. It’s actually the polar opposite if you forgive a very loose pun.

I understand the concept that global warming doesn’t necessarily mean warmer. Its more extreme weather. I am grown up enough to know that it doesn’t necessarily mean the Costa del Govan anytime soon. But still, change the name please.

So, who is to blame?

As with most things these day, if something bad is happening or has happened, then someone or some organisation must to be to blame. The economic crisis = bankers. Horse meat burgers = Romanians. Greek, Spanish, Cypriot austerity measures = Germans.

Having someone to blame allows us to deflect responsibility and direct our anger at someone. Kill the bankers! Stone them! Tax them! Burn them!

Of course the reality is somewhat different but having someone to blame is much much easier. And if that someone happens to be rich, aloof, a bit poncy or German then even better.

It’s a load of rubbish though. Sorry, but it is.

I watch on the news the vitriol being directed at Chancellor Merkel and the nasty Germans from the streets of Athens or Madrid. Why? Because Germany are bailing them out, loaning them money and expecting some guarantees in return? 

If I was German, facing a tax hike because I lived in one of the few countries in the world which have not mismanaged their economies, I would be very pissed off indeed.

Sorry Mr Stopalopalos, if it was me I would be just letting you get on with it. Take responsibility for the mess you have created yourself and go back to smashing plates for a living.

In a illegal drug market who is responsible? Is it the drug dealer coming in and pushing his dirty, nasty products or is it the existing demand and the dealer is just taking advantage of the market conditions?

One simply would not exist without the other. 

A drug dealer wouldn’t exist in a town full of saints in the same way as an economic crisis would not have happened if everyone stopped, took time to considered it and then realised that they couldn’t afford the house, the plasma TV, holiday to a hot place or new car.

It just wouldn’t.

Its not just the bankers fault. Its as much your or my fault for being so fucking stupid in the first place. Just because you are offered something, doesn’t mean you should take it.

This is why when I read the anti-banking propaganda being peddled in the news or from both sides of the political spectrum I instantly think witch hunt or scapegoat.

The problem with following my train of thought is that it shifts the blame from the nasty fat cat, tax avoiding, Southern English sleazy, scum, tory bankers onto you and me. And this isn’t nearly as much fun or easy to stomach however true it might be.

So global warming, who is to blame for the ruination of the planet and me having to delay my first barbecue of 2013?

Again the answer seems to be everyone. The difference it seems with global warming and the economic crisis is that there never has been some group or individual to blame. It always has been everyone to blame and I would contend this is why we are still arguing about the real causes and the real impacts – i.e. not doing anything real about it.

Judging from my garden right now its real. I don’t need some politically or financially motivated organisation telling me otherwise. Its real, just look outside or try taking off from Zurich airport this afternoon on the first day of Spring.

The penalties and restrictions which are being proposed for the banking world have a Treaty of Versailles-esq feel about them. Almost vengeful. And its not just restricted to banking. Cross border legislation is being proposed to hinder larger businesses taking advantage of their earned economies of scale. The whole point of growing a business is to increase such opportunities, any country which restricts these opportunities will increase the percentage of tax they receive, yes, but unfortunately it will be a higher percentage of a much lower pot. I haven’t done the calculations. I cant do the calculations but I would bet a lot of money this will work out to be a lower number.   

As Bill Gates is supposedly said recently, the world and life isn’t fair, get used to it. He’s right - it isn’t. 

There are winners and there are losers and not necessarily the right ones.

If you have spent the last 25 years sucking up cheap unaffordable credit or enjoyed your annual holiday in the sun on the never-never. If you have built a thriving economy based on debt and employed an unaffordable army of civil servants who are essentially parasitic in nature, from a tax balance perspective, or built up a nanny state where personal responsibility is largely absent then I fail to see how anyone can claim to be a victim.

Its yours, mine and everyone’s fault so please stop blaming the bankers, the Germans or anyone else for that matter.

Unless you happen to have your life savings in the bank of Cyprus that is. 

Then I might start to agree with you.

DNA

Augustus the strong was the king of Poland. A long time ago.

As his name would indicate he was a big guy. He was so big and strong he would break horseshoes with his bare hands just for fun. Now, even knowing that Polish horseshoes are rubbish and easier to break than the British equivalent, this is still fairly strong.

He was also the world champion at fox throwing.

Fox throwing is a sport which has long since dropped off the Olympic schedule but in long time ago Poland it was hugely popular. It was their version of football and Augustus was the best. He was their Cristiano Ronaldo. He was also the king, good looking and judging from some of the paintings of him as metrosexual as the modern day equivalent.

He could also throw a fox down a field further than anyone else.

Yes, Augustus was very very strong.

Now before you get a bee in your hand knitted hemp bonnet and start screaming that such a sport shouldn’t be celebrated or that this was horribly cruel to the poor cuddly foxes. You should know foxes back then were a very different breed to the modern version. They were much less cuddly, bigger, tougher and, according to contemporary records, actually quite enjoyed being thrown.

So there. All good.

Augustus also knew there was a big difference between foxes and kings and for a long time most people agreed with him.

Then along came a man called Charles Darwin. He went on a cruise and developed a theory. Ever since naturalists have been telling us we are basically just the same as our dung eating or furry, fly through the air, relatives. Flesh, blood, live, die, eat, sleep – we are just the same.

We are separated by the tiniest, smallest, smaller than the smallest thing you have ever seen, piece of DNA. We have a ‘C’ whereas a gorilla has a ‘D’ or something like that. Change my C to a D and I will instantly be dragging my hairy knuckles in the mountains of Rwanda and eating nits from my partners head.

But I don’t buy it.

I think it’s just another scientific discovery which can’t be proved either way. Draw something with unintellible symbols and it must be true right?

Nope.

Let’s look at the evidence out there and when I say evidence I mean evidence I can actually see and understand. Not some computer generated spiral helter skelter thingy with letters stuck to it. That’s not evidence, that’s just CGI.

Dolphin DNA discovered to be very similar to humans reads the headline.

How can this be? How can any sensible thinking person actually read this nod thoughtfully and think ‘hmm, yes makes sense’.

They are fish!

Yes fish, the kind of slippy wet animal with flippers, fins and other fishy type things sticking out.

I look nothing like a fish so how on earth can you say that I am almost 98% fish? Without even bothering to delve deeper into the scientific study and so called evidence underpinning the headline I know it’s rubbish.

The easy way to tell is to look and ask the simple question; does it even vaguely look like a human?

I don’t look like a dolphin, a giraffe, a pig or a giant spider crab so please don’t insult my intelligence by trying to persuade me otherwise.

The BBC took another angle on this last week with an article on the sexual perversions of our animal ‘cousins’. Apart from being a thinly veiled excuse to write golden showers, group sex or cross dressing on their normally staid and sober website it also attempted to prove we are not that far removed from the jungle floor based on some unique and similar sexual proclivities.

Take the giraffe as an example. Apparently male giraffes sample the urine of female giraffes to gauge how good a mate they will be. The BBC has taken this and said look there are some obscure and borderline illegal German websites out there doing the same, so we are not that different.

No BBC, we are, very, very, different. Well I sincerely hope the vast majority of us are anyway.

Snakes engage in group sex, monkeys masturbate, wombats look like they are wearing gimp masks and so the article goes on.

I would be more likely to believe a young earth argument than I am to believe that animals have similar perversions or vice versa.

No, I prescribe to the theory, my theory, that animals are animals and humans are significantly different.

I’m not saying we are better but we are bloody different.

We invented cars, airplanes, houses, dishwashers, lasers, diet coke and the internet. Show me one thing, and I mean one simple little thing any animal other than a human being has invented.

Note: Wool, leather and steak don’t count.

If you don’t believe me, if this blog hasn’t managed to change your mind then next time you find yourself stranded in a cave, high up in the Andes, try asking a passing Llama help.

A human would help you, a passing human being, one possessing 100% human DNA that is, would in such a situation be very useful indeed.

A Llama which possesses 97% human so called ‘DNA’ will most likely look at you, chew some grass and perhaps helpfully urinate in your direction before plodding on.

Augustus the strong for all his wardrobe and sporting issues knew the difference.

And, regardless what Charles Darwin and DNA tells me, so do I.

Svelvik

Tablet is a versatile word.

Could mean pill. Could mean electronic gadget, could mean a heavy stone thing Moses supposedly lugged down a mountain. Could also mean a very heavy sugary Scottish sweet.

Four meanings for the same word only separated by its contextual usage.

The sweet version is always plural i.e. he bought some tablet. Its never he bought a tablet. If I heard he swallowed a tablet, I instantly think medicine. If its he swallowed some tablet it has to be a sweet so heavy it has its own gravitational pull.

The electronic gadget and Moses version are part of the same family. They essentially mean the same thing. They’re just separated by a few generations of design, innovation and the odd microchip.

So four (or three if you count Moses and i-pad as one) usages for the same word but today if someone says tablet, out of context, I immediately think small sleek book sized electronic gadget. This is the first thing which pops into my head.

So what this means is that in less than ten years the word tablet has taken on a whole new and predominant meaning.

And I think this is just lazy.

If you go to all the trouble of inventing something new don’t stop there, at least come up with a new name for the thing you have invented. It could be anything, anything at all. You have the option of inventing a whole new word  but no, you choose an already existing word and take it over. Yes very lazy indeed and also a huge missed opportunity. 

Inventing words from scratch has got to be fun.

IKEA do it all the time. In fact they go further and come up with new and largely unpronounceable words for common items of furniture which already have names.

Take bed as an example.

Bed is a good word. Easy to understand, no alternative usage, easy to spell. There is nothing wrong with ‘bed’.

IKEA seem to think otherwise. Take a trip into the blue and yellow scented candle hell and bed becomes the impenetrable ‘FJell’ or a saliva inducing ‘Svelvik’.

If IKEA can do it, and probably have a lot of what is considered fun in Sweden in the process, why cant the tablet makers? I know I would.

The worlds largest and most technologically advanced telescope in the world is not called ‘Goliath’, ‘Collosus’ or ‘Hercules’ all of which would befit such an man made achievement. No, after years of cutting edge engineering, impossibly difficult logistics, the worlds most refined mirrors and mathematics which would even make Stephen Hawkins raise an eyebrow they just stopped.

They stopped, sat down and had a cup of tea as the worlds media gathered around.

Journalist ‘Wow, that’s cool’

Chilean engineer ‘Yup, good huh?’

Journalist ‘What’s it called?’

Engineer ‘Called? Does it have to have a name?’

Journalist ‘I would give it a name, but then I’m a girl and I name everything’

Engineer ‘Everything? Do you?’

Journalist ‘Yup, everything’

Engineer ‘Ok, hmm, let me see’

Journalist ‘Well its very big ….’

And so became the VLT – Very Large Telescope.

And this brings me on to the overall point, if there ever is one, of this blog. Text speak.

I dislike it immensely. I do. Its lazy and there is absolutely no need to use it. When I receive a message which includes the number 8 or the letter z I tense up in the same way I do when I try to press the lift door close button and realise there isn’t one there. Its irritating and unnecessary. 

Fit a fucking button and just use the words properly please.

Adding LOL to the end of every sentence for no apparent reason also baffles me. I very rarely laugh out loud so why on earth would I do so when you tell me you are going to Tesco’s or have a cold? Its not funny and certainly a million miles away from laugh out loud funny.

Language is a constantly evolving thing, its changing all the time. 

I was asked the other day, what the acronym ‘ok’ stood for and I actually stopped to think about it, what could the two letters stand for? This is an example of an abbreviation and of lazy English which I use everyday without thinking twice about. I very rarely use ‘okay’ even in my business correspondence.

So if ok is ok for me, then why not m8, 2moro, ysterdy or shld?

Its probably because ok already existed whereas the rest is changing within my lifetime and I am having to adapt, or not, as the case actually is.

Is it wrong? I don’t know. I do know that in say fifty years from now this short hand lazy arse way of writing, spelling and communicating will most likely be commonplace and accepted however depressing this might be.

I never speak like Shakespeare and that’s probably a good thing but he would probably wince at the ‘proper’ language I think I am using.

Its changing, I don’t like it but there is nothing I or you can do about it.

I guess I just need to accept it however difficult this might be.

Remember though, if you send me a txt or email using such bone idle, grammarless, fat arsed, tablet eating bad English the response you get may be surprising. If you add LOL to the end it might even be painful.

Okay?

I Love Me

I generally dislike travelling to the US.

Not because it involves a >10 hour flight, jet lag and an immigration process built on the presumption that I want to stay forever, carry out illegal stuff and blow something up.

It’s not because if I choose to smoke I am treated like a Middle Eastern leper with a worryingly oversized belt.

It’s not because I still get carded and have been refused alcohol because my British passport was not, to quote a Jurassic sized Polynesian doorman with an oily smile, ‘a valid form of identification sir’.

It’s also not because they have gun laws which should have been cast aside at the same time they stopped burning witches.

No, the main reason I dislike travelling to the US is that it’s a place where as soon as I land I start to feel wholly and horribly inadequate.

Self-confidence is a trait so ingrained in the American psyche it really should be added to their constitution. All men are equal, the pursuit of happiness, the right to arm yourself to the teeth and the right to be so self-confident that it borders on narcissism.

I am British and all that means. I would consider myself to be reasonably self-confident but even after living in liberal Europe for over ten years I still carry the baggage. I still struggle at the point in a job interview when the interviewer asks ‘So tell me about your strengths’. I giggle uncontrollably in mixed nude saunas and worry about rising. I feel distinctly uneasy when someone decides to discuss a deep personal issue with me and fully support ‘because I was drunk’ as a reasonable and forgivable excuse.

So how does your average, arse the size of a settee, American immigration officer become so self-confident and at what point does his or her self-confidence shift from endearing to ugly Kardashian-esq?

I don’t know, but I do think we are all right at the edge. We are teetering at the tipping point, clinging onto the edge of a self-confident/self-love cliff and very soon will find ourselves plunging headlong into an abyss where the words restraint, modesty and humility do not exist.

America has already jumped. They are lost and through the medium of Facebook we will probably (and I include myself here) join them soon.

On that, Facebook is a strange medium. I along with the other gazzilion users quite happily post without restraint or thought. I then sulk when no-one ‘likes’ or comments on my check in, my blog post or my hilariously funny joke.

Why do you not like the fact I have just checked in to the Holiday Inn in the arse end of nowhere Germany at 9.24pm? Probably because they don’t really give a fuck that’s why not but I still sulk for a brief moment before making up, or stealing, another joke and going for it again. Someone will like something I post eventually. Please.

The photos of me picking my nose, lying flat drunk or waking up looking like a 1,000 year old peat-bog man never make the cut. Why not? Because I choose what other people see and delete the ones I am tagged in if they show me in a light which I dislike.

I am, like everyone else, a real person. I am good, I am bad and I am ugly but two of these don’t make it onto my Facebook page (you might argue differently) and thus I am probably displaying a narcissistic trait which I have written about to this point in such disparaging terms.

Is Facebook to blame? Probably not, we would have gotten here anyway. How is less relevant.

In the Big Brother house, within days, the contestants descend into a manic state of inward looking self-absorption. He said this. She said that. How do I look in this? Me, me, me. Without other, more important distractions: a global war, famine, biblical plague or Mayan apocalypse its basic human nature to go all Lord of the Flies and I think this is exactly what is occurring.

So what is next?

Are we doomed to tip over the edge, fall madly in love with ourselves and suddenly become super self-confident?

If our collective Facebook pages are anything to be believed, then yes.