CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

Back in Kabul. Wrote this in transit:

I suppose for sedentary people, travel is exciting because it’s different. For me travel is somewhat normative and so it’s mostly irritating. You know that psychological phenomenon where you want what you don’t have. And I’ve traveled around enough where just going somewhere new is not particularly interesting. When you’ve traveled around a lot, everything starts to look the same. To compound this, traveling with small children is difficult squared. Cubed. If you really want to travel with small kids and preserve your sanity you better stay 4-or-5-star because you really need room service and regular room cleaning and a pool. This is if you want to preserve your sanity. If you have sanity to spare then ignore these remarks.

This trip was more difficult than most. First of all in Bangkok, the station chief of Air Asia didn’t want to let us on the plane. She also did this to a young Israeli couple. The reason for this was unclear, which made it even more difficult. The Israeli girl told Vanessa they were in a panic because they’d run out of money. We’ve actually been worried about them because we didn’t see them on our flight. Anyway this was really difficult and inconvenient because it’s almost impossible to control small children in a big airport check-in area, and also as I mentioned previously, I threw out my back and was in real pain standing around. After a certain point I complained enough where they took me to the station chief. She was a young girl who didn’t know what to do and I don’t speak Thai but it was evident that she kept calling people asking what to do. Why this was an issue is still unclear. Now I’ve traveled enough where I actually read the Warsaw Convention rules of airline travel. So I told her either give me a ticket on another airline or give me the frakkin Air Asia ticket. She said, “No not transferrable.” I mentioned the Warsaw Convention and how she was contractually obligated to get me to Delhi by either her airline or another airline. This changed her mind and she decided to solve the problem she’d manufactured.

Then we arrived in Delhi in the middle of the night with a 13 hour layover. First I will say again that the Indian Army are some of the rudest, stupidest people on God’s green earth. They bark at you and order you around like they’re cool or something. Really extremely irritating to be barked at by a jackass at 1AM. I eventually found the brand new airport hotel, and thank God. This is an example of how if you want to preserve your sanity you better be prepared to shell out $160 for a room at the airport hotel. The Indian army is camped out at the door of the hotel, which is inside the airport and no exit to the outside, but for some reason they are there and insist on searching you and barking at you. I think they’re there just to give two jackasses a job.

So I am currently sitting on Air India to Kabul seat 14C waiting for the plane to fill up and will post this later when we get back. I am curiously enough actually almost looking forward to getting back to Kabul so I can relax a little. That’s almost funny isn’t it.

In the smoking room in the airport I met a British guy on the dole going to visit his Thai girlfriend. Cheers to the welfare state I suppose. Other guys were going off to locations like Sri Lanka and were kitted out in combat boots and safari vests, standing around smoking their cigarettes in 100F heat thinking they’re cool. I find this amusing that you could possibly think Sri Lanka was adventure, much less that combat boots would be useful on an airplane or in tropical heat. I bet you five bucks the first thing they’ll do when they land is take their expensive new boots off. If you look at a map, you can see I’m headed off into the Himalayas to one of the most remote places on earth, where they don’t even have Starbuck’s (oh my God!) and there is more danger present than the possibility of sunburn, and I am kitted out in suede loafers and a surfing shirt. This is actually intelligent travel clothing because it gets cold on airplanes, and surfing shirts are long-sleeved with a hood. Also your feet swell up on an airplane and with loafers you can easily kick off your shoes. Anyway enjoy your adventure to Columbo, boys, I hope you actually find a use for your safari vests and combat boots. I’ll tell you, in Kabul I wear Columbia hiking shoes and a South African safari jacket, and this is because there are few streets and you also need to carry around a lot of things like hand sanitizer and phones for emergencies etc. Also everything is filthy so hiking shoes and a safari jacket are practical clothing. I think that’s the real reason you wear safari clothes in South Africa; everything is dirty. But even in Kabul, me in a safari jacket is admittedly a little poseur-ish, acting like I’m Indiana Jones or something. The boys out in the bush or up in the mountains have real adventure. My adventure consists primarily of hoping to not be caught in the wrong place when some lunatic decides to blow himself up. This is real enough adventure for anybody so I don’t mean to imply Kabul is safe or that you should come take a vacation there, but back to my point, I find guys kitted out in combat boots and safari vests for a trip to Columbo to be amusing.

In conclusion I will share with you my theory about the Indian army. I bet they inherited their obnoxious, officious, bark-at-everyone attitude from the British Raj. I don’t know but I’m reasonably certain the British army went around barking at the natives. The British depart and the Indian army thinks this is normative an proper behavior and continues the tradition. That’s my theory. If you encounter American soldiers you will as a rule find them to be extremely polite (they are under orders to be so, they always say “please” and “sir” and “ma’am”), and I am not Mr Standing on a Hill Waving a Flag, but Americans do have one trait that some other people could use a little more of: we are a generally polite and well-mannered people.

Now that I’m getting used to Macintosh OS again, I see it’s a lot like Ubuntu Linux. Indeed I believe the new OS is Linux or Unix. I grew up on OS7-9, which was a completely different ball of wax.

Vanessa had the roots of her wisdom teeth extracted, apparently the dentist in Manila did a slapdash job. Indeed I’ve spent a lot of money on her teeth this vacation and much of it is just fixing slapdash work in Manila. I was previously content to let her go to her Manila dentist because he was cheap. Now ultimately he’s costing me more which is annoying.

We had very comprehensive health insurance in the Emirates, but in retrospect we had, well, shitty quality of care. I am busy paying out of pocket for things which should have been already done in the Emirates. Indeed I have noticed at the hospitals a lot of Arabs, and around the big international hospital there is a “Little Arabia”. Quite evidently the people in the Gulf don’t trust their own doctors and come here. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. I will not go into explicit detail but I have never been impressed with the attention span or work ethic of those people. The only thing that gives me concern about this is that Dubai is our usual medical evac point. If anyone in my family needed medical evac I suppose I would insist on Delhi. Bangkok is a little far for a real emergency. People quite mistakenly think you can get European-quality medical care in Dubai. We went to the best hospital in Dubai and I’m telling you, don’t get your medical care in Dubai. In a previous post I mentioned how I had over a year of stomach treatment in Dubai but was never cured until I got food poisoning in Afghanistan and they gave me flagyl, which killed the AMOEBA which my Emerati doctor was apparently too slapdash to check for.

Anyway speaking of doctors, I threw out my back at some point 2-3 days ago, difficult to say when exactly because the pain came upon me very gradually. Vanessa thinks it was during the elephant ride. Yesterday in the morning I went to the doctor because I was in pain to the excruciating level where I was going to vomit from pain. And frankly I don’t go to the doctor unless the need is very clear. You know Chris is sick if he actually goes to the doctor. Anyway apparently no big deal and I should avoid lifting and take it easy for a while, and I have horsepills for the pain which make me vomitocious (not actually a word).

Our last full day in Bangkok, we’re going to the world’s highest alfresco restaurant tonight. I am concerned about our luggage because Vanessa seems to have bought everything in town.

So it’s Friday and we fly out on Monday. Actually work starts on Sunday but due to a 20 hour layover in Delhi (couldn’t be avoided and we can’t exit passport control and there’s no hotel in the airport) won’t actually get to Kabul until Tues afternoon. I’m not sure why we’re supposed to be at work as usual, there’s no class until 4 Sept, I suppose it’s the usual nonsense of showing your face around. I suppose the faculty senate will convene. Hopefully I can recuse myself as chairman of the Curriculum Committee because 1 semester is enough for the resume and I did all the interesting work (writing the charter and White Paper) and now it’s just going to be the grunt work of curriculum review which I’ve had plenty of.

Vanessa had some food allergy outbreak, big red rash suddenly. Doctor gave her an antihistamine. We won’t know the test results for a day or two.

We went to the famous floating market which you may have seen in James Bond The Man With the Golden Gun. If you check out our Photo Blog (link on right sidebar) you can see lots of video. Vanessa is obsessed with documenting every moment of our life on film. The floating market was interesting and historically the Thai consider themselves to be “River Lords”. However predictably enough the market we went to was long ago taken over by tourism and I suppose you have to go north if you want to see a real boat market.

Vanessa was talking for weeks about an elephant ride. Elephant ride, elephant ride, elephant ride. So we went on an elephant ride. Amusing enough. She was happy when her dream came true.

I’m basically happy with my Mac Air, it’s cool and all, but it actually lacks a bit of the functionality of Windows. Perhaps I need to get to know the system better. But for example I’m typing this in Chrome and in Windows my typing errors would automatically be corrected. Not here in Mac. Mainly I got this for my briefcase. I save myself a lot of work and keep student records as they happen in class. Been doing this for several years. The Air is so small, I barely notice it in my briefcase. Previously my briefcase combined with a laptop and textbook was making me a hunchback.

Had a comprehensive physical exam today, primarily because I’m over 40 and apparently you should do so. Rather unpleasant, compounded by the fact that I had to fast for 9 hours and so couldn’t enjoy the breakfast buffet. So, after many bodily samples and being hooked up to several machines, the verdict is I’m fine, except for slightly elevated cholesterol. In the changing room they assign you a little locker with a key, and you change into the hospital gown. In my locker somebody had left a money roll with several thousand baht. Probably $2-300. I have it to the secretary to cultivate good karma, though I hope it actually gets to the real owner. Somehow I suspect I gave the secretary a salary bonus.

We’re at a 5 star hotel but we generally eat the street food you can find by walking about 30 feet off the hotel grounds. We don’t actually do this to economize, though economization is nice. We do it actually because the street food is delicious.

Bug got his teeth fixed again, a continuation of the dental visit 10 weeks ago. The actual reason we’re back in Bangkok. It disturbs me that a small boy has such teeth problems, though he really dislikes the dentist and so we don’t have to hassle him too much to get him to brush.

We’re in Bangkok at our home away from home, the Anantara. There was some 1980s song which had a chorus, “One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster…” Forget who wrote that, think it was a one-hit wonder. Yeah well everything and more is here. Also I’m enjoying a Heinekin for the first time in 10 weeks.

We went to Paragon mall, which is quite upscale, to the point where there are Lamborghini and Porsche dealers on the 5th floor. This was particularly thrilling for Tristan, who is obsessed with cars, most particularly his two Hot Wheels Lamborghinis. Boy has good taste in cars. Anyway I’m quite flush and there were plenty of things I’d buy if money wasn’t an object, but it is. Actually what you do in Bangkok is this. I will explain. First you go to the store you like, say Burberry or whatever. See what they have. Then you go to MBK for the knockoff which is generally of equal quality if you’re smart about it. You can get really good knockoffs at MBK, can’t really tell the difference. Vanessa went to the Chung-gai night market which is her element. She was pleased as punch. Chung-gai is Filipino, the closest translation would be TJ Maxx but like a farmer’s market. The night market Chung-gai is on the street and really cute stuff for the girls.

I had promised myself a reward for the whole trouble and nonsense of 10 extra weeks in Kabul. My thought 10 weeks ago was either the iPhone 4 or else a Mac Air. Was trying to find the Apple store but the family had reached exhaustion point and I gave up. Tomorrow. Not sure if I’ll actually part with the cash but I might. I suppose you can guess, my first thought is “this money could be invested”, however, you also need a bit of a reward to keep the morale up and keep life slightly amusing, otherwise you can get dispirited. So anyway the big question tomorrow is whether to get myself the reward or not.

So I’m watching my kids take their first exam. In 2 days 22hrs we will be on Air India to Delhi, then Air Asia to Bangkok. My lord, are we looking forward to a break.

Our internet was basically gone for 5 days because the antenna fell off our house. They finally fixed it today. Being cut off from the internet in Kabul is really a bit of a disaster.

Vanessa went lapis lazuli shopping last Friday and there is a short video of it on Facebook. Anyway for one thing we discovered there is a lot of fake lapis being sold. Real lapis has veins of gold. Really lovely, the real stuff. Anyway Vanessa came to campus yesterday and she was chatting with one of my girl students. Van was happy about her lapis pendant. My student said, “That’s nothing, in my province that’s just a small stone, you can find them everywhere outside my house.” Heh! She is from the northern province bordering China and for security reasons, we never leave Kabul. Some people do but I have to protect my children. So unfortunately I don’t think I can go up there and gather lapis off the ground.

Going to have a rather busy week. Have to get all the grades in within about 50 hours. This is quite do-able since my classes are small, but I will be working tonight when I go home. The big pain is grading essays. We try to be somewhat systematic and so we have a grading matrix, and then we double-mark the essay and take the average. This makes it complicated and labor-intensive.

As I mentioned, one of my friends is in Bangkok, we’re getting drunk on Sat night at the world’s tallest alfresco bar. I forget the name but it’s a bar on top of a 70 story building, should be fun, hope my fear of heights doesn’t kick in though.

So anyway one of the nice results of having an iPad is I can now indulge one of my favorite passtimes, which is reading newspapers and magazines. We have about a dozen subscriptions. You have to understand, as an expat, getting the latest copies of your magazines is almost impossible. Has been for years. Now I’m back to reading the glossies and loving it.

I have started reading the London Times, particularly the Sunday Times, and I must say, I rather like it better than the New York Times. Sometimes the Sunday times is a bit gossipy which I also enjoy. For example, the Prime Minister is like me, he prefers to wear loafers without socks. My wife among others has always thought this strange. I think for me it started with the Preppy Handbook, if you remember that book, and I never looked back. Anyway latest gossip, the prime minister was at a restaurant over the weekend, no socks with his loafers, and he didn’t tip the waitress. Heh! The New York Times has bigger fish to fry I suppose. The London Sunday Times I recommend to everybody; it’s one giant glossy. You can spend the whole day reading that thing.

Well, Iftar is almost done (the evening prayer and they can eat now) so back to class.

So it’s Ramadan. Yesterday was a public holiday. A little weirdness with time here because the Afghanis use the old Zoroastrian calendar, but they fast for Ramadan using the Hijri calendar, and for most business they use the Julian (American) calendar. Weirdness everywhere because for example the university works Sun-Thur, but businesses work Sat-Wed, etc. Anyway it’s Ramadan however you figure it, and it’s my least favorite time of year because people get cranky. For example my guard snapped at me today. Not sure about what, didn’t care, I knew he was just hungry.

9 days and we fly to Bangkok. Thank GOD. I have never looked more forward to a vacation. Honestly the money is really good for teaching during the summer but the whole family is a little crazy. We have a lot of plans for Bangkok, and also one of my friends will be there, so we’ll have a drunken boy’s night out or two.

Tristan has entered a screaming endlessly phase which is making us a little mental also. Nothing will make him stop. Difficult to determine what’s on his mind. Big pain.