Rants & Raves of Jasmine's Fiction

When Pigs Fly

I was on the flight from

Bangkok

to

Singapore

recently and I was very pleasantly surprised (I will apologise for my leftover mindset from living in Islamic countries) to find out that Singapore Airlines serves… PORK!!!

I swear.  The pretty flight attendant was staring at me very expectantly for a couple of minutes while I gaped at the choice of food. “Ma’am?  Would you like the chicken with noodles, the fish with rice or the pork with mashed potatoes?”

Note:  For those of you who do not know me please understand that I don’t eat chicken but I will however do backflips and cartwheels for mashed potatoes and pork. Mmmmm. Pork.

You might also like to note that on most occasions I would rather DIE than eat airline food but the choice of PORK! And MASHED POTATOES!  On the same plate!!!  OMG it was too good to pass up.  I think when I came to my senses I almost shouted in excitement that I wanted the pork.

Of course I HAD to be seated next to a Muslim man.

Before you people call me out for being a racist bitch, I’m gonna backtrack a bit and tell you about the massive eye roll I got from my neighbour when I rocked up with my headphones and hand luggage. He took one look at me, rolled his eyes to his mate at the window seat next to him and muttered something.  I ignored him and tried to stow my hand carry.

That’s when I realised that there was no space in the overhead compartments!  Those two bozos had hogged up not one, not two, but THREE luggage racks. How do I know this?  It was filled with identical plastic baggies, 2 of which were on my seat due to the lack of space above.

Great.

Long story short, I ended up having to stow my bag about 8 compartments away from my seat, and the two idiots did not like the fact that they had to sit next to a girl. I kept hearing snide comments in Indonesian no less.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) I happen to be relatively fluent in Indonesian and I caught quite a fair bit of bashing despite having the Pussycat Dolls purring in my earphones.  Sigh.

Anyway back to my pork and mashed potatoes. My neighbour had requested his halal (kosher) meal and when I did the “PORK” shout to the flight attendant, he was not happy.  First a girl, now she is going to eat pork?  (Not like he’s so virtuous, the dumb beer swilling bastard!)

I was half tempted to slurp as MESSILY as I could and wiping my mouth with my sleeve closest to him and very casually resting my pork laced limb on the arm rest.  I had been winning the Arm-Restling war but what’s not to like about a bit of piggy leverage eh? I didn’t do it of course.  Tolerance is a virtue after all.

Hah tolerance.  That’s another story but I shall save that for another day. Like, when pigs fly.  In the meantime, I shall think back to my pork and mashed potatoes and drool.

Plain Stitious

Friday the 13^th.  Honestly, I don’t really care.  Sure, Jesus was supposed to have been crucified on a Friday 13^th about 2000 years ago.  Remember that he died for our sins I will.  Worship Friday the 13th I will not.  I also will not stoop to being afraid of it like a LOT of superstitious people out there.

I’m not SUPERstitious.  I’m plain stitious. 

I’m not about to avoid stepping on the pavement cracks lest I release ghostly spirits; or stop pointing at the moon in case my ears gangrene up and fall off.  Neither am I going to stop shooing away my stupid neighbour’s black cat from harassing my puppy and I’m sure as hell not about to hack off some poor defenceless rabbit’s foot so I can taxidermy and wear it as a lucky charm!!!  Yes I wear rabbit fur but I draw the line at a whole foot!

IT’S A FLAMING BODY PART FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

It’s like all those fucking retarded gamblers who *RUB* their cards like its going to make a difference!  Or the dice throwers (you know who you are!) who claims that using their main wanking hand obtains better results than their off hand…  OMG!

Most of my Friday 13^th has not been noteworthy except for the time Carol, my sister Joanne and I were stuck in Genoa, Italy during a train strike.  THAT was fun.

-_-’

We were in danger of being stranded in Genoa on our way to Barcelona.  We HAD to be in Barcelona and the ONLY train that would take us there was leaving from Milan that evening.  Genoa to Milan is a 2 hour train ride.  Did I mention it was in the middle of the train strike?

Problem 1.  It was imperative that we got a ‘reservation’ to get on this Milan-Barcelona train.  No reservation, no ride.  That was a do or die.

Problem 2.  Train strike = sorry, all counters are close.  No reservations can be done. 

Problem 3.  It was also imperative that we get to Barcelona on this train or we’d a) lose our rooms and suffer a full penalty of about a 100+ Euro and b) we would be stranded in boring little Genoa for 4 days with nowhere to sleep, nowhere to go and nothing to do AND we’d lose 4 precious days on our very limited two month trip.

Did I also mention we were in the middle of the freaking train strike???

That entire stressful day involved a lot of charades and rapid fire Italian.  And considering our Italian is limited to ciao, grazie, pizza, pasta, that was a whola lotta Italiano thata we didn’t understando… 

We spent several hours trying to find out about the trains and after asking about a billion people, we concluded our best bet was to try and hop on the ONE and ONLY train that was leaving Genoa for the day and try to get ourselves a reservation on that Milan-Barcelona train.  Simple, right?

No such luck.  The Genoa-Milan train was CHOCKERS with people trying to escape to a more central location.  Trying to get ON the train was a challenge with our luggage and my poor sister even had to hug her suitcase while sitting on one of those tiny aisle seats…

THEN WE GOT TO THE MILAN STATION.

We had about an hour to find a way to get those reservations but with about several thousand people with tickets and no trains etc our problem was getting bigger as the clock ticked on.  We split up to look for travel agencies, ticket vending machines, ANYTHING that would let us get that reservation.

Then we saw that our train had already arrived!  Ok we’ll hedge our bets that we can get that blasted reservation on board the train.  Then we are greeted at checkpoint 1.  Several Spanish police officers asked us for our passports.  No problems there.  Checkpoint 2 was a bunch of train officials checking everyone’s tickets.  Oops. 

A bunch of American girls were in front of us with the exact same train passes that we have and they were turned away for not having a reservation.

Time to panic is at hand.

Door number 1 was now closed as the official was shooing away the girls.  What’s behind door number 2?  We approached a different train officer and we begged and pleaded but no dice.  No reservation, no ride.  &%#@!!!  We needed to get on, NOW. 

And it was then and only then that we realised that the Milan-Barcelona train was a SPANISH train.  Dum dum dum!  The sodding Italians were on strike but the Spanish were not!

Ah &%#@!!!

Carol then had the bright idea of just ‘hopping’ on the train.  We bundled our luggage and snuck into the front of the train (where the food cart was) and we locked ourselves in the first compartment that we found.  We just sat there for a bit and then WHAM a whole bunch of thoughts of what ifs and what woulds ran amok.

Would we get thrown in jail?  Would they throw us off the train?  Would they fine us 100 Euros or more each?  Would they drop us at the closest stop and leave us stranded there?  The train had started moving by then and we were half hoping that we wouldn’t be discovered…

Then there was a knock on the door.  EEK.  We open the door and all three of us little Asian girls gave the Spanish Train Official very sheepish smiles…  And…

To our relief he smiled back at us.  He said that he understood that the Italians were on strike blah blah blah and he’d take care of the reservations for us.

PHEW!

We paid him and he bundled us to another compartment befitting our lowly 2^nd class status.  All that worrying for nothing!  We slept really well and although we were smelly and rumpled from the cramped ride with no shower, the weather was bright and sunny when we arrived in Barcelona on Saturday the 14^th.  All was right again.

Moral of the story? 

As much as I hate people who herald Friday 13ths with dread and fear, when karma come to bite you in the arse it will bite you HARD.

So I say screw it!  Where’s that bloody rabbit?

Surfin' Safari

Last weekend Bear dropped in straight from work wearing his uniform – Kenya Airways: 3 times a week from Bangkok to Nairobi.  While we were talking about the Safari tours his travel agency offered I was quite happily reminded of a safari experience of long past…

Okay the honest truth is that it was not my personal experience.  Rather it was my good friend and former housemate Paul’s.  He was with the army and he travelled quite a fair bit on postings.  One of his favourite places was in Africa, and one of his most memorable trips was when he went with a local guide and a marine biologist to one of the smaller tributaries of the Congo River on a moonless night to look for a weird breed of glow in the dark fish.

Armed with an engineless longboat, numerous specimen jars and some UV lamps the trio set out in the middle of the night, braving a legion of mosquitoes and the errant crocodile.  It was pitch black, and they were slowly paddling along till they came about a swamp like area with tall grass and a little pool positively teaming with the little Day-Glo fishies.  As they set to work filling the jars, the sounds of the Congo jungle suddenly went quiet. 

Now if you have any experience hunting you would know that jungle sounds are good but when all suddenly goes quiet you should start to panic.  And hope that your guns are loaded.  With no weapons and no boat engine to make a quick getaway from only goodness knows what was coming, the trio quickly abandoned any further scientific research and started paddling as fast as they could back to base.

But before they got even more than a metre away, pandemonium broke out!  Out of nowhere, BULLETS were flying from every direction and making HOLES in their boat!  And to make matters worse, a STAMPEDE of about 40 odd HIPPOPOTAMUSUS of various sizes came barraging through the river trying to run away from the POACHERS that were camped out in the tall grasses, SHOOTING at everything that moved!  Being at the wrong place at the wrong time never felt quite like this I bet!

In a situation like this they did all they could do to remain alive. All three of them tipped the boat over and hid underneath the chunk of wood that was rapidly getting riddled with bullet holes and being bumped in every direction as the hippos trundled by, praying that they wouldn’t be hit or trampled to death.  Paul tells me the fear he felt serving the army during the war and live fire ammunition training exercises did not even come close to the terror he felt that night under the boat in the Congo River.

They got out (relatively) alive and (more or less) bullet and hippo footprint free.  But it involved treading water in the Congo for over 3 hours under the remains of their sinking boat as the poachers came past to finish off the hippos that they shot.  Attracting attention of these people would have been a bad idea as hippo poaching is illegal in Congo and you know the poachers will not let you get back to civilisation alive to tell the authorities about their activities.  So they had to contend with the fish that were nipping at them (luckily no piranhas), insects that were eating them alive, the odd water snake and again, the errant crocodile. 

Paul likes to tell me that Africa, after that little ‘safari’ would never be the same for him ever again.  I like to put it another way:

Plane Ticket to Africa:  USD 2500

Safari Fees:  USD 300

Boat Fees:  USD 50

Getting Shot by Hippo Poachers: Priceless

There’s some things in life money just can’t buy.  For everything else…

All Things Great & Small

Recently the company I work for relocated their premises, from a spacious DOUBLE storey corner lot to a semi Victorian style, SINGLE upper floor office.  I say Victorian because it’s long and narrow; I say semi because it’s minus the high ceiling.  Adjusting to the space difference has been an interesting experience to say the least.

As some of you might know, the entire process of moving is a circus in itself.  First you have to inform everyone of the change.  Then you have to pack up your things; from the huge 5 tonne safe box to the tables and chairs to the smallest paperclips, everything had to be packed into boxes, sealed and labelled correctly for easy identification.  Then you load everything into a truck (or seven) and then it’s off to the see the Wizard of Oz.  Well not quite but you do trundle along to the new premises.  Then its unloading time.  Everything comes out of the boxes, is arranged as it was and voila, Bob’s your uncle – new office!  You move in and life goes on.  Simple ain’t it? 

Well simple can kiss my Uncle Bob’s arse!

It’s been one ordeal after another:

-         From the very beginning we had problems with the renovations – the ceiling collapsed in after we took down a wall.  Then there was the relocation of the bathroom and the kitchen sink; partitioning the walls; levelling of the floor; installation of new doors; fitting in new shelving and windows; blocking out the previous paint job (which was a yummy combination of red, orange and yellow) and the re-wiring of the electricals. I’m just thankful no one died!

-         Then there was a typo error in the notices we sent out (granted I was the culprit but what the hey, I’m human) informing our customers and suppliers of the change of address and phone numbers.  Normally that’s not such a big deal, except for the fact that we only noticed AS WE WERE LEAVING to the new place.  So it was back to the fax machine (in the empty old office with no tables and chairs) to re-send the notices again, this time with the I’M SORRY WE FUCKED UP note attached to the correct new address and telephone numbers.  Sigh.

-         Packing an office with about 7 years of files and papers that needed to be re-sorted and re-arranged, along with hardware and supplies that needed to be sorted, packed in bubble wrap, catalogued AND sent to our overseas office is of epic proportions!  And I haven’t even started on our respective tables, computers, fax machines, telephones, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, odds and ends, bits and pieces and all the other whatnots. I’ve inhaled so much paper dust from constructing and filling AND extracting and collapsing the cardboard boxes, I think I have enough pulp in my boogers to make a refrigerator carton box all by myself.  Yum.

-         The new upper floor office is about one and a half times smaller than our double storey corner lot and fitting what used to have its own space is now a massive exercise in space management.  Its like that Bricks game where you arrange the different shaped blocks – except that we have to use tables, chairs, filing cabinets, and all the like, BUT these bricks don’t vanish when you get them all in a straight line!

-         Then we move onto sorting out the telephone lines, fax lines, setting up the PCs and the wireless, gently reminding people (again) that we’ve moved, the feng shui ceremony to ‘warm-up’ the office, scrambling to re-locate files and records that were previously somewhere else…

Yeah the list goes on and on and on.  I’m still trying to get into the groove of the new routine but the bonus right now for me is: work that previously used to be a 30 minute drive from my house is now a glorious 2 minutes walk.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up for not needing to refuel my car (at the current fuel prices, that’s a MASSIVE bonus) so often, not needing to fight for a parking spot, not needing to take the freeway and pay the ever increasing toll fees, not needing to face the morning & evening ‘rush hour’ traffic everyday and the BIGGEST bonus of ‘em all – I get to sleep in for another 45 minutes every morning!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!