The Hearts of the Country

Posted February 19, 2007 | | 3 Responses

The Albuquerque one

Desserts in a box

The Jell-O aisle

The Boot Co., Santa Fe

Adobe money, Santa Fe

Nightcap.

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A Starbucks a day

Posted February 16, 2007 | | 1 Response

makes you broke.

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Nota Bene

Posted February 16, 2007 | | Leave a response

A lot of things is automatic in America. It’s systematic. It’s hydromatic. Like trash cans in Atlanta airport. You throw in your stuff and a few minutes later gsssssssssshhhhhhh and your trash is gone. Same thing with the toilets. You hardly get a chance to button your pants before everything is flushed away, waiting for the next.

(Is it any wonder….???)

At the Mandarin Express (yes, that’s Chinese), the special reads: “Ham, bacon or sausage with scrambled eggs cheese and hashbrowns 3.99″

Being here is like coming home to the movies. It should be new but it really isn’t because you’ve seen it all before. Sitting in a bar full of men drinking beer and watching sports to the sorrowful sounds of Bob Dylan or some deep blues. A fat man on the right whose name is probably Jesus. A fat man on the left with tattoos on his arms who is either an ex-marine or a postman. Or both. His name is probably Jake and you don’t want to fuck with him. A thin long haired man in the corner whose name might be Fred Wuk and who used to be a hippie but now his two kids are in college and he drinks at night telling of their success. He hasn’t seen them for two years. A lonely bespectacled drunk at the other end of the bar who watches you but pretends not to.

Route 66 in downtown Albuquerque is full of fast food joints. Then, a sign: The Library. Culture? Look again. The Library: Bar and Grill. (I think I’ll have to steal that one day).

Everything not here is “out there”. Cape Town, Venezuela, up the road. Go figure. This is the centre, I mean center, of the world.

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Lady Luck

Posted February 14, 2007 | | 2 Responses

(Dulles International, Washington DC, 13 Feb, about 6.30 am)

Such was the view when I arrived at Dulles (nothing French sounding here, it’s pronounced Dull-us) yesterday morning. There was little evidence of the snowstorm that I had been worrying about. I even had a smoke outside without a winter coat (checked through) and was amazed at how mild it was.

Neither did I really mind the prospect of having to be in the airport for the next 11 hours until my connecting flight. I would just locate the various smoking and wi-fi hotspots and drink coffee and read and write all day, do some browsing, maybe snooze a bit.

So I go through security and start looking for all my distractions. Signage wasn’t very clear on this, so I followed a couple of leads, took a couple of shuttle busses, walked a couple of kilometres. I’ll cut the long story short. Wi-fi? No. Smoking spots? Two “lounges” in the entire airport. Interesting shops? No. I couldn’t even enter a duty-free shop because I wasn’t in possession of an international boarding pass.

Dull-us indeed.

The rest is too dreary: walk sit smoke walk have another starbucks sit snooze walk to other smoking lounge walk sit smoke sore ass.

Then, as the hour of my salvation drew close, the weather got worse, flights started getting cancelled and of course I was in the same f**king boat as everyone else. I was cancelled. Except that everyone else hadn’t been travelling for 36 hours and everyone else had somewhere to go in the city and everyone else’s body clock wasn’t on midnight at 5 in the afternoon.

In short, I did not make it to Albuquerque. I spent my first night in some (non-smoking!) hotel in Washington. I did sleep well, perhaps helped on by a couple of Jacks on ice last night when my nightcap coincided happily with the local happy hour.

I am still here, and my first phonecall to Dulles to check on flights was promising. All is, as they say, good to go. We shall see.

postcript: We have seen. The flight is cancelled. I now have a provisional booking for 1pm, via Atlanta. Meaning I may get to final destination at 7pm this evening. In the meantime I have been downstairs and outside for a smoke, via the breakfast room to get some fruit on the way up. The night porter saw me and probably thinks I am wierd. It’s 4.30am. Lunch time.

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Hot Dog

Posted February 11, 2007 | | 1 Response

Jumping frog, Albuquerque
here I come.

Got my TSA approved lock, got my adaptor, got my quart-size Ziploc bag for my 3 oz tube of toothpaste, and my clothes have managed to dry despite Cape Town’s wierd weekend weather. Guess I can go ahead and pack now.

(Minor panic: large snowstorm heading for Washington same time as me).

What to do. On voyage…

ps. For those of you who will have the luxury of choosing your own food for the next few days, here are some tips on what to eat to make you sleep better.

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Erratum

Posted February 9, 2007 | | Leave a response

George is not Yeastfree, and he’s not even George, but Gyro (??) Gearloose, and he exists on the WorldWideWeb, and he exists in other languages:

(Danish: Georg Gearløs)
Norwegian: Petter Smart
Swedish: Uppfinnar-Jocke
Finnish: Pelle Peloton
English: Gyro Gearloose
German: Daniel Düsentrieb
French: Géo Trouvetou
Italian: Archimede Pitagorico / Giro Rotalibera
Portuguese: Professor Pardal

Thank you, mother.

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Unleavened

Posted February 7, 2007 | | Leave a response

I’m going to share a brainwave I just had. I’m going to share it because I can’t make much use of it seeing as I am not a scientist. The idea (how good is this?) is for non-melting ice cubes.

I’m at that stage of my sundowner (Debored’s Second Vice) where the ice cubes have melted just enough to cool the whole thing down and dilute it enough but not too much. The ratios of temperature to strength to taste are perfect and from here on it’s downhill. Helas! A fleeting moment.

That got me thinking about what it would be like to be an inventor, and the only one I could think of was Georg Gærløs, and actually this is just something for him. GG is a character in Donald Duck, but the Danish version (I’m talking old-fashioned comics here). I never read many Donald Duck’s in English, so I have no idea what GG’s anglo-double is, or if he even exists.

I googled Georg Gærløs just now but the phrase did not match any documents. Neither did the other possible spelling – Gærløse. I find this very hard to believe, but the ice cube brainwave may just have led to the first instance of the phrase Georg Gærløse on the WorldWideWeb. Never again shall Google come back empty handed.

The name is difficult to translate. Georg is easy, that’s George. But the surname is nonsense and would literally translate as Yeastless. (It could also be one of those Danish nuances I miss because I don’t have the nuance radar). Yeastfree? That sounds too healthy.

I digress. I also googled non-melting ice to make sure no one had already been as clever as I just was. And this is what I found:It’s a non-melting ice lolly. The first one ever was from Iceland, and was unfortunately photographed for its press release:

_39013503_lolly_2.jpg

But the other one is made by Uhmapko (Inmarco), a Russian ice-cream company, and comes in cherry and pear flavours and the superimposition of three lollies into one is meant to represent what happens instead of melting: it droops. Or, in market speak, it takes on ‘a funky shape’. Then it becomes something between marmalade and jelly.

A rival manufacturer has a similar product under the label NFO (UFO) and their sales pitch is better: “NLO is a fruit ice with cherry taste enriched with special stabiliser avoiding melting. If to store NLO in warm place for a long time it will become a jelly-like paste reminding a representative of extraterrestrial civilizations on vacation.”

Still, I don’t see any non-melting ice cubes for sundowners. (Those little plastic shapes you put in the freezer don’t count because they don’t melt at all and therefore don’t affect the taste. They are impostors).

Where is Georg Gærløs when you need him?

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And so it is

Posted February 6, 2007 | | Leave a response

Just finished Rome. Like all the best things, it is brilliant and sad. So very sad. The end of the empire. The end of the comfort of my cursed television (what shall I do tomorrow?).

I think I’ll go cry myself to sleep now.

And to tune out from this evening in the Mother City, we’ll be going to sleep to the smooth midnight sounds of The Temptations, with My Lady Soul…

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On the stereo

Posted February 6, 2007 | | Leave a response

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Selling wine and intrigue

Posted February 6, 2007 | | Leave a response

Sitting in the wine shop this morning I am reminded of a man who came in last night. He’s a regular in the shop, a burly man with gentle eyes who we call Dr.so-and-so because that’s his name. I always see him on my Monday shift, and he always buys one bottle from the fridge, typically the same as last time. I imagine this is his bottle for the evening, and I imagine that he looks forward to the end of his Monday so he can go home and enjoy his wine. He probably has a wife, but I imagine he drinks the man portion of the bottle. He looks like someone who will drink the man portion of a bottle of wine over dinner and then move to his favourite armchair with a brandy and the paper. His wife will wake him when he starts snoozing and he’ll tell her he was just closing his eyes.

When the doctor came in last night I offered him a taste of a bottle we had open, a wooded chenin blanc. He wasn’t fond of the wine – he prefers something easier on the palate – but when he saw the label, he said “Oh, do you know the owner of this estate?”

Me: “Hmm, no… do you?” (I guess it was a leading question)

Dr.: “Yes, he’s a Russian Jew”.

Me: “Oh.”

Then he paid for his usual bottle, we bade each other a good evening and he went on his way. Nothing more was said of the Russian Jew.

I had no idea then and I still have none of what was meant by that exchange.

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