I got to wear shorts today. It was 70 Degrees F which is about 21 Degress C for you Canadians. For you Canadians that are freezing your rears off right now, I have one thing to say to you. I got to wear shorts today. The weather in the South rocks. As for you Canadians, you certainly will dethaw in a few months when the weather warms. One last thing before I change the subject, I got to wear shorts today.
Now that Big Ole Dumb Southern Boy (moi) is home, I can discuss a few things that I found interesting on our trip but thought it unwise to discuss during said trip. One thing is China's communism. Before we left for China, we had to buy a visa ($100 each) from the Chinese government. On the visa form it asked if we had any sexually transmitted diseases. Now why would they ask that? Wouldn't the bubonic plague be a better question? On the plane while flying into China, we filled out a form that wanted to know where we were staying which is par for the course in many countries. In China, if you are staying at a private home and not a hotel, you are required to inform the police precinct in your final destination of your stay. While we were traveling on a bus tour in one of our Chinese ports of call, the tour bus English speaking guide would not discuss certain questions in front of the bus driver. Deb had the guide tell her away from the driver that the bus drivers were often communist party implants that keep tabs on the people on the bus and speaking in front of them was unwise. I read an English language Chinese newspaper--actually a few of them--while I was in China. The paper was full of rubbish about how the Chinese government was doing glorious projects that would benefit the people. One newspaper had a huge article about Chinese doctors and hospitals. In the article it said family doctors are not trusted or rather all doctors for that matter, and the masses go to hospitals for routine medical conditions instead of family practices. The paper had photos of a huge, waiting room at a hospital and every square inch of the waiting room was filled with people. The photo showed hundreds of people waiting to see a doctor. The article said that a normal visit allowed the doctor only two minutes per person due to the quantity of people the doctor must see in a given day. To complicate matters, the hospital must dispense the medicine and usually will not dispense enough medicine to fully treat the person without more trips to the doctor. Go figure. I am a veteran and a flag flying American citizen that is extremely proud to have served MY country, and I love MY country. You should be happy with what you have. The next time you start complaining about your country and what you have to put up with, take a trip to China. On your way out take a democrat or two with you. Geez Louise that joke took a while to set up.
I would like to declare the next week as Fork Appreciation Week. You have no idea how difficult it is to eat with pencils. The entire time I spent in China and Japan, I didn't see a dinner knife. You might think that their food came in bite sized pieces. Right? Wrong. They expect you to pick up the bigger pieces of food and gnaw off a piece while holding the food with small pieces of lumber. Every dern thing that I ate had noodles in it in some form. Oh eating noodles with chopsticks reminds me of eating spaghetti at age six where you pick up the noodles, sorta kinda, and slurp in up. Gross. On the airplane on the trip home, a Chinese guy was in the seat in front of us eating a piece of pizza that was in a cardboard box given to him by the flight attendants. The flight attendants didn't give him chopsticks but did give him a knife and fork. The esteemed gentleman had the cardboard box up at mouth level gnawing off pieces of pizza and raking it into his mouth with the dern knife and not the fork. He didn't want to use the fork and was using the knife as a chopstick. When ChopKnifeStick Boy was in God's assembly line in heaven prior to being born, he thought God said train instead of brain and said, "Give me a slow one". ChopKnifeStick Boy almost got his picture taken by me so that I could prove he was eating with a chopknifestick, but I didn't want him to start jabbering and possibly stab me with his plastic chopknifestick. Yeah right. For the love of Sam, why do I always seem to get these folks? If it weren't for these kind of folks, I wouldn't have anything to talk about would I?
In Vladivostok, Russia I made note of a couple interesting things. Let's see where do I start? I know, let's talk about their women folk. We were told their women were supposed to be prettier than a speckled puppy sitting on a firetruck. The women were actually closer in looks to a great dane riding on a garbage truck. Well I guess they were pretty in a chainsaw toting, lumberjack sort of way. Personally I wouldn't want to have a woman that is more manly than me, but what do I know? Well I know I wouldn't kiss a lumberjack with more hair on her chest than I have--as opposed to a lumberjack with less chest hair. That didn't come out right did it? Now, let's talk about the cars in Vladivostok. It seems there is a shortage of non-Russian cars there. Russian made cars are pieces of junk I've read. A great deal of Vladivostok's cars are actually used cars that are imported from Japan. What you may not know is that Japanese cars have the steering wheel on the right side of the car similar to Britain. So we would see the locals driving around town on the right side of street with right hand steering wheeled cars. I must admit that looked strange. I imagine Ivan loves his new found privileges like driving his clown car to pick up his lumberjack girlfriend. But, if you think about it, having a girlfriend like that wouldn't be too bad. Since Ivan's car is used and could easily break down. I can just hear Ivan say, "...first we drink vodka then let girlfriend push car to get motor running". Actually to be perfectly honest, the Vladivostok women's looks were not that bad. I might describe them as a Chinese mink coat wearing puppy on a firetruck. You can extrapolate from that image, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
I still have not messed with the photographs yet. I have been too busy thinking about Russian cars, Chinese doctors, and wearing shorts. I promise to get to the photos soon.
Al
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