thduggie’s blog

Dave Barry stopped writing his humor columns a while ago, but that hasn’t stopped the Miami Herald from reprinting old ones, dubbing them classics.  The most recent one was about the Art Basel Miami Beach and mentioned Rodney McMillian’s “chair.”  Clearly, Uncle Jay could have done better – and if indeed McMillian’s art was on sale for $2’800.00 then it could be a wise business investment to get Uncle Jay a gallery.  I can volunteer to write the pretentious copy. 

I suppose the real question is if anyone ever bought the artwork. 

…Flat Stanley?  He is scheduled to leave for another briefcase trip to Prague tomorrow, but when we last spoke he suggested he may be near the end of his traveling days, fed up with the long hours in an envelope and the cramps and joint pain they bring.  He’s planning on putting his extraordinary flexibility to better use in a dance troupe extravaganza.  Rumor has it the show will be called “Sheets of Flames” and he’ll change his name to Stan Flatley.  

To all you artistically inclined blog readers I offer an art competition with as of yet unspecified prizes: Draw a picture with the title “Pastafarian.”  Send it to thduggie [at} yahoo {dot] com.  Win crazy stuff. 

Deadline: My next business trip. 

And no, I’m not the first to come up with that portmanteau, but until I just searched the internet I thought I was.  The internet is a depressing thing. 

I meant to include this picture in the last post.  Instead, I now dignify it with its own, a dignity I doubt it deserves.  Who can guess what this ad is for? 

It wasn’t a bad day as such.  We had a bit of a business discussion in the morning and went for lunch at a Chinese restaurant across the street.  On the way there we passed a liquor and tobacco shop with glass doors and an English translation underneath the Chinese warning: Mend the Glass.  The Chinese are far less trigger-happy than the Japanese about using English, so cute signs like that are few and far between.  Most of their English use goes toward “Bank of Beijing” and such signs. 

The food at the restaurant ranged from cold and vinegary to hot and spicy.  The spicy chicken bits with peanuts and hot peppers contained a flowery-sweet note which came from small pepper corns.  When toward the end of the meal we asked for rice, the informed us they were out of rice and would we like noodles?  I’d just explained to Joe my rule of not having noodles in Asia before dinnertime, so we opted for dumplings instead. 

Despite boasting upscale furnishings the toilets only boasted squat pots, and it didn’t impress me much more than rocket scientists apparently impress Shania that up the same staircase that led down to the toilet came a guy with a platter of hot dishes.  Oh well, I’ve got King Creosote to back me up. 

After lunch Paul and I hailed a cab and took a ride through Beijing’s sto-pan-d’go traffic back to the hotel to pick up my demonstration microscope for some training.  I enjoyed that, even though it took us all afternoon just to cover basics and get everyone to change a tip.  (I’d link to the wikipedia page for atomic force microscopes here, but the Chinese government has apparently decided that wikipedia is a dangerous site that needs to be blocked.)  I’m still not sure they can carry out a good measurement…

The day ended with yesterday’s customer demanding that we demonstrate another measurement mode before they sign the acceptance form and pay the remainder.  I feel like the car dealer whose customer pays 80% cash for his SUV and then says: “Now you demonstrate to me that my car can do what the ad promised and I’ll pay the rest.”  What is it that makes Europeans and Americans alike purchase and accept our instruments without such testing?  Apparently, Chinese researchers will purchase ovens they intend to use for temperatures around 100 °C but insist on seeing the oven reach the specified maximum of 240 °C before accepting it. 

So, in honor of this day, here’s an ABBA sing-along:

My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my infamy in quite a similar way
The Sears catalogue on the shelf
Is singing this ditty itself

Squatterloo – I am defeated, you won the war
Squatterloo – promise to use you (can’t wait no more)
Squatterloo – couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Squatterloo – no other place for a man to poo
Squatterloo – finally straddling my squatterloo

My my, I tried another tack but that took longer
Oh yeah, and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight
And how could I ever refuse
I feel like my bowels are loose

Squatterloo – I am defeated, you won the war
Squatterloo – promise to use you (can’t wait no more)
Squatterloo – couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Squatterloo – no other place for a man to poo

And how could I ever refuse
I feel like my bowels are loose

Squatterloo – I am defeated, you won the war
Squatterloo – promise to use you (can’t wait no more)
Squatterloo – couldn’t escape if I wanted to
Squatterloo – no other place for a man to poo
Squatterloo – finally straddling my squatterloo

I tried to check how much the beer from the mini bar was, but the hotel guide folder only has two pages worth of how much it is to damage items in the room.  The thermos comes pretty cheap at 40 RMB; the mattresses at 400 RMB practically invite a person to try and wedge them out the window just to see a mattress fall from the fourth floor to the dusty Beijing ground. 

However, all the articles we provide in your room are for use only, if you want to take it away, please contact with the Duty Manager in the Lobby.  Too bad, I wouldn’t have minded a safe box for 750 RMB.  (I checked: the safe box is fixed to the floor anyway.) 

I thought I’d have to auction it off on ebay as a broken printer, or just chuck it and auction off the spare cartridges, but I tried the answer I’d gotten on www.FixYa.com and the printer is once again printing.  Whoo-hoo!

I’ve been waking up to the Breakfast show with Andy and Adrian for the last three days, because 94.9 was the first more or less clear station I got on my radio.  Today it finally clicked: JOY 94.9 is not your usual radio station.  I’m so clueless…

I just need to point out that the legendary Grillete on the Mattweid reached a new pinnacle with an entire pig on the grill.  And I need to point out that after a week of horrible rains we were blessed by surprisingly balmy weather that got hot on Sunday at my aunt’s birthday party.

You know you’re not seeing enough sun if your sunburn after-care lotion expired 22 months ago.

Where am I going next?  I am going here:

I can’t figure out why they don’t at least design one non-blinking non-rainbow-colored button for people to use.  I know there’s no way I’m using that on our company site!

I got to observe something today that made me chuckle.  In the Basel train station, most platforms empty up onto an overpass via stairs and sometimes escalators.  When a train arrives, the stairs and escalators are chronically jammed and people move slowly.  On my way home today it was no different, except that two young girls had the bright idea to use the down escalator.  Obviously, they walked more, but managed to overtake most of us because the escalator was in energy saving mode: it moves slowly until somebody boards at the top.  After the girls, an African followed suit and obviously understood the mechanism: he hurried up and got to the top just as the girls did.  The next guy, a suit and tie and cell phone edition, was too important to run.  You could see it coming: the girls got to the top, the escalator accelerated, and Mr. Imeladdanmafone was suddenly moving down instead of up.  Next to him, the smiling crowd continued to poke its way up the regular way.  I didn’t see whether he got off at the top or the bottom – I thought it’d be poor form to just stand at the top of the stairs and stare.