Say no to crack

I have plenty of time to write this weekend because I am working an event for work. It’s some international trade meetings that happen every year and I guess we just got lucky. Usually they’re in Beijing the every other year they’re in China.

My job consists of babysitting a room that’s sort of an adjunct media room/lounge for the U.S. governmental offices. It’s really not bad. Of all the assignments, my personal belief is this is the easiest. The main show is about a 30-minute drive (no traffic) away, so I have the residuals. I’m on the day shift; it’s busier at night, I think, because some of the people are staying in this hotel. Since that’s waking hours in the U.S., my guess is they’ll be working a lot at night.

That’s a guess because even though this is Day Five of me sitting here, it’s only the first day of the actual event, which ends on Monday.

It seems that everything with the State Department involves a lot of planning, calendars that cover minute details and countless “countdown” meetings.

And lots of emails. Lots and lots of emails. And since I am in an adjunct facility, and the fact that none of these meetings take part in our office, I have to get the emails off site.

All this, in turn, means that I’ve been issued a Blackberry. It took seven seconds to hate it. It probably took seven minutes for me to establish a password that fit all the requirements, then type it – twice – with my fingers and/or thumbs.

Now, I feel like Pavlov’s dog with the damned red blinky light. I completely understand why they call these things “crackberries.” They are the devil’s idea so far as I’m concerned.

The emails come two and four at a time, with relays of “such-and-such car started its engines” and “such-and-such car left the site” and goes on to it being 10 or five minutes out, arriving or whatever.

And that’s just one example. All kinds of emails go back and forth. The first day, when I was bored, another bored person at a different location and I had them flying back and forth as to how bored we were.

It’s not healthy. I swear, I do not understand why people love their smartphones. This thing is a tether. I don’t want it and cannot wait to give it back.

Hopefully, that will be Wednesday. Let’s just say that Thanksgiving is going to be awesome. Everyone is looking forward to that here.

At this point in the post, I was going to change the subject to New Zealand but then a wonderful illustration of “overstaffing” just meandered by.

A new person from one of the agencies just arrived and she said something about, with some change, she was unsure of her role. The guy she was talking to said, “you just need to stand around.”

That’s your tax dollar at work, folks!

New Zealand’s tax dollar (how’s that for a segue?) is really at work for tourists. The place is fantastic. The beaches are fantastic. The ferns are fantastic.

Ferns are the national plant (or something) of New Zealand, with good reason. They’re everywhere. The silver fern is used in the logo of the All Blacks rugby team (I think it IS the logo). And on all the hikes you do, ferns are everywhere.

They’re not like ferns that I’ve seen before, either. They can be HUGE – like, the leaves are the size of my leg, which ain’t tiny. They also grow into what look like trees. I waffled and wondered if they were palm trees because they were so big. Are ferns and palms related?

The beaches are just wonderful, not that you swim in them. It’s too cold, for one, but mostly the surf is too rough. I’m not even sure that anyone other than Bodhi would tackle them.

The juxtaposition of the beach to the green (or white, as in the case of the glaciers) never ceased to amaze me. I think people got tired of me saying, “It’s just so beautiful.”

It was.

How cool is this?

New Zealand, with all its previous volcanic life, has some amazing geological stuff going one. One particular day, I spent the morning on a glacier and then, that evening, camped out on a beach. The day’s travel was no more than 20 miles – and in between the two, we’d passed through a rainforest-like bush.

“Bush” is Kiwi talk for “forest.” I have to say, I love Kiwi talk. I picked up three words I need to work in my vocabulary:

• “Fiddley” – a little unpredictable or wonky, as in “if the bike acts a little fiddley, let us know and we’ll check it for you to make sure it’s safe.”
• “Flash” – impressive, as in “When Peter Jackson saw the area, he knew it was flash enough to be in his film.”
• “Smash” – get it done quickly, as in, “It’s going to rain, so let’s smash out tomorrow’s lunches before the skies open.”

The last one is my favorite. I’d really like to work it into daily usage. “On Friday, I smashed out the annual budget.” It just sounds so cool.

 

NZ in general was just amazingly cool. I’d never really camped before (twice at Disney), and I have to say NZ does it right. I’ve no idea of their tax structure, but they’ve spent a fortune putting in trails everywhere, plus facilities left and right. It seems everywhere you drive, there’s a hike available, and all the paths are clearly marked. If there’s water or swampy land, they’ve built boardwalks, complete with chicken wire on the boards to make it non-slip.

There are also campsites, some with showers, on the public property and some spots also have these really big dorms that you can rent. Like, not a hostel-sized one, but a hospital-sized one. And they also have private campsites, which have a better chance of having showers.

There are no campsites on the glaciers, thankfully, but they offer day hikes via helicopter. I’d done heli-hiking in Alaska, but it was on a frozen tundra and not a glacier. The glacier hikes are different, because the glaciers shift daily. What was safe yesterday might not be safe today.

My group of 18 didn’t all do the heli-hiking, but I think 8-10 of us did. Once we got up there, we were so bundled up I really couldn’t tell who was who.

The glaciers are really amazing, and to walk on them, you had to wear boots with these cool massive spikes called “crampons,” I think they said. It was sort of a roller skate frame you laced over your boots and had these mean teeth – like 2 inches or something like that. We were advised to keep them in the ice at all times, otherwise, we would have slipped down the glaciers.

And it really was that slippery. In one of the ice caves, I was trying to scoot along on my back (this was how you were supposed to do it, pulling yourself along with a rope) and I slipped down to the foot of the cave, even though I was still hanging onto the rope. It was just that slick.

There was a waterfall up on the glacier, too, and it was pretty amazing. Just the amounts of snow and ice were incredible. More than North Dakota!

This is me on my back, sliding through. My version of a selfie.

We hiked for a couple of hours, and it was quite fascinating to watch the clouds. The weather turns quickly, and we’d been warned that the trip might not go due to low clouds. We got up there and the clouds came in, but we were able to still hike the whole time. By the time we went back down, the clouds looked like they’d shifted, but it was raining on the way down, so I don’t really know for sure.

New Zealand is probably the fifth place I’ve gone to where I’ve heard the line, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will change.” The funny thing is, everywhere I’ve heard it, the people think it’s unique to them.

Traveling’s an ordeal

I’m back from New Zealand and man, it’s everything it’s billed to be. I mean, beyond the beauty, every single public toilet I went into was clean and had toilet paper. How can you top that?

Getting there is never half the fun. I swear, as much as I love to travel, I hate traveling. If that makes any sense at all.

The Guangzhou airport is a beast, and this time around I thought I’d pull my hair out before wheels up.

First, it’s time for the annual Canton Fair, which is this huge event and people come from all over, meaning the airport is crowded. For the first time in my travels through the airport, there was a massive line just to get to the security line. As in, a complete standstill for 10 minutes.

After getting in, I did this new trick I learned and went to the first-class line and waved the black passport, which saved oodles of time as the immigration line was backed up beyond the quarantine and customs sections, which are both before. So no telling what kind of time that saved, but once to that line, I didn’t move up in the line for 5-10 more minutes, and in all, spent about 20 minutes in line.

Seriously, every time I hear someone complain about security in America, I want to choke them. In Guangzhou, it’s a full pat down for EVERY person, which takes awhile. A long, long while.

But it, too, passed and I went to my gate. I arrived in plenty of time so I just read one of the three books I’d brought.

Finally, they called my flight, but not after a gate change. This really isn’t a big deal, because how they do it, the gate is merely a false start anyway. You don’t actually go down a jetway into a big plane; you load up on a bus and get driven to what seems like a tarmac in the next county over, and then you board.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens far, far more often than not. I’m so sick of little buses on either end of the flight. You come back, get off the plane and think you’re done, but then you have to wait on everyone to cram on a bus and then get driven for a solid 5-10 minutes to a building that’s forever away from your landing spot. And that’s not even counting the 10 minutes you taxied after landing.

Anyway, on both ends of my Auckland flight, I was subjected to these annoying bus rides. I swear the departing flight ride was close to 10 minutes. Then, to add insult to tiring injury, we got off the bus and THEN climbed up a staircase to a jetway. God knows where we were, but it appeared to be at a gate. What the purpose was for us to go to one gate, only to be bused to another to enter a second jetway was beyond me.

And the same thing happened on the way back. We pulled in after a long, long taxi and I saw the building and thought I’d struck gold because the little jetway thing came out. I got off quickly – somehow I’d been upgraded to economy plus – and thought I was going to make a beeline to the immigration and baggage claim areas, but no sooner had I stepped into the jetway than I realized everyone was stepping right back out on another staircase, which led to the road, which led to yet another van.

But all that’s history. I’m back now and will get to posting about New Zealand, but right now I’m really exhausted and want to get laundry done before crashing.

My first stop there, though, was the Hobbit place, so I’ll start off with photos from there. It really was cool, although I’m not a huge Hobbit fan. The guide guy kept saying, “You know how in [enter name of one of the movies], [enter name of character] [enter verb for character] and  then he [enter another verb/scenario].” Well, other than one, I didn’t know any of them.

The one I did know was the yellow door. That was the home of Sam Wise, Frodo’s best friend. At the end of the LOTR series, Sam returns to the Hobbit and is greeted by his wife and daughter. He sees them, smiles, and walks into his hobbit hole and shuts the door, closing out the trilogy.

34-17

Greetings from the land of the World Cup winners!

I was in Auckland the morning of the game, conveniently awake at 5 a.m. to watch. I had to catch the bus into town and boy, do they take the All Blacks seriously.

In the quiet downtown, I found a TV showing the final live and watched some bits with some people, mostly taxi drivers whom the casino staff kept trying to move along. No one really did.

Watching the game, I realized I have no idea how rugby works, or when the game would end. It had been something like 16-3, All Blacks, when the Wallabies went on a tear and suddenly, it was close.

Having no idea when time ran out or anything like that, I hung on with the crowd and saw some more points going up for New Zealand. I don't really understand how, honestly, but, hey, the home  team was winning, so I didn't care.

At some point, it became final and I only knew because the group around me exploded.

All of a sudden, the volume turned up and the city came to life. Everyone had been hiding out, watching the game somewhere, and it took about three minutes for those people to get to the streets, their horns, etc.

Everything became loud and things started blaring. Everyone was sober, though. It was still 7 a.m.!

Anyway, I'm in New Zealand now, getting ready to meet my tour. I'm in an internet cafe as I own no devices and the little red light just came on, so that's the sign for me to get off.

You lose!

We have something in this line of work called a “losing post.” It looks like Guangzhou will be one for me.

A losing post is the opposite of a gaining post. These terms are used in this job for, when you transfer, your old job site and your new one.

When you plan your departure, you have about 60 days leeway and you are supposed to “negotiate” with the two to figure out when you can leave, what training you can take, and when to arrive. In these negotiations with you – allegedly on your side – is sort of a job advisor.

I’m about six months out from changing posts, so I have to start thinking about the transfer. I thought this was an easy thing, since I already had a proposed training schedule and everything.

My new start date is supposed to be May. That was back when I was to leave here in December. At that point, the higher office here that controls staffing in China asked me to stay longer. I’d been scheduled to take an 8-week language class in February, but I agreed to stay – with the backing that I would get a 6-week course in HR, which I really want. That class is scheduled to start May 2 and go until June 10. I got the OK from the gaining post that it should work.

However, that was back in May. There’s a new person in Istanbul now, and I learned this week that I am not going to be allowed to take that class, one reason of which is because I am expected to arrive in May.

And that’s a wrinkle. A really, really big one. See, I also have what’s called home leave. This is a time when Congress tells all foreign service people that they must be in the U.S., in order to stay in touch with America. Congress mandates that a foreign service officer must take at least 20 days, but I will have just over 30 days. And you know what? Since I am not being allowed to take the class I want, I want to take ALL my leave.

So even if I depart the first day I am able to from Guangzhou – April 1 – using 33 days of home leave would put me in D.C. on 5/18 or so. There is one class that I must take and it’s an entire week, so I’d have to take it the following week.

Well, that Friday is Memorial Day. I shouldn’t have to move over a holiday weekend. And if I don’t, then I can’t leave until May 31, which would put me arriving on June 1. Which, last I checked, is in June.

So I just can’t figure out why I can’t get an extra week or so of class. Even if I can’t get the one I really want, there are other classes that DC deems more appropriate for my career. (Note: The reason I want the HR class is because it would have been so very helpful in my current assignment. My new assignment is even more HR-laden, so it seemed appropriate.)

Anyway, the job advisor person isn’t on the same page as I am. This is a three-party negotiation, and so far two of the parties have coughed up a lot. My current post is willing to let me leave on April 1 – they’d like me here until April 30 – and I am forfeiting a class that I really, really want AND that the new post told me I could have. Beyond that, I gave up an 8-week language course. So far, the gaining post has continued to chant “May! May! May” and yielded nothing.

And my job advisor came up with the brilliant idea of forcing me to leave Guangzhou in mid-March. This is not something that I want, nor is it something that Guangzhou wants.

I’m trying to schedule a time to call my job advisor about it; I’m wondering if wires haven’t gotten crossed somewhere. It just shouldn’t be this hard.

Back in town

After three weekends away, I’m finally back. For awhile, anyway.

Last weekend, I went to Taipei. A group of people had gone from all over China, maybe about 30 in all. I’d been there before but this time around went to a little touristy city up on a mountain.

When we planned this weekend, we hadn’t realized that not only was it Columbus Day, but also Taipei’s national day. Last year, that wasn’t an issue because we chose to go to Hong Kong, but this time, the city selection proved a little silly. It was super crowded and we couldn’t get deals on hotels like we had in Hong Kong.

Nonetheless, we all found housing. We also found people everywhere, especially in the little mountain city. (It’s where some film, “Spirited Away,” was set. I’ve never seen the movie.) The big thing to see was a little narrow street with all kinds of cool shops. It was also filled will all kinds of people, and by that I mean mostly Japanese tourists.

We also did food and the night market, which are the things to do in Taipei. I also did my thing, which involved Krispy Kreme. Yes, so far as I know, it’s the nearest Krispy Kreme to me, and I made the most of it.

In the end, I was glad enough to have gone again. It was nice to be with people and not just go somewhere alone. I’m not as big a Taipei fan as are some that I work with and wouldn’t have gone back on my own again, but with the group, it was a good weekend away.

Having three holiday weekends also meant three less-than-five-day work weeks. We had a four-day, a two-day, and then another four-day. Quite honestly, I am ready for a five-day, which is good because those start again tomorrow.

On Friday before my weekend in Guangzhou, my department took a cruise. For mostly everyone but me, it was fun. For me, it was a logistical nightmare. For a select crew that I have not yet figured out, it was a no-go, because they missed the boat.

I’d sent out an email wherein I said “the boat leaves at 7:30” eight times. Basically it was every other line in the email. I’d arranged with the boat guy to buy me another five minutes, just in case, and what do you know but people didn’t even make that.

I held out as long as I could, but the boat guy was taking off so I left my “wave ‘em in” spot and got on. We started the engines to pull out and I heard a commotion at the dock. Looked up and there was another person, so I frantically waved her in. She made it, but started berating me, saying I “should have told them in the email” that it could take awhile to get there in a cab. Seriously? It’s a city of 15 million people and it’s rush hour. Can you not figure that out? Or, you know, ASK SOMEONE?

So basically that just added to my stress. I know of there people who definitely didn’t make it. I have no idea how they will react tomorrow. I just hope they don’t expect a refund. It was pretty darn clear what time the boat was going to leave. (Indeed, I found out later that, at 7:33 on the boat, when I was still waving in people, the folks on board were wondering aloud why they hadn’t left yet.)

But all in all it was a success. Next week’s project is to continue collections for Marine ball tickets, of which we will purchase as many as possible and then hold drawings for winners. Right now, I have collected enough for maybe five tickets (of which I purchased one). Last year, we had 11.

And now I am on the tail end of what’s been a successful weekend in Guangzhou. I did 14K on the treadmill in 90 minutes Saturday morning, then napped til 10, worked 1-4, then hit the wet market and bought veggies for the first time in a month. Also finished a book that I didn’t really like but had invested a lot of time trying to figure out, so I stuck with it.  Then I chilled out – well, sweated, anyway – in the steam room and sauna.

After setting my alarm for 12:24 a.m., I got up, remembered in a haze why I’d set the darn thing, I Slingboxed the FSU game until 3 a.m., crashed until 6, then got up and did 10k on a couple of milder settings. My hips hurt so bad yesterday it was not funny. I was limping like crazy. I have no idea what I was thinking on this 10k. I’m going to die.

Anyway, I got back into the usual weekend routine by hitting the grocery store, which redefined crowded and raises your blood pressure, cooking my week’s meals and then getting a massage. I’m still sore but not limping. My other task was getting a light bulb changed, which is harder than it seems. It involves contacting the front desk and explaining what I need when I have zero language skills, but I got it done.

Basically, it’s been a really domestic weekend and I don’t mind a bit. I still have a couple more things to do, like wish Leila a happy birthday, but I’m really glad to have not commuted to or from either the airport or the train station this week.

Next week is in town, too, but the following weekend I head down to New Zealand. This has been in the works for awhile, but I haven’t done much planning beyond signing up for a tour of the south island. Now it’s finally the “next trip” and I guess I should get in gear.

Fill ‘er up in Dhaka

Banyan tree with a temple thing

 Now there is one. Coming into a two-year tour in Guangzhou, I had a whole slate of South, East and SE Asia that I hadn’t visited. Since I’ve been here, I’ve visited the Philippines, Mongolia, Bhutan and even Kazakhstan. My travels started in earnest about March 2014 (I can’t count Seoul – nice, but not exotic enough to make this list) in Bangladesh. And what do you know, with just one more to go – Brunei, and I’ve no idea how/when I can get there – it circled back to Bangladesh.

I’m not sure whose fault that was. The whole issue confused me during my entire three-day stay in Kathmandu. Yes, I finally got to Kathmandu! (And of course, I can’t get the dadgum song out of my head.) This had been in the works for awhile, but I was really kind of freaked about it.

Seriously, I tried to get there previously. I’d even bought tickets for Memorial Day, and then the April 25 earthquake happened, and China Southern canceled my direct flight. I opted to go to Burma instead. Oh, yeah, left that off the list. But Kathmandu remained on it, and I finally repurchased flight tickets, though not through Expedia – I’m done with that.

The thing is, China Southern either did away with or cut back on its nonstop flights, so I had to go indirect. Being from Tallahassee, where even if you crash you still have to go through Atlanta, this wasn’t such a big deal, but the only flight I could get was on Malaysian, that of the “go missing” flight.

Rubble from Kathmandu temple

So … Kathmandu on Malaysian airlines. What could possibly go wrong with that, right?

Fortunately, nothing. I just got back and had an amazing time. Granted, I’m dragging right now because my two-leg flight started at midnight and ended at 2 p.m., but I’ve done laundry, loaded up my photos and have eaten dinner. I’m trying to hold out to 8 p.m, after which I plan on melting into bed.

Anyway, after Bon Jovi for the Mid-Autumn holiday, I decide to do the rest of Golden Week – Chinese National Day – in Nepal. I knew I wouldn’t have time to do any trekking to Everest Base Camp or anything like that, but I figured even if I just wandered I’d be fine, assuming no other earthquakes hit.

And they didn’t. I hired a guide (got the name from the Kathmandu embassy and would recommend the guy) and we wandered through the valley for two and a half days. The rubble is phenomenal, but plenty remains. I have to say I am so very tired of temples, but I saw more temples. (Honestly, I don’t know or care about the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism, but I do find the different art interesting.)

For Zippy. I also saw Applebee and S.U.B.way.

The religions – just don’t get. And I get those two confused all the time, but we would go to one thing and Kumar would explain that this was for the god of _____, and people would come and leave stuff. In one place – and this completely blew my mind – there was a “living god.” He went on to explain this ritual where 4-year-old girls go through the equivalent of beauty and dare contests to be chosen/nominated/voted/not sure of the right verb as a “living god.” At least until menstruation, anyway. Then they do it again. But in the meantime, she is dressed up in an outfit that makes Jon Benet Ramsey look like a redneck and kept in this courtyard, where her feet never touch the ground. She’s either walking on velvet or being carried around. I just don’t understand.

Second-floor chicken

And the kama sutra. Bhutan had penises, but Nepal had sex ed carved into the temples. Never seen this before. Apparently the child brides of the past were taken to the temple to look at pictures for a how-to guide. They still stand today. And bend over, too.

But temples are the thing to do in Nepal, at least if you’re not hiking, and I did temples. I went to 3-4 UNESCO sites and saw lots of cracks in the rubble and beams holding this or that up. They really are trying to rebuild, but how do you rebuilt something from the 17^th century.

The one temple that Kathmandu was named for was completely leveled. Others still had the little deities standing, but they were facing a pile of rubble. I also saw more rats than I have since walking home from the Jakarta Globe.

Predates the fuel shortage, I'm sure

The Kathmandu valley is just that – a valley between mountains, including the Himalaya. So we had to transport back and forth between the places. Normally, this isn’t a problem, but this time it was, and from what Kumar told me, it was all India’s fault.

Somehow, and I still don’t understand this, India and Nepal are in talks about this or that (I tried to read some article, and “diplomats disagreed” popped up over and over). As a result, there are protests and holdups. One of the holdups is that India is not getting fuel to Nepal anymore. And this is where the fuel comes from, so there are few taxis. What they have, though, are lines of taxis and buses – like 20, 30, 40 – lined up, engines off, in phantom lines for gas.

The taxis that are running are gouging riders, especially tourists, because they have no idea when they will get gas again, so they have to make it worth their while. (And let’s face it, because tourists are easy prey.)

One alternative is the city buses, which reminded me of Morocco’s. And as much as I love Morocco, the transport system is not enviable. It’s downright scary, but that’s what we took.

Loved the view

The buses are very suspect, even before you realize they’re crammed with three times the safe number of people. The count includes those extra three people sitting in a two-person seat, the guys hanging on for dear life outside the open door and the ones sitting on the roof.

This was my transport for two days. My guide kept apologizing for it but it really wasn’t that bad. Again, it reminded me of Morocco. I certainly don’t miss that part of Morocco, but I lived through that and I made it through the weekend here.

On Day Three, we could only get to one other location and just couldn’t get a bus, so that was it for the trip. Kumar wound up walking home and I wandered back to some of the places I’d visited previously and started spending money. I bought two pairs of pants and three shirts for myself, but they’re not exactly the kind I can wear to work. I have a lot of trouble splurging on myself. On one pair of pants – one I’d returned to after seeing the first day – I had to, literally, sit myself down and talk me into it. They were $5.

Kama sutra  temple. In case you thought I was lying.

I didn’t get a yak shawl, which, now, I think is a shame. I don’t wear shawls but have several; this was my reasoning in not getting one. They were 300 rp, which is about $3. I haven’t worn the one from Bhutan once, so I decided to skip it. Then I wound up with 700 rp left over. The changers wouldn’t just give me $6 – they said their fee wouldn’t be worth it to me – so I wound up spending it in the airport, on a 5-pack of Oreos, two baby canned juices (pomegranate and pineapple) and a Twix bar. That was about $7. I would have been better off with two shawls, even if I never wore them. Sigh.

The fuel crisis lingers, and it wasn’t limited to auto fuel. Tourists restaurants were running low, shuttering them, and then on the way back I got thrown for a loop at the airport. I’d gotten a notice the day I left for Nepal that the arrival of the flight to KL had been postponed by an hour. Not the departure, just the arrival, and that confused me. But hey, I can roll with that, right?

But when I checked into the airport, I got the explanation: we had to pull over in Bangladesh to get gas. There’s no airplane fuel in Nepal, either.