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Beam me up Scotty, North America style.. . . .  .

            Lately, I’ve gotten into DVD’s of the series “Boston Legal”, that stars among others, William Shatner.  A few decades ago, he played a character named “Captain James Kirk”, in the cult series  “Start Trek”.

            For you non ”Trekies” out there, the weekly series first aired in 1966, and ran for 3 years. It was science fiction set in the 23^rd century, centered on the mission of the Sovereign Class Starship “Enterprise” to explore space and defend the "United Federation of  Planets".

            Seeing William Shatner (Captain Kirk) in “Boston Legal” (as a senior partner named “Denny Crane”) reminded me of an incident that happened in the North America a long time ago, but I figure it’s still good for a chuckle.

            For a long time, I had people comment that I look like Leonard Nemoy, that played a character in Star Trek, from the planet Vulcan, named Mr. Spock. Mr. Spock was the second in command, with the next in line  Chief Engineer and Chief of Security Montgomery Scott (AKA “Scotty”).

“Scotty” was also in charge of moving members of the crew through time and space. More than once in the series, Captain Kirk would utter “beam me up Scotty”, to get out of trouble

            So anyway, in the mid 70’s I was on a domestic flight in the States (I don’t remember what airline, or the destination), and when we reached the cruising altitude, the Captain came on the intercom with the “welcome aboard” message.

            About the time he got to the part “this is Captain Kirk speaking”, one of the cabin attendants came up the aisle, and I started to ask her “is Scotty in the flight deck, too?”  Before I could finish my question, she said “No. And you better stay in your seat Spock” (and she never even broke stride)

            What could I say to that?

            So there I sat, for the rest of the flight with a head full of smart comments, like “if I had known a Scotty was on the plane, I would have just had him beam me up”, or “is the co-pilot a Klingon?”, that I kept to myself.

            In those days, airline crews pretty much were assigned to flights as a group, and I was reasonably sure that working with Captain Kirk, she pretty well heard more Star Trek “one liners” than I could possibly come up with.

            In any case, we made it to the gate without running into any alien space craft, or having any Klingon’s roaming the aisle, but my trip with Captain Kirk was one I’ll never forget.

            As an aside, the original Star Trek series became a cult item, with conventions for “Trekies”, and was remade as “Star Trek the next generation” and “Star Trek: Enterprise" around 2002. Somehow, the “new Star Trek’s” weren’t quite the same. Instead of Captain Kirk and crew “taking on all comers”, when a serious situation confronted Captain Jean-Luk Picard, the response seemed to be “quick, let’s call a meeting”

 Even NASA acknowledged the popularity of Star Trek when it renamed the first reusable orbiter “Enterprise” in 1976  The original name was to be the “Constitution”, but the name was changed due to a major write in campaign by “Trekies”. NASA’s Enterprise flew 5 missions, but never broke out of earth orbit.

Well its back the present, and the world of Denny Crane, the International Space Station, and HD TVs.

Oops! Boy do I feel safe

            I’ve got to go back to carrying a small camera…. . . .  .  .

            There are things that I witness that are just too much to be believed without visual evidence. Below are a couple of  examples

           Along ago, in a… . . O.K. so it wasn’t another galaxy, just half a world away (but then, I’m not Steven what’s his name, either)

            In the mid 1980’s I took a temporary assignment in the capital one of the middle eastern countries, and while waiting for my departing flight, the first “Mrs Charlie” and I (theree has been more than one) were watching people go through the “Magic Arch” (metal detector) for an adjoining gate.

            I commented to “Mrs. Charlie” that I wondered how long it would take for the guard to realize that the metal detector wasn’t plugged into the wall socket. For several minutes we watched him nod at the people passing through the security point, until a man carrying a large silver tray went through and the machine remained silent .

His reaction was a genuine shocked “double take”, followed by a lot of shouting. After plugging the metal detector in and testing it, everyone in the gate area was sent back through the “arch” and then allowed to board the plane (and no, the guy with the silver tray was not allowed to carry it on).

            Who needs a big ole’ cruiser with a big, ugly metal ring welded to the rear floorboard?

            Recently in the Southeast Asian Country that I’ve taken up residence in, I saw an officer of the law riding a “Dirt Bike” (motorcycle), with a prisoner on the back down the sidewalk. How did I know the rider was a prisoner you ask?

            Well, he was dressed in a prison orange colored sweat suit that had a large letter “P” on the back of the shirt and the right leg of the pants. Oh, and he was also wearing a rather large set of chromed handcuffs.

            I wonder if the officer in charge realized that any time he had to stop, all his prisoner had to do was to stand up, and wait for the cop to ride out from under him, and walk away?

            Anyone gotta’ set of jumper cables?

            The local police department isn’t alone, in making yours truly feel safe. The Fire Department has its days too.

            As a little background, the city I live in is a provincial capitol, and has a fair sized population of politicians. Like politicians everywhere, they have a pretty good life style that quite often includes more than one dwelling.

            As any city with a few million people living in it, they have Fire Stations distributed through out it, but from what I’ve seen life at some of the fire stations here is quite a bit different than in the U.S. A lot of the equipment doesn’t seem to get the “loving care” that it does in the states.

            Recently, there was story in one of the local “fish wraps” (newspapers for you younger folks), of a fire at a house belonging to a politician in the hills above the city. The fire was classified as requiring two pieces of equipment, from two different firehouses.

            Unfortunately, the fire burned itself out before either of the fire trucks arrived.

            It seems that the first truck stalled on the way to the fire and couldn’t be re-started, while the second overheated climbing the hill to the house.

            Ah well, I managed to live through Riots, Tornadoes, Blizzards and Pestilence in other countries., so I guess I’ll adjust to life here too

I’m back, and No, I don’t  know why….. . . .   .

          O.K., so it’s been a while since I’ve been online, and I don’t have any excuse other than we’ve moved and are no longer living in the “Middle Kinkdom”. Now we’re living on a sunny island in the “Land of a million Smiles”.

Here in the islands for urban transportation, they have what were originally World War II Jeeps left after the War, that were modified to carry passengers called  “Jeepney’s (since replaced by small bus like vehicles)”. As the passengers get on and off through a door in the rear of the “Jeepney”,  there’s a “helper” riding (or generally hanging) on the back. His job is to attract riders, make sure the driver stops for people that are waiting for a ride, and collect fares  Some of the younger guys get quite acrobatic in attempting to attract riders, but some  also bear a striking resemblance to the old cowboys in the Leanin’ Tree card collection (deep wrinkles, missing teeth and all).

Recently, I saw one of the younger “helpers” jump off at a stop, pull a comb out of his hip pocket, and take a few swipes at his hair, and put the comb back in his hip pocket.

          As I’ve written before, my mind is basically a warehouse of useless information, and for some reason, this move made it “flash back” to a character in a late1950’s/early 60’s T.V. series called “77 Sunset Strip”. The character had the name of “Kookie”, and he carried a comb in his hip pocket for emergency adjustments to his hair, before returning it to his hip pocket.

Kookie was a slang talking valet (played by Edd Byrnes) at the snazzy restaurant next to the hero’s detective agency office at 77 Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. In the series, he later left his job as a valet, to become part of the agency, and Kookie, along with a secretary named Suzanne, played a big part in helping the hero’s (Jeff and Stu) solve the mysteries in each week’s episode.

Stu, Jeff, Suzanne and Kookie were joined later in the series by a couple of more detective characters named Rex Randolph and J.R. Hale.

Actually Kookie had a big influence on the “Rock n’ Roll” generation, and most of the (then) kids carried a comb in their hip pocket for emergency purposes. The “Ducktail” hair style was big at the time as the symbol of the “rebel” generation, and with Elvis and his hair making the scene about the same time, the combs generally got a work out.

Some of those of us that still have enough hair to comb continue to carry the emergency combs in our hip pockets. Although the ”Ducktail” hair style has been replaced by multi colored Spikes as a sign of rebellion, the pocket combs still get a fair amount of use. In fact one of the items I’ve seen in Department Stores here is the Ace Hard Rubber Comb (plastic combs break when you set down with one in your hip pocket, hard rubber combs don’t).

And no, I don’t have a clue why the action of the “Jeepney Helper” caused my memory to jump back to the 1950’s, but it did.

Posted 28 August 2008

Where do they get those names?? ? ?  ?

            Disclaimer

            Before we get into the question above, those that have been exposed to China Charlie in the past know that I normally avoid using names of people or businesses, but every so often, in the interest of the story  I have no choice.        

     That’s the case with the piece below

            China Charlie

            Recently, I saw a new (what appeared to be a) restaurant, named “La Pluie Wine Club” here in the “Middle Kinkdom”, that raised a couple of questions in my mind.

            The first question was where did they get the name of “La Pluie” for this place?

            Having a mind that’s basically a “warehouse of useless information” with an “off the wall” skew to it, the only place I could think of was a half hour T.V. sitcom from several decades ago (before 1967 when colour showed up on the “small screen”).

The show was originally named the “Andy Griffith Show”, and was followed up by a sequel named “Mayberry RFD”. The show centered around life in a small town named Mayberry located in the U.S. mid south. The main characters in the show were its Sheriff (named "Andy Taylor", played by Andy Griffith) and his Deputy (named "Barney Fife", played by Don Notts)

Andy (the voice of reason) was a laid back widower with a son (named "Opie", played by Ron Howard) who lived with “Aunt Bea”, while Barney was a hyper, super officious individual.

As the deputy, Barney was only allowed to have one bullet (that he had to carry that in his pocket) and was instructed to carry his citation book under his hat. He also had to ask Andy’s permission before he could use the siren or flashing lights on the “squad car”.

 The show also had a full range of other characters, including Floyd the barber, Gomer Pyle (at the Gas Station) and Otis, the town drunk. Otis was given a key to the sheriff’s office and to one of the cells, so he could put himself in jail when he had too much to drink (Mayberry was located in a “dry county”, where any alcohol was illegal)

            O.K., all this is fine, but where do I suspect “La Pluie” came from?  

            As this show was one of my favorites, I wanted my kids to have a chance to see  and laugh at it, so I bought a set of DVD’s entitled “The best of Barney”. This set was of several episodes, including one where a goat eats a few sticks of dynamite from a construction site, winds up with Otis in his private cell, but then escapes. In the course of looking for the goat, Barney expresses concerns for the goat “going Ka’ Blooey” several times.

            This show was (and still is) in syndication in several countries around the world. If the dialogue was translated into French, there’s a good chance that “Ka’ Blooey” could have come out as “La pluie”, and perhaps somehow the owner of the “La Pluie Wine Club picked up on it.

            Yeah, I  know it’s a “stretch”, but how the heck else could he have picked this name.

            My second question is what in the world is a Wine Club?

 Is it a place to go to enjoy setting around getting “fried” on fine wines?

If it is, what in the world is it doing in the “Middle Kinkdom”?

Keep in mind that up until recently, this country had local wines that were suspected of being “aged” with formaldehyde or either (we used to joke about checking the label and commenting that “Tuesday was a good day”, forget looking for a year, month or even a week).

Also up until a few years ago, the connoisseurs here considered expensive Cognac mixed with Sprite as a classy party drink.

I’ve been told that there are some decent local wines here now, and I haven’t seen anyone mixing Cognac with soft drinks in quite a while, but I suspect that without a catchy name, a true “Wine Club” would have a difficult time.

Posted 21 August 2008

 Of Scents and Sense… . . .  .  .

            There’s a program on one of the cable networks this season that describes some of the more distasteful occupations out there, but I’m sure they didn’t (or won’t) cover the occupation of  “scent smeller”. A recent happening showed me that there should be such an occupation, but not everyone would really be qualified.

           Not too long ago, I had a friend ask me take a whiff of some new After Shave cologne that was advertised as specifically scented for “Mature Men”. This stuff had an odor slightly reminiscent of a “French House of Ill Repute” mixed with Horse Sweat (not that I’ve ever been in a “French House of Ill Repute”, or for that matter any “House of Ill Repute”-some pretty smelly smoke filled beer joints with some “ladies of the night” hangin’ ‘round, but never a true “House of Ill Repute”).

            The major problem with having me sniff this stuff is that at this point in my life, I passed being a “Mature Man” sometime a decade or so back, and am at the stage where most men start regressing towards childhood. Given this I’m not sure if I would be qualified to judge a scent aimed at the “Mature” Market. Besides, what the heck is a “Mature Man” supposed to smell like?

            I decided to look at the combination of odors that make up the essence of the average “Mature Man”, and in the process question some of the “facts” concerning “Maturity”

            I’ve seen medical studies that indicate that a person (man or woman) stops growing (except for their nose and ears), sometime around their 30^th birthday and start to shrink with age.

I’m reasonably sure this is not necessarily so.

Ask anyone on the wrong side of 60 if it’s as easy to bend over and pick up something on the floor as it was when they were 30 or 40, and they’ll tell you it’s a whole lot more difficult “than it used to be”. To me this indicates that a person actually grows taller as they get older, making it more difficult to reach the floor. This phenomenon of not being able to reach their feet when taking a shower anymore leads to a fair build up of “Toe Jam” in “Mature” people which is one of the basic scents surrounding “old guys”

Most “Mature Men” that I’ve been around also tend to pass gas at the most inopportune times, and as this tends to leave a certain residual odor not only in the atmosphere but in their clothes, it adds another aroma to the air that surrounds “old dudes”.

Another thing about most “Mature Men” is that a large part of the mature population have “store bought” plastic teeth.

This has a positive side, in that if someone complains and tells a “Mature Dude” to “go brush his teeth”, he can take them out, hand them to the complainer and tell them “you want them brushed, you do it”. The “downside” of plastic teeth is something called “Denture Breath” (AKA “Dragon Breath”), that most Mature People live with.

If you combine the odors from (1) Toe Jam, (2) residuals from passed gas and (3) Denture Breath, it can result in a semi toxic combination of scents. Add in the smell of used cigarette smoke from mature smokers, and it really gets odoriferous. We can thank the gods that this combination of odors is generally in the atmosphere in parts per million small enough to be well below toxic levels, and is treatable. Generally soap, or toothpaste and water will at least temporarily correct the problem until to next gastric eruption or snack..

To me this combination pretty well sums up the air of the “Mature Men”. I’m reasonably sure that what the people developing a smell for “Mature Men” wanted to make was a scent that would cover or at least blend with the combination, but somehow “missed the mark”

. Also somehow, I doubt that I’ll ever be asked to pass judgment on any scent.

O.K., so what does sense have to do with the dissertation above, you say? 

Absolutely nothing at all. It was included in the heading for this only because I thought it made it sound sorta’ legitimate.

   Posted 20 June

A day in the life of… . . .  .  .

            A few years ago, there was a series of books of photographic studies, that the titles started with “A day in the life  

of ... .  .”, that photographically followed an average person through an average day, some where in the world.

            O.K., so I was a teenager in the “fabulous fifty’s” (1950’s that is) and every so often get all misty eyed and nostalgic about some of the iconic things and advertising slogans of that era in North America that seem to have gone the way of  ”Willkie (campaign) Buttons” (Wendell L. Willkie was the unsuccessful candidate running against Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 U.S. Presidential election).

In the midst of one of these reveries, I got to thinking what it would have been for an advertising man to do “A day in the life of a person in North America”, from the prospective of the advertising in the 1950’s and 1960’s, so here goes.

            Getting ready to go out into the world each day, after brushing your teeth with Pepsodent Tooth Paste (“you’ll wonder where the yellow went, if you brush your teeth with Pepsodent”)  if you were a lady, you were advised to use Ivory Soap (that was “99 and 44, 100% pure”), and Clairol Shampoo (“Does she, or doesn’t she?”)

            If you were a guy, you were advised by Gillette Blue Blades to “Look Sharp, Feel Sharp, Be Sharp”. And who could ignore the warnings of Brylcreem (a men’s hairdressing that advised “A little dab’ll do ya’”), or Hi Karate (a men’s after shave that had self-defense instructions with each bottle), that too much could make you irresistible to women and lead to possible attacks. Or the sexy lady that told you that “There’s something about an Aqua Velva Man” (Aqua Velva was another aftershave).

             This was just before you slipped into your Jockey Shorts (“The best seat in the house”), and had your Quaker Puffed Rice or Puffed Wheat (that was “Shot from Guns”). Of course you needed to put some Borden’s Milk (“If it’s Borden’s, it’s got to be good”) on your cereal, and spread some Smucker’s Jam (“With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good”) on your Wonder Bread Toast.

            After you finished eating, you’d lite up a Lucky Strike (“LSMFT  Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”) or Old Gold ( for “A treat instead of a treatment”) Cigarette, while the ladies checked to be sure they had put the  Duz Laundry Soap (“Duz does everything”) in the Westinghouse washer (“You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse”).

            After all of this, you’d go out to take Dinah Shore’s lyrical advice to “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet”.

            At lunch time you might have a Tuna Salad Sandwich made with Star Kist Tuna (“Sorry Charlie, Star Kist only wants Tuna that tastes good, not Tuna with good taste”), and a cold Miller (“The champagne of bottled beer”), Schlitz (“The beer that made Milwaukee famous”) or Carling’s Black Label (“Hey Mabel, Black Label”) beer.

            Later in the afternoon, you might “sneak” in a Pepsi Cola (with “More bounce to the once”).

            For dinner, you might have a pasta dish of some variety that had a sauce made with Contadina Tomato Paste (“How did they get eight great tomato’s in that little bitty can”) and then set down to watch the Sid Caesar's “Show of shows” on your RCA T.V. (“His master’s voice”), sponsored by Nestle’s (“N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestle’s  makes the very best shaucolte [a slurred choclate]”).

            That pretty well covers an ad man’s version of a typical 1950-1960’s day in ‘merican life.

            An interesting foot note to this is that in the beginning, I wrote a note about the 1940 U.S. Presidential election that was won by Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his first inaugural speech in 1932, he used the phrase “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself”. Ironically, recently I was in a Southeast Asian country that was having an election, and saw the quote on a political poster (correctly attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt). After 76 years, that statement's still pretty much true.

          Until next time, ya’ll have a rice day

  Posted 21 May

                                               Wasn’t that a party??? ?  ?

            O.K. so this one happened a long time ago, but it still has a certain “off the wall” humor to it.

            I mean there I was, on a bus on my way into China, listening to a "shady"  MP3 download of an old vocal group called “The Irish Rover’s” doing a song titled “Wasn’t that a party” that reminded me of a friend’s experience 40+ years ago..

As is pretty typical in this part of the world, I was listening to the song on an "iffy" version of a very popular MP 4 player, camera, radio and video recorder

            The song I was listening to  has to do with a party that “got out of hand’, and wound up with the lead singer telling the judge that it would take the 90 days he was just sentenced to for being drunk and disorderly, just to recover from the party. In the song, somewhere along the way someone wore a grapefruit like a hat, had a conversation about Hockey with a cat, was blowing a siren from a police car in his back yard, etc.

            Getting back to semi reality, before I was married the first time, I had a friend that was known to have more than a few “brews”, and sometimes would have to ask someone else if he had a good time the night before, or not.

            In any case, my girl friend at the time had a friend named Murphy that my buddy got interested in, and one weekend her family had a party. The morning after the party, I got a call from my buddy asking if I could give him a ride to her place.

            It seems that somehow, after having just a bit too much to drink the night before, he had gotten a ride home from the party, and thought he remembered leaving his car parked in front of the Murphy house.

And, Oh by the way, he wasn’t sure where his shoes were either.

Anyway, I picked him up and drove him to the site of the previous evening’s drunken frivolity. While I had seen my buddy in action and visited various sites of his good times before, I really wasn’t prepared for what I walked into that particular morning. We arrived at the Murphy household about the time they were setting down to a late breakfast that someone thought should include some runny scrambled eggs, that had a good part of the folks at the table looking a “little green around the gills”.

In addition, Grandpa Murphy looking a little “sunkin’ in”, in the face. Apparently, sometime during the festive chaos the evening before, he had decided that he should take his false teeth out, but couldn’t remember where he left them. If you wear dentures and have tried to consume anything reasonably solid without them, you’d understand the scrambled eggs that particular morning.

After spending a good part of the morning looking for my buddy’s shoes (and eventually finding them on the back porch), we left. As we were leaving, most of the Murphy household was still looking for Grandpa’s teeth, while “Mama Murphy” was preparing a lunch of puree of something or other in a blender.

I understand that they did find Grandpa’s teeth later that afternoon, in the "dust bunnies" under the sofa, but no one ever did figure out how they got there.

This same buddy had a “few too many” at a surprise birthday party a year or so later, and decided to climb a small tree. The tree was limber enough that it didn’t break under his weight, but did bend double, and left him clinging to the top of it, while basically standing on his head.

While the song by the Irish Rovers came out a couple of years later, I’m not sure if the party and events of the next morning at the Murphy residence or the tree climbing incident had anything to do with the lyric (there was no mention of lost teeth or bending trees in the song, although the lyric does make reference to someone cutting down his neighbor’s tree).

Wasn’t that a party?? ?

Posted 30 April

                                                                   I know nothing, Nothing!!! ! !  !    

I’m “in to” old movies and old T.V. Series, and recently while watching “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” (a comedy about an air race, between London and Paris in 1910) my wife commented about the way the German (military) Team was portrayed as a group of bumbling buffoons.

 I also happen to enjoy watching the old series “Hogan’s Hero’s”, that’s based on a bunch of allied prisoners of war in Stalag 13 (a prison camp), during World War II. This group was lead by an American named Hogan (played by Bob Crain) that outwitted the German Commandant (Col. Klink AKA Werner Klemper) and the Sergeant of the Guard (Sgt Schultz AKA John Banner) on a weekly basis over several T.V. Seasons

Any time the German Commandant or the Sergeant got in Hogan’s way, he would suggest that they consider what life would be like on the “Russian Front” (after more than 40 years, you still hear people quoting Sgt Schultz, with “I know nothing-nothing!!”).  This series was aired in the late 1960s, and was in fact based on an very un-funny allied operation that was based in the real Stalag 13 and lead by a U.S. Air Force Col. named Hogan

Personally, I’ve always viewed these characterizations as they’re intended-a humorous caricature that’s part of a parody of life in general, In reality, I found out that contrary to all we were taught, it was not all that regimented in the German Armed Forces during World War II.

During the 1960’s I worked with a friend that had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany after the war, and had served with the Luftwaffe in Poland. Apparently he was originally assigned as a (rear facing) Gunner on the notorious Stukka dive bombers, but was grounded because he shot part of the rudder (“vertical fin” for you aeronuts) and radio antennas off a couple of trainer planes.

He always enjoyed relating a story about his time “on the Russian Front”, that involved a commander that believed in a strict military separation of officers and enlisted men, and the supply problems that the German military had on the Eastern Front".

It seems that one of the items that was always in short supply was socks, and that as a substitute they came up with a triangular piece of fabric that they would wrap around a soldier’s foot if he didn’t have socks. For the sake of this story, we’ll call it a “triangle”.

Through the “grapevine”, the commanders in a unit stationed on the “Russian Front” found out that they were going to be “inspected” by a general from Berlin, who believed that commanders needed to associate with the troops in their command, and to know them well. This unit had (as was above) one commander that refused to associate with his troops out side of the military structure, and the other commanders wondered how he would handle the General’s visit.

The day of the visit by the General, all the troops of the unit were lined up for inspection, and the general started down the line asking commanders to demonstrate how well he knew the men in his command. When he got to the commander that believed he was better than his men, the commander bragged that he knew his men well enough to know who had socks and who was wearing the “triangle”. Of course, the General took the challenge, and started down the line, randomly asking the commander who had socks and who didn’t. He would stop at a man in the ranks, ask the commander what he was wearing, and then have the soldier prove what they were wearing by removing a boot. Surprisingly, the commander was 100% correct in his knowledge of what his men had on.

After the General left, knowing this officers attitude, his fellow commanders asked how in the world he did it. His answer was “Simple. This morning I ordered each man to put a sock on one foot, and a ‘triangle’ on the other. When I told the General what he had on, the soldier would remove the boot that had the correct one in it.”

I guess they weren’t all bumbling buffoons… . . . .  .  .

Posted 30 March 2008

The Devil’s playground, or don’t these guys have something better to do?? ?  ?

        There are those that claim that the idle mind is the devil’s playground. Several years ago, a buddy of mine and I seemed to confirm this statement (but then, of course we had added the influence of several beers to the idle warped minds that reside in our craniums)

            In the late 1980’s and early 90s, I was working for a major U.S. footwear company that had their primary source of product in an area of the “Middle Kinkdom” about half way between Hong Kong and Shanghai. While this area was (and still is) the home to many factories producing footwear and garments, it was never a center of entertainment, so if you were “stuck” there, you had to make your own.

           Quite often an evening’s activities would include such fun things as trying to drink all of a single brand of beer in a bar, seeing  how many turns you could get with a snack plate that had a “dimple” molded in (that allowed it to spin like a top), calculating the total combined weight of all the female human mammary’s in the country (2264 metric tons), etc.

            Now, I’ve always maintained that most North Americans (“Gwailoh’s”) who come to the “Middle Kinkdom” and can speak the local language have hemorrhoids for brains and should use Preparation H to remove their earwax, but I have “run across” a few exceptions.

            One Saturday Night, I was stuck in this entertainment capital of Southeast Asia with one of the few decent aforementioned “Gwaiohs” (employed as a trademark security person by the same company as I was). We were taking on the hotel bars’ supply of the local brew, when we “hatched” a practical joke of major proportions.

            It seemed that just after going through a divorce, his boss had come to Southeast Asia on a tour to check out the trademark infringement problems in the area. He had returned to North America a week or so earlier, and after consuming the hotel bars’ entire inventory of the local “suds”, we decided we really needed to do something to cheer him up.

            The following week, my compatriot was heading off to one of the other Southeastern Asian countries, that’s known for its Topless Bars, live exhibitions of the act of human procreation, darts shot across a room using an unusual “shooter”, and such. We decided that my buddy’s boss needed a friendly note from this country, and settled on the idea of a Post Card with a Topless girl on it, to be sent to his office.

            During his trip the next week, my co-conspirator followed up on our plan. He purchased the postcard with a picture of a rather well endowed Lass on the front, took it to one of the local “clubs”, had one of the “hostess’s” write a message on the back concerning how much she had enjoyed the boss’s visit and how she was looking forward to seeing him again, put postage on the card and dropped in a postal box.

            I’m not sure of the other guy, but I had forgotten about it until a little over two months later, when my phone rang in the middle of the night. When I answered it, the voice on the other end said “You did it. You and that fool that works for me did it. I know you did it, but I can’t prove it”. Being a little confused, I asked who was calling and what was he talking about. The voice identified itself as my buddy’s boss, and he started to laugh (thank God he had a sense of humor)..

            The office that he worked in had several hundred people in it, and from the way he described the condition of the card, when he received it, it looked as though every one of them had read it before it was delivered to his desk. He told me that the card was badly “dog eared”, the writing was badly faded, (and a bit smeared) and that it helped explain why most of the female employees had “that silly smirk” on their faces, when they talked to him.

           We all had a good laugh, but we never repeated this practical joke again (mainly because it got to be too well known, and would have been spotted right away). Besides, my partner in this little episode and I had a few other ideas to try.

        Until next time “Y’all have a rice week now”

Posted 21 March 2008

Wingnuts.. . .  .  .   .

O.K., so it’s finally Spring.

You know, the season that causes a young man’s fancy to turn to thoughts of... . . . (well we won’t go into that) It’s also is the season when the Iron in your blood turns to lead in your butt, and if you’re on the wrong side of 60, living in the “Middle Kinkdom”, for some people their brain turns to mush.

Such was the case with a group of old “China Hands” that would get together for a late Sunday breakfast a few years ago. While normally issues of importance to the survival of the world would be discussed, this particular Sunday the subject turned to a serious conversation about the Radio Control toys available in a local toy store. The group discussed the radio control cars, boats and airplanes that were available, and before long 3 of the guys decided that they would “go together” (split the cost) of an R/C airplane. The plane they selected was battery powered and had a cost of approximately 20 U.S. dollars (big spenders, this bunch).

The next week they brought the plane (fully charged) into the coffee shop where we met for breakfast, so they could proudly display their joint purchase. It set there majestically, in it’s putrid shade of yellow, admired  (sort of) by all. The power for this particular aircraft was a small electric motor with a 3 bladed propeller on the trailing edge of each wing.

In retrospect, as most of the World War II bombers had girl's names, we should have followed tradition, and named it the “Amelia Erhart” (as it turned out, this plane was more of a "bomb" than a bomber).

As one of the “owners” had a pilot’s license, it was decided that he should take the plane “up” on its maiden flight. With the instructions written only in a language that none of us could read, nobody in the group knew that the controller "sticks" controlled the power on each motor individually, and that to make the plane gain altitude, you had to push both of the control levers the same distance forward at the same time, and match the distance (if one was further forward than the other it made the plane turn, and if you pulled one (or both) back the plane would dive.

As they were leaving, one of the guys suggested to the pilot and his assistant that they wait until they got to the area selected for the flight, and not try to get it off the ground in an adjacent parking lot. As soon as they were out of sight, they tried to get the plane into the air in the parking lot, and flew it into the side of a parked car at an altitude of about 2 feet. The plane and the car suffered minor damage, but both were judged safe for further operation.

We convinced the pilot to hold his take off until they got to the area that we had deemed safe for aircraft operation, and also warned his assistant about keeping his fingers clear of the spinning plastic propellers-when he turned his head to ask "What?" he stuck one of his fingers into the path of the “prop” and wound up with a “Bandaid battle ribbon” as a reward for his efforts.

By the time they were ready for “take off” our activities had attracted a fair size audience (the folks here in the “Middle Kinkdom” will stop to watch most anything). The “pilot” pushed both of the control "sticks" to the “stops” and the plane shot out of the assistant’s bandaged hands and into the air.

 When the “pilot” was satisfied that the plane had reached a reasonable altitude (about 10 seconds into the flight,and at about 30 feet) he backed off one of the control sticks, and the plane promptly banked into an unexpected turn, headed around the corner of a building. I was able to control my laughing long enough to remind the “pilot” that the radioncontrol units on these things were “line of sight”, and that as soon as he couldn’t see the plane, it would be out of his control. By this time the plane was just about out of his sight (behind the building), so he took off chasing it at a dead run.

As the rest of us were laughing too hard to run as fast as he did (which still wasn’t quite fast enough to keep up with the plane), by the time we got around the corner of the building, he was standing in the middle of the street looking for the plane. Actually, it was fairly easy to see the basic track of the plane, by matching the direction that most of the pedestrians were looking.

We finally found the plane, stuck in a tree, and paid a young guy to climb up and get it.

After a few more flights that ended with the plane stuck into various other things, and being patched back together with a fair amount of transparent tape and some guys business card, the pilot “got the hang of it”, and just before Sundown it made its last controlled flight.

The thing actually flew out of the transmitter range without hitting anything and the last we saw of it, it was heading off in the direction of the Public Security Bureau  headquarters (a Government Security Branch), and into the setting Sun never to be seen again.

Maybe we should have named it the “Amelia Erhart”… . . .  .

 Posted 1 March 2008

                                     The Mad Frenchman of Lan Kwai Fung

            When I started introducing my current wife (yes, there has been more than one) to my friends, she asked the question “do you know anyone that’s not a character?” I hadn’t really given it much thought, but with my lifestyle, I guess I have been drawn to some of the more “unusual” folks that seem to be part of living outside your home environment.

            One of the more unusual characters I’ve met, was a French Chef that I met in two countries, and was enough of a character that he “made” the Hong Kong newspapers more than once (including a feature on his life).

            For the sake of confidentiality, I won’t use his real name, but I’m sure that anyone that lived in Hong Kong in the early 90’s will recognize the story and know who this piece is about. For this story, we’ll call him “Pierre”.

            It seems that Pierre was involved in the French Resistance towards the end of the German Occupation during World War II. According to the story, he was captured and was scheduled to be executed, but was saved when the Allied Army marched through Paris, and drove the Germans out.

            Again, according to the story, after the war, Pierre wound up in North Africa, in (French) Algeria during the problems between the French and Algerians over independence. The newspaper article also mentioned that he was married to an Algerian Lady during this time.

            After the problems in North Africa, he returned to France, where he had one of the more popular radio shows for a few years and became a certified chef.

            I first met this guy while I was living in South Korea in the mid 1980’s, when he was managing a club for overseas sailors that were “in port”. This was a place where you could get a Cheeseburger made with Blue Cheese, Coffee and a U.S. magazine (or newspaper) for Lunch (Sunday’s it was difficult to get a table). Pierre was also known for his antics, particularly if he walked out of the kitchen (in his chef’s hat, with a cigar in his mouth) and saw a patron that was talking with untouched food in front of him. Pierre would stomp over to the table, and hands on his hips, demand to know why the patron was not eating. Invariably, before he would get an answer, Pierre would go into a tirade about if the person didn’t like his food, to get out (more than once I saw guys escorted to the door before getting their check).

            For some reason, this guy and I seemed to get along pretty well, and established a relationship that probably would be called a friendly acquaintance. At the time, it was rumored that he was secretly married to his Korean Manager (We’ll call her “Miss Kim”). You always knew where he was because in a city known for its narrow streets, he drove a full sized American Mercury Marquis (a big car even by ‘merican standards).

            By the late 1980’s, I had moved to Hong Kong, and in my position, had to do a fair amount of entertaining of visiting business associates, before taking them into China. As the area of Hong Kong called Lan Kwai Fung had the highest concentration of western restaurants, bars and discos, I became familiar with it and a lot of the businessmen there.

            One evening, I “bumped” into Pierre and Miss Kim in Lan Kwai Fung, and we had a chance to talk, It seems Pierre was in fact married to Miss Kim while they were in South Korea, and they had moved to Hong Kong to open a restaurant in Lan Kwai Fung with some other partners, named “Café De Paris”.

            I would see Pierre from time to time, and we would share a few laughs, but it was pretty easy to keep up on his antics in Hong Kong through the newspapers. First there was a couple of articles relating to “the chef coming out of the kitchen with a cigar in his mouth, and ejecting patrons for not eating” (guess who?). Then there was the fight between the partners over control of the “Café De Paris” (that Pierre won).

            At one point he had gained enough notoriety that there were “Pierre” post cards for sale on Hong Kong Island, that had a caricature of Pierre in his chef’s hat and his ever-present cigar in his mouth.

            Through the years, I’ve lost track of Pierre, but I'm reasonably sure that he’s out there somewhere in his chef’s hat, cigar clamped between his teeth, giving some guy that he caught not eating his meal, the “Bums Rush” out of his eatery.

    Pierre, we solute you for being a true character

Posted 15 February 2008

                                                                               How old are these guys?? ?  ?

            In a world of seemingly unending award shows, sometimes I really wonder who determines what performer or performance deserves to be singled out as the best?

            After looking at the selection of “entertainment” on a satellite/cable connection recently, and seeing all the “hoopla” over the “Reality T.V.” shows, I guess it’s O.K. that we're residing in a country that has basically banned English language T.V.. One of the benefits of not being able to view the current fare available on the “tube” is that our kids have a limited exposure to it (my reference to “the Tube” probably pretty well dates me , as the CRT is about to take it’s place in history along with Skate Keys. These days most TV’s are flat screened, LCD or “Plasma”- cripe sakes, I remember when “plasma” was something to do with condensing blood-I am getting old).

            In any case, this lack of “entertainment” in a language that I can understand has led me to the “TV Series” section of my favorite DVD shop, and we have acquired a fair collection of TV shows that have been “in syndication” for at least 2 decades.

            This has also exposed our two children to the likes of “Magnum P.I.”, “The Rockford Files”, “Quincy” (CSI from  the 60s), “Happy Days”, “The Red Skelton Show”, “The Honeymooners” etc.

        While the second season of “The Wild, Wild West” was tops on our daughter’s list for quite a while (the first season was in Black and White), her currently favorite is “Murder She Wrote”. Our son is into “Banacek” (a series about a Polish free lance insurance investigator, that was done in the 70’s, a time when “Pollack Jokes” were the “in thing” in North America).  

My personal favorite is “Peter Gunn” from the mid 50’s. In this series, Craig Stevens played a cool private detective that hung around a Jazz Club named “Mother’s”, where his girlfriend was singing.

Given the type of “cartoons” shown on the cable networks that target children and younger adults (that seem to be primarily focused on violence and destruction), maybe getting “hooked” on the TV shows from a lot of yesterdays ago, isn’t such a bad thing

            This exposure to the likes of “Hogan’s Hero’s” (with John Banner’s classic line “I see nothing, NOTHING!”), “Columbo”, “Baba Black Sheep” (AKA “The Black Sheep Squadron”) , along with their Dad’s enjoyment of  music from the 60’s through the 80’s, and Steam Railroading, has led to some interesting conversations with friends. Recently, while having dinner with a friend, our pre-teen daughter asked who she was imitating (cross eyed, with her chin pulled back with her mouth hanging open). She finally had to tell us that it was one of Red Skelton’s character’s, “Clem Caddlehopper” (and once we knew who she was imitating, it actually was a pretty good one).

            All of this has led me to wonder what’s going to happen 10 to 15 years from now, when these kids are out with their friend’s and they start reminiscing about their favorite entertainment when they were “young”. I suspect that while their friends will have fond memories of “Britney”, “Christina”, “Power Puff Girls” “Scooby Doo” and “Jimmy Neutron”, our kids will be talking about “Reverend Jim and Nardo”, “Radar O’Rielly”, ”Sergeant Shultz”, “Johnny Cash”, "Bing Crosby" and “The Doobie Brothers”, and discussing what a Smoke Stack was.

         One of the series that we have is the original Rod Serling “Twilight Zone”.

        After discussing their memories, I have the feeling that our kids contemporaries will probably feel that the "Twilight Zone" is where they grew up, and wonder how old they actually are.

Posted 30 January 2008

                                                Advertising Hong Kong style, and Lord almighty its cold.. . . .  .

O.K., so by now you know that I’ve changed from China Charlie to the “Jetage Bum”, and expanded my horizons to include some memories of the wackier side of the rest of our world. However, just about the time I figure that it’s time to look outside the “Middle Kinkdom”, something “pops up” in the area that’s just too good to pass up.

Such was the case recently, when I was in Hong Kong, and saw an advertisement on the side of several buses for a new brand of condom, made with a synthetic material. This ad had a picture of one of these “sleeves” tied off  and inflated, with some guy's foot standing on it, looking like some sort of a weird balloon.

If you were to believe a character named “Hermie” in the 1970’s movie “The Summer of ‘42”, these things are to be filled with water, and thrown off a garage roof (close “Hermie”, but no cigar). Of course, this could be one use for them, but not necessarily their reason for being. And neither is blowing them up like a balloon and stepping on them.

While it’s not my place to judge, but the whole thing with this is, have we gone too far with what’s acceptable advertising? I mean on local T.V., you can see rather graphic ads for several different “Breast Enhancing creams” and devices for the ladies to use for the same function, .

Personally, I miss the Marlboro Cowboy that encouraged you to light up one of his “Cancer Sticks” (which eventually killed him), the Phillip Morris page boy with a call for guy named Phillip Morris, a guy “chugging” a glass of Schlitz, or even a stern faced Inspector 57 stretching a pair of Hanes “skivvies” and letting you know that if she says they don’t go, then they don’t go. But, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing condoms on the side of buses. Ahh well, I guess I’m getting old…. . . .  .

On another subject, it’s turned cold here (at 8:00 A.M., 6 degrees Celsius with 72% humidity and a 35 Km/Hr wind). While this is not considered cold in many parts of the world, in an area with no heat in the buildings, single pane windows, and generally not equipped to handle cold temperatures, it is cold.

While temperatures like this can make a person uncomfortable, the fact that it’s cold is really “driven home” (for the guys) when you’ve forgotten your gloves, been outdoors for several hours, and have to “make a trip to the Men’s Room” (sometimes referred to as the WC or CR). You guys know what I mean.

  Posted 20 January 2008

                                                     Strange sightings in China… . . .  .

            O.K., I know that I wrote in the paragraphs above that writing about the “highway antics” here in China was getting boring. And also, that basically, I was going to start “picking on” other parts of the world, but recently I saw some things on the roads here that caused even someone as “jaded" as yours truly did a “double take” over.

            The first involved a 45 foot container “rig” and one of the major bridges over the Pearl River south of Guangzhou (Canton) on a foggy day.

            About 15 years ago, a ferry service was opened across the Pearl River south of Guangzhou, using several double ended ferries. They have 5 slips (docks) on both sides of the river, and enough “boats’ (I come from the Great Lakes area, where large vessels are referred to as “boats”, not ships) to keep most of the slips busy 24/7. This service has been very popular from the beginning, and is still the preferred way to cross the river today.

            As this service crosses the river on a very busy stretch (between the mouth of the river and Guangzhou, which is an ocean port), during fog it’s curtailed, and if the fog is “heavy”, cancelled. Just downriver” from the ferry slips, they built a major suspension bridge that opened about 10 years ago.

            During fogs that cause cancellation of the ferry service, the bridge gets much busier than normal, and quite often is the sight of monumental traffic jams.

            One of these fogs had “hit” recently, and my driver and I were heading across the bridge, and noticed that there was no traffic at all in the oncoming lanes (as with most bridges this size, the opposing traffic is separated by concrete barriers). Usually no oncoming traffic indicates a major  problem ahead.

            When we got to where we could see what the problem was, we knew what we saw, but neither one of us could figure out how the heck it happened. Somehow the driver of a container “rig” had managed to “jack knife” it on the bridge (on a straight hunk of road). Not only had this guy managed to ”jack knife” on straight road, being he had a 45 foot container behind the tractor, he managed to wedge it in tight between the center barrier and the railing of the bridge.

           As we approached the other end of the bridge, we met a heavy self propelled crane going the wrong way in our lane. I often wondered how long it took to sort that one out.

            Another one that we saw recently was not as spectacular, but had to take some serious patience to sort out.

            During “rush hours” here the single left turn lane at most intersections will spew forth at least 4 lanes of cars jockeying to make left turns, when the traffic signal changes to green. This rapid increase in cars moving side by side making left turns has lead to some interestingly “tortured sheet metal”, but not as interesting one morning recently.

            Some guy making one of the multi-lane left turns ran into the side of left turning armored car. That’s right folks, he ran right into the side of one of those vans with no side or rear windows, gun slots, money and armed men inside, and a number painted on the roof.

            Usually, you’ll see a group of people milling around, shouting and pointing fingers in a case like this, but not this morning. No one was outside the vehicles, and I’m not certain even the police wanted to get too close to the gun slots.

            I suppose they got it sorted out eventually.. .  .  .

Posted 6 January 2008

                                                    You give away what?? ? ?  ?

Having grown up with the likes of the TV Series “Peter Gunn” (who hung out at a Jazz joint called Mother's and had a girl friend that was a singer named Ettie) , and the original Playboy Magazine (as well as Alfred E. Newman and Mad Magazine), I developed quite a taste for good Jazz. Through the years, this has lead to “stunts” like getting on a airplane in Hong Kong on a Friday Morning, flying to a city in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, enjoying an outdoor Jazz Festival Saturday and Sunday, and flying back to Hong Kong the following Monday.

While this may seem a little “over the top”, a couple of decades ago I ran into a guy that made flying to the States for the weekend and a Jazz Festival seem pretty normal.

I was living by myself in Hong Kong at the time on the “Kowloon side”, and the weekends could get pretty “long”. I found that one of the better Jazz Bands (Quintet and “Big Band”) had “jam sessions” in the bar of a hotel on “Hong Kong side” on Sunday afternoons, and pretty soon became a “regular”.

Quite often an evening dinner with friends would start with a “Sunday Afternoon Jam Session”.

As I started to get acquainted with the performers and the other “regulars”, I got to talking to a middle aged Englishman with gray hair in a brush cut, that always showed up in a gray tweed jacket and bowtie, named Pete.

When I asked him what he “did”, his response was “I give away houses”.

I had to ask… . .  “Jeez Pete, that sounds pretty interesting, but how does it work?”

He explained that he was involved in some of the annual training and certification of pilots for a local airline, that was known for service and safety. This particular airline was also known for hiring some very attractive flight attendants from one of the island nations here  in Southeast Asia.

It seems that ‘ole Pete had quite an “eye for the ladies”, and when he would “take a fancy” to one of the flight attendants, he would marry her. Apparently, generally after a couple of years, things would get a little boring and Pete and his lady would have the marriage annulled (there was no divorce in the girl’s home country), and as part of the settlement, Pete would give her a house in her home country.

He told me that at the time, he was working on his third house.

His wife at the time showed up at one of the Sunday Afternoon Jam Sessions, and even from the perspective of 20 years or so, I still have to say that Pete had a pretty good eye.

I’ve often wondered since if ‘ole Pete is still giving houses away?

Posted 30 December 2007

                                                                            I know about trees, well maybe… . .  .

            Now, I come from the Great Lakes area of North America, so really know about trees. I mean I can identify Hickory, Soft Pine, Maple, Cherry, Apple, and Poplar trees. And, I know that, 1) you need to protect the roots on a transplant, with a ball of the dirt it was in, and 2) you trim the top of a tree by climbing up and cutting off the part that you don’t want.

            At least, that’s what I thought…. . . .  .

            In the early 70’s I was in one of Middle Eastern Countries for a year or so, and was working in factory that was about 45 minutes "down"  a new expressway, from the capital city. This expressway had opened just before we arrived, and was still being landscaped.

            One morning, on the way we got behind a tractor trailer truck that was loaded with what looked like sticks, and on the “sticks” was a guy that was throwing one off next to holes spaced along the roadway. The next morning, there were crews, shoveling what looked like Camel dung in to the holes, burying one end of the “sticks”, and giving the whole thing a liberal amount of water.

            The rest of the group I was with (our group consisted of 4 people) were from the same area as me, and we had a good time laughing a these poor guys working so hard with “sticks” that we knew would never sprout a leaf. If they had hears us laughing, they would have had the “last laugh”, when the “sticks started “leafing out”, and within a few months had leafy branches.

            On another occasion a couple of months later, I was shown just how little I did know about trees.

            We had a fourth floor “walk up” apartment on one of the main streets in the capital city of the same Middle Easter Country as the story above. This street had grass and trees planted between the gutters and sidewalks as well as electrical lines overhead. While the trees provided some welcome shade during the summer, they also created some problems for the power lines when they got too tall.

            Apparently, this was the case with one of the trees across from our apartment, as one day a crew showed up with hand trimming saws. At the time there was a lot of construction going on and wheel borrows and ladders were difficult to get, and treasured, if you had one (I saw a couple of guys carrying a wheel borrow between construction sites, to cut down the wear on the wheel bearing).

            In any case, the crew that came to trim the tree across from our apartment didn’t have a ladder, and although the tree was fairly tall, it didn’t look strong enough to support a climber. What appeared to be the supervisor waked around the tree a few times, and then told one of the crew to do something. The crewman left and came back a few minutes later with a group of guys carrying shovels. Pretty soon, they had the tree dug up and laid out on the sidewalk.

            The “supervisor” appeared to “pace off” the tree (measure the tree by counting the number of paces from root ball to the top), and had one of the crew with a saw cut about 4 feet out of the top of the tree  The then put the tree back in the hole, filled in around it, and gave it a good watering.

            I never saw the tree “drop” a leaf through this topping or after.

            Maybe I don’t know as much about tree’s as I thought… . . .  .

            Until next time “Y’all have a rice week now”

Posted 4 July 2007

Believe or not, its been two years, and give these guys a 100 miles… . . .

That’s right, it was two years ago since the first China Charlie showed up on the internet. That primer China Charlie was an introduction and a wish for a happy Independence and Dominion Day holidays for our friends from North America.

Since that first installment we’ve looked at a lot of "off the wall" local traffic situations, and the way that many of the local drivers "bend" the law to avoid obeying traffic regulations. We’ve also made suggestions for the addition of some motorized vehicular events at the up-coming Olympic Games to be held here in the "Middle Kinkdom" (the Olympic Committee must be pretty busy-they haven’t gotten back to us yet), and looked at what shaped China Charlie and gave me the "skewed" outlook on life that I seem to have (thanks to the likes of Alfred E. Newman and Henny Youngman).

A year or so ago, we established "China Charlie dot com" (that I keep thinking I need to get finished), and have plans to make it interactive.

Over the two years that we’ve done China Charlie, the pressures of maintaining a job and family have made coming up with something to comment on each week (or so) a little difficult on occasion, but the world is a big place with a lot of people that get into some strange situations, and the news services on the internet can always provide a fall back with an "unusual" story or two. While I do use this sometimes, there are just too many stories that are "too good to pass up", so we came up with the "Jebidah T. Kronk Award… . . " below.

The stories mentioned in "Jebidah T. Kronk" are stories that have been on the home pages of a couple of the most popular web browsers, and can be found on them or in their archives.

Anyway, on to this installment.. . . .

After living and working in "Developing Countries" for the past few decades, I’ve maintained that outside of most of the "Western countries", if "you give 2 drivers a hundred miles of straight paved 4 lane road, they’ll create a traffic jam". A minor construction project that I’ve been exposed to recently seems to lend a certain credence to my philosophy.

For the past several months, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time in a factory near one of the terminals for a river ferry across the Pearl River, part way between Guangzhou (Canton) and Hong Kong. The road that connects this terminal with the rest of the world is 2 marked lanes (that are expanded to 3 each way by the drivers) and has several small 2 lane bridges. Given the amount of containerized freight moving between factories here and container ports, the ferry’s are busy 24 hours a day, the traffic is fairly heavy, and the road really takes "a beating". A week or so ago, someone decided that a section of the roadway in the center of one of these bridges needed some work, and they took a jackhammer to an area approximately 4 feet wide that straddled the "center line". This took about 2 feet out of each "lane", but with the average lane width, still allowed for a normal traffic flow each way.

While the traffic on this road is generally congested the flow was usually pretty well organized, but as soon as the construction started, the traffic leading up to the bridge "snarled up" in gigantic proportions. The bridge still carries the two lanes of traffic as it did before, but it seems as though as soon as the signs and traffic cones went up, everyone had to try to be first, and they now try to "stuff" 3 (unofficial) lanes each way into one.

Ah yes, give them a hundred miles of straight road…. . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

"Butts accused of stealing toilet paper"-a woman named Butts in America caught stealing toilet paper from a courthouse

"11 year old arrested for Drunk Driving"-11 year old girl with blood/alcohol count higher than for an adult DUI takes police on 100 MPH chase in America

                    "Musician canned for focusing or wrong organ"-A woman that had played the organ in the same church for several               years let go for taking a job in a sex toy supplier

Anyone that’s taken a look at China Charlie over the past couple of years knows that normally I comment on the more "unusual" aspects of the expat life style. While these comments have centered mainly on every day life and some of the characters that hang out in South China, occasionally we’ve taken a look at life in other parts other parts of the world.

The subject of this installment concerns a far more serious subject, and although the reason for it is local, the tips could be useful in almost any part of the world.

That subject is the protection of yourself, and loved ones..

The reason for my temporary change of literary outlook is the recent rumors of thefts, attacks and attempted kidnappings that seem to be centered around a store operated by a major American retail chain and, the local shopping center it’s located in it.

What follows are a few tips from a "scruffy old dude that’s bummed around the world" for a few decades, and managed, generally, to keep out of trouble.

Don’t depend on assistance from Security Personnel

Generally, Security Agencies operate at an investigative level, and will show up after an incident to determine who did what, and how to prevent it from happening again. Don’t rely on any assistance from a Security "Guard". Most have minimum training and they always seem to be "somewhere else" when needed.

Check out the people around you

Every so often, take a quick look at the people around you. Generally, you can tell if you’re welcome or not, even though you may not speak the local language. Facial expressions, "body language" and general actions will let you know if you’re unwelcome or being stalked.

Decide in advance what’s expendable

Thieves are generally after goods and not trouble. If accosted by a thief, it’s best to let them have what they want, try to get a good description of the person and to not defy them. Quite often a thief is more nervous than the victim, and if they’re armed, they can be "pushed" into doing something harmful.

Given this, it’s best to take a look at the things you’re wearing (or carrying), and decide what’s worth defending, and if anything (other than your kids) is worth risking possible injury over.

A few common items and actions that can give you an advantage

Keep in mind that most "bad guys" depend on the element of surprise as their advantage, and if you’re quick enough, you can "turn the tables" on them. Some of the things listed below may look as though they were dreamt up by Larry, Moe and Curley, but they can work when needed. It’s not a bad idea to go over various scenarios and possible reactions in you mind enough times that they become automatic. A few are:

1) If you’re confronted by a thief, scream or wave or point-anything to attract attention. These guys assume that by the time you figure out what’s happening, it’s over and they’re on their way. A quick move, or attracting extra attention on your part can change all that.

2) A good healthy stomp on the bridge of a foot, or kick in the shins generally changes a person’s focus. A person that’s intent on grabbing something from you will not expect a sharp pain in the foot or lower leg, and the few seconds it will take them to figure out what happened and recover will give you time to run or (as above) attract attention (screaming, jumping up and down, etc.).

3) A sharp corner of a box, shopping cart, card, key, etc. jabbed into a person will distract them, and again, gives you time to take "defensive measures" (screaming, shouting and pointing, etc.)

4) A shopping bag with any items in it can make a good club. Even a bag of clothes swung "up aside the head" of a wanna' be thief can give you a few seconds advantage

The good part of these moves are that you can always "play innocent" and apologize later ("Geez, I didn’t see your foot there". Or "Oops, I didn’t see you standing there when I turned to wave at a friend, and your face happened to get in the way", or "watch out for that box or bag!").

The key is to stay alert to your surroundings, and if a person is intent on taking something that’s yours (except your kids), let them have it .Don’t let them turn your home into your prison.

Until next time (when it’s back to the [ab]normal side of life), "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 14 June 2007

O.K., so I had a piece all done and ready to post on what seemed to be the biggest world wide question last week, "who whacked Tony?" (and does anyone really care?). However, I saw something on the way to work that over-rides any question on the final episode of any T.V. series-an actual detour (or diversion) here in China (and what happens when they use one).

In several earlier "Charlie’s" I’ve commented on the lack of detours to route traffic around construction zones here, and the rigors of getting "right down into it" with the heavy equipment and construction guys. Well, this morning I saw what I figure is the reason why they don’t bother trying to divert traffic.

First, this detour was on a recently opened, fairly good piece of limited access divided (boulevard style) 6 lane road that my driver uses between my apartment and office. The re-routed traffic went to another reasonably good stretch of secondary road (through a residential/business district).

However, one of the problems with this secondary road is that it has an underpass of a restrictive height, and somehow a truck driver got one of those hi-cube containers (you know, the ones that have the label "caution 9’6" container" on them), between the underpass and the "tattle tail" (the "I" Beam bar across roads with the same clearance as an underpass down the road from it, to prevent high trucks from damaging a bridge). How the heck he did it, completely escapes me. In any case, there he was backing up, then going forward (apparently hoping the clearance under the bridge would somehow change-I wonder how long it took before someone suggested that he let some of the air out of the tires).

After we passed under the bridge, there was a repair crew getting ready to repair a damaged "Tattle Tail".

Ah ha (!) you say.

But wait. First, the truck was trapped on the opposite side of the bridge from the damaged "Tattle Tail".

Then, there’s the matter of the construction of the "Tattle Tail". These things are made of heavy "I" Beams, that would cause major damage to anything that hit them (they take bridge protection very seriously here), and there was no visible damage to the container.

Alright, so we get past the traffic situation caused by the container/damaged tattle tail, and work our way up toward the intersection where we would re-join the limited access road that we started out on, only to start meeting cars and trucks coming the wrong way in the right hand lane.

It seems that some "bright spot" opened the barriers just enough to allow some of the smaller vehicles to "sneak" onto the closed section of the road, and in true Chinese driving fashion, several people decided to avoid the detour and bypass the barrier. When they got to what ever had the road closed, due to the boulevard style dividers, they had to turn around and "backtrack" to the barrier (driving the wrong way in the closed lane). And of course, when the arrived at the barrier, they made a right turn onto the road used for the detour, which put them in the lane facing the detoured traffic.

We got out of this snarl about the time a lot of the vehicles that had "sneaked" past the barrier arrived back at the detour.

We didn’t stick around to see the results of all of this, but given the recent antics of the local drivers, I suspect that this probably created a traffic jam of monumental proportions.

Maybe it’s last month’s Blue Moon here, or perhaps it’s just me, but it seems as though the drivers here have gotten "daffier" than ever.

The other day, we passed two cars stuck together at a 90 degree angle (both in the wrong lane for their direction of travel), at an intersection with traffic signals (of course, this is the same intersection where the single left turn lane swells to a width of 3 lanes). We also saw a car that had gotten a "scuff" down the entire side while apparently playing "I bluff you" with another guy at a parking lot exit.

I guess it’s about time for me to get some "blinders…. . . .

    > All the "hoopla" about the final episode of the "Sopranos" (including the one mentioned above that I scraped)

    > Movie inspired dumb stunts (lewd salad dressing, "mocousy"  sandwich)

    > A driver making 2 "U Turns" on Interstate 5

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 3 June 2007

The Fine Art of Long Term Thievery … .. . . .

I don’t know if all the followers of China Charlie are old enough to remember some of the things in this installment, but through the years there have been several jokes, songs and stories of creative thievery.

A classic, was the old story about a guy that worked in a factory for 40 years before retiring. Everyday for that 40 years he would go through the factory gate with a wheel borrow full of sand. And, every day the same guard would stop him, and check the sand to see what he was taking out, and everyday, he would find nothing.

The day the workman retired, the guard (who was retiring also), said "I gotta’ to ask. For 40 years you’ve been pushing a wheel borrow full of sand the gate, and I’ve checked, but never found anything in the sand. I know you’ve been stealing something, but never figured out what. I really need to know what you’ve been stealing for the past 40 years."

The workman replied "Wheel Borrows", and left the Wheel Borrow he had with the guard.

In the 1970’s, the Country Music singer/writer Johnny Cash did a song titled "One Piece at a Time", that told the story of a guy that left Kentucky in 1949, and started working in a Detroit Auto Assembly Plant. He was given the job of putting wheels on Cadillac’s, and after watching them roll by on the production line every day, decided he wanted one.

The song relates how he came up with a plan to carry one piece of out of the factory each day, until he had all the parts needed to assemble a complete Cadillac automobile.

When he retired in 1979, he started assembling the car, but found that the parts didn’t necessarily match. According to the lyric, he wound up with a 1973 engine bolted to a 1953 transmission, a tail fin on one the rear fender and three headlights "up front".

After he got it all assembled, he registered it for license plates, and the "title" (legal registration paper) weighed 60 Lbs.

While both of these are "flights of fancy", they must have made sense to some guy in the U.S. state of Minnesota, because recently there was a story on the internet about this character being arrested for stealing Silver from his boss (apparently, he wasn’t as lucky as the "old Dude" with the wheel borrows, or Johnny Cash’s buddy with the "Psycho-Billy Cadillac).

According to the story, he stole nearly ½ million U.S. Dollars worth of the semi-precious metal from the plating plant he worked in, over a fairly short period. Given the relatively low price of Silver (compared to other "precious metals") and the amount used in plating, he had to be taking a fairly large amount of the plant’s inventory out each day to accumulate the estimated U.S.$ 450,000 in the three years since the company started noticing shortages.

According to the internet story apparently the perpetrator has confessed, and is receiving professional help for a gambling addiction.

Believe it or not, this same sort of thing happens here in the "Middle Kinkdom", with a lot of the products made here. This accounts for a lot of the "one of a kind" shoes and garments available in the shops. Personally, I feel that most of these shops are "missing the boat" by not marketing these production "misfits" as Chinese "Originals", "Hand Crafted" or as "Future Antiques".

Why does the shirt I just brought have sleeves two different lengths….. . . . . .

> An article on the sexy attire of the "Bratz" Dolls

> A Pub having to change "tricky" bathroom (Toilet) door signs

> Police in Brisbane (Australia) not being allowed to close a nude carwash. (as if they really wanted to). "Bubbles ‘n Babes"     will stay open (it sure beats hanging around a donut shop).

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 27 May 2007

Scraps… . . . . .

O.K., so we’ve been "out of action" for a couple of weeks with a major problem with our computer and internet connection, but haven’t lost track of some of the weird things going on in the world.

This installment is a few "scraps" that we "picked up", while "off line".

As an example, a few installments back, we related a story about an old friend’s getting "booked" for Drunken Walking, by a police department in an old logging "boom town" during an Ice Racing Weekend in North America.

Well, it turns out that there are several other ways to get a DUI violation without drinking and driving.

In the U.S. state of Tennessee, a member of the Tennessee Titans (an American NFL football team) was charged with a DUI while riding in his pickup truck with a relative driving. It seems that under Tennessee law, a vehicle owner can be charged with Driving Under the Influence, if he allows another person that has had "one too many" to drive his vehicle.

In the U.S. state of Missouri, a buddy of mine’s son has a friend that was arrested for "sleeping off too many drinks" in his car along a state highway. He was charged with a DUI, and when he appeared in court, he admitted that he had driven his car to the place the cops found him (is honesty really the best policy?)

In a town in Germany, a man was charged recently with Driving Under the Influence, when the local police found him speeding down the center line of the main street in his wheelchair. According to the story, the police were having trouble figuring out how to handle this one, as apparently the normal thing to do is impound the vehicle involved

Of course there’s always the story about the woman that was charged with DUI, while riding her horse into a police car late one night.

The "wildest" story involving a DUI I ever heard was rumored to have come out of Australia several years ago. The story went that when police found a car full of drunks wedged up against Eucalyptus tree, they were told that the boys had appointed a designated driver before going to the Pub, and he had not had any alcoholic beverages all evening. In using the breathalyzer, it was found that he in fact did not have any alcohol, in his system.

However, they did find that he was legally blind. When asked how he was able to drive without being able to see, the reputed reply was "No Problem. Me miates tell me where I am, and when to turn or stop". I understand that the whole bunch was facing a judge on DUI charges the next morning.

A scrap on anther subject was that most of us have heard the expression about something happening "Once in a Blue Moon", but really don’t know what Blue Moon" is. It seems that someone decided several decades ago, that a second full moon in the same calendar month (in the sky that is) is a "Blue Moon".

With the time difference (and the date line) the second full moon occurred in Asia on May 30, but won’t happen elsewhere else in the world until later.

> A story about injuries suffered by a woman when a camel sat on her (I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around).

 

> A theme park opening near the U.S. city of Roswell New Mexico, in the same region as the infamous "Area 51" (where a "Flying Saucer" was supposed to have crashed in the late 1950’s) that has an "Alien Parking Area". With the U.S. state of New Mexico being located on the southern border of the U.S., this may not be only for visitors from the "night sky"

 

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted  13 May 2007

Who is Jebadiah T. Kronk and what does he know about the news?? ? ? ?

Every so often, I run into a problem with what to write about. I mean, traffic and unusual things you see on the street here provide plenty of material, but you can only write so much about it before it gets boring.

Over the past few weeks we’ve commented on what might happen if NASCAR came to the "Middle Kinkdom", suggestions for a few new events at the Olympic Games in Beijing next year, an adjustment on a move by local drivers to avoid obeying traffic signals by bending the law, a possible bounty on lighted lane markers, etc., but where do I find something to write about this week?

Go to the internet to check the news, of course.

When I connected to the "net" I found a story attributed to Reuter’s on the first home page I checked, that I really question the validity of. Reuter’s is a pretty reliable source for news, but I suspect that someone may have "put one over on them" with this one.

The story related how tourism authorities in a town in the Chinese Province of Sichuan have been working on creating a tourist attraction of an area, where apparently the local custom is "Women Rule and Men Obey", since 2005 (???).

According to their sources, the motto of this "tourist attraction" will be (or is, I’m not sure which) "Women never make mistakes, and men can never refuse women’s requests". Most guys I know don’t have to go to Sichuan to be told this (I wonder if any of the people involved in this ever heard the old vaudeville/burlesque one liner "I waited to get married until I could find ‘Miss Right’, unfortunately, I didn’t know that her first name was ‘always’ "). Women tourists in this village also decide where to stay, where to shop (and what to shop for) and what to eat.

So, again, why would most guys I know have to travel to Sichuan to have these decisions made for them? If I was a travel agent, I wouldn’t bother to do a presentation on tours to this place at the local Rotary or Elks Club.

Where these folks really fall down with their concept is in the punishment for any "infraction". All they do is make the offending man "kneel on an uneven board" or wash dishes in a restaurant. No where did the article say anything about several hours of silence, banging of dishes and flatwear, or sighing and pouting.

Apparently the person who wrote this piece, talked to an official involved in the project (named Li-no gender mentioned) in Longshuihu Village. Mr./Ms. Li explained that the tourism bureau has budgeted approximately U.S.$26 million for improvements in the infrastructure, and are looking for foreign investors (I wonder if Trump or Playboy would be interested in investing, or if Louis Farrakhan would like to schedule an event there?).

Having worked my way through that, I turned on one of the 24/7 International News Networks, only to be told that "a team of experts have determined that China is one of the major contributors to air pollution". Boy, now there’s a real "Earth Shaker"!

It took a "team of experts" to establish this?

Anyone that’s been in China for more than 3 days has learned that "you can’t trust any air that you can’t see".

By now, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with the "lead" this week ("who is Jebidiah T. Kronk and what does he know about the news?"). Well, after looking at the stories that I’ve commented on above, we’ve decided that we’ll have "Ole’ Jeb" awarding the "Jebidiah T. Kronk Award for Ridiculousness in Journalism" on a weekly basis, and as soon as I can unlock the mysteries of out how to rig a link on the website, will make the award to any stories that you  feel may qualify, and share with us

So, the first two Jebidiah T. Kronk Awards for Ridiculousness in Journalism go to:

• "Woman’s town to put men in their place"
• "Team of Experts Determine that China is one of the Major Contributors of Air Pollution"

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 28 April 2007

Fake right, go left ... . . . . .

The line above could very well come out of a "huddle" in a "sandlot (American) football game" or from a coach anywhere, but it didn’t. It seems to be the latest discovery in the continuing quest by drivers here to find ways to avoid having to obey a traffic signal or sign, without really breaking a law (putting a major crimp in a law, yes. But not breaking it).

Early in the saga of China Charlie, we looked at a traffic move that we called "the Dong Guan Duck".

To refresh anyone’s memory (that may care), the "Duck" comes into play when some of the local drivers approach a red traffic signal. Instead of stopping, the driver makes a right turn, cuts across the street, makes another right turn, and continues on in their original direction, on the street the maneuver started on. While this can be irritating for folks that are waiting for the signal to change to see, apparently it doesn’t really break any traffic laws (if there are any). "U Turns" seem to be legal here, and exiting one right turn, cutting directly across the street to another technically could be considered a "U Turn", so there’s no real infraction.

I suppose the "Fake Right, go Left" maneuver could be considered an adaptation of the "Dong Guan Duck.", as it allows a driver to avoid the wait for a green left turn signal, or to make a left turn where Left Turns are banned.

The way I’ve seen the "Fake Right, go Left" executed is, in approaching an intersection with a red traffic signal, the driver moves to the far right lane, and makes their right turn. As soon as they’ve cleared the right turn, a "U Turn" puts them in a lane that’s heading 90 degrees from their original direction of travel (a Left Turn, without making a left turn against a red signal or sign).

With the increase in the number of motor vehicles on the street (and particularly waiting make a legitimate turn), both of these maneuvers require drivers to travel down the cross street for some distance, before being able to force their way through traffic, and make their "U Turn"

Given the average traffic situation on the cross streets, any of this can be too much bother for a lot of the folks behind "the wheel" of motor vehicles. These "guys" (and "gals") use a maneuver I call "the Bulldozer".

This involves disregarding the traffic signals and signs entirely, and "plowing" through an intersection as the driver pleases, at any speed they may desire

For the past couple of years, the "Bulldozer" was executed primarily by Redi-Mix Trucks, Mitsubishi tandem axle Dump Trucks, and Container Rigs (with an occasional "Honey Dipper’s" green tank truck thrown in). Recently, however, I’ve seen the "Bulldozer" being practiced by vehicles of all sizes.

While the "Bulldozer" can result in a lot of "tortured sheet metal and scarred paint", waving of arms (with an occasional "punch being thrown"), and a lot of screaming, it also makes crossing a street at a signaled intersection as a pedestrian, exciting. This tends to turn most strollers and shoppers into "Jaywalkers", only adding to the chaos on the highways and byways here (pedestrians are not allowed on the highways, but that doesn’t mean much either).

Well, it’s time to put on my "blinders" and get into a taxi…. . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 21 April 2007

There must have been a newspaper "Baby Doctor" around in the 1940’s…. . . . . .

During the 1960’s there was a prominent "baby" doctor named Benjamin Spock (not to be confused with Leonard Nimoy’s character of "Mr. Spock" in the original "Star Trek") that made himself famous and wealthy by giving advice on raising Children, both in person and in books.

I don’t know of a "baby doctor" that gave international advice on "keeping a kid on the straight and narrow" before or has since, but there must have been one around when I was growing up. My reason for making this assumption is that over the past couple of decades, I’ve heard other people around my age quoting their parents with some of the same lines that I heard as a kid. Not only have I heard these from people that grew up in many different areas of North America, but also from folks that grew up half a world away from the street I lived on.

Given the time I grew up (during and after World War II), and that paperback books were rare at the time, I have to assume that advice in this area must have come from a newspaper column, similar to several columns devoted to advising (and belittling) the lovelorn, popular in the 1960’s and 70’s.

A few examples of statements that my parents made, that I thought were "originals", but have since heard that other parents used on their kids are below. A lot of these were also used in the movie "A Christmas Story" (a great film about a kid lusting after a "Red Ryder Air Rifle" for Christmas, in the 1940s).

Obviously, things were tough in the post war Asian Countries (including Japan), and I’m sure that a lot of kids went to bed hungry on more than one occasion, but I never did figure out what this had to do with my "cleaning up my plate" in North America. I’ve heard that similar lines (only with different countries) used in many areas of North America and as far away as Australia.

I’ve used this on my kids, but have had to update it to ".. there are kids starving in North America" (Times do change… . . .).

This is one that my Mother used on me a lot, usually without telling me what the alleged infraction was. A variation on this that I’ve heard was "When your Dad gets home, you’re going to get it!" (usually, at a shout).

This statement usually followed "go to your room, and think about what you did" that was preceded with the "instruction" above

I never really figured out what "that look" was or what I was going to "get", but was reasonably certain that what ever "it" was, it wasn’t going have two wheels, shiny fenders and neat horn.

This is one that I heard more than once, and it usually preceded what’s referred to today, as "Corporal Punishment" (in my time, it was called "getting your Butt Blistered"). I never really understood how giving a paddling could hurt more than receiving one, but I guess it did (and while I was on the receiving end, was not the time to ask).

I know that today’s generation is more enlightened than mine, but I find it hard to believe "Corporal Punishment" or using a little "think about what you did" to be grounds for a child suing their parents.

Actually, the few swift swats on the butt followed by a little time to think about the various things that got me "into trouble" were probably some of the best teachers I had when I was growing up.

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 14 April 2007

One that didn’t make the Home Pages, or "What UI"…. . . . .

In a recent China Charlie, I commented on the fact that with the Olympics coming up, China had enlisted the assistance of some English speaking folks to help eliminate some of the funnier translations on signs here. The concern I expressed was, where I was going to get new material for China Charlie?

Well, given some of the stories that have shown up on the Home Pages of the Internet Browsers on my computer, my concerns were unfounded.

There were a couple of "unusual" stories recently involving DUI ("Driving Under the Influence" [Drunk Driving]) arrests that didn’t involve inebriated celebrities making racial slurs, that caught my eye.

One was about a couple of guys charged with DUI in the U.S. state of New Jersey, for making a trip to the drive through at a "Wendy’s" (a chain of fast food joints in North America), on Zambonis (you know, those big machines that are used to smooth up the ice on professional Hockey and Figure Skating rinks).

Another was about a woman in Alabama that was arrested for ramming a police car with a horse late at night, when an officer tried to make her stop riding it down the middle of a street ( I wonder what the charge was on this one. To say she was driving would be a "stretch").

All of this reminded me of a similar experience friend of mine had a long time ago.

To set the stage for this story, I have to admit that several decades ago I was part of a semi organized group of fools that used to race Sports Cars on the ice (a frozen lake) for sport. Actually, "Ice Racing" became quite popular in the central part of North America at the time, and eventually became reasonably organized, with regional events.

While the competition was a major part of these regional events, and some of the competitors were pretty serious about it, a big part of these gatherings was also the partying that went with them.

My friend (we’ll call "Ernie") had entered his car in one of these regional events that was held in a town on a lake about 100 miles from where we lived (believe it or not, the town was named Lake City).

He was scheduled to run on Sunday, with his qualifying run on Saturday.

Now, what do you do on a Saturday Night in an old Logging Boom Town on a sub-zero weekend, when you’re involved with a bunch of other folks intent on sliding around on a frozen lake, while driving as fast as they can? Have a party of course!

After several hours or partying, and imbibing in the "devil’s brew", my friend decided to go back to his hotel and found that he would have to walk (he’d had enough to drink that he couldn’t find his car).

While he was sorta walking back to his hotel, he was observed by a couple of members of the local law enforcement community, and apparently they recognized the signs of a person who had just a little too much to drink, but not quite enough to keep from freezing. Based on that opinion, they took him to the local jail and put him in the "Drunk Tank" for the night for his own safety (better to find him there, suffering from a "big league hangover", than  frozen stiff in a snow bank the next morning).

Now their problem was what to put on the report as a reason for locking him up?

While he obviously was well beyond the legal limit for blood/alcohol, he wasn’t disorderly and wasn’t creating a public disturbance, so they finally decided to "book" him for "Drunk Walking".

Now, I’m not certain, but I suspect that my buddy, "old Ern" is probably the only guy around with a "Drunk Walking" charge on his record.

Ah well, back to the "Home Pages" to see what other "off the wall" stories they have…. .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 1 April 2007

Pranks to put a strain on a friendship… . . . . .

O.K., so it’s "April Fools Day", a day to pull jokes and pranks on other people. However, it’s possible to get a little too elaborate with your pranks, and actually have folks get up set over them.

As an example, a couple of decades ago, yours truly had a friend get married, and the group of "morons" that I was part of decided to give them a welcome home surprise when they returned from their honeymoon.

I had gotten married a couple of years earlier, and had foiled an attempt by this same group (including our victim) to have the State Police pull a (prearranged) Marriage License check at the Hotel my new wife and I were "honeymooning" in (We lived in a small town that was the district headquarters for the State Police, and had several Troopers and officers as friends that could arrange such things). I had suspected some "skullduggery was afoot", and had made a reservation in one place, then changed it the day before the wedding. When we left the wedding reception driving the wrong way, they decided to check to be sure we were registered in the original hotel, before pulling the "raid".

In any case, we felt it was our duty to arrange a few surprises for the newly married couple, so the night before the "honeymooners" returned, we got into their apartment, and set a few things up (one of our group had a key).

After we stretched cling wrap over the toilet stool and lowered the seat, loosened the light bulb in the bathroom and smeared Honey on the flush handle of the toilet (have you ever tried to use toilet paper with honey on your hands?), we "short sheeted" the bed (for those of you not familiar with a short sheeting a bed, it’s done by removing one sheet, and folding the remaining sheet so with the normal bed covers on it, the bed looks like it has two sheets on it. The results are that when the person tries to get in bed [between the sheets] he finds it’s half as long as it should be). The final surprise we arranged was to take small plastic bags, put a small amount of rice in them, lay them on all the kitchen shelves in the cabinets, and attach the bottom of the bag (with the top unsealed) to the cabinet door. The first time a cabinet was opened, the bag would be pulled off the shelf, and the rice would shower out.

From all reports, things followed pretty much what we had engineered when the couple arrived home. The wife had to use the toilet, which she came out of using some very un-lady like language with the backs of her legs wet and toilet paper stuck to her hand. After they got the bathroom light working, tried to make a cup of coffee which resulted in the first of many rice showers, and decided to go to bed only to find it short sheeted, they figured that there were more surprises than they really wanted to deal with that night, and checked into a hotel.

The result of all this frivolity was that there were "a ton" of accusations, and those of us that were guilty finally had to "own up" to our indiscretions (although I have to admit that watching the expressions on the faces as the incidents were described, made it difficult to "keep a straight face", even while "confessing").

Even though it seemed funny to us at the time (and even funnier after a few decades have passed), it did put a strain on the relationship between several friends for some time.

While this series of pranks "went just over the line", I heard the story of one that almost turned deadly.

In the upper Great Lakes area, it used to be pretty much "Red Neck" country, with everyone having several guns, and some folks living in "houses" that would have to be remodeled before they could be condemned. They also had a marriage tradition called a "Shilviery", which amounted to a group of friends of the bride and groom getting together outside the house that the couple were spending their wedding night in, and making as much noise as possible, to disturb any "nefarious activities" that might be taking place inside.

In this particular instance, the "Shilviery Team" consisted of three guys that were well beyond their capacity for alcoholic beverages, with one being considerably overweight. When making all kinds of noise didn’t get a response from inside, the fat guy volunteered to go up on the roof and jump a few times just to let the newlyweds know that they were being "Shilvieried". The first problem was that the roof would not support the impact of him jumping on it. The second was that apparently he chose a roof section over the bedroom to jump on, and from what I was told he landed on the "wedding bed" with the first jump. Problem three involved a loaded shotgun that the groom kept in the bedroom.

According to the story I heard, as soon as the fat guy disappeared through the roof, "friends" two and three decided to run. Shortly after that decision was put into action, the overweight guy charged through the front door at full stride with the groom right behind him, armed with the shotgun. A couple of rounds of "bird shot" were discharged in the general direction of the retreating "friends", but luckily no one was badly hurt.

Now, about those old "bird shot" scars in my butt…. . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted  25 March 2007

Why I suspect that NASCAR would have a difficult time here…. . . .

A group of us were watching the first Formula 1 race of the new season last weekend, and someone commented that there weren’t any local Professional Drivers on "the F-1 circuit". The comment got me to thinking about what might happen if they tried to open a NASCAR circuit here.

After watching the chaos loosely referred to as "traffic" here, I think there would have to be certain modifications to the requirements for a track to be certified by the folks that put the NASCAR Stamp of approval on a race course...

A few examples might be:

The name would need to be changed from NASCAR to NASCATR (National Agency [of] Stock Car And Truck Racing), to better reflect the vehicles involved in the racing (anything smaller than a "deuce and a half" [truck] would be allowed to compete).

They would also need to change the "light tower" used to start the race, so the top three lamps are green instead of red (anyone that’s been out at "rush hour" knows that traffic here doesn’t move on the green signal). The next lamp below the green would be amber (again, in traffic, the guy on the mobile phone that’s holding everyone up doesn’t start to move until the traffic signal turns amber). And finally, the signal to really get a race started would need to be changed to red (which seems to be the color that really gets some people in vehicles moving-the bigger the vehicle, the faster they "sail through" a red signal).

The starting grid would need to be marked for two lanes and made wide enough for four cars abreast, to accommodate the seven or eight cars that would be lined up side by side, by the start of the race.

The pace vehicle would need to be a Redi-mix Truck, a tandem axle Dump Truck, or a "Honey Dipper’s" (Green) tank truck (no body seems to "mess" with any of these, and there might be a chance it could make an entire lap without a driver "slipping past" him on the right).

Next, the local mobile phone company would need to erect a mobile phone repeater tower every 2 Km. or so around the circuit so the competing drivers wouldn’t "lose" their (phone) signal while they’re talking to a phone solicitor that’s signing them up for a service program (that offers a selection of the latest phones at a discount).

At a couple of intervals on all the straight-aways, there would need to be lane markers indicating Left Turn Lanes, to keep the driver’s headed straight down the track.

The access to the Pits would require driving a 100 meters past the entrance to the Pit Lane in the inside (high speed) lane, stopping and looking around for at least 30 seconds, turning on the emergency flashers, and then reversing across a minimum of four lanes of high speed vehicles, a few electric bicycles and a pedestrian or two to enter them. The viewing stands would need to be located on the opposite side of the Pit Lane from the refreshment stands. This would allow for a reasonable number of folks trying to cross the Pit Lane, while focusing on food and drink (and not looking at traffic).

Turn Signals would need to be required, only to confuse any drivers following the lead car (unless the following cars ignored them completely).

Sponsorship would definitely see some changes.

Instead of the Winston Cup series, the primer events might be labeled the "Shauhgxi Ashtray races", and the official beer could well be "Zhu Hai Lite". Any advertising on the participating vehicles could be reversed from one side to the other, misspelled, or applied up side down, however the person applying it pleases.

Now, if I could just get back across the Pit Lane without spilling my Zhu Hai Lite and styrofoam tray of stale Squid Chips.. . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 18 March 2007

Has Charlie always been a little bit warped?? ? ?

This installment is going to be a little different from most, in that it will go into a few happenings before yours truly started writing "China Charlie". While I’ve been in the "Middle Kinkdom" for a couple of decades, most of what follows happened in other parts of the "Mysterious East".

For a good part of my life, I’ve been involved in manufacturing Branded Products for export to Europe and the "Western World". In most of these jobs there has been an "average expat package" that included a car and driver.

So, Sorta’ like Luke Skywalker, "Return with us now to time long ago and a country far away" that bills itself "as The Land of the Morning Calm" (as with most Far Eastern countries, who ever came up with that catchy little "ditty" obviously never experienced their morning rush hour .).

Anyway after being told that I could pick my own job title, and then having them tell me to pick another (I guess someone else with more "sand in his bucket" than me wanted to be "President/CEO"), I was told me to select any car I wanted.

After seeing the old "National Lampoon" movie "Vacation", with Chevy Chase, I told them I wanted a Cherry Red Ferrari, with a driver that had long blond hair and a shape like a Coco Cola Bottle. Again, there must have been some confusion, because the response was "you get a Black Daewoo, and Mr. Kim" (I guess Christy Brinkley was taken, but you can’t blame a guy for trying).

After a year in the "Land of the Morning Calm" I was transferred to the "Middle Kinkdom" where I did a "solo", representing a major and very well known American Company. This particular company had fairly large expat contingents in several other Far Eastern locations, so for me to get responses to my communications was always a challenge. To get people to read my faxes (this was in the days before e-mail), I started using what I referred to as "Hayseed Philosophy" ("back where I come from ‘they’ say if you don’t use your head, you use your hands and feet a lot", or "stop worryin’ about the mule goin’ blind, just load the wagon", "got the world by the tail on a downhill pull", "an expert on nothing, with opinions on everything", etc.) for the first line. The guys in the other locations never did figure out how I could get a response as fast as I did (I understand that my faxes were the first read each morning in the U.S. office).

The response to the "Hayseed Philosophy" used in my faxes prompted a few other ways of communicating my feelings. I replaced the company logo on the standard fax form with sketches that I felt fit the subject, for my responses.

As an example, a response to a fax that I felt was a request for something that was a waste of time, would have my "Charging Rhino Fax Heading".

The "Charging Rhino" came from something I had seen that explained that the Rhinoceros is a very large animal with a small brain and an extremely short memory. It went on the explain that the rhino’s memory is so short that many times it will charge at something, but forget where it’s going before it gets there (as I recall, it showed a rhino charge at something, and stop to graze before it got to what ever it was that it was charging). The fax head had a sketch of two rhinos, one charging by the second one, that was standing under a tree with a question mark over its head (cartoon style).

Another fax head I used on faxes that communicated the solution of a problem, was a "take off" on popular beer commercial of the time. It showed the silhouette of a B-52 Bomber flying away from a nuclear mushroom cloud, with the caption "now it’s Miller Time".

Oh, by the way, did I mention that I have been an avid reader of the original "Mad" Magazine and big fan of Alfred E. Newman since my teen years?

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"                                    

Posted 4 March 2007

We’re back, and O.K., so now where do I get "material"?? ? ?

Those that follow my (sorta) weekly dissertations have probably noticed that I didn’t have any new material posted last week. While a weak excuse would be that I was in a country that has beautiful beaches and great beer, without a computer (or access to my webpage), the fact is that I just plain got lazy, and put off getting anything new together for posting.

I do apologize, and hope that the following helps brighten your week.

A few weeks ago, there was a story on one of the network news programs that, to me, was about as welcome as an Audit Notice from the Tax Department.

The story related how the government of the "Middle Kinkdom" was concerned with the spelling and grammar of the English Language signs here, and that with the Olympics coming up in a year or so, had enlisted expat help in correcting the errors.

At the risk of repeating myself, all of us non-Chinese speaking folks need to appreciate the effort made by the people here to accommodate us with English Language signs. And again, not intending any ridicule, some of the results of direct translation from Chinese to English are downright bizarre, but truely hard to understand in this age of "Spell Check". In the past couple of years, we’ve explored "Life in the Past Lane" (this came from a lane marker on an expressway, and I assume should have read either "Fast Lane" or "Passing Lane", but some how came out as the "Past Lane"), and have mentioned several other oddities (a Lane marked "Carriage Lane", and another approximately 100 miles long, marked "Driveway"). Also thrown in are several N’s that have gotten reversed, misplaced or reversed "al’s at the end of words, vehicles with English markings that are correct on one side and reversed on the other (IE: "Modern Bus" becomes "Sub Nredom"), etc.

A "classic" (and one that I never figured out) was on an expressway that had an exit from the left lane. A sign that was a mile or so before the exit warned of a "Mind Changing ahead". The best I could ever come up with to try to translate this one was that normally exits were from the right lane and this one was different.

These examples are all on expressways and the vehicles that travel them. I kind of wonder if this "assistance" will spill over into the "private" sector. Will the lettering on cars be "corrected" also? Will "Parado" be spelled the same on both sides of the popular SUV, or will continue to be reversed ("Odarap") or mirrored on some.

Now, we’re looking at the possibility that all of this fun will be eliminated, which means that I’m going to have to look elsewhere for material, and this will not effect only me. I mean, what are the rest of us going to do for entertainment when we’re stuck in a traffic jam between Song Guan and Chung An?

They took the three letter country coding off the rear doors of containers several years ago, so the pastime of trying to decode those is gone, and now they’re trying to take away the entertainment of attempting to decipher the miss spelled and reversed English?

Actually, given the amount of work these advisors have to do, it’s going to be interesting to see if they can get the job done before the Olympics.

Given the number of spelling infractions I’ve seen, I would like to wish these folks well, but whatever the results of their work is, another part of the "Old China" will slip away.

Guess I better start carrying a book with me, just in case… . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 11 February

The end is coming, promiscuous butterfly’s and talking urinal cakes…. . . .

The internet is a great place to find all kinds of information, and the "news" items on the home pages for the some of the major (default") browsers are especially helpful. I mean where else could you find stories on promiscuous butterfly’s (yes folks, there was a full story on this), or having to show animals in a zoo that had forgotten how to prorogate X-Rated movies to remind them how "its" done.

A classic showed up recently, when one of the listed "news stories" concerned the U. S. State of New Mexico’s purchase of 500 talking Urinal Cakes (you guys know, those smelly little disks that are found in the urinals in "Men’s Rooms"). Actually, this does make sense when you read the story. They’re part of a anti drunk driving campaign, and the state is giving the first 500 to bars. The way they work is when a person approaches, a female voice says "Hey big boy, had a few drinks? Maybe you should call a taxi", or something similar. You talk about getting a guys attention!! A woman’s voice coming from a urinal in a men’s room ought to do it (if you had been drinking, this could make you consider abstinence)

Anyway, with the Lunar New upon us, I saw a story on a home page recently that seemed appropriate, albeit a little disturbing.

It seems that the folks at a website named "space.com" have a mystery series, and somehow they determined that the Sun is part way through its "Main Sequence", and will be for the next 5 million years or so (give or take a millennium or two).

The next phase is labeled as the "Red Giant" phase, and this will mean trouble for the moon, as well as the earth. It seems that sometime during this phase, the Sun’s atmosphere will swell until it envelops not only Mercury and Venus, but also the Earth and our little buddy, the Moon.

While I remember being told that the Moon was made of several different materials, including green cheese, and later found out that the "Man in the Moon" was actually shadows created by craters from "meteor hits", I’m beginning to suspect that there may be some intelligent life in there somewhere that we don’t know about. It seems that while the earth, with all its brain power, continues to happily maintain its orbit around the Sun, the Moon is doing something about the "Red Giant" phase threat.

Apparently the Moon is moving away from the Earth at the astounding rate of 1.6 inches per year. This movement, combined with a reduction of the speed of the earth’s rotation means we’re headed for 47 day months (the time it will take the Moon to make a full orbit). Doesn’t seem like much appreciation for the Moon being formed by a titanic collision between the Earth and another Mars sized rock 4 ½ million years or so ago .

Added to this, the folks at "space.com" have also determined that the earth’s rotation would also slow to 47 days. If I read that right, it sounds to me as though we’d be looking at a day 1128 hour long (boy, is that going to cause a few problems for the writers of the daytime "soaps").

Now, back to the original reason for all this drivel. With a lot of the world using a calendar based on the Moon, this could take care of a lot of delayed shipping dates. Of course no one has mentioned what this would do to "sailings", many of which are based on "high tides" (with the tides controlled by the moon, this could cause a real problem for ship owners, and be a "boon" for waterfront bars).

If you’re in one of the countries celebrate the Lunar New Year, this is just a little something to ponder while enjoying the celebrations.

In the meantime, from all of us to our Asian friends, Happy Year of the Pig.

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted  4 February 2007

Highway Olympics.. . . .

With the Olympics coming up in a couple of years, there are a few new events that I would like to suggest be submitted to the International Olympic Committee for consideration.

All of these competitions would require the use of motor vehicles, and in the case of automobiles, would be restricted to mid sized cars only (no "QQs", Chevy "Sparks", Suzuki "Swifts", "Chana" Vans, BMW 5 or 7 series or Benz allowed). Also the difficulty level (and points scored ) of these games increases by 5% for each driver using a mobile phone while participating in an event.

The first event would be called "Olympic Lane Stuffing"

The object of this event would be to see how many automobiles can be stuffed, side by side, into the average width Left Turn Lane while waiting for a 60 second traffic signal. To qualify as occupying the lane, a vehicle must have at least one wheel within the lane markings (a wheel on the line does not qualify as occupying the lane).

The next would be "The Amber Dash".

The "Amber Dash" requires that a line of automobiles to wait until the traffic signal switches from green to amber (with the lead driver on a mobile phone-as the "mobile" user is required in this event there would be no 5% increase for this particular "user"), and then see how many cars can make it through an average intersection before the light switches to red. To constitute "making it through" the intersection, a vehicle must cross both crosswalks.

The third new event would be "The Red Light Run"

The rules here are fairly simple. See how many vehicles can make it through a busy intersection, by driving "against" the red signal without a "T Bone" accident or a dead pedestrian . This game must be conducted at a busy intersection, with heavy cross traffic, many pedestrians and drivers with a Kamikaze mentality.

Number four would be "The Motorcycle Lane Marker Balance"

This requires two lanes of traffic and a motorcycle. The object is to see how far a motorcycle rider can go, traveling between two lines of automobiles, truck and busses without hitting a vehicle, or breaking a rearview mirror.

There are three levels to this competition. "Novice" involves driving between two lanes of stopped traffic. "Mid level" is with moving traffic, all traveling the same direction as the motorcycle, and "Suicidal" involves driving between lanes of moving traffic, traveling in opposite directions

Number five would be "Traffic Jamming".

This event is set up on 16 Kilometers of an expressway, with three lanes having the direction of travel one way and initially involves three vehicles. These three vehicles are to attempt the impossible task of traversing the 16 Km of highway without creating a traffic "snarl".

Once these vehicles have successfully created a blocking situation, the object is to see how many midsized vehicles can be jammed into the 3 lanes of roadway behind them without contact between any two. This event is scored by percentage, based on the number of vehicles and the length of the highway behind the blocking vehicles, with the team that has the highest percentage per kilometer as the winners. Due to the differences of vehicle sizes, only one highway bus for each 10 midsized automobiles are allowed (no trucks).

Event number six is "Lane straddling".

This competition involves seeing how many other drivers one vehicle can make swerve to avoid a "fender bender" accident. The Lane Straddling competition is set up on 16 Km of two lane roadway with two intersections of "side" roads, with one vehicle straddling a "center mark" (the dividing line marking lanes of traffic moving in opposing directions). The "Lane Straddler" centers up on this line with the normal traffic mix (Automobiles, Trucks of various sizes, buses and motorcycles), and attempts to traverse the entire 16 Km. without being forced into one lane or the other (between the lane markings), or being "T Boned" by a driver entering the traffic flow from a side road without looking or yielding. Each accident caused by, but not involving the "Lane Straddler", adds 5% to the overall score.

In watching the local traffic recently, I suspect that there’s already a move afoot to get these games included in the 2008 Olympics, and the local drivers are getting in some early practice time.

The prizes for these events would be a miniature crumpled fender, in gold, silver or bronze on a lanyard, suitable for hanging from a rearview mirror.

I always thought Olympic medals were hung around the neck. Why is this one wrapped around mine??

"til next time, "Ya’ all have a rice week"

Posted 29 January 2007

Another look at bizarre "Middle Kinkdom" writings… . . . .

Well it’s 2007, and time for another look at a couple of semi successful attempts to translate information directly from Chinese to English. Now before anyone hollers "foul", as with previous looks at this kind thing, we need to be thankful that the Chinese have made effort (I mean, how many signs and official forms are done in English and Chinese in western countries?).

O.K, so on to the oddities.

My nomination for last year’s strangest was at the "old" airport in one of the major cities in China, that had an area specifically set aside for "handicapped pregnant women over 70".

As was in that particular segment, there was no one using the area, when I saw it. I suspect that any "handicapped pregnant woman over 70"probably was serving time in a Chinese "Slammer" for beating the guy responsible for her "delicate condition" to death with her cane.

Anyway a couple of less than successful attempts that go on the list for this year are on official documents.

The first one is on the health form that’s required for entry into China.

In the area with the "tick" boxes that includes a question regarding carrying "soiled clothes" (better make certain that you have you laundry done before you try to cross the border-don’t want no dirty clothes here!), there’s also a place to" tick mark" if you’ve had any problems with "sniveling" . As I recall, "sniveling" falls roughly into the same category as begging or complaining, and we sure don’t want anyone with a problem with "sniveling" here in China.

The second comes from a police document, that a friend got when he was trying to help a customer that had his passport stolen.

It seems that there’s instructions on the back of the form for getting a replacement visa in a new passport after having one go missing or stolen.

These instructions also include a warning regarding anyone overstaying their visa, that indicate that you’ll "be punished by police organs(!)".Boy, now there’s one to get your attention!

This same form indicates that a new visa will be granted immediately, but my friend’s customer was told it would take 5 working days for his visa (I guess "immediately" takes a little longer here than in most other parts of the world.)

Again, with all the "up roar" in the North American countries over government forms having to be issued in two languages, you have to appreciate the effort being made here.

On the serious side, for folks in most of the Southeast Asian countries, the Lunar New Year holiday that’s coming up in late February, usually brings with it an increase in robbery’s. So to avoid any possibility of being "punished by a police (or any other kind of) organ", be aware of the people around you, don’t leave your bags anywhere out of your sight in public places, and don’t carry anything in your bags that you can’t afford to loose (any more often than necessary).

Now, with all the police organs, I wonder how many "antique organs" there are here in China?

‘til next time, ya’ll have a rice week… . . .

Posted 22 January 2007

The Patrol Carts of China… . . .

Most everything in the "Middle Kinkdom" has gone through major changes in since I first arrived here a couple of decades back.

What were rice paddies are now high rise apartment blocks, construction zones are now multi lane highways, where a provincial capital had only two neon signs in 1987 it’s now ablaze in a sea of neon and what was largely an agricultural population is changing to an urban society. With all of this, medium sized cities are now thriving metropolis’s.

The growth in urban living has brought with it all the problems that more people living in a reasonably small area does, and law enforcement is as much of a problem here as in any other rapidly growing urban area.

Given the prosperity and change in attitude that goes with urban living, a large part of the population has forsaken the bicycle for automobiles for personal transportation. The "bicycle to BMW" transition in basically one generation has led to some interesting traffic situations, and provided plenty of "fodder" for several segments of China Charlie.

This growth in the cities and changes in attitude that go with it has also put a serious strain on the resources available to the Law Enforcement Community, and has called for some creative thinking on their part to maintain a semblance of law and order.

If you saw the 1987 movie "Dragnet" (a parody of the old 1950's T.V. series), you probably remember that after Joe ("just the facts ‘mam") Friday’s nephew and his partner had two patrol cars stolen, Lieutenant Gannon assigned them an impounded (Czech) mini car called the Hugo, to use as a patrol car. We don’t have any Hugo’s here, but the local authorities have come up with a similar solution to the problem of a shortage of "Beat and Traffic Cops".

First, they combined the two functions into one package, and then put a couple of cops in a modified golf cart and have them cruising the streets, or monitoring busy intersections at high traffic hours..

A modified golf cart you say?

That’s right. But we’re not talking about the "beefed up" suspensions, "souped up" engines, special tires, dashboard racks for shotguns and such that "Police Specials" have in North America (in fact, I’m not even sure that the "Patrol Carts" are equipped with 2 way radios). It appears that the modifications for the transition from the fairways to the highways and byways involve mainly flashing lights and blue and white police markings. While this seems as though it’s a solution to a police force stretched too thin for neighborhood foot patrols, it does leave a lot to be desired for traffic control.

Imagine if you will, a "high speed chase" involving one of these "Patrol Carts". First chasing anything bigger or more powerful than an electric bicycle would be an extremely short chase. No "Bullit" style pursuit with screaming tires, sliding around corners, jumping curbs or flying through the air, here. Instead of the deafening scream of a high powered engine, it would be the quiet hum of an electric motor, and most likely screaming in a dialect that may or may not be understood. Also, I’m not certain how effective a chase between a "Blue and White" and a bicycle would be anyway. As soon as a bicycle turned down a narrow alley, that the "cart" was too wide to fit through, the chase would be over.

In all fairness, the "patrol carts" do allow a mobile presence that the police force wouldn’t otherwise have, and the fact that they are manned by two officers does permit an overall safety factor that would be missing in having a single cop walking a beat.

One city here in the "Pearl Estuary" has banned all Bicycles, Motorcycles and Motor Scooters from the urban streets this year, and I understand that others will follow by year’s end. I wonder what effect this will have on the "Patrol Carts".

Do you suppose that they’ll wind up back on the fairways, flashing lights and all??? ? ?

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 15 January 2007

Here it is, the middle of January in South China and it’s "coldern’ a well digger’s auger in the Klondike".

I can’t believe it.

About 25 years ago, I sold my snow blower, left the Great Lakes Area of North America and moved to the Caribbean to get away from cold weather. Now, here I am, freezing my "tootsies" while basically sitting on the "Tropic" of Cancer ("Tropic" in name only. There ain’t nothin’ tropical about the weather here). On top of that, over the new years holiday weekend, our family went to the city of Xi’An (the home of the terra cotta warriors, in the east central part of China), so they could see the warriors and snow (and experience cold wet feet).

The terra cotta warriors were an incredible sight, the kids got a chance to make a snow ball (there was a very light "dusting" of snow while we were there), and I had the opportunity to remember my reasons for leaving the Great Lakes Area. I think that I remember now why bears hibernate all winter.

Having grown up where temperatures in the winter can drop to -20 degrees, when I first came to South China, I couldn’t understand how cold 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) could feel. After about 20 winters here, I’ve decided that the difference is in the relative humidity. Where in the area I grew up in, the humidity in the winter averages a "static electricity snapping" 10-20%, here the winter humidity is generally in the 60-70% range.

This higher humidity does have some advantages. When you comb your hair, the hair doesn’t stand up and follow the comb, and very seldom does a hand shake become a "shocking" affair. However, you ain’t felt a cold wind unless you’ve experienced a 20 mile per hour breeze, in 45 degrees (F) at 70% humidity.

To combat these weather conditions seems to require about the same number of layers of the same type clothing that the -20 (F) took. Long underwear, "Union suits", gloves, sweat shirts, long sleeve flannel shirts, heavy weight jeans, and "watch cap" are pretty much necessity, with a scarf being optional.

Most folks from North America or Northern Europe that visit the "Middle Kinkdom" will comment about all the people being "bundled" up, in temperatures well above the freezing mark. Usually, they in a hotel where there is heating of some variety or another, and don’t realize that most of the buildings south of the Yang Tz River don’t have heat. Given that biggest share of the building here are concrete (that never really warmed up in the first place), its about all that several electric heaters can do to generate enough BTU’s to keep the indoor temperature in the low 60’s (F).

One of the things that most of these visitors endure "back home" that we don’t have to put with here is the ritual of using Self Service Gas Stations in the winter. I remember very well standing out in a wind chill of -45 (F) with my hand frozen to the nozzle, filling my tank. Now maybe it was my age at the time, but the amount of time it took to fill the tank in those conditions always seemed to trigger my bladder, requiring a trip to the "men’s room". After freezing your hands filling the tank, this little interlude generally causes a natural reaction that you ladies will never have the opportunity to experience (I’m sure you guys out there that have "filled up" at a Self Service Station in the winter time and then made trip to the "gents" know what I’m referring to)

I know, it’s winter, and with it you have to expect that things like thermo underwear, down filled jackets and gloves are usually the "order of the day", and luke warm showers are fairly normal, but I find that I really miss short sleeve shirts, flip flops and sweat running down my back

Wait a minute, sweat running down my back? Wasn’t I the one "commenting "on how uncomfortable 90(F) with 75% humidity was just a few months ago?? ? ?

til next time, "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 8 January 2007

Thanks for the memories…. . . . .

With 2006 passing into history last week, we would like to remember some of the folks that entertained and influenced us, that left us in the past 12 months. Some were honored with network T.V. video, some were not.

We saw video clips of the "Godfather of Soul", James Brown, doing some of his biggest songs ("I got you" [I feel good]) and heard words of praise from people on the street and the U.S. President. We also saw clips of actor/comedian Peter Boyle, ranging from "Young Frankenstein" to the character Frank in the T.V. series "Everybody loves Raymond" ("Holy crap!!"). And, Johnny Carson, the host of the "Tonight Show" for 3 decades (once described by his "sidekick" Ed McMahon as hosting a "night light for your nefarious activities") left with a minimum of fanfare (the original host of the "Tonight Show", Jack Parr, also passed on in 2006).

While all of these folks deserve the accolades accorded them, there were several other folks that passed on with less notice last year that will be remembered for entertaining us through the years.

A few of those remembered from T.V. included Art Carney (Ed Norton in the "Honeymooners"), Don Adams (Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart"), Bob Keeshan ("Captain Kangaroo"), Fred (Mr.) Rogers ("Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood"), Don Knotts (Barney Fife in "the Andy Griffith Show"), Buddy Ebson (Jed Clampett from "the Beverly Hillybilly’s"), Red Buttons ("The Red Buttons Show"), Tony Randall (Felix Unger in the "The Odd Couple"), Dennis Weaver ("Gunsmoke" and "Mc Cloud"), Bob Denver (Gilligan in "Gilligan’s Island") Robert Stack (Elliot Ness in the T.V. Series "The Untouchables") and "Scottie" (from the original "Star trek"), James Doohan.

Lost from the big screen were Marlon Brando ("The Godfather"), Jack Palance ("Curly" from the movie "City Slickers"), Darren Mc Gavin (Ralphie’s old man in "A Christmas Story"), Donald O’Connor (Bing Crosby’s partner in White Christmas"), Glenn Ford (starred in the movie "The Blackboard Jungle" that introduced "Rock Around the Clock" to mainstream America, and the world), Gregory Peck (several Hitchcock movies), Charles Bronson ("Death wish"), Fay Wray (the original "King Kong" girl), Ann Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate") and Rodney Dangerfield (from the original "Caddy Shack").

Music lost a few icons in 2006, with Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Skeeter Davis, Barry White and Jan Berry (of the musical duo "Jan and Dean") leaving us.

The news media also lost a few of the "bigger names" with the passing of Ed Bradley ("60 minutes"), David Brinkley ("The Huntley Brinkley Report") and Peter Jennings ("World News Tonight").

On the religious front we lost Pope John Paul II, a man that had a major influence on world politics in the 1980s-1990s.

A few names from the U.S. political scene that passed into history in 2006 were 38^th President Gerald R. Ford (in December), 33^rd President Ronald Regan (in June) and Strom Thurman (the senior senator from South Carolina).

A side note on U.S. political leaders and honors to them.

Several of the U.S Presidents are honored by having their portrait in various denominations of U.S .monetary notes. Examples are George Washington on the one dollar note, Benjamin Harrison on the ten and Benjamin Franklin on the one hundred dollar bill, etc. Recently I saw an item on one of the major home pages that someone had sculpted a life sized image Benjamin. Franklin, by in butter (??). I hope it isn’t kept outdoors.

This has basically turned into a roll call of the departed, but there is one more major entertainment icon that left us this year that entertained several generations, and will be long remembered-Bob Hope. From his first movie appearance in "The Big Broadcast of 1938", the annual Christmas USO Shows for troops serving away from home, to the "on the road to…" movies with Bing Crosby and musicals with Doris Day, he was always entertaining.

I guess the title of his musical theme is a fitting close for this week.

"Thanks for the Memories"

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 2 January 2007

Farewell 2006…. . . . .

So the long robed old dude with the scythe and the white beard (and no, I wasn’t looking in the mirror), and his "sidekick" the smart alec little kid with the sash labeled 2007 have come and gone, and another year has "bit the dust".

With the holiday last weekend, came all sorts of weak promises ("resolutions") to oneself (usually to improve one’s own being) that usually don’t make it though the first week of the year. Quite often these involve goofy promises like not starting a snow ball fight in Florida in July, eating strawberries during the winter months or driving over 200 miles per hour.

Going to the internet and typing "Weird New Years Resolutions" into the window of a search engine comes up with some really strange ones.

One of the wilder ones that I saw was the guy that promised his wife he would loose weight and get into shape, and then tried to convince her that round is a "shape". Another guy resolved to give up betting on Cock Fights (I believe he lives in New Hampshire). Then there was another American that resolved not to pay more than US$1.50 per gallon (he’s been doing a lot of walking and riding a bicycle the past few years).

According to a couple of sites on the internet, Internet "Junkies" in general resolve to:

1) Figure out why they need 12 different e-mail addresses.

2) Stop sending their wives e-mail, and use the phone

3) Work with neglected children-their own

4) Answer "snail mail" with the same enthusiasm as e-mail

5) Spend less than one hour a day on the internet-tough when you’re not a "clock watcher"

6) Read the manual, as soon as they find it

7) Stop replying to jokes with "LOL" ("laughing out loud")

8) Stop laughing at people without high speed internet connections

9) Cease trying to convince computer illiterate folks that AOL is internet with training wheels.

10)Find a password other than "password".

11)Make certain that they back up their 12 GB. hard drive daily (or weekly)

Sometimes they are serious, and made with the best of intentions, like quitting smoking, loosing weight, getting more exercise, etc.

I read somewhere that approximately 91% of resolutions are forgotten in the first month of the new year, and that the main reason for failure to keep them is procrastination (Boy! There’s a shocker!)

Personally I don’t believe in trying to fool myself with resolutions.

I mean generally, I know myself well enough that there are things in my life that no matter how much I promise anyone (myself included), I’ll wind up going back to my bad habits.

Before I absolutely had to stop smoking (or die), rather than tell people I was stopping, I would say that I was just seeing how long I could go between cigarettes (one time I made it for 6 years). My logic in handling it this way was that I knew I would go back, and that way I didn’t have to feel guilty, or explain anything to anyone when I did.

In any case, whatever you resolved to do last Sunday Night (and most likely forgot by Monday Morning), we would like to wish all the folks that take the time to read China Charlie all the best for 2007

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted December 18 2006

Merry Christmas to all, and to all….. . . . . . .

That is part of probably one of the best lines known to man, outside of "You’re what?? ? ?".

While most North Americans would tell you the "Merry Christmas" line above came from "The Night Before Christmas", the poem actually was originally titled "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and was written by Clement C. Moore in 1823, as a Christmas gift for his children.

Although an American soft drink company has refined it over the years, the original image of St. Nick and his magical flying "miniature sleigh and 8 tiny reindeer" came from Mr. Moore’s imagination, with the first drawn image of Santa Claus was done in the late 1800’s by a German born political cartoonist named Thomas Nact (Mr. Nact is also credited with the image of the Donkey for the U.S. Democratic party). Due to the soft drink’s international marketing through the years, most of the world is familiar with the slightly obese gent with the flowing white beard, wearing a soot covered red suit and the airborne team pulling his sled

The character of St. Nick is pretty magical in itself. I mean, here’s a guy that’s slightly overweight ("a jolly old elf whose belly shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly")", yet can fit down a chimney. He also is able to go back up the chimney "in blink of the eye" by "putting a finger aside of his nose,.. .". Santa started coming down the chimney in the Netherlands

While the image and magic of St. Nick was pretty well set by Mr. Moore, a magical visitor that leaves gifts for good little boys and girls on a certain night of the year, was around for a long time before Mr. Moore put pen to paper.

In reality, St. Nicholas was a bishop of a church in Southwest Turkey around 300 A.D., and was credited with several miracles associated with gift giving. Apparently the tradition of giving gifts started with him, and the original festival in his honor was celebrated on the 6^th of December. Gift giving is also celebrated on December 24^th, December 25^th, January 1^st and January 6^th. St. Nicholas is also credited with the traditional hanging of the stockings be the fireplace.

According to legend, there was a man with three daughters that had no hope of marriage because he could not pay their dowries. St. Nicholas rode by his castle and for two nights threw a bag of gold (to pay 2 of the girls dowry) through a window. The third night, the window was closed, so he dropped the bag of gold down the chimney. In the morning, the girls found the bag of gold in one of the stockings they had hung by the fire place to dry, the night before.

St. Nicholas (or Santa Claus) is known by many different names. In early New York (when it was called New Amsterdam) he was called "Sinterklaas", in France he’s called "Pere Noel" and in many Spanish speaking countries his name is "Papa Noel". In Southern Germany he’s called "Kris Kringle", while in China (?) he’s called "Dun Che Lao Ren" (Christmas Old Man). Folks in the U.K. generally refer to him as "Father Christmas".

Also surprisingly, according to the folks at santaclaus.com Mrs. Claus has a full name of Jessica Mary Claus.

All in all, Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Papa Noel, or what ever you call him is a big part of the Christmas Celebration, and we have people like Clement Moore, Thomas Nast and several others to thank for bringing this magic fellow to life for most of us.

To give credit where credit is due, most of the information used for this segment came from "www.santaclaus.com", a well researched and entertaining stop on the "information highway". You might want to check it out

As the holiday draws near, we would like to wish everyone that reads China Charlie a very Merry Christmas.

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 11 December 2006

Was Fuzhou the "Devil’s Playground"?? ? ?

The mysterious "They" (you know the guys, "They told me".. .,, "They made me".. ., "They said".. . , etc.), say that "The Idle Mind is the Devil’s Playground".

I would like to submit that this statement is especially true if the mind is in certain type of expat’s head, and if that expat was in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou several years ago. As an explanation of that, in the late 1980’s I came to the "Middle Kinkdom", and the company that I was with was doing business primarily in Fujian Province, in the area around  Fuzhou, In those days this town was far from being "The Entertainment Capital of China" (unless you were "into" the KTV, Karaoke, or drink until you drop, "scene"). If you were lucky (or smart) enough, you might get a room on the right side of the hotel to be able to receive an English Language radio station out of Taipei, but other than that you needed to take a thick book.

Given this situation, the "high point" of the evening generally was meeting other expats at dinner time and maybe getting together in the bar later, for a brew or two.

The particular company that I was with at the time, was a famous brand , and was a major target for counterfeiter’s, To protect the brand, they had a two man security department, one of which was a Chinese speaking American (from Colorado) that worked "in the field". This security man and I developed a friendship, and due to his involvement with China, a fairly close working relationship (every so often, I still "run into" this guy today, and it’s a great time for "remember when’s")

If you’ve ever been around people that are in this kind of business (it’s similar to being a "street detective"), you know that one thing they’re not "short on", is imagination. My friend and I met up with a group of his buddies in Hong Kong bar one night, and it reminded me of the "Cop Bar" scenes from some of the movies. These guys ran the gambit from looking like Sherlock Holmes (Tweed Jacket, Bulldog Bent Pipe, and all), to Frank Serpico (Beard, Scruffy Jeans, etc.).

Getting back to Fuzhou and idle minds, the combination of the characters above and nothing to do in the evening lead to some interesting plans. While most of these plans never got beyond the planning stage, we actually did carry one out that was a classic.

It seems that my buddy’s boss worked in the "home office" of the company, that was located in the Northeastern part of the U.S. that’s called "New England" (an area that’s pretty conservative), and had just gone through a divorce. He also had just visited Thailand and China, and while he was here, I discovered that he was as "daffy" as we were and had a good sense of humor. Given his lonely situation, my buddy and I decided (over a few beers in Fuzhou, one night) that he needed something to cheer him up, and "hatched" a scheme.

My friend was going to Bangkok in a few days, so we decided he should buy a postcard with a topless girl on it, take it to one of the more notorious "clubs" in Bangkok, have one of the girls write a message (something to the effect of "had a really hot time on your last visit to Thailand. Looking forward to seeing you next time, etc, etc,") and send it to him at the office by regular mail.

A few months later I got a phone call, that stated with "You did it. You and that ‘son of a b*@ch’ that works for me did it". When I asked who was calling he identified himself and started to laugh. I asked if the call was in reference to a post card and he said he had just gotten it, that it was "dog eared" from having been through so many hands and it was worn to the point that he could hardly read the message. He did say that it helped him understand why most of the girls in the office had been looking at him and snickering for the past few weeks.

Luckily, he took it as it was intended and everyone had a good laugh over it.

Now, why have I been seeing a guy in a Tweed Jacket with a Bulldog Bent Pipe following me around for the past few years… . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 27 November 2006

Where do you suppose Clyde, the Concrete Cop is today??? ? ?

On the other website that runs China Charlie, this week’s installment is titled "Scraps", and is basically a collection of notes that I had collected over the years, but could never find a way to make them into a full length installment.

This is one that I almost relegated to the "scrap" file, but somehow felt it had a little too much potential to ignore, so… . . .

When I was a kid, the city near where I lived used policemen to direct traffic at busy intersections during "rush hours". The guy working one of the main downtown intersection had what amounted to a dance routine he used to move folks in an orderly manner, and would be pictured in the local newspaper about once a year (he was also an "artist" with his whistle-it didn’t take much imagination to have it darn near talk to you).

During my early years here, in the "Middle Kinkdom" a similar situation existed at a fork in a main highway between Panyu and Zhongshan, except this officer didn’t move. He was a full size policeman made from concrete, and painted up to look like a traffic cop.

Us "Gwailohs" nicknamed him "Clyde, the Concrete Cop".

While Clyde didn’t make any local newspapers that I know of, he did have a lot of film exposed on him. (almost every foreigner that I was with, that saw him, had to have a picture).

I remember seeing more than one misbehavin’ driver "shape up", and temporarily drive sensibly the first time they saw ‘Ole Clyde. Usually this lasted until they figured out that Clyde wasn’t going to issue any traffic citations. The "give away" for the drivers was that Clyde was always standing in the center of the "Y", and not setting along the side of the road smoking a cigarette, or taking a snooze.

Recently I had occasion to pass through this same junction, realized that Clyde wasn’t there any more, and with the twist that my mind has, I began to wonder what happened to him.

Questions like, is he still in the Traffic Division setting behind a billboard in a concrete cruiser, or did he get promoted and is now a concrete detective, or is he like most ‘merican cops, and sitting somewhere in a donut shop right now, enjoying a cup of coffee and a concrete donut, swirled though my mind.

Did old Clyde get involved with one of the concrete queen’s that hang out with the concrete animals on Yingbin Lu, north of Panyu (those cement sweethearts that all seem to have silicon implants), have her clean him out and leave him to retire broke, standing in a sunny Hainan park acting as a pigeon roost? Or did he possibly wind up as a "greeter" at a branch of an American discount store located here?

Given the traffic situation today, where ever ‘Ole Clyde is we could sure use him and whole lot of his brethren to help drivers realize that a red light means that you’re supposed to stop. Or that those lines painted on the road are supposed to help the traffic move smoother, and not be used as centering guides for your vehicle.

Possibly they could hold the cameras that are intended to photograph traffic violators (it seems as though most of his human counterparts these days are aiming the cameras at anything but the traffic).

I just received an invitation from some guy named Clyde, to go swimming.

Now, why do you suppose the folks at the "swimmin’ hole are asking me to stand in this box, and why is there a bag of portland cement over there?? ? ?

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 20 November 2006

             Dear readers, what follows is a little history on the American Thanksgiving Holiday. For a more contemporary look at the holiday, check out "Charlie" on "thatsdongguan.com"

The American Thanksgiving Holiday, the real story … . . . .

The internet is a wonderful thing. It can be like having the world’s largest source of information parked in your own house (as long as you have a computer, an internet connection, are computer literate).

Having grown up in North America, I thought I knew the real story behind of the origins and celebration of the holiday that’s coming up there this week, American Thanksgiving.

I mean, how much simpler could the story be?

From the time we were kids, we were taught that a group of folks from England, who weren’t happy with the treatment of their belief in Europe, got on a small boat named the "Mayflower", sailed west until they bumped  into North America in 1620 during the Autumn Season, and established a colony (in the Boston area). With the help of friendly Indians, most survived the first winter and had a very good harvest the next year, so they had a feast to give thanks to the greater power (gotta’ be "politically correct here) for the bountiful harvest. It was a little over hundred years before it became a traditional Autumn festival in America.

Going into the internet, and typing "American Thanksgiving Holiday" into a search engine, pretty well blew holes in the myth that I grew up with. Now I hate to disappoint you, but there was nothing sensational (no paparazzi photos of John Smith and Pocahontas in a "compromising" situation in the woods), just that there had been certain liberties taken with the original story through the years.

First, the Puritans were from England, but were escaping intolerance with their belief in the Netherlands. Apparently, they negotiated the trip to North America with a London Stock Company, and roughly 2/3rds of the people on the Mayflower were sent to protect the company’s interest.

The Pilgrims (and the security contingent) did land on Plymouth Rock in the middle of December 1620, The first winter was extremely tough on the group, and by the following autumn the group had shrunk from 102 to 56. The harvest of 1621 was bountiful and they did have a feast to celebrate, that included 91 of the Indians that had helped them survive the preceding winter.

Somehow, we always seemed to think that the first Thanksgiving included Pumpkin Pie, and Turkey. By the fall of 1621, there wasn’t any flour left, so Pumpkin Pie was out (boiled pumpkin yes, but no pies), and the term "Turkey" was used to describe any wild fowl (not necessarily the big dumb, non flying bird that we associate with the holiday today).

Last year I had some "smart" comments about having a stuffed fish for the holiday here in China. As it turns out fish and Lobster were a big part of the original menu, along with clams (New England "Steamers"?), berries, venison, etc.

After the initial feast giving thanks in 1621, they were pretty sporadic, and it wasn’t until 1676 that June 29^th was declared "a day of thanksgiving" by the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts. October 1777 was the first time that thanksgiving was celebrated in all 13 colonies, and George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789 (a later president, Thomas Jefferson, thought the whole idea was not too smart).

By 1863, a magazine editor named Sarah Hale had "nagged" government officials for roughly 40 years with letters and editorials to have Thanksgiving recognized as a national holiday like we know it today, and that year President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November would legally be that day.

In 1939, then President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the legal holiday up one week (to the third Thursday of November) to create a longer Christmas Shopping Season, but bowed to a general public uproar, and in 1941 it was moved back to the last Thursday in November, and was sanctioned by congress as the holiday by law.

So, there you have it. The real story of Thanksgiving… . . .

After all of that, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish our American friends, and any one else that will be enjoying a sumptuous feast this Thursday, the happiest of holidays.

‘Til next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 13 November 2006

Explosive Shaving Cream, and warning labels?? ?

Most people are aware of the meaning of the red diamond shaped label used to warn folks that a product or cargo is flammable, but recently I found one in probably the last place in the world I expected it.

I had purchased a can of Shaving Cream made and packed by a major American supplier of non electric shaving gear and associated men’s shaving aids recently, and noticed a small red diamond shaped label on the can.

Normally, I associate these labels as being on products that blow up bomb style (Gasoline Trucks, Acetylene Tanks, kegs of Gun Powder, etc.), but explosive Shaving Cream?

In getting my glasses and reading the red diamond (the combination of old eyes and small print, requires a certain amount of visual assistance), it appears that the problem is with the gas that’s used to force the "shook up" foam from the can (there were also instructions to Shake Well before using on the can-"the can you fool, not your body", to quote an old burlesque line).

The particular company that markets the "Explosive Shaving Cream" also manufactures extremely sharp manual shaving devices. Are they going to have to put warning labels on those products also (something like, "danger, dragging this instrument lengthwise across the veins in your wrist can cause sever bleeding", or "improper use of this product may be hazardous to you health")?

Somehow, all of this reminded me of an alleged plot "hatched" by the "intelligence" agency of a major country in the 1960’s to eliminate a newly installed dictator of a Caribbean country, by loading his cigars with high explosive (boy, talk about intelligence!). And no, I don’t recall that this particular "intelligence" agency was advised in any way by Larry, Moe or Curley-this group of "intelligence" guys came up with this sinister scheme all by themselves.

Now this dictator also had (and still does have) a heavy beard, and shaving cream in aerosol cans was fairly new at the time this plot was dreamed up

All of this kind of makes a body wonder if the "loaded cigar" story was leaked to cover up the real plan? Did they really plan to start a brush fire in the dictator’s beard with flammable shaving cream, instead of using an exploding cigar? And has the real plot been hidden all these years, only to be uncovered by some bureaucrat in a government agency that was distracted from the solitaire game on his computer long enough to analyze the gasses used in aerosol shaving cream?

With the current craze for Product Liability Lawsuits that have lead to the avalanche of warning labels, one has to wonder if we’ll soon be seeing warnings on items like distilled water, reading "Warning, consuming large quantities of this product without proper pauses to breathe can cause oxygen deficiency?" (remember, McDonalds was actually found guilty of making some broad’s urchin fat!-Ole’ Ronald must have been caught on tape, force feeding the kid)

Actually, one of my favorite warning labels has been around for as long as I can remember. This is the one on cans of Lighter Fluid that reads "Do not use near fire or flame". Now, I suppose that it has to do with age, but what the heck is Lighter Fluid intended for-Cigarette Lighters, and other appliances that produce a flame. This always seemed like some kind of a governmental oxymoron to me.

When I was smoking and required the use of a lighter, generally I used fuels that didn’t have any warnings labels-Gasoline, Toluene, MEK (Menthol Ethyl Ketone), anything that would burn. The only problem with these was that their fumes would build up in the cap of the lighter, and cause a small explosion that would blow the lighter out the first time you’d try to light it, and some of them burned with a very black smoke.

One of the times I really could have used a warning label involved lighting one of the afore mentioned lighters, while standing up in front of a fan to light a cigarette.

I didn’t realize that your own burning whiskers and eyebrows smelled that way… . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Posted 6 November 2006

Did you ever try to buy a light bulb, or standardization China style… . . .

As was in last week’s "Charlie", I hang out with a bunch of guys primarily from North America that are old enough that they have not seen "50 anything", in years. Most of the folks from that generation were raised to be pretty independent when it came to repairs, and never call a repairman until something is so screwed up that it takes a trained pro with a schematic and bank of equipment at least a week to sort out.

With the normal expat lifestyle, unless you own the apartment you live in, if you have a problem with water, electricity, etc., you call the Management Office and they sent a person to fix it.

Occasionally, one of us will get "a hair across our butt", decide we miss the "old do it yourself" days, and tackle a "gremlin" in the power or pipes ourselves. One of afore mentioned group had decided to fix a "drip’ (faucet, not a person), and in trying to get the parts he required, he found that there really isn’t a standard in almost any parts here

Personally, the trials of replacing a light bulb here some time ago taught me  that repairs of any kind are best left to the local professionals. Coming from North America, I figured all I had to do was to make certain that the bulb was high enough in wattage to keep me from going blind, and low enough to not melt the socket.

Boy, was I wrong!!

When I went to the lighting section of the local branch of a major  North American Department Store here, and looked for a 100 watt bulb, I found that they didn’t have anything brighter than an 80 watt. O.K., so I wouldn’t "burn a hole in the night" as quickly as I wanted, but we all have to make sacrifices.

Next, I found that if the lamp took a screw based bulb, there are 3 different size screw (threaded) bases here. "Back home", basically all larger incandescent bulbs have a standard diameter and thread base, so I hadn’t bothered to check that before I left our apartment.

Then I found that not all lamps here have a threaded socket, and some use pins on the bulb base to hold them in. O.K., so I checked and determined that I needed a bulb for a "pin socket".

Further checking in the light bulb department, revealed that some of the "pin sockets" used bulbs with the pins directly opposite each other, while some others have pins that are "offset" (the pin on one side is higher than the pin on the other).

When you throw in several different connectors on fluorescent tubes (straight and circular), halogen tubes in several sizes, believe me, it’s easier to let a pro handle bulb changes.

Alright, so something a simple as changing a light bulb can be pretty complicated, but buying an electrical device here can be even more challenging. The plug styles will vary from the two flat prong North American style plug, to the heavy three prong Hong Kong/UK style plug. In between, some will have two round prong Japanese style plugs and others will have the three flat angled prongs that seems to be the "standard" Chinese style plug.

Most apartments seem to have electrical outlets that are supposed to handle all but the Hong Kong/UK plug, but even these won’t handle most plugs other than the Chinese "standard". Extension cords are available that have outlets for most plugs, except that the Chinese "standard" plug may or may not fit.

It’s enough to give a guy a headache.

The point is that if you're buying anything from a 65 inch flat screen T.V. to a hair dryer, avoid a lot of frustration and make certain that you pick up an adapter or have a multi plug extension cord.

Now, if I could just get this American Style plug, with two different width flat prongs out of the outlet I forced it into…. . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Segment Posted 29 October 2006

The risks of mixing older folks and exercise equipment…. . . . .

If you haven’t already guessed by the picture on our home page, I’m "gettin’ on in years". Not only that, but I hang around with a group of guys that can remember "Ike and Nixon" campaign buttons, and know who Adelie Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and Alfred E. Newman were.

Generally a group of us guys that are a little beyond middle age get together for a late breakfast on Sundays, speak ‘merican, and have a general discussion about "old guy stuff".

A strange thing about being on the "wrong side of 50" is that you get these "guilt flashes" about some really unusual things (nothing really "earth shaking", just unusual). During one of my guilt trips about not taking better care of myself, I went out an bought a contraption that resembles a beach chair, held together by a bunch of Rubber Bands (some folks refer to these as "elastics", but where I come from, asking a person if they have some "elastics" will get you "whopped up ‘side of the head").

Anyway, during one of our Sunday Brunch’s ("Brunch" sounds pretty classy, huh?), I mentioned that I had purchased this thing, but was concerned about using it with anyone standing anywhere behind or in front of it. I’m not sure, but I suspect that if one of these Rubber Bands ("elastics" or bungee’s) "let go" when it was stretched, it could do some real damage.

One of the other guys (with a build similar to "jolly old St Nick") mentioned that during one of his physical fitness guilt trips he went out and bought a Chinese Treadmill, and that he had a problem with it (now, there’s a real shocker).

It seems that he had set it up on a mezzanine in his apartment, and one day was happily striding along, when it suddenly started picking up speed. Before he could find the off switch, it pitched him up against a glass partition. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt, the partition wasn’t damaged, and eventually he was able to get the machine un-plugged (and out of his apartment).

"They "say that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" which is probably a safe assumption, but I suspect that it’s also lined with exercise equipment purchased by older folks with good intentions (I know one guy that went out and bought a Chinese version of a full Nautilus machine and the last time I saw it, it was being used to hang wet clothes on).

They’re also a handy place for piling old magazines, set your beer and ashtray while you’re watching T.V., and exercise tables are great for taking a nap (for both animals and humans). Most exercise equipment will make a really good paperweight for the Summer, when you’ve got fans running but don’t want your newspaper blown around.

One advantage of getting older is that people expect you be forgetful. So "gee, I forgot it was there" works when some smart alec asks about a piece of exercise equipment piled high with a couple of years of back issues of your favorite magazine, and wet clothes draped all over it.

Fitness Clubs and exercise rooms are not good places for old guys to hang around in.

First, some of us are still smokers, and most of these joints don’t have any ashtrays setting around. Not only that, they object strongly to having cigarettes or cigars ground out on the floor, when they come up and tell you in a very indignant manner, that you that can’t smoke in their place. Then, there’s always the danger that some young "pup" will challenge an older guy and of course, you can never back away from a challenge. The result of these answered challenges can be a fast ride in an ambulance.

If that’s not enough, most of these establishments have full length mirrors, that I suspect are there to keep us older folks out. A 55+ year old body is not a pretty thing to look at and for me personally, having to look at it when I shave in the morning, is about all a guy can stand.

Now, can someone come over here and help me get out from under this 150 lb. Barbell? It didn’t look that heavy, when that young guy over there bench pressed it…. . . . .

Until next time "Y’all have a rice week now"

Segment Posted 22 October 2006

Segment Posted 15 October 2006

Area 51, China Style

In the Southwestern United States, near the city of Roswell New Mexico, is an area of desert that’s referred to as "Area 51. This area has been declared "Top Secret", and closed to the public since an alien space ship ("Flying Saucer") allegedly crashed there in the late 1950’s. Given it’s proximity to the White Sands Testing Ground and Los Alamos Research Center (nuclear laboratories) may also have something to do with its classification (but that would spoil the story regarding the space ship crash).

Moving on to2006 and the other side of the dateline, a while back I was in an airport in one of the major cities in the "Middle Kinkdom", and found what seemed to me to be a Chinese Version of Area 51, called "Gate 51".