A Day: Stream of subconciousness VI

German client: "Imagetext is perfect-Thank you for helping me! Invoice?!" (Pay: 50 Euro per hour) Vietnamese client: "Your prepararing for the whole 2 recruitment seminars were very bad." (Pay: $20 per hour) # It's Curtis King's birthday. A ragtag group of musicians and musician wannabees is having a jam at Bernie's. A man with glasses crawls on the stage and begins to kiss the crotch of the lead singer under his guitar. Forty-something expat ladies wander onto the stage and spin around like Stevie Nicks well past her prime. I do substance abused harmonies. Bernie smiles. # American client: "I am so happy we are working together. It's GREAT (I don't bold letters easy)... you are truly a consummate professional and a super talented writer." (Pay: $40 per hour) French client: "I'm going to dock your pay 10 minutes every time you go out and have a cigarette because when you're smoking you're not writing and I don't pay for smoking" (Pay: $6 per hour) # We're remodeling the old patio area to be an enclosed room with patio and BBQ outdoors. The construction boys have installed frosted glass to the now enclosed indoor area thus blocking the large expansive view we used to have to the patio. Uhh. Do it again Vietnam. Until we get it fucking right. # German client: "Hi David- Magnificent (work)!". (Pay: 50 Euro per hour) Vietnamese client: "We want to stop working with you." (Pay: $20 per hour) # I'm convinced tomorrow will be a better day. Because I'm an optimist. I wonder how the black bespectacled drunk fan made out with the lead singer at the birthday party. I should kiss more crotch (female) on stage :) Because I'm terrible at kissing ass. Want respect in your job? Charge more.

Good Morning Mali & The Red Toilet Paper: Into Afrika with the Wild Wild East II

08.29.09 - RCNevada opens his post, Onward To Mali, with the following, " I’ve never been to Mali, but I’ve spoken to people who have. And after hearing their stories and seeing their pictures I can’t for the life of me think of a single reason I would want to go there." And I can tell you he's dead right, at least for our first day. The previous evening found us traveling from Bamako airport to the city proper and trying to figure out where the city proper was. All along the road into town my eyelids kept flashing like the shutter on a camera taking rapid-fire snapshots of a country in more disrepair than Mongolia, the 183rd poorest country on the planet. Mali is the 187th, depending on which chart you look at.

I had spent a few months in Mongolia five years ago at the invitation of Ulaanbaatar's TV5 to write and produce a television program on the Olympics and if one needed a lesson in what happens to a country when the prevailing colonial power or political friend cuts and runs when things get tough - Mongolia was a case study. RCNevada continues on Mali, "According to one man who lived in Bamako for a year trying to set up a business, the country of Mali serves but one purpose: That is to serve as a shining example of what happens when the profit dries up and the colonial government packs it in and goes home, leaving the country in the hands of people who have no concept of how to run a business, much less a country."

This echoed a hollow "ditto" as I watched unfinished building after unfinished building fly by on the road into town, inviting unfavourable comparisons to the same scenario in Mongolia. Mali spoke to me in the same language that Mongolia had, the latter being left in the lurch after the fall of the Soviet Union with no understanding of a market economy and no motivation to go beyond NGOs for aid. Although I believed it immediately, it would take me days to know for sure that Mali had the same disease - insufficient sociological antibodies to fight off the shit situation they had been left in by the French.

But our invitation had come at the request of my partner's mother and the situation we were presented was that of an open opportunity to develop business and even learn from the more than plentiful NGOs how to pitch marketing projects to aid organizations and how to acquire funds from those organizations to implement projects of our own - all in an untouched land of organic produce and absolutely beautiful music we were told. Rubbish, we found - except for the music.

The look on my partner's face as we turned off the main blacktop onto a sand, rock and mud side road was that of horror as she eyed the fully one metre deep mud trenches that our old Mercedes would have to traverse - and this was not the sleek Mercedes of our early trip Frankfurt fame. This was a banged up more than ten year old model that had had it's make & model markings replaced by Daewoo and Toyota logos to make up for the three stolen hubcaps and the missing peace symbol from the hood. A Mercedes without the markings might as well be a Chevy and in this case, it was a Chevy that kept it's parking lights on while the engine was turned off - so long as the power cables were still connected to the battery. Worried about the battery going dead on a following day, I wondered why the driver didn't just disconnect the cables at every parking stop but realized that he knew just how long the car could sit with it's running lights on and still be restarted, saving him from the tedious job of screwing the cables on and off every time mother Miss Daisy wanted to stop and buy something.

"Where's the road?!", my partner exclaimed as we plunged deep into a muddy rut and the driver gunned the engine to slop us through, the trunk and gas tank slamming against the muddy rocks and refuse that littered what they called a street - her eyes all bugged out trying to see something/anything on the poorly lit pass. "Welcome to the third world, I chimed", knowing full well that this was but the first of many cultural shocks that she would encounter on this slow slide from a world that delights in the exploits of Paris Hilton's new BFF.

The pool

Home comes with an abrupt stop and we are facing the courtyard of what was once, the Cuban ambassador's residence in Mali - arguably a reasonably wealthy abode by local standards. It boasts a garden, two storeys, a maze of rooms and a swimming pool. We had been forewarned that the pool needed cleaning, and even tacitly agreed to do so enroute to Mali, in thanks to our gracious host, but the whole idea that my partner had packed a cute bikini in which to do the cleaning was now becoming just screamingly hilarious once we saw the pool. What sort of cruel joke could this have been that our combined airfares from Vietnam to Germany, on to France and forward to Mali would be seemingly worth more than the whole of this residence and its accompanying pool? "Oh dear David. Shut the F up and sit the F down", my future self says to my present self. "You have no idea how whacky the finances are going to get around here" he continues. And no, at that point I didn't - but I suppose that's the beauty of being a barnacle on a ship that somebody else built and sailed. At virtually no point during the proposal, or planning of this endeavor had I been requested for more than yes or no answers to questions like, "Would you like to spend three weeks in Munich, Paris or Frankfurt before going to Mali?" It would soon become apparent that the trip was executed perfectly bass-ackwards leaving nothing but poverty and chaos as the icing on a three week Parisian holiday instead of the other way around

Time to meet the mosquitos. One of the things we had been prepared to deal with was the idea that part of the house had been reapportioned to serve as kitchen for the owner's restaurant chain - so we fully expected to see things a bit of a mess downstairs. But what had failed to have been mentioned was that there would be over 20 staff living in the house and its supporting out-structures along with ourselves and our hosts. They also forgot to mention the mosquitos. Welcome to the third world. The one in which my partner and her mom would sleep in an air conditioned and hermetically sealed portion of the house and I would sleep, "soldier style", as it had been described to me, in a simple clean room just down the hall but without aircon. And that would have been fine, had they not overlooked the need for mosquito netting, which all the other residents had. But I was the new guy, and I should have expected some oversights in this area - the same as the owner should have expected me to have been banging on their bedroom door at four o'clock in the morning after suffering through 3 hours of mosquito coordinated dive bombing attacks. 

An unhappy owner and a can of bug killer was produced and I then did my best to sleep with well near 100 bites in just the space of a few hours. Rainy season. And nobody seemed to have thought that the metres worth of stale and rancid water still left in the pool would have been any cause for mosquito breeding.

Morning comes in Mali with the priests at a nearby mosque chanting through loudspeakers around 5am during what we didn't know was going to be Ramadan and though initially jarring would turn out to be sort of an early morning lullaby in my first week of this new and undiscovered land.

Popping up around six, I can't get dressed fast enough to hit the streets and see what had been shrouded in mosquito laden darkness just hours before - the street life of Mali and all it's glory. Drugstores are carried on heads in baskets and you just need to poke around the basket a bit to find the cure for whatever ill might be ailing you. These are black market drugs by the way, but finding and Excedrin or a Motrin here can be akin to finding the toy in a box of Cracker Jacks. Notice the photo of the green peppers with the Malian coin at the lower right of the photo. That coin is about the size of a quarter so you can see that a standard green pepper here is about 1/3rd the size of what you might be used to in the west, or even in Vietnam. All the people are tall and if you had missed that virtually all of the woman are gorgeous, you'll most certainly be impressed by the manner in which they carry most anything ranging from food to auto parts atop their heads with perfect balance. Mali was adequately described to me by my partner as remedial, and whilst I had already experienced this sort of an economy and culture in Mongolia, my partner could not have been more over whelmed. Here, her mother had assembled not just a business but a life in this tropical moonscape of a country and she was still trying to come to grips with that. For all of our missteps along the way, the one thing I have always assured her was that I would absolutely go to Mali just because it was there, and secretly, because I thought she needed me there as a vote of confidence. This place will turn out to bring more that either of us ever could have dreamed it would. Now we just need to give the country time to let it's mysteries unfold. Bring on the epiphany, Bamako. And explain to us why all the toilet paper in the country is red.

For more in the "Into Afrika" series, check here:

I) The Antipodes of Mali & Paree
II) Good Morning Mali and the Red Toilet Paper
III) Family Feuds, Singing Children & The Sounds of Silence
IV) How to Get From Mali to Munich

Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III

I'm gonna rant a bit and the quotes in colour are from Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn". - Dream: Hugh Kwon from Leo Burnett in Korea works at Nintendo and is my boss. (only in this dream) Is reviewing my expense reports and instructing me how to cheat more effectively - old contract story from the "Wild Wild East" (not in a dream) . - Kevin and Charlie and Robbie and crew are all at the Lan Anh club today. Fracas in the pool. Cool. I'm reading Henry Miller. - "In America they're constantly running amok. What they need is an outlet for their energy, for their bloodlust. Europe is bled regularly by war. America is pacivisistic and canabalistic. Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work; inwardly it's a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbor and sucking the juice from his bones. Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it's a whorehouse run by women, with native sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh. Nobody knows what it's like to sit on his ass and be content. That happens only in the films where everything is faked, even the fires of hell. The whole continent is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place." - I'm writing in Paolo's, the French cafe below my home. I can't have the details of the past in my writing - Forget the little things. Smells, and such. Bugs. A blur. Story about the roach on the wall of the bar and men behaving like roaches while it crawls. Li-Li bar. Finished. - There's a Saigon kiss on my leg in the sunshine. A fading burn on my calf from touching a motorbike tailpipe parked to shortly and no room for a man to walk in between. - And Paolo's bar breaks into a barwide chorus of "Stand By Me" when it shows up on the stereo and then a French song, even f%4#*ng louder. It's Sunday night. 8:45. - These are not the clouds of Chicago - The South Pacific only. They don't move. - "And I was just a Brooklyn boy, too, which is to say one of the last and the least of men." - A raindrop in the sunlight. - "Confusion is a word we have invented for an order that is not understood." - Long hairs growing from a mole. Beautiful for Vietnamese men. You see it all the time. No pictures for you today. Imagine. - "Most of us live the greater part of our lives submerged. Certainly in my own case I can say that not until I left America did I emerge above the surface. Perhaps America had nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that I did not open my eyes wide and full and clear until I struck Paris. And perhaps that was only because I had renounced America, renounced my past." - I have a large Philly cheese steak sandwich waiting. Over and out.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective

Belgian Prime Minister quits over Budweiser purchase - endorses Obama!

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Belgium's government collapsed Tuesday, unable to resolve an enduring divide over the purchase of Budweiser. The gap was so wide the premier, Yves Leterme, suggested the end of Belgium as a country was looming. King Albert II immediately began political discussions with lawmakers to try to resolve the situation. In an unusual declaration, the premier quit and said Belgium's constitutional crisis stems from the fact that "Budweiser is one of the crappiest beers in the world!"

"This is absolute madness. Here we are, a country famous for great beer and we're buying this swill? Gimme a f%#*^ng break!" Leterme added. "The stuff's made with rice!"

Leterme failed to get his cabinet -- an unwieldy alliance of Christian Democrats, Liberals, Socialists and nationalist Stella Artois drinkers that took office March 20 -- to agree on a better beer to buy than Budweiser. Vice-premier Didier Reynders urged him to stay on, saying the government must go ahead with its domination of world beers program. Elio di Rupo, leader of the Francophone Socialists, said the lackluster lager reform negotiations were held in a "constructive, positive and extremely fluid climate." But mainstream Flemish parties -- including Leterme's own Christian Democrats -- accused French-speaking parties of not knowing crap about good beer. "Go ahead, name a decent French beer, you morons!", they collectively voiced.

In a separate announcement Leterme endorsed Barack Obama for US President and indicated he would now be free to accept a Vice Presidential nod from Obama.

"He's the only American who's got his head screwed on straight", he opined, "America needs to learn to keep it's crap to itself, even if a bunch of numb-nuts from a small European monarchy are dim enough to want to buy it." The Obama camp responded with stock PR release stating the candidate was feeling "retinal fatigue and slightly under the weather" after his strong support for retaining the American brewing powerhouse over the weekend. No comment on Leterme's resignation or VP opportunity was offered.

For more on Obama, click below:

Obama to Send 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods House

Rick Wagoner Makes History - First CEO To Be Fired By A Sitting President
"I Vote For Black Man!" - Obamanation II
Lunch With Obama: Perspective XVI - The Little Things IX
A sex Redesign obama For scandal The oprah Wild oral Wild butt East iPhone Dailies
"Yes We Can": Obamanation
MENSA Endorces McCain/Palin
Obama Splits Ticket, Boots Biden!
Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase!
Obama Brandishes a Bud For The Bubbas!

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

Perspective

Today on the street there was a woman with a small pile of electrical refuse – wires and connectors and stuff, sockets & plugs. She had a screwdriver and a small hammer and was very deliberately separating the tiny copper and brass connectors from their plastic casings, throwing the plastic away. Each effort yielded a piece of metal about half the weight of a penny. She had a very small bag full of the scrap metal – not even a pound; and that was worth her time this afternoon – right across the street from the photo here. Graham Greene in his novel "The Quiet American" called Vietnam a country where nothing goes to waste. I see this in practice everyday. I am paid to think for a living. I shouldn't waste a thought. Perspective, for sure.

Update: 03.02.09 - I have learned since, that the building you see pictured was designed to be the home of a famous writer - hence, the window treatments representing the quill of a pen. Tre' cool.

For more on the "Perspective" or "Little Things" series, click below:

My Morning Wake-Up Call - Perspective XX: The Little Things XII
We'll Have A Gay Old Time - Perspective XIX: The Little Things XII
"Rolled Foggy Disposed Ricepaper" - Perspective XVIII: The Little Things XI
Joyeux Noel - Perspective XVII: The Little Things X
Lunch With Obama - Perspective XVI: The Little Things IX
One Motley Crue On The Bus Today - Perspective XV: The Little Things VIII
Attraction vs. Conversion: How To Power Your Blog - Perspective XIV: The Little Things VII
A glass box full of deep fried chicken heads - Perspective XIII: The Little Things VI
Seoul Searching - Perspective XII
He Would Have Shot Me 40 Years Ago - Perspective XI: The Little Things V
Chomsky on Colour & Sleep - Perspective X: The Little Things IV.2
Running With Scizzors - Perspective IX: The Little Things IV
Henry Miler II - Perspective VIII : The Little Things III.1
Henry Miller - Perspective VII: The Little Things III
Big Brother - Perspective VI: The Little Things II
This Carnival of Life! - Perspective V
The Art Walk - Perspective IV: The Little Things
Bentley #5 - Perspective III.2
Bentley vs. Vespa - Perspective III.1
Bentleys Invade Vietnam - Perspective III
Death Of A Colleague - Perspective II
Perspective