Day Two: Please Fasten Your Seatbelts

"The Shit piles up so fast in Vietnam you need wings to stay on top of it…”

Day Two can only be summarized by replacing Vietnam with inner-urban Mumbai and wings replaced with golf shoes. My delirium is beginning to break and I’m taking this full on Gonzo style complete with Jack (I know, the mini bar didn’t have Wild Turkey) neat, because I don’t trust the ice around here.

0940AM UTC// 30.04.07

I’m awake, seems like I’m always awake now in between moments of blacking out. Happened to get to sleep for more than 100 minutes straight last night thanks to a tape delay broadcast of the Yanks/Sox duel from Saturday or had Joe Buck not cleared customs until just then? Anyway, never made it through the game, but my faith lies solely in the Sox to pull it out, perhaps its waiting for me on the tele right on?

After thoroughly enjoying a combination listed below in recommendations, my morning was spent wondering if teleportation is ever legalized, will people choose hotels just so they can claim that they’ve been somewhere? I was beginning to think that my life was going to exist purely in the realms of airplanes and hotel rooms until….

1626 PM UTC// 30.04.07

After putting the room service cooks through my introductory test of a tasty club sandwich and chicken-almond cream soup, I’ve decided that I may need to up the bar for breakfast tomorrow. The meal was perfect and ended with a quality 110 minutes of rest, which came to an abrupt end with the call from the lobby telling me my Indian-Grandfather was ready to advance this journey to the next level.

1701 PM UTC// 30.04.07

I can’t recommend the showers at Le Royal Meridian enough…good velocity, good heat, ability to change speeds, but could go cold at any time…from now on we’ll just refer to this moment of my day as “The Felix”. I gather my belongings and head downstairs to meat my Indian-Grandfather as we begin one of the most monumental car rides in my life, only to be topped by this mornings car ride.

A little background about Indian driving, and I’m assuming this is common throughout most parts of the world not located in Canada and the US.

*Horns-to be used at all times, but never in anger. Horns are the universal verbal signal that informs the motorbike, scooter, ox-drawn carriage or fruit truck that you are behind and would like to pass or please start accelerating. Horns are to be used approximately 10,000 times during an average 45 minute commute.

*Lanes are informative suggestions about separation of cars on major and minor roads. These suggestions are strongly discouraged and dangerous.

*People are to walk with caution because they do not posses “right of way” status.

*Do not be alarmed when you are backed up behind a fruit truck that is having a hard time getting around two oxen-drawn carriages, this is normal and should be encouraged.

…and after all of that, it was by far the most interesting 45 car ride I’ve ever had that didn’t involve ____ on the road. I thought it was the most interesting car ride until I was set to go home, but since I don’t have any photos (and I will tomorrow, I promise,) I’m holding that conversation for a later post.

The work day was long and since I still do not posses Rupees to bargain with I was unable to put the feed bag on during my first shift, which made the 12 hours go by rather quickly in fact. So the first day of work is done and as I watch the smog-ridden sky glow with that big red ball, I’m reminded that the world is in fact a lot larger than I imagined.

More tomorrow and the Z-survival percentage of Bombay.

Recommendations:

Premiership:

*ManUtd/Everton-I know that no one will catch this, but caught the game on one of the two sports stations I get here on “ESPN” with Martin Tyler and Andy Gray. The coverage was excellent and it made me want to find an old skool Satellite Dish to take up my entire backyard so I never have to go back to FSC.

Learning:

*Discovery Channel’s Search for the Lost World-a group of scientist head out to study the findings and mythology of Arthur Doyle’s “Lost World”, I think Train is the only one that really cares about either one of these.

That’s it for today…thanks for reading

Day One: "I'm just glad to be here"

Welcome, I felt it would be an injustice to the blog world not document this monumental adventure, so here I am at 0122am watching a live match between Real Madrid and Athletico (3-0 Real), eating original Pringles and enjoying a nice mixed cocktail of water and Gatorade Propel mix. I apologize for the lack of wit and creativity, but I can’t remember the last time I was so mentally and physically confused. I know now that my blood doesn’t have what it takes for international travel, but that’s another story and while we’re here I suppose we should make the best of it.

13:15 (PST) // 28.04.07

Mad dash to get all gear together was a successful operation and therefore caught the plane on time and enjoyed my seat in 21F next to an elderly Dutch woman that hadme lift her luggage and help her with the remote for the on-flight entertainment screen located on the back of the seat in front of her. Six hours later my tutorial continued and we finally agreed that it would be best for everyone involved that she only watch the real time plane map to make sure we were still on course and I advised her to let me know when the outside temperature dips below -65F.

I have to sing my first ray of praise for the on-flight entertainment, I honestly can’t remember of want to image what life would have been like taking to 10 hour plane trips back to back without the ability to contemplate watching a film like “Holiday”, because if not now, when?

After only managing 20 minutes of throughout the first flight we landed at the “Schiphol” in the beautiful flood lands of the Elenbaas Tribe.

07:45 CEST (Central European Summer Time)/ /29.04.07

My arrival in Heiny world also coincided with the first stages of delirium. Since I haven’t quite finished my medical degree I figured the best thing to do to fight a mild case of delirium would be to polish off a Heiny or two and enjoy a smoke? Who knew that I could do both of these while sitting outside of a Casino, all in the Schiphol. Road trip Goose?

Well thanks to Maieke for keeping the “Big Heiny’s” flowing and Andy and DJ Dutch for keeping me company for two hours while I tried to conquer my current state with the finest in golden Dutch Ale. Unfortunately this led to the story of the day. Here are the details that need to be known:

*misread my boarding pass for the next flight to the difference of about a half hour
*this was compounded by the numerous “Big Heiny’s” and Camels that I had spent the last two hours helping get prepped for another 10 hour plane “experience”
*compounding this fact even more is that I’m unable to read Dutch, in less you count 2.0’s pic’s of the day

So as I’m walking to find my gate with the prototypical lost American look two agents waiting at the gate immediately state: “you are Mr. Edwards?”….right away I knew things were fuct. Moving quickly through security and finding the doors closed to the final tunnel to access my new Airbus 330, I immediately panic and look for the nearest button to push obviously, which turns out to be the fire alarm button….really…it’s a button. After a scolding from 2.0’s 3rd cousin I eventually settle in to my seat with a little bit of an accelerated heart beat and the line repeated over and over, “we almost pulled your bags”…well they didn’t, and I got a story so stick it Dutchies.

Not much to tell about the 2nd plane experience other than my futile attempts at trying to maintain consecutive hours of sleep in two coach seats. Good times.

22:50 UTC // 29.04.07

Mumbai, big city of dreams? We’ll see about that, but the short time I’ve spent here I’ve been floored by the hospitality and accommodations. Not much to mention, other than Ruud Van Nistleroy scored while I was talking about my Dutch experience, so is there a windmill conspiracy? Stay tuned…. (As you see with the photos I'm working with a new camera and I haven't figured how to get myself out of the picture.)

Recommendations:

Film:

***Blood Diamond-a little predictable, but perhaps the best LdC performance since he was on Growing Pains. I’m too tired to look that up, but I think that’s right.

**1/2 Half Nelson-Where did RG come from? And why is he so good? Amazing performance, some of the other elements break down as an overall film, but still quality.

¼ Aragon-I know, but I didn’t have time to get started on The Good Sheppard so this had to do, and I wish I would’ve just read Sky Mail.

Podcasts:

SModcast Absolutely brilliant (thanks to GS for pointing me in the right direction)