(1267) Tue 13 Apr 99 15:22
By: MARTY LEIPZIG
Howdy campers.
Well, as some of the more astute and erudite of the gallery
may have noticed, I've been away for the past 3/4'ths of a
fortnight. And if you didn't, sit up and pay attention, and
your mother is a cow.
Anyways.
Seems that a combination of an inquisitive and determined 6-
year old, a blustering sandstorm and an impromptu trip the
hell out of Dodge accounted for my absence here.
Well, as usual, it all started innocently enough. Daughter #1
was futzing with her new Barbie Designer CD on the computer.
This, of course, completes the collection and is a welcome
addition to her collation of all things Barbie; including the
Barbie Porsche, Barbie Dude Ranch, Barbie Summer in the
Tropics, Barbie Winter in Majorca, Barbie Bulimia Clinic,
Barbie Abbatoir and Barbie Detox Center.
Ahem.
Well, not to be outdone, Daughter #2, the aforementioned 6-
year old, who is under strict parental injunction NOT to even
think about messing with the family computer without direct
adult (or at least, sisterly) supervision; conveniently
forgot that admonition and was simply delighted with the
prospect of wasting as much ink, paper and computer printer
consumables as possible as she proceeded to create an entire
wardrobe for her drove of similar Barbies with all their
assorted paraphernalia.
I was out in my office, listening to the old shortwave bands
and having a generally fine time of things as there was
a considerable storm brewing and the skip was jitterbugging
across the ionosphere like a break dancer on speed. But this
is not your typical sort of storm, this was the Old Testament
"Let's nuke the nasty ol' pharaoh" sort of aeolian
blitzkrieg; in other words, the mother of all sandstorms.
Now, for a little science lecture: the air is hovering at
about 75% humidity, and the ambient screen temperature of the
said air is approximately 40C. Now, into that mess, stir in
winds of near 75 mph, toss in a goodly portion of the Rub al-
Khali (i.e., a shitload of very fine quartz sand); and set
the atmospheric blender to "frappe". The result? Tons and
tons of mobile, moving, motive sand with a serious mad-on for
anything stationary; all a-banging and a-zinging against each
other with abandoned glee. One doesn't need an orchestra to
be a conductor. One doesn't need Western Union to be wired.
Nor, does one need to be an electrical engineer to see that
this is going to generate some serious static electricity.
And it did.
A shocking turn of events.
After the first few crackles of lightning and the continued
lowering glower of the skies, I decided that being hooked up,
via an expensive world band receiver, to fully 2.5 km of wire
in the form of a helical antenna, was not a good idea at all.
Even though I had taken serious precautions to ground the
equipment, I am not one to tempt the Fates. I yanked the
antenna leads and hooked them all to my home-brew "Cantenna"
(a 5 gallon oil can with an SO239 coaxial connector rigged
into the aforementioned 5 gallons of crude) to dissipate any
static buildup from zinging sand grains and all that copper
outside the window.
As I came back into the villa, I heard the distinct whine of
the Epson grinding out yet another polychromatic Barbie
accouter. With all the atmospheric brouhaha brewing outdoors,
even with the UPS, I figured that it would probably be best
to shut the thing down and disconnect the modem, peripherals,
etc., against the onslaught of errant electrons.
Good idea, albeit implemented a tad too late.
Seems the print spooler was near full capacity and grinding
out outfits like a Taiwan knock-off shop. The damn thing was
locked up solid with a single minded determination that make
Komodo dragons seem like they have short attention spans.
Short of yanking the plug, I couldn't figure out how to dump
the cache and curtail printing without trashing the system in
the process.
Well, my quandary was soon resolved for me by just a few
extra gigawatts of electricity that your local nuclear plant
would term an "unanticipated fission surplus". Seems that the
wires that were designed for 220 VAC, 50 Hz, were suddenly
supercharged by a few dozen mega-amps and kilovolts from the
substation by a direct lightning strike. Not only did the
entire west side of Doha lose power; those electrical
"thingies" connected and operating at the time, were, for the
lack of a better term, toast.
The final tally was one shorted UPS, one cremated computer,
one zapped US Robotics modem, one trashed fax, one totaled TV
and one smoked stereo.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that they were all plugged into the
expensive as-all-get-out Richardson UPS which unconditionally
and absolutely guarantees that all products plugged into the
critter will be fixed or replaced at their expense if the
unit fails to protect "it's charges" (if you'll pardon the
pun; or even if you won't). I was advised of this when we
relocated from the states, as the electrical supply here is
primarily unfiltered, spikey and not at all conducive to long
life of products which are mechanical electrovores.
Off to the Internet Cafe on the east side of town and off to
Richardson Electronics went a list of things they, however
unknowingly, had just purchased. I received a phone call (as
the phones, being on a separate circuit, were one of the few
electrical entities still working) a scant 4 hours later from
Richardson telling me that: 1. Yes, I was registered with
them (bless their little blow-in registration cards), 2. Yes,
I was covered and 3. Yes, I should go ahead and replace
everything that was now a small puddle of silicon and scrap
metal and send them the bill.
Neat.
Well, since all this ridiculousity was more than one person
should be allowed to handle, I decided that this was just the
excuse I needed to make a trip out of Doha and go somewhere
(anywhere) else for some well deserved, but seldom redeemed,
R&R with the family.
We chose Dubai in the UAE because it was cheap, relatively
close (but distinctly less Islam-inundated), and home to the
currently ongoing "Dubai Shopping Festival".
Such a deal.
I won't bore or tempt you with all the gory details of the
trip but suffice to say I almost caused an international
incident when the Custom's Agent had his balls swell a little
too much and decided that it would be fun to taunt the large
and seriously overheated American Expat (seems we arrived
just in time for summer to hit Dubai with full force).
Numerous verbal atrocities were committed in at least 6
languages. He'd scream at me in Arabglish, and I'd swear back
in Russian (there's a HUGE Russian (Mafia) influence in
Dubai). The wife would join in with German deprecations and
the kids were having fun ridiculing the locals in French and
Arabic; unfortunately simultaneously.
Way too much fun.
400 dirhams later, we secured our entry visas and made our
way to the Renaissance Dubai Hotel, and entirely too posh and
exclusive hostelry. Bidding the Custom's Agent adieu and
early coronary thrombrosis; I immediately forgot him and made
our way to our room, and precisely 15 minutes later, down to
"Harry's Pump Room" to take my troubles out for a well-
deserved swim.
The 4 days we were there passed in their typical familial
delusatory fashion, what with trips to the huge malls, huger
souqs and even more huge electronics and gold shops. Apart
from some more verbal brouhaha with various merchants, there
was not really anything of a humorous, areligious or
scatological nature to report...
...well, maybe one thing...
Seems that there was this group of British footballers
(soccer players to you NorthAmericanos) staying at the same
hotel as we; ostensibly to participate in the ongoing "Dubai
Coca-Cola Cup" soccer tournament. Fine, fine. Night three of
our little vacation found me perched on a bar stool in the
again aforementioned Harry's Pump Room, contemplating the
fine selection of 8 English ales, porters and stout on tap
and chatting it up with both the German bloke seated next to
me (an engineer from BMW or Mercedes in town for the shopping
festival) or the Aussie barkeep. Harry's was also the local
cigar bar and I was contemplating also having the most
expensive cigar of my life (A Monte Cristo double corona from
Havana, 8.5" x 62 ring and nicely dark, silky wrapper) for a
mere pittance of Dh148 (about US$47.00).
I selected the cigar and told the barkeep to start from the
left and keep going until there were none.
"Were none what?", he inquired.
"None left.", I replied.
"Ah."
I was working on beer #4, blissed beyond compare. The wife
and kids were lounging out by the rooftop pool, eating up
both room service and my Rhodium American Express credit
limit; I was smoking one of the finest cigars I've ever been
privileged to smoke, chatting with 2 wonderfully affable
blokes from the antipodes and sipping some of the most
wonderful beer this side of La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Yet, into this idyllic scene intrude four heavily inebriated
and seriously pumped up on themselves British footballers.
They weaved and staggered over to a table and loudly demanded
service. Since it was still rather early, the waitress hadn't
yet shown, so they were forced to rubber-leg it to the bar
and fetch their own drinks.
I ignored these mere wisps of 30 year old testosterone as
much as possible (thus securing my spot in the Don Martin
old-fart curmudgeon hall of fame); fucking noisy, sloppy and
boisterous bastards.
Seems that the leader of the clan took offense at my cigar's
aroma and made it quite clear to all in the bar that they
were thusly offended. I immediately pointed out to them that
this was a Goat-damned Cigar Bar (Fer Chrissakes.) and if
they didn't shut up, I'd charge them for breathing my air.
Well, this went over like a turd in a punchbowl and not only
did not calm the waters, but actually seemed to irritate
these blighters all the more.
As Jim Staal would say: "Bummer, dude."
Numerous pointless and prosaic invectives were hurled by this
crowd of collective morons ("Pommy bastards", as the barkeep
confided); which were all soundly ignored.
This infuriated them all the more.
By this time, the wonderful English beer was working it's
magic on my kidneys and bladder and I decided that a quick
trip to the loo was in order. As I pushed back my barstool,
one of the noisier of the Poms decided that he was just
bulletproof enough to stand up to the "blighter with the
smelly cigar", which could have been any of the 15 patrons in
the bar at the time.
Unfortunately, it was me to whom he was referring.
He jumped up, but, strangely enough, after I stood my ground,
snarled a bit at him and questioned both his general
intellectual capacity and familial lineage; he sort of shrunk
back to his cadre of like minded morons, and immersed himself
quietly in his dwindling beer.
Chickenshit. Schmuck. Dolt.
Well, after answering nature's call and returning to the bar,
I was pleased to see the Poms had all sucked down the last of
their drinks and had absconded. I spent the rest of the
evening laughing with Stan the German, Rollo the Aussie and
all the others in the bar about those drunken idiots and life
in general.
Time came to settle up and leave (the cigar was on a
different account and was destined to show up (or not,
actually) on my hotel bill; about which I, being a good WOA
did point out to them but did not run out and purchase a box
of the things (although the temptation was damn near
irresistible)); when Rollo told me that my bar tab was Dh0.00
"How could that be? I had at least one of every beer and a
few shots of Knob Creek bourbon." I protested.
Rollo explained that he tacked my and Stan's bar bill on the
tab of "those Pommy bastards" (they also gave Stan a hard
time about being German or some such idiocy).
"And they paid without even batting an eyelash, the silly
sods. I hope they have a serious hangover in the morning."
Great.
Now I had to stay and buy a few beers for my new best friend
Aussie barkeep buddy.
You see, there are certain advantages to being an ExPat.
Cheers! Y'all.
... "And I, unlike you, you poor simian degenerate, can type legibly."-PS
* Origin: FIDO QWK MAIL & MORE! WWW.DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:3603/140)
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