Microemboli

- Taxi rank, it's just on the street out front, says the concierge.

- Ta, brilliant, says E@L and he skips (slowly) down the steps in the chill wind down the easy winding, brick-paved walking steps to the road. There are four taxis. E@L considers jumping into the last one, but hey, don't be a smart-arse prick E@L.

The driver in the front cab, somewhat sullen, says nothing; no 'Good morning,' nothing. He starts the car, puts it into D and starts to pull out.

- H***** hospital, please.

The driver looks at him. His foot lifts sightly off the accelerator. They are already out of the rank's demarcated confines.

- Which H***** hospital?

- The H***** hospital. The Royal? Hang on let me check.

- Which hospital? the driver repeats. There are several.

E@L drags his man-bag onto his lap and pulls out his Tab.

- Yep, the Royal H***** Hospital, he says looking at the email from his colleague.

They are slowly (this is H***** at 8am: there is no other traffic) passing through the first intersection.

The driver points up the road to a squat grey, white, glass, mulit-blocked, multi-temporal building two streets away.

- That's the Royal H***** Hospital, just there. Shit man, you pulled me out of the rank. You could have walked.

- Well, OK, so it's not far. I'll know for tomorrow. You can drive me there. Like, it's you job (E@L mumbles this.)

They are up to the next block, and the driver turns right.

- Shit, man. Which entrance. I'll drop you up here on A***** St.

- I'm meeting someone on the coffee shop on E****** St.

- That's around the corner.

He keeps moving out of the drop-off bay and back to the road, where he immediately turns right, to the road behind the hospital. This side of the hospital is partially obscured by scaffolding. Half the earth seems to be under construction, have you noticed that? The driver drops E@L at a closed sandwich shop on the next corner.

- That's the only cafe on this street. Must be this one, man.

E@L shuffles his wallet out from under his arse. Like everyone else, he only goes for his money at the last possible minute.

- How much?

- Man, I didn't even turn on the fucking meter. (No receipt then?)

- Here's five for your troubles. Buy a pleasant attitude.

~~~~~~~~~~~

E@L meets his colleague, not at the coffee shop on the corner but, on the phone with her for directions until he sees her at the coffee-shop outside the north entrance to the hospital, waves, hangs up - hidden behind the scaffolding.

After introductions and small-talk about the customer's not-all-uncommon-amongst-gastroenterologists obsession with David Foster Wallace, she begins to walk towards the entrance. E@L hesitates, his tummy protesting, and asks:

- Breakfast?

- Haven't you had breakfast yet?

- Well, no (it was included in his hotel room-charge, but, hey, might as well be sociable), I was expecting, you know, as we were meeting in a coffee shop… You've had breakfast?

- I have. But sure, sorry, let's have something.

- Do we have time?

- Plenty of time. (Then why did I get out of bed so fucking early?)

The serving ladies seems your classic looking waitresses, slightly updated; homely apron (the word 'apron', interestingly, or not, has the same root as 'nappy' and 'map', btw - any rectangular piece of material), scarf (not sure how this fits with previous comment) tied back DFW bandana-like, and she is moderately unattractive. Could have been a body-double for the girl in Five Easy Pieces, except shorter by a little, but movies, TV, you really can't be sure, can you?

- How can I help? asks the shorter of the two waitresses.

- Oh, in lots of ways.

They crack-up for some reason. The waitresses can't help laughing, one has her arms on the counter, she lays her head in them. Never heard this one before, obviously. Stressed out; too many serious types this morning?

- What's wrong, asks E@L with a grin.

- Oh, nothing. We have dirty minds that's all.

- That's all? (They're still laughing. These girls go in the front row when E@L next does a show.)

- OK, what do you want to order?

- Ah, you're back. Flat white and some of that toasted banana bread. (Hold the chicken.)

- Thanks, have a seat. I'll bring it to your table. (She wipes away a tear.)

~~~~~~~~

They arrive in the Day Surgery, sign in as visitors, get some Ni-Viz stickers for their shirts and are 20 minutes early. The machine is ready to go, but they need a scope as his bloody thing won't let you do anything unless there is a full scope attached. The machine's probe is part of an endoscope and so it needs to be connected to the large fibre-optic camera - a stylish stack of cream and blue boxes from once respected company that has yet to completely negotiate itself through major legal/corporate issues back in Japan. The scope is still in the disinfectant and will be another 10 minutes.

They have another scope, they'll go get that. E@L fishes into his bag, pushes his hand around. Tries the secret compartment at the back. The secret compartment insode. Nope. He has left the USB thumb-drives (USB sticks, USB drives, what do you call them) back in his hotel.

Microembolism.

Shit.

A small clump of self-adherent RBCs have pulled out of his heart (the disjecta, the jetsam from an atrial thrombus?) or his leg (ditto from a long-haul flight induced soleal sinus DVT?), shot up the carotid, found an impassably small arteriole and knocked a few brain cells into ischaemia this morning: the integrated synaptic song-lines are interrupted and so a memory fades, an essential task is omitted, an anomic aphasia tips on the tongue, a name is list at a crucial career-making/breaking introduction, a forgotten lover's face coming towards you at a party. Hate it when that happens.

- Do I have time to go back to the hotel? (A short walk, two blocks away, don't need a fucking taxi, man.)

- Sure the Doctor is normally not in 'til about 20 to. (Then why did I…)

E@L puts his jacket back on (a jacket and tie, E@L? Unhealthy precedent, that) and finds his way past the anxious patients and the indifferent staff (stranger? shrug) to the lift, thence the street.

It is 8 minutes to the hotel he guesstimates, past interesting old buildings - 1889 built Theatre Royal, "Bare Witness" starts next week, "Crapunzel" still playing. A converted 1880's warehouse, Victorian style (the queen not the rival State up north); red-brick place, the old City Hall, with pale rendered pillars and two incongruous bell/observation-towers, weird, probably the stairwells. But no time/further-interest to look closely and sort this out.

E@L is in his room now, panting. The USB suckers were in his other briefcase. Sigh. He pockets them and heads back. It's an uphill gradient, only 1in 40 or so, but still, he nearly died a few months ago (Death on his holiday) so it's 10 minutes to get back. The scope is by then out of the disinfectant, the machine is on. He loads the presets and fiddles with them, a bit of tweaking.

Three hours later, they are finished all the scans, only one of the three patients nearly died, a good enough morning, and E@L has backed-up the further tweaks to his USB sticks. He has admitted only getting 70 or so pages into "Infinite Jest" but the Doctor has forgiven him, as he at least had completed "Ulysses," which he (the Doctor) agreed was more daunting in reality. "Gravity?" E@L nods. The Doctor nods back, approvingly. "IJ" is more of an endurance test, he said.

E@L's colleague had her copy of "50 Shades" carefully tucked deep in her bag, but she already left, gone back to M*********.

Which triggers the following aside: E@L wonders - Why would you fly down from M********* last night, stay for half an appointment, and fly out at lunch-time leaving The Talent (Phil Connors E@L) who has flown from Singapore - via, A*********, B*******, M******** epspecially to support and train her, and here he is on his own for the most important part of the commsioning/training. He is here merely to support you, beatch, not to do your job himself. Sigh. He shrugs, like Atlas - you're getting obscenely well paid E@L, STFU.

(She's not a beatch, just an over-stretched, under-paid (commission only 4.5%) little Greek girl.)

The doctor has more cases to do, not using the machine, but after lunch. Can E@L come back before they start agina, and do some more training, explaining, uncomplicating? Sure, certainly, that's why they're paying him so obscenely well.

~~~~~~~

A lunch at Cafe Sawak - Malaysian food in H*****! OMG, and they have Kopi! E@L, being shown a seat, asks the girl with the strong mainland accent, if they use the sock! Yes, she answers. He order the kopi, some water and the traditional, homemade laksa. The kopi is of course, densengauno inducing, disappointing: over-milked, too white, only warm. The laksa is OK - not brilliant - however just homesick defusing enough. Chili oil droplets, nonmiscible, on the creamy coconut broth, but not enough tofu, not enough "oysters" i.e. no clams, not really enough laksa kick. But hey, even in Singapore you can get just-as-shit kopi and a-lot-worse-than-this laksa.

- Salamat, shit. I mean telema kasih. Tsche-tsche (谢谢), Mm goi. Khap khun krup. Thanks. Fuck.

Microembolism.

~~~~~~~

The Instruction Manuals are on a DVD - large files packed with Japglish and completely unhelpful explanations ("Spatial Enhance Switch [a button] - This Switch To On and Off Turn Spatial Enhance." Yes, but what the FUCK does Spatial Enhance do?), but the customer wants to read them in hs computer to find out, not about Spatial Enhance (which E@L doesn't understand and therefore has hidden its "switch") but how to turn the system itself on and off, and how to do simple measurements. E@L offers to email some simplified instructional PDFs (2 pages, VERY simplified, we are talking about the limited capabilites of surgeons here) to him.

- Why not send them by Bluetooth?

Doctor fires up his iPhone and tries to pair with E@L's Android tablet. Of course, fucking iPhone, the Bluetooth on Apple devices is fucked proprietary and no files can cross the intangible ether from its OS to a rival OS. (Cue Dr Evil pinky: A BILLION dollars!)

Me, get an iPhone? You've got to be joking.

- Email OK?

E@L's files are in Dropbox and, and, they must be de-clouded before he can trans-etherise them via Gmail. He manages to pull the smaller file down but the larger one (12MB) is taking too long, via 3G, so E@L promises to send it that night. All done, great, shake hands.

- Oh, I have a case tomorrow afternoon. Could you come in about 1:30, 2? Have you read "Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story," yet?

- Sure, sure. (Like who want's to go to MONA, the only reason he agreed to do this diversonary trip to T*********.) Tomorrow. Reading it now, actually.

~~~~~~~~

Back in his hotel room, E@L fires up his MacBook Air (yes he does have some Apple products, reluctantly) and looks in his jacket pocket for the USB drives to back up.

Hmmm. They are conspicously absent. In the pants? Nope? Shit. Man-bag? Nope. Hey, his Tab is not in the man-bag either. Not on the bed, not on the desk. Oh Jesus.

No USB sticks, no Android Tab. They are back in the hospital, the USB still in the machine, the Tab on the back tray.

Microembolism.

Shit. He pulls his jacket back on and heads for the door, steps out quickly in the corridor and as he walks away the door starts closing and he taps his pocket for the door-card. Top pocket, no. Wallet, nnnn…hey! No wallet at all, he lunges back at the door just as it firmly locks with a solid clunk.

Microebolism.

Walking in an anxious pace, in 6 minutes he is the hospital door, he hopes he doesn't send off a real embolus.

He has been thinking of the people who were in the room where he was explaining the system to the doctor. A chubby (fat, but not as fat as him) red/gray-haired nurse from the cleaning room, who waddled and was cheeky. A laconic theatre tech. Tall, in a decorative paper theatre hat somewhat like a DFW bandana, but slack-mouthed, somewhat dopey looking. But these are the smart ones, slow and measured, they know what's really going on, can anticipate. These are the ones you'd want taround if something went wrong, if some surgeon or nurse didn't know how to work one of the ping-machines. The smart, sharp briskly efficient and over-friendly seeing ones are, apart from being as a rule shorter, often as not, try-hard dumb-fucks, and desperately hard to reach a level of competence your big C or G dopey look guy has when he wakes up with a fucked-over hangover, a dozen bongs and a slab of beer downed during a re-run of Apcalypse Now last night. The sort of person who already knows how to drive E@L's machine.

The sort of person who wouldn't steal a guy's Tab.

And they are still there, where he left them.

Sigh.

Shit.

Microembolism.

E@L

Bad Press

How not to respond to a bad review...

Big Al (see above link) gives a mildly critical review of a self-published novel called, for some wildly un-circumspect reason, The Greek Seaman (no [more] puns please), in which he says he likes the essential story, but was distracted by the number of typos and/or spelling errors. He also has some issues with the author's grammar and (later in the comment section) some awkward sentence construction.

Now, go and check the rest of the long comments section.

OK - you couldn't be bothered? Let me precis it here.

The author, Jacqueline Howitt, responds to this 2-star review by cutting and pasting some 4-star and 5-star reviews she had on Amazon, in order to prove to Big Al that he is wrong! She insists that she is a good writer! He must have downloaded the wrong version! He however, counter-insists that his was the correct and latest version, and that it was indeed full of errors.

Then some other people chip in and chide her for being petty, unprofessional and overly-sensitive...

And she bites back, bites back again, and yet again... And the chides keep coming in, only now they are because she is biting back against these chiders. They keep telling her that she is only making matters worse, but she refuses to apologize or to acknowledge the inappropriateness of her responses and back down. She is obviously not reading what people are saying and has gone limbic.

Eventually she descends to such a level of incoherent rage and paranoid frustration at these people she sees as attacking her (which they are, but not for the reasons she seems to think) that all she can scream is, "Fuck off"!

Twice. Charming! The right thing to say to her audience of potential customers? No.

As one commenter observes: "Incredible. Absolutely, positively, inanely and asininely incredible. Utterly and inexplicably self-destructive, as well. That's one author I know I'll never waste time reading. Thanks for the heads-up, Big Al. You've done an incalculable service to readers everywhere."

Now no-one wants to read her damned book.* If she had just shut the fuck up and taken it on the chin...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I waded accidentally into this quagmire from a link on Mercer Machine's blog -- it was a post at TheWorstBookEver. There, Aaron analyses the issues much less aggressively than I have here, and suggests the following:

Here is the correct response: Thank you for the review, I will look into the formatting errors and have it re-edited. I am so glad you liked the main story and I hope once it has been worked through you can review it again and maybe we can move the 2 stars up to 5.

E@L

* The bunfight continues at Amazon.

Bad Week - At A Loss

Friday Evening 6.15pm : Bus Stop, Ome. Bus to Okasu Station

By the time we left the building, Tokyo's noon heat had faded and a pleasant breeze was teasing the tops of trees, cool on our faces. Twilight was sucking up the last brightness of daytime. Soon it would be night and dinner time, and we would have little time to change and freshen up before we met M***.

M*** who now worked for Taicheebye. Usually worth a giggle, that name, but I could hardly raise a smile.

We had stayed back, we were the last to leave the dark corridors of the office. We had to incorporate some extra slides into our presentation. Slides we hadn't seen in the past months after being told we were to prepare the training, even though it was to start next week. The possibility that they were setting us up to fail tried to squeeze into the paranoia part of my brain, but kindly, perhaps naively, I dismissed the thought and decided that their failings were merely incompetence and inexperience. Although, as I was aware, they had squeezed out M***, our dinner host tonight, the previous trainer, the best one, the only one who could speak English fluently and who knew the product inside and out.

- This really gives the shits. They always have something we don't know about.

- Absolutely. How are we to do proper training if they keep this stuff from us?

- We wouldn't have known about those features if I hadn't seen that PPT from over Z***'s shoulder. Fucking idiots.

The bus was bouncing up the street towards us on its pneumatic suspension. We could see it clearly enough, but its lights were on. I felt in my shirt pocket for my Suica card. I felt in my front trouser pockets, left and right. I felt in my back pocket. The bus was hissing to a stop in front of us, and the rear door opened. I quickly unzipped the front compartment of my bag, felt for the Suica card, found instead my bag of coins. I mounted the bus and sighed.

- Fuck, I've lost my card already.

I had used it this morning. For the train and then for the bus. Where had I left it? In the office somewhere. It must have slipped out of my pocket. Maybe in the toilet.

- Your Suica? Oh no, you lose everything. It's OK you pay when we get to the station.

- Do you still have your phone?

They laughed. I showed them the Samsung smart-phone and pulled a fuck-you face.

- Maybe the card is left on the desk. Or someone picked up it.

- But we were still in the room, they would have asked, surely.

- You should write a note to yourself every time you put something down, or pick it up.

- Tattoo it somewhere.

The staff had rearranged some of the tables in our work room while we were still working on those late slides They had been shuffling tables and chairs around us, trying not to disturb our cables. This was preparation for next week's training. Surely someone would have found the card in all that lifting and rearranging, that exposure of different sections of the floor. They had left before we did.

- Maybe it's with your wallet...

They laughed.

I was embarrassed, resigned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Thursday 6.15pm: Tachikawa Train Station

- You guys should be getting a Suica card. If we are here for over one week, it'll save you fishing into your coin bags all the time. It's 2000Y, I think. I have this one still from last time.

The train was 210Y, the bus 190Y to the office and the same again back to Tachikawa. The trips to the office and back for seven working days of preparation and training would be 2800Y. 2400Y, not counting what I'd already feed the ticket machines today.

- You can top it up the machine; it's just like the eZlink card in Singapore. It lasts I think for five years.

- OK, I'll get one. Where? If I use it correctly, at least the bus-driver won't shout at me, like he did to you.

- I didn't know you had to tap it as you went in.

- Of course you do, freaking idiot. Man, the driver was getting angry. How loud was he getting?

- He's like anyone. The louder you shout the more a foreigner will understand.

- Words get translated automatically at higher volume, everyone knows that.

- He seemed to think so.

- OK, where do I get the card?

- I'll get one too.

- They're at the JR ticket office.

- Can you lend me the money?

- OK I'll pay for you.

When the three of us entered there was one counter already free and no queue so we skipped the winding path of poles and retractable nylon strips and approached the older man directly. He was probably not older than us, but older enough to be called older. He had a little English, not much, but enough so that we didn't need volume to explain what we needed. His ear for English was good enough for him to almost handle our mixed accents (German, Indian, Australian). At first he thought we wanted merely to top up existing Siuca cards. We convinced him that only one of us had a card. We wanted two new ones. He smiled and set two of them up, first one then the other for me.

- One thousand, hundered five. For train. Hundered five. Card. 2000Y, dozo.

We indicated that we wanted receipts. For expenses.

- Domo arrigato.

- Arrigato gozaimahss.

- Do-itashimashite

I placed the Suica card in my shirt pocket.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Thursday Afternoon 5.45pm: Train to Tachikawa Station.

I felt in my right front pocket. I felt in my back pocket. These are the place where I normally might have it. I opened my the front compartment of my bag. Maybe I had slipped it in. When? At lunch? In the bag I found only the bag of coins I had collected over the years and brought with to use for lunch, for the coffee machine, for the bus and train fares. This was not what I wanted. I felt my heart sink. I opened to middle compartment. Nothing except the paper with its unfinished Sudoku puzzle. I closed these compartments and pulled at the zipper of the larger laptop copmpartment. I dug into the rear of the bag behind the laptop. Camera, unused. Two glasses cases. The bag of cables, cords and USB sticks. Didn't I slip it into the rear compartment somewhere, sometime?

I have this vision, this sensation of leather against leather, sliding, but it is all unclear, like the half-remembered flash of a prior deja-vu.

- I can't find my wallet.

My abdomen and thorax hollowed out and my voice choked on the spirit leaving my heart. I was vacant inside, a deserted house.

- What? Is it in the bag? With your cables. Is it in there?

- No. I've fucking looked.

- When did you last have it? Do you remember when you last took some money out? When did you buy something?

- I got coffee from the coffee machine.

Terrible coffee.

- But I was with you then, you had your plastic bag of coins. You paid with the coins.

- Maybe I looked in my wallet first?

- I didn't see that, you used coins from the bag, I am certain.

Massive sigh. Silence. Only the train's rhythmical pounding and something like a distant three-dimensional scream whipping around the inside of my skull.

- Have you used it since you came to Tokyo?

- Of course, I had to pay for the Airport bus. And you know what? I fucking forgot my passport at a shop in the airport. But they still had it. Fuck.

- You're in a bad way. Your mind.

He twirled his finger by his temple. The sign for idiot. He whistled as well and I could hear the sibilance only faintly against the rattle and roar of our carriage, and the buzz of panic in my ears. Every sound seemed to bounce around an echo chamber.

- It must be either still in the office, in one of the rooms we used today. Someone will hand it in. The Japanese never steal anything, it wouldn't be polite...

- Or it's in your hotel. Did you use it after the hotel this morning?.

- I don't know. I can't remember. I'm almost certain I brought it with me. I think I put it into my bag, pretty sure.

The vision of the wallet going into my bag returned. When was that? Last night? This morning. Almost certainly this morning. Or yesterday, before going out for dinner. It's not in my room. I knew already it in my soul. My empty soul. Sigh again, a deep deep sigh, to push away the bad feeling of self-esteem falling through the floor onto the train tracks. One more time I went through my bag. Thorough, like a Japanese bank clerk, everything check, reread, read backwards, three times.

- It must be in your hotel room.

I felt my lacrimal ducts dilate, but swallowed the tears away. I know it's not in my hotel room. I know it's somewhere else. Gone.

- What was in it?

- Amex. Mastercard. Visa. Fuck - my driver's license; I won't be able to rent a car in Australia when I go for the Grand Final. What an arse. 35,000Y. 200 Sing dollars. My golf handicap card.

- Shit, that's a lot of money.

Captain Obvious.

- You'll find it. It'll be somewhere.

No it won't, I thought. It's nowhere, nowhere I can reach it. I couldn't help myself, but the corners of my mouth went down.

I shrugged with a deep sense of embarrassment and resignation.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Wednesday 9.15am: Singapore Airport, Terminal 3

- How much this iPod mini-speaker?

- This JBL one $169. This one is better, bigger. $296.

- Is the quality OK on the smaller one. I don't want to carry such a big one. It's for travel.

- Would you like to try it?

- Sure.

He took my iPod and the speaker to a spare power point. I set some ambient stuff from Shpongle and let it play for a minute or two. The music's deep throaty beat and the wandering tonal expressions created a pleasant 'cone of relax' - it swept over me like an oil massage. I smiled, impressed.

- That's good enough. I'll take it.

We moved through the display shelves to the checkout counter. A lady was dealing with another customer, but the POS computer obviously could handle two transactions at once.

- Flight number?

- SQ12.

I showed him my ticket, nestled inside the cover of my leather passport wallet.

- Pay by NETS, OK?

- Can.

I took out my wallet from the side pocket of my cargo shorts. He swiped the card and passed me the small customer console. I typed my pass-code. We waited a second until the Approval beep came through and a baby-printer spat out a stream of paper, as did a second baby-printer. We are swamped by irritatingly unnecessary receipts in this age of distrust and its need for verification. He placed the speaker, within an nearly indestructible plastic mold, into a bag and passed it across. He returned my card and the receipts. I threw little the bits of paper into the bag, just in case the thing failed, and returned my NETS card to my wallet.

- Oh, I'll need another converter plug. For Japan. Yes that's the type. How much?

- Five dollars.

Robbery.

- I pulled a $5 note from the wallet, still in my hand, threw the converter into the bag and walked off without waiting for the receipt, a few micro-grams less burdened.

Through caverns measureless to man, I walked slowly down the enormous halls of T3 past the vast duty-free shopping area between Gates A and Gates B. I often wonder what species of giant creature this terminal was meant to house.

The 20 minute limit was approaching for boarding my plane. As I approached my gate (B3), I quickly took my briefcase and the duty-free bag from the small trolley, placed my phone in the briefcase. The guy at the front of the queue was taking forever.

Why do people never get ready for the security queue? They wait until they are the front. THEN they take off their jacket. THEN then take the keys from their pocket. They always neglect to take their laptop out of the bag until the security person asks them if the have a laptop in their bag. Oh, did they forget that? They go to walk away and the security officer asks if they have mobile phone. They come back take their phones out and place them in a tray. They decide to take their shoes off. The decide to take off their belt, their jewelry. And then try to walk through with their pack-pack still over their shoulders, or with their purse. They still beep as they go through. They have water bottles in their carry-on.

Sigh.

As I finally moved towards the front I felt my side pocket for my passport. Empty. I went to my front pocket, my back pocket. Shit. My guts dropped. At the shop.

I walked quickly all the way back, a journey that reinforced my annoyance at the architects of this building. The lady saw me coming back into the duty-free electronics store and smiled as she held my passport wallet and boarding in front of her.

She thought I was an idiot.

I shrugged my shoulders and pulled a face of resignation and embarrassment.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sunday 3.40pm: Phuket International Terminal

D**** was sweating, his face red. It was another hot day in Phuket, but we were leaving after quick weekend holiday. We were in fact at the check-in counter with only 35 minutes before our flight to Singapore was due to ascend into the crystal pure azure sky and home for a few days, before my trip to Tokyo.

ED*** and I had pushed the time limit with a final massage in Beach Rd. D**** had gone to Starbucks, had a coffee, tried to get WiFi on the phone. He had lookedup and seen the time. He knocked back the last of his coffee, picjed up his backpack and walked quickly to the Soi where we were to meet. It took a few minutes to find a taxi ready to take us to the airport for a reasonable fee, and even then he put on a surcharge because we were all big guys. Time was getting tight for our ride to the airport. But we got there, the taxi driver hitting 120km/hr whenever he wasn't stuck at a 120sec red traffic light.. ED*** and I had our bags x-rayed and went to counter first. D**** was still outside at the taxi for some reason. Then he was behind us, puffing...

- Don't laugh.

----------

D****'s Blackberry was almost brand new. He had it only two weeks. He'd lost the other one. We all had our phones on the table-top next to our beers. We were in Molly Malone's for lunch. I couldn't find the Samsung to find the same hotspot that the others had had no trouble getting. I took my phone up and down the pub but couldn't find the one called 'Office'. I sighed. D**** and ED*** compared their Blackberry'a to see which had the most recent operating system. ED*** took out his iPad and played Angery Birds, and a few rounds of Words With Friends.

- I've lost eight phones in the last two years.

- Fuck. That's what? One every three months. What does work say.

- They pay up for a new one.

He shrugged, chuckled.

----------

- Don't laugh.

D**** wiped at the sweat on his forehead. When I looked at him, I saw a hint of embarrassment and resignation in his expression . ED*** faced him and raised his right eyebrow. We both knew what he about to say. ED*** cocked his head, which together with that raised eyebrow threw him into parental mode. He had no kids to discipline, but he had all the moves.

- What have you done?

Pause.

- I've lost my phone.

A laugh burst forth, nothing I could do. I couldn't believe it, after all our conversations about lost phones, after I told him about mine traveling in a taxi around Kata Beach for the last three years. What a prize goose, I thought.

Imagine losing things so often. I couldn't credit it, what a drama. I slapped him on the shoulder.

- You're an idiot. No doubt about it...


E@L

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

I was whingeing on FB about how booking this Melbourne hotel on the interfukt was a mistake, as the booking company had charged me the full week up front and not merely taken a deposit. This meant that if I checked out early I would lose that night's money. Well work is paying but it's the principle, right? Next time, I'll let our travel agent do it.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I have a mid-morning flight to Auckland for some work cleaning out the last habitats of the Tooki-Tooki bird, to get them off the endangered list and onto the extinct list where they belong. Today (Saturday) was a birthday brunch for my sister down in Geelong, an hour's drive south-west from Melbourne.

Smart me thinks well, if I stay the night in Melbourne in order to catch my flight, I won't be able to drink much, and as we are all either good or lapsed Catholics down in the Western District that is not the preferred option. Instead, I'll check out of this lovely historic place in buzzing Chinatown, forfeiting the charge for the night, have a few champagnes at lunch and maybe afterwards and stay at my mother's or sister's place (depending upon where I fall down drunk asleep), then wake up earlier than originally planned and head to the airport clearheaded.

Plan A. Right?

E@L packs his bags. E@L takes his bags to the lobby. E@L gets his parking validated. E@L checks out. E@L goes to the car-park in Lonsdale street. E@L exits the car-park and drives to Geelong.

OK, borzengurs, what did E@L forget? Answer, below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No, you work it out yourselves, E@L feels too stupid to admit it outright.

At my mum's place, I found the hotel's number with the robot on directory assistance ("Can you be more... specific?") and asked the hotel if they could hold my room after all. They were happy to let me come back up and use the room, as it had already been paid for.

Suffice to say I couldn't drink (much) at the brunch today... and am now too tired to go out in Melbourne on a Saturday night (for fear of getting bashed up, essentially).

Do'h!

E@L