Tales from the East - Episode 3: Sex city

This ought to be the real name for Bangkok (BKK).

The city simply oozes sex. Everything revolves around the sex industry. It seeps into every brick and bone of the city and materializes like sweet on your forehand on a warm humid day. The city is not as such decadent though as this industry is firmly aimed at the tourists. And unfortunately it is more than a little complicated to not look like one sporting pale skin and blue eyes.

You can't take a cab without getting strip-joint brochures thrown in the face. You can't take a tuktuk without a lengthy argument about whether or not they will take you to the nearest brothel. You can't walk the malls without strangers approaching you with offers on sex-toys. You can't even have a chat with your associate professor about Thai-boxing without him sneaking in a reply about where he knows a certain lady that entertains him now and then and who happens to also have a 'daughter' if we would be interested. YES - our professor! Rather hard to keep focus at his lecture on wastewater treatment 5 minutes later when all that echoes through your mind is his thinly veiled proposal...

Yet he managed to step it up one notch. The course was concluded with a magnificent riverboat dinner. When we disembarked he asked us where we were going now that the course was finished knowing we had another week before leaving for Malaysia. The conversation went something like this.
Professor: "Hi boys. Good food, yes?
Me: "Yeah, that was nice. Cool trip. Cool to see the city from the river at dark".
P: "So where you go now? For holiday?"
M: "No, we probably just stay here in Bangkok. We haven't had the chance to see very much of the city during the course"
P: "Going to Pattaya. Yeees! Good place. Lots of girls. Beautyful girls.Yes." (Pattaya is a beach close to BKK even more soaked in the sex industry - where BKK at least pretends to uphold a façade, Pattaya has totally given in).
M: "No - not Pattaya. We stay here in Bangkok to see some more of the city. Can you rec... [P interrupts - obviously taken in with his prime suggestion]
P: "Pattaya good. Cheap girls [wink and BIG smile]"
M: "Eeerm. Ok. But we stay in Bangkok. We don't want to travel that much for just a week."
P: "Oohhh - you don't like girls? Also very many boygirls! Nice boygirls."

At this point I gave up on politeness, turned my back to him and went partying with the local students at some almost tourist free discotheque street intended for rich Thai's.

I can easily recommend that! The service was legendary I tell you. Each table had a personal waiter eagerly filling your table with all sorts of booze without you even asking. No flapping your hands or hanging over the bar desk waiving a dead moose or whatever you normally have to do to get the attention of a bartender. Just a plentiful stream of more than fairly priced alcohol constantly flowing in your direction... SWEET

Female logic

I bet every man knows what I'm talking about. Who hasn't been in the receiving end of a zinger from a women that seals the argument as surely as fire door when the bell rings. Actually it's a rather cunning technique but it does however require the ability shut down the left cerebral hemisphere or otherwise bypass the logic centre in the brain.

The technique itself is quite simple: You disregard whatever rationale and logic the discussion has followed so far with an offhand comment that is so obviously true that the opponent can't disagree. This makes it extremely difficult for them to sport a snappy comeback not to say a moderately eloquent remark. Tadaa - you win! Of course it's not really a victory. More like a surprise ceasefire that enables a quick retreat with a change of topic since everyone knows there is something wrong here but probably can't quite point their finger on what.

This might sound awfully theoretical so here goes a few prime examples I've picked up over the last few of weeks:

1) A couple is walking down the street talking about something in a certain direction.
The woman points and says: "To the left of that man down there". (walking towards them).
Her fiancée: "You're pointing to the right of him".
"Well, isn't that his left!"

2) Along the same lines a man and a woman is talking about a painting of a stern person looking down on the viewer.
She says:"Quite a stunning effect this birds eye view gives".
Him: "Eeerm. That's frogs eye view when we're looking up at him"
Her: "Birds eye view from his perspective!"

3) One of my friends has reviewed and updated his company's project management model based on the maturity of the organisation, critical project execution elements, the typical problems experienced by project managers etc. etc. At some point during his kick-off presentation he mentions the best practices and a female project manager remarks:
"So how are we supposed to improve when we can't learn from our mistakes?"

Tales from the East - Episode 2: Thai Cuisine

Thai cuisine is a topic explored in great length at many different places and probably more seriously than here. Nevertheless here we go with an insightful experience which probably takes off at a different level than the usually lofty and grandiloquent food critics.

Here's the deal - Thai cuisine goes along the same scale as the seasons: Hot, Hotter and Hottest. The reason is that food hygiene is a relatively uncommon term in this part of the world and so chilli is added to kill bacteria. Or so my philosophy goes (at least until someone gives me reason to re-evaluate it). 

So don't go to Thailand if your stomach is not attuned to horrendous amounts of chilli! I know you're going to argue that the thai-food dealer down-town makes excellent meals, spicy but not too spicy and with just that touch of chilli that enhance the other tastes. Well, as mentioned elsewhere Thai food here is nothing like Thai food in Thailand. I guess the principle might theoretically be the same in Thailand with the important footnote that their level of chilli imbibing is far out of a normal Caucasians scale resulting in the amount of chilli necessary in the food to 'enhance' (/annihilate) other tastes is far higher. I love it - once your stomach adjusts its acid level and your taste buds recalibrates (or grows out again after being burned to cinders in the first try) Thai food definitely has its upsides.

When you walk around in Bangkok there is hawker stalls everywhere selling fresh fruit. This is great news for those looking for alternatives to chilli-drenched meals - if you can sustain your existence on fruit of course, which most people cant for prolonged periods (such as e.g. a month, which was how long we stayed ;-). And it's actually very nice to always have fresh-cut fruit within reach to refresh you in the hot and humid weather.

Also displayed en masse is small side-walk restaurants. If there's room for a few tables and chairs and a 'kitchen' of sorts why not have a restaurant. They have a decent amount of dishes at an extremely affordable price and if you have gone through the effort of learning Thai you even know what you order. If you don't - like me - you simply point at something and hope for the best. And I must add that this method is shaky at best. Most of the time it doesn't really matter where you point, what you ask for (in the vain hope that even the most rudimentary English skills are present at the other side of the desk) or what the price labels indicates since you will inevitably get something different at a seemingly random price (sometimes also cheaper than expected). 

Ok, says the smart reader, you were in a class with 50% Thai's, so you should have a chance to befriend some of them enough to help you order. True. And I did. We were on several occasions hanging out with them after classes and also going out for dinner. Sometimes a lot of us, sometimes just a few. At one such occasion I was having absolutely the best seafood experience of my life - I guess we were about 20 sitting at one of the better side-walk restaurants and the Thai's just ordered seafood galore: Several kinds of fish, whole crabs, crab claws, sea snails, clams, squids, cuttlefish, lobster, fish soup, shrimps etc. - very delicious! However, the chilli level calibration issue still remains. So when one of the Thai's tell me that this particular fish dish is sweet, actually almost sugared, my mouth still explodes in a fireball leaving the impression that it wasn't in fact a dish but rather a Molotov cocktail and left me feeling like a exceptionally poor fire-eater. While I don't see this as an especially nasty joke played on me it illustrates all too well the problems of getting local advise - the common Thai's definition of spicy was not even comparable to mine at the time. But given some time you'll adjust and Thai cuisine really grows on you - to this day I'm still a big fan of chilli :-)

Last thing on the menu today is Thai desserts. If at all possible stay well clear! At the classes we were treated with all kinds of Thai desserts, sweets and other afters so I believe I am well versed in that area. They can roughly be split into 2 categories: Fresh-fruit dipped in a sugar-salt-chilli mix and the ever popular lukewarm-coconut rice-starch combo. Need I say more...

Tales from the East - Episode 1: Bangkok inside out

There's one thing I haven't told you yet: In my younger days (newer thought I would ever say that but it sounds kinda cool - and I do have the beard to go with these kind of sayings ;-). Well, in my younger days I spend about 6 month doing a research study in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Lot's of stuff happens in 6 month, especially when living in another culture. I swear I'm telling the truth when I tell you that most of what happened in Malaysia fits perfectly under the header 'bizarre' - thus fitting perfectly for my blog :-)

Here goes the first episode in what hopefully becomes a long series of Tales from the East:

Me, a good friend, 3 cd's and a new laptop set out for Malaysia to conduct a research study as part of our masters' degree. Our professor insisted we took a so-called '3-week course' in Bangkok before the real project started, which was fine by us even though we had no fucking clue with regards to the topic (Environmental Management and Waste Water Treatment) - but it seemed like we were doing him a favour for using his contacts in Malaysia and fair is fair, you help each other out, one hand wash the other etc. And hey, who can't spend 1 month in Bangkok for free.

The course was a test-run with a mixed unit of Danish Engineer students and Thai's from the local University of Mahidol, Faculty of Public Health - it already sounds like a cool cocktail right. You probably all heard about Bangkok - read the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, saw The Beach or whatever (you American's might even know that it's not on Hawaii :-p) - so I'll just quickly go through the basics myths:

- Thai's are shy: Wrong. They are indeed VERY 'forthcoming' - at least those trying to rip-off tourists. 

- Thai's are extremely polite: Partly true. Admittedly they do what they can not to offend you - as long as they think you'll buy something.

- A paradise city: Well, don't trust commercials unless your idea of paradise is heavy pollution, sex-pushers in every level of society and a pedestrians definition of hell. 

- Nice climate: They have a humidity close to 100 through all 3 seasons which is Hot - Hotter - Hottest. Result: Extreme air-con in all buildings (except open air markets) to a degree were you have to put on extra clothes to when you go inside.

- Generally good at English: No - but very good at Tenglish (the local mix of English and Thai). But I'll give them credit for the language, they have their own alphabet and it must be kinda hard to not even know the letters when learning a 2nd language.

- Thai cuisine are great: True - if you have a stomach for chilli. Otherwise you're in over your head (travellers advice - (most) 'western' Thai food is adapted to our local taste. It is only a pale replica of real Thai-food!). More in a later episode.

But those Thai's not related to the tourist industry (i.e. those who doesn't want your money) are actually quite nice and friendly, rather polite and extremely afraid of confrontations. The latter which I will elaborate on in a later episode. I even got some good friends on the course which I had contact with for years... Another cool guy we meet on the course was Slavic of some small village outside Kiev - probably the only guy on the face of Earth who swears more than he blinks. Very nice combo in 'polite country' and it did earn him more than a few anxious looks. 

And yes! Russians (as in ex-soviet union country citizens) do drink a shit load of vodka, but hell - who wouldn't when you can buy a good bottle of it for less than the same amount of water would cost you (which was roughly 2 $ at the time)?

Well, it's getting late. Cheers.

The Fridge

The fridge crashed this weekend. Saturday night to be exact so everything was lukewarm sunday morning - Great. Having a 1 year old kid who demands tons of things that needs to stay in a fridge it obviously chooses to crash on a sunday morning! Could it possibly be more inconvenient (and I'm not tempting destiny, the Goddess of Revenge or whatever you believe will punish you for saying that kind of things - I now very well things can ALWAYS get worse!)...

Well - it turns out we're lucky: The stores are open since it's the last Sunday of the month so let the hunt commence. First step is checking homepages for all major fridge stores - again and again it amazes me how outright hostile some homepages are considering they want people to buy their stuff. But we check prizes, sizes etc. and come up with a few suggestions.

When we actually stand in the first store it turns out however that it isn't size and prize that will be the deciding factor - we clearly need a new fridge fast as hell, but apparently we are the only ones in the country who waits until the old shit decides to quit, so fridges isn't something the white goods stores waste their 'sparse' storage rooms on?!? Flatscreens - oh yes, 'cause this is something people will kill to get the same day, stoves - definitely, wouldn't wait a day for my new stove, vacuum cleaners, toasters, micro-ovens, baking machines, blenders and all other kinds of household machinery are in stock, but not a freaking fucking fridge!

Of all the things you need to have replaced rather quickly when the old one crashes a fridge seems to be pretty high on the list. It isn't exactly something you upgrade because there's a new model out or fashion dictates a new colour - you generally change it because the old one has ceased to function. Oh, right - there was two in stock: A state-of-the-art monster way over our budget and a pricey one that was returned by a customer because of dents (which we could get at a tiny discount). But within a week we could get any of the models they had - a few of them within 3 days even?!? Thanks, but no thanks - what do you expect us to do in the meantime with milk, food etc for the boy?

Next store. At least here we could get one next day - actually we could get it the same day if we we skipped delivery and brought it home ourselves incl. moving it to fifth floor (90 kg, no lift, reasonable stairs), installing it and getting rid of the old fridge -could be done with some help, but that would also mean the end of that weekend 1 day premature - and with kids you learn to enjoy every second of the weekends.

Well, we got the fridge next day, it works fine, it looks good and it's way better than the old! - but why doesn't anyone have a fucking fridge in stock!

Bathing in the Dubai of Europe

That's apparently the new nickname for Ørestaden (www.orestad.dk) - a new city development just outside of Copenhagen. And that's where our new head office is located.

This monday we finally moved the whole business out there and everybody was very excited bla bla bla... Some of us mainly to see if the relocation actually were as seamless as promised. I for one didn't have high hopes but sometimes you get surprises.

The building itself is more or less finished which is to say that people can work but some minor things still need to be done. The schedule is about a month with craftsmen working evenings and nights as soon as the offices is emptied of employees. But we can work. We have access to the inter- and intranet and much have been done to accommodate the usual fuss about finding the printers, toilets and colleagues.

So all in all things a fine - its a nice open welcoming building made to support networking across a big organisation with a high degree of transparency; knowledge sharing etc. Its cool to move to a newly build place where everything is thought through from the beginning. Or almost everything that is.

I was rather pleased to have my working place move closer to my home so I could start biking to work again without spending hours each day. And with a new building where everything is pondered in great depth of course we (as in those of us biking to work) had of course hoped for an appreciable improvement of the rather horrendous changing and bathing facilities of the old rundown place.

But my hopes were diminished to some degree even before we moved. When the floor plans where published the first tiny little suspicion arose that maybe there was something someone hadn't thought about. Then it was clear that apparently we had to change on one floor and bath in another?!? Then I signed up for a locker and was told I was on the lottery list. That added at first a tiny bid of confusion since I had read on our intranet that thorough analyses had been made to establish how many lockers where necessary for the bike enthusiast. I inquired to what exactly this lottery list was for and was politely told that there was at this point - a couple of weeks prior to the relocation - 90 people signed up for 80 lockers so they had to draw lot. Enter more suspicion and a slight hint of resentment - thorough analyses my ass: 80 locker rooms for 1600 employees of which a 1/3 are living within reasonable biking distance (less than 10 km) Even a drunken dingo could come up with a better assessment!

Well - it turns out when I arrive monday morning that I have of course lost the draw. But at least acknowledging the problems more lockers have been put up. Only there is not room for them close by the others since they were not supposed to be there in the first place.... Actually not even remotely close. So here's my deal:

1) Arriving by bike

2) Down in the cellar and out in the farthest end of the south wing to find my locker

3) Off with the sweaty biking clothes

4) Retrieve towel, shampoo, deo etc.

5) Walk halfway through the basement floor, up the stairs to the ground floor and walk to farthest end of the east wing to the baths (all in all approx. a 3 min walk)

6) And after the bath a return trip to the basement and the locker room to get dressed

This seems slightly not-so-fucking-Lean (the latest management fad in the company). But wait, it gets better - the walk from the basement locker to the baths goes through not only the reception area but also right past the class rooms. So not only are half-naked sweaty cyclists supposed to be waltzing through the main public area of the company twice, the place all guest are 100% sure to pass through, they also parade past the rooms specifically reserved for external courses, undoubtedly to restrained joy of all who happens to be attending a high-end business course that day. NOT VERY PROFESSIONAL!!!

Anyway - in my opinion this particularly part of the relocation has not been handled with due diligence (another management fad). It's not only an annoying solution for those of us biking to work, it also compromises the company's professionalism. And it does nothing to support that neo-green we-want-to-cut-CO2-emissions-by-convincing-employees-to-use-public-transport-and-cycling-to-work profile. Lip-service or just plain lack of brainpower in the planning group?well, the next couple of months will prove that when the willingness to remedy the situation is tested.

no new post for 2 weeks?!?

Got it - I'm not gonna post several times each day and spend hours commenting on other blogs. I have better things to do. I'll make a post when there is something to write... 

Or when I'm eagerly anticipating some special event that could potentially turn out to be extremely bizarre, outright ludicrous or could invoke my righteous indignation.

As in the case of my company moving to our newly build headquarters. Thats 1600 people moving with all IT systems, archives, personal binders and stuff, desk, some of the furniture etc. And the moving company has 1 week to accomplish this. This includes packing out all our stuff and placing it in bookcases by the right desk - in a specific order nonetheless! 

1 week means a rather tight schedule for that - especially considering the access road is planned to be finished on morning when 60 trucks is supposed to arrive with all the new furniture. That doesn't leave a hell lot of room for delays. 

Furthermore we are switching to wireless network. I'm not much of an IT guru but it seems to me it'll be rather hard to seriously test the whole network prior to 1600 persons logging on within 1-2 hours. And if the network is not working -> no internet, no intranet, no access to files, folders etc. i.e. basically no-one is able to work (apart from the receptionists...).

It is of course a declared success criteria for our company that everybody can check in at their desk Monday morning and start working right away. I don't say this is impossible, but I will be mighty surprised if this dream scenario is coming through :o)  I give it odds 1:80 for a seamless transition to our new headquarters (seamless as in people can start working instantly - which is not to say they will start working :p).
Personally I expect people to run around like decapitated chickens most of the day looking for their lost belongings, investigating the new headquarters and its facilities from cellar to roof while cursing changes and trying to gain access to wireless network.

I will of course return on the evening of Monday 9th of August when the events has unfolded with an in-depth description of everything gone awry! 

Parental advisory explicit content

This blog might very well offend someone somewhere out there. Let me be crystal clear on this from the very beginning - I couldn't care less

I don't write to please people or get a lot of new 'best friends' - actually I really don't care if anyone read this.

On the other hand I don't specifically try to offend anyone. I merely write for my own amusement. Mainly about some of the absurd, cool, hilarious, entertaining, insensical, bizarre, ridiculous and inane intermezzos I come across. And believe me - they are numerous! Maybe I'm some kind of magnet for these things, or maybe I just have an extraordinary well-trained stupidity indicator. All this come garnished with the finest uncut sarcasm, plenty of raw cynicism and just a hint of wit to give it flavor.

If this is right up your alley, stay tuned. Otherwise this is probably a good time to quit. 

See ya in hell fuckers (I've quitted the karma thing) 

ENJOY \m/