Falling in Line

Line culture tells a lot about a people. How compliant they are. How respectful of others. How structured they are. How civilized-wanna-be they are. Americans love lines. They consider them the ultimate sign of civility. They look for them and ask “Is this the end of the line?” constantly. Line cutting is a form of personal violation. You can ask to cut, and often, you’ll get in. But if you just cut, accidentally or otherwise, eyes will roll, grunts will be heard. All the other line dwellers unite through secret eye contacts in hating you. They may or may not say anything to you, but you’ll be their common cause of the society going to hell in a hand basket. Often times one grumpy old man will stand out and say “Hey buddy, the end of the line is back there!” Your apologies will fall on deaf ears. There is no excuse for not having sought the very very end, or the start depending on your perspective, of the line.

Deplaning (egress from an airplane) is an art truly mastered by the Americans. You just wait till the rows ahead of you exit. No matter how they have to struggle to get their massive luggage out from the over head compartments, put on their headsets, yak on their phones, pick up their junk. You just f%$#@ing wait. This may seem annoying until you travel aboard. Then you really miss it, where the rows behind you rush and trample you as you are trying to get into the stream. If you are reaching to get your luggage, the folks behind you just dry hump you and push you into the seats and squeeze by anyway.

Boarding in Detroit

Line culture is very different in the rest of the world. I blame it mostly on looking foreign in the foreign lands. People think because you don’t speak their language, they could rip a loud stinky fart in your face and you wouldn’t understand it; on the account of the language barrier.

In China, folks will just cut in. They busy themselves with something else and act like the rest of the line is completely invisible. A gentle tap on their shoulders will usually send them behind you. If they get tapped again, they’ll just make another single person hop until there are either no taps or the end of the line is reached. You have to stay close to the person ahead of you. Any gap, where some amount of light can get through, is an invitation to cutting. Sometimes they just wiggle and twitch their way in front of you. Being an American with a large personal space requirement is like driving a fully laden cement truck in stop-and- go traffic on I-275. Everyone and their brothers will cut in front of you.

In India the cutter will give you a sideway glance and grin and step in front of you. It’s like saying “Ignore me, I am just cutting in! You very very nice man, but don’t speak Hindi.” And a tap would do the trick, but they have already looked at you and grinned, so that makes the tapping a cold hearted act.

Germans cut in, in the most garish manner. Not only they cut, they seem as though they have half a mind to turn around and slap you for standing behind them. The tap is only advised when the cutter is much smaller than you. I do, however, tap no matter what. Sometimes the tap is completely ignored, and then I loudly condemn the entire country “what a bunch of assholes” as I look at the folks behind me, seeking sympathy. Of course they all look away, as though to say “we didn’t see that.” And I go on saying “ha, typical!”

But no one cherishes lines more than Americans. They seek them. They see one and they line right up at the end. The reason for shopping on black Friday, the day after Thanks Giving is the goddamn lines. “Ooooh, look at us, we are standing in line.”

-“Excuse me, is this the end of the line?”

-“No, it’s back there, three hundred feet back, snaking behind the appliance isle.”

-“Would you like to cut in? Go ahead.”

-“Oh, no I couldn’t.”

-“Oh go ahead, that baby looks heavy.”

-“ Is it OK with you? Really?”

-“Sure!”

-“How about the people behind you? Is Ok with you sir?”

-“Yeah, no problem.”

-“How about the lady behind you? Ma’am, do you mind?”

Sometimes I just want to shout “Just get the F%$@ in the line already!” But Americans would never forego the pleasantries of falling in line. It’s the one chance to be truly civilized.

And a great song to close…

Home With Some Eclectic Music

Wrapping it up in China

Flew back up to Harbin from Beijing and watched the cars roll down the assembly line. Then back to Beijing again to meet with more people. The special luncheon held in our honor had my life long  favorite item on the menu. It was a bit fattier than I expected though.

The flight back was an ordeal. Beijing to Seoul to San Fran to Detroit. The Beijing to Seoul segment was utter misery. Sat next to China’s foulest person. This guys mouth had never seen a tooth brush. Sat on the other side of the middle seat, but his breath filled the air and stood still like a living creature that brought tears to your eyes. Got a glimpse of his teeth as he shouted on his phone. 1/2 inch thick with plaque from years of eating forbidden fish and ass meat.

Beijing and Peking

Yeah baby, Beijing is rock & roll. Peking is OK too! Turns out they are one and the same. Another one of the Brit dumbass FUBARs, like the Bombay / Mumbai deal.

Made a trip to the great wall, which was truly GREAT!

Recognize this thing?

And this is Beijing from my hotel window, breathing heavily in the smoky air.

Well, it’s China

The signage is a constant source of amusement in China. This is good advice from Air China in the VIP Lounge.

This is very bad advice in the bathroom. I will be flushing that stuff, no matter what the sign says!

Spent two days in Harbin with suppliers and had a banquet dinner.

I was told this is a very endangered fish caught in Harbin river and it’s forbidden to catch or eat. “Why is it being severed here then?!” I asked in bewilderment.

“Well, it’s China. No one follows the rules” I was told.

Jet lag means that I can catch the 4:30 am sunrises of Harbin.

 

I headed back to Beijing for the weekend. On the flight from Harbin to Beijing, I typed up this on my phone, which is now free and easy to post, but doesn’t seem so fascinating anymore.

On the way back from the plane restroom I sat in an empty isle seat while the isle way was blocked by the food service carts.

The little piggy who was sitting next to me, actually on the other side of the empty middle seat, thank god, went to town on the free air china food. Gobbled up the sandwich which was composed of a hamburger bun, a thin piece of cold-cut and a giant gob of mayonnaise the instant he got it in his hand, simultaneously flailing his other arm to get the second one with first still in his mouth. Got an orange juice, slammed it and held out his cup for a refill right away. Slammed that and asked for a coffee. Slammed it and asked for a second.

I was getting worried with the thoughts "please don't eat me!" Fortunately the isle way cleared up and I got to back to my seat, sitting where it smelt like someone broke a bottle of cheap vodka and got it all over their clothes. Traveling in China!

The Class System

When the biz class is all booked and you can get a first class seat for 50 bucks more…the gods of air travel have smiled upon you. So the flight from LA to Beijing was mired in utter luxury of full-bed sleeping.

In the Air Again

Nothing good ever comes out of a person approaching you on a plane and saying "shoma irani hasteen?" The literal translation is "are you Iranian?" The actual meaning is "I am just about to screw you, because I speak Persian and you poor sap can't say no to a hamvatan, (fellow country man/woman). So lube up pizano!"

So I end up grabbing my beer and switching seats with her, to a window seat, which I hate, as I have already started the process of hydrating myself for the long trip and am going to need to have unobstructed access to the lavatory. I am also five rows upstream from my luggage, which means I have to wait for everyone to get off before I can grab my luggage. So much for not checking any luggage in.

The proper answer to "shoma irani hasteen?" is “excusez-moi, je ne parle pas très bien français”

I am starting a long journey to Harbin, China via the route: Detroit à LA à Beijing à Harbin. I can’t complain too much, because I think it’s a miracle that it’s done in 30 hours or less with no diseases and casualties. The switched seats, is a small set back. On the plus side, I get seated next to an attractive young lady who turns out to be the cliché LA woman, engrossed in her hair and makeup magazines. Now, I am going to seem like the frail old man with a weak bladder or an enlarged prostate, asking her for bathroom permission over the next 4 hours. THANK YOU HAMVATAN!!! MERCI!

The long faced southern Delta model on Safety TV says, "please watch these instructions even if you are a frequent flier." Really? Why?? I have not bought in on half of the bullshit she tells me and I never will. If the bag does not inflate, I WILL NOT keep the mask over my face and breath normally. How can oxygen flow and the bag still be crushed?! Has someone missed the chemistry class on natural gas laws? And I have never seen people evacuating for a water landing with such happy faces.

Appearances can be deceiving. The young lady sitting next to me turns out to be the President of Cinnabon, a 1.7 billion dollar coffee and pastry chain. She was completely the opposite of the ultra ditz that I had pegged her for, yet what was up with those magazines?! I didn't ask her about that.

I remember on one flight I sat next to a guy who said he sold cheese. I thought well, maybe it's a specialty cheese store. He said no, he just sold regular gorgonzola, parmesan and such. I thought "poor bastard! Making a living selling cheese! I am glad I am not this guy." Turned out he sold millions of tons of cheese to the entire southwestern united states. Had all the taco shops, Mexican chain restaurants and delis covered. Sold to the wholesalers and distributors. This guy sold more cheese than god... well I can't think of anything interesting to compare it to, but I mean a lot. More than another person who sells a lot of something else. And I am sure there was a ton of cheddar in his back account.

The moral of the story: You can never tell with people; don't judge them! Walk a mile in their shoes! Then you're probably far enough that you can just run off and keep the shoes.

Continuity in Blogging

I am told that for a blog to be effective and successful, it needs to have continuity. To have a flow, where the readers can come back to see what’s happened next.

Well, I have no intentions of having an effective blog. I don’t even know what that means.  The stuff that happens to me is neither continuous nor that unusually thrilling.

My mantra is saving the universe, one planet at a time, calmly and quietly. So far I am on planet #1. We’ll see how the rest goes.

Now on to the happenings in the past few days / weeks.

I was in MI a few weekends ago and watched my daughter read a book to a dog at the library. I don’t know what the book title was. The dog seemed to be well dressed for the occasion. If the moral of the story was “don’t eat poop,” it surely would be lost on the dog.

Back in California, I went for a sail last Wednesday evening with work friends. Sailed out of Marina Del Rey for a quick cruise to Venice Beach pier and back. It was windy, healing over and happy!

Then two days of off-site meetings at the ritzy Lowes Hotel in Santa Monica! What a great place not to be stuck in conference rooms like this one!

Managed to snap a few shots of “life at large, when you have time and money,” during the breaks.

And last but not least, had a chipmunk turn double digits on me! 10! Back in MI and heading to China on Monday eve!

Ali in the Jungle

Sailing Saturday

Rented a 28 foot Catalina sailboat today and sailed out of Marina del Rey with a crew of friends from work. We needed some time off on the water and it was great fun. Didn’t need to talk about work for a change, with this gang of dolphin rascals that showed off their jumping and swimming skills with a care free ease that only a dolphin can do.

The pelicans put on a show of aeronautics too, but the dolphin act is a hard one to follow.

The harbor seals didn’t even try. Sun bathing in front of the Santa Monica pier was it. We did see a few seals in the water too.

Smiling is easy out here.

And here is the other side of the Venice beach.

Day Trip to San Fran

Made a day trip to San Fran today. A short and sweet four-hour trip to a company of a bunch of Stanford and MIT entrepreneurs. Such a lovely city, such easy going life style compared to LA.

Been too busy to blog. I only have time to tweet once in a while. So to keep up with my drivel, follow me on twitter. http://twitter.com/amaleki

A Churchillian Day

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Winston Churchill

Day +7 and the Music Has Not Stopped Yet!

And Lissie is all the rage, as little known as she is.

 

Gas, Energy and Other Pressing Topics of Our Times

Beijing to JFK flight on Air China. The business class was comfortable enough, except for the seemingly well groomed and respectable Chinese man who sat next to me. He kept himself fully occupied reading research papers and underlining stuff in the most serious and spectacled way. All very dignified and somber.  Yet, every five minutes or so, a rancid smell of fish, garlic and onions would emanate from his direction.

It’s not too hard to spot nasty farters in business class. In coach, it’s easy to fart. I have done it thousands of times, with impunity, myself. I even have the audacity to sit up straight after each one, look around at my neighbors indignantly, wrinkle my nose disgustedly, raise an eyebrow, shake my head and simultaneously fluff another one. It’s too crowded to ever pin-point the source of the odor. But in biz class, there’s only ONE neighbor. The other ones are 4 to 5 feet away. The smell itself taps you on the shoulder and says “Hey buddy, I just got here, from your left, fresh out of this Chinese guy’s ass! WA’AS GOIN’ OON?”

“Of course you realize, this means war!” I declared to myself, using Bugs Bunny’s words. But I am not so crude to implicate myself among people who are wearing Air China red slippers and drinking free cheap Champaign. I have a long standing strategy in these matters. Thick, biz-class blankets! Oh yes, they muffle and have a timed-release sort of effect. They diffuse the odor so that it’s nearly impossible to pin-point its origin. So I pull the blanket over me and let him have it over and over. The war goes on for 20-30 minutes, but he is too strong an opponent and soon I am overpowered by his sharp, un-blanketed fish-garlic scent. I roll over, as far away from him as possible and face the window.

The flight goes directly over the North Pole. Huge icebergs slowly start to appear, giving way to continuous ice with magnificent cracks, and crevices. I snap a few pictures, mesmerized by the other-worldly sights. Hard to believe people used to die to get here. Now the hoards of passengers have the windows shuttered closed and are farting in their blankets during this momentous journey. I am the only one who keeps opening his shutter, taking a peek and a snapshot and wanting to yell, “OH MY GOD, THE FRIGGING NORTH POLE! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?”

I notice on the “moving map” that we are quite far north and there are still cracks in the ice. I shake my head and mumble something to my gassy neighbor about the global warming and the cracks in the ice this far north. He makes a sound like “hmmpph…so you believe in global warming?!” I am surprised at the question. I tell him “It’s not a religion. Just look at the evidence outside the window!”

We strike up a short conversation. He says he works in the Chinese government, as an “academic/scientist” attending a conference on the environment in Washington DC. And no siree, he don’t believe in no global warming neither: quite the open minded thinker. “It’s all OK. Manufacturers should produce and there is no such thing as greenhouse gases and no climate change. All cyclical and normal.” Then we talked about my work: Electric Cars. “Aha, I understand now why you push this global warming thing, of course you have an interest in selling Electric Cars.” I explain to him how that was the effect and not the cause of my beliefs.

He asked a peculiar question: “why couldn’t cars just have generators on them to generate electricity from the wheels as they were turning?” I said “well, that’s regenerative braking, we do that to take energy out and slow down the car.” He said “no, no braking, don’t slow down! Just use that electricity to drive.” This ticked me off worse than the global warming blasphemy. Is this guy for real? IS THIS FRIGGING QUASI-SCIENTIST-OPEN-BLANKET FARTER FOR REAL? I hollered on the inside.

I curled my lips, the way I do, raised one eye brow, as I do, and said pointedly“do you even have a college degree?! I mean in that environmental science thing that you practice, do you ‘believe’ in the the laws of physics, thermodynamics?” He was set aback and said yes of course he was a high level academic with high education. He argued his case more vehemently that someday they could generate energy from the moving wheels of a car. He mentioned that in fact he was going to look into getting a Chinese government grant to study this. And like all advocates of the perpetual motion machines, he shook his head as if saying “ay, these stupid engineers just don’t know how to do it.”

With that odd exchange, the conversation fizzled out and I rolled over in my semi-comfy seat and stared out of the window. It’s sometimes hard to explain to the morons the simplest laws of physics. It’s hard to explain how things can remain in motion with no force acting on them. Aristotle thought force kept things in motion, and he was no moron (notwithstanding his theories on the planets, basic elements, ether, gravity and many others that kept us in the dark ages for a thousand years). It’s hard to explain why you can’t hook up a generator to a motor and have it run forever and take some extra energy out to light a light bulb or drive a car to boot. I shuddered at the thought of this guy representing a big polluting country like China in a conference on the environment who doesn’t understand that you cannot create energy.

Then I chuckled to myself at a possible skit on a Sesame Street-like show a thousand years from now, which would go something like this:

Jinky (an animatronic stuffed Zoranian Sea Elk):

Did you  know that in the dark ages of science, engineers thought that perpetual motion machines were a myth? They thought it would NEVER be possible to makes cars that required no energy at all. Can you believe that Foozle?

Foozle (A live pair of talking boobs): Oh, Jinky, they must have been really stupid.

Jinky: No Foozle, not stupid, just ignorant and closed-minded. Until a wise Chinese environmental scientist obtained a grant from the Chinese government and did it.

Now on to the photos

What’s all the fuss? Siberia doesn’t look so bad.

Well, it looks a little worse now.

The “moving map” never moved. It was bolted firmly to the back of the seat in front of me.

Over the North Pole, yet no signs of Santa.

Sun over the horizon at high noon

There are cracks in the “it’s all good, drill baby, drill” theory.

Over Greenland. A Brit with a dry sense of humor must have named Iceland and Greenland. “Let’s swap these two buggers around. The wankers going to green land will see nothing but ice. Jolly good fun!” I think I’ll edit the Wikipedia entries on these two countries and add this gem of a tidbit. I’ll call the guy Sir Isaac  Foozleton.

Sorry, no photos of the fart wars between Santa’s little farters!