“I, for one, know of no sweeter sight for a man’s eyes than his own country”

- Homer

Or city, for that matter. I’m back.

Well, my stay in Vegas is drawing to an end. I initially couldn’t figure out if I liked the place. The casinos are truly impressive and, objectively speaking, I have to admit some are downright beautiful. I just can’t get past the fact that these beautiful castles were not at all built out of a love of beauty, but rather a love of money.

The city is a strange hodge-podge, a mix of rich and poor, both impressive in their own way, neither in really good taste. Squeezed in between the incredible monuments to opulence that are the casinos, you find all manner of dirty little businesses in disrepair (”Do It Yourself Divorce Kits!” “World’s Best Uncensored Adult Hypnotist!” “Hot Chick Visits Your Room 49$!”). Vegas reminds me of an aging starlet still dressed in sequins, wobbling on stilettos, rhinestones and age spots on full display.

All that being said, when you finally let yourself enter the game and just start taking the city for what it is, basically a giant theme park with free alcohol, I have to admit it can really be a lot of fun. For a few days, by somewhat reserving judgment as best I could, and taking the city on its own terms, well, I’ve had a blast. A blast I’m glad to be ending today, but a wonderful time nonetheless.

I’m sitting at a café, waiting for my order. The Borg comes up.

- (robotic, with a southern accent) Greetings female.
- (looking around, a little embarrassed) Uh, hi.
- Be not alarmed. You may have gotten the wrong idea from what you’ve seen on the two-dimensional entertainment box.
- Is that right? Ah, here’s my food. I gotta go.
- Success on your digestion.

Yesterday: fly to L.A., spend the afternoon working in the hotel although Hollywood, just outside my door, beckons. Drinks with clients in Pasadena in the evening. Geek talk. Must return here when I can spend more time.

Today: up at six to beat the L.A. traffic (but fail to do so), drive to San Diego and for lovely meeting followed by a lovely lunch. More geek talk. Drive five hours to Las Vegas for meetings tomorrow and Thursday. It rains hard in the Mojave Desert. Drive for a bit on the Strip. Try to take a picture of some Elvis parking attendants, but they want six bucks.

Haven’t really seen the Strip at night yet, and I’m just about to do so. I promise you a better post when I return.

As if it wasn’t neat enough to be flying to L.A. next week then driving to Vegas, all for work, I just found out that the biggest Star Trek convention of the year will be going on at my hotel in Vegas.

Guests will include most of the original cast (Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov), and Wil Wheaton.

Because you know, having only a Star Trek wedding chapel in the hotel just isn’t tacky enough.

…only makes you poorer?

Just got off the phone with my friendly neighborhood travel clinic, and they regaled me with all sorts of juicy tales of what could happen to me if I don’t get the required shots before going to Morocco. Perhaps they use these tales to justify their exorbitant prices.

Typhoid: 35$
Heps A : 65$
Hep B: 30$
Two required consultations at the clinic: 60$
(Having a work insurance plan that covers this: priceless)

As I recall, the most expensive thing about my trip to Indonesia, after the plane ticket, was all the immunizations and medication. I remember the pharmacist charging me 8$ per pill for anti-malarials, warning me that they may induce psychotic episodes: “If you start feeling paranoid and aggressive, lay off the meds and check yourself into a clinic”. (Years later I did a paper on anti-malarials and learned that it was unadvisable to take the pills I’d taken for more than four weeks. I’d been on them for eleven weeks. Luckily I don’t have to take them for Morocco.)

When you get a vaccine for an exotic disease, they stamp your little yellow WHO-issued international health passport, and it feels like you’ve achieved something. Maybe that’s as good as any other way of choosing a destination: “Gee, I don’t have Yellow Fever in my little book yet!”

On every non-business trip I’ve ever taken, I’ve had the Canadian flag sewn onto my knapsack. In Bali, the flag led to my meeting a fellow Canadian at a time when I was pretty homesick. I joined him and his Scottish and Dutch companions, and travelled with them for a week. They took me off my planned itinerary, I discovered places I wouldn’t have without them, and with them I had some of my most memorable laughs.

In Norway, a local musician approached me on a train, as his band had just gotten back from playing in British Columbia. He took my map of Oslo and marked all the good out-of-the-guidebooks spots, including a wonderful, almost-secret bar called the Mir Station. Through this acquaintance I ended up spending several days merrymaking in Oslo, and went camping on an island in Oslo fjord with about twenty locals. My friendship with Rune endures to this day.

Anyway, there’s been a little debate going on for the past week between T and I. He feels I should not wear the Canadian flag on my knapsack on the upcoming trip to Morocco. He says Canadians are the third most sollicited nationality in that country, and labelling ourselves as such is asking for annoyance.

On the other hand, having the flag has always opened unexpected doors for me. It also allows me to avoid being mistaken for an American (no offense, but I’m sure Americans don’t want to be mistaken for anything else either), which might not be bad in an Arab country right now.

I know we’ll be speaking mostly French, but we’ll obviously be using a lot of our American-sounding English too, for example with other tourists. And there’s no way fair-skinned, blue-eyed T will ever pass off as a local, so we’ll get sollicited anyway.

What do you think? To flag or not to flag?

(picture from www.canadianmoose.com)

Just booked. Whee!

(Image from National Geographic Traveler)

I was 24 years old, and I was in Java, sitting on a bus crowded with people (oh, and hens). I had been in Indonesia for eight weeks. I was loving the experience of being constantly surrounded with new vistas, new tastes, new fauna, new people, of having everything be completely different from what I had known before. But recently, the fact that there was never anything familiar had been getting to me. I was starting to have occasional dreams that I got to go home, just for a weekend, or that I went into a store looking for aspirin and knew exactly what the bottle would look like, or that I spoke my own language and was understood. That day, the little differences were really getting to me.

One of the things that were particularly irking me that day was how everyone always stared at me, I guess because I was a white Westerner. How they followed me around, always solliciting, asking, touching, pulling. I was usually pretty good at being philosophical and telling myself that this was their country, that I should respect their way of being, but that day… well, I was just plain out of philosophy.

Next to me sat an ancient lady, topless and toothless, with a wise, weathered face. In front of me sat Dean, an Australian tourist I’d met a few days before. Dean read my exasperation and tried to make me laugh. He started telling me what the old lady was probably thinking. Eventually he said “Gee, I wish this white girl next to me would sing me a song”.

And that’s when it happened. I thought, “All right, you people wanna stare, well, I’m gonna you a reason to stare!” And I started serenading the old lady with the song California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and the Papas. As I went on, my song grew louder and eventually I was singing to the whole bus, as its local occupants laughed and stared.

Then I sat down, and everything felt okay.

So Bill and I are planning a little breakfast date and she offers to provide lox for the bagels. I reply, “no thanks, I don’t eat fish”.

I really don’t like fish (or any other seafood). I deeply regret this because I know how good it’d be for me to eat it once in a while. Mind you, nowadays I’m not even so sure of that - did you know that salmon is artificially colored to be pink? That it’s near impossible to buy real salmon fished out of the sea, no matter how much you’re willing to pay?

Anyway, this caused me to remember with a smile some gastronomic nightmare that once befell me. I was in the beautiful Atlantic town of Bergen, Norway, world-famous for its fabulous fish. The whole town smells of fish. I was visiting the family of a professor I’d met online, and they were of course very proud of their local delicacies, so the menu my first night there was of course going to be fish. Ugh. But not just fish: a bouillabaisse with three types of fresh fish, fresh scampis, mussels, shrimps, etc.

I realized with shame that to most people this would be a wonderful meal, but all I could do was try not to inhale too deeply to avoid the smell.

Too polite to refuse their food, I courageously muscled my way through all the fish and seafood, blocking off my senses to keep from gagging. Finally, at the bottom of my bowl were left only two disgusting-looking mussels, staring up at me with their bivalves. I collected my thoughts, tried to clear my mind, and put one in my mouth, trying in vain to swallow. But my eyes just watered and my stomach contracted in protest. It had taken all it would from the sea.

What to do? This was a desperate time. I took advantage of baby Harald grabbing everyone’s attention, and, feigning a mouth wipe, quickly transferred the mussel to a napkin, disposing of the napkin in my sock. The other mussel quickly underwent the same journey. A quick trip to the bathroom, and they had recovered their freedom.

Sometimes I feign an allergy to fish because people insist “oh but you must try this”. And don’t get me started on the whole social stigma associated with the blasphemy of not liking sushi.

Some tastes are not meant to be acquired.