I want to go to Vietnam for the food.

               Yeah, I know, I’m thinking with my stomach again.  But blogging about food has so many fewer calories than actually eating it, so it’s worth it.  Plus, this keeps me on my Jillian Michaels meal plan (that I’m following loosely, with emphasis on the “loose”, but that’s another blog altogether).  So anyway, back to the topic at hand: I have a craving for Vietnamese Pho, and I’m tired of settling for the yummy westernized stuff they serve in Vancouver.  I want real Vietnamese food, and the only way I can get it is to actually go to Vietnam.  There it’s just called food.  Alas, I am still in saving mode after the last trip, and am already paying off the next (California in September – stay tuned!), so my Pho craving will have to wait until next year, at least.  Big pout.  In the meantime, lets all take a moment and fantasize about that cuisine you love and can’t wait to try the authentic version of, or that plate of steaming awesomeness you once had and wish you were back there again. 

                   One of my clients told me, which is probably why this is on my mind in the first place, that he was once in Texas and had a steak so good he actually cried.  I, of course, told him he was a lunatic.  Kidding.  I just thought it.  He had a point though, global cuisine can transform a vacation into an experience.  The local delights are as much of a cultural experience as a dance performance or a museum, but they can be much easier to find and, depending on your tastes,  either way cheaper or waaaaayyy more expensive. 

                Some of the best food in much of southeast Asia can be found at street carts for next to nothing, but it’ll keep you coming back for more.  When I was in Bangkok there was this cart on the corner near my hotel that was little more than a single burner run by jumper cables hooked to a car battery, and there was this real and very dead rooster head hanging from the side, but every morning the line up was practically around the block for a container of their stir fry.  I never tried it, the combination of the line length, the rooster head, and my weenie Canadian palette made me chicken out, but I still think about it, and vow that if I’m ever back there I’m totally eating from the rooster guy’s cart.  If the locals like it, it has to be good.

                  What’s the deal with Korean Kimchi, anyway?  It’s just fermented cabbage buried in a vat underground for like six months, but every time I’ve been out for Korean food, they use it on everything.  I have not acquired the taste for it.  To me it’s like sour… something nasty… but I can’t help but wonder if the stuff you’ll get on your plate of braised short ribs in Seoul would be so much better.  Does the shipping process make it nastier?  Is it less pungent straight from the ground?

            Mmmmm… chicken tikka masala…. another of my faves.  Admittedly, the BF does cook one hell of a home version, but it blows my mind thinking of the layers of rich flavour that can only come from a spice mix hand-ground daily by the women of the village.  Yum.  Just wait until I find myself in India one day and all the spices are ground by your standard coffee grinder, but in the interim I will happily allow my mind to wander to the romantic fantasy I have created.  Besides, I’d go to Vietnam before India, the flight is shorter

              So tell me, what foods would you love to try fresh from the source?

Tags: eat, Food, interesting, kimchi, rooster, stomach, Texas, Thailand, travel, Vietnam, weird

The ultimate relationship test – traveling with someone

         “We’ve been best friends since ninth grade, we’ll have the best time in Europe!” 

         “I love him!  Three weeks on the beach will give us time to connect more!”

          “You’re going to Asia?  Me too!  Let’s go together and save on the hotel costs.”

            It seems like such a good idea at the time.  You get along with/are dating/are married to/share similar interests with someone and you decide “gee, Steve, wouldn’t it be awesome if we went on vacation together?”  Picking your travel companion is usually done even before the destination is chosen, but before you begin to suggest a trip, stop and think about it.  No, I mean, really think about it.  There’s no greater test to a relationship than travelling together.

             Let your mind wander back to your childhood.  When Mom and Dad packed you, your brother and your ten thousand suitcases of crap into the van and took off for a weekend up at the lake.  By the time you reached mile eight someone had thrown something, someone had been insulted and someone was crying.   Just because you’re grown up and not necessarily with children doesn’t make a vacation any easier, as it still involves the same components:  long hours trapped together and unable to escape, tedium where you have to struggle to keep yourself occupied or come up with something to say, stressful connections or deadlines, and exhaustion.  Everybody reacts to these factors differently, and if, when she’s over tired and jet lagged, your best friend gets really weepy and needy or she gets so bitchy she’s taking shots at your family/career/significant other/fashion sense/pet, she may not be the ideal person to be with.  Unless, of course you are prepared to handle this. 

             And don’t forget, you’re going to be just as unpleasant.   We all have our triggers.  God knows, I fly all the time, but if anyone I’m traveling with wants to wait and check-in for the flight less than the recommended three hours prior, I’ll take them out.  We can relax once we’re through security, but until I know I’ve  made my flight and am not going to have to run/beg/risk having my seat given away to a standby passenger, I’m in go mode.  I don’t fucking care if you’re going to have to go sixteen hours until your next cigarette, that’s not my problem, so let’s get a move on it.  Apologies to anyone I’ve told off in this situation over the years, but I still get this way every time I step into an airport, ticket in hand, and I don’t foresee this going away any time soon.  Consider yourselves warned.

         My point is that when it comes to traveling with someone, you have to, as my boyfriend always says when he does something that mildly irritates me  (like leave his damp – they’re always damp – socks beside the hamper instead of two inches to the right in the hamper) take the “good with the bad”.  If you can work through your differences in extreme conditions, then you’re going to have a fantastic time together.  But if you have a mental picture of this person being perfect and they fail to live up to your expectations, you’re going to have issues.

          Travel can test even the strongest relationship, bringing you closer than ever or tearing you apart.  The way I see it, if neither passenger comes home in a body bag or handcuffs, it was a success.  If times get occasionally testy just remember, you’re normal.  That’s just part of the experience and (unless you’re the one in the body bag) you’ll laugh about it later.

Tags: boyfriend, family, friends, girlfriend, scary, tough, travel, weird

London – My favorite museums Pt. 2 – The Natural History Museum

Finding a museum in London is like finding a Starbucks in downtown Vancouver – if you spit, you have a pretty good chance of hitting one.  But unlike Vancouver Starbucks, the majority of these gems are free (although a donation is greatly appreciated).  Thank the British lottery for that.  With availability like that, if you tell me you didn’t visit some of these incredible museums, I’m going to smack you.  Seriously, I will smack you.  I know all that choice can seem overwhelming, but allow me to help steer you in the right direction with a spotlight on my must-sees.  This one proves that looking at Dinosaur bones isn’t just for kids and nerds, the Natural History Museum.

I admit, I have a bit of a passion for architecture.  Maybe it’s because I’m a painter, but the incredible, graphic things being done with stone and glass always fascinates me.  The Natural History Museum holds a special place in my heart, architecture-wise, as it’s an interesting mix of classical and whimsical, and I love whimsical.  Technically it’s an example of the German Romanesque style, with spires and sweeping arches, all done in a mix of buff and cobalt blue terra cotta, circa 1881.  What makes it stand out are the relief carvings of plants and animals that crawl all over the outside, so subtly included in the design that you could easily walk by and not notice them.  But upon closer inspection it becomes “ooh, there’s a monkey climbing up that tower!”  and “is that a Pterodactyl on the roof?”  The western winghas living forms while the eastern’s are all extinct. I spot more creatures every time I’m there and, as I learned firsthand, it makes waitingin line to enter a rather pleasant experience.  Inside it’s just as cool, particularly the ceiling of the central hall, which is covered with a patchwork of more than 160 painted botanical panels, each depicting a different plant.  There are more monkeys crawling the columns and girders in here, too.

I love a good entrance, and this one greets you with a fully-assembled diplodocus skeleton smiling at you.  Well, if he had skin and muscles, I’m sure he’d be smiling.  Anyway it’s sure an impressive way to greet the visitors.  He’s just the first of many dinosaurs, some real, some animatronic that fill the gallery to your right.  That’s an interesting gallery, as are the Earth (earthquakes, rocks, weather, etc.) and Ecology ones (bugs, big trees, recycling), but personally, as a girl who’s been hauled to zoos around the world her entire life, the real draw for me are the animals.  The stuffed animals.  Taxidermy still kinda creeps me out, but when you remember that this was the norm back in the 1800’s when most of these samples were collected, and that they’re incredibly well preserved and displayed, it takes some of the “eww” factor away.  Some are even faded from sun exposure over the last hundred and fifty years or so.  This is also the only way to actually see a dodo, sabre-toothed cat and more species of animal than any zoo could hold, all life-sized and not reproduced by computer, so I guess it’s worth it. The bird, primate and mammal galleries are my favorites, specifically the animals that are elusive to see in the wild, like lemurs (only in Madagasgar), lorises (damn that nocturnal thing) and duck-billed platypusses (what is the plural of platypus?  Platypusses? Platypii?  Whatever it is, they’re so damned hard to find they were thought to be a myth for years).

Another thing the Natural History Museum has going for it is their food, specifically the cafe by the bird hall in the green zone.  No, we’re not talkinghigh gourmet here, but as far as museum food hall fare goes, it’s pretty darn good with a price point and selection to match.  You can get everythingfrom a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to fresh plated pasta.  A couple of years ago I had a bowl of tomato-basil soup that tasted exactly like my homemade spaghetti sauce, and I love my spaghetti sauce.  I cannot tell you how good this was.  It’s making me hungry just thinking about it.  Once we were wanderingaround South Kensington around lunchtime and couldn’t decide on a restaurant, so, because of it’s free admission, we went into the museum cafe just to eat.

The Natural History Museum is totally not just for kids.  Granted, the kids will love it (lots of ooh-ing and aah-ing), but you adults will enjoy it too.

Tags: animals, architecture, birds, BlogSherpa, cafe, England, free, London, monkeys, museum, terra cotta, UK, weird

WTF – The airline lost my client!

          Let’s file this one into the “smack your head in amazement of their stupidity” file.   And I stress, I am not making this up.  If I was making it up it would involve a rare species of bird and a police chase.  This, on the other hand, is just stupid.

        An airline (who shall remain nameless to avoid a lawsuit) actually managed to loose one of my clients. 

        Yep, as in “no we have no idea where he currently is, but we know he’s on a plane going… somewhere”.   That’s actually pretty close to the exact words the agent said to me.   At this point I’m staring at my phone in complete disbelief.  You’re a freaking airline, moving thousands of people every day and with an incredibly sophisticated computer system, but yet you have no idea what plane you put my client on?  You have got to be kidding me.

          The situation was this: my client showed up at the airport in Cordoba, Argentina, only to be notified that his flight had been rescheduled and he’d miss all his connections, so he been rerouted.  Instead of the planned route Cordoba to Santiago to Mexico City to Vancouver, he was now going Cordoba to Santiago to Los Angeles to Houston to Vancouver.  Nice, eh?  Ooh, surprise, you’re no longer even touching down in an entire country (where he had been supposed to spend the night and had a hotel reservation) and we’re sending you all over the Americas just for the hell of it.  But because all these changes were made right at the check-in counter at the airport, his tickets were issued and he was on a plane even before the airline’s computer systems had time to catch up with the changes. 

         Luckily he had called his wife, who had called me, to notify her of his new schedule, so we (the important people) knew where he was at least supposed to be, even if the airline didn’t.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like had his poor wife not known where he was and I wouldn’t have been able to give her any answers.  I’ve had upset clients before, but she would have taken the gold medal for having the best reason to freak out.  But alas, all was calm.  Just dumbfounded.

       On the upside, he arrived right on time and everything turned out great, but I just can’t help but wonder that if the airline could spend hours not knowing where a passenger is, what do they do to luggage?  “Oh, I’m sorry, your bag had an emergency rerouting to…somewhere.  You may get it back, but we really have no idea at this point”.   

              And get this: regular passengers out of Cordoba told my client that this wasn’t unusual.  It’s like airplane roulette, you have a 50% chance of landing close to where you want, but nothing is guaranteed!  Needless to say, next passenger I have going anywhere close to Cordoba, I’m monitoring their progress every step of the way so that even if the airline looses them, I don’t!

Tags: argentina, BlogSherpa, crazy, flight, Mexico, south america, travel agent, weird

Spooky Halloween around the world.

       Here in North America Halloween rocks.  We have a commercially-successful excuse to dress up, trick or treat, do crazy things (”but Officer, it was Halloween!”), set off illegal fireworks, sing Monster Mash far too loudly and eat the junk food we spend the rest of the year trying to remove from our waistline.  Personally, I can’t survive the day unless I’ve heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller at least three times - something I don’t think will be a problem this year.  In the US it’s now the second most popular holiday for decorating after only Christmas.  But if you think we can party, you should check out how they do it in other countries.

                  Scotland gave us one of the great traditions we over here have stolen/corrupted/commercialized into our standard Canadian holiday. Little Scots used to carry traditional lanterns called Samhnag’s made out of turnips with the devil’s face carved into them in order to scare away evil spirits. Nowadays they’ve switched to pumpkins for their jack-o-lanterns, mainly because it’s waaay easier to carve a pumpkin than a turnip, but some cities, such as Perthshire, are trying to reinstate the old ways.  Hopefully vandals don’t go around blowing up turnips like pumpkins are blown up here, as a turnip can do so much more damage since they don’t smush and splatter on impact! 

        In Wales Halloween is called Nos Calan Gaeaf (the beginning of a new winter) and legend has it that the fearsome spirit Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta took the form of a tailless black sow and roamed the countryside with a headless woman.  Needless to say, kids would rush home early.  This fascinates me, mainly because I have no idea how to pronounce Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta.  It’s hard enough to type correctly.  Your how-itch do-doo g-wah-ta?  Beats the hell out of me, but it’s fun to try.   

         Halloween in Mexico is just the start of three days of festivities, Witches Night (Halloween), All Saints Day and Dia de los Muertos (the day of the dead).  I mean, really, why shouldn’t the dead get to party, too?  Skulls play a huge part in these rituals, as wooden skulls are placed on alters dedicated to the deceased, sugar skulls made with late relatives’ names on the foreheads are eaten, and they dance to honor the dead while wearing wooden skull masks called calacas.  Sugar and dancing?  How have we not started celebrating this yet?  Sweet.

              Romanians have the perfect reason to celebrate Halloween, as Dracula himself, according to myth, lived right there in Transylvania (specifically the town of Sighisoara – another one I’m not going to try and pronounce).  Dracula’s spirit is believed to live here, as the city once was the site of public Witch trials (it makes sense to keep all your spooky dead people together, right?) which are recreated by actors amidst all the costume parties.  Can you just imagine getting pissed drunk and watching a live “Witch trial”?  Neither can I.

                 In Lebanon, Syria and the Palestine don’t actually celebrate Halloween, but Arab Christians hold Eid Il-Burbara (Saint Barbara’s Day) on Dec 4th instead.  The festivities are nearly identical to the Halloween we know and love here, and include wearing costumes, trick or treating and singing a Halloween song.  No, not Monster Mash, though I would love to hear that in Arabic.  Similarly, Kuwait and other Gulf states have Qarqe’an.  It’s not scary, but children wear traditional costumes and sing outside homes for handouts of candy and nuts.  There it’s actually cool to get nuts, and if you give them out you don’t have to worry about your house being egged later that night!

          And then there’s Japan.  There actually is no Halloween per se in Japanese culture, but think about it, do you really think they would pass up a chance to dress up in weird clothes (or weirder clothes) and celebrate?  Their Halloween is based mainly on American pop culture, but it has really caught on and I personally would love to see it. Carved pumpkins are a common sight and Disneyland and Universal Studios over there have huge festivities leading up to the big day.  A few years ago I was in Disneyland Paris just before Halloween, and the decorations were massive, with everything from a troupe of life-sized pumpkin men taking over Frontierland to the riverboat in the rivers of the far west being turned into a giant floating gray ghost, but apparently the decorations and theming in the Tokyo park are twice as impressive. 

            There are many reasons fall is one of my favorite times to travel, but if you really want a show, check out some of these countries and I’m sure you’ll have yourself a bewitching good time.  There’s just something about Halloween that makes we want to end this blog with a big Mad-Scientist cackle.  So i will.

           Mmmmwwwwwaaaahaaahahahahahhahaha!

Tags: Canada, candy, Europe, France, Halloween, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Middle East, Monster Mash, Romania, Scotland, Sweden, Thriller, traditons, USA, weird

Julie & Julia, the most disturbing movie ever

Last night the bf and I went to our local drive-in for a Julie & Julia and District 9 double feature and I practically had an out of body experience.  District 9 was good, but Julie & Julia freaked me out.  It also inspired me to bake and blog (chocolate chip cookie squares in the oven as I type this), but that’s beyond the point.

The movie is about me!

I’m not talking one little passing similarity here, I’m talking full-on, Joey Lawrence “Woah!”   The bf kept looking at me, eyebrows raised, amused smirk on his face as I squirmed in my seat, engrossed in the very good, very funny movie, but also having a disturbing moment of self-reflection.  Totally weirded me out.  For the most part it was cool, but there are some aspects of my personality (the occasional meltdown over the smallest things, my neurosis, fears, not always appreciating all the fantastic things I have in my life) that you don t necessarily want projected on a giant screen.  Thank God we were alone in the car!

Get a load of this:

- Julie Powell is an aspiring novelist as yet unpublished.  Julia Child is an aspiring cookbook author in the process of being published.

- Julie and I both have jobs where people occasionally yell at us for something we have no control over or, conversely, burst into tears, and it’s our responsibility to make it all better.  When the frustration of this follows us home we bury ourselves in our hobbies to escape.

- Julie and I both blog about our passions.

- Julie and I both have a fantastic man NAMED ERIC (!!!) who fully supports us through all our emotional meltdowns (not that I have many) and whom we need to appreciate more.

- Julie and I both love to cook.  My particular passion is baking and desserts, but any port in a storm will do. Luckily, Eric is a foodie and loves good quality meals (or pretends to like the lesser-quality stuff that pops up every once in a while), so it doesn’t go to waste.

- Julie and I both have short red hair.

- Julie and Eric just moved to a new apartment to be closer to work and save money.  Holly and Eric just moved (two weeks ago) to a new apartment to save money and be closer to work.

- Julie and I both had no idea about blogs until our Erics got online and set them up for us.

See?  Told you it was overwhelming.  On the upside, the movie (as all Norah Ephron movies do) had a happy ending, so I’m taking that to mean that I will have my novel published, become a super famous (or at least financially stable) writer and live happily ever after until the credits roll.  And it made me want to cook so bad I almost gave up on sleep last night to whip something up at three in the morning.

On an only slightly related travel note, the movie also made me want to go to France, which never happens to me. I have been to France twice (which qualifies me to say this) and left both times saying I had no desire to ever be back. Don’t get me wrong, I love the attractions they have there. The Eiffel Tower is quite possibly my favorite structure on the face of the planet and I can stare at it for weeks happily. But the overall “vibe” of France – the stereotypical standoffishness (I don’t find them rude at all, they just ignore the non-French as if they’re not there) just doesn’t suit me. But seeing the tower, the adorable little winding cobblestone streets, the look on Eric’s face at the thought of eating actual French food in France… I would go back.

Okay, just got the chocolate chip squares out of the oven and they have some issues. I think they’re slightly undercooked and I might have accidentally just poisoned Eric and I. So I will do like Julie and channel my inner Julia Child. As the maestro says in the movie, there are no mistakes in the kitchen, just setbacks.

Tags: baking, cooking, drive-in, France, Julie and Julia, movie, weird

City Chase – a step by step rocking recap

                     Yesterday the Vancouver edition of the Mitsubishi City Chase powered by Blackberry (might as well get the full name in there, make the corporate sponsors happy, not that they’re reading this) was successfully run, and, as promised, it was awesome.  I dressed up like a fireman, found myself blindfolded no less than 3 times, saw naked people, went shopping and actually went willingly to one of the disgusting food challenges for the first time ever.   This was the first year for me and the bf, and I had no idea how we would react together under stress and physical exertion, but I’m happy to report all is well and no one has to move out!  There was a little sniping in frustration at the first chasepoint, but after that it only got better and better as the race progressed.  So, I promised you a blow by blow recap of my favorite day of the year, so here goes:

                   We started at Granville Square plaza, right beside Waterfront Skytrain Station and with an incredible view of North Vancouver and Canada Place at 9am sharp with the traditional speech and geeky warm up stretch/dance routine.  Then, at 10am sharp, it was go time.  In past years, in order to receive your clue sheet you have to complete a scavenger hunt that I dread with a passion, as it can take up to 1/2 an hour to find all the obscure objects (a business card printed in a language other than English?  A cocktail umbrella?), eating up a huge chunk of your precious 6-hour maximum race allotment.  Even had a homeless man help me out with that one year.  He had heard a lot of the teams run past saying they needed an apple core, so he found one and got it for me.  That was fantastic.  But this year they made it much easier, you just had to find another team with the same last digit of your team number and then check in with them at the Olympic Countdown Clock.  No sweat.  We found a team of girls wearing head to toe metallic pink spandex (not kidding) and ran to the clock, the whole process taking maybe 10 minutes with traffic.

                  Our strategy was to find what we thought was the farthest away chasepoint and head right there, doing a lot of our additional strategizing Geographically, it may not have been the farthest point, but we started with the hardest to get to one at the Cliffhanger rock climbing gym on Terminal Ave.  This was an important point for us, as we had raised CAD$50.00 for charity in advance of the race, and if you went there you got a chasepoint stamp for the fundraising as well as the task at hand, so it was an easy two points right there.  After skytraining it to Main Street, we discovered there is no other form of public transport from there to the rock climbing, so we had to hoof it.  Getting to the gym, Eric (the bf) had to climb a rock wall while I completed a Sudoku puzzle.  Let me just say, he rocked that wall.  It took him like a minute, he just flew up there.  I, on the other hand, did not have that much luck.  With him down and the two of us putting our heads together we managed to finish that damn puzzle in like 20 minutes and hit the road again.   Apparently some teams were working on that puzzle for an hour, so, despite my supreme frustration, we didn’t do too badly.  Two points down, eight to go.

                    From there we walked the 2.7km (once again, no freaking public transportation!  I don’t think in 5 other races I ever had to run/walk that far in one single stretch before) from Terminal, along Main St and up Prior, heading to Strathcona Park.  On the way we stumbled across another chasepoint, this one a block before the park at Fire Hall No. 1.  It had only said “go to firehall no. 1″ on the cryptic cluesheet, and we hadn’t had time yet to get out phone a friend back home (thanks Mom) to google that yet, so we had no idea it was right there, but since we had found it, we were doing it, whatever it was.  Turns out both team members had to don full firefighting gear, pull a firehose out, knock down a target with the water, then drag a weighted dummy across a yellow line, and then one team member had to unroll a fire hose and then the other had to roll it back up again.  Let me tell you, those outfits are not comfortable.  Not only are they hot as hell, but they weigh a ton.  On the upside, the bf looked great all dressed up like that   This point actually didn’t take too long, and soon we were on our way.

                   One block up was Strathcona park, where I got to be blindfolded while the bf, using only words, talked me through disassembling a skateboard.  This wasn’t too bad, he gives great directions and I’m pretty adept at taking things apart, but the grippy stuff on the skateboard deck did horrible things to my manicure!  Four down, 6 to go.

                  One more block up was La Casa Gelato, Vancouver’s legendary home of the 218 flavours of ice cream.  If this hadn’t been so close to the other points and involving the word “gelato” I probably wouldn’t have gone, as they never give you anything good to eat on the city chase.  Ever.  As a rule I usually avoid the eating challenges, but this one just made to much sense logistically to pass up.  One team member was blindfolded (me again) and had to taste 5 flavours  of gelato and try to identify them.  For every one they got wrong, their partner recieved a penalty.  Of the 5 flavours the only one I got right was ginger, though I heard the others were either wasabi, lychee, corn, balsamic vinagar, fish or pesto.  Honestly, none of those rang a bell to what had tickled my taste buds.  But because of my four errors, Eric had to take one for the team (love you, Handsome) and eat two huge oysters.  I really didn’t think he was going to manage the first one without vomiting, he came pretty close, but once it was down the second one was easy and we were on our way. 

             Finally, public transportation again!  It was now just over two hours into the race and we were finally getting to use our provided bus passes.  The 22 bus took us to VVC-Clark skytrain station (the driver helped us out and dropped us off right at the station instead of the bus stop), from where we trained it to Renfrew station and ran to the Grandview Rona store.  Here the task was shopping.  Sweet.  If I can do anything, it’s shop.  They gave us a list of 8 items and we had to correctly find 6 of them somewhere in the store.  They tried to be tricky, asking for 56 lt of bark chips, when the bags came in 2 cubic feet (it works out to be the same thing), but we quickly saw through this and finished in good time.  6 down, four to go.

              Right next door to Rona was Van Tech Highschool, where we wandered around lost with another team for a few precious minutes before we finally found the chasepoint hidden on a lower field.  Once again I was blindfolded (I was the navigator of the team because I rock with maps, but when it comes to giving small directions, like ”turn a little to your left” I have this horrible tendency to mix up my left and right.  Stop laughing, you know you do it to.  Our little saying is “your left or mine?” even though we’re both facing the same direction. Thus, I was always the blindfolded one while he, who seems to know his left and right, directed) and was verbally directed to walk through a field of scattered balls, where if I touched any of them, I had to go back to the start and try again.  No touches, we finished and were on our way.  Time for the home stretch, and we had it all planned out.  from here on out, all the points we needed were along our rapid transit routes, so we were good.

                  Skytrain again back to Science World, where we got to team up with four other teams and paddle a dragon boat through a marked course.  That was fun and fast. Back on the train, it was straight to waterfront station and the start/finish line to pick up the trivia question sheet we needed to complete for our next point.  Let me tell you, it was hard being so close to the finish line and not be able to cross it, then have to run away again and hop on the nearby seabus to North Van.  The questions were hard, random facts about the world, like “Which country has the lowest literacy rate?” and “where in the world is the highest waterfall?” (I work in travel, I knew that last one was Venezuela), but between our phone a friend and working with other teams we got them all by the time the seabus docked and it was time to run again.

                 In North Van we had two options, either learn a dance routine with the BC Lions’ cheerleading squad the Felions, or draw a nude model.  The clue was very cryptic on this one, as it sounded like you had to get naked, so we had automatically ruled that out (my underwear I’ll do, no problem.  Anything more than that, no freaking way.  Luckily Eric felt the same way), despite the fact that he really didn’t want to dance and had warned me it would take him forever.  Of the two of us, I have the rhythm.  But on the seabus we learned that you only had to draw a nude model, not become one, to get your stamp.  If you were willing to get naked you could get a second stamp, but that was optional.  Since the two chasepoints were right beside one another, we figured we’d try the drawing and see how it went.  I’m a half-decent artist if I do say so myself, and we were in and out of there in 5 minutes flat, chorusing a resounding “NO!” when they asked us if we wanted to get naked for point number 2.  Besides, we didn’t need it, we were done.

                 Back to the seabus, a quick stop just behind the start/finish line to turn in our trivia sheet and officially get chasepoint #10, a run through a construction zone to get to the entrance, and we sprinted to the finish, crossing at about the 5-hour mark.  Apparently the winners finished in 2 hours 48, but I’m still really proud of how we did.  We finished.  I’ve had years when you just have to cross the line with 8 stamps because the course is going to close before you can finish.  And we finished still talking to one another!  I’m under no illusions that I’m ever going to win the Chase, I’m not a runner, but it’s all about the journey and the fun, and it was a hell of a lot of both.  On the upside, he’s already willing to do it again next year!  Sweet!  I’ve converted another one!

               Great course, great year, great race, great fun.  If you hear about a City Chase in your area, do it!

Tags: adventure, City Chase, dragon boating, fun, gross, nudity, odd, public transportation, race, rock climbing, running, vancouver, weird

Brace yourselves, it’s almost August

        In less than 14 hours it will be August.  Oh boy.  I can’t speak for other agencies (or even other branches of my agency), but over the past four years, if something weird is going to happen at work, it’s gonna happen in August.    Paperwork going missing, technical problems, a client breaking her arm, a client’s mother going missing in the US and being featured on America’s Most Wanted…  some days we just look around the office and think “damn, we couldn’t make this shit up!”  

               This is our quiet season, as people are either away on vacation already or just mentally on vacation (come on, we all know those people who wander around all summer in a foggy daze, as they’re surfing in Bali in their mind instead of focusing on their grocery shopping).  This lulls us agents into a happy sense of calm while simultaneously attracting all the strangeness to us like a dog whistle at the pound.  I mean, would you think to ask a travel agent how to say tomato in Spanish?  Really?

          So we’ll see how this year plays out.  I’ll keep you posted.  I’m getting my crash helmet ready now!

Tags: summer, travel agent, weird

Weird at work newsflash: Cuba is an island!

          She walks into the travel agency and asks for the best all-inclusive vacation deal.  At this point she seems like another perfectly normal bargain-hunter.  No problem, whatever.  Little did I know that five minutes later I would be tempted to excuse myself, walk into the back room and bang my head repeatedly against the wall, screaming expletives.

          On this particular day the best deal happens to be in Varadero, Cuba, so I show her the hotels, she makes all the excited noises and says she’s ready to book.   Inside I’m doing the happy dance that happens every time I sell a trip.  But then she asks, “How long is it going to take me to drive there from Florida?”  

              Excuse me?  Drive?  Florida?  Where did that come from?  I’m trying to keep the totally perplexed look off my face as I explain that Cuba is an island, and that you can’t drive there from anywhere, especially not the USA.  Hell, you can’t even fly there from the US!  She then asked if it was a long highway or a bridge, having totally glosssed over everything I had just said.   

            After the second repitition of the ”you can’t drive to Cuba” spiel, it becomes very apparent that I only have one option:  the Sesame Street method.  “Cuba is an island.  It is completely surrounded by water.  You know, that blue wet stuff?  Well, you can’t drive on water (unless you have a very special car, but I wasn’t going to complicate things and tell her that) and there is no bridge, so you have to fly to Cuba.  You know, in a plane?  With the wings and the engine?”   Of course I said it slightly nicer than that (not by much, though she  – oooh, shocker – didn’t seem to notice) and I even got out the atlas (or, as she’d describe it, the heavy book with all the pictures of places in it) and showed her a map.  Finally she nodded, pushed the atlas away and booked the trip.   I even did something unusual in a sales job and actively tried to talk her out if it, but she insisted.

            Booking was an equally nerve racking process, as every time I asked for her name as it appeared on her passport she started giggling, not something that makes me confidant she comprehends yet again, but we managed.   Then, three days later, she calls to see if she could change her non-refundable (she had this in writing, I made sure) vacation to Mexico, as she still can’t figure out how to get to Cuba.  No.  Just no.  Period.   And, in case you’re wondering, this woman spoke perfect English, so there was nothing lost in translation!                

            So for anyone playing along with the home game, let’s summarize: 

1 – Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean, completely surrounded by water.

2- You can’t drive there from anywhere.

3-If you’re a US citizen, you can’t even visit there (with the exception of the people with some very long and technical government paperwork in their posession).

4-If you see a woman wandering around Varadero wondering how to get from her resort to Disneyworld, please accept my sincerest apologies and steer her back in the direction of her lounge chair and coconut umbrella drink

              Call me crazy, but before I spend thousands of dollars and get on a plane to somewhere I can’t leave immediately if I discover I don’t like it, I like to know where I’m going.  Maybe that’s just me!

Tags: cuba, island, travel agent, travel problems, weird

WTF?!! Weird questions I’ve been asked at work

             Today a friend of mine asked me what the strangest thing I’ve ever been asked at work, and that got me thinking.  The first thing that came to mind was the trio of early-twenties guys who wanted me to request that the cruise line seat them at the same dinner table as “young hot girls, not old people” (not guaranteed, but the reservations agent at Royal Caribbean was laughing her ass off).  Or the guy who wanted me to fake a reciept so that his wife wouldn’t accidentally see he was taking his mistress with him to Disneyland (of all places.  Really?  Nothing turns people on like a giant mouse, apparently).  Didn’t do that one.  Minor legal reasons.

               Then it came to me:  To find a non-smoking city in Europe.

              Yep, I said city.  As in whole freakin’ place.  That’s like finding a cow with air brakes, it just ain’t gonna happen.  This is Europe, people.  Everyone smokes.   Infants come out of the womb with a filter tip and a Bic.  A client of mine even picked where to eat dinner by how much smoke was spilling out the door, because if there was lots, it was a popular place and the food had to be good! 

               Once I got past the “wow, did that make sense in your head before you said it out loud?” factor,  I found a non-smoking hotel and an Irish town (you’d think after all that I’d remember what it was called, but I don’t) that banned indoor smoking.  Afterwards the clients had no complaints, but it’s been years and I’m still shaking my head at that one.

             Ah, well, it could have been worse, like the time I lost a client…

Tags: BlogSherpa, cruise, travel agent, weird