Back in the saddle

It is a Monday, 10 am, and I'm in the airport. I've just spend an hour on
the a conference call ( taking a break to get through security ) and still
have 3 calls and 40 emails to catch up on before the plane takes off.

It is also the week before the Memorial Day long weekend and everything is
booked solid. Foolishly I tried to get a coast to coast non-stop and
wrangle an upgrade with one of the infinite free vouchers I have that are
due to expire. Of course the gate agents just announced that the flight
is full and there will be no upgrades. I'm lucky I brought my own lunch.

I guess you can say that I'm back at work.

I was beginning to enjoy the break I gave myself. I took a week with no
phone or email, toured the wine country, tried to recall what a normal
life looked like and generally decompressed.

Of course, that didn't stop me noticing that some things, with
the right set of glasses ( e.g. my tired, stressed, bitter and twisted
pair) are interesting, annoying and or bizzare.

My Saturday was spent playing 'spot the tourist'. I was in the local dive
bar where an R&B band was cranking out classics like 'Dock of the Bay' and
'Mustang Sally'.

The locals were easy to locate, dirty jeans, grape skins under the
fingernails and drinking , well, either, domestic beer, margaritas,
tequila shots, or arguing the points of some new bottle of Cabernet
someone found.

The tourists: clean jeans, clean fingernails and drinking , well, either,
domestic beer, margaritas, tequila shots, or arguing the points of some
new bottle of Cabernet some found.

Ok, so maybe not so easy to spot.

It is easier to just wait a few hours, let the alcohol kick in and see what
happens. The locals just get a bit more belligerent or run away then the
tourists get rowdy.

the tourists, not only get rowdy, but, set free from their environment,
reveal wonderful examples of human behavior such as the group of desperate
housewives who were burning a hole in the dancefloor, and making eyes at
the drummer who had the whole shirtless, tattooed, cap on backwards thing
going for him.

I can only assume that this sort of thing happens all the time because the
next day I definitely got the hint that they wanted us to all leave.

It was Sunday, after 9pm, and all the restaurants were closing their
kitchens. So I was stuck at the only place still open and being
entertained by some swarthy latin wannabee playing smooth jazz. It is
almost beyond description and I'm not sure where to start.

His outfit was classic Banana Republic and would be predictably
non-threatinng except that he was enjoying his work beyond a point that
made me comfortable. He was actually humming along to the tunes, and had
this whole head bobbing 'In the groove' thing going for him. It was
really quite scary.

It didn't help that he was sporting a textbook accountant haircut and had
matching black glasses. This was not buddy holly thing , this was like
the High School Dweeb had a secret job as a musician but forgot to change
into the uniform.

To make matters worse he had a wireless receiver and was trolling the room
serenading the diners. I felt like I was trapped in a version of hell
where the only entertainment was Al Jarreau, if he was white, five foot
one and had put on about 20 pounds.

I accidentally made eye contact at one point (big mistake). He looked
back at me and nodded with an unsettling "I'm cool eh?" type smile,
changed key and tried out a solo I'm sure he had been practicing in his
bedroom for the last four weeks.

I guess I probably shouldn't mention he also had drum machine.

It almost made me want to go back to work.

I blame the Dutch

When asked to describe the Dutch I usually rant about the fact that they
are a bunch of windmill turning, clog wearing, dike stuffing, tulip
eaters... and go downhill from there.

The second thing that crosses my mind is a scene from 'Goldmember':

GOLDMEMBER

Can I paint his yoo-hoo gold now? It's kind of my thing, you know...

DR EVIL crosses the room in his moving chair and comes in close to the
camera. He pauses, working up to the answer.

DR. EVIL

How 'bout no, you crazy Dutch bastard.

Either way, I'm convinced that the Dutch are weird and don't do things in
a conventional manner. This includes the practical things like getting
around.

I was supposed to be in Amsterdam for 1 or 2 meetings. So we had all
planned to come up the night before, have an extra diner meeting that
evening and get back to the regular business the following day.

But at about 4pm on the night before I got a message from the Dutch rep
that the next day's meetings were not in fact in Amsterdam but in a town,
Maassluis, that was, not only 1.5 hours from Amsterdam but 1/2 way between
where I was at present and the meeting that night.

Sucking up my two steps forward, one step back. I got up at the crack of
dawn the next morning, fell out of my overpriced single bed downtown, and
trudged to the rail station.

After standing in line for 10 minutes I found out that the station didn't
take credit cards, none of the vending machines did, and unless you had
cash you were S.O.L.

Handing over the last of my notes, I sat in the train for the first leg
of the journey, got off at the correct station, then tried to find a cab
for the last portion.

Simple, you may think, but no. Not only did the cab driver have no idea
where the address was, but he didn't take credit cards, and neither did
any of the others.

Now you may be thinking that this was just an isolated case but I was
when I mentioned this to someone who lived in Amsterdam, they had this to
say :

"...Been there, done that, have the T-shirt. This is Dutch service and
hospitality at its best. To give you a hint:

While having a nice dinner, the waiters start vacuuming and ask the
guests to lift there feet so that they can vacuum under the table.

My father was visiting, and asked the waiter for bread with his gambas.
The waiter said no and left.

I was going to a meeting outside of The Hague. Once I got to the train
station I called for a taxi. After 30min there taxi still hadn't arrived
and I called back. It was freezing, I might add. After a lot of back and
forth, it turned out that this taxi company did not pick up passengers
in this area and no other company in the area either. So the people
where I had the meeting had to pick me up. "

Oh yeah, and I'm never drinking Heiniken again.