I Will Not Go to Work in My Pajamas

No posts because I've been working 20 hours a day. Sleeping none. I'm working with a Vietnamese staff to launch a new newspaper--an English language daily--they already publish a glossy and a daily in Vietnamese.

The other night I got home at 530 am and was back in the newsroom at lunchtime the following day. Last night I hit a wall. I got home at 11pm and sleptsleptslept. I was still sleeping (dreaming about Remi, a good-looking stranger named Steve who thought I was adorable, and a cool apartment in Vienna that I wanted to rent)... when I got a call. It was one of the journalists calling to tell me to get my ass to work. It was 11 at that point, and I'd already slept through the noisy state music/announcements and the door-banging from the maids.
She was in the lobby and wanted me to go with her IMMEDIATELY to the newsroom.

So I could either pop on her motorbike, still in my pajamas, and be there at 11:05.

Or get dressed and brush my teeth and be there at 11:15.

I did the 11:15 thing.

Tonight I got home at 3am. The first edition was published tonight and is hitting the stands in less than an hour.

We have to do this all again tomorrow.

Bottom's Up

I wonder what white fungus tastes like? And should I drink it with the "Turkey's Chest with Bee's Nest" I had in Slovakia?

The Hoopla Over Op Da La

I was down in the Empress Hotel (Saigon) fitness center, which is comprised of a stationary bike, a rowing machine and a scale, crammed inside what may as well be a sauna.

So I'm on the bike in the "fitness center" when the guard charges in. I continue to peddle along as he points his finger up at the ceiling and says to me "Op da la."

"Op da la...." I repeat slowly, hoping he'll be cued by my uncertainty and offer me more explanation, either in mime or in comprehensible English.

"Op da la," he repeats. His face is a stone. He gives me nothing more to go on.

I ask him if I should go upstairs, because maybe Op da la means Get the hell out.

"Op da la" he says again.



"Okay! Op da la to you, too!" I shout. Big friendly grin from me. That seems to satisfy him and he exits.

10 km later it hits me. "Off the lights!" I shout out. Off the lights is Op da la. He wants me to turn off the lights when I leave.

Op da la.

It's only Day 3.

Bloggus Interruptus

In the last two and a half days, I was:
•Offered and accepted a 4-week assignment in Saigon, beginning... in three days!!! ---booked flight, moved around deadlines, found care for my beloved dog (not easy!! My standards are strict!)

• Told my mac has died.

I need a mac while in Vietnam, so I have a busy Monday and Tuesday ahead of me--I have ordered one (need one with an international keyboard, which was not in stock), and will rent one from this place for my stay in Vietnam. Very unfortunately, they think that all data has been lost from my mac....

I still need to apply for/retrieve my visa in Vienna, get meds (to avoid another trip to a Saigon hospital), get Remi's supplies, drink heavily.

Anyhow, this is a long, self-absorbed way of explaining the lack of posts.

Algeria Under the Radar

Here's a look at a piece I wrote for The Guardian's website about the recent bombings in Algeria.

Someone posted a response that fundamentalist terrorism is a bigger threat to Muslim countries than the rest of the world.

My powerbook is still in the hospital. Just waiting for a transplant--the part hasn't arrived yet.

Lessons From My Kindergarten

Yesterday afternoon I had a massage from a large, round bombastic Yugoslav woman who pummeled me for 10 minutes and left just bits of pulp. She swears she doesn't use a meat grinder, but since I'm face down I can't really be sure.

My back is bad--full of twitchy, painful clumps of swollen nerve tissue, lower back pain and a neck that would cry in relief at a neck brace wrapped around it--anything so that it doesn't have to use its own muscles to hold itself up.
I have the kind of back that makes people want to grab me by the arm and march me around as a lesson to others: Don't let this happen to you! Be born with a good quality back!

Like Ms. Thompson used to do with kids at my kindergarten at Sunnybrook Day School. She took 4-year-old Jimmy by the arm and marched him to the front of all the classrooms. Jimmy's grandfather's lawn mower had blown up the summer before and Jimmy's face must have been in the gas tank when it happened because his face became as pulpy as my back with a meat grinder to it. So Ms. Thompson said something like, "Jimmy's face looks a bit lumpy, we all know it, so don't make fun of him." And then she dragged around the kid who was born without a thumb: "So let this be a lesson to all you 4-year-olds because how would YOU like to be BORN WITHOUT A THUMB!, so don't make fun of him because we all know he doesn't have a thumb so shut up and get back to your coloring books"; or Kathy the Stutterer or Janice the Lisper-all were paraded in front of us like our very own solemn sideshow.
Instead of field trips to farms and donut factories, Ms. Thompson would take us rubbernecking at roadside accidents.

In first grade at Windsor Oaks things got much more fun.We had a kid whose name I don't remember but he will always be the kid who could fit an entire orange into his mouth. Or, okay a tangerine, but Ms. Waldrop was so pissed at him for shoving an orange (okay, a tangerine) in his mouth, which then got stuck, that she grabbed him by the arm and marched him into all the classrooms: "Look, kids. Look at this monkey. He thought he was being funny by shoving an orange into his mouth, but look at him now. He can't get it out. Is it so funny, now?" Indeed, it was, seeing this mouth full of orange and lips that couldn't shut was sidesplitting hysterical.
And even better than rubbernecking.

Cover Yer Ears

The Hainburg Gazette, or whatever its really called, announced last week that the city will be testing the siren system today.

It is completely unnecessary, since the siren (air raid siren, one of which is placed just at my doorstep) is used to call the tobacco factory workers home every Saturday at 12:10 pm.
The story goes that they were meant to be called home at noon sharp, but the guy who set the time for the siren had his watch off by 10 minutes, so 12:10 it is.

The siren also used regularly to call the volunteer fireman from the bars and pubs whenever there's an emergency. And the siren is loud and piercing enough to sober anybody up, so it serves a double purpose for them.

A Note to Ouali and Hanafi in Algiers

Hanafi and Ouali:
If you're reading this, boys, consider it an email to you. My computer is being repaired so I don't have email addresses. I know Ouali tells me not to worry about my Algerian "brothers and sisters"--but I do. I hope everyone is okay and that no one was effected by the recent bomb attacks.


I wrote a commetary about a previous attack a few months ago.

Bill Bryson and Bathrooms

Bill Bryson writes this about public bathrooms in "The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid":

"There was a long line of toilet cubicles and they all had those dividers that allowed you to see the feet of the people in flanking cubicles, which I never understood, and indeed still don't. It's hard to think of a single circumstance in which seeing the feet of the person next door would be to anyone's advantage."


Larry Craig, meet Bill. Bill, meet Larry Craig

Hungary's Far Right

A commentary I wrote on Hungary's far right is up on The Guardian's website.

One guy posted a comment asking why I was writing about this, since it's really nothing new and nothing can be done about it. Another guy said that Poland is worse, yet the Western press is quiet. I hate to say I agree with him. Everywhere I try to sell "foreign" pieces these days, I get told "too far off the radar." And these are places that, even a year ago, were much more interested in getting pieces that are now considered "too far afield."

Say What?

Tabakstrasse (Tobacco Street), is just around the corner from me. It's at the intersection of Hacking Cough Lane and Emphysema Blvd.






Note the sculpture of a cigarette in an ashtray.



The tobacco factory is the major employer in Hainburg --it's been around since the 1700s, but it's recently been bought by a Japanese firm and it may soon be closed down.
Tabakstrasse is nowhere near the factory, but I'm guessing the houses built on it were at least partially subsidized by the company for the employee buyers.


In any case, the factory is still open and I drove today from Tobacco Street in Hainburg to Invalid Street (Invalidenstrasse) in Vienna.



I haven't found Politicallyincorrectstrasse, but I think it's near Handicapped Lane, which is just off of Racial Slur Square.

At the Mac Hospital

No post for a few days... my beloved powerbook is getting old and has clocked too many miles. It needs a new component for the screen, which will take a couple of weeks (part needs to be ordered).
In the meantime, I'm grateful to be using Sigi Sullivan's old ibook. Thank you, Sigi.