Greetings from the Land of Morning Calm

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
By Jove, turn those into your favour Ian!
Suggest a 100K annual reward for you, Ross supplies for a whole year and a summer deportation to Bali, Tahiti, Hawaï and Aruba. Not sure in what order.

😆

Ian_Adkins

@Voy Kay#1012 So at the company my wife works for, it's pretty common after a long stay in Asia to come back via Hawaii or Tahiti. Except of course pandemic, blah blah blah. Of course, the irony is that intercontinental travel is the reason there's a pandemic on at all. This is probably my last long stay in Asia, without having taken the Polynesian route back. I wanted to drink out of coconuts...

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
If you have painting equipment with you, would it help softening the mental pain, to paint some palm trees?? 😀

https://www.twoinchbrush.com/originals/Voy%20Kay/taiwan-by-hado-hagen

Ian_Adkins

@Voy Kay#1026 Alas, no, everything is at home, apart from a couple mechanical pencils and my research notebook. It's interesting how I might pack differently today. But I did have a little breakthrough. I peeled apart my luggage tag and cut it up to cover all the LEDs, so maybe I will sleep better tonight. 😁 It's weird how quickly the prison ingenuity develops. I now save everything for some unknown future use. I have a chopstick I'm planning to make into a shiv. 😆

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins Oh my, don't get caught with that shiv! One South Korean guard could be a deflected North Korean dubbelspy that searches and checks your accomodation in your absence or at night!
Be aware of too carefully folded bed sheets and/or foreign thumbmarks on glasses and silverware!
....
....
Are we really the only ones having fun here in this spy thriller?? 😁

Ian_Adkins

Ah, see, they've only given me disposable utensils and Dixie cups, you'd need a fingerprint dusting kit to turn up any unusual prints. And believe me, the exact arrangement of my bedding is induplicable by rational mind, and only by a diseas'd wit. Speaking of North Koreans, I went to Panmunjom in 2014, and saw a few for myself. A very surreal experience.

Yes, odd that no one else has joined the thread, but perhaps they're loath to break in upon our revelries and flights of fancy.

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
Darn, they are smarter then we thought!
The smell of 'fear' can't be far out! The loneliness can play tricks as well. Panmunjom is only a few whiskars away .... never visited it while I was in Seoul in 2010.
Gosh, why is the late Charles Bronson's quote playing in my head now?
'I have fear for the fear'

Felix

nothing we could say would be as entertaining as your conversations! 😀

Panmunjom is well worth a visit! Especially since they have an ATM at the gift store that doesn't charge fees for international cards 😉

Ian_Adkins

Felix I remember that shop, I came away with carved wooden marriage ducks, DPRK bank notes, and North Korean plum soju. Inexplicably there were also Transnistrian bank notes, and I now regret not buying any.

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
Just out of bed, had a tough time reading about the bank notes.
First I read 'trans' ... but that's was too close related to 'Katoy'. Then I read 'train' .... but with one eye opened only, I must've read that dislectic. Then I noticed 'Istria' .... but that region in Croatia could not fit with 'Transnistria' very well.
So eventually, felt unhappy that I've been to Ukrania so many times, and to Rumania as well, yet never visited Moldavia nor Transnistria.
Anyway, in my land of morning calm (although the name of Belgium alone raises my neckhairs as well as my stomach acid!) .... coffee never dissapointed me and is my golden remedy and adage for 'happiness in a mug'!
Cheers to the world!

Ian_Adkins

First things first upon waking: never let your Internet addiction get in the way of your caffeine addiction.

I gather Transnistria is a bit of seedy place, but since the 1990s, I've been following this plucky little holdout of the Soviet Union that nevertheless wouldn't exist but for Russian "peacekeeping." I'm amazed it survived the Yeltsin years, but that was probably due entirely to General Lebed's active interest.

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
Well normaly I am up between 3 and 5 am, but the rest of the house is still asleep then so I try to make as few noise as poosible, thus extending my need for coffee till around 7am, also the hour where the cats can enter the house after their nightly splurges.
Most cities of importance in my little 'no good' country have nicknames for their citizens. That can vary from 'Chickeneaters', to 'Onions', to 'Cobblestampers', 'Donkeys', 'Sleepers' or .... in my case either 'Fools' or Coffeesippers'. My birth city has hus two and although I am a healthy crazy person as well, I tend more to the second nickname for we are known to be the bigger coffeedrinkers in the country.
As I often state, my mother even gave me coffee while breastfeeding!

Name of my birthcity .... 'Bruges', the medieval city of Belgium. Great city for the million of tourists, shit city for the 150.000 inhabitants. I'm VERY pleased I don't live there anymore although I stil reside in Western Flanders, the richer province of my country.
Momentarely ... I live in 'Waregem', 'city of horses'. Although the only horses I tame are my 120 American thoroughbreds in my Ford! No coffee can beat those!

Felix

@Voy Kay#1085 ah Bruges... Great city to take out your hitman partner!

Voy Kay

Felix
You know Felix, I was asked to play in that movie, really true!! I starred as an extra in almost 70 movies, television productions and documentaries already. So was asked for this movie as well.
Unfortunately that was during my former life as a hotel inspector and I was abroad during the fliming, so had to let that one pass by! PITY!!

Ian_Adkins

@Voy Kay The very terms Flamand and Walloon strike the English ear as funny. I like it when serious things have somewhat silly names, it's fun and punctures our pomposity. England is full of odd place names, we have many here in the U.S., with goofy demonyms to match (Hoosiers?). And for odd place names, Australia takes the prize (Humpybong? Dismal Peak? Mount Bugger? Eggs-and-bacon Bay? a Google search will provide hours of entertainment).

Speaking of Belgium, many years ago in college we had an exchange student, Orlane, from Liège. I was smitten, and did my very 18-year-old best to catch her eye, to no avail. Probably worked out for the best, but my, was she pretty. We had German 101 together, and she grew irritated with it because she claimed it was messing up her Flemish pronunciation terribly. I say irritated, but she was nothing ever but unfailingly polite and cheerful.

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins It is a fact that our f..ked up country has three comunities, a Flemish one (the biggest), a French one (the Walloons) and a german one. Hence we also have three governments (Not a single logical person in the world who wants to believe that at first!!) and three official languages.
As the largest community, the Flemish mostly pay up unrightfully for the two smaller ones and that's a big issue for over 50 years already in Flanders. Liège is in the French part yet close to the Flemish and german borders, so that would explain why the girl knew some languages (Dutch included which is not very common for Walloons). I know six but I studied languages in highschool, and lived for a while in Peru where I went to Spanish dayschool.
The cheerfulness of the girl, I can only explain that most probably with the fact that she was out of Belgium for a while. Brings a smile to everybody's face!! Especially mine!

Had to smile with the Auzzie names ... LOVE that country! Been there in 2003 for 9 days and made the biggest mistake of my life there .... by using my return ticket!

Ian_Adkins

@Voy Kay#1102 I live near Canada. There is no end to my (anglophone) cousins' complaints about Quebec freeloading and still wanting to be its own thing apart. Partout la même, non? 😂 Pour moi, after inventing poutine, they can do no wrong.

Belgium is one European geopolitical curiosity that can't be pinned on Napoleon. Or can it? If allowed to draw a line through enough things, everything is because of him. Even here--he sold us the middle third of our country!

I read a little book recently, An Atlas of Extinct Countries, by English wit Gideon Defoe, and under each entry, he lists whatever caused the country's demise. Half the entries it simply reads, "Cause of death: Napoleon."

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins True, also Canada has a seperated-by-languages part of the country. I've only been to Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Niagara. I was never very happy in Canada but probably that was because half of India seems to run Canada.
Napoleon, brilliant in many things, rash and dumb on other things. His 'war-happy' attitude costed millions dearly yet besides his defeats (Waterloo, Belgium his worst), he is also known for what he'd introduced to us.
Metric system, traffic rules (we drive on the right side since Nap.), the Code Napoleon ... to mention a few but my favourite is the obligation for choosing a family name. In Belgium, we took that serious but in Holland, they thought that was a joke so they still have the most weird and comical familynames of the entire world.
One final anecdote about Nap. would be that the third symphony of Ludwig Von, was named 'Bonaparte' first, as a tribute to the french general, but when Beethoven heard that he had crowned himself emperor, he was so angry that he immediately renamed his masterpiece (Eroïca).

To mention something personal .... I have a french first name and a Dutch family name yet luckily it's a name that existed already way before Napoleon. The name was only briefly famous in Holland in the early 17th century because of a certain lensmaker that provided Galileo Galilei with his lenses for his telescope (a Dutch invention by the way).
Would that forefather be the reason that I am an amateur astronomer (amongst many other hobbies) and hold two degrees in astronomy (solar system and deep space)?

Ian_Adkins

@Voy Kay#1113 What a lovely family anecdote. Astronomy has been a personal passion since maybe the fourth grade. In college, I had three astronomy classes, one of which was a nighttime lab. My alma mater has the largest reflector telescope in New York, tied with Vassar. (Unfortunately the weather rarely cooperated.)

Ah, Beethoven's Third, "to the memory of a great man" (emphasis added). There's a satirical postmodern novel, Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess, that gets its structure from Heroïca. Highly entertaining book.

My mother lives in Niagara Falls. The U.S. side, not the Canadian side, which is much nicer (and with a nicer view of the Falls).

Voy Kay

Ian_Adkins
Speaking of Anthony Burgess ... 'A clockwork orange' ... I never felt more' being normal' then to be shocked when I first saw that movie, like 87,53% of the audience did. Shock was highly tempered though by that wonderful, lovely fake blond nymph (Virginia Wetherell) that stripped for Alex to test his psychological strengths and weaknesses. At my young age, it was the most beautiful creature I had met so far in life!

Speaking of creatures ... my mother's favourite was Beathoven ... at least I pronounced his name then like I just wrote it .... and she had all his symphonies on vinyl They all became part of my inheritance together with lots of opera records and French chansonniers. The latter being a poisoned gift but since those creatures are worth a lot of money, I still save those for future selling!

Speaking of mothers ... I only visited the Canadian side of the falls in Niagara and can second it that that side is indeed the nicer one. I only spent three days near Toronto, since I was doing flight inspections at that time for KLM. I flew up to 25 times a month in those days, seeing asterisks before the eyes ! Sigh!

Speaking of asterisks ... being a Trekkie since 1971, I was completely excited about space and everything related!
At the age of 8, my dream was to become a jet pilot. At the age of 9, that dream was destroyed by becoming nearsighted. Glasses were not allowed in a cockpit in those days. By the time they were allowed, I already knew I was a failure in mathematics. So if I had to fly to Barcelona, I might've ended up in Moscou! So I have 1670 flight hours on my conto .... as a passenger only! Double sigh!

Speaking of .... I should be silent now, the fourth chapter of this novel is about to reach its end .... or is it its climax?

wybnormal

Astronomy ? sweet!! I'm the neighbor nut case who drags out his scope to see different events. Then again, while the parents think I'm nuts, the kids think it's great. When they were small, I would set up my scope and a step ladder for them to see the moon. Now they are in college and they still come out when they see me get out the scope 🙂 in my iPhone books, I showed how to take pictures of the moon with a cheap telescope, a pony clamp and some earbuds. Fun stuff -you can see one of the shots I used here : https://imgur.com/gallery/5p4YTLd

Voy Kay

wybnormal
Love your moon Michael ....... euch, that sounded more weird then I meant! But then again, wybnormal?! 😁