Time Warp to Thailand

In a previous life I had traveled the world extensively but had skipped around the fabled land of Siam for some reason as if repelled by two positive magnetic currents. I had first heard of this country through my two sisters who in our childhood years had scored roles in an amateur production of "The King and I," my younger sister playing one of the children while the older sister playing one of the junior wives. From Broadway through film adaptations and a little delving in to actual history on my own I discovered the charms of Thailand as well as the food. Time to see it up close and personal after all these years.

The journey begins as such journeys always do at the airport, in this case Washington/Dulles. The line of flight would take me first to Dallas/Ft. Worth on American Airlines, then Tokyo/Narita and from there on United Airlines for the final leg to Bangkok. Some people like to add in all the time ahead of and in between the actual flying to paint a picture of how long it really took to get from A to B? This is one of those occasions! I woke up at 3:30AM to make the drive from Baltimore to Dulles Airport in time for a 7AM flight to Dallas that would give me about an hour at the massive facility to find my nonstop, the all important international flight to Japan.


A slight mix-up at Dulles almost caused me to miss that flight but I made it and connected with no problems to the gleaming Boeing 777 waiting quietly at Gate D33 to carry me to Tokyo. The flight was on time, the service impeccable and the seat just the ticket for a trip that, even after 12 hours in the air, was really only just beginning.

We landed at 12:30PM local time but the United service was not scheduled to leave until 6PM that evening. Three hours before leaving Washington, three hours to Dallas, an hour in Texas plus twelve hours to Japan equals nineteen hours since I last kissed my pillow at home with almost a six hour layover before my last and final flight of the day. Gott in Himmel bitte mir helfen!

Boarding is finally called and I'm seated next to a chipper guy just in from Denver who makes the trip once a month. That announcement clams up my grousing pretty quickly as we settle in for the, wait for it, five and a half hour flight to Thailand. I kept telling myself that it will all be over soon; I needed this vacation. At some point I will have a chance to kick back and relax as planned.

On in to the East Asian night we flew, with every mile taking me literally back in time towards ancient Siam. The 747 flew straight and true, threading the needle of the Formosa Strait between Taiwan and Mainland China, riding the edge of the mainland before skirting Hainan, hanging down like some uvula in the throat of the Southeast China Sea. We made landfall just north of Da Nang at Hue, Vietnam, images of the Evening News with Walter Cronkite playing in my time-warped mind while the country itself slept peacefully below. We continued on over south central Laos and across the northern border of Cambodia before finally entering eastern Thailand where the engines droned our imminent arrival as they throttled back for the descent.

It is midnight and we're pulling on to a remote parking stand at the new Bangkok International Airport some 30 miles to the east of town. The plane is tired, the crew is tired, everyone else is tired and I'm almost in tears from being tired. Without doubt the longest single travel experience in one direction that I have ever endured with everything operating exactly to plan, 30 hours from door to....almost door. Never was anyone so happy to see the plane door open for the last time, sweltering as it still was in the Southeast Asian humidity, as I just then. It wasn't over yet, though; I still had to get to my hotel.

I paid the equivalent of $30 for the journey in to town which was not altogether unreasonable but I would discover later was three times what I could have paid with a little haggling. At midnight after the marathon I've just endured, though, that delirious vulnerability is exactly what the taxis and limo drivers are counting on but I didn't care. They could have driven me to Singapore for all I'd have known. I was an exhausted novice who just wanted to get to a bed so I could get this desperately needed vacation started.

Welcome to Thai.....Zzzzzzz!

Gotta go.

Always on My Birthday

It never fails. Something always happens on my birthday. Where the Chinese have said "May you live in interesting times" those times seem to occur either planned or unexpectedly around the day of my arrival, starting on the very day that I was born.

My cousin took the bus in the early 1960s from her home in Virginia to the deep Midwest the Summer I was due to help my mother keep house and care for my older sister as Mom prepared for her second blessed event, me. On the actual day the story goes that Mom was in the kitchen frying chicken when and stated she had been in labor for some time when my cousin had simply asked after her general condition. A war of wills broke out as Cousin dragged Mom to the hospital with Mom protesting all the way up to the delivery room that she wasn't ready and had left her chicken sitting in the grease on top of the stove back home. Something like an hour or so later my voice and lungs were in full throat, joyously proclaiming my acceptance in to the company of rulers, writers, inventors, scholars, soldiers, athletes, singers, actors and museum curators who shared the same day.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that birthdays are meant to be celebrated. Those of you who instantly defaulted to "party time" might be surprised to learn that I simply mean taking time in SOME fashion to acknowledge the fact that I was born, that I am here, that I have earned the privilege of meaning something to at least one other person and that I'm equally grateful to have them as a part of my life. It means, to me, taking time off of work or whatever the daily routine is and being thankful to have done more than just survived another year. How about being happy in just being alive and in good health or, if not, having the strength of will and character to keep going, to fight for what is desired and reach for those long held dreams and goals. Oh alright, already...I won't turn down a slice of cake if you insist!

On or around my birthday so many notable things have happened. I've begun and ended relationships, accepted jobs and promotions, taken amazing trips and vacations somewhere in the world and yes, even endured a few disappointments along the way. Two particular highlights were involved seeing Tina Turner live in Wales on the very day of my birthday and again on the exact day two years ago in Dallas when Earth Wind & Fire came to town. The Chinese proverb of living in "interesting" times holds true for me, a proud, card carrying member of the Cancer zodiac club.

This year there is a family wedding the week after my birthday so that pretty much sets the table for this year's event and it will serve for me as a nice bookend to the one-year anniversary of launching this website. Now that's a passing of time that I'm pretty pleased about.

Happy Birthday,

Gotta go.

The (Soccer) Battle of Britain

It was a modern major miracle for Germany and the world when the wall came down in 1989. A more recent modern miracle for Germany was the blown call in the Round of 16 at the World Cup in South Africa this Summer.

"Watch," I told friends during the Group Play. "Some way, somehow, someone will bring up 1966. Fights still break out over that World Cup Final between England and Germany; it's their clarion call to arms, I explained. In that famous game the Germans were defeated in part by a Geoff Hurst "Ghost Goal" that shouldn't have been because the ball never crossed the goal line. Instant replay didn't exist then but it does now and it is needed as much as it was then.

The purists within "FIFA," the international governing body of soccer/football, claim that although some calls may be considered questionable that all evens out in the end; that within the spirit of the game one blown call should not and often is not the deciding factor within a match. To their point, the final score between Germany and England oh so long ago was 4-2.
At the same time, however, with the entire sporting world up in arms over repeated and repeatedly bad calls during the 2010 World Cup FIFA chose to retreat within its bunker by declaring no re-broadcasts of controversial plays. Let the boos, whistles and vuvuzelas ring out in full, cheated cry! As if that will fix the problem or make it go away? Uh, can you say ESPN? YouTube?

Some say a key reason behind the refusal to introduce new technology to the sport is because of the American roots of instant replay. High-falutin' electronic interference from a brash and meddling nation that doesn't even really care about the game? I doubt it but they're still missing the point. Instant replay doesn't fix all the ills of a judgment call as most fans of American football will attest. It does rectify egregious errors, however, like the obvious-to-a-blind-man goal England scored to tie the game in the first half against Germany at two all.

A mentor I had once told me that no progress in a relationship will ever be made if unresolved issues remain festering on the table, be it between co-workers, customers, family or friends. How can a team play its heart and hardest if there is a lingering sense of being cheated, that the pitch is not a level playing field?

Germany's "Mannschaft" ultimately dismantled the English with surgical precision by a score of 4-1. One blown call didn't seem to matter much, or did it? Either way, forty-four years is an awfully long time to wait for things to come out even. In this current truculent refusal by FIFA to modernize the fans will never abandon the game they so dearly love but many have gone or will go to their graves waiting for spirit of the game to serve its own justice.

FIFA simply must find a way to instantly address the human error equation of the judge. As I write this the World Cup is still only in the Round of 16; and though Mexico, the United States and England, bad call victims all, are gone, I'm quite sure as the stakes get higher that the real squealing and screaming has only just begun.

Gotta go.