Friday 16 December 2011

Travelogue: Part Two

(Again, this post has been presented pretty much as it was written. I'm quite pleased with this one, in actual fact, so if you do get a laugh out of it let me know!)


Well, I just figured out how it is that my universal, right-round-the-world plug adaptor actually works, so that means my laptop is up and running and that means I'm back to work. 'Work' being a relative term, being as I'm cruising at 33,000 feet in comfort aboard a Korean airlines aircraft. Economy really isn't as bad as it used to be, judging by the shiny screens, the movie selection and the insistence of the in-flight advertisments (I still have the urge to think of them as propaganda, thanks, Doctor Steel). That means it's time for the thrilling second installment of Troy's travels!

Bibimbap. I learned about something new in the world of cuisine just now. I'm not really a fussy eater by any means, most that know me will attest to the fact, but I have to admit that I do much prefer when my food is actually cooked. When I can readily identify the constituent ingredients with a quick glance at the plate you're not necessarily turning me off, but I like to know that heat was, at some point, applied to my meal. I'll let you know what a bibimbap is, though. You take a bowl. Into that you throw some shredded green thing, some diced white thing which is potentially onion, a second green thing which is neatly sliced and something brown which I think is masquerading as some kind of meat replacement. To throw on top of that you're given a little container of steamed rice which has been thoughtfully permitted to cool and go sticky, along with a small sachet of seasame oil and some hot sauce in a little tube.

I do say 'throw on top' due to the fact that this is a Construct Your Own Meal adventure brought to you by the ingenuity of Korean Airlines, and after the initial gleeful mania of hurling everything I don't recognize into a bowl and giving it a quick mash with your fork wears off, you're left with something that looks like someone who had a serious grudge against vegetables attacked them with... well, hot sauce and some rice. This wouldn't upset me nearly half as much were it not for the way that bibimbap were presented to me in the first place.

"Excuse me, sir, the options for the meal tonight are beef or bibimbap."

Not wanting to push the boat out too far on my first venture into Korean cuisine without at least some forewarning, I put on my best smile and answered, "I'll have the beef, please."

"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, but we have run out of beef."

Korean girl, your uniform is pressed very nicely and your smile is sincere, but you can't possibly be serious about how that conversation just took place. I struggle. Under ordinary circumstances I'd ask why, but I know very well the answer. Every passenger aboard with a passport that isn't green had the same idea as me. I want to explain to the stewardess that presenting this to me as an option is roughly on par with what my mother used to do with me when I was a child. Present to me the illusion of choice before deciding on a course of action and politely informing me of it. This bugged me sixteen years ago and it bugs the hell out of me now, too.

Very carefully, trying to ignore the potential for a flashback, I return the stewardess' smile as best I'm able. "Sorry, so, uh... what are the options?"

"Beef or bibimbap."

"But there's no beef."

"That's right, sir, I'm sorry."

It wouldn't matter at this point if Bibimbap was an eight foot tall amazon slathered in barbeque sauce carrying a bottle of tequila in one hand and a basket of limes in the other. What I want, now, completely irreconcilable with reality, is the beef. The stewardess is smiling at me, still, in the zeptosecond it's taken me to try and force this grim fact on my now attentive stomach. Beef? it wonders aloud, giving me a quick tickle to remind me of its presence. We like bee-WHAT. I've just heard from up top. Is this shit true?

Yes, it's true. The options are beef-or-bibimbap-but-there-is-no-beef.

I'm starting to wonder if I'm not being set up. Is this a proving ground for comedy material? Is Eddie Izzard lurking somewhere to jot down my reaction? "Is there anything else?" I ask, still smiling the rictus of a man preparing himself for a second sucker punch.

"The only other option is the bibimbap, sir."

That's that, then. I cast my vote like a Russian at the polls. "I'll have the bibimbap, please."

The service is quick and there is wine. I prepare my tray for the meal laid out in front of me and inspect it as it arrives. There's a chance, at least, that there's something good still available somewhere on this place. I can't readily identify any of this, though! I unwrap my fork and spoon to start digging apprehensively around the outskirts of this unlikely meal. Hell, I'd even settle for an eight inch amazon at this point, but she's not to be found and any promises of the tequila with her quickly evaporate. Damn. There's a glimmer of hope, however! To the right hand side of my tray is something gently steaming, something that's been prepared - or even just microwaved - and presented to me as a hot option. God, thank you, there's a chance. Has there been a mistake? Is this both bibimbap and beef on the same tray?

It doesn't take long to inspect the foil and dash my hopes. Seaweed soup. Now, before you turn your nose up and cringe at the mention of it, I've never had seaweed soup. I know that it's a staple of many diets in asia and the pacific, so I lift my shoulders in a figurative shrug and decide I might as well hedge my bets. Get the hot food in me first to improve my mood and then tackle trying to graze on the unruly hodge-podge of miscellaneous forestry that's been arrayed in front of me.

Seaweed soup tastes about as good as you'd expect something called seaweed soup to taste. I make a little 'smek smek smek' face with my lips and give it a chance. It promptly decides that this is its chance to make a full assault on my tastebuds. I am not subject to the Operation Overlord of taste invasions. Okay, I can deal with that. I'm not even getting the US invasion of Grenada over here, so, okay, I've got to set my standards a little lower. Perhaps the Korean people are used to things being very bland? I don't know. I'm a foreigner to their land and customs and increasingly their cuisine. I push my tongue to the roof of my mouth on a manhunt for the flavour of seaweed soup and what I get back is a few tertiary reports from tastebuds long thought lost on a mission to the Plains of Bland. I had hoped for a full-scale thermonuclear war on my senses. I got two guys in a squad car.

I put the seaweed soup aside and focussed on the bibimbap. It came with hot-... shit. SHIT! I just realised as I write this that I had a small tube of pepper sauce available to smear over the bibimbap. Why didn't I think to put that in my seaweed soup?! Shit! That's fucking genius! Damn. I'm going to have real trouble letting that go. Damn.

Alright. The bibimbap. It actually came with instructions! Our row of three was given a small card instruction sheet for how to successfully orient the food in your bowl without looking like a complete and total fuck up. Here, I took a picture of it for you all.



Doesn't it look appetising? That doesn't look remotely like a bowl of chunder, does it? Of course not! Sick would at least be warm! I'm staring down at the monstrosity I've unleashed with a few deft swipes of my fork and preparing to steel myself for the moment I know has to come. I'm hungry. I'm not going to eat for another ten hours. It's beef. It's beef. It came from a cow and has been thoroughly mistreated at the hand of an expert chef who was brought down from his hermitage atop the Himalayas by a team of sherpas and one plucky alpaca with the sole intent of producing something that I will find palatable. Don't worry, Troy. Bibimbap is greasy, uneven and cold - not even properly cold, but the half-chilled of food left unattended long enough to lose its heat from the oven. This is beef. This is everything you wanted. Take your fork, tuck in, take a mouthful. Savour what the ancient art of a hermit chef long thought lost to the world has wrought.

Bibimbap tastes like shit.

If all that build up made you expect some more grand explanation of what I had to eat, ask yourself, are you disappointed? If you are, you're a fraction of the way closer to understanding what I had to endure at that first mouthful of my first exposure to Korean cuisine. It tastes like leftovers out of the fridge. Cold, a little formless after you've stirred it into the bowl to try and kick the flavour awake, but just inoffensive enough as a result that you're left desperating wanting a reason to really kick back and unleash the fury on this stuff. I'm not even scarred by the experience. Just deflated.

The stewardess brought me a beer, though. I'm not too upset about that. I'm trying to read the writing on the can and I just can't shake the feeling that it looks like the 'hieroglyphics' from Futurama. I am enjoying this beer. I think the first thing I do when I get off the plane in New Zealand is head to a bakery and get myself a pie.

You can guess what kind.

Travelogue: Part One

(Author's note: These are presented without editing, as per usual, as I sat in various places with my laptop on the journey from England to New Zealand. Good luck and god speed, my poor readers, as the first content in an age is the ravings of a man without sleep.)


I've never been one to travel well, which is ironic how many times I actually have. I've toured parts of the world I never thought when I was a boy that I'd ever see, and despite this I still get the jitters when it comes up that I'm going to have to get on a bus, board a train or pack for a flight. I just don't like it. I'm a remarkably sedentary person when I can be, known to remain still for periods of hours, even days, with breaks only to roll over slightly or to make an emergency dash to the bathroom when necessary. If I thought I could avoid peeing without the messy business of having a catheter installed? I'd be on that like a shot, you can believe me. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm lazy, but I definitely favour an economy of motion that might be best described as 'borderline responsive.'

Somehow, though, I'm at Heathrow International Airport's terminal four waiting for a plane to take me to Seoul, where I will then be whisked away the rest of the distance to Auckland, New Zealand. I can't really say with any degree of certainty what it is that's actually going through my head at this point. I'm running on empty, operating on reserve power; the usual euphemisms for being out-of-my-mind blank and drifting through security checkpoints and baggage carousels and clouds of lost, chattering people staring at screens they're far too far away from to read properly. I can't help but think that at some point I made a fairly poor decision, or maybe the right decision for the wrong reasons. I'm not going on holiday, you see. I'm going home.

I don't know when it was that England and I first started to have difficulties in our relationship. First it was subtle things. The little things that England did were really starting to piss me off irrationally. St George flags would erupt like teenage acne at the first mention of the FIFA World Cup (or whatever bloody sporting event that England happened to be competing in at the time on the world stage) accompanied by a marked increase in hooting, cheering and shouting random obscenities down the street. When, invariably and without fail, this was then followed by England being promptly shot off the world stage by a superior sporting opponent, all signs of patriotism were flushed like a bad curry and everyone immediately forgot the words to 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

I mentioned to England that it might be a good idea for us to visit other people for a while, just to get our heads back in the game together. England was sullen, noting that it hadn't actually had an empire in a few years, but it understood my decision and that if that was what it took for me to stay, it was prepared to make some sacrifices. I shopped around a little. Visited America. Spent some time in Germany, which I went back to a few times to really get a feel for the place. I came to the strange realisation that people in the streets of those countries were smiling, often for no apparent reason, but England assured me when I got back that this was the behavior of lunatics, terrorists and recidivists who couldn't be trusted at any cost. I had to maintain vigilance and squeal on my neighbors if I heard anything funny happening late at night, early in the morning or past four in the afternoon on Sunday.

When Tony Blair stepped down rather unceremoniously from office and paved the way for Gordon Brown to slop his unceremonious bulk into the Prime Minister's seat, I was apprehensive. I wasn't above pointing out that no democratic process I could mention had lead to this strange, grey man coming to power. I was assured that all that had happened, everything bad which had taken place over the last few years, it was all Tony's fault. He was a well-meaning villain, Gordon and England told me together, but he was not to be trusted. I should prepare a stake and be ready to tackle him in the street if he was to stray close to residential areas. At no cost was I to even mutter that I'd seen weapons of mass destruction, or Tony would be 'round my house to wreck the place looking for oil. Alright, I reasoned. His eyes are too close together and his smile makes him look like a stoat. I suppose everything could be Tony's fault and everything would be good from now on, right? People would smile in the streets, that'd be a nice change of pace.

No, no. If I was apprehensive before that was nothing compared to watching the poll results on the latest general election, my gall rising as it became obvious that for some bizzare reason the country had decided that the best way to haul itself out of a depression was to elect a pack of hyenas in blue ties, lead by a man who can best be described as a pillock. There are other terms, more offensive, but I can't any longer muster the energy to express my loathing for David Cameron with anything that takes longer to say than pillock. The observant may note that this is also roughly the amount of time it takes to say prick, knob, asshole, cunt, tossbag and willy, so you should feel free to substitute 'pillock' for whichever of those you feel most appropriate. England promised me again that everything would be okay, that I had strong, economically minded leaders who were prepared to make the hard choices to correct the mistakes that Labour had made while in power. Goodness, didn't you realise? It was all Labour's fault that we were in a mess to begin with. Gordon Brown, the grey man, was nudged from the Prime Minister's seat with little fanfare and England immediately set to pestering me about how fantastic the Basketfoot Club Ball Series was going to be this year.

I threw up my hands. On my desk there has always been a small red button under an innocuous plastic cover. It looked like something out of a nuclear submarine and that if you pressed it Abu Dhabi would immediately cease to exist in a brief, violent nuclear fire. Not so. Marked underneath it in simple white script was 'EJECT' and all I had to do was hit that button and I'd be catapulted back to New Zealand. An emergency extraction staged by my family (who will be portrayed in the movie of my life as the A-Team) to return to me to some semblance of normal life. I flicked up the little plastic cover, but I was apprehensive. This would mean travelling! This would mean quite literally relocating my life for the second time. Leaving behind my friends, familiar territory, starting from scratch.

David Cameron began his war on the EU, the Euro and the entire EEC for a 'safer, more progressive Britain' that presumably didn't include anyone that kept a beard, wore a turban or had been educated outside of Eton. I pushed the button.

Now I'm in Heathrow grappling with the internet access it's trying to offer me. I have to pay for it, of course, but I don't think that's really much of a bad thing. I have a fair few hours of flight to sit through and I'd like to have access to my Steam account in order to play some games while I'm in the air. My luck has already begun to turn. For reasons unknown it informs me dutifully that I cannot connect to the Steam network. "That's fine," I tell it, "just start in offline mode and let me access my game library." Don't be silly! You can't access offline mode without updating Steam online. Trying to wrangle the airport wifi access point I start to think I may as well try to recite the Emancipation Proclamation in reverse. In Dutch. It's okay, though, I shouldn't worry. I've got a couple of games on this venerable beast to keep me entertained. I'm sure, if I'm very careful and I ration my resources, I could even watch Star Trek for twenty three hours. I just can't get too excited or enjoy it too much or I'll want to watch the whole thing in one fell swoop and ruin my chances at entertainment. Don't you worry, though, gentle reader. I have access to Notepad, of course, so you are safe. You are provided for by my immense boredom.

I've got a camera, too. A little Sony Cyber-shot which claims to have megapixels (some) and shoot high-def video to a recommended memory card (not supplied). Here! My first picture with it.

[Actually, this is taking much too long to upload. It's just my ugly mug, anyway.]

For the moment I'm going to try and find something to eat that doesn't cost me the use of my kidneys. I'll update more throughout the trip, don't you worry, since I'm not sure that even I have the ability to play Panzer Corps for twenty three hours and find it entertaining the whole way through. I'm sure there's potential for a joke about the gravitas and severe nature of war, but... yeah, I'm wiped out. This is what you get, people, this is all I am at the moment. Do not just me too harshly for this. We're in for one long-ass ride.