Folks, I’m in Guam and just saw the forecast for New York upon
my return. Ergo, I realized I may not make it home! So I’m
rushing this out in case I have problems traveling.
Instead of a sports quiz for Presidents\’\’ Day, how many presidents
were also generals? Answer below.
The Zoo, The Park and Other Things
So I go to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney and my first impression
was, I didn’t realize how good Bonorong Wildlife Park in
Tasmania was! Not that Taronga was bad, mind you, but at
Bonorong you were really up close and personal with the
Tasmanian Devil, the Koala, and the Wallabies, which wasn’t
necessarily the case at Taronga.
But here are some random musings
Seals are vastly overrated.
Underrated: The Andean Condor, the Kodiak Bear, and the
Aldabra Tortoise; the latter from the Seychelles, capable of
living 150 years and I really got to see it move. Now tell me,
when was the last time a tortoise at a zoo moved for you?
Male Kangaroos (bucks) become mob bosses and reign for a year,
mating with most of the females in the group. Great work if you
can find it.
This just in from Harry K., “When called by a panther, don’t
anther.”
Harry also just reminded me that man-eating lions have been
eating lots of eco-tourists in Africa, what Reuters describes as
“fast food of the bush.”
So after the zoo, I went to the Sydney Acquarium. This was far
better. Goodness gracious, there you had the world famous
saltwater crocodiles. Did you know these beasts can live to be
100?! They average about 3 metres in length, with the longest
ever caught being 9.1 metres (this was in India). The average
human male, sticking with the metric system, is 1.8 metres.
Saltwater crocs attack man without provocation and are
responsible for numerous deaths in the Aussie outback each year.
Does the “dog-face puffer” think it’s a dog?
Freshwater catfish can be deadly, seriously.
I didn’t see any sea monkeys.
You know what is underrated? The platypus, which has a
venomous spur.
Coolest fish was the giant cuttlefish, kind of like half grouper,
half squid.
Don’t mess with moray eels, sports fans. They inflict deep
lacerations.
A potato cod measures up to five feet in length and can rip you
apart.
The Octopus possesses a brain as large as a human and would
probably make for a terrific outfielder, if they’d change
the rules.
On the way back from Bondi Beach (a Bohemian place outside
Sydney where the babes are quite interesting to look at), I asked
the cab driver about a sign I had seen at the acquarium, that
being the fact that only one person a year is killed by sharks in
Australian waters.
“Hah!” he said, “We just had a man eaten alive just last week in
Queensland.” My new best friend went on to relate how many
deaths simply aren’t reported. What happened to this particular
bloke was he swam in the canals near his home and his neighbors
had warned him that sharks had infiltrated them. The water is
dark and murky, but he went in anyway gulp!
In a related matter, kind of, while I was in Sydney 3 tourists died
in 3 days from the dangerous surf at the area beaches. Or maybe
it was sharks .
The Layover
On Saturday, I had an 8-hour flight from Sydney to Manila, but
that was just the beginning of my day, as I was going to have to
stick around in Manila for 7 hours before a 4-hour flight to Guam.
I’ve been dreading this day for months. As it turned out, it was
another special one.
When I arrived in Manila, however, I soon learned that I had to
change terminals. No big deal, right? Well, it wasn’t that easy,
because the only way to get there was by cab since they didn’t
have a shuttle, and after 30 minutes I wasn’t able to hail a ride.
Then this man came up to me.
“Need a cab, sir?”
“Yes, to International 1, but I don’t have any pesos.”
“That will be $3 dollars, then,” he replied.
Great deal, I thought, and I was whisked into his associates’ car.
Of course I was cautious, but didn’t need to be, because in the
five minutes to the terminal, this cabbie and I bonded like you
wouldn’t believe.
I bring this simple story up because it was the beginning of my 7-
hour experience with the local Filipinos and I’m here to tell you
that these good folk are perhaps the single, greatest people on
earth. Their kindness is so geniune, you want to pinch yourself.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t check in at my gate for 3 hours and
there wasn’t anyplace to get a drink, so I sat on an unused
baggage belt and talked to the locals who occassionally sat down
next to me. Again, just the best.
But it was at the bar inside the terminal, once I finally checked in
(and now with about 3 hours to my flight), that I heard even
more.
I’m sitting in this little fish bowl, with but ten seats, and all
manner of characters are walking in and out, there being flights
departing to places like Kuwait, Cairo, Frankfurt and Kuala
Lumpur, for starters, but since there were so few chairs, I asked
anyone that was interested to sit at my table. Good way to meet
people, I thought.
So this one American takes a seat and I proceed to tell him how
impressed I am and he goes on to say how he lived with a
family outside Manila for two months one year. “I have never
come across a people who seem so happy with so little,”
he told me. Therein lies a lesson for all; at least that’s
what I’m taking away from the experience.
Thanks for letting me write this little love letter to these great
folks. As I quaffed my next San Miguel, one of the best beers
in the world (and you won’t believe this, it cost just $1 a bottle!),
I looked at the label. Part of it reads “The only beer that
nourishes true Filipino friendships.” And you can look it up.
Stuff
–Those of you who follow basketball may be interested to know
that Andrew Gaze is still staring in the Australian Professional
Basketball League, the NBL. It gets quite a bit of coverage over
there, as does hockey, surprisingly.
–Follow-up to my top five pick-up lines from last time. Allen
H., a fellow bachelor, writes that he has had success with this one.
“Where do you bowl at?”
–In Australia, a tremendous amount of publicity went to Shane
Warne, a star on the national cricket team, who was suspended
because he was caught using steroids. This is a big deal given
that the World Cup in cricket is going on right now, but the local
press absolutely ripped Warne for his stupidity, which led a local
sportswriter to note some of the other excuses given by world
class athletes for failing drug tests.
U.S. sprinter Dennis Mitchell was exonerated from a mandrolone
charge after revealing the reasons for his positive test.
“I had sex with my wife at least four times and drank six bottles
of beer last night.”
Mitchell was banned by the international track and field board
for two years.
Deiter Baumann, the German 5000m Olympic champion, tested
positive to steroids in 1999. “My toothpaste was spiked,” he
claimed.
British bobsledder Lenny Paul had the following excuse for a
positive mandrolone test.
“It was because I was eating spaghetti bolognese made with beef
raised using anabolic agents.”
If you have a personal story you’d like to share, such as failing a
drug test at work, drop us a line here at Bar Chat. We’ll be sure
to use your full name and list your home address, too.
Top 3 songs for the week of 2/17/68: #1 “Love Is Blue” (Paul
Mauriat) #2 “Green Tambourine” (The Lemon Pipers used this
for my very first commercial cost me a lot of bucks ouch!)
#3 “Spooky” (Classics IV ‘Stormy’ was better)
This coming February 19 is birthday #60 for one of the great
singers of all time, Lou Christie. [Actually, he’s a personal fave
of Harry K. and I.] He was born Lugee Alfredo Giovanni Sacco
in Glen Willard, Pennsylvania and first gained fame for the 1962
tune “The Gypsy Cried.” But it was in 1966 that Christie topped
the charts with one of the awesome tunes in rock history,
“Lightnin’ Strikes,” which to this day has held up very well.
That same year Christie had another smash, “Rhapsody In The
Rain.”
Speaking of birthdays, I missed my brother’s the other day.
Sorry, bro. Hope you had a few ales, ‘cause you know I did.
Presidents Quiz Answer: Eleven were generals – George
Washington, Andrew Jackson, William H. Harrison, Zachary
Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant,
Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and
Dwight Eisenhower.
Next Bar Chat, Thursday we’ll slowly get back to more normal
fare. Thanks for hanging in there with me the past month or so.
**Aghh! I just saw Alinghi is besting Team New Zealand 2-0
in the America\’\’s Cup. C\’\’mon, boys!
