Dearest <INSERT YOUR NAME HERE>,
OK, so it's not very personalised. In fact, it's more like a chain letter.
If you send this on to five of your friends you'll quite possibly lose five friends.
But never mind the quality, feel the width. I should apologise to the more casual acquaintances among you for the length that this is bound to end up being, but those of you closer to me will know how I love to talk about myself.
And in these fast-moving modern cyberintersupergeekway times, I just don't have time to send you the old "Wish You Were Here" postcards. This is more "Dark Side of the Earth". Look, just turn your computer over and pretend there's a picture of a moose on it.
No, don't. (That's for the work folks. I don't want to cause Jussy unneccessary grief when I'm sure he's dealing with plenty of neccessary grief.)
So I've finally landed at the rellies' place in Canada, but let's begin at the beginning. My travelling companion, my 22 year old brother Poos (not his real name), who's moving to Canada for a year. The Japan Airlines (cheapo) flight, came with a free stopover and hotel at Narita for 24 hours.
I guess I was probably pretty dense to go to Japan for a day with a total of zero yen. (At the present exchange rate, that's zero Australian dollars.) Japan, I thought, surely must be the home of the credit card, and we'd been led to believe that Narita was a city built around an airport. Could there be anything more designed for dumb tourists like us?
Or to put that another way...
Is there anywhere less so?
We'd already determined that our original "24 hours of Japan" goal
of eating sushi off a naked virgin was probably unethical and certainly unaffordable,
so instead we grabbed our video camera and set off to be traditional Japanese
tourists. Karaoke was definitely on the agenda. A
free bus got us from the hotel to Narita Central (quarter of an hour away),
and would take us back too, but only up until ten o'clock. That was clearly
unlikely. But Poos had 4000 yen, and we should be able to get more cash in the
city if needed. On the way in we chatted with three Sydneysiders, Bill, Ross
and Nick, who were even more arrogantly convinced that credit was all that was
required. I got the feeling that they had no cash, just Amex cards.
I suppose it was after 9 o'clock at night, but it was really hard to find somewhere that looked appealing to eat. Eventually we went to down into a little shop where a woman named Tamimi - the only person there who spoke English - set us up for a tasty varied meal, for our 4000 yen, and told us where we could exchange our travellers cheques. She used to be married to someone from Adelaide, she said, and if we came back at 1am when she knocked off she'd take us "somewhere very unique". Our heads filled with Internet horror stories of spiked drinks and stolen kidneys, but I convinced Poos this was tourist paranoia and in the absence of anything better, we agreed. She gave us her number and we left to get some cash.
So we went down to the nearest hotel, as directed by Tamimi, and up to the
exchange desk. Closing at 10:30, it said, and I checked my watch.
10:28, phew.
Mr. HOTEL: "No, is closed."
WOK: "It's not 10:30 yet."
Mr. HOTEL: "Sorry closed, bye-bye."
And so began two hours of wandering around Narita looking for an open exchange place. Or a teller machine that spoke English, or started with you entering your PIN. Or a store that took VISA. Or ANYONE who spoke English! Eventually we decide our only hope was to return to Tamimi's. And then, just a block from Tamimi's place, we saw Bill, Ross and Nick through a bar window. They'd found a pub that took credit cards, and by the looks of them they'd racked up quite a hefty bill. And the arrogance levels had soared in tandem with their blood alcohol levels.
"Yeah, yeah," Bill reassured us very unreassuringly, "we've got cash." So, figuring five Australians stranded in Narita is a bigger news story than merely two, we tagged along with them. It took quite a bit of Western "encouragement" (ie. force) to convince the cabbie to take five of us in our car, but we were soon heading back to our hotel. Or rather, to the nearby Hotel Ana, where the stewardesses on the plane over had told our Sydney pals that there was a swinging karaoke bar - sorry, karaoke shack. We were just about there when Bill, our drunkest and most arrogant companion, pulled out his Amex card and turned to the driver.
BILL: "American Express? You take American Express?"
Mr. TAXI: "No, no."
BILL: "No, you don't understand. Am-er-i-can Ex-press card. You take, right?"
Mr. TAXI: "No, *no*!"
Poos and I just stared at each other, and turned in desparation to Ross, the member of their party with his feet (as opposed to his head) vaguely in ground-like vacinity, and who had claimed to have a little cash.
WOK: "You *do* have enough cash for this ride, right?"
ROSS: "Uh, I just need to make sure I have enough left for departure tax..."
WOK: "We'll fix you up when we get back to our hotel mate... HOW MUCH CASH DO YOU HAVE?"
BILL: "American Express card? Karl Malden? You know - 'Mr. Wong! Mr. Wong!'..."
Ross did have enough money to get us back, but not before we'd totally confused the driver and the assistant at the Hotel Ana trying to find this karaoke shack, without luck. Relieved to be back, relieved to have finally found an open exchange place, and relieved and away from crazed Sydneysiders, we retired to our hotel room and called Tamimi to say "thanks, but no thanks, we're buggered". But Tamimi was insistent - the bar was just over our way, and she'd pick us up on the way.
Aw, what the fuck, losing a couple of kidneys would be more fun than our night so far.
So Tamimi took us to this little shack near the Hotel Ana where they were playing karaoke.
We had a blast of a time. Poos and I sang "My Way" and "Wannabe" in succession (now there's a playlist) to a big response, though personally I preferred my guitar solo in "Hotel California", got those facial expressions down sweet.
We got up too late. The Sydneysiders had already left for their flight, and we never had a chance to gloat.
We did get the rare privelige of two Sundays - in Narita and San Fransisco - though personally I couldn't believe how long it was taking for my actual holidays to start. Narita Sunday saw us stumble upon by far the biggest temple of any description I've ever seen. Forget Westminster Abbey, forget Koln Cathedral, I don't know what this place was called (minimal English again), but it was *MASSIVE* (to be said in your best Clive Peters Massive RunOut Clearance voice). In fact we still don't know just how big this place was - whenever we reached the top of one flight of stairs another couple towered off towards the heavens. And, being a Sunday I guess, a lot of Buddhist chanting was going on. People were queueing up to get their purses and handbags blessed over a fire (the only real sign we saw of the Japanese worshipping money) and one baldy fellow was doing his best John Bonham on the second biggest drum I've ever seen. (The biggest was sitting about ten feet behind it.)
And if you want to see something truly incomprehendible, ask me to show you
the photocopied sheets which some guy called Hideo Saitoh pulled out from under
his motorcycle seat to give to us at the bus stop. One talks about Pakistan's
nuclear testing, but by far the weirdest was the one talking about America's
intervention in Chinese human rights issues. Quite what "NON-STANDARD GOLD
MEDALIST = The President, Bill Clinton" means is vague at best, but his
closing note "Since Bush intentionally keep hurting my eye by using laser
through electric cable with
SAWARA-guys, Horikoshi in JPN, the plans are being delayed" seems intriguing
in a real X-Files/Star Wars light saber conspiracy kind of way.
Got off the plane at San Fran to be greeted (at the enquiries counter where we were each asking after the other party) by my old friend Mr. Pi (again, not his real name). He asked us if we realised that today was Gay Pride Day - now what could be more San Fransiscan than that? I've never seen the Sydney Mardi Gras, but I imagine this was at least as big - there were floats and deputations from every conceivable crossbreed of gay culture, including some hard to reconcile ones. The Gay Southern Baptist League, Lesbian Taxidermists, Bi's for the Electric Chair... the only groups I couldn't see represented were the Gay & Lesbian Heterosexuals and Poofs for Understated Dress Sense.
As if that wasn't enough colour and movement for one day, we headed straight for Haight Street, noted Greatful Dead fan HQ and the place where the seventies never began. Having never seen any of the States before, Poos was certainly a bit freaked out, man, by the amount of homelessness and begging and the fact that the wind kept blowing bits of clothing into his face. Welcome to America. Of course, being a hippy at heart (regardless of recent haircuts) I loved the vibe, man, though the two park bums cutting a parka into strips were slightly scary. Especially when the one who wasn't twirling the bowie knife around like Drunkenmaster started bleeding quite heavily from his hand.
Next stop Las Vegas, and everything you've heard is true. I'm surprised the locals don't glow from neon overexposure. (Or maybe they do, a waitress told us that in spite of the intense heat, they mostly stay indoors and use tanning beds.) Ah yes, the heat. We stepped off the bus at 9pm to be told by the Vegas equivalent of the Nylex clock that it was 37 degrees - that's Celsius, folks - and I don't think it would have dropped below 30 in the day and two nights that we were there.
We got fully into the spirit of Vegas - you'd think being a mathematician I'd know that gambling always ends up in a loss long-term, but that seemed like no fun. So I played, both by system and by chance, and I guess I worked out how to maximise my chances, because I ended up $US250 up. Not just my biggest ever win by a long way, but enough to just about cover my rail fare through the States.
The scale of some of these casinos was staggering - block upon block - it was hard not to think of them as temples to 20th Century America's favourite deity, just as impressive and ritualistic as the Buddhist temple in Narita. Mind you, the cocktail waitresses in togas at Caeser's Palace probably didn't help this illusion. Especially as they kept bringing us free drinks, leaving me in a perpetual state of foggy delusion. And then at my most hammered - 3am Thursday - my "lose and double" blackjack technique was starting to get expensive. I laid down $80, knowing it would be my last bet for the night, and pulled a blackjack out of my arse, raking in $120 rather than just evens. I guess in the end the maths mattered fuck all, really.
So... from one extreme to another, onto the Grand Canyon - even more impressive than Vegas and without the human intervention. Amazingly unspoilt, actually - Poos and I walked down into the Canyon on a day hike with a Swedish girl, Sara, who pointed out that it was surprising that they hadn't installed an elevator. In fact there weren't even fences - and on quite a hairy gradient - the bare minimum of signs, and a remarkable sense of reverence. When down within the Canyon, I got a beautiful sense of the sheer vastness - the detail in every tiny leaf or berry on every small shrub, making up the tiny green specks on the nearby hills, which in turn were tiny green mounds on the horizons, stretching to infinity in all directions. Here I felt like I'd found the temple of my own faith, of the fractal unity of the universe. As Poos said, "I just wish I was into meditation."
The 35 hour journey from Flagstaff (130 miles from the Canyon, but the nearest rail station) to Chicago departed two hours late and arrived four and a half hours late, so this seems as good a time as any to warn you about Amtrak, the US national rail company. The fact that we've managed to make all of our connections and stick pretty much to our itinerary seems nothing short of a miracle.
About the day before we left, I figured it would be far easier to pick our first train up from Berkeley (where Mr. Pi lives) rather than Oakland (where we had it booked from a week prior - not only hard to get to, but very hard to get to by 7am with far more luggage than we should have brought). So I called Amtrak on the Monday, from Pi's place, to make this routine alteration to our plans. I quoted our booking reference number.
WOK: "I'd like to change the booking so we leave from Berkeley rather than Oakland tomorrow morning."
Mr. AMTRAK: "I'm afraid those reservations have been cancelled."
WOK: "WHAT?!"
Mr. AMTRAK: "Yes, the tickets were not collected on time."
WOK: "What do you mean - we've got fully paid up Rail Passes here, I was told we could pick the tickets up from the station!"
Mr. AMTRAK: "That is correct, you should have picked the tickets up from the station."
WOK: "But we've only just arrived in the country!"
Mr. Amtrak proceeded to rebook our complete itinerary - fortunately we managed
to squeeze onto all the trains and busses we were originally
intending to take. FFWD to the end of the phone call...
WOK: "So we collect those tickets from Berkeley station tomorrow morning before the train leaves, is that correct?
Mr. AMTRAK: "No, Berkeley station has no ticket issuing facilities."
WOK: "Well, where can I pick them up from?"
Mr. AMTRAK: "Your nearest ticket issuing facility would be at... (TAP TAP TAP) Oakland station sir."
So a large amount of our second day in SanFran was spent getting to the railway station we'd decided was too difficult to get to in order to collect tickets for the rickety bench half a mile from Pi's place. Since then, it's been a series of getting up absurdly early to wait for trains running hours late, belting across the platform to make connecting busses, and rude American attendants glowering at us because we didn't know we had to line up in this special line half an hour before the scheduled departure time. The 6:20am Flagstaff => Chicago train was delayed two hours, for no better reason apparently than the platform being occupied at 6:20am by the previous nights 9pm train going in the opposite direction. Further delays were caused when it seemed our two engines weren't strong enought to pull us up hills - when we went up a mountain, they had to cut the power to the carriages! What delayed us the most, though, was actually changing the engines over for some presumably working ones just outside of Kansas. Somehow the resultant loss of power meant that my bowl of Raisin Bran was delayed an hour and a half. Still, I guess we had nothing better to do with our time than console a bunch of fellow passengers who could see their train connections slowly slipping out of their grasp.
So unfortunately we only had a few hours in Chicago. But we did them properly. Started off by grabbing some Chicago pizza, which I've been waiting six years to try again; Poos pointed out that someone should open a Chicago pizza joint on Fitzroy/Brunswick/Lygon/Acland Street and they'd make a killing. Then we *finally* found some decent music! (Las Vegas doesn't seem to acknowledge any music made after 1985; if it wasn't Southern-fried country rock it was "Thriller", "Footloose" and "Eye of the Tiger".) Just back from Edwardo's pizza was a club that seemed to be packed and vibed, so we went in; the bouncer told me on the way in "They're recording a CD tonight, so it's pretty tight." Was he ever right. Turned out the night was a series of black poets, speaking, reading, rapping, scatting, singing or all of the above, frequently backed by the house band, presented by an organsiation called EastWind Productions. Also turned out that apart from the drummer and the mixer, Poos and I were the only limeys in the (overcrowded) joint. It was AWESOME. The band was a mean, super-groovin' three-piece with augmentation as required from a percussionist, pianist and an old trumpeter sitting in the audience who seemed to be channelling the spirit of Miles. Tackling everything from straight-up R&B to bluesy dub to dark, edgy soundscapes as the poems demanded. The poets were a loud, proud, funky, funny and sexually charged pack of men and women - each one unique and compelling. Never have I more wished I was a black African-American; one poetess told us the story "If I could not be black", and concluded she would rather not be at all. In spite of this vibe which verged on the racist, we were everybody's friends! Drinks on the house, slaps on the back, "you come back to Chicago we get some female action happening, brother", "I'll see you in 2000, man, we are *there*"... Every time I come back to Chicago I love this city more.
So now we're in Toronto and suffering from relative overload - there's a whole branch of the family that's out here, but I imagine that's another email.
Missing Australia, but especially you, <INSERT YOUR NAME HERE>. Best regards to those who are technologically impaired. And if I've taken up too much of anyone's valuable work time, then you should have deleted it earlier.
And remember, it's better than forgetting.
Love,
Wok.