Passport? What passport???

Afternoon!

I am at Heathrow Terminal 4 waiting for my flight to sunny Indonesia. Going there for 10 days. First to Jakarta or near there and then on to the Island of Sumatra to a place called Pedang. Should be good for a laugh or two...

This trip nearly didn't happen because of dutch penpushers...
Last week I noticed that my passport only had 4 months left on it. After checking with the Indonesian embassy it was clear that you need 6 months validity left on it. So I call the dutch embassy to find out how to go about getting a new one. This is always a bit tricky as I am dutch but living in the UK. First shock was that they told me that it will take 4 to 5 weeks to get a new passport. What???? Even in the UK they can do it in a day or two... So I ask about a fast track procedure. All I got was the bloke laughing down the phone. 4 weeks or nothing mate...
So The next day I go to Harwich to see the dutch consul. He just confirms what the first joker had told me on the phone. He did have another option though. If I could go in person to the dutch embassy they could do me a Laissez Passer which is some sort of emergency travel document. So the next day I drive - bus - taxi - underground it to Hyde Park to the dutch embassy. Well, that was a right laugh. In the queue with about 150 somalians, ethiopians, Nigerians, all with hordes of crying kids, my idea of a good time....

After queueing for an hour I finally make it past the front gate. There the dutch consul tells me that I CAN travel to indonesia on my passport. I tell her that she should check her doumentation and after she does that she tells me that I am right, I can't travel. Right. That is why I am there you silly moo cow. Then I ask her about the Laissez Passer that the consul in Harwich was about. She informs me that that is only good for getting you back to Holland from wherever you are abroad. Great. When you live in Holland.... Then she tells me that it will take 5 weeks but of I pay her extra she can do me a temporary emergency passport valid for 1 year?!?!?!?! Well, I don't care about the money so I nearly snap her arm off agreeing to this. So 3 hours later I have my application for a new full passport in and a am holding a new shiny temp passport. Excellent.

By the way, it is the gayest passport you will have ever seen. It is bright pink and only 10 pages thick but hey, if it is going to get me into the country of Satay Ajam, Kroepoek, Babi Pangang, I am not complaining.

Today is gonna be a long day, I have a flight to Amsterdam, then onto Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, then on to Jakarta and then possibly on to Pedang. I don't even know yet if any one will be picking me up in Jakarta when I arrive tomorrow afternoon, never mind, if there is no-one there I will find the most expensive hotel and go to bed and let them find me!

OK, more later, there is free booze to be hoovered here in the business lounge!

Cheerio,

Alex.

In the Ustates Nites...

Afternoon all,

Again, it has been a while since there were any updates. And again it is because I am travelling. At the moment I am in sunny Iowa, in a place called Mason City.

I started my trip last week tuesday, it's now tuesday the 1st of May. I arrived in Kansas City late on tuesday night. By the way, Kansas City airport is in Missouri, strangely enough. I rented a car and drove the 200km to Chanute. This place really is in the middle of nowhere. As one of the locals said, it's two hours to anywhere from here. While driving there I had to dodge quite a few herds of white tail deer as the state is famous for its hunting. I could have 'hunted' quite a few with my car but as I am not a great fan of venison I just stuck to weaving all over I-96 trying not to kill any. I had been to Chanute before but it has only gone downhill further. The one restaurant that was half acceptable there had closed so now it is a toss up between McDonalds or BurgerKing, hmmm, great when you are on expenses and don't care where you eat....

I stayed in a place called The Safari Inn. Don't really know why it was called that as the only wildlife there was cockroaches and ants... maybe I was supposed to hunt them 'ey?
The manager was from India and wasn't to happy to get out of his pit to let me in when I arrived at 12 at night. The room was, let me see, how do I describe it, rustic? No. Crap? Yep.
No working phone, no internet access, no laundry, no bar, no restaurant, excellent. What it did have was lots of food from previous inhabitants of the room stuck on the walls and ceilings.

The advertised free breakfast consisted of a pot of creosote which they claimed was coffee and a jug of orange juice from 1978. Nuff said...

There was however a poolhall down the road. The clientele there was, again how do we say this, from a limited gene pool. On the last night there I was minding my own business sucking a few Coronas (Don't start me on american beer, they all suck... sorry...) and suddenly in the back of the place a lovely american style punch-up erupts. It was fucking hilarious. There's bar stools flying, people punching the crap out of each other, women joining in. I use the term women loosely here. A lot of them had hairy upper lips and more tattoos than David Beckham. The worst thing was that while this ruckus is going on the bar woman stops serving! Goddamn, I had just run out of beer... The funniest thing was that no-one actually thought of calling the police. After it all ended and the worst offenders were swept out the place with all the broken pool cues, chairs and glasses the bar woman said that this was normal for a friday, there is nothing else to do except punch the hell out of each other... Nice place.

There was no mobile phone coverage there, I think they use a fire and blanket to signal each other to coordinate where the next punch-up is. So I had no way of contacting the wife. So she got a trifle worried after not hearing from me for a good 5 days. She managed to get the phone number for the place from my secretary and manages to talk the indian receptionist to put a call through to my room. Unfortunately she had forgotten that I am 6 hours behind in time so I got the fright of my life when suddenly I get a phonecall at 5 o'clock in the morning from Mr Suvinder Barjapal telling me that I have a call. He then proceeded to disconnect the call three time before my wife finally got through. I then explained to my wife about the phone problems and assured her I was fine.

The job itself went fine, customer happy and everything working when I left.

On the sunday I travelled to Iowa. It was a one hour flight to Mineapolis and then a very small 30 seat propeller plane to Mason City. The airport in Mason City is a shed. There is only one flight in and one flight out every day. At least that means that there are no queues anywhere.

The job for Holcim Mason City is going great so far. The weather has been stunning. On the sunday it hit 90 degrees which was nice after 5 days of rain in Kansas.

Oh, something else, I have finally joined the modern computer age as I have bought myself a WiFi card for my PC. That means I can finally use my PC anywhere to update my Blog. The card was 40 dollars at Walmart, excellent! That is 20 quid for a 700 ft range Wireless G Plus ard. It connects with a speed of up to 125Mbps, not bad...

OK, gotta go now, it's time to go out and find some chow. The choices are somewhat limited but hey, everything is better than Chanute!

Cheerio,
Alex.

PS If you have been wondering about the lack of pictures recently it is because my much beloved Konica Minolta Z3 suffered a fatal fall in Saudi Arabia a couple of months ago. I'm still trying to get the travel insurance to cough up but no luck sofar...