priya tuli's randombloggz

Yes I’m back, in several little pieces, from my third (but short) trip to Greece. With another knapsack full of strange tales, heart-warming encounters and surreal experiences…and within hours of landing back home, the decision to go right back again as soon as possible! Though the last time that happened, it took me five years.

What IS it with Greece that just sucks you up and won’t spit you out? Not that I want to be spat out, not in the least, but even so? I sat pondering this as I gazed out at the Bourtzi (Venetian fortress) across the water in the original capital of Greece, postcard-pretty Nafplio. Trying to crack that one for nearly half a day over several ouzos didn’t work, of course, because the mellower I got, the further away drifted any remotely logical reasons. Present-day Greece is not a locale that enourages logic; the ancients did too much of it in the days of the great philosophers and now it’s the age of anarchy. I guess that’s why I feel so completely at home in Greece; that, and the fact I’m convinced I’ve lived many past lives there. Because something drags me back, I don’t know what. And I go willingly every time, no kicking and screaming. Must have been a GOOD past life.

I’ve had all manner of eventful detours both on the way to, and within Greece, every single time I’ve visited. Including missed flights that involved buying new tickets; reluctant 24-hour stops at ugly airports thereafter, waiting for the next flight to Athens; even strikes that have precluded the usual tourist visit to the Acropolis- yes, three times!

And this time to top it all, I had the most bizzare invitation- from a highly articulate Greek with an American accent who lives in Copenhagen and speaks ten languages who talked 2 hours straight all the way on the bus ride to Nafplio- to spend the night with him- and his mother!- at their family home in the Old City. He was convinced I was an Israeli spy, and kept talking to me in Japanese to see if I would respond. And then he actually made my bed so I could lie in it. All the while muttering about getting the crease right down the center. Decidedly OCD. Yes.  

The sad part was his real reason for being in Nafplio that particular weekend, but I won’t go into that now because it doesn’t rate flippancy.

So to get back to my inexplicable connect to Greece and the way-out-of-left-field experiences it always brings me, I think I’m just a junkie for strange, heart-warming and surreal. And though these pretty much follow me anywhere I go, they are at their Dali-esque best in Greece. I’m totally hooked. What to do.

I do believe each of these events rates a whole story to itself, and I’m not sure I’m going to put them all up here, I’m still too busy tracking all the post-its I jotted them down on. But tell you what, I’ll let you know when they publish the book so you can go and buy it, then I can go and buy an island, that old forgotten dream I found abandoned on a shelf and dusted off just a few days ago.

And since I still can’t post pictures to this blog, maybe I’ll just put those in the book too, as there’s no saying when my blog will go AWOL again and I’d hate to lose the pictures as well. Losing the blog was worse than a 5-month miscarriage. And it’s only back because I was finally able to stare down the wicked Cyclops who manages it, and prod it into resurrecting the site after who knows how long. For who knows how long. What? No, of COURSE I don’t back-up my files!!! I should???

The great language mutation we are in the midst of is nothing short of mind-boggling. In the space of a few short years, we’ve gone from books (and ships and sealing wax) to a few paragraphs of text on our computer screens, a few truncated sentences that serve as conversation, and a few words of txt msging on our mobile phones.

Our attention spans have already adapted, now closely resembling the Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché) or cat flea, jumping from one thing to the next without any rational connect. Cat fleas can jump as high as 17 cm, by the way.

Generally speaking, it seems we are no longer able focus continuously on any one person, place or thing for longer than 3 seconds tops. Which means the old gender thing about women being supreme multi-taskers is now officially obsolete.

Today, everyone is a multitasking specialist. We’re all doing lunch while simultaneously txt msging, reading emails and drafting bullet points for a post-lunch meeting, while ordering dessert and coffee. And then we and look up at our lunch partner and smile brightly, saying, “Yes, so where were we?”

It’s the same everywhere you go; at meetings, airport terminals, spas, elevators, cafes nightclubs.

And my other big gripe: you’re on the phone to someone and you can hear the tapping of a keyboard between the pauses in conversation, music playing and a conversation happening in the background (oh, that’s the TV), as they simultaneously conduct a parallel conversation with someone else by sms on their other mobile phone. I am, of course, guilty of doing exactly the same thing as well, which sort of negates the gripe. Right?

And kids? Their thumbs are perpetually hooked in Gameboy position, even when they’re not decimating aliens or driving the Mario Kart super circuit. Will you STOP waving your thumbs around, please?!?

But to get back to fleas and their attention spans. I never met a flea yet that could read a book, and now with our limited focus, we seem to be following suit. There go our literary skills, too.

Collectively, we don’t have the time, the words or the inclination for any more than the shortest, grammatically incorrect, unpunctuated phrases at best. My last conversation, over three days ago, went something like this: “Eh? What, no really? Weird.”

Most of us don’t even really read much any more. Speed-reading is more like it, skimming over pages to absorb a word or three. Which means writers will soon have to adapt their writing. No more wordiness, neat turns of phrase, elaborate plots and 500-page Booker-winning titles.

Publishing firms will eventually bite the dust, what with the tree-hugger lobby loudly protesting that reams of paper are eating up too many trees.

Imagine instead, a whole book written in sms-ese, which you can read on the screen of your new iPhone on your way to work. I believe the Japanese have already full-body-embraced this new genre.

And now here’s one better, for the die-hards who still prefer to hold a live book made of dead trees between their grubby, grasping hands.

Look out for a whole new literary genre that I’m convinced will be the next big thang. It’s the six-word story, and is not that new, actually; Hemmingway wrote a six-word short story years ago, calling it his best: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn." I totally love it. What the six-word story takes away in terms of descriptions, characters and plots, it more than makes up for by allowing you, the reader, to fill in the blanks with your own storyline.

I strongly urge you to go buy the book Six Word Memoirs. Our reading habit might well die an unsung death, but for sure our imaginations will take wing and go back to creating phantasmagorical tales, as they did when we were kids. Still, I could only get through several pages at a time; using one’s imagination can get tiresome. Far better, I think, to let the writer do that for you.

Even so, just to whet your appetite somewhat, here are some more six-word stories:

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.
- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.
- David Brin

His penis snapped off; he’s pregnant!
- Rudy Rucker

Wasted day. Wasted life. Dessert, please.
- Steven Meretzky

Pungent. Fiery. Fearsome. Seething. Incendiary. Why would anyone want to eat something that first stops them breathing for up to three eternities, then makes their eardrums explode and eyes bug out as it blows their brains clear across the room?

Because it’s addictive. You eat it and die. Slowly. And then you come back for more. You forget what happened the last time. Or maybe you remember, but you want more all the same.

Diverse culinary traditions across the world seem to nurture various versions of this peculiarly masochistic phenomenon, but today I shall limit myself to just three: Japanese Wasabi, Bengali Kasundi and Sri Lankan Kochi.

First, Japanese wasabi, the traditional accompaniment to sushi, and don’t be fooled by appearances. Innocuous, green and docile-geisha looking, it is guaranteed to clear your sinuses even if they’re already clear, thank you. Wasabia japonica (Miquel) matsumura is a rhizome, which is ritually prepared by grating it against a sharkskin grater, which is actually not made of sharkskin. So what does it taste like? For not even a close approximation, I’d suggest a really sharp and unforgiving European horseradish. And you know what that can do to the unwary. For those who don’t touch sushi, and have therefore never encountered wasabi, all I can say is, get a life. But remember, with wasabi, less is more. And even then, be ready to have your grey matter exit from the top of your head and ricochet across the ceiling.

In Bengal, East India, a similar blow-your-brains-out effect is achieved with mustard kasundi. A devastatingly potent accompaniment made from innocent-looking mustard seeds, ground to a paste with salt, chilli, garlic and raw mango, it packs the kick of an enraged mule. Moments after your first taste, you will exhibit symptoms reminiscent of severe anaphylactic shock. Your entire body will be seized by a rigor and appear flushed; profuse sweating will ensue as your blood rushes to the surface of your skin in an attempt to regulate the internal thermostat and cool it down before it goes permanently on the fritz. Breathing becomes difficult; speech, of course, is not even a remote possibility.

Then there’s the ubiquitous chilli, a staple in most Asian countries, which comes in a glorious array of colours, shapes, and sizes. From tiny ones the size of your pinky fingernail, to plump medium-sized ones that look like juvenile peppers, to wicked, thin spindly ones six inches long. They come in a range of colours: vicious green, violent red, incendiary orange and every shade in between. Some are even black! The ones I refer to are the tiny little Sri Lankan ones, which come in various shades of green, red and sometimes black, and are even more vicious than the famous Thai bird chilli. One tiny bite of Kochi, and your lips swell up, your mouth is on fire and nothing is going to put it out for a long time, until finally your tongue goes numb. And we’re not even talking about what happens when you go to the loo next morning.

So back to the question: why would people want to eat stuff that causes them such extremis? Masochism aside, it’s a part of the Eastern tradition, I suppose; we relish a bit of bite to our food, and if sometimes it bites us back, well, so be it. Meanwhile, I’m planning a fiery chilli-infused curry dinner for tomorrow. Anybody want some?

When I first joined the workforce, around the year dot, I was so immersed in the novelty of it that I didn’t have much time for introspection. That, and the fact that in your twenties, you’re too busy living life to contemplate or introspect; such ponderous pursuits are best left to the geriatric brigade.

A few years down the line, however, I started to suspect that the work I was doing had no ‘real’ value. My benchmark for comparison was my immediate family, most of whom are medical professionals.

They deal with real problems, I’d be thinking; their work is important, it’s about saving lives. My grandfather was in public health. My father, paediatrician and family doctor, dealt on a daily basis with really sick children, and often their really sick siblings and parents. My brother and sister-in-law, both oro-maxillo-facial surgeons, have had some really horrific trauma surgery cases to deal with.

Real lives, real people, real work. And sometimes, real life-and-death situations.

As against that, there I was, in advertising. The heady, fluff-&-froth business of selling dreams, lifestyles and products that people didn’t really want, but we helped convince them they needed. Perhaps I grew old before my time, because I remember spending a great deal of it on the geriatric pursuit of pondering the validity of what I was doing. And more often than not, grappling with a work-induced ethical dilemma or two, thrown in for good measure. Like, should I really be getting a fat paycheck for sitting in an airconditioned office and doing rubbish like this, when the man fixing the road in front of our office in the heat of a relentless Indian sun, subsists on less than a dollar a day?

False premise, false pitch, false work?

I eventually concluded that we can’t all be doctors; some of us had to be the patients, too. And I accepted that while the medics might be the ‘real’ doctors, we were the ‘spin’ doctors. And that the work I was doing did have value, just a different sort of value. Like telling consumers about our client’s product or service so they could make an informed choice.

Then I hit the ‘cynical’ years, which generally happens at 30-something, and realized that we can convince ourselves of the validity of anything, to justify why we do it.

That said, there was no denying the high of belonging to the ad frat. As Jerry Della Femina once famously said, advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. If you’ve been in advertising for at least 25 years, you would have read his bestselling book, From those wonderful people who gave you Pearl Harbour (1971), the clever title of which was actually a tagline proposed for his client, Panasonic, during a brainstorming session. Of course he was kidding, and fortunately his Japanese client seemed to have caught the humor, or that story might well have ended very differently.

Stories that end very differently are a recurring theme in advertising. So is the song with the ‘killkillkill’ refrain, a favorite with ad agencies. Why? Because the client is top dog, and the client knows it.

One of the unwritten rules of the game is that clients can get away with making insane demands and agencies will have to hop to it, or risk losing the account. This is a fairly ancient tradition, and has outlived blue-chip clients and hot agencies alike. It is still the top-rated rule of them all.

Although not every client is an ogre, I'm convinced the perfect client-agency relationship simply does not exist; it’s just another myth, like the perfect marriage. The primary focus of pitching for business has changed from bagging a new account to desperately trying to hang on to an existing one, because everybody’s trying to get in bed with everybody else. So when clients call for their incumbent agency to join a pitch, it’s like telling your spouse, “We have a great relationship, nothing has changed; but I sometimes wonder what I’m missing out on, and what it might be like if I switched partners, you know, just to see what it’s like.”

So, kicking and screaming, the incumbent agency joins the pitch, in a desperate bid to retain the business. What else is there to do?

Then comes that agonizing hiatus between pitch and signed contract, which is probably what drives ad execs to the brink. All that time to obsess over the horrific prospect of losing the pitch, of not being the ‘it’ agency or creative team any more. Of the damage that would do to the Q2 numbers. Not to mention how it would impact the outcome of the next performance evaluation and paid vacation someplace exotic, if the agency doesn't make the cut. All in all, it's an edgy way to live.

If they were to do a market research on antacid sales, I'm sure they'd find that ad execs account for at least 80% of total offtake.

Seriously though, after more decades in the business than I care to mention, I have finally come to the conclusion that the real work we all have to do eventually, is on ourselves. Which is what I’ve been focusing on lately. I’ve detoxed my liver, had my chakras cleared, learnt how to breathe from the stomach and seriously contemplated giving up smoking. I am currently considering giving away all my worldly goods, and taking up a vow of silence. Or celibacy. Or both. Nothing permanent, mind you, just toying with the idea and wondering how long I could make it last. Around as long as a pitch, I’d imagine…

Well. Today I made a sucker out of me again. I bought myself a carton of those dinky little bottles of “oxygen-enhanced” water, you know the ones? I remember thinking, oh wow, extra-oxygenated water, that must really be good for you, after all every cell in the body needs oxygen, and considering how much I rob them of with the smoking, I should do them a favor by drinking gallons of this precious elixir.

But wait. You remember your basic physics from school, yes? Where every molecule of H₂O (water) = two molecules of H and one molecule of O? So now, you tell me something. When you add more oxygen to that equation, it isn’t H₂O any more, it becomes H₂O + O. So is that H₂O₂, or H₂O₃? Who knows, because isn’t oxygen O₂ anyway? So technically, it isn’t water any more. It tastes like water, it looks like water. But chemistry equations don’t lie; if there’s more oxygen in it, that changes the entire molecular structure. So what does that make it, then, apart from just another marketing gimmick? I have no idea.

So first, I did a quick spot-check, an informal survey if you like, at the supermarket water shelf. Rows and rows of oxygen-enriched brands, touted to oxygenate every living cell in your corpus and afford them plenty of combustion-enhancing, metabolism-boosting oxygennnn!

There was this guy checking out the same bottles as I was, assiduously reading the small print on each one.
“Have you tried these?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he answered, “I’ve tried most of them, but this one is new.”
He was fondling the same sort of bottle I was, I think we were both seduced by the shape.
“So, is it good stuff? Do you feel any different, I mean all that extra oxygen?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he says, “I feel fresher, it gives me more energy.”
Uh huh, I’m thinking, don’t want to go there, buddy.
“And it tastes different. Better than ordinary water,” he adds.

This much is true, I found out later; it does seem to have a more clean, honest, water taste than the ordinary, and therefore cheaper, brands.

My decision is made; I buy a carton of the stuff and as I head over to the check-out counter, I’m reminded of that whole other buzz over oxygen bars, some years ago. Another fad that zoomed into favor for a brief moment in time, and then went up in a puff of, ahem, smoke. But not before several oxygen bar owners had built themselves a nice little retirement fund. This is the thing about fads; you come up with a new idea, market it as a new trend and if it catches on, you’re made.

So marketers are speculators too, in a way, as they need to measure the pulse and the moment, estimating it accurately enough to make a killing on the supermarket shelf. Most often, for limited trajectory products, services or brands, it has to be that initial push, supported with an intense publicity blitz, that makes the mirthful trip to bank a reality for the investor. Quickly now, before someone comes out and questions the premise and the bubble bursts.

And so, I am a sucker. You’d think I’d know better, with nearly 3 decades in the marketing milieu, but I am as susceptible as the next person to whatever new spiel some overpaid copywriter has thought up, to justify yet another product or service to dupe ever-gullible consumers with. In fact, I’m currently on an aggressive conversion binge, insisting that everybody I know must try this new brand of extra-oxygenated water. And by now I’m so full of O₂ that you’d better not mess with me!

Until today, I had no idea that Google offers Klingon as a language option on its search page. Then of course, I discovered they also offer Hacker language, and Interlingua, the ‘common language for international communication’, which must be a mishmash of several unsuspecting bonafide languages crudely lumped together any old how. This one begs further research, so I shall do the needful and report back to you at some point in the dstant future.

But meanwhile, to get back to Klingon, did you know there are actually people out there who conduct entire conversations in this fictional alienspeak? A language complete with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary, Klingon was created by Dr. Mark Okrand, a trained linguist, for the Star Trek series. I didn’t watch a lot of  episodes, and have no interest in learning Klingon myself, but in case you’re one of those who is fluent, here’s the perfect job for you:

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.

The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.

We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients.

"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.

County officials said that obligates them to respond with a Klingon-English interpreter, putting the language of starship Enterprise officer Worf and other Klingon characters on a par with common languages such as Russian and Vietnamese, and less common tongues including Dari and Tongan.

Okay, so that one is from way back in 2003 and they’ve probably filled the position, but it is still my favourite job vacancy ad!

Around the middle of June last year, my mother came to visit. She barely had time to take three deep breaths, and we were off to Bali the very next afternoon. My brother had generously given me a week at his Bali timeshare as my half-century birthday gift, and we had to use it before the end of the month or it would expire. No rescheduling, no refunds, no nothing, take it or leave it. We were already into our first brush with timeshare and the vagaries involved…

So I booked us on Air Asia, a budget carrier, one of the several hundred that have suddenly appeared over the last few years. I think they all use the same small print, you know the stuff nobody reads, that goes: "When you pay peanuts to fly, we reserve the right to mess up your head, screw up your schedule and delay all flights as many times as we want, so there!"

And that’s just what they did.

We left for the airport at 2.30 pm to catch the 5.30 flight, which of course got delayed to 9.30pm. To make amends for the delay, they offer us dinner vouchers or lounge access. We opt for the latter, and shuffle off to the lounge. Good decision; they have reflexology on the menu. So that's what Mum has.

Several long, slow hours later, we take off. After being on the move from 2.30 pm, we finally get to Bali, and then to the hotel around 1 am, that's nearly 12 hours for a 1 hour 40 min. flight. We take nearly as long to locate the hotel, as our taxi driver doesn't know the place and keeps saying "it's dark", by way of explanation, and proceeds to give us a midnight tour of the area instead. The hotel is not answering my frantic calls because they're evidently all asleep.

When we do find the hotel, there’s nobody at the reception counter. I inform the sleepy guard we have a reservation, could he find someone who could check us in? He blinks at us and quickly disappears into the bowels of the hotel and is never seen again. 10 minutes later, someone else emerges, saying, "Sorry ma'am, I’m from room service, the reception closes at 11pm".

Right. I explain about the delayed flight, and ask if he could give us a room, we’d complete the check-in formalities next morning. By this time, I’m close to growling and Mum is slowly collapsing in a heap on the floor. He realizes things are getting rather fragile and decides to rouse the reception staff because we certainly aren’t planning to disappear. We manage to get a room and promptly crash, and don't wake up till 10am next morning. 

While puttering about with tea and coffee to really wake us up, we notice there's a lovely pool. The hotel is charming, as every place in Bali manages to be, without much effort at all. We also notice there's no milk or creamer. I call the desk to inquire. They ask me to call the restaurant. I do. They say they don't have creamer. Okay, I say, milk is fine. "Sorry ma'am, but you have to pay for it. " No problem, I say, please send it, I have an increasingly irate old lady on my hands here. They send me a 5-litre tetrapack. I send it back, saying, "All I need is half a cup. Please keep the rest, I don't drink milk, use it, I'll pay for it, just don't send me 5 litres of the stuff. That's too much milk to deal with this early in the day."

Tea done, we both take a leisurely shower and set off to spend some time driving around to some of our favourite spots, including the rice terraces and the quaint little coffee shop we have been frequenting for years. We get the same cabbie from the previous night, but he can't say "it's dark" any more because it isn’t.

We get back after our leisurely drive in time for a quick swim. Up in the room, we realize they don't seem to have replaced the teabags and sugar, so to avoid another fiasco tomorrow morning, when I’m really not at my sparkling and effervescent best, I call the desk to ask for teabags. "Sorry ma'am, the Gift Shop is closed." Eh? I need a teabag, not a gift. "You need to buy the tea-bags, ma'am."

Oh okay, sure, so where can I buy them? Hotel is in the boondocks, nothing for miles around in any direction. And the Gift Shop is closed, right? "Yes, Ma'am." Okay, so could you send them from the restaurant, and charge me for them? Evidently not, but we arrange for the Gift Shop to deliver the teabags next morny at 8 am. 

By now, I have understood this is going to be the pattern; I am rapidly learning the difference between a hotel and a timeshare. Just to see if I'm right, I say, "Oh and by the way, we have no water in the fridge." Sure enough, "Sorry Ma'am, you need to buy it from the Gift Shop which is closed and we can't send it up from the restaurant unless you order it from Room Service." Ahhhh yessssss, I understand. Please send me 10 gallons of water from Room Service, thank you.

We go through the same spiel with the bath towels: "Sorry ma'am, we have a policy to change the towels on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and this is Monday." Too bad both our towels were sopping wet, because I'd put mine down in the bathtub so Mum wouldn't slip and break her head. With the ice: "Sorry ma'am, you must buy a bowl of ice, ma'am". With the cushions we had borrowed from the room to use in the cab for Mum's back: "Sorry ma'am, the General Manager says that you cannot remove the cushions from the room", to which I reply, "Please tell the GM I will bring them back, we do not kidnap cushions and we don't eat them." Foam filler causes terrible gas, and the bile-green covers are rather unappetizing anyway.

The GM, we later find out, is an Aussie Great White, closely related to the JAWS star. She is HUMUNGOUS, about 200 kilos, conservative estimate. She stalks about in a short icky-pink Indian kurta, which leaves nothing to the imagination. Her derriere doggedly follows her around everywhere, dangerously wobbling 3 paces behind, along with her poodle. We call her alternately the Great White, and the Pink GaBlob. A BIG arrogant Aussie with attitude is not a pretty sight. We later learn that her Guest Relations executive, the new PR guy and around 3 assorted front desk and housekeeping staff had gone AWOL in that one short week. One day they were there, and the next they were gone. POOF! We figured she probably eats them for breakfast. SCARY woman.

As you can imagine, I took up the cushion issue with the GM one fine morning, but I won’t go there now. And of course on the trip back, the flight was delayed yet again, making us wish we’d just stopped by the great little cafe that serves the best bangers and mash for, literally, peanuts. It's run by a humungous Swiss guy, and in retrospect I think we should have thrown him and the Great White together, just to see what might happen. I can see the headlines now: Great White makes short shrift of Swiss Wiener."