From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V4 #310 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Thursday, November 18 1999 Volume 04 : Number 310 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Alloy: Re: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... [jonathan.chiddick@nokia] Re: Alloy: Re: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... ["Melissa R. Jordan"] Re: Alloy: Re: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... [RThurF@aol.com] Alloy: Utterly OT Thailand Story - Was: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... ["Melissa R. Jordan" Jon, man - think all season radials!!! I ordered radials > through the Sears catalogue (thank god for the diplomatic mail!) for my car in > Moscow (my cheap, > lame, bright green Zhiguli), and you would have thought I'd > put diamonds on my > rims - the militia man outside my apartment building insisted > that I park my car > right in front of his booth so no one would steal my tires! Hi Melissa, yeah I know what you mean- I HAD all-season tires until I found out that they are not legal in Finland! From November to March it is mandatory to have 'real' winter tyres. They are just like regular tyres except that they have lots of mean little titanium spikes sticking out of the periphery to grab the ice. (the ice that you drive on top of for several months, even in the city!) You can drive quite normally on ice with these baby's. When I have guests in the winter time I regularly scare them to death with this concept ;o) > Helsinki is beautiful in winter - I'm envious. I don't know what Finland looks > like when there *isn't* snow on the ground! I've been there twice, both times in > winter. Since moving to Washington, DC from Moscow, my blood has thinned out so > much, I can't stand the cold for very long. Today it was in the 40's F - I would > have been wearing a light jacket back in Russia, but here, now - I was wrapped > up in my big, puffy winter coat. What a wimp! I know what you mean. My whole concept of cold has changed since this is now my forth winter here. The climate is not unlike Moscow really. Hot but short summers and long and very cold winters. Actually nice once you're used to it. I'm lucky to get to travel a lot with my job and in two weeks time I'm in Thailand for a week so that will be a nice break from the cold! (which has only just started actually. Daytime sub-zero started last weekend) ...I'm flying north again... tonight! Jon ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 09:44:59 -0500 From: "Melissa R. Jordan" Subject: Re: Alloy: Re: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... jonathan.chiddick@nokia.com wrote: I'm lucky to get to travel a lot with my job and in two weeks time I'm in > Thailand for a week so that will be a nice break from the cold! (which has > only just started actually. Daytime sub-zero started last weekend) Oh, man! Thailand! That's one of my favorite places on the whole planet. Now, I'm utterly envious! This should be a good time of the year to go. I hope you get to go outside of Bangkok. Phuket rocks! (And they have "James Bond Island".) I can't believe radial tires are illegal in Finland. Wow. I'm sure there's a really good reason for it (like lots of people driving around on ten-year-old bald radial tires in winter, telling cops at accident scenes, "But I had *radials* on!") Back to work (I'm researching the telecommunications sector for an upcoming delegation - I get to take 18 Russians, Uzbeks, you name it to the Wireless 2000 trade show in New Orleans... the week before Mardi Gras... god help me and the people of New Orleans...) Cheers, Melissa - -- Melissa R. Jordan Owner/Artist, Compass Rose Studios (www.crstudios.com) Owner, Compass Rose Consulting (www.askcrc.com) Visit my new blank, websites! Text, pictures, and all that coming soon!!! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 20:13:11 EST From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: Re: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... In a message dated 11/17/99 9:46:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, wearart@erols.com writes: :: Oh, man! Thailand! That's one of my favorite places on the whole planet. Now, I'm utterly envious! This should be a good time of the year to go. I hope you get to go outside of Bangkok. Phuket rocks! (And they have "James Bond Island".) :: You must regale us with stories of James Bond Island, Melissa! Please? It hasn't been story time around here in ages... Robin T always angling to be told a story! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 00:40:31 -0500 From: "Melissa R. Jordan" Subject: Alloy: Utterly OT Thailand Story - Was: Diamonds on the soles or her shoes... RThurF@aol.com wrote: >You must regale us with stories of James Bond Island, Melissa! Please? It hasn't been story time around here in ages... Always happy to oblige, Robin. Of course, for those who are sick of my travel stories, read no further!! :-) James Bond Island is one of those things that all my friends not only know about, but know the Thai pronunciation for. ("James Baaaahn EYE-laaaaaaahn") Back in 1990, in a fit of winter madness, I bought a ticket to Bangkok from Moscow on Aeroflop. That was back when foreign diplomats could buy tickets for the same price as Soviet citizens. It was decadent and wonderful, to be honest. You could be capricious and madcap and say, "Oh, let's all fly to London this weekend!" or "Let's go to Ashgabat and buy antique carpets - it's only $10 each way!" Ah, the old days... So, to combat the Moscow I-haven't-seen-the-sun-in-two-months-I-may-kill-someone-soon blues, I got a 200 ruble economy ticket to Bangkok (rubles I got by selling a K-Mart pseudo-leather suitcase, held together with duct tape, at the embassy garage sale) and headed out. I left my winter coat with the embassy driver at the airport, and all I had was sneakers, two changes of clothes, and a swimsuit (and virtually no money). It was the coolest week of my young life. The food was amazing (despite me getting the WORST food poisoning known to humankind), the sun and sea divine (despite me getting sunburn and sun poisoning so bad I didn't sleep for three days and I still have burn lines when my swimsuit ended), and the people very kind. I spent half my time in Bangkok and the other half down in Phuket, the southern peninsula of Thailand. At that point, Phuket wasn't overrun by tourists - I'm not sure what it's like now - but then, I had a whole beach to myself. There was a seafood shack nearby, a young guy who came by to slice pineapples or top coconuts for your drinking pleasure, and two women who offered daily Thai body massage on the beach for the equivalent of $4 US. It was heaven. Phuket is on the Andaman Sea. The water is so clear, it's almost unreal. There are secluded spots for snorkeling and coral reef scuba diving all over the place. I had the bizarre opportunity to snorkel one day with Juergen Hingstrom, a former Olympic decathalete, and his entourage of gorgeous German women in a spot loaded with little sharks. It was wild - you could just stroke these sharks as they cruised by. When I was hauling my sunburnt carcass out of the sea, Mr. Hingstrom reached down and grabbed me by the arm and basically flung me back on board with seemingly no effort (and, considering my size, that's no mean feat!) There are Islamic fishing villages directly in the sea - the communities live on platforms that stick out of the water. The sea is dotted with tiny, lovely islands and breathtaking vocanic rock formations that jut out of the clear water. This is where much of "The Man With The Golden Gun" was filmed. (Remember Christopher Lee as Scaramanga, the assassin with three nipples? (What is that called anyway, supernumary??) One tiny island - it literally takes about 30 seconds to cross it all on foot - was Scaramunga's home in the film. The locals, when offering sea tours to goggle-eyed tourists, call it "James Bond Island". From the way they keep pushing it, you'd think it was the most amazing thing known to man. Every couple of minutes, your tour guide says something like, "Don't worry! Soon we go James Baaaaaahn EYE-laaaaaaaahn!" (This, by the way, is NOT an exaggeration.) You have to reach the island by longtail boat (these funky Thai boats that are long and skinny and often have dragons or demons at the bow.) You climb in and out of the boat in the water, so you have to be prepared for damp tooties and soaked clothes. I'd shucked my shoes for a cheap pair of rubber thongs the first day I hit Phuket, and I got a giggle out of the folks who kept mincing around in soggy sneakers every time we got in and out of the longtail. James Bond Island really is beautiful, despite the silly moniker. Somewhere I have this photo of these two adorable kids who trailed me around the whole island (that was about a minute's walk), wanting me to buy some pearls. They finally wore down my resolve. They were brilliant salesmen and too sweet to turn down. Just as funky as Scaramanga's tiny island paradise (I kept expecting Herve Villachaize to pop up or to hear Lulu sing that marvelously cheesy theme song!) was the nearby cave island, called the Viking Cave for the paintings of strange ships painted on the walls inside. Here, thousands of birds build intricately woven nests that are harvested year 'round to send to Chinese gourmands around the world for bird's nest soup. (Until then, I just thought it was called that because it noodles in it that LOOKED like a bird's nest. Nope. These babies are edible.) Funky world we live in, no? Of course, this story skips some of the more interesting aspects of my trip: the Japanese surfer dude wrapped in a body cast, the Russian-speaking French doctor who'd bought his 13-year-old son a Thai woman for a week, and the all-night VIP bus (this is where I got the food poisoning) from Bangkok to Phuket, featuring a stewardess in a Jackie Kennedy-style pink suit and porno movies all night, and, last but not least, the Snake Farm - "it's whitening frightening!" :-) Okay, sleep calls. I've been staying up waaaay too late recently. Gotta cut down on the tea at work... Cheers, Melissa - -- Melissa R. Jordan Owner/Artist, Compass Rose Studios (www.crstudios.com) Owner, Compass Rose Consulting (www.askcrc.com) ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V4 #310 ***************************