Saturday, October 15th …..

When I get bored I often fall back on a tried and true method of keeping myself amused. I research and plan detailed trips to exotic places, not really believing that we will ever do them, but I really enjoy the challenge of putting the pieces together into a workable whole.

I’m not as bad as a person we know who organises to the extent of programming in toilet stops. We talked recently about a trip he is planning to Europe. He has developed a spreadsheet with all the details of places to visit, driving times to get there, daily budgets for food and other expenses, etc. If the distance between two towns is more than a couple of hours he identifies where toilets might be found en route.

I’m not interested in that level of detail, although I can understand the satisfaction of seeing how intricate plans can fall into place. The time we took Madi to Japan was more carefully planned than usual; I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Even so, we got lost in Tokyo and I was forced to use my very limited Japanese on an unsuspecting passer-by.

Sumi masen, Tokyo eki, kudasai? (Excuse me, Tokyo railway station?) I don’t think he spoke the same kind of Japanese as I did because it took an English-speaking stranger to intervene and get us out of a difficult situation.

The trip I’ve been looking at is built around a wonderful cruise which sails from Japan in April next year, visiting ports in South Korea, Russia, Alaska, and finishing in Vancouver. There’s a considerable amount of flying, of course: getting to Japan, of course and flying home from Canada, but also a short hop to visit friends in Calgary, around 26000 Km, in fact. Out of interest, I priced the flights and they totalled about $2600. Hmmm, that’s interesting. Flying internationally only costs about 10c per Km! That has to be a bargain!

Jamie has been watching this awful show on Channel 62, called Bargain Hunt. The host is very camp, often wearing red trousers and with a penchant for pink socks. Two teams, with the assistance of a so-called expert, try to buy bargains from local antique markets and sell them at a profit at auction. It’s rare, in fact, for them to make a profit and the éxperts’ lead them astray at every turn, and the stuff they choose is just rubbish. However, what I wanted to say was that the contestants last night turned out to be members of the cast of Állo, Állo. Rene and Colonel Gruber and the short waitress, etc. They trotted out the old catchphrases, Listen carefully, I shall say this only once, and so on. It brought back memories of a very funny show.

Here is a link to youtube where there are some excerpts from the show.

http://youtu.be/UUgaSZFY9vs