Month: September 2021

I was chatting with one of the other programmers from work when he told me a story about Paul and Tammy. They were a couple of Australians working in London. Just like most people living far from home there is a tendency for people to meet up with others from back home. So it was natural that the two of them went out to the bar and had a beer or two.

I have no idea what most of their evening was like, I only knew how it had ended. You see Tammy was a pretty good drinker considering she was both a girl and fairly petite, but the two of them ended up in a pub and apparently she managed to drink poor Paul under the table and then a bit more.

In fact the barkeeper took a look at Paul and suggested that it would be better for the two of them to sit outside as Paul looked a bit green. I don’t think that it was intended with malice but once they were sitting outside on the steps Tammy had somehow convinced Paul that he needed to take off his shoes. It was probably experience on the part of the bar tender that encouraged them to get a spot outside, as not to long after that Paul was indeed sick.

The next day there was some new gossip around the water cooler. Yup, Paul went out and was drunk under the table by a girl. That was embarrassing but what was even worse was that Paul was sick into his own shoes.

Nope, nobody at the office forgot about the night that Tammy went out drinking with Paul.

A guy I spoke to once worked in the former soviet union and was a real technical guy. The kind of guy you see at night with a haphazard pile of identical looking technical parts one night and in the morning you see a brand new piece of hardware.

Well, things are slightly different in a planned economy and yet I did hear some stories about how bartering and entrepreneurship did flourish in such an environment. It is all about seeing an opportunity. It is in this environment that this story begins.

He was a skilled man who had the necessary equipment which could be used to create real goods, and as an electrical engineer he had the knowledge how to reverse engineer, modify or create from scratch electronic boards. The mainframes at that time were running 3270 terminals and required special computer boards to support these terminals. How hard can it be to simply create our own boards and sell them must have been his thought as that is exactly what he did. In true capitalist style he did not do all of the soldering and assembly himself but rather hired people around him to help. He came up with the design and the boards and had assistants who in their spare time would work on the assembly.

Of course the assembly was probably the simplest part of the whole endeavor. How many small businesses or home users would have use for such a computer board? None really. It was the military or the government in the end who would be purchasing such boards. In the Soviet Union a regular person cannot simply approach the military complex and become their vendor. He needed a middleman who could help with this sale. The middleman did indeed facilitate the sale and the money was deposited into our “capitalist hero’s” account but the other problem was currency control.

The computer boards went for about 5000 dollars but when they were purchased it was not just a handful of cash but instead was deposited into a bank account. Part of the problem is that it is not possible to take out more than 300 dollars in cash from a bank account per month. So how to have a capitalistic venture where the money simply doesn’t flow?

Taking out the money from a single account for a single board would take all year and is thus not very convenient for purchasing components or paying people. So our hero actually had an entire armful of bank deposit books at banks all over the city. Every month he would take about 3 days driving around to each one to extract the maximum cash from each account and at the end of the month split the money up into “pay envelopes” for the employees.

How much money is this really? Well, the local car Zhiguli at that time cost about 5000 dollars so the approximate value of the board was similar to that car.

I finished my high school studies and trying to plan which college to go to. I wanted to study abroad and I had very good grades and one of the places I could have gone was America. I submitted all of my paperwork but I did not get a study position, although my friend Tanya did get a one of the positions.

There were only 20 places open so the odds of getting a spot was not very likely. The reason for this was that the Uzbekistan government doesn’t want people to go and study abroad and then stay there. The goal is for the student to come back with their education. The common line of thought was that a girl will find a man, get married have children and stay there, which is why most of the people selected for that program were men.

It sounds like the current mindset limits women in Uzbekistan, and that is true but only partially. If the company that you apply to is a Usbek company then they will probably hire Usbek women, and the common stereotype is that when they get pregnant they won’t be coming back to work. I am considered to be Russian and that actually helps. The Russians will work, so even if they do get married and have children they would be coming back to work.

In the end I ended up in Japan as they were trying to build up their international program and this included grants to a lot of their foreign students. The grants didn’t cover everything, especially for the first six months but as I was living with my sister and her husband I didn’t have much in the way of bills. I worked in a foreign language school as an English speaker to earn a little extra cash.

My friend Tanya did actually beat the odds and got one of the few open spots in the program to the USA. She was both a woman and from Azerbaijan but in the end she did at least prove the stereo type. She met someone there, got married, had children and never came back.

Perhaps you have heard of the story about the college student who just kept studying. This semester it was mathematics, last semester it was modern art, and well I don’t even remember what last year. It is probably difficult to justify the perennial student given the current costs of education [in the United States].

Well, other countries do it a bit differently. In Germany the costs are actually much cheaper, well in fact almost free. Student fees usually cover some sort of public transportation ticket but they also convey the right to claim to be a student. Being a student may get you into the opera at reduced rates, allow you to get a student copy of Microsoft Office or even get into some nice student housing.

I was always surprised when I first showed up in Germany younger than most everyone else but with actual business experience. Perhaps I was just jealous. They are just starting in the work world and they are 29 years old. This might also be the downside to the Germany education system that I was not previously aware of.

During lunch we were talking about how my colleague had to prepare a new test for the eight students who failed the first final. I pointed out that where I went to school you either passed the test and the class or you failed. It was explained to me that if a student failed his or her test it could be taken over, a second and possibly even a third time. I was a bit shocked and made some sort of a joke about the fourth test.

Well, it turns out if you fail a mandatory class too many times you fail. But you don’t fail that class you actually fail that degree and you are finished. If you fail, you may have to make a big move. If you really loved that particular profession you may be able to start all over at another university. If you are planning on failing you should do it early on, otherwise, you will just be another student who took a decade to finish your studies.

When I was going to college I had a close friend who thought it would be nice to open a bar, and it should be called “The Library”. If anyone was asking you could always say you were going to the library.

Well, apparently someone else from a different continent had a very similar idea. Their drinking establishment was open on Sunday morning and it was called “the church”. I guess I was young and irreverent as I had been there a few times with some of the guys from work. You cannot call it a bar as it was a large room that reminded me of a gymnasium from school. At one end was a stage and at the other end was a series of long tables where you could buy three packs of beer.

On this particular day I can only hope my “friends” were testing that I indeed met a good women. My girlfriend was visiting us in London and my “friends” took me to the church early in the morning and we keep it up all day. I guess having a few beers in the morning on an empty stomach must have led to incapacitated thinking. We had something to eat and then went to the park, took a nap and then went out and started hitting the pubs with gusto.

By this time, I had not given all that much thought to my girlfriend. I must have had a lot of stamina as we kept going until about midnight. We ended up at Mike’s place and they wanted to keep going. I actually was starting to run out of steam and Mike suggested that I looked pretty bad and should crash on the couch.

It was about this time I remembered my girlfriend and said I needed to go home. So Mike and his girlfriend gave me a beer and a bag of potato chips. It was late and I was about a couple of miles from home, but I trudged on. I did make it but it was quite late.

Was my girlfriend impressed? No, just relieved. All she knew was that I was going out for a pint with the guys in the morning and no word from me and even she knew that the pubs closed at 11pm.

Well, it was slightly less spectacular than crashing a birthday party. I was doing some day trips before my transfer to our office in Australia. I had been following my sightseeing book all day and I was starting to get tired and it turned out that one of my colleagues lived nearby. It was not completely clear to me where the interesting places for locals were, so I called Samantha. She was also getting ready for a big move and was tired of packing, so she showed me a bit of the old town and we had a beer.

However, all good things must come to an end. Sam had a birthday party to go to, but as we were having a nice time and she invited me along. The weather was nice, the food was good and actually there were a fair number of girls.

I spotted a couple of pretty blonds that I would like to meet, and with a bit of luck I did end up in a conversation with them. The pretty one and I spoke about a lot of things including my upcoming transfer as well as her singing in the choir. I showed interest for a lot of reasons, one of which being I work in IT. As professions go it isn’t that there aren’t any women but usually they are few and far between.

I needed to get another plate full of food and when I came back she was speaking with her friend in German, I was impressed. She was the first American that I had met that had what seemed to be perfect pronunciation. I found out later that I was mistaken – she was the first German that I met who spoke English as good or better than I did and with no accent.

It wasn’t a bad party at all. In the end I did manage to get a few phone numbers as well as a chance to hang out with some other Americans and eat a few burgers. I kinda like crashing birthday parties.

The only people who really enjoy air travel are probably the people who don’t really do any air travel.

• Take off your shoes
• Get rid of your softdrink,
• Small hand-baggage only – oops no space for even that.
• No leg room

Travel used to be better than that but even before September 11, airlines were taking extra special care of their customers.

My favorite was a small Irish airline that used to fly out of Frankfurt-Hahn that flew to Stansted airport. It was the last flight of the day which should have left about eight pm and arrive in Stansted about 10:00 pm. I guess that the airline didn’t really want to depress the people waiting in Stansted. They simply reported that the flight was on-time, up until the time that it should have landed. It was at this point that they mentioned that it might be delayed but didn’t even mention that it had yet to take off.

First a bit of geography. The Stansted airport is outside of London, so unless you have a car you really don’t want to get stuck there. A typical cab ride would be about sixty pounds or one hundred dollars to get you back to London. Eventually the plane took off and while I was waiting I did the math on the arrival. It looked like it would be a close call between when the flight would land and when the last train of the evening would leave.

I read some of my book and silently cursed the airline, but hey if we miss the train I am sure that the airline will help out. After all, we are in the middle of nowhere. Well, to make a long story short, the passengers and their luggage arrived about 30 minutes after the last train.

I don’t know how often this type of problem occurred but apparently it was not so infrequent. I went to speak with one of their representatives to be told that no, they don’t actually provide any transport (ie a bus) into the city, that is something that each person would have to sort out on their own.

Well, I can only say that I was extremely lucky. One of the other people waiting to pick up his girlfriend used to work for a travel company and so he took the matter into his own hands. He went outside and spoke with one of the bus drivers to see if their company could come back, pick us all up and drop us off at a couple of train stations in the city. The driver checked with his boss and indeed that was ok, but he had to first pickup a load of people and drop them off and come back.

My girlfriend had arrived and she would be staying with me for a while and so I was happy, but I was quite surprised to hear one of her comments from the flight. It seems that the airline staff were selling train tickets on the plane, and a few people were asking if it would still be running. The staff apparently without even a pause said that the train would wait for them.

The bus driver did eventually come back and we boarded the bus at about two in the morning. The bus was full, the cost was actually a very reasonable five pounds per person. It was a very long night, and we did arrive at liverpool street station about 4:30 in the morning. It was so early that there were no cabs at the cab stand.

Depending on your view there were two different lessons to be learned from this trip. The first being if the airline is using a single plane between two different destinations the delays are cumulative and you will be late, unless you take the first flight of the day. The second lesson was that this particular airline was not very concerned if they stranded their customers and should really be avoided.

I remember when I was young and perhaps a bit naive. My apartment was only a 40 square meter one room apartment and although tiny the location was great. It was just a couple minutes walk from alte-Sachenhausen – the old part of town in Frankfurt. There were a lot of bars and partying going on there especially on the weekends.

Well, my buddy wasn’t quite as single as I was, but he wasn’t that long married and so one night we tipped a few back and then we had a few more. His train home was leaving in about an hour and it seemed a pity to break up the party, so I had an idea. I decided to give his wife a call and ask if he could stay out longer. Well, this was back when having a mobile phone was a luxury so I hoofed it to the nearest pay phone and tried to make my case.

Well, I guess I was not that persuasive as I just remember her yelling at me and telling me to put him on the phone. Well, I couldn’t hardly do that as he was sitting back in the pub, but I promised to pass that message along. A few minutes later back at the bar I explained to Gary that my sales job wasn’t quite closing the deal and his wife requested him to contact her – so he trekked off to the telephone. I guess my buddy was not any better at selling that idea than I was.

The plan was to have only one more beer and he would go home. In the end, we somehow failed to follow the plan and after a few more hours he simply crashed on my sofa.

When you find Mr. or Miss right, and plan on getting married your “friends” are afraid that they will never get a chance to go out with you again. It is because of this that they go out with you one more time before getting married, stag night or hen party. For the men they proceed to drink enough in case they cannot go out with their friend for the next 10 years.

There are a lot more stag night stories that end with the moral being “never have a stag night the day before getting married”. Well, this is one of those stories and rather than to embarrass anyone with a lot of facts, we will jump to the end of the story.

It was a bad idea to have the stag party the day before but we were just going out to have a few beers with the groom. Well, one turned into two, and two turned into four, and it is safe to say that we easily had more than we should have.

So, to make sure everything turned out ok, we put the groom into a train but not before we took most of his clothing, and took a few photos. We figured that he would get out at the next stop on the other side of London and take a cab home. Oops. There were two problems, the first was that this was a train and not the subway, and the second was he was a bit drunker than we anticipated.

Rather than getting off the train, he sorta passed out and thus woke up in Scotland and missed his wedding.

This isn’t an urban legend as it was my friend who ended up getting uninvited to the actual wedding ceremony a few months later.