18.31
As I sit down and the tram picks up some speed I take my iPod Touch out of my pocket and start tapping. Other passengers get in, sit next to me, smell of smoke, get up again and leave the tram. I keep on playing games, look at the stock exchange updates, and so on. Nothing new. Nothing special. Another day of work behind me. On my way home, where the freezer keeps my meals for me till I decide it's comsumption time and condemn them to the microwave. Captain Bird's Eye on the stake.
Two women enter the tram. I reckon they'd be, what, forty-some, and definitely from South America. They sit down on the bench in front of me and talk without interruption.
I pick up pieces of the conversation.
....que me dices? No es verdad. Oye, lo que te digo...
....es un cameron! Y muy exigente tambien. Pero que guapo!...
Giggle-giggle.
I find Havana on my weather-around-the-world-software the iPod supplies free of charge and which keeps fascinating me for some reason, although its predictions are not better than some internet sites. But is also tells the current conditions: showers, 29 degrees Celcius.
I have excellent memories of my trips to Cuba. A fascinating place, if a little bit poor. No, scratch that "little bit". Understatements may be perceived as arrogant and if I start antagonising my readers in my fifth piece my career as blogger will go nowhere. Not good.
Anyway - Cuba. Great landscape, good climate and interesting people. The men too, before you ask.
I was also a bit disappointed by Havana, or rather by the state it was in (dilapidated). I was also enchanted by Havana's state of the art-bygone. The camaras de musica, museos, Hemingways' local and the obligatory mojito there. Every restaurant had a live band which might as well have been dead, as their repertoire consisted of endless variations on the same tunes, Hasta siempre commandante being the most popular. I did it all, and enjoyed it immensely.
One evening in Santiago de Cuba, a town in the Southeast, I had an interesting encounter which I would like to "share with you" as the buzzword goes. In fact, I was to have two more interesting encounters in the same town soon after but we'll skip those pages for now.
In the early evening I enjoyed a drink on a terrace of what might have been the only halfway decent restaurant in the city, when I got into conversation with a group of four. All of them obviously local, and me being very obviously not, the conversation turned soon to music and parties, and two hours and two mojito's later I was on my way to a party privado.
On our mopeds we reached an ordinary house in an ordinary street in the outskirts of Santiago, where we went into a patio to find a dozen or so younger people talking, drinking, and enjoying the music, which came from an electric record player. A real disc jockey stood behind the a small table with an air of professionalism and what could not have been more than ten vinyl records. I recognised the labels with the dog. "His masters noise" he jokingly pointed out as he explained how he got them from Havana where he goes twice a year to update his already impressive collection. A master indeed.
As I sat down at the table with my newly acquired friends someone came over and asked if we would like a drink. I felt obliged to pay a round and ordered five beers. He disappeared and we got up to dance.
After half an hour I carefully enquired what happened to the waiter, who had taken my money as an advance payment. As it turned out, he re-appeared after forty-five minutes with exactly five bottles of beer. "This is not an official bar", someone explained, "he goes on his moped to the other side of town and buys them there." Upon my enquiry as to why nobody put orders together and got more rounds in one go, he looked at me as if he was faced with yet another CIA invasion.
I gave him more money and ordered ten beers this time. We stayed till three in the morning, had a great time dancing but, because of the special moped -beer delivery service, it proved biologically impossible to get drunk. Since that night, I like to think that it's not just Castro's political ideas that stood in the way of the Cuban economy.
The women get up and leave the tram in the Tunnelstrasse, their empty seats being taken by two younger men in business suits and manbags on their backs. I never understood this rage - people who look like they spend the entire day at their desk equipping themselves as if they will climb the Himalaya in the coffee break. A mobile phone blares out a few bars of the most outrageous rap and one of them starts to talk in what I recognise to be Polish.
The iPod has found Warsaw and reports unbroken sunshine with 15 degrees.
On my many business trips to Warsaw I had always been enchanted by two aspects of this city, one of them being the high quality of the Japanese and Korean restaurants it already featured in the beginning of the nineties. A lover of oriental food and keen karaoke fan, I astonished my colleagues with the stamina for sake and sukiaki as well as determination with the karaoke, in spite of the sheer lack of any audible talent whatsoever. But a good voice is not what karaoke is all about.
On one occasion in Warsaw, on a morning after one-of-those-nights, I set out in the early morning to visit the Polish telecom company who was housed in the outskirts of Warsaw in a building that blended perfectly into the equally grey and gloomy background it was built in.
After having spoken to a square built old woman who manned a wooden desk with an optimistic sign saying "reception" we were met and taken into the lift by a woman in old clothes and an even older face, which did not look too cheerful. My colleague, who was from Antwerp, said in Flemish: "This one could do with one of those job-motivation seminars", upon which the woman immediately retorted, in equally fluent Flemish: "So would you if you would work here!" It appeared she had been living in Belgium for many years when she was widowed and had gone back to Warsaw. My colleague's silence was embarassingly loud.
"What did we learn from this", I asked him as we stepped out of the building after our meeting with the Polish telecom. "Never assume the obvious, I suppose."
Indeed. Or: keep your mouth shut in lifts.
Singapore: 32 degrees, scattered showers.
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