Book cover via Amazon

On Writing. A Memoir of the Craft. Stephen King.   2000. ISBN 1417647019.  What a delightful book - part personal story and part a master class on writing, Steven King tells a compelling story. As well as his guiding comments you also get inside views of his stories - what prompted them , endings he tried and those he picked.  As well you get insight into his long struggle back after a horrendous car accident.  The man can write and if you read this work, your writing can not help but improve. He believes that every story has a nugget and the writers job is to excavate and polish that.  Not a surprise, he is a fan of Strunk and White.  Lesson learned for me is how long he lets a story sit after the first draft before he goes to the rewrite stage. Easy read, good pace and enjoyable on a plane or cruise.

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Summer reading. Grass Beyond The Mountains. Discovering the last great cattle frontier on the North American continent. Richmond P. Hobson. 1951. ISBN 0771041705.  I first read this book while at University after spending  a summer of helicopter mining exploration in the regions that Hobson talks about,  the Batanuni  Range and the Blackwater River . If you take the Anaheim trail from Quesnel through to  Bella Coola you will see this incredible and huge country. I was lucky to meet some of the characters in the book, Panhandle Philips and his wife Adelia at their ranch.  This book details the finding of the 5 million acre ranch and the toughness shown by these pioneers in just getting there.  Hobson’s second book , Nothing Too Good For  A Cowboy, details the building of the ranch and the trials and tribulations they went through. (It became a TV drama)  This is real horses and men stuff, unvarnished and simple - but a great read at anytime, especially since its all about opening up BC in the 30s.

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The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bill Bryson. 2007. Hilarious. This is a quick read, great  plane fare. Bryson the prolific travel and whatever writer, grew up in Des Moines in the ’50s. He takes you right back and makes you want to be there alongside him. I was reading this in a clinic yesterday and just kept busting a gut while waiting.

European Business Customs & Manners. Mary Murray Bosrock. 2006. ISBN 0881664979. This covers 31 countries in the EU. There is a very good introductory session with tips etc. for traveller. For each country there is then brief comments on:

• Basic background
• Vital statistics
• The people
• Meeting and greeting
• Names and titles
• Languages
• Conversation
• Body language
• Dining
• Drinking
• Toasting
• Tipping
• Manners
• Dress
• Gifts
  • Hostess gifts
  • Business gifts
• Helpful hints
• Punctuality
• Corporate Culture
  • • Structure
    • Meetings
    • Communication
    • Business cards
    • Be aware
    • Socializing
• Especially for women
• Holidays & Festivals

In helping clients become more familiar with new markets in the EU this has been a very useful resource. A major part of building market relations is building trust. Having a grasp of how to do business in a new country is a help toward building that trust If you are looking at the EU and lack experience this would be a useful book (I just wish more Americans read this type of book before they traveled.) I found the chapter on Spain helpful in understanding business people during my recent visit to Argentina.  She has written several books like this

Star Princess is a troubled boat. An open letter/multiple blog posting to the CEO of Princess Lines

Travel arrangements:
From start to finish disorganization around travel arrangements is normal. Princess’s inability to arrange airline assignments continues and was validated by the serious cruisers on board. Evidently they just don’t care about things such as spouses sitting together on lengthy flights despite the arrangements being booked 3-5 months ahead and paid for well in advance.

Embarkation:
Embarkation continues to be a major challenge. As an example, in 30 deg plus, high humidity weather, platinum and elite passengers are forced to wait hours while staff fruitlessly search for boarding cards and other assorted documentation on the Buenos Aires dock. Disembarkation is another nightmare albeit a “gong show” in trying to get passengers to the airport. When queried, on board staff say it’s all to do with being in a South American port and decry any control over the situation, yet other cruise lines out of Buenos Aires seem to handle the situation very well.

Novo Virus:
We found out while we were on the ship that the previous cruise had severe problems with novo virus. Despite our best efforts to protect ourselves we and numerous experienced cruisers contracted the dreaded virus. The virus weakened many peoples’ resistance so that when they recovered, they fairly quickly contracted a severe cold/flu that was running rampant throughout the boat. The flu spared no one, entertainers and staff alike.

Cleanliness:
The boat doesn’t appear to be properly cleaned. Other passengers complained of boarding the boat and finding dirty sheets on their bed. Certainly we saw that as we were disembarking, despite the tremendous amount of illness that had been on the boat, no methods were being employed differently to ensure it was clean enough for passengers arriving that very afternoon for the next voyage.

Due Diligence
Passengers sign a document prior to boarding that they have not been ill for two days. Yet we met people from the UK who boarded the boat while they were sick and had been so for 2 weeks. There is no effort made to ensure that people boarding the boat are healthy which just exacerbates the problems that this boat was having. One would expect extra efforts which were non evident.

Smoking:
The smoking arrangements on this ship are obviously not well thought through. For example, in all the areas where there is dancing, the smoking area is right beside it even though there is lots of room to move smoking well away from the dance floor. The ventilation arrangements appear sporadic in these smoking areas as well. This is evidently a corporate policy.

Food:
We were astonished to find that even though the ship was embarking from Buenos Aires all food was sourced from LA. Argentina is famous for the world’s best organic beef, pork and lamb and yet we had no chance of enjoying it. There was no abilityl for the menus to reflect the local cuisine. For example, there was no Argentinian wines on board. This is evidently a corporate policy. We were lucky that a new Exec Chef came on board when we did and we did notice that after about three days the food taste etc dramatically improved from mediocre to good.

Staff:
The staff on board overall are extremely helpful, friendly and very service oriented. It seems in these situations their hands are tied by corporate policies. These policies must be reflecting a continuing shrinking of resources and penny-pinching attitude from head office.

Conclusion:
This experience has certainly soured us at looking at any other Princess offerings. The preventable problems of this cruise was a source of major disappointment. Thank goodness I sold my stock in this company.

Antarctica was a fantastic experience.

Caminito.
Mar 11. This was the Shrine visit day. First off to see the bronze of Carlos Gardel. He is the Elvis of Tango, who also died too soon. Beautiful singing voice, Gardel is an icon in BA. They have converted his house into a museum, and the streets nearby have many tango stores and tango halls. But to see the birthplace of tango, we had to go to Boca.
Boca has the part of the port, where the immigrants built corrugated steel houses, which they then painted in vivid colors. This is also called Caminito. It is a feast for any artists eye to land in this part of old BA. There are non stop tango shows to go with your lunch and always a smoldering eye’d partner to pose dramatically with you. As you walk the rough cobbled streets, there are artists displaying wonderful works all along the street. Very affordable and original work.
Boca is also the name of the football club that was home to a somewhat famous guy called Diego Maradona. There are pictures, shrines, papermache statues of him all around the area. Evidently he can do no wrong, unless you are a River Platte football fan. So BA shares with Manchester the hosting of two bitter rival clubs in the same city, just at different ends.

Our experience with local customer service shows some trends. No one is in a hurry. Not at the bank, supermaket, wine store, bar or restaurant.  Customers as well as workers seem unaware that anything could move any faster..
As an employee you are entitled it seems to carry on your own business at anytime, even while at work. As an example, one waiter took our order, received a cell phone call, headed outside to comverse, lit a cigarette while having the talk and eventually came back to the restaurant and handed our order in.  Another time, he dashed to the kitchen and then minutes later he and all the cooks headed out the front door to have a smoke, chat and make several telephone calls.  Customers carry on their conversations regardless.

Yet when your food order comes it is so good, you stop caring.  Every coffee (always perfect) comes with a small cookie and a small glass of soda. Every meal comes with a fresh assortment of breads, buns, breadsticks and rusk.  Salads come on their own, oil and which kind of vinegar do you want?  The language of Kraft is banished.  The meat is always on its own, a massive thick slice, that regardless of the cut, you can cut with a regular knife, no steak knife. And when you taste there is no smoothering in BBQ, or any other type of sauce.  Some salt and pepper, but nothing interferes with the best tasting 100% organic beef in the world. Kobe is nothing compared to this.  Life as a carnivore has never been this good.

Driving lessons in Buenos Aires.

(The following contains mature subject matter and may not be suitable for some audiences).
Lessons learned while riding the incredibly affordable cabs in BA.
1.Rules are generally to be ignored. By being different from everyone else, you risk injury.
Traffic lites are considered rules.
Painted lanes on streets are ill advised guidelines.
Using turn signals is just a rule.
Using head lites at nite is another silly rule.
Having any space between you and the next vehicle, is a dangerous rule, as another car will slip in.
2.Slowing down at uncontrolled intersections indicates a lack of manhood. If you are in control of a motorcycle this means you must accelerate on approaching such intersections. If you are a taxi, you also accelerate, but you do give way, to other taxis, if you see them.
3. Use of more than one hand, (which means having more than three fingers) on the steering wheel, shows that you are getting too old to navigate quickly. Other indicators of this are any use of gears lower than 3rd or 4rth and/or speeds lower than 55 in heavy traffic, including approaching red traffic lites. Such colors are meant to be ignored with full gusto. They will change.
4. Motorcycles are detested by all, but most of all by taxis, and second by buses. To reduce the m/c numbers it is important to play a full speed game of chicken with them. This involves a rapid approach and attempt to touch their back wheel with your bumper as they weave in and out of heavy traffic. If no m/c are around, it is accepted for taxis to practice the same with buses. Buses are also part of the game, lets cut in front of a vehicle as close as we can to their bumper while they are not looking. This works better if you do not own the taxi you are driving as few win this game. We saw similar behavior by water skiers who cut right in front on our catamaran on the River Delta cruise.. Obviously off duty cabbies.
5. Pedestrians can walk across a street anytime there is a break in traffic. The pedestrian defines what constitutes a ¨break¨, in some instances we have seen this to be as small as a change in attention.
6. At the sign of any holdup in forward motion, always hit the horn immediately and repeatedly. That is what your other hand does when it is not out the window gesticulating. We some some old school drivers who would use one of the three fingers on the wheel to also operate the horn. For left hand gesticulation, only one finger receives any significant use, the rest are along for support.

As a passenger we were grateful for our training in aircraft crashes, as we just usually bent over our knees, with our hands over our heads during our usually brief rides. It is cautioned that if you must look, the side window is best, as a forward view will usually cause you to revisit what you had for your last meal. This is not recommended as a weight reduction scheme.