Macadamian Follies

Christmas is here again, bringing with it the urge to go places. As a result, the mind wanders west, south and eastwards from Toronto, a city that, at other times, remains one of the best places on earth.

So online I go, surfing for bargains to places where seasonal festivities are not likely to include snow or ice. Credit cards at the ready, I clicked on to a site famous for expeditiously arranging cheap flights everywhere, but here, there was nothing but disappointment.  The next “discount” site, was no better and was just bad enough to evoke bitter laughter. That wasn’t the worst, either. Content in the next site was nothing short of eye-watering, which led me to think that perhaps I might have left it too late... At prices like those I doubt whether I’d even be able to afford a trip round the block.

Flying to a western Canadian city, for example, was being quoted at around $850.00, US. To Miami, Florida, $676, and to London $1190. Perhaps going to Sierra Leone may not be too expensive, I thought. There were no options to there, though. The journey had to originate from a European point and only the Belgian capital, Brussels offered anything viable, starting at around $3000 and not including the price of the Toronto-Europe leg either. Besides, these are just coach prices.

While marvelling at these outrageous numbers, something unexpected, but related popped up, as things tend to on the internet. This one was a story about a Korean Airline exec, Heather Cho, who had got herself into trouble for demanding that a Korean Airline plane turn around just so she can eject a flight attendant who had annoyed her. What was the crime? The attendant had had the impudence to serve Ms Cho her inflight snack of macadamia nuts still wrapped in cellophane instead of on a plate. I expect the lady executive was travelling in a class befitting her station for which, ordinarily, she would have had to pay top dollar. Never mind that she was the boss’s daughter, and would probably have been travelling on a voucher. But first class is first class, and however you get there it must cost quite a bit of dosh. I know that whenever I managed to make executive or first class myself, whether through my own money or by other means (which we don’t need to go into here), I got the full treatment: starched linen, bespoke china, not to mention the fine wines and gourmet hors d’oeurves. Expectations mount, the sense of entitlement becomes bloated, even when the bill is not on your tab. And if you have to ponder the ruin on your bank balance, the last thing you need is anything to discomfit you further. What with the added stress and all of checking in at the airport these days, passengers are bound to be in bad humour by the time they reach their seat, anyway. It takes just the merest hint of disrespect to tip the most placid of dispositions into fits of air rage. For me, macadamia nuts are not that enticing anyway and Ms Cho could very well be another for whom macadamia doesn’t do much as well. I don’t suppose the cabin staff were in a position to know that these nuts were not among madam’s favorites, but sitting in the front of the plane must have provided enough of a clue that whatever nuts are served they must be presented with all due pomp and ceremony. I am not surprised that the lady blew her top. What is the world coming to? 

 However the blame for the fiasco overall must fall on the captain.  He was too easily influenced by the executive lady and should have been man enough to have disobeyed her command to turn the plane around. What was he thinking, I wonder? Isn’t the cockpit supposed to be protected from outside interference these days?

And here we are at a time when I can’t get to Sierra Leone,  grown people fool around over a few indigestible nuts and Ebola Virus Disease steals Christmas from millions in West Africa.

Tell Fren Tru

Steps To A Perfect Christmas

The trouble about childhood Christmases is that they feel so much better in retrospect, even though memory tends to be unreliable as the years pass, just as it was the case for Dylan Thomas, who could never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when he was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when he was six.* Of course, it never snowed in the country where I spent my childhood Christmases but, not intending a pun, you get my drift.

            Although my childhood was a tropical one, December is usually a month of cool temperatures, sometimes cold enough to require blankets at night and flannel during the day. So, I am sure I remember correctly when, early one cold, dark Christmas morning I woke up to my father playing the carol, “Christians, awake!” on a tin whistle which, as it turned out, was one of the stocking-fillers destined for me that day. A thrill, impossible to forget, ran through my entire body, and all Christmases thence have had to be measured against that high. 

            Since then, I have had Christmases in many lands on three other continents and in various circumstances. I even spent the entire day of one at an airport once. But I am happy to say, though, that many of those Christmases have equalled, if not exceeded the rapture on that Christmas morning all those years ago when I was six or seven. That old memory thing again. Gifts there have been aplenty, given and received, and the thrill endures, especially when we, too, in turn had young children.

But Christmas is also a time for a retro look at and reflection on the year just ending. In our case, the credit side has been more than enough to balance those minor annoyances on the debit side that sometimes look so formidable. One event in particular has been the cause of much joy when, in May, our son, Steve, married Carla Jacobson.

We have reason to be satisfied also because the Sierra Leone Sickle Cell Disease Society, of which we are foundation members, continues to bring relief to people who are, unfortunately, born with that disease. Their well-being is assured by donations from people like you. 
I haven’t had cause to source a tin whistle recently, but the cost of a common garden one could help make a difference to those who suffer from this disease for which a simple cure has, so far, been elusive. So, when you consider where to put your Christmas money this year, spare a thought for the Society and head for their website at www.sleonesickle.org and you will be taken through easy steps to the many ways in which you can donate. Perfect.

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas, if you celebrate, and also, and for others as well, that the coming year will be a glorious and healthy one.

Tell Fren Tru

*A Child’s Christmas in Wales

Compare and contrast.

At this time of the year it used to be customary to wish “Merry Christmas” to all. But in these days of political correctness, the bland “Happy Holidays” has become the greeting of choice. However, I remain steadfastly old hat and stick to a rousing “Merry Christmas!” Whether this would make any difference to your mood is open to question, as the gloom of recession, inflicted by the bankers’ curse sits heavily on the shoulder. What makes the curse even more unbearable is the fact that those responsible for unraveling the world’s economy are happily back at it again, pocketing huge bonuses and laughing all the way, dare I say it, to the bank.

I have not blogged for several weeks now because I have been preoccupied with some personal issues that took me away from my desk, and when I returned, I had to write an article on a medical subject for submission to a medical journal. This got me into thinking about the similarities and differences between writing a science article and doing one for a general or literary magazine. The thought brought to mind those essays we were made to write when we were young: “Compare and contrast this and that.” The subjects could have been anything from rail and road transport, to farming in the prairies and the paddy fields of South –East Asia; the Shakespearean tragedies Hamlet and Macbeth or the mating habits of spirogyra and hydra, or whatever.

Well, compare and contrast science writing and creative writing, which, by the way, covers a multitude of sins, which I will refrain from enumerating just now. The writing part is basically the same for both genres. Where the difference lies is in the murky world of the editorial office, where you send your stuff after you have labored and sweated over the keyboard for God knows how long. The science or medical article goes through a fairly straightforward process: You choose your journal, access their website and follow the links to their submission page. There you create a username and password and in a few clicks you have a PDF version of your article which you can review and then upload for the editor(s) to look at. They even ask you if you have a preference for reviewers to review your piece or reviewers who they shouldn’t send it to. This generally ensures that the paper gets sent to your friends (sympathetic, you hope) and not to your enemies or competitors who are more likely to stamp all over your paper. It is all done anonymously of course, but any piece has fairly obvious clues as to its provenance, so all this cloak and dagger stuff may just be theatrics. Anyway, nowadays, you know that you are going to be hearing from the editor in a fairly short time, electronically of course. You go to the journal’s website, put in your username and PW and see what the editor has decided, based on the comments of the reviewers. Usually, it’s a 2-1 decision that guides the editor as to whether to accept the paper, “as is” (highly unusual), or, with modifications and appropriate responses to queries. However, if the reviewers’ comments are terminal, your authorship ambitions with that particular encounter are brought to a screeching halt. When you regain your composure, you march off to seek your fortune elsewhere. And ,just like in the days before online submission, you listen to what the reviewers said and re-write the piece and send it off again. In the old days when you did it by post you pop it into the nearest postbox, again and again. An old prof of mine used to say that you can always publish an article if you have enough stamps. But he was a cynical one. Anyway, back to modern times, you modify the article and find another journal’s website and go through the process again, hoping that, this time, the piece stays out of the hands of your worst detractors.

            Now contrast this brisk business-like process to sending a piece to a literary or general interest magazine. We won’t go through the preamble that you go through when you send a query about an idea you have for a piece. Anyway, you send a polite enquiry about whether the magazine might like an idea that you have for a piece. After a couple of weeks you might get a reply saying yea or nay. If it is yea, you knuckle under and work toward a deadline you (and they) have set. You do the piece and send it in, hardcopy or electronically, with a cover letter that drips with sweet words to soothe the breasts (I almost said beasts, but that’s not the way to get published) of the editor and wait. And wait. And wait.

So after about six weeks to two months, you send a reminder, again coated in the sweetest terms you can manage (under the circumstances) and in a week or so you get a reply explaining that times have been tough and that they’ve been out of the office, etc, etc. Sometimes you actually feel sorry for them and have to resist the urge to send them an email apologizing for disturbing them in their labours. Anyway, they promise to read your piece and get back to you as soon as possible. Then you wait.

 I am still waiting.

More reason why I am not inclined to wish “Happy Holidays,” but you can be sure that I wish you the merriest of Christmases, and when the New Year rolls in, the best for 2011.

Tell Fren Tru