Posts

 

Some more pics as promised. They were all taken with my phone as my basic requirement for a phone is that it should be a movie-quality camera first, scanner, laser gun, computer and possibly coffee maker second and a phone third or even 93rd, but obviously quality of these pics is sometimes low given the low tech threshold of Terrans.

1. A beach at Cape Point Nature reserve

2. The airport at Palaborwa. Yup. That is the WHOLE airport. It reminded me of the airport in Gaborone (Botswana) 20 years ago (or even Tirana in Albania a few years ago) except it was bigger, cleaner and way more functional. The plane was tiny, only two seats on one side and one seat on the other side of the isle and the passengers had to be spaced out evenly in it to balance it. Total capacity was 32 people including pilots and crew.

3. A giraffe

4. A not so clear pic of a wildeebeest running

 

 

1. Buffalo

2. Zebra

3. Frog. Only little but surprisingly loud. It made more noise than the Hippos.

4. Old male Elephant with Musk, waving it's ears at us in a rather pissed off fashion. Luckily the guide was a cool guy and didn't get freaked and stayed there with the car so we could get nice pics. Redhead Girl spotted it and we would have missed it if it wasn't for her. It's amazing how a 5 ton animal can basically hide behind the equivalent of a shrub at 20 metres. See later pics for proof...

 

 

 

1. Elephant hiding behind the equivalent of a bush lamp-post

2. And now you see him...

3. If you look carefully you should see the "tear" that shows he's in musk making him irritable, and testosterone fuelled, meaning, more likely to make him want to stomp dumb tourists bugging him, but he liked us I guess.

4. Inside the plane, pic taken by me holding my arm out. The other side of the isle was a single seat.

So that should complete the pics of animals section for ya.

The trip was basically all good and I even got to see and talk with my father again after 7 years. He's still physically fit and doing well, except I think he thinks in his 60s he should be "old" so has slowed down a bit, which is not all bad since he really needed to get better emotionally speaking. He seems calmer anyway and he's finally retired, which is good.

Hopefully he will think up of a nice hobby that doesn't involve shooting people or hunting criminals. He wrote an article for Magnum (an outdoor/hunting/wildlife magazine) and they liked it, so he might do more of that which I think would be nice for him as he certainly has a lot of funny, crazy, stories to tell and it saves me having to do it at some point.

 

Dad in the left one and Mom on the right one.

 

The only hitch was that on the way back the flight was cancelled which was badly unannounced so we wasted hours at the airport before finding out and had to come back the next day to fly home a day late in an almost empty 747 which meant we could stretch out taking up five seats to sleep a bit. Redhead Girl didn't bother, but I did as I never get to sleep on planes due to my height mostly.

Also I renewed my membership to the Mile High Club as Redhead Girl insisted she wanted to join this exclusive club... That's why I love her, she's just comic-book cool.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I know. You were all waiting with baited breath for my return. The 1 comment I'll get from samjohn999 trying to sell me some real estate in Cambodia or take part in the very safe and secure online spreadbetting that has recently made many millionaires will be all the proof I need.

Yes. I do thank God for my adamantium self-esteem daily. So there.

ANYWAY...Lots happened over the last two months, which is why the long absence from my blog. But I make it up by reporting much funny things and some amazing pictures from my recent trip to see my family in Africa.

 

So...I am now able to tell you dear readers that I now NO LONGER WORK! That is, I am now no longer employed by anyone to do anything for them that I don't want to do. I will be writing books, finally getting my hypnosis work that I have been doing for 4 years more mainstream and training in and occassionally teaching (when my friend Uldis is not doing it) the System, that awesome, awesome, cool amazing "martial art" (but really oh sooo much more than just that) I have been doing for a while now.

 

Some of you that care can go see more on that at WWW.WAYOFSYSTEMA.COM where you will find a rather simple site (which badly needs a revamp but I have no time or skills to do it and am hoping one of the other Systema guys will improve it sometime before 2012....)

 

So yeah!! I am no longer a slave of the system. For a little while anyway. I have a little money saved up for a year at least so the plan is to make enough money to survive (or even you know, buy a few islands, I don't mind being stupidly, obscenely rich, it's ok with me...) doing only what I want to do out of my own wish to do it, as opposed to having to in order to do luxurious things like have running water and food to eat in a nice apartment.

 

Those of you now turning green with envy please note that you are as much in a position to be doing what I am doing (sweet, sweet nothing) as I am or was. If you REALLY want to do so, I cannot suggest strongly enough that you read Vadim Zeland's book Transurfing Reality (There are three books but the first two are really enough and the last two are only available in Russian for now). More than anything it has certainly helped to shape my view of reality in a way that is really malleable by me, the operator of it. Sounds too Matrix-ish for you? Too bad. That's how it works and you should watch more SF movies anyway, it's good for you!

 

I also moved home and thus pay a cheaper rent, though that at the moment is REALLY cheap as I have stopped paying it altogether since more than 2 months after we moved in I STILL have boiler and electrical problems of a pretty serious nature (not to mention several other issues not as serious but certainly not fun to deal with). Let's see how long it takes the Estate agents to wake up now. In the meantime I am going about fixing these things myself now and I will simply not pay rent until I have it ALL sorted and then I will deduct all the costs as well as my time for sorting it all out and only THEN start paying rent again.

Every possible reasonable option has honestly been tried before this and at the end of it I have just lost patience with the utter fucking scandalous incompetence, stupidity and fucktard, brain-damaged-like inability to get any kind of half-decent service done in apparently the whole of greater London from people who take chunks of money from you for supposedly providing such non-existent service. 

I would list the incredibly long amount of retarded things I have been subjected to but I'll stick to a few highlights for your amusement:

• The leaky tap in the kitchen was supposedly visited by a plumber. It still leaks exactly the same as before so I asked if the next time the plumber can maybe also hold it and speak some comforting words to it as apparently just visiting it doesn't do the trick.

 

• Today the guy who supposedly sorted out the washing machine (but I haven't tried it yet so I seriously doubt he actually did anything successful on that appliance) suggested that the way to rectify the problem of the fridge door not staying closed was to "not put any bottles in the bottle holding part of the door". Actually since it's snowing in London I suppose really I should just throw all the stuff in the fridge on the balcony and hope for the best. Maybe even hope it snows enough to make an ice-box which will take us through the short summer like trappers of old in the Canadian wilderness. I somehow resisted the urge to ice-pick the "handy-man" and hang him from a hook off the balcony in case meat runs low in the harsh winter months.

 

• The boiler "knocking noise" and intermittent hot-cold water when showering is not due to any problem with our boiler. It's from another flat. Hyperdimensional physics must clearly be involved, but I guess it's a "need to know" thing because when I asked how in the name of anyone sane could an electrical problem in ANOTHER flat be affecting MY hot water supply I was not given an answer. Just repeated the same drivel above. I invited the estate agency's maintenance guy to come up here and see for himself. To be precise I told him to bring a towel because I would have pleasure in having him take a shower here to experience for himself the situation. I don't care if it sounded gay to him. At this point buggery is after all only about the 7th lowest item on the list of things I'd like to do to the whole of the "management" of the Estate agency and their employees responsible for them not fixing these issues over a period of 2-3 months.

 

So yeah...rent's gonna be real cheap around here for a while. I may have to live like a fur trapper of the 19th century but then again the Estate agency offices are literally just outside the apartment complex I live in, so if I ever run out of fresh meat I will just go ice-pick one of the proto-humans they employ and hang his/her carcass from my balcony for preservation purposes and good meat curing. They certainly don't seem to serve any other function so I assume they are a meat giving animal. Sort of like cows but stupider and less useful. And more full of shit which probably means they play havoc with the ozone layer.

In the meantime enjoy a picture of the view I have from my new office space I created inside the flat. That mild reflection is me and I am glad to say I actually have my PJ bottoms on...bonus!

 

 

 

 

 

After the hectic end of my work and move, Redhead Girl and I went on holiday for three weeks to South Africa, (Johannesburgh) though she also visited her oldest friend who now lives in Maputo and we also went to Cape Town and a resort bordering the Kruger National Park for a few days so we were actually in planes a whole bunch of times while there.

 

The trip was great and I also got to train with Vadim Dobrin who is a gentleman as well as being a deadly and funny guy. He was so cool he basically organised one class on a Saturday just for me with two of his top students (who are both younger, nicer people and better than me at Systema, but I feel I make up for it by being far more ornery, vicious and unpleasant than them in general life [which gives me immense satisfaction]* and knowing things about women and sex they will only discover if they become at least as debauched as I am and work hard at it for the next 50 years or so)**

 

Here's a few pics for you (and more later, including some of an Elephant in musk at about 15 metres from us):

They are (from left to right):

1. Redhead Girl silhoutted on Camps Bay beach

2. Me and my little brother after I just baptised him (with some sea-water, hence the crosses) "Aldo Libero" the first in my own sect of free people. Yes, I plan to have a religion named after me one day, it's all part of my plan to take over the world for my Martian brethren. This was at Yzerfontein where I have a couple of plots, one of which is now for sale for about R1,100,000.00 (roughly about £90,000) which considering it's about 200 metres from the Ocean and has guaranteed views and given the general prices in the area is actually a decent price, so if any of you want it, let me know. Broker fees would be on top of this.

3. Redhead girl looking sexy at Boulders, the Penguin colony, which she loved and where she took hundreds of pictures of the ridiculous and yet very cool penguins.

4. Redhead girl and me at Boulders again (Simon's Town).

 

Here is a couple more for you:

1. A Penguin suntanning. if you look you can see he has his eyes closed and little short feet propped up

2. Boulders beach. Exclusively for the use of Penguins so their small colony can be safe from human interference

3. Redhead girl at the Dias cross at Cape Point

4. My view for a lot of the time we were at the game resort

 

But since I know you're all waiting for the animal pics, here they are:

1. Ostriches at cape point. the males are black with white feathers and the females brown

2. Hippos at the golfing resort (I have never played golf, but the animals all over the range are cool)

3. Crock near the pond in the middle of the golf course. I had to get a little closer than you see Redhead Girl in the last pic as all these pics were taken with my camera phone, but he was sleeping so no problem really

4. Redhead Girl takin pic of the giant lizard

 

This post is becoming mammoth, so more pics of animals (including the Elephant one) in the next post after I eat dinner!

 

 

* Hey I get my pleasure where I can, don't judge.

** I'm not that old, it's just that there's lots of catching up to do for them in this area really. Way more than is healthy anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and compulsory hard-labour sentences issued for stupidity would be nice too.

Now, contrary to popular belief, I am not a violent man. Truly, I am not. I am driven to it however by excessive amounts of stupidity. Lazy selfishness, and generally lack of awareness in others except of anything other than one's own anus as though it were the center of the Universe.

 

Let me highlight a few examples that occurred in the past week.

Pret a Manger Server in Training.

So we have a server in training. Yes I understand that it's a minimum wage job where you have to wear a uniform so basically your intellectual potential has to be marginally above that of lobotomised clam in order to get the job, nevertheless, we can train monkeys to recognise certain sounds and press appropriate buttons so this should not be beyond the range of capabilities of your average Pret a Manger server.

And of course I understand that some of these poor souls only speak a local dialect of Serbo-Croat accompanied by gesticulations and much face-slapping. In fact I am happy to help with the face slapping really. Because surely to God it should not take 15 minutes to get me a damned cappucino. I picked the rest of the stuff I want myself and it's in front of you. It's not that hard. Punch the button for each corresponding item. Add a cappucino. Tell the guy behind you to make it. Hand it over.

Surely, even if you hailed from the same Taliban cave that Bin Laden uses you have actually been inside and used one of these places. Because Osama himself uses US made dyalisis machines and these are a little harder to come by than a McDonalds. So you should have a vague idea of the process.

 

What you do not do is punch in half the items, forget which ones you did after you come back from a sudden interruption you just had without prompting or explanation to anyone (violent diarrhea? Memory loss? Schizophrenic surge?) then re-type in half of them, forget the cappuccino, try to give me a black coffee and then repeat the price to me 4 times as though I was deaf or actually not paying.

I mean, ok...so she's in training. So for fuck's sakes...somebody please train her! Christ. Or just at least do a basic "is she on heavy drugs/insane/less capable than a lobotomised clam" Q&A evaluation form.

Or hire a chimp. At least I'd get a laugh out of a chimp even if he overcharged me for cappucino and made it frothy instead of wet. Because he sure as fuck wouldn't get it wrong past that. And I could live with that. From a chimp.

 

The general staff of the estate agents we used to move.

Really good at getting me the kind of place I wanted.

Also really good at not giving me a damn thing as soon as I paid the deposit. Including two full sets of keys, a garage door opener, getting the tap fixed, or even giving me a copy of the lease I signed. In about 6 weeks.

This prompted a letter from me to them. It discussed at some length (and I quote myself) my not being born a sarcastic pain in the rectum but being made into one. Also how if they thought I was a pain in the rectum now, they would have a whole new dimension of idea about that come Friday if the whole list of items hadn't been taken care of, since it is my clear and expressely stated intention to then take care of all said items myself, and charge them for my time. Which is quite expensive and I have proved in court before and am very willing to do again, after I stop paying rent until the landlord shows up on my door step, at which point I'll settle with him directly thank you very much.

 

I did get a nice e-mail back telling me I would be contacted by the end of the day. So let's see.

 

The disgusting turd at Waterstones Jubilee place working there yesterday afternoon.

The fuckwit with the beard and the finger in his nose. This fuckwit personified everything I hate about humans in one person pretty much. Excepting child raping and a few other choice behaviours I am not absolutely certain he exhibited.

 

I bought a couple of books and fuckwit rings them up while actively picking his fucking nose. Being too oblivious, half-witted, lazy and self-engrossed to understand that placing his snot over my just purchased book is not what I consider an added bonus.

I was however surpised with myself. Normally I would have had a marginally higher blood pressure after eviscerating the idiot. But I actually remained calm, simply wiped down the books when I got home with a bacterial wipe and then contemplated this whole regimen of incopetence and ineptitude. It reminded me of the futuristic Graphic Novel featuring Marsha Washington. Google it. Read it. The subtext of ever increasing human incompetence is disturbingly realistic.

 

I mean, short of public executions for stupidity this situation is not going to get better. I am therefore planning to have an island getaway in preparation for stage one of the annexation of this crappy planet. World domination requires quiet contemplation free of the regular tsunamis of human stupidity I seem to encounter daily after all.

 

And I am not even going to talk about my job and the examples there. But trust me. That specially bred Pret server? She has relatives all over the planet. And I work(ed) with many of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, while professionally my preferred method of dispute resolution would actually be this:

 

 

when it comes to intimate relationships, this song describes it perfectly.

 

And Redhead Girl has this attitude etched in her woman's soul.

For which I am grateful to whatever Gods may exist.

This one's for you.

 

 

 

 

 

So the plan was to pack Saturday and move on Sunday.

Sunday comes along and I take the first of two furniture units down to the lobby. I come back up in the elevator and when i step out of it nearly go through the window in the corridor because the thing has actually stopped about a foot higher than the floor and I stepped out of it without noticing (because you sort of expect lifts to stop level in general!)

 

Needless to say the lift is now screwed. We call out the emergency repair guy who takes an hour to get to our place then after a quick investigation proclaims that it's a "worst case scenario really".

According to him, the lift expert, the whole memory unit of the lift is shot and it's not even from the UK but maybe Italy or Portugal or Spain and the lift has no way of re-setting itself without this board being replaced. Which will take at least a week no matter what.

So we are basically fucked and together with one poor Brazilian guy who actually showed up to help us move (man with a van) despite being told the problem we moved the entire contents of the flat out from the fifth floor.

 

Redhead Girl was actually heroic throughout the whole thing. That girl has an organisational ability that is quite superior to my own and while I have moved now 42 times in my 40 years of life (not joking) she moved 5 times in 2 years so we're both pretty expert at it by now.

 

Even so I did not plan to take things down five flights of staris for 4 hours straight. With a fever on top of it which just added to the fun when I got the sweats and chills.

At one point my neighbour Lee (Lee Hurst the comedian was my neighbour for 3 years) offered to help and I asked if he was actually serious. Redhead Girl asked if he knew "it was not a joke!" but to his credit the man helped us for about an hour.

I told him I wasn't sure if I had been a good neighbour or if he was or if maybe he hated my guts and couldn't wait to see me on my way, but whatever it was I was grateful. It needs to be addd that Lee has asthma. Not that I knew, coming down the stairs with yet another box of heavy books I saw him a couple of flights below me take a quick pause to use his inhaler. Just once in a while a human does something like this that gives me hope for the whole planet.

 

The Brazilian guy missed the start of the Brazilian Grand prix, which he wanted to see to help us deliver the stuff to the new place. He was contracted to get £60, but I gave him £100, since without him it would have been only so much worse.

Redhead Girl packaged most of our crap in a way that was novel but very efficent for me. I am used to moving from one African home to another mostly and generally you need to pack your crap into bomb-proof crates to ensure at least 50% of it gets to the destination. Redhead Girl on the other hand put everything in big IKEA-like bags and it worked faster at both ends. She also put up with my grumpy, sweaty, fevered ass, and carried a fair load of crap up and down stairs too, so yeah...as soon as we're settled in properly I'll have to think of a good thing for her.

 

 

 

 

This is what our new place still looks like because of course along with all this move comes the busiest time I have ever had in the last 6 years probably. Even the toy duck looks wasted.

 

People calling me and relying on me for all sorts of martial arts related stuff. Work kicking into high gear as we're reaching the end of a pretty intense process and people near and far inviting me to all sorts of things I can't really say no politely to, like their birthdays, house warmings, grandmas dying (not really but you get the idea).

 

So much so the EXTRA-stuff begins to conflict. For example, this next Sunday we were supposed to go see a friend of mine I have not seen in years but I also just got told that someone has organised for a magazine interview for the Martial art stuff I do and could I please be along as I am the instructor for it.

And tomorrow I am supposed to go to another dear friend's birthday party but also i have to take care of my new work related stuff i have been ignoring for too long. And yeah, our new home still looks like you saw above. I.e. a bomb shelter. That has received multiple direct hits.

 

I also have to go over to the old place tonight to hand over the keys and do the inventory and hopefully not get ripped off and get my deposit back in full since i took the trouble to hire not one but TWO professional cleaners. Mainly because the big furniture could not be managed down the stairs so Redhead Girl is going there a couple of hours before me with yet another man and van to get the last bit out. We've both been on 13-18 hour days for a couple of weeks now and basically i can't wait for the end of all this stuff.

 

Which is why I have been lax on the blog readers.

And just so you know....when I got to the office on Monday the lift THERE was out. And guess which floor the office is on? Yup. The fifth.

 

And when I returned to the old flat to finish up the last bits....yup. The lift was working perfectly. Seems the lift expert of Sunday was just another lazy, incopetent, arse-sucker who couldn't be bothered to know how to do his actual job when it's apparently easier to blame it on "cheap parts from them foreign countries".

 

So yeah. But apart from that, everything is going just swimmingly.

And I can't wait for my job to end...it continues to get extended and frankly I am just over it now and it needs to stop, despite the money being good of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazing video posted by bookmole.

 

 

 

If all the cyclists and all the smokers just suddenly died it would be a better world.

I'm thinking like a really short version of Flash-Forward, that cool new series...only not a series, more like a single pilot that lasts about 12 minutes.

 

Every stupid ass cyclist (that's 93.7%) of them and every single smoker (because smokers are all definitely dumb fucks) just keels over and dies.

We would still have to deal with their putrifying remains of course, but it would be a small price to pay for the sudden spike up of the average human IQ of some 30 points.

 

The 12 minute documentary would end with an ominous hint that if the flash-death happens again politicians and bankers would be next.

 

 

Apparently "Hollywood" is up in arms over the Roman Polanski arrest (Metro 29th September 2009).

Certainly at least one Debra Winger, president of the Zurich Film Festival judging panel seems to be up in arms about it saying she and others ("we") are standing by (him) and awaiting his release and his next great film.

 

Personally I want to also know the names of who exactly "Hollywood" is. I want to know if this stupid bitch Debra has a daughter. Maybe a 13 year old daughter. And then I want to ask this cow if she would be ok with a 44 year old man drugging her daughter, then raping her, forcing oral sex on her and sodomising her. I can only conclude that Debra would say that this is all good and great and OK with her.

Possibly though the 44 year old man might have to be a film director for her to really approve. But if he were, I personally at least, am convinced, Debra would help him hold the little girl down.

  

I also have to deduce that Debra Winger is a drug addled crack-whore that stumbled into her job by sucking every cock in Zurich while being filmed. I am also assuming it's only by sheer force of blackmail and the threat of exposing such films that she ever got to do anything other than sucking cock and shooting up heroin.

Mostly because I am assuming she is such a pig-ugly, shit-stained, crack whore that being seen with your cock in her mouth is in and of itself more shameful than the actual act of same-said cock-sucking being made public.

 

Now my conclusions may be somewhat speculative, they may be way off the mark, hell, they may just be my imagination. But they are mine and I like them and I firmly believe them. In my mind that is who she is. Oh. And she likes to fuck drugged children too. Which is why she's on Polanski's side. Child-fuckers of a feather and all that.

I believe this too. I don't have any actual proof or any evidence, but just a nagging feeling and that's good enough for me.

 

A bit strong you say?

Well let's see. Did Old Roman at the age of 44 drug, rape, force oral sex on and sodomise a 13 year old girl?

Yes. Yes he did.

Did he know she was 13 at the time?

Yes. Actually yes, very clearly so, despite what other pedophile-friendly "documentaries" and their "producers" would like you to believe: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0928091polanskiplea10.html

 

Does it actually make it NOT rape if he didn't somehow know she was 13? No. No it doesn't change that at all.

But he did know anyway. Just to you know...be clear.

Yeah. Yes. He most certainly did.

 

Did he admit all of this in court? Yes. Yes he did.

 

So really....there is NO doubt at all. He did do this thing.

Yes. Yes he most definitely did.

 

Right. So why the fuck shouldn't he rot in jail according to anyone?

Oh well, his mom died in Auschwitz and his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was slaughtered in an admittedly horrific murder by Charles Manson and his drug-crazed gang in 1969.

Horrible shit that happened to him? Yup. Without a doubt. Enough to drive most people insane for sure.

So how does this change the facts of what he did? It does not.

Not one little bit.

 

So now I'd like to know which Hollywood people side with Polanski.

Step right up people. Tell us your names. Because I want to know which actor/producer/director or other Hollywood executive and hanger on believes drugging and raping a 13 year old girl in every hole of her body you can forcibly stick your cock into is ok.

I want to know who these fucking pro-child-rape people are.

Because I like deducing things about such people, like Debra up there, whom as you have seen I deduced - by just her associating with Polanski mostly and siding with him and also my natural instincts and the weather today at noon (which hasn't happened yet because it's 11.27am, but it's noon somehwere in the world!) - as being a drug-addled, black-mailing, pig-ugly, shit-stained, crack-whore.

 

I want to deduce about them "Hollywood" people. Because Sherlock Holmes, he's got nothing on me readers. I will deduce the living shit out of those pro-child-raping, pig-fucking sons of bitches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven't read the backstory, here is Part I

 

Well...with a riveted audience of three loyal readers I feel honour bound, nay...compelled even, by this teeming mass of readership, to continue with my story.

NOTE: I suggest you read up on the footnotes (*) as you go along rather than at the end if you want to preserve the ambiance I was living with at the time.

 

***

Timeline: December 2003 to February 2004

 

So here I was working for this consortium made up of Bilfinger Berger and HSG although now HSG has been assimilated by Bilfinger Berger. At the time I had (theoretically) been hired by HSG via that interviewer whom as luck would have it was also Irish. This should have been my first clue.

 

On arrival on site and after my first report to the project manager (whom was a Bilfinger Berger guy) I suddenly became aware of my rather vulnerable situation. Here I was theoretically in charge of all the financial aspects of the project, worth some 30 million Euro, but I had a slight problem.

I had no access to any financial information. This was all in the hands of an accountant type, which I swear to God looked for all the world like a stereotypical Nazi straight out of the über-core of the Elite SS Intellectuals. He was tall, slender, good-looking, wore his hair in a military/Nazi short/shaved sides and back and longer at the top and front style, smoked quite a lot but not as much as the other perennially stressed Nazis Err..German managers, which to my mind made him more dangerous for it meant he had more of his head about him and perhaps worse of all he wore those round spectacles with very thin frames. But only sometimes.

Now tell me that isn't chilling.

 

He also spoke to no one except the project manager (and we'll come to that description in a short while my curios readers) and in measured and precise tones of pure German at that. He was mostly silent but would respond to a greeting or a direct question though without ever giving any actual information and managing - unlike all the other German "managers" -  to actually not be rude about it. And he spoke perfectly fluent English.

He was around 28 or so too, making him younger than me by some six years. Yet I had no doubt intellectually he was one of the very few here who could match me. And in his field almost certainly outdo me. Let's put it this way, if this had been war and I a lone infiltrator behind enemy lines, he would have been the first one whose throat I'd have slit at the first new moon and cloudy night, so as not to be revealed as an infiltrator.

 

Being as I am Venetian and was raised with quasi Japanese martial concepts in my formative years (bussiness is war!) it's a good thing this young man and I had different hotels and he never hung around after dark much as well as I not having a sharp stiletto on my person as a matter of course.

 

I spent the next couple of months extracting teeth. I waded through the archives of paper all intentionally mis-filed by the "managers" of HSG on site* whom were also busy disappearing boxes of documents daily. In plain view of everyone of course. Most of the documents and contracts were in German too. Of which I didn't, and still don't speak a word. Nor was I going to learn any of it. As with Afrikaans, I took an insant dislike to the language and studiously avoided trying to learn any of it. It probably had something to do with the people speaking it is my guess.

 

As I waded through the papers I nevertheless began to realise just the extent of the situation. Some things would take too long to describe (as well as would go against certain unofficial but nevertheless very binding agreements (ethically for me, probably practically for them) I made with persons that were not directly to blame for any of this crap, namely the US Navy) so I'll just give you the highlights:

 

• Some subcontractors had been hired to do specialised work with hospital gas equipment which were not qualified to do this kind of work, which requires specific permits. Interestingly they still got the job despite this essentially being illegal. And the company actually qualified to do the work also having made a bid. For about 100,000€ less than the other company.
• The project manager was not actually registered with the chamber of commerce which in Italy is breaking the law
• One of the previous project managers was wanted by the police for kidnapping because he'd locked Italian workmen into the site to "make them finish". Now you go ahead and tell me my comparisons with Nazis are inappropriate all you like...
• Certain areas of work were given out to be performed to several subcontractors. Sometimes up to 3. Yes you read that right. 3 different companies to do the same elements of work. They were all getting paid mind you. When I told a friend of mine he asked if he could get a contract for the same work too. "I mean...someone is bound to do it no?" He laughed. I had to admit it was pretty funny and I hadn't thought of it like that until he said it.
• Some of the staff employed was very interesting. One of these was the commercial manager, in theory in charge of putting all the subcontracts in place. This was interesting because he only spoke German and had the manners of a rapist grizzly from Bavaria. As well as the same general look. And most of the subcontractors were Italian and didn't speak any German. He was also paid more than 9,000 € a month plus expenses. No one knows what he actually did at a practical level.
• Then we had an Italian "store keeper/commercial buyer" kind of guy. Who ordered about 3000 bricks in one instance, which just sort of disappeared from site. Which I am sure had nothing to do with the rumors that his family was building a nice house in bricks somewhere. Or the fact that they were the wrong type of bricks for the work at the base. 

That's just the contractual issues, and not even the worst of them. Some of the Mechanical and Electrical works were the best.

•  They had this huge plant room all built to house some generators, electrical boards and so on for a large part of the complex being built. This being an American Air Force base it was all reinforced concrete, bunker style stuff. It was finally all built. Great. Except the generators were too big to get in through the door.
• One of the exhausts for the whole complex which basically jetted out air at something like 100 plus degrees at near-jet engine speeds was "designed" to throw the exhaust out into the foothpath used by nurses between stations. Nothing like a free blow-dry with your 3rd degree burns.

 

And again on the civil engineering side of things:

• Walls out of plumb by almost a metre. Yes you read that right. A wall, which supposedly was all bomb-proof that had projections of 2 to 3 feet. When I first saw it I was impressed by what I assumed was the weird construction style used to make the walls bomb-proof. One metre staggered lumps of concrete would seem to be quite effective to me. Then I asked and looked at the drawings. The wall was supposed to be flush!
• Lines of columns with a column out of the line by a metre or two.

And so on.

 

This of course says nothing of the German "management style". Let me introduce you to it.

 

First meeting witht he new team. the German project manger of Bilfinger Berger holds the meeting as an introduction and also a formalising of duties. At the meeting an engineer gets asked some questions about the layout of a section that is not his responsability. He basically says that he doesn't know because it was not his responsability and no one had asked him to look at that before but he would be happy to check and get back to the group.

The PM insisted on getting answers there and then. Which seemed odd as it would be the equivalent of asking a blind man what colour the sweater the guy next to him had on. At this point I tried to mitigate by saying I would help the engineer measure the layout that afternoon. The response of the german PM?

"NEIN! NEIN! You vill do no such ting! You vill do as I say!"

It was kind of comical because this guy looked extremely similar to Mr Bean (Rowan Atkinson) except he was serious. Because he was so comical my reaction was one of surprise as opposed to murder. Then over time it became clear:

And as a preamble here I want to apologise to those few Germans that are actually not brainwashed fuckwits (I know some exist because at least one of them worked on this site although he was from East Germany and a really cool guy, despite the fact he too wore those very suspicious round glasses.)

 

I quickly understood that German management entailed shouting. I shit you not. No hyperbole or a word of exageration.

 

Whoever shouted the loudest was the most senior manager. I saw meetings were I actually stood up and left and others were I stood up, apologised to the other people for my even being present with these fucking krauts and then left. I still wasn't fired. Which again raised you know...just the odd little warning bell. We had one meeting were an Italian sub-contractor was called in and basically shouted at for 30 minutes for being incopetent and producing shit sub-standard work after which the Italian sub-contractor calmly said:

1. I don't like your attitude.

2. You are the incompetent ones. Here are the letters and drawings requesting I build the things you have received, which are as per this letter. Which you sent. That is your signature here is it not?

 

In his shoes there is no way I would have been able to limit myself to that. He produced the letters and drawings at the same meeting along with a sample. He was about 300% right. Conservatively speaking. That's when I excused myself to the sub-contractor, apologised for even being associated to these German monkeys and left the room even though I had not said a word in the whole meeting up to that point.

 

I realised then why the Romans had referred to the Germanic tribes as Barbarians. They lead by shouting.

Watch a clip of a Hitler speech and you will see why he was the Füreher. He shouted a lot.

 

But what of the classic German skill and engineering you say? Well I wouldn't know about that. I was there a grand total of 3 months or so and by the time I left we had two "management"/office people per labourer or workman on site.

Yes.

You read that right. That is two manager types for each brick-layer. I shit you not. I counted them myself. And yes i did include every sub-contractor.

Many of the subbies were not getting paid either. Except for the Sicilians who locked a German site manager in his office and told him if he wanted to make it to Xmas he would approve their payments. From his own personal account if need be. They got paid. They had also done the work.

 

Amongst all this joyful work we were also faced with brand new site managers straight out of germany whose first order of business on day one on site was to order three cases of champagne and a washing machine for the cleaning of drinking glasses, which were also ordered by the crate. i suppose when you drink champagne on site in industrial quantities the odd glass is bound to break after all. It's only sensible you should order them by the crate.

 

One mystery that remained unsolved though was why this project was about 5 to 10 million Euro over budget and at least 18 months behind shedule with only about 30% of the work done. As long as you're not fussy about any of that 30% of it actually being you know, plumb, or level, or working, or functional.

 

While all this was going on of course the daily phone calls from my soon to be ex-wife were just the tonic to pep you up in case you were having a slightly difficult day what with realising you had been hired to take the fall when all the God-awful mess these fucking nazi wannabees had created at every level of any kind of legal, financial or contractual level. Not to even mention human or ethical. In a relationship that involved the US Navy. Only the most powerful entity this planet can muster and whose only function is basically to kill people that get in the way of US interests. Or countries that do.

I just can't tell you how heart warming the calls from the wife telling you what a complete selfish bastard you are for not being at home and working far away and not being there while we're going through this difficult period and so on are at such times. I hung up the phone a lot after it was clear that replying in kind was just a waste of breath. So she texted.

 

Yeah. Fun times. So I sat down at the base mess one day. had a little think about my situation, realised essentially I was either alone in this or could only count on my enemies. To be nearby. It was a watershed moment as it set me free to just be myself and do what comes naturally.

 

So I went to find a good lawyer and then I wrote a 7 page letter detailing many of the things I mentioned. I also made sure it was stamped received and signed for by the company secretary and placed in the file and I retained a duplicate original copy with the same signature and stamp received on it.

 

They gave me two hours to clear my desk. Which was expected, but I also had the personal satisfaction of having the German PM in my office alongside with the Irish Goblin that had hired me demanding and ordering me to sign this bit of paper that absolved them of any responsability.

 

I calmly told them to leave my office as I was busy now as I would be talking to my lawyer and not to disturb me.

They insisted. I told them to again just leave, I would not sign any such paper absolving them of any wrongdoing and they were dismissed. I kept my tone even and professional but I was so utterly dismissive and arrogant on purpose that it was truly satisfying.

 

The German PM raised his voice. This dumb fuck must have got it into his head I was one of his sheeple. Now I started to get into my element and just stared at him and told him I am not signing that or anything else.

He shouted again:

"You vill sign this NOW!"

I got sooo...calm. And looked at him straight in the eye.

"I am not going to sign that. And I want to ask you a question now. What are you going to do now, when I don't sign it?"

The way I spoke to him shocked him. I didn't raise my voice but my body language was kind of clear. I had leaned forward in my seat and had one hand on the desk in front of me and one on the armrest of the chair and I stuck my chin out as if inviting a punch. They were both standing. The room went silent. I continued.

"I tell you what you will do. You will get out of my office now and not disturb me any more until I leave this site."

Still silence. But they didn't move. Quickly. Towards the door. preferably doing little bows and flourishes as they retreated backwards, which began to irritate me.

"In about five seconds I will get up from my chair and if you are still in this room when I do then you are going out of the fucking window instead of the door. So I suggest you leave on your own legs now while you can before we find out if you can fly."

We were only on the second floor so it wouldn't have been much of a flight. But I was eager to see if he could do it nonetheless.

 

The German was just immobilised. He was shocked into a kind of rigor mortis. His grin of a second before frozen in shock. He couldn't believe this was happening I suppose. The Irish Goblin instead, sharper than any German, instinctively grasped the situation. Which was that he had no flying capacity.

He physically grabbed the German PM's arm and dragged him out saying, "Come, come, let's go now, it's fine, let's go now..."

 

And so I packed my stuff quietly. Said goodbye to the few decent people at that site and told them what had happened and that it was fine as I would be suing them. They looked horrified and as though I could infect them with the plague except for one Italian (The M&E guy) and one German (The scheduler from East Germany). The rest were so afraid that all they could do was warn me that suing them was just going to ruin me and it was not worth it and blah, blah, blah. Very sad.

 

Weirdly enough the accounting guy and I had had one meeting in the interim where I basically grilled him for information and he essentially turned out to be a smart guy in an impossible situation. He had no baseline information. The HSG site manager and his whore (they openly were in a fucked up relationship which to this day I am convinced included pissing on each other) had destroyed so much information he had no idea of what the baseline was. He had some running costs and projections that essentially were no better than a witch doctor throwing bones because without a baseline to measure them against it was just a best guess based on unverifiable expenses that could not be allocated to much of anything for what we had to show for it.

And apparently he was freelance. Turns out the über-nazi-poster-child was actually just competent. I shook his hand when I left. It was somewhat reminiscent of two mercenaries shaking hands despite being hired by different factions. I wished him luck and meant it and he thanked me.

 

I also told the poor American side (the US Navy) that owned the base in which these cluster-fuck Germans crapped like epileptic chickens that I was very sorry about this whole situation and that I would be suing the fucked up conglomerate of Bilfinger Berger/HSG in order to protect my good name. I also made it very clear that I had absolutely nothing against the US Navy, which actually ran the place, what with them being the biggest and most powerful entity on this planet. I made it VERY clear my fight was with BB/HSG and not them. And that I hoped I had a long and happy life, because in the unfortunate event of me having a bad accident, a whole bunch of shit I had taken copies of would magically appear all over the place around the world and that could be a tad uncomfortable for everyone. I said it exactly like that and the Americans being a practical bunch of people remained very quiet and wished me luck and shook my hand too.

 

Fast forward five years and I am now in the office of a judge with my lawyer and the head of HSG and his lawyer and a judge. Long story short:

A few months ago I got 25,000 Euro. The lawyer fees ate up about 10,000 Euro and we kind of fell out a little bit because he'd promised me a maximum fee of 4,000 and a period of 2 years "tops". So multiply by 2.5 when dealing with lawyers I learnt.

But still. I paid off all my credit cards and still had a little money in the bank.

 

***

So I was ready to start a different line of work now and I had hired a guy to build a web-site for me to this effect. I had hired him in July of 2008. Told him what to do, and paid him. It was now April of 2009 and the site was still not working properly.

Long story short again.

Guess which incompetent or fradulent or evil web "designer" is going to appear in court soon.

 

But it's not a bad ending readers. I found another designer. A good one this time. And very soon in the scheme of these things the site he has done will be up and running fully. It already kind of is. I just need to add a bit more content and then, then dear readers I will fill you all in on where it is and my internet home will move there.

But you'll still all be able to comment, in fact even if you are not a vox member, and it will be probably more entertaining than this blog ever was as well as a lot more useful in general. My experiment of self-exposure when I first started this blog will soon be coming to an end and a new era of fun shall begin. In part, all helped by the money I got from being my own, devious, evil, but ultimately ethical self.

 

A beauty of the settlement? I have no gag order on me. And it's all documented, so when the italian version of the IRS eventually catches up to those fucked up Germans and my name comes up? Guess what. I'll be happy to testify against them if it ever comes up. My record is clean.

Which makes me wonder...what on Earth ever possesed those dumb fuck Germans to think they could ever get me to be their patsy?? They just have no damn history these people do they? Venice was a city state for more than a thousand years and resisted the Italians, the Ottoman Empire and the church. Which pretty much no one else has done. What are a bunch of shouty krauts going to do? 

That alone gets them the title of barbarians. And idiots.

I often say that 25 years in Africa did not make me racist; but 3 months with the Germans sure did!**

 

So stay tuned for an eventual epilogue to this whole story but not just yet. 

Ok Earthlings. Feel free to give me a five star review now that your popcorn is all eaten and the lights are back on. Don't mind the zap gun in my hand...I need it to count votes of brilliance! 

 

 

* This was essentially composed of an alcoholic, chain-smoking duet made up of the site manager, who looked like a Nazi sergeant skin-head and his crack whore, the secretary who looked like a skanky, dirty blonde, over the hill, crack whore. Also chain smoking and also alcoholic. And when I say skanky I mean she was skanky for a crack whore. Which fit perfectly with the personality and attitude of the site manager. And yes they were in a "relationship". I say "relationship" because I truly believe their couplings were really more reminiscent of a satanist black mass mixed with an exorcism complete with much scatological goings on and projectile vomiting directly into each other's rectums. 

**This applies to German men mostly. I only met one German woman in my life really and she was nice enough and kissed softly.