Gallipoli

We stayed in the small seaside town of Chanakakle (pronounced Shan-a-car-lay) for a couple of nights.  The town has a very nice waterfront area with lots of cafes and restaurants near the ferry terminal.  A big attraction is the horse from the movie “Troy”.

We took the ferry in the morning over to the peninsula where we engaged the services of a taxi driver who would also be our guide for the next 6 hours. There are plenty of tours but we wanted to be more in control of where and how much time we spent at various locations.
First stop was the beach where the Anzacs were meant to land.  It was a long beach with a small strip of sand leading into scrub land.  No cliffs, no big dunes, nothing.  There may have been quite a different outcome had it not been for the currents which swept the landing boats 2 miles down the coast to what is now known as Anzac Cove.

This little beach is an entirely different proposition. The hills and sheer cliffs give a commanding view over this beach. There is no cover and once past the beach the sandy cliffs and ridges would be incredibly difficult to negotiate.  When you consider these guys were also carrying a 25 kilo backpack and a heavy rifle it must have been terribly hard and the terror level of being machine gunned the whole time must have driven them mad.

Standing on the beach it made me wonder why they didn’t simply get back in the boats and row down to the correct landing place under the cover of night.

Up on the ridges there is a bitumen road which runs through what was no mans land.  At one point there are remains of both Turkish and Australian trenches. The closeness to each other is chilling.

In fact looking over the entire battlefield from the vantage point of the Lone Pine Memorial it is immediately apparent exactly how small the entire area is. The Anzacs at most controlled a couple of hundred metres of ridges and gullies.  The smallness of it all takes one by surprise as it is not at all apparent when filtering all ones knowledge of Gallipoli through old black and white newsreels.

Not all the big sacrifices were on the side of the allies. We went to the scene of a battle where the Turks had run out of ammunition and were under heavy attack form the Australians.  The Turks were beginning to withdraw back toward Attaturks head quarters.  Attaturk saw this happening and ran down to the fighting to see what was going on.  When he learned they were out of ammo he gave them a rousing pep talk and told them he was not ordering them to fight, he was ordering them to die for their country.

They turned and went back to the battle with bayonets fixed and rejoined the fight.  Over 300 died in the next hour.

They did hold the line and supplies and reinforcements arrived shortly after.   Looking at their graves, I noted many of them were only 18.

Overall the experience of going to Gallipoli was well worth it in order to gain a better understanding and to see the scale of the area. It was emotional and I can imagine on Anzac Day it could be overwhelming.  It is disappointing the amount of trash visitors leave, the roads built by the Turks also are irritating and more could have been done to preserve trenches.

On the other hand the cemeteries are pretty well cared for and the Turks do show a lot of respect.  The experience did give me a feeling of having connected with my grandfather whom I never met and that was worth it for me.

This boring stopover gave them a lot of time to kill so they decided to also kill some brain cells with copious amounts of rum and cola.  i have to say cola because coke didn’t pay me to use their name even though I was offering the sponsorship deal really quite cheaply.

Anyway I digress, in case you didn’t notice.

So there we were knocking back rums like they were going out of style when finally our flight is called.

Being three of us and being in Qantas economy we sat three abreast on the left hand side of the 747. As soon as everyone was settled and the hostie (political correct term is apparently, flight attendant like they have something to do with flying the plane) came by we ordered more rumbo!

I love those little bottles of booze, they make me feel like a giant.

In no time we were pressing the buzzer again for more rum.

Bzzzz

More rum

Bzzz

More rum

Finally the hostie gets smart or really stupid or maybe just plain lazy and she starts just dropping off three bottles each every time we buzz her.  We don’t even have to say anything to her anymore, which is pretty convenient because by now we can hardly talk anyway.

Eventually it becomes time for sleep.  We’ve already kept everyone else awake with our drunken jibbering.
Now in the olden days when Qantas still gave economy passengers a few little freebies to make the journey a little more comfortable they included the eye mask.  With this eye mask came a round sticker which you could place on the eye mask which read in large letters, DO NOT DISTURB

Now I didn’t want some rude bastard or misguided hostie waking me out of my alcohol induced coma by waking me so I made sure I had the do not disturb sticker prominently mounted on my eye patch for all the world to see.  Well everyone around 45c anyway.

Once all snuggled up in my blue Qantas blanky I instantly dropped off into my rum fueled dream land, fully expecting not to be conscious again until LA was well and truly in sight.

Imagine my utter annoyance when I’m roused from my drunken slumber by just way too much noise from directly behind me.  Groan. What the hell is going on.  Bumping the back of my seat even, do these people have no sense of courtesy whatsoever!

This is simply just too much.

Having a brain the size of a planet (or is that plant) I figure that the best way to get back to my slumber is to not engage my giant brain in what is going on around me.  I would be much better to leave it turned off.  So without removing my sleep mask I peel off the sticker with the giant DO NOT DISTURB white on black lettering and stick it to my finger.

I then hold up my arm with said sticker attached to finger and wave it around prominently.  Wow, what a brilliant idea that was, I could even hear a universal instant quiet and everyone even had an involuntary intake of air.  Good! I thought smugly to myself, they’ve all realised, finally that they have been way too loud and were in peril of coming dangerously close to waking me up.

Without a further thought I plunged back into darkness.

Sometime later, presumably we were in sight of LA, I woke from my sleep and carefully, tentatively peeled off my sleep mask and blanky. After stretching and yawning like a well satisfied cat, I looked around and surveyed my surroundings.

One thing which I was noticing was the overtly hostile looks from the passengers across the aisle and even the hostie who walked by jobbing carelessly in the side of the head with her arm.  I’m sure that was by accident.

I turned to my traveling companions who were always jolly company to find they too had very strange looks on their faces.  Mind you, I should explain, these fellows pretty much always had strange looks on their faces, but on this ocassion they were not the friendly happy faces I expected to see.

No, indeed they were rather stern and decidedly unfriendly.

What has happened I wondered.

Let me see… everyone was happy and jolly when I last saw them, just as I was putting on my sleep mask and yet here they all are looking rather like a lynch mob.

I leaned over to my companions and said “Um.. whats up, what’s the problem?”

Now one of these guys is my cousin, David who is one of the easiest guys in the world to get along with and so when he’s showing signs of wanting to flush me down the nearest crapper, you know there is a problem.

David says “You remember last night when you were having your little beauty nap, all the noise and commotion behind us?”

“Yeah” I say “How rude was that? Nearly waking me up!”

“you remember how you put your little do not disturb sign on your finger and held it up for everyone to see?”

Rather proudly I reply, “Yeah that was a good idea wasn’t it, got everyone to shut up”

“Well arsehole” says David “The guy behind you was having a heart attack and the crew, including the pilot were trying to save his life”

Reporting to you from Paradise Island.  The weather is not terrific but I guarantee you it’s a lot better than what’s going on in North America and Europe!

Last night we took a night off from partying and actually got up at a reasonable hour. Kris walked into town to buy a power cord and charger for his laptop because a certain Russian woman threw his away in Florida.  When he got back we decided to go on the water slides here at Atlantis.

I have to tell you, these slides are legendary.

We went on a what could only be called an entry level one which twisted and turned in the dark and eventually spat you out into a clear tube which goes through a shark pool. It was really cool to be surrounded by sharks while floating in a tube. We were pretty amazed to see that some of the sharks had learnt to rest on top of the tube carrying us.

Next was the highest scariest slide ever.  It’s from the top of the Inca temple in the picture. The scariest part, apart from the sheer angle is that once you start the slide you actually leave the slide and become airborne.  Now that’s really scary, especially as you look down and see you have to go through a entry hole into a tube. I was just hoping that somehow I would go in the hole.  I did.

Once again you slide throuh the shark tank but the speed this time is way to fast to notice anything except the needles of water smashing into your face.

I was pretty proud of having down this ride cause last time I was here I pussied out.

Guess having your son in line behind you gives you courage you didn’t know you had

Shark Slide the Bahamas

That’s the slide in the middle of that temple type building

It was some time since I had tested myself and so while here in Fuquay Varina, North Carolina, I figured I better look into replacing the meter.  We went down to one of the two Wal Marts that service this small town.  They both run 24/7 and are about as big as two Bunnings put together.  On a side note it’s worth checking out the people of Wal Mart

If you are not familiar with Wal Mart they are gigantic and sell pretty much everything and at low low prices.

They of course had a huge range of meters and I could not believe that I found one exactly the same as the one I lost except for a different brand name on it.  It cost $9!

So I went home and test myself. Pricked my finger, got a drop of blood and put it on the test strip and waited the 5 seconds. Up came the result! I totally freaked out at how high the level was.  I was thinking my blood must be like syrup.

This was really bad, I didn’t want to start losing limbs so instantly I went into panic mode and prescribed myself a new dose of my medication.  Clearly I had not been taking enough or for some reason it just wasn’t working as well anymore.  Best to quadruple the daily dosage. Brilliant thinking!

For the last 3 days I’ve been taking four times the normal dose of Diabex trying to get the level down to what would be considered normal.

In addition I’ve not been eating in an attempt to also bring it down.  I’ve only had a few meal replacement shakes and water.

Yesterday I was feeling really sick and threw up, which was not nice as my stomach was empty.  I did feel a lot better and had a pasta meal for dinner.

When I tested myself first thing this morning it read 15.6 which is not good.  This had me really concerned so I thought I should read the manual which came with the meter.  I noticed that on the cover of the manual it had a picture of the meter showing a reading of 10.5  I thought, that’s not a very good reading either.  It should be around 4 to 8 After I read the manual and found no further clue I searched on Google.  I went to the American Diabetes Association site and it was talking about readings above 300! What the heck! Had I gone into one of those parallel universes…again?

Slowly it dawned on me.

Maybe, just maybe the US uses a different scale to Australia and no doubt the rest of the world.

I did some more quick googling and sure enough that was the case.

So rather than reading 15.6 the meter was really reading 156  The US uses a scale of mg/dl (milligrams/deciliter) the rest of the world uses a scale of mmol/l ( millimoles/litre)

I found a site that does the conversion.  My blood sugar level is fine and I can stop freaking out and over dosing on the meds.

Thought I was gonna die there for a minute..

Today I happened to be in the parking lot of my gym and came across an old cadillac which the owner had apparently mistaken for either a garbage truck or a rubbish bin.

I kid you not, this thing was choc a bloc full of trash except for the drivers seat. I mean, who doesn’t love trash, but this is excessive don’t you think?

Trash Cadillac

Pim'd Da Caddy

Travelling on a budget I headed to the shuttle desk rather than grabbing a stretch limo as I have done in the past for the ride into Manhattan.

While waiting for the shuttle to arrive I bought a gingerbread latte at Starbucks.  Yes I know it’s gay and I only tell you as a warning not to get one, they suck.

Eventually the shuttle arrived and we were off…well we were off to the next terminal to pick up some more passengers and then we were off…to the next terminal..

Finally we we on our way and we went over the Queensboro Bridge which was interesting and my first time.

I was trying to figure out if I was going to be first or last on the drop offs.  I was going to East 14th Street in Midtown to the Union Square Inn.

In Singapore I was the last to be dropped off and it had taken a couple of hours.  I wasn’t keen on doing that again, so I was lobbying the driver to drop me first, which really impressed everyone else hahahaha

Amazingly, I was second and hustled into the small frontage “boutique hotel”.  I’m fairly certain at sometime in it’s history this hotel would have been renting rooms by the hour.

I lugged my giant new suitcase up the steps and into the lobby.  I gave the gal behind the counter my name and card. she told me my room was on the 5th floor and that there were no elevators. Great! The investment in this giant new suitcase was really beginning to pay off.

The next thing really floored me.  She handed me an envelope addressed to me!  I flipped it over to see who had sent it . The senders address was in New Zealand and I’m certain I would never give anyone in NZ my address.  But I was confused how did this person know I was staying at this hotel in New York, hardly anyone knew.

I shoved the letter in my heavy winter coat pocket and grabbed my laptop and my giant new suitcase and struggled up to the 5th floor.  Luckily Kris had made me walk so much over the last few months and luckily most buildings in eastern europe have no elevators so staggering up stairs is something I’m getting pretty ok with. but I tell you the giant new suitcase did make it tough and I had to buy some oxygen halfway up or was that cocaine?

Finally found the room and was amazed at how small it was.  Smaller even than the one I stayed in when I was in Tokyo.

The letter was at the front of my mind so I opened it up and pulled out the contents. My mind went into meltdown when I realised what I was looking at.  It was a letter from an obviously very young child and it started with Dear Daddy. About a million questions flooded into my brain!!

Who was this kid? Who did I know in NZ?  More to the point who did I know in NZ that would have sex with me? How old was this kid? Did I have sex with someone in that time frame?

All night I tossed and turned wondering about all these questions.  Standing in the shower the next morning I finally remembered… I had a vasectomy in 1996… why oh why hadn’t I thought of that before!!

I dressed quickly and went down to reception and asked the clerk to check the registry for another Don Reid. Bingo! He had been there a few weeks before me.

I’ve never even met someone with the same name as me so the odds he would stay in the same hotel as me in New York can only prove he’s a cheap bastard too!

don reid letter from new zealand

The flight was a code share on a British Airways plane.  My flight was going from terminal 5 which is brand new and absolutely huge.

I figured that i would give the automatic check in machine a go so I whipped out my passport and my ticket info printout.  I entered the relevant information and was promptly told by the computer that it could not help me in anyway and that I should go to the “Assistance” counter.

This is where my whole day went downhill.

When I think back it had started out so nicely; nice blue sky, a walk and a coffee and paper reading in Starbucks.  A bit of a walk along Buckingham Palace Road

All the niceness of the day was dashed and kicked to the gutter when the woman behind the counter said there was something wrong with the ticket and I need to go up to section 13 and see them in ticketing.

So off I hiked to the ticket people.  I have a lifetime Qantas club membership which allows me to use business and first class check ins so i used them at the ticket section. Apparently the BA guy had a problem with this and was ranting and raving on about first class. I looked around and I was holding up exactly … no one.

I asked him to help me out rather than go on about the first class thing.

I showed him my Qantas card which seemed to appease him a little.  He clicked a few things on the computer and then said that Qantas had not issued the ticket properly or that it was not complete. none of this made any sense to me because the printout Qantas had issued said it was confirmed.

Because he liked me so much he said “nothing I can do about it mate, you will have to talk to Qantas about it”

I asked him what their number was because I had no idea. He suggested I ring the number on the back of the qantas card … yeah..that was a 1300 number in Australia.

I let him know I had a prepaid phone with about 50 pence left on it

Finally he got off his fat arse and got a number for me.

off I went to call them and was promptly put on hold for 7 minutes.  I hung up and sent a text to Alex asking him to put some credit on the phone for me.  what a champ in a few minutes it had 10 quid on it!

I decided it would be better to try BA again.  Nope, that was useless but they did suggest going around to Terminal 3 where Qantas was located.

So I went down to the basement and found the train station and boarded.  nice modern train. Found a seat and dialed up Qantas as we had a few minutes before we were ready to go.

Soon as a human answered I asked him not to put me on hold.  I went through the story of having booked online and using my points. He was ok. He found the problem, just as the train pulle dout of the station on its way to Terminal 3.  No matter I felt much better cause this guy was going to sort it all out.

He told me that when Qantas had gone to process my debit card to pay for the taxes on the ticket it had been declined.  Oh I said, gosh  that’s never happened to me before!  hahahahah

Anyway if I could give him a card number he would process it right now and get my ticket issued in time for me to catch the flight to New york.

Halfway through giving him my card number we hit a deep spot and the phone connection was lost…

I nearly cried like a little girl

I grabbed by incredibly heavy new big suitcase, laptop, and heavy winter coat and struggled to terminal 3 looking for Qantas.

Nowhere… I asked at the staff at an airline that I’ve never heard of. They had no idea. I went to BA and asked them. They directed me to BA ticketing at the end of the hall and said that BA ticketing handled all the Qantas tickets.

Can you feel my hatred of that jerk back at BA ticketing in Terminal 5?

By now I’m dragging all my stuff and am holding my phone to my ear talking to Qantas.  I’m going through it all again with a new girl.

I’m talking to her and to the lady at the BA ticket counter.  BA cannot help me, it’s all down to Qantas.  Are they going to come good and issue the ticket cause time is running out fast.

YES!  The ticket is issued and the BA gal even holds a seat for me on the flight.

At least the train ride back to terminal 5 was more relaxed.

The BA club was excellent and I used and abused it and the flight was excellent as well.

This all goes to show there is no way around paying taxes