Chilled Monkey's Brains...

Big break from blogging so to bring you up to date, 2 entries. Entry #1 is on a 5 week stint in Linz, Austria. Highlights & lowlights (you decide which is which):
- Nicknaming the 2 Denises Große Denis and Kleine Denis (Big Denis and Little Denis)
- Watching Christof, our youngest team member, react to English jokes told by our British colleagues – listening, listening, pause, thinking ‘this must be the end of the joke’, thinking ‘I don’t get it’, thinking ‘It is polite to laugh when people tell jokes’ & then laughing. You could actually see this all on his face. It was heaps funnier than the actual jokes.
- Finding out all sorts of disgusting things about guys that they discuss with each other when there are no girls around. Consultants are even more disgusting than Cat guys!
- Working a median of 13 hours a day and not being able to try the steak in the hotel that the guys kept recommending as we were eating dinner at ~9.30-10pm each night. I eventually got to try it and it came well done when I asked for medium (still very nice).
- Being the mantelpiece for Steve to rest his elbow, my shoulder being at exactly the right height for him (he is 14 inches taller than I am! Not as tall as Marcelo but still very tall!)
- Meeting a fascinating Austrian man who talks non-stop and has travelled to China extensively. His best 2 anecdotes were:
o One time when he was due to travel to China, he had terrible back pain. He went anyway and was in such pain that he could barely get off the plane. His Chinese colleague suggested an old man could help him and this guy would not charge any money if it didn’t work. So, the old man came and put his hands above his back (chi gong) and determined that he had ‘blockages’. He then proceeded to stick him full of needles (he says that anyone who tells you that acupuncture doesn’t hurt is lying!) The whole time, he had the same thing running through his mind – this isn’t going to work, this isn’t going to work…When the old man had finished, he told him to lie on the bed until the next morning, at which time he would return and would either: 1) get paid for work well done, 2) do it all again (!) or 3) leave without pay. The next morning, he gingerly got up and didn’t feel any pain. He has not felt any back pain since!
o This second anecdote is PG rated. Another time he was in China he was taken to a restaurant where they had little holes in the middle of the tables. A live monkey was brought out and shoved into the hole so that only its head was above the table top. The waiter brought out a big knife and thwuck! He sliced off the top of the monkey’s head. The people then proceeded to eat the monkey’s brain while the monkey was still alive. Urgh! He felt obligated to try some as he was the guest and almost threw up. Urban legends abound but this is the first time I have met anyone who has actually done it.
- Watching our boss take down the entire team in arm wrestling, even the young guys who thought they were pretty buff.
- Taking 2 team mates home after they threw up in the restaurant from too many schnapps. The whole of the next morning, the project room stank of alcohol exuding from everyone’s pores.
- Going to my first Christmas Market, a little one in Linz, and trying gleuwein (just a small sip – it’s yuck) and kinder punsch (non-alcoholic!)
Some photos of the team are in the usual place.

I also caught up with Jenny (Harry wasn’t able to make it) in London. We visited the Portrait Gallery, which still hasn’t grown on me yet and she recommended the Wallace Collection to me. I went there the following weekend and found that it is another of London’s free museums. It was the private collection of a rich family who, over about 5 generations, collected an amazing amount of art, including pieces from Catherine the Great’s most famous dinner set, furniture & ceramics from the French Royal family (they have 6 of 36 ladies’ chairs that were commissioned just before the French Revolution and so were never used) and paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Rubens & Gainsborough. The family died out at the turn of the century and they gifted their mansion & its contents to the nation. They managed to collect such pieces because of their wealth and also due to timing – they bought French Royal family pieces at around the Revolution in a fire-sale when such things were not fashionable to own.

In other news, my gold Corolla is no more. Ma was sideswiped by a semitrailer and then crashed into a truck. No injuries but no more car either.
I also hear that Ye Ye is ill. At 89, he has done very well so far with little health issues. Wishing him all the best.