16 January 2005
Getting ready for Antarctica
'You must really hate the cold,' said the assistant at the baker. Apparently not far north of here, where her father lived, it was -52C.
Down at the supermarket the cashier looked in a puzzled way at the note I gave him, and to my surprise went to find someone to check whether he could accept it.
'I'm sorry,' he said when he came back. 'We don't accept Hong Kong dollars.'
The note hadn't struck me as foreign in any way, and in fact when I'd come across it while leafing through papers on my desk I'd congratulated myself on finding a useful sum of money. I really need to sort out both my brain and my wallet, which on further investigation also included receipts from New Zealand and China, and a Moscow metro ticket.
I must say this next trip is daft. Although I'm travelling at the invitation of the tour company, I've had to pay half price for an airfare to Buenos Aires, spend hundreds on cold weather kit, and there'll be other overheads in Buenos Aires, Ushuaia. Despite a commission from a major in-flight magazine, and some others from Canadian newspapers, this is going to be a very unprofitable trip.
So I suppose I should stop writing this and starting pitching to more papers.
I really must give up the vice of replying to China queries on public message boards on the Internet. In most cases people simply don't want to hear anything other than that which goes along with their existing prejudices, and arguing with dimwits who've made single trips to China within the cocoon of a tour group yet are determined that makes them experts (while the replies from real experts are 'only opinions'), who cannot follow a logical argument, and who cannot prevent themselves from descending rapidly into abuse of other posters, is possibly the single most unprofitable way I've ever found to spend my time.
Going back to the Antarctic kit, it does seem odd to be shopping and making plans before a trip. Usually when people ask me a few days before a trip whether I'm packed I just look at them blankly. Usually I do a little bit of packing the night before, and finish off in the morning. What would be the point of doing it earlier? For most of the places I go it's not as if forgetting something would be a disaster since it's all in the shops, and usually cheaper than here. This difference of attitude is just one of the many ways in which travelling for a living differs from taking the annual holiday or the 'trip of a lifetime'.
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