April 2003 dateline Beijing---

So a Frenchman, a German, and an American get caught doing something wrong and are about to be executed.

"Any last requests." asks the gunman? 

"Oui," says the Frenchman, "I want to sing the Marseillaise one last time." 

"Javohl," says the German, "I want one last time to give my lecture on Kyoto, the UN, and US Imperialism."  

The gunman then turns to the American and says, "So, any last requests from you?"

"Yeah", answers the American, "Please shoot me first so I don't have to listen to that damn song or hear that damn lecture again."

Well I messed up the German's lines a little bit but that's pretty much exactly as it appeared on the front page of The
International Herald Tribune which I happened to be reading last week in a bar in Beijing, China; The Pig and Whistle Pub, part of Holiday Inn's Lido complex we stay in when laying over in the Chinese capitol. Usually its packed with chummy briefcase toting expats babbling into cellphones and those party members who seem a bit more equal than the others, but this evening, as SARS engulfed the Middle Kingdom, even the plethora of buxom Mongolian callgirls was absent. Just me and the bartenders. 

Service was great! I was antiseptically reading the local party rag, The China Daily, full of perky fluff about happy, healthy peasants, anti-Americanism, and NBA Playoff highlights. The Chinese barmaid abruptly says to me, "Why you read that?, There's nothing in that. You go read Herald Tribune!", and she shoved her copy over to me. Well this was so humorous I burst out laughing, ordered another Guinness, and did as I was commanded by her, which led to the Frenchman joke I lead off with. This turned into a fun exercise of trying to explain that geopolitical gag to the very nice Barmaids, with me singing the Marseillaise, mouthing a Deutsch accent, and pantomiming pulling a trigger. Much fun, amid quizzical stares and animated Chinese chatter,  but they seemed to enjoy it.

Now some of you may be wondering at my cavalier stupidity, hanging out at some bar in plague soaked Beijing. Ah, but you see from my years of of hardfought experience doing this, I've learned one thing you don't know---Chinese don't drink Guinness! They are lager boys, poofta's from the word go, and since Guinness gets poured into it's own special type of pint glass (Lagers into another type), SARS wise I figure I'm golden. I'm sure its a relief to know that this is the quality of logic going on in the heads of the guys who drive you around in airplanes. It follows of course that if this plague had hit Ireland and this Pub was in Dublin, I'd be a dead man. QED.

My co-pilot for this 12 day trip was a new guy, a rookie to Asia. A big fat fun time dog from Ohio, looking almost exactly like dead comedian Chris Farley of of Saturday Night Live fame, and also famous as the moronic boyfriend of Cindy Conehead in the Conehead's movie. Picture me as Homer Simpson to complete the pair and you've got a good workable mental image of our crew. The moment I met John I knew I was in trouble as his bloated corpulence proudly advertised his affection for the keg.

Of our upcoming journey into disease ridden Hong Kong and Beijing the following stanza crossed my mind as motto:  into the valley of death rode the 600 pounds (give or take a few), but I couldn't figure out how to use that till now:)

On April 13th I had my miserable 8 hour simulator torture training session, in prep for the even more odious annual checkride the next day. The following morning I met my co-pilot and began the trip with an 10 hour leg to Inchon, Korea. He was amazed to be flying over Russia for hours on end, which really is amazing when you consider the changes in the world since the wall came down. Even more startling to John was talking to Pyongyang controllers while transiting an offshore NK airways route segment between the Russians and the South Korean's.

It has always been fascinating to me that the Nork controllers have better English in general than the South Korean's yet John didn't believe me until finding out for himself half an hour later. Sadly this trip we had a parcel of yelping beagles on board, bound as I understand it, for research. They were barking the whole way, and as I am partial to Beagles, it was way mournful. For dinner----I had the chicken.

Flying down to the Philippines the next day was a big improvement. It was quite clear and one of the Japanese volcanic islands was mildly smoking. During that stretch I was able to pick up decent Armed Forces Radio on the ADF for a few hundred miles. 

Their programing is very hit and miss, and its not unusual to catch an hour of say Doctor Laura followed by an hour of NPR, but this noon we caught Petty officer so and so broadcasting heavy metal 80's tunes to the troops, so my man John, (being of a later generation than I) was elated to be checking out his first smoking volcano at 35 grand, all to the tunes of Axel Rose and Arrowsmith. (810 Yakota, 1575 Iwakuni, 648 Kadena---check it out!)  (And 1530 or 1440 if in Korea, while 1044 and 567 are the AM channels to get your Rock fix if in Hong Kong.)

NaturalIy I went way up in his estimation this day I can tell you, but of course that ain't hard what with the help of Black Sabbath: "Duh duh duhn-duhn-duhn, deedle-deedle-deedle duhn-duhn, duhn-duhn...etc."

During our Philippine stay, being an old native, I hired a taxi and took him and some other guys over to a place where we were surrounded by a couple dozen monkeys suspiciously inquisitive about our business.That enthralled everyone.

Then we drove up to a bizarre few acres of tall jungle trees which were covered with probably a thousand enormous wing flappin', screeching fruit bats, dangling upside down above our heads. Most are close to the size of turkeys, just huge, and amazing to see. They flap upside down in daytime to cool themselves, then launch at dusk in humongous flocks to feed, and return to their upside down perches around dawn.  There appeared less than I remembered from decades previous, but I had recently read in Science News how the localized variety of Parkinson's Disease that had been striking Guamanians for generations had finally been tracked down to their eating Guamanian Fruit Bats, whose favorite food happens to be the neuro-toxic Cycad palm fruit. Oliver Sacks had just unraveled this mystery, so now the Philippines was exporting Fruit Bats to Guam supper tables. Since Philippine Fruit Bats eat regular fruit, that seemed the reason in the diminution of but numbers I noticed. Anyhow, still an amazing natural spectacle to see. I hit one on a low level 20 years back and crushed the radome of the plane I was flying, so frequently I show new guys the bats simply as a caution to get them to consider to take off over the water in the opposite direction of where these fruit bats usually head to feed. 

At Magellan's oceanside bar we watched as a handful of natives sunk a beautifully painted up old airplane into Subic Bay, in order they told me to make an artificial reef, but especially to give the visiting Taiwanese Gambling Tourists something else to scuba-dive on, besides the old military troopships sunk in WW2. To me Subic was uneventful, but to rookie John it approached the wonders of Disneyland. Onward to Beijing.

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