Tailgating trucks

Says the man in China.....

But yes. It never ceases to amaze me, for a start, how few people stay a safe distance from the car in front. We often go to a market on Sunday. It's a 20-mile journey, of which about 3 miles is dual-carriageway, and about 13 miles is on a motorway. I can't remember the last time I did the journey there and back without seeing at least one three-car accident, always because people were driving too close to the car in front of them. Not only do they stay too close to the car in front; the drivers also consistently fail to look through or past the car in front to see what's going on ahead of it.

At least with a car you can usually see through it or round it. You can't do that with trucks.

 

I'm sure that you've sat, teeth and buttocks clenched, staring wide-eyed through the windscreen as someone else drove you through China, though.

I often find it amazing in such circumstances how ineffective the invisible brake pedal in the passenger footwell can be.

Same for me. I've been rear-ended, though, by a teenager who was fiddling his radio, and by a woman who was taking a group of mentally-disabled kids and who was understandably distracted by an emergency in her car.

Once when we got a taxi into Shanghai from Pudong Airport, I commented on the fact that we hadn't seen any accidents on the motorway, which was a first. We were just sliding onto the exit ramp. My wife side, "I bet when we come round the corner, there'll be an overturned truck full of chickens and they'll be running all over the road." We came round the corner..... and she was right! It was quite spooky.

Is that PriusChat autocorrect thing autocorrecting again?

I shall try writing the proper English word to see.

Tyre.

EDIT:

Oh, good grief! Yes, it is!

It's T Y R E. Which I'm sure is what you wrote if you say you were pandering.

The autocorrect is racist!

 

This is why I have scrupulously avoided the popular "My favourite ports in Lebanon" thread in FHoPancakes, and the "I have bought a used Gen II in Cyprus, but need to get it to my home in Qana - which port should I use?" thread in the Gen II forum. It would just frustrate me.

I'd be surprised.... We've given up on imperialism.

But it would be fun to see a British sport forum discuss the Boston Red Socks, the Chicago White Socks, the Utah Tuneless Nonsense, the Dallas Shepherds and the New England Separatist Traitors.

 

Another forum I used to visit didn't change spellings, but would star out swear words, even if they were part of other words, much to the annoyance of everyone who lived in S****horpe in the East of England.

 

No. Lots and lots of people I very much like and respect love it, but I find in insufferably dull.

I just don't get it. This doesn't mean it is bad, of course - just that it's not for me.

I haven't seen Birdman, but it sounded to me like the Jazz of films, and thus not really my thing either.

 

The opening theme was one of the draws for me in regards to Cowboy Bebop - Wikipedia.

 

In Hong Kong a decade or two ago, the missus and me took a taxi from Kowloon into the New Territories via a twisting mountain road with endless blind corners. Suspect the driver was a fatalist believing he could only die on a preordained day as yet unknown to him as he sped round these blind curves on the wrong side of the road dodging any opposing traffic with little room to spare.

We learnt about tightly clenching from that! Got him to drop us off in the wilderness a few miles short of our destination as we were unprepared for an underwear change.

 

From your description, I suspect that that was the road I used to commute on, in minibuses driven by psychopaths - I lived in the New Territories and worked on HK Island. The minibus drivers were far scarier than the taxi drivers. Many, I suspect, were off their heads on speed. They'd weave in and out of the traffic, with one hand constantly on their walkie-talkies, talking to the other drivers and starting every sentence with "屌你老母" (Diu lei lo mo - Google it. Minibus drivers would use this as an interjection or pause, like we would use "erm".)

While HK taxi drivers can be ... ummm .... eccentric, HK has by far the least-scary driving in Greater China. In fact, I'd say that it has the least-scary driving in Asia, apart from Japan, Singapore and Myanmar.

 

When I was stationed in the Marines on Okinawa, there were stories of some fellow Marines who would get in a cab with one behind the driver and one riding shotgun. Once on the road, the one behind the driver would reach up and pin the driver's arms and the other would stomp on the accelerator and handle steering. Alcohol was often involved.

Bob Wilson

 

Possibly the same route, but when I was in Sek Kong the minibuses didn't attempt route TWISK over Tai Mo Shan (Tai Mo Shan is the highest peak in Hong Kong, with an elevation of 957 m. It is also the tallest coastal peak in Southern China and second tallest coastal peak in China after Mount Lao). Route TWISK was constructed by the Japanese during WW2 using prisoners of war for labor. The name is an acronym of the start and end of the road, Tuen Wan (North of Kowloon) Into Sek Kong. The public service transport was a double decker #51 bus and the ride was similarly white-knuckled, particularly if you rode the top deck!

 

Ah, no. Not the same route, then - mine was the road to Sai Kung.

Route Twisk is a fun road. And Tai Mo Shan is great: we used to drive up it for picnics, because the views are fantastic.

Were you in the RAF?

 

Yes, the new territories had few of the luxuries of Kowloon or Central. My friend was in charge of Heliservices HK on Sek Kong airfield near Kam Tin, so I was luck enough to get free lifts to Central from time to time. Quite an experience to fly between the high-rises and low level over the harbour with clearance from Kai Tak ATC. Pull up a sandbag and I'll tell you a story.....

 

Did taxi drivers often refuse to take marines?

 

Ahha.

The New Territories did, however, have the luxury of space. We had a three-storey house in Sai Kung, which is something that would be impossible on HK Island or Kowloon.

I suspect we have very few degrees of separation: a lot of plane and helicopter pilots used to live in Sai Kung.

Once - it might have been the first year we were going out - I bought my wife a helicopter tour of HK. It is, I think, one of the best places in the world for helicopter sightseeing, because with the mountains and the skyscrapers and the sea, it's so much more 3D than your average city.

So did you live in HK for long?

 

Lucky you. We had a 2 bedroom 2nd floor flat (married quarters) close by a pig farm, a couple of duck farms and a disused fish farm. The aromas were never an acquired scent, even on high pressure, high humidity, still -air days which could last nearly a week!

I never forgot the way they used to leave dead pigs out on the roadside sprinkled with lime powder for the daily refuse trucks. Without enough wallows for the pigs to cool off in, fatalities were a regular occurrence, so if you saw one on the sidewalk ahead of you, advice was to cross the road to get past. However as the sun rose, decomposition accelerated and the gasses, unable to escape inflated the carcass like a helium balloon. A colleague of mine was unfortunate enough to be passing one just as it exploded and received a shower of smelly entrails from the event. Oh, how we laughed!

 

Ah. Yes, that sounds a bit different to our experience. Before we started living in sin, we lived on Hong Kong Island: I was in North Point and my now-wife was in Mid-Levels, on the Escalator (yes, non-Hong Kong people, there is an escalator that is used for public transport - Central–Mid-Levels escalator and walkway system - Wikipedia). But once we moved in together, we lived in Sai Kung.

It was much more relaxing than your place. We were in a village of 50 people. In front of us was the sea, and behind us was a forested mountain. Our animal experiences were different to yours too. We had the occasional problem with monkeys, but the bulk of animals in our village were wild water buffaloes. There was a pool at the bottom of a waterfall behind our house. It was a fine place to sit and relax with a bottle of wine in summer, but best avoided in spring, as it was where the lady water buffaloes would give birth.

As for pig storage...... When I lived in Tianjin in the early 90s, winter was long and very cold. There was a good noodle take-away near university, and I was a regular there. The pork in the noodles came from the street. In November, the owner got a cheap deal on a dozen pigs. It was cold enough that he just kept them out on the pavement (sidewalk, Americans), frozen solid, until he finished them in late February. He'd just go out onto the pavement and hack a bit off a frozen pig whenever anyone ordered pork noodles.