My Ozzie Travel Mate from www.travelchums.com
This guy is not out-and-out dumb, but he can’t find his ass with both hands. He has a PhD (Syracuse) in Computer Science – but all PhDs are not equal ………. Sometimes they just give them to you to get rid of you, or to fill the quota, or to get the money. He is from Israel, but claims to have lived a lot of time and has children in Ca. He obviously learned (at) English as an adult second language. Everything is heavily accented and hard to understand, not helped by copious mistakes in pronunciation and grammar. About like my Spanish (or Portuguese). I think his native language is Hebrew ………. Didn’t know that was anybody’s native language out of church (google is telling me it is the common language in Israel) ……….. how much do I know.
He just about came to blows with me when I was about to put in gasoline that is 10% ethanol, because the pump didn’t have a sign saying unleaded! My God, in the developed world you can’t buy “leaded” gasoline any more. Or, when we found we needed a liter of engine oil, kept insisting we put in 2 liters for safety!
When we walk down the street, if I walk on the curb side he crowds me into the gutter, if I walk on the opposite side he crowds me into the walls.
My traveling companion is a real dork, wimp, etc., etc. Though 65 he moves and does everything like an 85 year old. Thinks only of himself. Every sentence is I, never we, “I want ……. to get to Tennant Creek and stop today.” Every time I start to relate some experience, it reminds him of ………….. and he interrupts and tells me his experience. When you start a conversation or story, there is usually a setup. By the time I am half way through the setup, I’m interrupted for the incident he is reminded of. When he finishes, the setup is lost to him and I have lost interest. Part of the value of a companion is to have someone to discuss things with sometimes. Very soon I found that every time I begin to even state an opinion, or even what I think is a fact, I am interrupted and corrected. Hence, in about three days nearly all conversation was shut down.
An eye injury in early life left him with one eye essentially blind, so the eye looks to the side. One can’t fault him for this, but it is distracting because when he is scolding me I can’t even tell if he is looking at me! He is very risk adverse, saying that someone offered to fix the eye, “but something can always go wrong in even the simplest operation” so he declined. Seems to me he had nothing to loose since the eye is of no value in the current state.
Can’t drive. Takes him 10 minutes to get in or out of a parking place or make a tight turn – continuously slipping the clutch. On the open highway he can’t hold a set speed, but instead is continuously accelerating 5 mph, then decelerating 5 mph, with about a 5 second period. Plays hell with the gas mileage and with any attempt I might make to sleep for a few minutes when not driving, as the vehicle is constantly lurching forward, then decelerating. All the complex city driving is defaulting to me because I just don’t want to wait for him to get it done.
One bug, even if not a mosquito, tarantula, or scorpion, sets him into a panic. He is constantly complaining about everything I do and has a way of making every decision and that’s it … no discussion. Constantly complaining that it’s too hot, which it is, but deal with it. We drive sealed up in the campervan with not a crack in “any” window and AC blasting away. This even in evening or morning when sometimes the outside temperature is pleasant. If I open a window for an instant to let out a fly, he is all over me like I’m a bad child. Guess he hates open windows more than even the fly I am getting out of his life. Sometimes when the weather is pleasant and, perhaps we are not driving high speed, I would like to open the window and feel and smell a little bit of Australia – but no way!
On occasion when he is about something else, I choose a camp spot I regard as least desirable, then I can be relieved when he insists we change.
He is an active traveler with a lifetime 4 MILLION mile Platinum card from American Airlines which does get him all kinds of privileges, like flight upgrades, last-minute changes, admission to the VIP lounge, no charge for last-minute frequent flier awards, etc. But how did he get this? He traveled the world a lot as salesman for Applied Materials 6 years ago, but my sense is that’s only the half of it! He, and family, take every credit card offer, make a career of learning the minimum requirements and getting the miles, then cancel and go on the next offer. Also, make flights just for the miles – sometimes you can get a $600 round trip to Europe and they do this without ever leaving the airport in Europe! If that is 8000 miles, it’s worth $160 at my valuation of $0.01/mile, but he claims 5 or 6¢/mile, so $960. What am I doing wrong? Or suppose you need to go to NY from LA, but you can find an equal cost flight through Frankfurt – look at all those extra miles! People actually do these things?!
I had hoped to ‘dry camp’ about half the time in the bush when we are in the outback, and had made this clear before we departed, but sissy has to have power for a fan every night and a shower “every” morning. And that shower takes a minimum of 45 min because years ago he heard some European model say the way to stay young is “moisturize, moisturize, moisturize,” so it take some time to put on all those “creams.”
Constantly eating………. some days a liter or 2 of coke and 6 glasses of orange juice.
Manners ………… what’s that? Every time he eats or brushes his teeth, he gets food or tooth paste all over his face – and it stays until I tell his to wipe it off. His mother never taught him to “chew with your mouth closed” so listening to him eat trail mix is as much an auditory adventure as an hour in the rain forest with the Ozzie birds. Actually, after multiple promptings from me, these habits seemed largely corrected during the last half of the trip.