Who has gone traveling and made met really amazing people?

Well, Spendi, the Nyse just closed.

Do you know what you would have made if you had bought, say, 2000 shares of ETFC this morning?

£160 about I think. But that's history.

Ok, let's check out history tomorrow again..

I've met some people on my travels - a few who became friends and more with whom I just shared either distress or laughs or desultory conversations. I dunno about amazing, but I much liked the conversation with a bunch of us in the lobby of a medium sort of albergo in italy - we were near the FAO in Rome, and the people sitting around didn't seem to know each other before hand but got talking - let's say I'm glad I was there. The concierge (or whatever that word is in italian) joined us after providing drinks (he spoke five languages). I trust they were more open to talk than they all might have been at breakfast. Anyway, I loved every minute.

There's a £100 per year fee or tax or whatever ******* thing they call it in the higher echelons of our masters whose minions make a very nasty track all the way through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The minions were still at it when the juggler was trying to pick his balls up.

There's a chap comes in our pub who drinks 20, or so, pints of beer a day and he works on the road mending. I told you it was a class pub. He's a aged hippie type and always wear a baseball cap. Always on time the morning after. Works weekends too.

Roads never cease wearing out and travellers wear them out more than most. And if the travellers are sparing with their drinking and smoking they are getting their roads mended for free. My fellow boozer, who I don't coverse with much because I only go to the pub for the last hour of the day by which time his diction is incomprehensible to my tired out ears.

I am using scientific methods here. I'm looking at these things in isolation and ignoring the irreducibly complex swirling snowstorm of which they are a mere component but for which they are a symbol. Jon, which is what we call him, is an Weberian ideal type as the somebodies are also but in the plural.

Like a quack might shine a light in your eye and get his assistant to take dictation as if the rest of you doesn't exist. Or focus on any other organ which a specialist is perforce constrained to practice his expertise upon.

Now beer costs about 10 pence a pint to produce and it's £2.50. So somebody is getting their roads mended for free. No wonder road menders are looked down upon and hardly noticed by the somebodies who drive past them on the smooth surface of the restricted carriage way the other two lanes of which Jon and his colleagues have dolled off with cones and easy to read signs designed to funnel three lanes into one so they can get their brew cabin set up and their caravans for night security and the number to ring for complainers. With 2 on 4 off in operation the 2/3rds need somewhere warm and comfortable to rest while the other 1/3 satisfy the frustrated somebodies that work is proceeding and it won't be long before the road is mended and the three lanes can flow in an orderly fashion again.

I'm not that enamoured of American stocks in the normal course of events and I'm not about to start paying any extortionate fees for the privilege of investing in a system which I see as something of a macrocosm in which my story is a microcosmic and typical example. I'm a Bear really I suppose. I'm pretty astounded that it hasn't blown earlier.

You can go from one end of Gibbon to the other and the minions of the masters never changed their spots. Emperors came and went, often with alarming rapidity. It was quite a dangerous job. But the minions just acted like maggots from start to finish.

But thanks anyway. I have found I can bet on it. So I'll have a flutter. No fees, no certificates. Just phone up. Buy at this. Wait. Sell at that. And if your advice is good--collect the winnings. No tax.

What do you think about the French and British governments failing to bail out the world record holders in road mending. Eurotunnel. That intrepid bunch of brave entrepreneurs have not had their debts cancelled and they are tiny by the side of other figures I have seen for other industries than the one Jon is in.

Keep in mind that the plot was cleverly designed to make those who are not about to start paying any extortionate fees for the privilege of investing in the system and which you see as something of a macrocosm in which your story is a microcosmic and typical example, to pay for it anyway and even several folds.

I've always enjoy meeting people on my travels. Whether they are morons or extremely cultural. Either case, I've enjoyed their conversations. Some I couldn't follow like some strange dudes in Edinbourough (sp) pub that were some small town in England - they bordered on the moron side of things, but I found them enteraining and laughed my a$$ off when talking with them.

I even had an engaging "conversation" with a woman who only spoke German and I did not speak a lick of German. You cannot imagine how much you actually say without actual words.

I guess it is all what you want to get out of it. I can find enjoyment out of almost anyone - no matter how intelligent or worldly they are.

But the point is Linkat that those conversations mean nothing once they end. We all enjoy an ice-cream but we forget them quickly. They are superficial.

I know it isn't quite fair to polarise these two differences and I have only done it as an aid to understanding. There are many examples of the extremes though.

You wouldn't think it necessary to go to any weddings or funerals of the people you meet in transit. They have no nicknames and no past record of besmirching their good name. You don't really "meet" them at all.

It is why people are suspicious of strangers.

I wasn't complaining until they started bailing out others whose daily activities and motivations were poles apart from those who joined our two countries with a land link under the sea and some of whom died.

When the quick witted take priority over the producers of useful assets I think something has gone wrong.

Actually no - the point is I remember these morons before I remember some of these haughty smarty pants.

Yes but as caricatures.

Whenever I'm traveling, I do my best to stay away from Australians. They seem to spend most of their time sitting in bars drinking and acting like f@cking morons. I'd much rather absorb myself in the local culture.

Funny you should say that Wilso. All of the people on the bus that took me from destination to destination were from Australia or New Zealand apart from six.
What you said just about sums it up. I don't like to tar a whole race with the same brush, but I thought they were all idiots. What is it about their culture that makes them idiots?

That is not the sort of remark I expect to see from an intelligent and charming person Queenie.

Travellers are by definition dissatisfied with where they come from and the inevitable disciplines which normally attach to daily life. They are not typical and neither is the behaviour of those temporarily released from those disciplines.

It is also a grave mistake brought about by an unjustified affection for the self that one can absorb oneself in the local culture of areas one is merely passing through and that one understands it in any way an intelligent person would deem necessary in order to judge it.

It is also important for you to realise at this early stage in your life that declaring others to be "idiots" is not a satisfactory method of claiming to be free of idiocy oneself. If it were there would be no idiots at all.

You risk being thought impatient with human nature itself.

Nice try at a swipe spendi, but you're still a pathetic little **********. Take your tissue and go crying to the mods like the cowardly, worthless loser that you are.

I don't know that spendi has ever cried to the mods, my little snivelly friend...

why don't you just ask him nicely?

words to consider...

"it's better to remain silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"

Just passing through? I wouldn't call 7 visits to a country, and marrying one of it's citizens just "passing through". You really need to take note of the fact that it's better to remain silent and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. And don't doubt the fact that there's no one here is interested in any of the worthless crap that dribbles out of you.

I do know.

what do you know?

I do know


Is that clear enough? Maybe you'd like signal flags or a f@cking billboard. It was your comment I was responding to for f@ck's sake. Have you got the attention span of a goldfish, or are you just f@ckwit like out pint swilling friend?