Garn da hawl

Palau Dive Trip 2008

Cate has indeed found some pressing business to do in Manila so we are going there on the way home. For some reason we have to overnight in Bangkok but won’t see much as arrive very late and leave at dawn.

I do like the look of the hotel Rozalin has booked us into in Manila as it has complementary cocktails each evening.

This is the advantage of travelling with Cate (plus of course the Senator status on Austrian Airlines).

Over the weekend and Monday I have watched some of the US Open golf championship and have paid close attention to the strange behaviour of the many spectators.

These people dress mainly like they have been sent blindfolded and naked into an Op Shop and told to kit up by feel.

They cheer and screech and hoot at every shot played by every player but there is another group of Loonies who hoot ‘garn da hawl’ every time a player hits a ball towards the green.

This is apparently American for ‘go in the hole’ and there is a sizeable group of extremists who feel the need to loudly exhort the ball to do this every time the player hits or putts the ball.

From a distance I can’t see his group but there are lots of them. I also have a pretty good idea that there is a Kangaroo loose in the top paddock in each and every one of them.

I would find it very wearing if every time I played a shot a group of people hooted ‘garn da hawl’. In my case of course the hoots would be meaningless unless I was playing my tenth or eleventh shot.

Even on a par 3 I have never reached the green in less than four shots – and only then because my fourth shot ricocheted off the head of another golfer standing on the next fairway.

It must take a great deal of effort by someone such as Tiger Woods not to take a 5 Iron and set amongst them.

As we are about to travel I have been keeping a close eye on aircraft issues and note that yet again a number of people have been injured when a Qantas plane hit turbulence and made a very sudden descent.

Someone said something like ‘the plane suddenly dropped and Mavis hit the ceiling with her head and received a nasty cut. She has a really bad headache and a sore head’.

To which I would have replied ‘Why wasn’t Mavis wearing her seatbelt?”

On every one of the 6 million Qantas flights I have been on the Captain or cabin crew have warned the passengers to wear their seat belts at all times in case of turbulence.

By now Mavis will be talking to Slater and Gordon and will try and sue Qantas for a million dollars. She will do this because she was too stupid to wear a seat belt. This is only fair – Mavis is stupid – she needs to be compensated for that.

This will add to the cost of my air fares. If I see Mavis I will tell her exactly what I think of her. I may give her a black eye to go with her sore neck.

I am of course concerned that they have not found the ‘Black Boxes’ (which are in fact red) from the Air France flight.

I don’t like the thought that there are unknown things that can happen to airplanes. I have watched every episode of ‘Air Crash Investigation’ and similar shows on Discovery Channel and know almost everything that can go wrong.

There is an astonishingly scary number of these. My favourite is the one where the engineer used the wrong bolts when he fitted the windscreen. These gave way and the Pilot was sucked half way out of the airplane.

Watching these shows you get to hear the cockpit voices recorders. My favourite one of these is a plane that lost some important widgets and ended up flying upside down over the ocean.

When it finally dived into the sea – upside down and at about 600 kilometers per hour – the last thing Pilot said was ‘Here we go’.

This shows some style. I am sure I would not have said that. I might have used that many words but they would not have been quite as elegant.

Back to Air France. There is always a really good reason planes crash. The Air France flight worries me because we don’t know the reason.

I will continue to worry about it until I see the Air Crash Investigation episode where they reach a conclusion about the Air France flight. It doesn’t matter that they will just make this up – I am happy to hang on to anything they tell me as long as it is plausible.

Now I will have to worry about every crack and creak on our flights over the next two weeks.

It also gives me no comfort to know that – as we are flying Business Class – we will expire first if the plane nose dives into the sea. Admittedly the people behinds us will only get an extra nanosecond of life – but shouldn’t those who pay more last longer?

Not that we are paying – but you know what I mean.

So much for being a Senator then. I have decided what my last words will be just as the plane hits the ocean. They will be ‘garn da hawl’.

Wimbledon has started (groan) but at least I don’t have to worry about the parochial Australian commentators elaborating on every ghastly aspect of the Australian players inevitable demise in the early rounds.

We don’t have that problem here as Austria has no tennis players of note. Well it probably does but they will certainly also ski and will also almost certainly be killed in the carnage on the slopes each winter. This probably wipes out most Austrian sports people which may explain why there are not very many good ones (apart from the few skiers who survive).

Incidentally – Boris Becker was married recently and this event was televised on German TV. It was fascinating. I was transfixed. So was Boris. I think he might have resorted to something with a calmative effect prior to the ceremony.