My 4.50 EUR ticket cost me a kidney

I do like going on holiday. By car or on a boat or maybe on a train or as a last resort on foot but by plane... I would rather be flung out of a catapult knowing the landing spot would be covered in broken glass and angry hedgehogs.

It all starts when you know you want to go on holiday. A warm place...in February....or March...you know you will have to fly since Holland is either flooded or frozen over and France...well is France...

You go to the travel agent, since al-Qaida you can not walk up to a plane and take it anymore, and have the nice lady explain that a seat to your very warm and 65 star resort only costs you 4,50 euro.

And then it starts. "Do you have luggage sir?" well yes..."That's 50 euro handling charges"... What?? For 5 pair of shorts and a toothbrush?......"Have you heard from the fuel tax sir?"... No but I am about to am I?....Long story short, 50 euro to get that piece of horror into the sky... "What room do you want sir?" and then the tricky part begins.... I would like one with a double bed, ocean view and away from the elevator. There is always 1 guy during your holiday who thinks it's funny to do an Aerosmith drum solo against the elevator wall when riding up or down...so no sleep if you are close to one of those... "Ok, we do not have a room available in this category"... Ok what do you have then?..."A penthouse presidential suite overlooking the pool, the chimney and the neighboring 5 islands or a single room next to the elevator with no view at all except for the one overlooking El Corrida des Kaka."... No thank you, from a previous trip I learned that that was an open sewage waste pipe and not actually a parrot sanctuary...

So you end up paying for your 4,50 euro ticket with the deed of your house and the promise that, if the lady ever needs a new kidney she can have yours, and start packing.

Driving to the airport does not get me in the holiday mood, walking around on an airport neither so how anybody would think it's fun to drive around on an airport parking lot for 5 years looking for a space to park and then when you found one figuring out that you are parked in zone 6542 with the yellow funny looking turtle logo and that you have to walk back 5 years with luggage in tow, I do not know....

You check in your luggage and it's of through the custom office. Passport check and a quick probe by a big hairy bloke called BorisGzmirnkov to see if you do not make funny noises when he puts his metal stick up your wazoo and you are in the tax free zone...I learned not to buy anything while leaving because I once bought an 80 piece puzzle andby the time I was back home 7 days later.... I only had 7 pieces left. The rest was on it's way to some African country together with my suitcase... So you wait, sweat, wait and sweat some more and then, like a call from Death himself: "Plane with destination not-France is now boarding"... Quick trip to the loo for some clean shorts and then a brave face and of we go.

Strange crackling noises, a strange wind and smell and that is only the person in the seat next to you...I am on a plane...the horror...no way back now. Better start remembering what to do. Chew gum, ok, I start chewing gum like an idiot, 4, 5 pieces at once. Take-off... I start chewing even harder, so hard my eyes start blinking in sync with my chewing. My eardrums feel like they are about to exit my body via a way that would leave me in need of another pair of clean shorts. Then I remember that yawning can help. Ever tried to yawn with 5 pieces of mashed up gum stuck between your teeth...not easy. I blew a bubble so big they thought I smuggled an inflatable bouncy castle on board. After the worst 15 minutes of my life you hear a "ping" and a little indicator that says it's ok to unbuckle your seat belt. No way...when that plane explodes at least I want to fall, sitting comfortably towards my death.

Then it's lunch time. Thanks to Mr Bin-Laden I now need to cut my half frozen piece of pate with a plastic knife that breaks when you try to open the plastic wrapper it comes in. So after finishing my pate snow cone I watch on a small screen the route of the plane and the expected time of arrival. The agony...a blue map, which I can only presume is water, or some kind of error page, which I do not want to think about... and in the middle of it a small dot...still 2h to go... 5 packets of chewing gum, 6 apologies for exploding bouncy castles later another "ping"... The "put on your seat belt" sign went up. Finally....another 15 minutes and the sweatiest armpits you have ever seen later, I was kissing the tarmac...not like the pope but in my rush to get out of there I tripped and bounced my way down the landingstairs....

And the worst part....7 days, an indigestion and a sun tan later the thing starts all over again...

How love almost made me keep my marbles

Ever loved someone so hard it actually did hurt, and not in a spiritual way, no, actual real I-just-got-hit-in-the-face-by-a-fully-loaded-freight-train pain...

It happened to me, yes I know, underneath this sarcastic shell there lives a little shy young man who has true feelings. Now that I am all mellow and in touch with my feminine side I feel like making another confession.... I like French fries with ketchup and raw onion sprinkled on top...I hear you think... And yes, it does make me fart louder then a foghorn during a how-loud-can-you-go foghorn contest....

But love, the Bloodhound Gang phrased it nicely, "not the one you clean up with a mop and bucket", the real deal...between a man and a woman, man and man, woman woman, man African lion...you know what I mean....fill in your preference yourself... It happened to me a few years ago and at first you do not know it's even happening. You start seeing or hearing this person on a daily basis and you think, "come on what's this?" But before long you are waiting by the phone like a doggy that needs an urgent tinkle and his owner is standing there with the leash. No, I do not like bondage, it's just a figure of speech, not another confession...And when that phone then rings.... It's not making a ringing sound..Noooo it's a symphony of cherubs playing the waltz of love...

You want to talk to this person so desperately that you run to the phone without even knowing your foot made a 180 degree twist around it's base because you hit the staircase and afterwards you hit the glass coffee table resulting in a face that looks like a cross between Leatherface and a run over squirrel. You are just focused and your hormones produce so many chemicals that you would not even feel pain if Mrs Fat Globe would step on your little toe wearing the pointiest stiletto heels in the world...

You talk and talk and talk about the most silly things, "oh I saw a duck in the pond and it was sooooo lovely"...Normally I wouldn't even look at a pond unless it was playing host to the world championship monster trucking...but now "ohhhhh, I saw it too, Soooo lovely"...what happened to me...Love, making you see interesting things without being drunk....

However the worst part is when it's a love you can not share. Can be for a million reasons....she's Amish, he is a Golden Retriever....or just plain simple..you are scared for saying the words "I love you" or scared for rejection "No thanks, I'm Amish". So you keep your feelings to yourself. "Why would she be interested in me?" is often heard....We've all been there, apart from George Clooney... So you watch and admire from a distance...not in a tree, you do not want that restraining order... but metaphorically speaking...

You try and make sure they like you and for that you become Superman.You rush from 1 part of the city to the other in less time then it would take that world record guy to sprint the 100m. On your way, picking up whatever she would like at whatever cost to you, knife fight over the last chocolate bar "ok, bring it on". Monkey wrestling for the last can of coke, "Sure, bring on the baboon..." And when you are standing in front of her, wiping away your blood and sweat, all she has to say is"thank you" and all your pain is gone...

But...and this is the dark magic of love.. It only works for as long as they are near you.... The moment you are alone and your Golden Retriever or Amish girl left you for a Buddhist Poodle.... Pain, hell and agony...just like you twisted your ankle in a 180 degree angle, hit a glass coffee table with your face, had your toe crushed by a fat lady and wrestled a wild baboon...

And that ladies and gentlemen is how love almost made me keep my marbles...almost...

How IT made me lose my marbles

Now, for the people who do not know me, I am a dinosaur. Well not really, typing would be a bit difficult and then I am not even talking about the vast amounts of Special K cereal I would need in the morning to keep myself "regular"....

What I am saying is, I am an IT dinosaur. I have no Nano-byte-terra phone nor do I have the latest flatboard or keyless-screen or whatever IBM is calling it these days..I believe it's an I-Orange or something...

I do have 1 old playstation which my brother donated to charity....or me....to try and lure me into the Age of Technology.

Well...what is that? "The Age of Technology"...Cavemen also thought they lived in the Age of Technology when they invented the wheel...hell we still use it today....do you still use your first Mac or Intosch...?

I have a car that is 33 years old...same as me...it's old, farts, has some unexplainable spots and smells...same as me....But what I want to say before alienating all of you...is that when it breaks down, I do not have to go to a garage and pay a trillion Euro just for a guy in a suit sticking his laptop into my cigaret holder and telling me my washer fluid needs a top-up....No, I just go to Bob around the corner and he hammers some new greasy part in place and after spending 5 Euro I am back motoring along with a smile on my face and a bank account that does not look like Imelda Marcos went shoe-shopping with it...

Same with a pc or laptop, I had a pc when I was at school because it was "the Age of Technology" and all those teachers broke their fingers on typewriters...after that I never owned one in my life. My mother donated a laptop to charity once...I still have it...

And the reason why I am a dinosaur is that I do not speak Klingon. When that little message pops up with a small red circle and a cross in it and starts explaining me in, what I can only guess is fluent Klingon, that my Z-Bat drive is in error for my Log Script Unit I have a tendency to be a little violent and use that fork not for what it was designed for. It's hard to explain at the PC shop that that fork got accidentally stuck between the T- and the F key and that it has nothing to do with the Klingon on the screen...

What I also do not get are domotics systems. You drive home and before you are even in the same zip code as your house it is already making coffee, tuning the radio to your favorite tune and walking around in your slippers to get them "comfy-warm"....Same thing in the morning. Before you realise you need to wake up, breakfast is made and poured into you, your slippers are "comfy-warm" and your teeth are brushed. No wonder people fall asleep at the wheel...they never woke up in the first place, their house just puts them in the car and of they go...

And another thing... all those cards you get these days with chips in it to keep track on how many points you get when buying 5 loo rolls and a leek or when filling up with gas at the gas station, what is that all about? I asked one day and the answer apparently is: "Well sir, if you buy 500 leeks you get a free carrot" why do I even ask.... These days even pharmacists have member cards... How often do they expect me to get sick?...Do they know something that I don't know yet? "Oh, he is turning yellow, quick get him a member card..." Only the other day I tried to get gas with my loo roll card and was trying to explain a guy at the bank that I did not put my grocery discount card into his cash point machine deliberately...

And that ladies and gentlemen is how IT made me lose my marbles