Buy the jacket

and give it to your son.

and give it to your son.

and...I always wondered what happened to my dad's argentine black leather jacket...I'm quite sure that it was in his wardrobe when he died but his current wife withheld it as she always thought that I was not respectful to her...

(we gots to start a website for this mess...sbk, my darling I didn't mean to hijack but what's a niggah to do when drunk in Paris with his son who he hasn't seen in 2 years?...oh boo hoo, I am a bad father...)

My late Dad gave me his leather jacket when I was a teen. One of my best memories.

well, sheeed...despite me best intentions there was no sentimental rendezvous in Paris with the fake black leather jacket...we got a late start and just went to see 'The Raft of the Medusa' (my favorite and I wanted to share it wid my boy) and then did a quick pass by 'La Joconde' and then when we exited I was beat from all the stairs in the museum (goddam sick old man trine to keep up wid a teenager)...then we crossed the Tulleries garden and started to head up the Champs d'Elysees to the levis store but I was having trouble walking and we got a parisien tuk-tuk the rest of the way...

and fer what??? on further scrutiny the goddam jacket was TOO SMALL as I couldn't fold my arms with it on...defeated, we sought solace in a side street persian sheesha bar (smoking allowed inside!) and we sat there drinking and smoking sheesha and Camel unfiltered cigarettes so that the trip wasn't a total loss...I told the boy that I had thought about buying a leather jacket for the past 40 years and he said: 'don't worry dad, there'll be other opportunities...'

but, will there be? oh, boohoo...a small trip to the Louvre wasted my ass and mortality reared her ugly heid...

btw...for those that wanna plan a trip to Paris this time of year the Louvre was a mess, like being in a busy train station and the swirling mass I'm sure contributed significantly to my unexpected malaise...but we did get a seat in front of The Raft of the Medusa to relax and have me rail on to my boy about us all bein' shipwrecked and adrift and etc...

and then: 'dad...DAD, lets go get a beer and talk about it in a bar somewhere...'

he's my boy...

(does this mean that tutsi who is on assignment near Rabigh a few kms to the north of town has been lurking near the Harley shop and admiring the hardware and looking for an excuse to roar across the saudi desert in full leather regalia? buying a fake leather jacket is all the excuse that one needs...)

Yes, the shop was there when I was building phase 1 of Rabigh petro-chem installation in 2005/6. I assume you're on the town's PP.

How often do you drive down to Jeddah? Suicide trip every time. (or are you quartered in the big J?)

humph, I'm living at the King Abdullah Economic City about 75km north of Jeddah and working on the SEC Rabigh 2 project just south of the refinery...and yeah, I drive into town every Friday before prayers to the Danube supermarket on Madinah Road and there's no traffic and no hassles...any other time of the week it's madhouse like you describe...and every Friday morning there is a biker gang on Harleys roaring up the road northbound and I sigh but it's not fer me; no fake leather jacket then no Harley...

humph, I'm living at the King Abdullah Economic City about 75km north of Jeddah and working on the SEC Rabigh 2 project just south of the refinery...and yeah, I drive into town every Friday before prayers to the Danube supermarket on Madinah Road and there's no traffic and no hassles...any other time of the week it's madhouse like you describe...and every Friday morning there is a biker gang on Harleys roaring up the road northbound and I sigh but it's not fer me; no fake leather jacket then no Harley...

Yes, when I was in Rabigh they had just started KAEC. The architect's impressions were spectacular. Trust the finished product is as good.

I know the Danube store, bit different to the old days, when Danube were the worst of a shoddy lot of supermarkets. Danube used to be like an Indian corner shop with a handful of tired vegetables and some very dodgy packets of ... something. Labels were too faded to be able to tell, for sure.

To give the rest of you an idea of driving in Saudi :

Rabigh is 150km North of Jeddah, about the same distance South of M'dina. A major highway now connects the two, with turn-offs for Rabigh and Yanbu. A few other turn-offs for farms and bedouin camps, but nothing really noticeable. It is three lanes plus a hard shoulder in each direction. The traffic therefore moves at high speed. When I had to get my driving licence on my last stay there, I had to travel to Jeddah. I couldn't drive to the police driving centre, because I didn't have a Saudi driving licence at the time. Obviously. So I arranged for the Aramco government liaison officer to accompany me. Not only was that a part of his job, but it meant we could both get some shopping done. When he got in my car he saw that it was manual (stick-shift to those who know no better). 'I can't drive stick shift' he says. So we find another Saudi who can drive stick-shift, but who is not a GLO. So we set off in my Nissan and get onto the main road. The young Saudi is driving, I am mitfahrer and the GLO is in the back. We quickly build up to 160/180km/hr and the driver relaxes, pulls out his mobile and phones someone that he'll be in Jeddah soon. He rabbits on in his mobile, with interjections from the guy in the back, then starts to pull out to overtake the guy in front of us. The speed is now closing on 200km/hr (I had a damn good car) and he is holding his mobile in his right hand, leans his left hand over the wheel to flick the indicator stick on the steering column on the right and controls the direction of the car with his knee. I decide it's time to close my eyes, go to sleep and trust in the love of Allah to get us safely to Jeddah. Took us just over the hour, then a two-hour palava to get the licence. They had all the documents - eye test, blood group, foreign licence, work permit, residence visa in passport, Aramco pass, and so on - but had to go through all this again and get our GLO to make further copies at the police copy machine (at a cost of xxx Saudi Riyals) and eventually the guy comes out smiling and expects a gratuity from me.

And I left that paradise on earth to go and work for the bloody Germans in Vietnam. Why? Why? Why?

humph, I'm living at the King Abdullah Economic City about 75km north of Jeddah and working on the SEC Rabigh 2 project just south of the refinery...and yeah, I drive into town every Friday before prayers to the Danube supermarket on Madinah Road and there's no traffic and no hassles...any other time of the week it's madhouse like you describe...and every Friday morning there is a biker gang on Harleys roaring up the road northbound and I sigh but it's not fer me; no fake leather jacket then no Harley...

And I left that paradise on earth to go and work for the bloody Germans in Vietnam. Why? Why? Why?

humph, you know the answer to that one; in Vietnam we didn't haveta drive...foreigners are forbidden and ye wouldn't want to anyway...a SE asian madhouse that is not describable to most folks that haven't seen it...folks runnin' around tryin' to collect the crated live fish and chickens while folks writhed with their last breath ina puddle of blood on the roadway...

I'd liketa put a dozen of each pakistani/afgan/indian/bangaladeshi and VN bus drivers in a bull ring with their delapidated rigs an' let them have at it...'reality TV'...throw in a handful of 'pedestrians' for good measure...

here we are approaching the job site in rural Ha Tinh province one rainy morning on a particularly 'bad' stretch of road (main highway #1, the main north south route down the spine of Vietnam where we had already seen 2 fatal accidents) and a fcukin dog runs onto the road and the driver momentarily loses control and we start to hydroplane...and then tutsi stands up and screams: 'run over that mongrel POS you idiot!!!...oh, boohoo...idiot! yew got 10 western trained engineers in this fcukin' POS and yer gonna threaten their safety with a goddam dog???...oh, boohoo...'

tutsi is alternately enraged and remorseful, after all the dumb dog had as much right to be there as we did and lived in the area...

That dog could've been lunch!

And you haven't mentioned the suicidal scooter drivers. Just about every day there would be at least one accident in view of our crew-bus, on a really wet day maybe three. But most of 'em seem to bounce well - maybe one squashed Viet a month.

That dog could've been lunch!

And you haven't mentioned the suicidal scooter drivers. Just about every day there would be at least one accident in view of our crew-bus, on a really wet day maybe three. But most of 'em seem to bounce well - maybe one squashed Viet a month.

yeah...that's true...we did see some doggies in cages on the back of a truck going to market once...

and then in the evening with the school girls on bicycles in cone hats and school uniforms and their tresses down to their ass as we returned to the accommodation the driver slowed down so that the middle-aged western engineers could have a good look...

an unforgettable vision of rural asian womanhood....in rural Vietnam the girls keep their hair long until they marry...down to their ankles sometimes...

too much for me, most times...I needed to sit down and rest and then Phuong the country girl housekeeper with hair down past her ass would slice the fruit and massage me shoulders muttering in vietnamese: 'you need to relax uncle tutsi...you are not well, you know...'...

oh...and then to be 'correct' with the older ladies... in the forecourt of the client's office in Hanoi in the afternoons the neighborhood ladies would gather with their kids for a play-about and there was the cutest little boy tumbling about with his gran, a delicious middle aged vietnamese woman in pyjamas with long hair...in peasant fashion she stood with her backside in front of me and unfurled her hair displaying her magnificent attributes (the women haveta bend over and spread their legs while unfurling as some shoulder action is required and the flimsy pyjamas didn't leave alot to the imagination; she wasn't wearing any underwear) and then here's tutsi wid the little boy gesturing at his gran and saying that I want to meet her...

the lady was way ahead of me...and she smiled as she had noticed me admiring the unfurling of the long hair but I was without words...I promised the wife back in Suphanburi that I would behave (as I had fcuked up big time the last time in HCMC) and as I got into the taxi with the others I gestured in hopelessness...she kept eye contact as we departed sorta like saying: 'chickenshit...fake fancy moves for a western chickenshit niggah...

'but...I'se an engineer over here and how could I justify any attempt to seduce a pyjama clad grandma in the full light of the Hanoi afternoon?

only saw her again once out front of the office and she studiously ignored me but the little boy said hi...

Ahh the temptations of Vietnam ...

I used to run on the Saigon Hash every Sunday and after the run there was one Viet girl who taught Yoga (and she was very good at it) who would relax by grabbing her ankles and putting her head between her hands while facing away from me.

But luckily there was always a large bucket of ice and Carlsberg to tempt me away.

That was the difficulty there - so many lovely temptations and all with the thought of marriage uppermost. And at least one I was friendly with had a rigid plastic chastity apparatus around her knickers, that could only be undone by her family when she got home. Such is life ...

(SBK - sorry if we've hijacked your thread, but I'm in a reminiscent mood )

I likes to reminisce too!

tutsi is minding his own business watching old movies on the TCM channel and drinking vodka at the hotel on Tay Sach street in HCMC and then the girlfriend from Vung Tau walks in...she had just been out shopping for sexy little bits and a new pair of stilettoes...

and then the fashion parade began with the heels clip, clip, clip and she said: 'ye like this one then?' and she watched me as I watched in silence...

then she said: 'don't look while I change' (a Linda Fiorentino look alike but with olive skin and good english) and then clip, clip, clip: 'howzabout this one...'

then she started again and I stood up (I'm naked as I don't wear clothes in the house except when there's kids around) and then she reclined on the bed and kicked off her lower garment in anticipation and said: 'what took ye so long?'

and I said: 'well, 'the 3:10 to Yuma' was on the box an' that takes some mighty distractin' effort...

and then there was rollin' and tumblin' and when we finished we both looked at the TV screen to see what the film line up was for the evening...

I can't get the TCM channel in Thailand and good films are as good as sex and I tried to explain this to my wife in Thailand when I forgot to come home from HCMC and then she said: 'you spent milions on that whore didn't ye?'...and then I said: 'dunno, she just went shopping while I was watching the TCM...'

later when I was preparing to go to the airport Linda said: 'it was a good party tuts but you are one of the strangest men that I have met...' and then I sez: 'strange? whataddaya mean strange? ye like good films don't ye???'

(actually it wasn't like that at all, it was a day before my re-scheduled flight and she was sad and I was sad...she was dressed to go out and I said: 'you're coming back?? yes?' and she averted her face and said: 'yeah, I'll be back...' and I looked out the window of our room that overlooked the street and she marched away down the street with a purpose...she wasn't coming back...she was a remarkable woman...then me to Suphanburi and to face the music)

this thread needs a website of it's own...

www.Getyourownthread.com

www.Getyourownthread.com

someone give this man a tiresome, time wasting website...