An email that made me laugh...

Here is part of an email from Dr. John... it made me laugh...
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Greetings, All!

I realize it's been about a week since my last communication, and therefore time for an update. Here's the scoop, here's my dilemma.

How does one write an exciting letter, making it easy and fascinating to read, that describes sitting in meetings followed by sitting at the computer typing up notes of the meetings? For that's what I've been doing. Actually, not just sitting in meetings.

It might be more apt to say trying to survive sitting in meetings. We've all been to meetings that we call, "deadly". Well, I am here to tell you a stateside deadly meeting doesn't hold a candle to a meeting in Southeast Asia . For these meetings are truly life-threatening. Picture this...

Set the environment -- ambient temperature is 100 to 110° on a good day, and of course there's little or no air movement. Sometimes your hosts will provide a fan. Being an oscillating fan it serves the purpose of giving a brief "taste" of a cool wiff, but moves on to for you a chance to truly appreciate it. Then it comes again making your hopes, only to have it fade away. Oh, by the way, is it passes through it blows your papers all over the place, so you have to be sure that everything is pinned down for the "coming of the breeze".

Even those of us who don't consider ourselves particularly sensitive to somatic input, can feel each one of the body's 13 gazillion sweat glands open up and start pouring forth their product. Those little trips turn into frank rivers and although Westerners start to squirm in their seats while they scratch the tickle, or try to sop up the river.

"Oh, yes sir, I am paying attention." Yeah, right. Between scratches, you must be ever vigilant for aerial attack. For at any moment, from any direction you may be attacked by a black fly. Oh, we're used to flies, you say. Yes that's true, these flies are differ in that their wingspan is just short of that of a B-52. Why, if one hits your forehead, you are out cold. (Maybe cold is good? At least the meetings over for you.)

And then there is the ever present wicker. Furniture, that is. It's a popular furnishing in this area. Ever sit on a wicker chair for any length of time? While I am endowed with moderately liberal padding, which I take with me to every meeting, I tell you it's not enough. No indeed, the wicker will prevail. The padding seems to have elaborated and you can just feel the creases and indentations, the imprint of "The Wicker" being created on a certain part of your anatomy.

After a while, it begins to get uncomfortable. So logically you shift your position. Well, it's not that easy. For those little grooves beginning to form in your posterior surfaces are behaving like tongue and groove carpentry -- they have locked onto, mated with their counterpart on the surface of the chair.

If you succeed in extricating yourself from the above situation, you shift and place your weight back down on the chair, right? Yeah, of course. Unfortunately, you find that in order to be comfortable, you must find another place where the tongue and groove's exactly match. For if you try to make new tongue and grooves over old tongue and groove's, I am here to tell you that is uncomfortable. So, you end up returning to your original position and just suffering the discomfort. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, at a meeting.

Now that you have a feel for the environment be reminded that half of the meeting, at least, is conducted by gentlemen, or ladies, speaking in an animated dynamic fashion in words that are totally incomprehensible to you. They will politely glance at you, making eye contact, seeming to assume that you understand what they're saying. Desiring not to offend, you return the eye contact, smiling like a moron apparently indicating that you understand everything. So they proceed to talk some more.

Oh, and you're supposed to be taking notes. So that is a meeting in Southeast Asia .