Jethro Takes His Self a Trip

I’ll tell you what. You haven’t lived until you’ve taken a 30-hour plane trip.

I got home from Singapore this morning, and I haven’t slept in quite a while. My wife and I had a great time there, but the flights were really something.

Singapore is so far away from me, it doesn’t matter which direction the jets take. They could go north, south, east, or west and get there in about the same amount of time, as long as they didn’t run into fuel problems. My flights to Singapore flew east, and so did my flights home.

The web says Singapore is around 10,700 miles away, so it’s pretty much on the opposite side of the globe. The time difference is 13 hours in the fall. Until this trip, I had no idea two time zones could differ by 13 hours.

My first international flight took off from JFK and landed in Doha. It took off pretty late. It should have been empty, right? Well, it turns out Doha is hosting an event you may have heard of: the FIFA World Cup. An event of which I took no notice because I’m not the kind of person who cares about millionaires kicking a ball into a net.

People from Latin America were shoehorned into the plane’s every crevice. The aisle seat I had carefully chosen in hopes of getting an empty row turned out to be a waste of money.

Actually, I didn’t get to sit next to an empty seat on any of my flights. Not even the 15-hour one from Singapore to San Francisco.

I was spoiled when we traveled during the covid statistical hump. I got to lie down across rows of seats. People were terrified of flying, and Rhodah and I reaped the benefits. It looks like those days are gone. We flew on the slowest days of the week, and every plane was still packed.

I know this will sound insensitive, but I miss the slow tourist traffic of the pandemic. We flew on empty planes. We didn’t have to wait in line at restaurants. We had the Great Pyramid to ourselves. Looks like those days are gone, unless the black death makes a comeback.

What can I say about Singapore?

I was afraid it would be unpleasant because I hear bad things about Far Eastern destinations. I thought it would be like Blade Runner crossed with Slumdog Millionaire, sort of. I was afraid the people would be hard and selfish, and I was concerned about the weather. Singapore is nearly on top of the Equator.

Here is how I would describe Singapore now: it’s a little bit like Miami would be if the people were vaporized and replaced with better ones.

Singapore is very orderly. The streets are clean, and there is a great deal of beautiful, meticulous landscaping in public areas. People obey the traffic laws, which seems weird given the large number of ethnic Chinese. Everything is built well. Signs are in English, probably because there are three major ethnic groups, each with its own language. Or languages. Whatever.

The people in Singapore are very polite and helpful. We experienced nearly no rudeness. There is nearly no crime in Singapore.

Singapore is also wealthy. They have stores like Chanel and Bulgari everywhere. They have impressive skyscrapers. The cars are generally clean, dent-free, and relatively new.

There is food everywhere in Singapore. There are so many restaurants, it’s hard to understand how they can all make money.

The hotels are very nice. Ours was just about perfect. Spotless and quiet, with several restaurants and a gym. I think there was also a pool in there somewhere.

I just realized I forgot to tip the maid. Dang.

That’s okay, though, because tipping is not customary in Singapore.

Here’s something weird: the weather in Singapore is better than the weather in Miami. It doesn’t get really hot, and the island is in a breezy location.

Now I will digress and tell the world about a high school history teacher who told me a tremendous number of baldfaced lies. His name was Morgan Kelly. I guess it’s okay to mention his name, because he has surely been dead for at least 20 years.

My prep school taught grades 7 through 12, and when I arrived in grade 9, Mr. Kelly was already a legend among the core group of students who had started two years earlier. He was an amateur sailor. He had a lanyard with a spliced monkey’s fist for a keychain. He wore green coach’s shorts every day. He sounded like Burgess Meredith’s Penguin. He taught history.

Mr. Kelly impressed the younger kids by telling the time by looking at the sun. He claimed he could nail it within a few minutes. He would point at the sun with his extended left hand, look down his arm, pause briefly, and make his estimate. Over and over, he amazed the kids by proving to be right.

By the time they were sophomores, they started to realize his watch was on his left wrist.

Anyway, Mr. Kelly told all sorts of lies.

He claimed he was a tail gunner in World War Two. Ordinarily, I would not doubt a claim like that, but because I know he lied about other things, I don’t know whether he was really a tail gunner or even if he served.

He said that when he arrived at the place where they sorted out bomber crew trainees, the men were told to form a long line ordered by height. I would guess Mr. Kelly was about 5’4″ tall. Everyone at Mr. Kelly’s end had to become tail gunners because only short people could fit in the gunners’ stations.

Is this really how tail gunners were selected? I wonder. Maybe it’s true. Mr. Kelly had thick glasses, which means he wasn’t capable of the job, but maybe his eyes went bad after the war.

How likely is it that my school checked his military record? They might have checked to see if he had an honorable discharge, but I can’t imagine them asking for anything beyond that. I doubt they checked his record at all. They would have asked for his college credentials, but they wouldn’t have needed his military information.

I don’t think he was ever in a bomber, because he would have told us war stories.

He told a huge lie about the Chinese military.

He said he was on a troop plane going over the Himalayas, and there were Chinese soldiers on board.

Okay, right away you can see some issues.

Why would they fly troops over the Himalayas? It would be unbelievably expensive, not to mention dangerous. They would have moved troops with ships and trains.

Why would Chinese troops be on a plane with American bomber crewmen?

Okay, so now we get to the part I am sure is a lie. He said several Chinese were playing a game of chance. I think he said they were throwing down cards. He said they would play a round of their game, look at the results, grab one person who was playing, and throw him out the side door. While the plane was in flight.

We believed it. We were kids.

Of course, the Chinese military did not permit soldiers to murder each other in card games. This should not have to be explained to anyone. You can’t win a war by throwing your troops out of airplanes. Also, even if the game were permitted, how would you find people willing to play? If you did, how would you get enough men onto one plane to play the game? If you have to throw a man out after every hand, and you have 20 men, your game will last around 20 minutes. Not a great way to kill time on a plane.

Even if all the obstacles mentioned above were overcome, why would American servicemen sit and do nothing while people were thrown out of a plane?

So, yes, he was a big liar.

Here comes the lie he told about Singapore.

The British were building a bridge in Singapore. It was 120° Fahrenheit every day. The workers had to work outdoors, obviously, but at night they slept in air-conditioned barracks.

They were only able to cool the barracks to 90°, but it seemed so cold after working in 120° heat, the men had to wear winter coats indoors.

Lie number 1: 120° heat in Singapore. It doesn’t happen. It rarely goes above 92°, and that’s something you can’t say about Miami.

Lie number 2: men who found the 90° temperature in the barracks too cold would solve the problem by wearing winter coats. No. They would adjust the temperature.

I don’t know why Mr. Kelly lied to kids so much. I took Ancient History and Ancient Chinese History with him, and I guess I can discard everything he taught us.

I didn’t sweat much at all in Singapore. It was surprisingly comfortable. Rhodah, however, was shocked by the humidity. Apparently, Zambia doesn’t have any. In the past, she had heard me complain about the humidity in Florida, but she had no idea what I was talking about until we went to Singapore. We went to Egypt, which was hot but dry. We went to Turkey and Ireland, where the weather was cool. In Singapore, she suddenly understood why people buy anti-perspirant.

I just remembered another lie Mr. Kelly told.

Americans needed to land planes somewhere in China. There was no runway. The ground was covered with rocks. Fortunately, China was incredibly full of human beings. Their numbers were astounding.

The mayor of the city where the runway was needed told the people who lived there to go and stand where the runway had to go. Then he told them to pick up one rock each and leave. They did, and the runway instantly appeared.

I don’t know how we fell for that one. Having a lot of people doesn’t really get you past the problem that you can fit hundreds of rocks into the area one person takes up. Pick up one rock, and you still have hundreds more.

Man, that guy lied.

Another Mr. Kelly lie just popped into my head.

Some ancient Chinese pottery manufacturer had a slave, and one day, the slave got trapped in his kiln and burned to death. When the kiln was opened, the pots had a magnificent red color. The manufacturer couldn’t figure out how to reproduce the color, so he decided to throw a slave into the kiln every time he made red pots.

I’m starting to think we were really stupid.

Okay, Google and see if you can find this story, or any story about the ancient Chinese having a really gorgeous and highly prized red pottery glaze. I couldn’t find anything like that on the web. After that, try to find a story that mentions the part about murdering slaves.

Then ask yourself how many pots you would have to sell to pay for one expensive slave. And why use a slave when you could use a dead body or a pig or goat? Dead bodies would have been pretty easy to come by in ancient China or ancient anywhere.

How does a slave get stuck in a pottery kiln? Why wouldn’t he yell for someone to let him out?

I knew someone who served in Iraq, and he had a photo of himself shivering in a sleeping bag in a very hot room. He said the hot room seemed cold to him. Soldiers there wore a lot of hot gear, and the daytime temperatures sometimes broke 120°, so for all I know, the photo wasn’t a gag. But it never happened in Singapore or anywhere else in Southeast Asia.

Soldiers love jokes and pranks.

The food picture in Singapore is interesting. Nice restaurants and well-known restaurants there are unbelievably expensive, like $40 for Five Guys or $400 for two at Ruth’s Chris. On the other hand, there are cheaper places where locals eat, and they are real bargains.

It appears there are three types of restaurants in Singapore. Independent establishments, food court restaurants, and food center restaurants.

By “independent,” I mean restaurants that are separate from other restaurants. Food courts are about like American food courts, except the restaurants are jammed together very tightly, and a typical food court will have a huge number of them.

A food center is a concrete building with a roof and no exterior walls. Inside, there will be long concrete structures broken into stalls. Each stall will be around 8 feet wide, and most food center restaurants occupy one stall.

Between the rows of stalls there will be sturdy plastic tables and seats which are fixed to the floor.

You can get an incredible assortment of foods and beverages at a food center. Malay. Cantonese. Sichuan. Indian. A typical entree will run around 5 Singapore dollars, and that amounts to about 4 US dollars. Some stalls sell excellent food. Some sell food that is merely good. Some sell stuff you will prefer to discard.

If you want to eat well and adventurously in Singapore while saving a ton of money, food centers are the way to go. The trick is to keep ordering things until you find things you like. The initial investment may be $20 or so per person, but it will pay off in the end by helping you avoid unnecessary experimentation.

One tip: don’t go to the stall Anthony Bourdain recommends. His photo is still on the window. Bourdain was not a great cook, as he admitted, and his advice about food is not reliable. He went to the stall in question and ordered something called Hainanese chicken rice. He raved about it as though it had made the earth move for him, and Gordon Ramsay’s face also appears on the window on a sticker.

The stall usually has a long line of people waiting for chicken. There was a line on the day when we stupidly listened to Bourdain and Ramsay.

Hainanese chicken rice is basically a boiled or possibly baked chicken cutlet, skin on, sliced, and dumped across rice made with chicken broth. It is served lukewarm. It is limp. It tastes not quite as good as what you would get if you boiled chicken in Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. I am not exaggerating. It is worthless.

It may be that Chinese people who are raised on it like it. There is a big difference between authentic Chinese food and much of the Chinese food Chinese people make in America.

After we tried the chicken rice, I bought myself a Tiger Crystal beer (very good) from another vendor and told him the food was basically garbage. He agreed. He said all the people in line were tourists who had been fooled. He said the chicken rice was no good. He very kindly led me to another stall, where he recommended laksa, a pho-like dish with rice noodles, shrimp, and some kind of meat. Much better.

We liked the Maxwell Food Centre and the Albert Food Centre. There are others.

If you go to a food center, buy a package of paper towels and a package of antiseptic wipes first. Food stalls don’t provide napkins, and the tables and seats are often in need of cleaning.

I would advise avoiding fancy American chain restaurants. We tried Lawry’s, for example, and it was just plain bad. I think Asians sometimes copy the appearance of American food without capturing anything else.

We had Egg McMuffins in Singapore, because we had to, and they were good but not quite as good as American. They don’t toast the bread enough. We tried Five Guys, and it was better than American because they made the fries correctly. I think the reason is that they hire conscientious Singaporeans instead of American high school slackers who can’t be bothered to follow the formula.

We didn’t go in for sights much. The famous Marina Bay Sands, which is three buildings joined by a pool that runs across them at the top, did not get Rhodah excited enough to pay the $23.50 cost of going up for a look. She was pretty excited about the high-end mall at the bottom, however, much to my chagrin.

We visited the Singapore Botanic Gardens. If you want to see what Asians can do with gardening and landscaping, this is the place for you. All sorts of perfectly-tended plants and trees. They also have some weird wildlife. We walked right up on some kind of monitor rooting for food, and it didn’t mind us being there at all. We also saw some red jungle fowl, which are supposedly pre-domestication chickens. There are otters in the gardens, but they didn’t show.

The gardens has a huge orchid area. Pretty impressive, if orchids are your thing.

We went to the National Museum. It’s very small, and you can get in and out in less than an hour. They had some interesting exhibits, but not a whole lot has happened in Singapore, so there was a limit to what they could do.

We had a very satisfying trip in spite of Singapore’s limitations. It’s an extremely comfortable city to stay in. It will spoil you.

While I was there, I came to a crazy realization: I don’t actually hate cities. I hate AMERICAN cities, because of the people who live in them. Our cities accumulate the worst we have to offer. Singapore isn’t like that. You don’t have to be bullied by entitled homeless people or frightened by potential muggers. People don’t ignore you or abuse you. You can walk around at night and not worry that you’re in a neighborhood where your presence is considered consent to beatings, robbery, racist behavior, or rape.

There is no Antifa in Singapore. There are no self-pitying street murals that condemn the police while ignoring the people who do nearly all the damage.

I could live in Singapore without going crazy. I could even stand not being allowed to carry a pistol.

While the subject of bad behavior is on my mind, I may as well mention a remarkable conversation I had today. My aunt said a bunch of horrible things about me.

My aunt is in charge of some things related to my grandparents’ estates, and I am not very happy with the job she is doing, or, in my view, not doing. Everything should have been sold and distributed many years ago, but a few assets are sitting around doing nothing, and I would like to have my financial connections to my family cut. I’m just tired of being involved in it. I’m not very concerned about the money.

My aunt has Parkinson’s, and dementia is one thing Parkinson’s can cause. I can’t diagnose anyone, but I am wondering if she is getting close to the point where some decisions have to be made regarding her care and that of her husband. Today I had to tell him over and over who I was. I told him his wife had three sisters and I was the son of the eldest. I told him I was his nephew. I told him I was his wife’s nephew.

Anyway, she started the conversation by angrily criticizing me for being unavailable to discuss a deal involving a property. I received a text from her in Singapore, and I responded when I saw it, saying I was in the process of flying home and would try to get back to her the following day. She was very angry at me for taking the trip! This is someone who has never spoken angrily to me until this year, so it was strange to hear the tone of her voice and the openness of the hostility.

I didn’t get that at all. I said I had taken a vacation, and she demanded to know who takes a foreign vacation in winter, as though it was a hostile act no decent person would perform. She was seething. Why? She said, “I hope you had a nice time!” Still angry. I said, “I did!”

I have complained to her this year about her failure to take certain steps to get things sold. I have never been nasty to her, and I have never insulted her. I have been blunt, though, and Southerners don’t always take that well. It’s a serious failing we have. Often, we prefer to be passive-aggressive and treacherous. Smile in your face; stab you in the back later. Being blunt is like violating an unwritten code or something. It’s not done.

She said she needed to apologize for saying nasty things about my religious beliefs. She said she apologized wholeheartedly. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said so, and that I accepted her apology anyway.

So has she been making fun of my beliefs to the family? I don’t know. When I have talked to her about my beliefs in the past, she has generally given me the impression that she was right there with me. I took her expressions of agreement with a grain of salt, but I didn’t have any reason to think she contemned my faith.

I don’t really care about this stuff. A bunch of family members are long dead, and the rest greatly reduced their involvement with my dad and me over a decade ago, so I haven’t been part of their circle in a very long time.

I wonder if we see things differently. Maybe it would bother her a lot to find out I had criticized her faith to the family, so she assumes I would be upset if she had done the same thing to me. I don’t really think or care about what they say about me, though. I have so many things to think about.

I’m just guessing here. Maybe there is no rational explanation.

Bizarrely, she accused me of taking off to Egypt to see if I could find a wife to come home with me. She, whose son is on wife three, was saying I was a loser with women. I was amazed. Where did that come from? How long had she been holding it in? Why did she pick Egypt? Does she know I went to Egypt? Why would anyone go to Egypt to get a wife? I can’t imagine a worse place, unless it’s the area where my family comes from.

I now know she doesn’t know I’m married. I didn’t correct her. I didn’t think it would help.

I have tried to get her to list properties on the web for sale, and I have mentioned the fact that I manage properties and have sold some. I guess she did not like that, because she blurted out, “My property is worth much more than yours!” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked her what she meant. I think she was saying she had a bunch of rental properties that were worth more than what I have.

I don’t have any idea what she has, and she has no idea what I have.

She said everyone else in the family had planned for retirement and I had not. Where she got this idea is a mystery.

Apparently, she thought I was trying to get her to liquidate things because I was desperate for money. I said, “Do you think I’m poor?” She said, “Fine. You’re filthy rich!” So first she wanted to insult me by saying I had nothing, and then, I think, she wanted to make me feel bad for bragging about being rich. Which I didn’t do!

She said she had her treasures, which were her grandchildren, and she said I had no one, except my sorry dog. What?? I didn’t know where to go with that. I said I didn’t have a dog.

I never said anything rude. For example, I didn’t try to come up with a snappy comeback about her pets.

She said the family was going to do whatever it wanted with or without me, so of course, I asked her why she had called me. What is the point of asking for my support when it doesn’t matter? She said I couldn’t do anything about it, which is not true at all.

I told her I would never sue or contact the attorney general or anything along those lines, because I’m a Christian and I don’t intend to live that way. But I’m not going to say things are going well when I think they’re not.

I said she needed to advertise properties on the web, like everyone else does now. She said she was in “the hot spot,” meaning the frantic world of undesirable Eastern Kentucky rural real estate. She wanted me to know she knew more than I did. She then told me I was ashamed of my people and my culture, which seems irrelevant. I think she was telling me I did not understand the mysterious and unique methods of selling property up there.

I AM ashamed of my people and my culture! Every mature person who has come out of Eastern Kentucky is ashamed of the people and the culture. I used to be proud of my roots, but I was deluded. Immaturity, racism, illegitimacy, toothlessness, violence, adultery, drugs, generations of welfare recipients, hatred of learning…yes, of course I’m ashamed of my people. I didn’t say so, however.

I’m ashamed of being like them in counterproductive ways.

I used to love Eastern Kentucky, but the smart people left a long time ago. For years, my aunt has tried to promote the area as unappreciated and full of brains and talent, but that’s not even a little bit true.

Think about Singapore. In 1965, it had to start out as a new nation. It was poor. It was in the middle of nowhere. Now they call it the Switzerland of Asia. Money everywhere. A harbor full of ships. A highly educated populace. Skyscrapers. Safety.

Now think of Eastern Kentucky. It’s loaded with coal. All they had to do was keep their mineral rights, sell the coal, develop other industries, and invest, and it would have become the Kuwait of Appalachia. Instead, they sold their inheritances to outsiders and became their laborers. They never built a decent university. No infrastructure. No industry other than coal. They kept their corrupt politics and courts. They held onto racism. They fell in love with handouts. They planted marijuana patches full of booby traps. Since 1965, Eastern Kentucky has gotten worse.

Yes. Sure. I’m ashamed of it. Why would I not be?

Maybe “ashamed” is the wrong word. I’m critical of it. I am honest about it. I reject a lot of it.

She went on to accuse my parents of being ashamed of it. That’s true. They were. They didn’t try to disguise themselves or cure their accents, but they were realistic. My dad used to quote Kentucky author Harry Caudill, who said that everybody who had any get-up-and-go got up and went.

My dad was the best lawyer I ever knew or knew of. He flew all over the country representing companies like PPG, UPS, and Nabisco before the NLRB and the federal appellate courts. He was the head of litigation in one of Florida’s top firms at the age of 33, three years after joining as an associate.

My mother loved classical music. She read. She loved good restaurants and trips to Europe.

What were they supposed to do in Eastern Kentucky? My dad wrote a brief for my grandfather once, and my grandfather told him it was too good for the judges up there.

Since my beliefs have been mentioned, I’ll talk about some of them.

I am certain everyone has demons. They are around us all the time, influencing, or trying to influence, our hearts and minds. Many of the thoughts, desires, and emotions we think are ours really come from demons, and some, in some people, come from the Holy Spirit.

Demons use people to express themselves and fulfill their desires. They give us habits and leanings. Some try to turn us into the people they would be if they had bodies. They get us to wear things they like. They get us to cut ourselves up and get tattoos.

They manifest in things like overeating, pornography, rage, depression, delusions, to name a few.

I believe that when people become demented, the demons get promotion. Before dementia sets in, people resist them to a certain extent. They also cover their influence up, pretending to be nicer and better than they really are. Once the host loses the ability to steer things, he or she becomes more like the demons.

My grandmother liked to boss people. She covered it up when she was young and able, but she became demented, and one day, she announced, “I want to be the boss!” I believe that was her demons talking. Sometimes my dad, who had vascular dementia, would curse me for no reason and then forget instantly. I think that was demonic, too.

Now my aunt is fading, and she seems like a different person. Maybe she is a different person. Maybe other beings are finally getting to spit poison at me, after veiling their feelings for decades. She used to tell me she admired me. She tried to impress me, probably because I grew up in cities and had more sophistication than the rest of the family. She’s done with that now.

God has told me all kinds of brilliant things, which makes sense, because he is God. He told me this: “Things get better, or things get worse.”

It sounds extremely simple and obvious, but it’s important. Every day, you improve or deteriorate. You never stand still and remain unchanged. Nothing does, except God. Troubled people who don’t know the Holy Spirit deteriorate. Whatever is wrong in their hearts and minds gets worse.

God brings improvement and order. Where God is absent, rot and chaos are unstoppable. God told me this: “Bring order.”

I’ve talked to Rhodah about my family, and she feels the same way I do. Don’t sue. Don’t turn anyone in. Don’t wade into the food fight. The amounts at stake are too small to make a real difference in our lives, and getting into unforgiveness and juvenile squabbling would take all the joy out of life.

Paul said it was better to suffer wrong than to take another Christian to court. I would only call one or two of my relatives Christians, but I think Paul’s advice applies anyway. If anything is taken from me, God will repay it with interest, and He will be pleased that I’m pursuing his presence instead of playing verbal laser tag with people who are in real supernatural trouble.

We have been praying for my family. It doesn’t seem to help them. I don’t know what else we can do. I thought about contacting relatives to raise awareness about my aunt’s condition, but they know already, and nothing is being done.

It seems likely a very abrupt move to assisted living is in her near future, and I am told nothing is being done to prepare. If she’s angry with me for questioning her actions as my fiduciary, you have to wonder how she will handle assisted living staff telling her what socks to wear.

It’s very unfortunate. I used to have a great relationship with her. I don’t see that being restored any time soon. If my grandfather had done a better job planning his estate, maybe the family would still be whole.

At least I can say I never took advantage of any of the others. I’m not the world’s finest person, but I have managed to avoid that.