Dr. Verlene: Medicine Woman. April 5, 1999 (and more)

"Bangkok, Oriental setting, And the city don't know that the city is getting"

My little Durians! Sawadee Ca!

I was in Bangkok, where I have discovered some wonderful new pearls! You know that "the bars are temples but the pearls ain't free".

Well, they're not free, but with the high exchange rate, they surely are cheap! Luckily "you'll find a god in every golden cloister", and with help from friends, I managed to root out some new cloisters. The fact that I may run for public office one day prevents me from divulging too much more!

My life is so strange; I recently got stuck walking behind a baby elephant. My petit pachyderm had a band of blinking LED lights strapped to it's tail. The kind of lights that joggers use, so that cars can see them on the side of the road.

Now, I do not know how many of you ever have been stuck behind a baby elephant, (Several nights of the bar in Raleigh spring to mind), but there is NO WAY that you CANNOT see the animal! Oh well, I turned up the volume of my mini disk player, chuckled and walked on...managing to avoid crashing into the elephant. On the other side of the street, the King of some African republic and his entire entourage of bodyguards were blocking more traffic than the elephant! All this while Enya crooned in my ears!

Well anyway!

What a set of flights last week! On board my Thai flight some sweet woman got her size 4, nine-west's crushed and yours Verly, with my limited medical was ushered up to help the poor sparrow.

("What?" you ask, " Verl has medical experience? Well I do! And this is in addition to dating the doctor-twit. Trust me, any doctor who does not know where your uvula is located, should be sent back to whatever fly-by-night medical school in Mexico to repeat a year or two? I digress?)

Thank goodness for my supply of pharmaceuticals (kept out of view of most of the prying eyes of those pesky customs officers), I managed to Valium her down, splint her leg, using an onboard Vogue magazine, and to save us from having to do an emergency landing in Cambodia.

My next Thai flight had an aborted landing (through the haze of my free cocktails, I vaguely remember them screeching back up to the sky to avoid something wondering across the runway!) I dinged my call-button and asked if whatever they were avoiding, had little red blinking lights strapped to it's tail...because THEN I could tell them what was going on!

Finally my last Thai flight (yes folks, three in a row!). They again asked for a doctor on board, I put down my drink and offered my help. This time, it was not so pleasant. The poor gentleman died on me (I swear, a FIRST!). I assume that he had a heart attack, but everyone was shouting and screaming in Thai, Chinese and Korean, and I could not get it all! I do not know how many of you have been trained in CPR on those lovely plastic torso dummies but they do not really prepare you for the horrors of an actual patient. Ugh.

We landed in Taipei and Dr Do-Little here, got dragged off to the police station to make a statement (I thought that my stylishly outfitted figure made enough of a statement, but they wanted more!). I was sure that I would be spending the night in jail, so I grabbed a file (I have seen enough old movies to know that you always need a file in jail) and left the plane. Fortunately for me, the only file I had was a nail file so the hours spent waiting for my interrogation gave me quite an opportunity to give myself a lovely manicure!

I signed some statement that was all in Chinese. I am convinced that the next US administration is going to drag me off for selling secrets...but I SWEAR I did not know what I was signing. They fingerprinted me (MOI!) and copied my passport, gave me a bottle of Champagne and let me go! How odd. Moet. And he died...I wonder what I would have gotten if he had lived?

And if you think that I am making any of this up...wrong! Not an untrue word passes these lips.

Of course, I am now in Seoul, where the only entertainment that I can understand, is watching the Armed Forces Network...God Bless our boys in Blue/Green!

What a strange channel. Who is this Mike Wetzel? All of you out there, who can't-ask-and-don't-tell, know what I mean. The world's largest nerd is the anchor of the two-minute report (which comes on about every 5 minutes). News consists of: Gamblers Anonymous Meetings, Spousal abuse reports, dorm theft, warnings on when to use your government travel card (Oh! Buy the old girl a drink!) I tell you what, the armed forced seem positively horrid!

News from the Commissary. "March: Frozen Food Month" Free frozen treats, contests...they are pushing the use of Frozen Food! I wonder if they would be serving that in Jail!

Well, I must run! Room Service has arrived and I am parched!

I may be off to Malaysia tomorrow. There is a huge outbreak of encephalitis and they are killing all the pigs. Jodie Foster is there filming a controversial remake of "The King and I". I hope she is OK!

Love
Ventilator Verlene!