Friday 2 September 2011

Good ol Hamish



  In spite of my eyes closing up due to a mystery allergy, yesterday I met good ol Hamish at the bus station for a quick brekkie before he moved on to his next destination.  I hadn't seen him since an insane week in Thailand, back in '07.  He was in Namibia for a few months, trying to sell a documentary. What?  Hamish has always had the most 'interesting' international jobs.  Before Namibia he was selling industrial faucets in England, while living with a nutty English chick. Heh, I know what half of that is like!  He was also once a 'grillwalker' - he would lumber around German soccer stadiums with a propane tank on his back and a huge grill strapped to his front, grilling hotdogs for the Germans.  Also in Germany, he was responsible for rounding up old-timey push-rail-cart thingies.  He got onto the wrong track one day, and jumped for his life as a freight train smashed the cart he was riding to oblivion.  When I stayed with him in Shanghai, he was hiding outside factories looking through newspapers with eyeholes, trying to stamp out corruption.  In China.
  Hamish and I met in uni, and we were infamous for going to every wine and cheese/free food and booze event ever held, in every department.  The fine arts vernissage deals on Thursdays were the best - garbage cans filled with icy Heineken, and tables heaped with bagels.  The poli sci beer bashes were surprisingly good, too.  The trick was knowing just one person in the department, so when we rolled in and people would go 'Who are you?', we'd be like 'We're Dan's friend, is he here?'.  We would then proceed to eat and drink up all the sweet sweet free eatables and drinkables they had.  We did this pretty much every night of the week.  We were nothing if not resourceful.  Oh, we also ended up at a no-pants-party once, where a well-known documentary director was being lecherous.
  Anyhow, Hamish somehow got stuck with a king's ransom in Namibian currency, and no bank in the world will touch it.  Hahaha!  He'll have to find a Namibian in Vancouver to unload it on.  If anyone can, Hamish can.
  Here's another good Hamish tale: http://harfangperdu.blogspot.com/2010/06/black-mountain-tyrants.html

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