05-AUG-A-4
FULL TIME
BANKING FOR TIPS, PART-TIME HUNTING, AND INCIDENTAL SIGHTSEEING IN
THE THIRD “
WITH THE
LATE START FROM HOTEL ELITE,
THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT
OF THE POSTING OF ALL CARDS,
A CRUISE ON THE
FOR FURTHER
US CASH EXTRACTION
AUGUST 3,
2005
What did I
get accomplished today in my “
I know that a few friends would enjoy the exotic postage of Azeri stamps, as well as the stories I handwritten in detail on the cards in the usual War and Peace micrographia, so I made a big deal out of the fact that I wanted those mailed without fail. So, we went to the Central Post Office. Why do you want to send these? Because I am an odd duck, thank you, and my recipient friends might like them. Well, it will take about ten to twelve days and you can do better with email, why don’t you try that? Are you in the business of selling stamps here and posting letters or not?
So, all 36 postcards I had written in the last two weeks that could be found after they had been essentially tossed aside despite solemn promises of posting them were put into the mail by my own hand at about $1.20 in postage each—or a total of fifty dollars US. I hope you enjoy them, since it is one of the two things that can be distilled from this long waiting time in Baku to be shared as something positive, the other being these pages you may be reading if sent from abroad, or if you have to await my return with the “thumb” mass storage device carrying them across several more borders before the edited tapes reach you in this Jul-C-series and Aug-A-Baku series which is largely a holding pattern since my ten day hunt in the Big Caucasus has been aborted with the spectacular shot on the fourth day—leaving a full week of Baku tourism, which turns out to be only a hour or two per day which consists largely of a kebab lunch as we go to the office to get me to help recruit new hunters as a reference for the “superb arrangements” I am being treated to interspersed with continuing visits to banks to clear the guaranteed certified cashier’s checks or AmEx Traveler’s checks for tips. I have given them every negotiable instrument I had brought along to lat me through Azerbaijan and the nest three weeks in Africa as well—ALL of which are in their hands with demands for still more, identifying still further employees of Yullat’s Company who might have served me well such as drivers and camp managers (especially Bahlul, the head of the hunting camp, the one who had aborted the TV filming of what would have been the most spectacular shot to be seen on TV for a Caucasus Tur hunt, and the one who had made a four day hunt out of what I had understood would be a ten day expedition into the Big Caucasus Mountains who had already decided the tip he had wanted from me would be the Bushnell Range Finder that was not otherwise available here in Azerbaijan—until I took the range finder back after he adamantly refused to allow the cameraman to accompany me on the fourth –successful—day of my hunt, and who had wanted me to leave the mountain with the whole entourage as soon as possible after the successful shot.
Now, complicating
the demands for still further non-existent checks to be written, is a second
“sleight of hand.” Patrick, it turns
out, has been making various purchases of bar bills to laundry and mini-Bar charges
on the room, along with the “getting lucky” in trolling through the discothèques
and taxing escorts to and form the Hotel –but abruptly has lost all his
money. He says the money George had
loaned him was put in his pocket which went into the laundry and disappeared,
and now he cannot even retrieve his laundry without my paying for all charges
for him, including the Hotel Elite and the charges I warned him were not my
tab—like bar and Mini-Bar—but even his stay here and all transportation and his
share of all the tips, which now fall to me—on top of the redundant claims for them. The least enjoyable phrase I had heard throughout
FROM OFFICE TO HARBOR CRUISE,
LUNCH AT MIRAVARI RESTAURATN,
AND A STROLL TO AN EARLY CONCLUSION TO
OUR
“
Our tour
day began at around noon, as we were brought to the office where I completed
the postcard debacle, and may have added three chapters to the story previously
sent yesterday by email, which included the story of my first day and the head bonk
and the last day and the long range running single shot scored. I added the Hunts #2 and #3 (although that
one was not spell checked and may appear to have been typed up in Azeri!) as
well as the brief chapter of the “second day of Baku Touring.” I could not send a message to my sister
Shirley, since each time I tried a message the address was said to be
incorrect. Only later did I see a very
encouraging message she had sent to me after receiving the package from me I
had mailed before departure dealing with my plans for this trip and my
accelerated replacement of missing parts of Derwood, and my checking in on my back
problem with an MRI When I tried to
“reply” to her very kind message, the machine seized up and shut down, so she
did not get the stories of my Azerbaijani adventures. She will have to be the first to get the
edited and completed story when I can complete it—possibly forwarded from my
next destination in
Patrick called George Sevich on his cell phone, as he was in Moscow airport and we told him of my un-filmed spectacular long range shot after which there had been a rush to get me off the mountain and back to Baku, where we have been stranded in limbo until August 5 takeoff. Patrick told him of his loss of money and how he would need cash now, as George called Yullat who will cover the extra baggage fees to get the trophies home, with a suggestion that he somehow get cash form me if I could get it form a bank. I found myself in a bank for part of the afternoon, where they were anything but user-friendly, insisting on a specific card—which I had, Visa—and my passport, which I did not carry, although I had the number. They also said that the certified check that I gave as the last negotiable guaranteed instrument for the further tips would only be able to be cleared in two months. This is in an era of electronic banking!
One
suggestion as to how to trade value was gratuitously made on discovery of my
new powerful Toshiba laptop—“Oh, those are lots cheaper in the
In the
Central Post Office one can purchase first day covers showing the former president
Heyder Oliyev, whose portrait is every bit as ubiquitous around
BOARDING THE GOOD SHIP CAPTAIN ASIMOV,
FOR A SHORT ROUND TRIP CRUISE ON THE
WELL-OILED
We strolled
along the Corniche, watching fellows fishing for s herring-like fish both with
long slender poles and with cast nets. It is a rather hardy fish that stays alive
in the
Emil who is very uptight and on a short leash from the office and jumps when called as do the other “gophers” was visibly relaxed by our harbor cruise on the Captain Asimov. He said it was quiet and peaceful, and—in a phrase I really liked---“It reduced brain noise.”
We then
went on to the Miravari Restaurant and sat at a corner table overlooking the