Phones, Women and Cannibalism

Women of the world, when you accept going on a date with someone, please do that someone a favor and stay off your phone. This goes for guys too but this happens more often with the fairer sex in my experience.

I was prompted to write this story of misfortune based on a blog I read earlier today. He had a bad time with his date in Vietnam, This was my worst night in St. Pete due to a date.

My brother and I had just arrived in Saint Petersburg, Russia for the first time after a few days we had just spent in Moscow. We check into our single room in the Golden Garden Hotel. There was a cute girl at the counter checking us in and after getting scammed in the Moscow train station before the trip to St. Pete it certainly made, at least, the end of a pretty crap day a little better. Pretty girls have that effect. You are welcome for that pearl of knowledge, ladies.

St. Petersburg is, to date, my favorite city in the world. It has great architecture, gorgeous women, loads of things to see and do and gorgeous women.

We realized after the first night or so that getting a single room was a mistake. I realized it more than my brother as I am the less attractive, more shy of the two of us. He didn't have too many problems finding girls to touch him inappropriately in our single room while I was banished to sitting down in the lobby of our hotel. Neither of us knew the city very well by this point so I wasn't really into getting lost, at night, alone. He had to sit in the lobby too but not quite as often.

The glass half full of me spending several hours in the lobby of the hotel was that I was able to chat up the girl in the lobby that checked us in when we arrived. Her name is Анна (pronounced Anya) and she was cute, sweet and unable to run away... just the way I like 'em.

Anya and I got to learn quite a bit about one another and we kept in contact after I went back to Iraq. This is September 2006. The best parts of my life were 10 years ago... suck it... I am working on getting back and making new, fun memories.

My brother and I decided to go back to Russia on our next trip we were able to take from Iraq and that is exactly what we did. 14 February 2007. It was great, I had a hot girl I could date and touch inappropriately and when she had to go home, I would go to hang out with my brother at Golden Dolls. Golden Dolls is the superb Strip Club we found on our first trip and being the decent guys we are, we made a lot of friends there.

This trip we rented a 2 bedroom apartment so we had no lobby sitting. Our daily schedule was, for the most part, Wake up, see the city/go out on dates, end up at the club until it closed down at 0600, go have coffee and Tiramisu at the Kofe Hauz (Кофе Хауз) until 0800-0900 and go rack out at the apartment.

Anya would come over,  hang out, cuddle up, watch movies, sit on my beard... you know, the best things in life. We had a lot of fun in our little apartment, one of my brothers ladies came over and cooked us dinner since we had a full kitchen and all. Chris and I would be lazy and watch 24,  Supernatural and Russian Married With Children when we didn't want to go anywhere. Anya and I had fun with Nutella... Chris wasn't invited, I'm selfish, DON'T YOU JUDGE ME! It was a great time to be alive.

Until she tried to eat me.

I don't know if she was trying to turn me on, or cannibalism turned her on but she would bite the fuck out of me. This sweet, innocent girl who was originally scared of me due to my tattoos was trying to, in my mind, bite huge chunks out of me in an apparently sexual manner. It was bad, I was not able to have full use of my right arm for over a month after I got back from Iraq after this trip because she bit me so hard on the inside of my elbow.

I would have been horrified if I wasn't getting pissed that she kept trying to eat me after I told her to stop. I have never in my life come as close to smacking a chick in the head as when she was doing the job that ruined my arm. I have a pretty high pain tolerance and that shit hurt.

Would I do it again... fuck yes.

She was hot, I am lonely and I have become more ok with cannibalism over the years... I would just have to ask her to try to refrain from eating me. Rough biting and scratching, that's ok... making my body INOP for more than a day... not ok.

But then again, it has been a while and in the words of my buddy, J. Barnes... At this point, I'd probably fuck a beehive.

One night we walk to a Mexican place to have some dinner before we head back to the apartment to DVD and Chill. We walk in the door and the Maitre d' has us walk all the way to the back of the establishment to check our coats. We are then shown back to the front to be seated. It is a nice restaurant and I am just dying to see how well Mexican is done in Russia, life is good.

We order drinks, I am a lucky man about town with a pretty girl about to order what I assume will be a close approximation of Mexican food.

Her phone rings, she answers, it is her roommate who is currently in Paris on vacation.  She answers it and I am not bothered because she told me about the vacation and surely she will be off the phone soon. She gets all smiley and starts blasting off all excited in Russian. Now I know a little bit of Russian, I read a bit more but I sure as fuck don't know enough for two bestie girlfriends talking about vacations worth of Russian so I am completely lost and losing interest in this turn of events by every tick of the clock... And there were a LOT of ticks.

We order food... still on the phone

We get the food... still on the phone

I am eating the food, hating life and thinking for the first time in my life about walking out on the date... still on the phone. I wonder if I could just leave her there on the phone and head back to the apartment or hit up the club.

I don't even remember if the food was good at this place, I was too livid to notice because I was paying for two but eating alone.

She finally finishes the food while I am thinking about how cold it is and if I really need that coat... still on the phone

She wants dessert... still on the phone... fuck dessert.

She has said like 5 words to me since getting on the phone and I hate this date but it was bitterly cold outside and if I go get my coat, she will see me leave because I will have to pass by her on my way out and I don't want her to get off the phone for my sake as she hasn't to this point.

Dessert comes... still on the phone...fuck phones.

She eats dessert... still on the phone... Alexander Graham Bell was a prick... fuck him too.

I get the check and sit waiting till she finally gets off the phone. I am just staring at her by this point thinking about how much I hate her friend and I hope she falls off the Eiffel tower and maybe Anya could fall with her...

She gets off the phone and I am beyond done with that night... if I had it in me to be an absolute prick, this would have been my shining moment.

I could not wait to get rid of her for the night, so I could calm down and go meet Chris at Golden Dolls. Unfortunately, for me. I am not a prick and am, somewhat, old school so as the pissed off gentleman that I was, I walk her home, tell her goodnight and shoot straight for the club to try to salvage some of my night... Ника (Nika) certainly helped make it better, I miss her too though she and I still talk.

I continued to see Anya during the trip, we had fun up to that date and I am rather forgiving, even with her trying to eat me. She was mostly enjoyable and very easy on the eyes in all manner of dress... or undress, as it were.

That miserable night prompted me to start asking questions before I will take a girl out and highest on that list is what do you do with your phone during a date.

I'll end up stabbing a motherfucker if I have to live through that bullshit again...

I was going to apologize to AGB's family but it turns out he really was kind of an asshole.

Never Seen Nobody Get They Ass Kicked by a Pork Chop

Imagine, if you will, a war-torn country.

25 December.

Christmas.

 Mosul, Iraq.

2005.

It is a cold day in Northern Iraq but it has been a good day. Everyone is singing and dancing and living it up. Not really, we are in Iraq, you dumbass, it's cold and kind of miserable. Well, it was still a little fun... and there may have been dancing... so, I guess I apologize for calling you a dumbass.

Fuck yo Couch!

Anyway, it is Christmas Day in Mosul and after our normal 12-hour shift, we decided to get together and have a barbecue. Everyone is kicked back with their non-alcoholic beer because for some reason some people actually just like the taste of beer. Freaks.

I just happened to get stuck on the same base as my brother, Chris, after he got some strings pulled and I was having a blast. This was my first time out of the states and even though there was the constant possibility of death, I was loving every minute and I miss my time there every day. I was finally out of Shawshank and in the big, wide, world I want to explore.

I was fairly new in-country so everything I had for personal items were recently bought. I didn't know anyone very well and though I make friends pretty easily, I was hanging out with Chris, who had volunteered to cook the pile of pork, chicken and beef we had surprisingly managed to buy at the PX.

Chris and I were bullshitting while he was cooking and I was opening packs of meat for him. All of a sudden, one of the icy packs of meat (which so happened to be Pork Ribs) started to slide out of my hand. having the cat-like reflexes that I do, for a tubby bastard, I lunged to catch it, and catch it I did!

With just reacting to the beautiful meat falling to a certainly horrific end upon the god awful Iraqi dirt, I had forgotten that in one of the two hands I was lunging with was holding my brand new knife. The knife that plunged through those glorious Pork Ribs and into the middle finger on my left hand.

Blood, oh boy did I bleed. I bled upon the tragically ruined Pork Ribs, I bled on the ground, I bled on my brother, I bled on me, the porch... pretty much anywhere that the blood pouring from my rapidly shaking hand could reach. I thought for a second I had just lost the tip of my finger, I bled so much. To this day, 11 years later, Chris has those boots, still spotted with my blood.

So as I bleed profusely on everything in my path, I make my way to the medic.

We tell the Medic what happened... he laughs... the Medic is a dick.

Finally, when those douchenozzles calmed down, they got around to cleaning my wound which looked much worse than it was. Those chuckleheads gave me three stitches in the side of my finger at the first knuckle.

So, in this whole process, though we are not working, we had to call safety. The safety lady was the funny, short, black woman with short hair and glasses. We tell her the story of what happened and after about a second to process it she says, " In all my years doing this job, I have never seen nobody get they ass kicked by a pork chop!"

The medic laughed... like I said, he is a dick... my brother laughed... he is a dick too.

From that day forward I have been Porkchop which has since mostly been shortened to Chop, which, honestly is much better than the name my hippy parents gave me.

I earned my name in a war zone, sure, I didn't do anything cool, or heroic... wait, no fuck that... the act of me trying to save that tasty piece of pork was a truly heroic act, especially for the part of the world I was in.

It was heroic, fuck you, call me Chop.

Always Carry a Towel.

Howdy,

I'm Chop.

I am 35 for another couple months, I am a Texan living in Missouri, USA and I am spinning up to do more traveling and adventuring and whatnot in the near future, so I thought I would get in on this whole newfangled blogging thing.

I currently own a gun shop (Patriot Gun & Outfitters) which does pretty well and a t-shirt company (MOAZ Tees) that doesn't. I also work for the Miller County Sheriff's Department as a dispatcher. My average day is about 16 hours between my shop and MCSD and sleep.

Prior to being back in Missouri I spent the last three years in and around Minot, North Dakota in the oilfields and before that I spent 4 years in Iraq as a contractor.

I have had a lifelong wanderlust which I blame on my mother. At an early age we would watch British Comedies and I spent my early years wanting to meet all these people and listen to their cool accents in real life.

I went to Iraq when I was 25 and it was the first time I had ever left the country. While I was there, I saw some pretty amazing things and met some of the best people I know.

Iraq afforded me another great thing... the ability to finally slake my need for travel and seeing the world. I came home more often than I wished, but I did get to see Russia, Amsterdam, Dubai, Thailand and The Philippines. While I was in North Dakota I also took a trip to Canada. Outside of a few stateside destinations, my favorite being Deadwood, South Dakota, I have not been able to travel much since 2009. I have decided to change that.

This blog will show my progress and the places I travel among anything else that interests me to talk about... which is a pretty extensive list.

I am always reading blogs and books about travel and looking up prices for living different places overseas and I. recently finished A Better Life for Half the Price: How to prosper on less money in the cheapest places to live by Tim Leffel which gave me lots of good information about various places around the world to live at for cheap. Information that I may relay in a later post.

I like cheap, cheap is my friend... I am a poor bastard after all.

I have talked to my brother, Chris about what I want to do and being the truly great person he is, he was on board with the decision to sell the shop so he could work on his projects and I could work on mine. He is no longer able to be there very often due to his schedule and my need to travel, I fear, is going to start causing my life to shorten if i don't hurry up and start doing what I believe I was always meant to do... not going all Genghis Khan and trying to the impregnate the world... yet... just seeing the world... for the moment, conquering comes with patience.

So, I am going to try my hand at long term travel. I plan on using the money I make from the shop as a cushion until I can line up some means to to make myself some funds at the first destination I plan on moving to for an unknown amount of time... (subject to change), The Philippines.

The Philippines have a lot of advantages outside of cost, which is pretty phenomenal...

A personal plus is the fact that my little brother Darwin and his family are from the Philippines and even though he is currently working in Dubai, UAE with his wife, I know that I can rely on the rest of the family for a little help if i need it.

The true reason that I have settled for the Philippines over Thailand, Bulgaria and several other places I have been looking at as my first stop is because I have also been talking to my brother R-Lo about moving his family there with me. He likes the sound of the cost of living too. I honestly don't think it will happen but I am hopeful. Even if it is after I go and pave the way for them to come there, I'd still be grateful to have him there, it has been too long since I saw him, his wife and my nephews.

It is hard to find anyone in the country without at least a basic understanding of English which is great for those who have no intention of learning any of the languages of the Philippines... or those who worry about traveling because they wont understand anyone... which is difficult to do these days.

There are 7,107 islands that make up the Philippines which means there is a TON of coastline (5th largest in the world) and a veritable shit-ton of things to do and see, all for cheap. The last time I was in the Philippines, I bribed the crew of the ferry we were taking from Cebu to Bohol to let my brother, his family and I drive the ferry... its dumb but it cost next to nothing and how many places in the world would even consider that.

Possibly the most famous part of the Philippines are the  throngs of short, tiny, gorgeous Filipinas who have a happy inclination to loving them some white guys or possibly foreign guys in general... but I'm honkey white so I have only experienced it one way... so suck it, you PC bastard. As a guy, if you are lonely, you can easily get taken in by this brown land of plenty and in some cases get taken. If you have a gut feeling that not everything is good then break it off. Filipinas are amazing girls and I hear all the time they are probably the best wives in the world but just be careful cause it is an odd thing getting so much attention after living in the states and not being Channing Tatum. It's easy to fall head over heels for the first person to treat you that way. I'm not saying that first person may not be the one for you... just saying, be careful... it is a completely different world than what you are used to if you have more than one experience with girls stateside.

I am currently reading The Grown-up's Guide to Running Away from Home: Making a New Life Abroad by Rosanne Knorr to see if I get any more tips on moving along with reading several blogs on moving, culture, night life and women. I have been looking through OLX for the prices of apartments and houses in different areas, not that I will pay for one online but the pricing is a good baseline for the first week or so when I have boots on ground to be able to actually see these places.

There are a few amenities I am looking for in a place and the only reason some of these make it to the list is because I have seen several places without 1 or all of them.
1. Good Internet... I have to make money somehow
2. Air Conditioning... I am not built for heat or humidity, rather... I know this sounds dumb as I am moving to a hot/humid country... I don't mind heat too much if I am doing something enjoyable... but if I am sitting in my house writing on this thing or working... or even worse, sleeping... i don't want to be sweating my danglies off.
3. A stove, I want to live in the Philippines like a local and not like a tourist, I plan to cook... and though I don't do it often, i like to cook.
4. A refrigerator... I don't care if i go to the market daily and never put food in the fridge... i may need it for all my orange soda and sweet tea during my online endeavors... I will find a use.
5. Washer for clothes... I know there is probably a local lady i could pay to do it but depending on how much that is, i would be better off doing it myself... a dryer would be superb too.

I guess that is it... this is who I am and my plan to work towards in the near future. I will post when new things develop or something new interests me enough to write about.

-Chop

I hope you enjoy the links, i do not agree with 100% of everything I linked to but I do understand where they are coming from. Please tell me what you think.