Avatar of Mr Bean: Mr P in Kiel amidst the throes of labour.....

The place where this tale took place was Kiel in Germany. Kiel is the state capital of Schleswig-Holstein and has a long ship-building and naval tradition. A group of Indian submariners were deputed there to get trained and be involved with the assembling of some submarines that India was buying from Germany. The navy men could take their families also  with them and it happened that a lot of the accompanying wives were pregnant. It is with one such family that Mr P stayed to save on boarding charges on a trip to Germany.

As his host officer could not take a day off from work, Mr P volunteered to escort the wife who had reached full term to the hospital for a scheduled check up. Three other pregnant ladies also then tagged along for check ups as their husbands could not leave work as well. So Mr P drove all four ladies to the hospital and after reporting at the reception they all sat on chairs waiting for their names to be called for the doctor to see them. While Mr P sat down, the four fully pregnant ladies sat on either side. Can you imagine the spectacle it would have made in that German city? No wonder the local people who walked in and went through the reception area looked stunned, stared and kept giving furtive looks at the four women and Mr P sitting in the middle. After getting a lot of these strange looks, Mr P realised what was happening. He understood that people thought all four fully pregnant ladies were his resposibility and he was to be blamed for their condition, especially because he was sporting a beard at that time. Mr P felt embarrassed. He started to sweat and turned red. Somehow he got up and distanced himself from the ladies till all their check ups were finished and it was time to go home. As soon as they reached home, Mr P shaved off his beard.

He had to go back to the hospital again a few days later as his hostess was going into labour and the husband was not at home to take her. After he phoned and the husband reached the hospital, Mr P planned to make a speedy exit. However a couple more ladies in labour were also admitted into the hospital at the same time and Mr P's friend arrived with the other two husbands. The usual routine in the hospital was that these ladies would have to get out of their clothes and get into hospital gowns. They would also have to remove their jewelry and hand them to someone for safekeeping.

From one of the rooms a nurse came out and asked for the husband. Mr P immediately understood that it was probably for taking care of the jewelry. He also understood that only the husband could go in as the lady would be without any clothes. He rushed and summoned his host officer who was just coming in and took him to the room and hurried him in to see his wife. Mr P wisely stayed back.

Mr P's friend who went in saw the lady and she certainly did not have any clothes on. But then she was surely wife,..................................................... only to somebody else!!!

Funny Travel Incidents: Mr P and ghost travel

It was also on a Friday the 13th that Mr P was travelling from Baroda to Ahmedabad in a taxi. He had spent much longer time with his friends and it was quite late in the night that he left Baroda. The taxi driver seemed to be an amicable chap who also seemed to love old hindi songs and kept playing them loudly. His mobile phone also kept ringing frequently and it seemed to be from fellow taxi drivers who wanted to know where he was and from friends who wanted to share the latest gossips. These conversations were not hard to overhear at all as he seemed to believe that if you talk at the top of one's voice, it overcomes the power of distance. On top of that, he wanted to chat with Mr P in a loud voice. So Mr P indicated to the driver that he was planning to take a nap and moved to the back seat. There at least, he was slightly better off with the noise pollution. Mr P kept his eyes closed and pretended to fall asleep.

The taxi sped through the streets of Baroda and just before it entered the Expressway connecting the city with Ahmedabad, the driver stopped at a junction.  Mr P opened his eyes and sat up to see why the car had stopped. The driver turned around and told Mr P that he was going to get a cup of tea and some "paan" before they hit the Expressway. He asked whether Mr P needed to get a drink as well. Mr P indicated in the negative and pretended to go back to sleep again. As he did not want to start another barrage of conversation he proceeded to make a show of putting some cotton plugs in his ears and closed his eyes. The driver clearly understood the message Mr P was trying to convey and decided not to try and converse with Mr P again. He left for his tea and 'paan'.

Mr P kept looking at his watch and noticed that the driver was taking a long time with his tea  break. The thought of tea suddenly made a craving for some cardamom tea grow in him and he succumbed. It was always like this with Mr P. A lot of his good intentions and decisions somehow get overridden and that later landed him in trouble. So Mr P got out of the car and walked to a nearby tea shop and enjoyed a cuppa.
On returning back, Mr P noticed that the driver was still not there. But then the car was not there either!

Initially he thought he could have erred on the exact place where the car had been left. So he walked up and down the streets a bit, trying to locate the car. When these attempts failed, Mr P took out his mobile phone. "What an idiot I am," he thought. " I can ring and ask the driver where exactly the car is."

Mr P rang the driver and the driver answered the phone.

"Hello"

"Hello" said the driver and the phone went dead.

Mr P rang a few more times and did not get to the driver. The message on the phone said "Out of range.."

Mr P persisted and got to the driver again. The ensuing conversation went like this.

"Are you the driver?" he asked.

"Yes, I am the driver. And there are many taxi drivers in Gujarat. Whom do you want?"

"Where are you?"

" I am halfway down the Expressway linking Baroda to Ahmedabad. Who wants to know?"

" Hey, this is Sahib here.."

"What sahib? Which sahib?"

"That sahib who was supposed to be taken from Baroda to Ahmedabad in your car this evening"

"Ha, Ha, Ha! What a joke! Are you a ghost of that sahib? Because I did pick up the original sahib from Baroda and he is fast asleep in the back of the car! Or is it a ghost in the back of my car? He He He!"

"YOU -----------  ---------    --------" (These words are censored. Could be SAALEY KUTHEY KAMIINEY---- the hindi equivalents of some English foul language). "Turn around and see if there is a ghost in the back of your car."

"D---! I am so sorry sir! I am coming back to get you sir!"

One can only imagine how long it would have taken or how the driver could have come back "to get Mr P" considering there are not that many exits on the Expressway from Baroda to Ahmedabad!

Funny travel incidents: Mr P, "Figura" and the lion...

In the previous post (http://avatarofmrbean.blogspot.com/2012/01/avatar-of-mr-bean-mr-p-goes-back-to.html) Mr P had forgotten his parcel of party food in his desk because of all that Australian wine. It is no way as big an adventure that he had had through his interactions with a port wine in India, with the beautiful name of "Figura".

It was during his holidays in India that Mr P travelled to Diu, (let me settle your doubts right now. It is indeed DIU and NOT DUI) a union territory of India, that till 1961 had been under the Portuguese  for more than 400 years, where remnants of Portuguese culture still linger.The Portuguese are believed to take pride in their wines, especially the port wines. 

Now, Mr P had a very relaxing holiday on the beaches of Diu and bought two large bottles of the Figura port wine, one for himself and another as a gift for a friend back in Kochi. He then proceeded to travel in a car with two others to Baroda in the neighbouring state of Gujarat. This journey was through the road that traversed the Gir forests famous for its diverse flora and fauna and of course the Asiatic lions. Mr P was all excited about this trip and he would vehemently deny that he had been even a tiny bit scared! But he consumed half a bottle of Figura just before they departed from Diu. For courage!

picture from Wikipedia

Mr P sat in front with the driver and his two companions sat at the back. As the car wound its way through the jungle road, Mr P kept his eyes closed and kept praying. (Or was he in a stupor from the port?). His companions kept their eyes peeled, hoping and praying that they would see some lions. And Mr P kept his eyes shut and kept praying that they wouldn't. Every now and then he would open his eyes slowly to check whether they were out of the jungle yet. He would also open his eyes when he heard the others mention the deer and other fauna they were seeing. But by the time he roused himself and looked out, the animal would have long gone its way. It was during one of his "open eye episodes" that he thought he saw something in the bushes.

"A lion! A lion!", he pointed and then slunk down his seat in a crouch.

"Where is it sir?" said the driver and brought the car to a crawl.

"Right behind that clump of trees", Mr P managed to point out and slunk down again.

Now a bus loaded with tourists and a car following it  came from the opposite direction and they stopped and enquired why Mr P's car was stopping there. Seeing a lot more of his own race, Mr P gathered courage and blurted out that he had seen a lion and all the tourists got very excited.They got their cameras out and started gazing all around.

The driver of Mr P's car then realised that Mr P's lion was nothing other than a portion of a big tree trunk and surreptitiously informed that to Mr P.

To save the situation, a sheepish Mr P told the passengers in the bus and the other car that because of all the noise they made, the lion could have disappeared back into the forest.  Mr P was relieved indeed when his driver slowly started the car again and began to drive away.

To overcome the embarrassment and also to give him more courage, Mr P decided to take another swig of his bottle of the Figura. It was a very potent wine and he could hardly keep his eyes open. He was hoping to take the rest of the wine to Gujarat and said as much to the driver who was eyeing him curiously.

"No, you are not allowed to do that sir," said the driver. "Gujarat  is a dry state".

"What the.....!" Mr P shouted. He huffed and he puffed. And he brooded on what could be done. Rather than waste the wine on his companions or throw the wine with the bottle away before they crossed the borders into Gujarat, Mr P being Mr P decided to finish the whole bottle of wine then and there. A very inebriated Mr P fell asleep to a slumber interspersed with nightmares of lions sitting on his tummy when he woke up and got the car to stop so he could empty his bladder. It was during one such occasion that Mr P saw those two lions. They were slinking slowly across the road and Mr P gave a shrill ear piercing cry.

"Lions ! Lions!" he shouted at the top of his lungs and jolted everybody else out of their skins.

The others looked eagerly to where Mr P was pointing and saw those two scared little puppies that appeared to be trembling, quite shaken by Mr P's screams. They belonged to the dog or canine species (Canis lupus familiaris) rather than the feline species (Felidae panthera leo)!

picture from downloadable iphone wallpaper
The story ends here and it is left to your imagination as to what could have happened with the rest of Mr P's journey. Of course, it being Mr P, one can only imagine that everything would have gone incident free(tongue in cheek)! 

Of course Mr P would have had to go through a police check post into a dry state with a full bottle of the gift wine in his bags! What with all the lion encounters and the tryst with 'La Bella Figura', he had completely forgotten about that!
Did you?

Avatar of Mr Bean - Mr P goes back to work ……

It was back to work for Mr P after the holidays and everything went well the first day. That is to say, everything went well for Mr P. One cannot be so sure about his colleagues though......

At least he had not 'FORGOTTEN TO GO TO WORK IN A HANGOVER OF THE EUPHORIA OF  HOLIDAY MOOD' as in a very funny blog tweeted about by Cracked.com (So You Forgot You Had To Go To Work Today: http://bit.ly/tUHvo6).

It cannot be misconstrued if it is said that this was exactly something Mr P could have easily done. Exactly up his street, so to say. Right up his alley......

But this day he had shaken off the holiday mindset and managed to reach work not that late, contrary to what was his usual rule. When he reached the open section which he shared with some of his colleagues as his office space, he sensed that something was amiss and his co-workers seemed very restless. Mr P sniffed. A very offensive smell pervaded the entire area!

His colleagues were trying hard to concentrate on their work at their desks, and had tried some air fresheners. That did not seem to ameliorate the situation much. Now when Mr P reached work, he tried to identify what the smell was. It was worse than:

• Those socks he wore as an experiment to see how long he could wear them before he needed to wash them

• Those poached eggs he had forgotten on the kitchen bench and gone for holidays

• That packet of cauliflower and cabbage that had fallen off his shopping bag and rolled behind the freezer and remained hidden for weeks

The list could go on for ever if all the things Mr P had forgotten and allowed to decompose were included. But definitely, Mr P thought, this was something his colleagues were to be blamed for! And so it was much more unbearable than any other odours he had smelled.

"Well, well, well! Looks like some people here have never had a wash the entire holidays", he muttered loudly. He looked around at his colleagues with an air of a detective out to catch a culprit and disdainfully eyed their desks trying to find the source of that smell. In vain...

He then settled on his chair and opened the top drawer of his desk to get his pen.

That was when the others gagged and ran out from the office area!

Staring at him was a parcel of left-over  (...really?) party food from the office Christmas party celebrations before the holidays. He had stashed this in his draw planning to take them home later as unobtrusively as possible. Mr P cared very much on what others thought of him and did not like to be considered greedy. But somehow he had forgotten all about them! Was he inebriated or not....? "Blame the Shiraz and the Chardonnay! Or was it the Merlot or the Pinot noir? Or it could be the Cabernet Sauvignon."

Mr P looked at the parcel of what were once sausages and steaks and salads and coleslaw. And then Mr P was certainly glad he had not taken these home. Things were crawling on them!

Funny travel incidents: Culture Shock! and Mr P

A lot of times very funny things happen while you travel. The memory of these events stay clear in one's mind even years later. I would like to share some of these funny travel incidents with you all.

In India, especially in Kerala, we have the habit of pulling out the sheets and blankets and giving them a vigorous shake before spreading them out to make our bed just before we lie down and go to sleep. This is a practice handed down from ages and must have been followed as a measure of safety in a land with plenty of spiders, snakes, scorpions, centipedes etc.

When my friend Mr P, went to New Zealand for the very first time, he stayed at a motel. Mr P seems to be an Avatar of the famous Mr Bean and let me settle your doubts right now,... the P is not short form for Pea! This was his first trip away from India and he was very nervous and fidgety. In the evening as he was retiring to his bed, he pulled out the nicely laid out sheets and blankets from the bed that had already been made and started shaking them vigorously, out in the hallway.


The landlady came running and asked him, "What are you doing???"


"I am shaking my bed sheets and blankets" my friend said.


"What for?!" asked the landlady.


"To get rid of spiders."


"Oh I am very sorry if you have found any spiders in your bed sir. I am not sure how they could have gotten there."


"Well....., I didn't find any spiders...", he replied


"Then why on earth are you shaking the bedsheets?"


"Well.. just in case?" He replied .. scratching his head.


The land lady gave him a strange glare and asked him if he could do all his "shaking the bedsheets" in his room.


This was definitely a big culture shock!!!!!!!!!!!

For the Landlady!

For more adventures/misadventures of the Avatar of Mr Bean, please go to
http://avatarofmrbean.blogspot.com/



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Funny travel incidents: Mr P catches a plane after midnight!

It had been a jolly vacation for Mr P and he was all packed up to travel back to New Zealand from India. His plane was scheduled to depart at 12.45 am on 11 July from Chennai International Airport in South India. Although Mr P had spent most of his vacation in South India, he was in a small town and had to take a connecting domestic flight to Chennai to catch the plane to Auckland. It would take him roughly one to two hours to reach Chennai by flight.

He had enjoyed the balmy atmosphere and the beaches but now he was rearing to go back home to cool New Zealand. Mr P had decided that this trip back should be a well organised one and free of hassles. So he booked the connecting domestic flight to take him to Chennai early in the morning which would give him plenty of time to relax in a hotel and then board the plane to Auckland that was scheduled for just after midnight.

Everything seemed to go smoothly and Mr P was well on time for the domestic flight that left at 7 am on the 11th of July and reached Chennai right on time at 8-05 am. The trip to the hotel was also uneventful and once in his room, Mr P had a nice shower and relaxed in bed pretending to watch TV and snored off. Lunch was served in the room and Mr P slept again. In the evening after a stroll through the city streets Mr P came back to his room to check out early to take a taxi to the airport to catch the Auckland flight. Everything seemed to go so smoothly quite contradictory to what was the norm with Mr P that he preened before the mirror and patted himself. He was indeed proud of himself for being such a good organiser! The taxi to the airport was also on time and Mr P reached the check-in counter and gave the officer his ticket and passport.

"Your plane is long gone sir!" said the officer.

" It can't be so!", said Mr P. "My flight is at 12.45 am on the 11th"

"That is today and it did leave at 12.45 am, shortly after midnight last night." said the officer. "The next flight is at 12.45 am on the 12th which is in a few hours' time and I don't think there are any available seats on it. Come to think of it, you may find it hard to find tickets for another week."

Mr P's plane was at 12.45 am on the 11th of July and he had booked and caught the connecting domestic flight as early as 7am on the 11th of July! He just could not understand how he could have missed the flight........

Come to think of it, this could confuse anybody! So I am pasting the clock system here.

Clock system
12-hour	24-hour
midnight(start of day) 12:00*	00:00
12:59 a.m.	00:59
1:00 a.m.	01:00
2:00 a.m.	02:00
…	…
10:00 a.m.	10:00
11:00 a.m.	11:00
11:59 a.m.	11:59
12:00 noon*	12:00
12:01 p.m.	12:01
12:59 p.m.	12:59
1:00 p.m.	13:00
2:00 p.m.	14:00
…	…
10:00 p.m.	22:00
11:00 p.m.	23:00
11:59 p.m.	23:59
midnight(end of day) shown as start of next day For more adventures/misadventures of the Avatar of Mr Bean, please go to http://avatarofmrbean.blogspot.com <script type="text/javascript"> var vglnk = { api_url: '//api.viglink.com/api', key: '4434d66bcc3097139f1f67653fd56ac3' }; (function(d, t) { var s = d.createElement(t); s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? vglnk.api_url : '//cdn.viglink.com/api') + '/vglnk.js'; var r = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0]; r.parentNode.insertBefore(s, r); }(document, 'script')); </script>

Funny Travel Incidents:Mr P flies back to New Zealand.....

This Avatar of Mr Bean is called Mr P and let me settle your doubts right now, ... the P is not short form for Pea! Now, when Mr P flew back to New Zealand, he managed to lose his suitcases again!

He had prepared well for the journey and planned to arrive at the airport well on time. But he spent a lot of time with his grooming and styling in front of the mirror, and arrived at the busy American airport in a rush. By then, long queues had formed at the check-in counters.

Mr P prides himself as being quite intelligent, and little by little, he moved past the passengers in front of him in the queue. At times he smiled obsequiously at them and took advantage of their bonhomie. At other times if he felt intimidated by the way they looked, he meekly moved to a place ahead of them after diverting their attention elsewhere or eluding their observation. In this way, finally he reached the check-in counter and managed to check in his luggage.

His luggage was tagged by the lady at the check-in and they were sitting on the weighing area, about to be transferred to the roller belts for transmission to the plane. Then Mr P suddenly remembered that he had his favourite pack of "Simply Squeezed" orange juice in his bag that he planned to carry with him as cabin luggage. Mr P remembered that it would not be allowed into the plane but he hated throwing it away.

So what did Mr P do? He made a few surreptitious attempts to get the nearest checked in bag opened to put in that bottle of orange juice into it without troubling the lady at the check-in. This was not at all successful and only managed to raise all sorts of suspicions in her. After all this was the USA! The lady authoritatively asked Mr P to move on. But then Mr P told her very apologetically that he was cold and ill and needed to get a sweater out of his checked in suitcase. The soft hearted lady finally complied and Mr P took off the nearest bag, opened it and put in the orange juice, zipped it and put it back on the weighing area.

He then realised that the lady had been watching him all the time and he had not taken a sweater out of the bag! He sometimes seemed to care too much for what others thought of him! So he grabbed the second bag off from the weighing area, opened it and rummaged all around to find an ideal sweater. By the time he had pulled one out and the bag was back on the weighing area, he had held up a long line of people who were getting very anxious and impatient. Being the polite Mr P he was, he took some more time thanking the lady at the check-in profusely before he was impatiently shoved aside by the elderly passenger waiting next in line. Her patience was stretched to breaking point when Mr P gave her an admonishing look and stopped to advise her on good manners.

After all this, Mr P finally boarded the plane and reached New Zealand. As the plane was landing in Auckland, he was carefully planning out strategies to get the bottle of orange juice past the customs. Of course he had been in trouble with the New Zealand customs before. And at that time it was because of a forgotten pear in his luggage from his previous day's lunch! The New Zealand customs definitely did not like plant material! By the time he went to collect his baggage, Mr P had a nice plan ready to hoodwink those officers.


But then he didn't need a plan! His baggage had not made it to New Zealand, and neither did the orange juice! Maybe during all the commotion of checking in and rechecking in, the destination tags on the bags must have been mixed up! Maybe they could have been tagged for the destination of the elderly lady and she also ended up losing her luggage just because of being next in line to Mr P. Who knows?.... Anything can happen when Mr P is involved!

However, I am sure, that lady if she lost her luggage, would not contemplate what Mr P was thinking while standing by the conveyor belt! Mr P observed that the moving belt that had not delivered his luggage, disappeared into a dark hole in the wall behind and he wanted to make sure that his bags were not in the dark hole. So after the crowd of passengers had left, was he planning to lie down on the conveyor belt and take a ride to see if his bags were on the other side... Just in case.......!? It tickles one's imagination!

Anyway, the long and short of it was that Mr P had lost his luggage again! All for a bottle of orange juice!

For more adventures/misadventures of the Avatar of Mr Bean, please go tohttp://avatarofmrbean.blogspot.com/



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