Hi Win, having driven in Italy I'd wholeheartedly agree. However you should try driving in India. The Indian driving test consists of ensuring that you can drive along in a straight line a few yards, and that you don't mow down too many market stalls and bullock carts when you steer around a corner. And that's it..
Oh, and that you can honk the horn. Even driving along empty roads at 3am everyone honks the horn. Trucks are brightly adorned with prayers in Hindi along with - in English - "Please Sound Horn" painted on the tailgate. I think it's just to ensure that all possible senses are used when driving. You need them. In India they nominally drive on the left.....and I mean nominally. Particuarly at night, everyone (especially trucks) drives with their full beam on in the middle of the road playing a macabre game of chicken with oncoming traffic. It's even less safe to drive near the sidewalk or in the gutter as there'll probably be someone sleeping there, or maybe a cow sitting there. You drive straight through a red light if there's no policeman around - you'd have to bribe him with 20 Rupees (about 30c) if he saw you - and going through a green light you slow down and look carefully, honking your horn, just in case there's someone running the red light at 50mph the other way. On my first day in India (I lived for a while in Madras, now called Chennai) I got a tut-tut (a sort of motorcycle rickshaw) from the Taj Hotel to work and to my horror he drove straight across the traffic, the wrong way around a roundabout (a "rotary" to you Yanks) in the paths of oncoming buses and cars. I thought it was my eyesight at first, but the buses really were listing about 30 degrees to the left due to about a hundred people hanging off the side to avoid paying..... .....but depsite all this, no-one got aggravated, no-one got angry. Have you ever heard an Indian operate on the radio like an Italian? Me neither. After a while I got to know that rickshaw driver and outside the office where I worked we often talked over a samosa and a cup of that amazing South Indian coffee bought from street vendors. He and his family lived under a tarpaulin on the pavement. Yet his eight children looked as smart as the kids attending the most expensive private school in London, all in their uniform and with their books under their arms going to school. This guy was born with nothing, but he worked all day and half the night, spoke fluent English, German, French and Italian - yet spent everything on educating his children to give them a better start than he had. It was a salutory lesson in life and attitude to me, and a real eye opener. We put these exotic countries in the log, but to actcually travel to them and live there is a true life experience. I went miles off topic, but what the hell? cheers Dave G0OIL --- On Wed, 28/1/09, Win <w...@winlyn.us> wrote: From: Win <w...@winlyn.us> Subject: Re: [DX-CHAT] Descheo Island To: dx-chat@njdxa.org Date: Wednesday, 28 January, 2009, 12:48 PM I think it is just a cultural thing. The Italians ham like they drive. Just kidding. Win, w0lz ----- Original Message ----- From: <f5...@free.fr> To: <dx-chat@njdxa.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 5:42 AM Subject: Re: [DX-CHAT] Descheo Island Concerning the pile-up undiscipline, unfortunetly, I must admit that I fully agree. I do not know where this kind of "radio" behavior comes from, but it has nothing to do with any kind of HAM spirit. Strange... 73 de Nicolas F5FRM ----- Mail Original ----- De: "DAVE WHITE" <mausop...@btinternet.com> À: w8tahra...@gmail.com, dx-chat@njdxa.org, jdav...@mindspring.com Envoyé: Lundi 26 Janvier 2009 18:02:51 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne Objet: Re: [DX-CHAT] Descheo Island "......and has ask the big guns to hold off a bit. Now we know that will not happen in some parts of the world but the request may help some. " I can see right now what's going to happen when they work Europe: When the operator says quite clearly for the fifth time "Golf Nine Alpha Alpha Alpha five and nine", all the Italians will keep shouting their last two for ten minutes solid on the G9's frequency, overmodulating their 3kW amplifiers and without pausing for breath......even if they are in the log twelve times already. I hope I'm wrong, but experience suggests otherwise. These guys are all pretty good operators and you'll have propagation akin to a telephone line on most bands nearly 24 hours per day from where you live. Don't bother takin the time off work during the first week when the big guns will slug it out toe to toe, but you'll make it in the log easily enough during the second week. If you wait till the band's closed to Italy, anyway....."Whiskey eight Tango Alpha Hotel five and nine".."ITALY KILO ITALY KILO ITALY KILO ITALY KILO ITALY KILO....." If you're like me you concentrate on CW where there are fewer muppets.... cheers Dave G0OIL ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to imail...@njdxa.org In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-chat or subscribe dx-chat This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to imail...@njdxa.org In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-chat or subscribe dx-chat This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org -----------------------------------------------------------
