Those Crazy Euro's!

I'm going to France in May!

Actually I'm going to Germany, then Italy and then France.

For some reason there are no airports in the French alps, and no direct flights to my hotel. I really wish someone would hurry up and invent the teleporter....


Why am I going to France? I'm going to do a Mountain Bike Guiding course. If I pass, consenting adults can put the lives of both themselves and their children in my hands.

A scary thought...

So of course I need to get trained in First Aid.

The Red Cross, a wonderful organization, do a one week first aid course. The price? 1100 peso. About 11 quid. The course to be held at a local elementary school.


What I didn't realize, at least not until I turned up for class, was that this price excluded a few things. First of all it excluded seating. Then I found out it excluded air-conditioning and then I found out it excluded spoken English...

I'm a qualified PADI Rescue Diver and know enough Tagalog to direct a taxi driver to a girlie bar, so how hard can it be?



Quite hard as it turned out....

Being the Red Cross, the course was run purely by volunteers, A nurse, a Emergency Medical Technician, and a man who owns a Chinese laundry...



They were very nice, very supportive, and very, very patient with the giant, smelly, sweating Englishman. Who's body wouldn't fit in the dwarf size school benches and whose back and bum hurt after 5 minutes of sitting on them..



I also learned a few things. As well as subjects such as tropical diseases (useful if anyone gets Dengue while on the Alps), snake bites (half a lager, half a cider, shot of blackcurrant) and heat stroke (vigorous masturbation without lubrication) we covered a little known condition (at least in South East Asia) called Hypothermia.

According to our teacher, a qualified Nurse with more than 20 years experience. The major causes of Hypothermia are :-

1, People don't wear hats...Which is why there is a saying in England "If the feet are cold, put on a hat" Funny, I've never heard of that saying, and if my feet were cold I'd put on some socks!

2, People don't drink enough...Apparently all Europeans have a shot of rum or whiskey before they leave the house. The reason? Alcohol raises body temperature, she went on to say it also explains why foreigners drink more than Filipinos and are always drunk!

3, There are two holes in the head, and these holes let the cold in which gives you...a cold! Which I guess is why hats are so important!

I should say, in her defense that she went on to mention something about cold weakening blood cells and making them more susceptible to viruses. But she explained it as thought she really didn't believe this theory and it really was down to the holes in the head and not drinking enough booze!!



So there you have it! If some day, while walking down a European highstreet in the middle of winter, and you happen to come across a drunken Filipino wearing a hat, ask him if he was on the same first aid course as me!