Tag: James Bond

Huber. Michael Huber.

By Mike Huber

My apologies as my stories have been quite out of chronological order.  I wrapped up ~2 months in the beautiful country of Nepal. I still have several blogs to write on Everest Base Camp and Annapurna Circuit, and my experiences with the wonderful Nepalese people.  Upon completing my treks there I performed a typical “Huber” and was flipping coins more or less to find a new home.  I was tired of being cold and from hiking daily.  In search of a place where I could relax it seemed that Thailand checked all the boxes.  Thailand has warm weather, great people, food, and I could get some more scuba diving in.  Decision made.

My friend Nigel Rustage from Anum Scuba (www.anumscuba.com) has helped me find amazing live aboards before and is pretty knowledgeable on diving Thailand.  Just prior to arriving in Thailand I asked if he could recommend anything.  It didn’t take him long to respond with a 5 day live aboard that would provide me with 14 dives over my stay on the boat.

Once I was fully thawed out from Nepal and with a short flight to Phuket I was ready to begin diving again.  As I made my way to the pier there was a beautiful wooden tall ship in the bay.  Its name is The Junk.  I learned it would be my new home for the next four nights.  Once on the boat, which housed 22 divers normally, I found out there were only six divers on this trip.  This meant we each would have our own cabins on the boat. Perfect!

The reason for the title of this blog is that The Junk was the actual boat in the James Bond movie, the Man with the Golden Gun.  This made the boat even cooler in my eyes.  Throughout the dive trip that thought kept popping in my head, which was really cool. With the Bond boat being my home I was ready to meet my new diving friends and spend some time underwater around the remote limestone islands that are home in this part of the country.

The next day would be busy since four dives were scheduled.  I try to not do more than three dives per day as I begin to develop ear issues and the key is to be proactive and know when not to dive.  Combine that with on my third dive I got caught in a current that sucked me away from the others I and was forced to resurface after just 20 minutes. Upon surfacing I could hear expletives (coming from me) echoing off the tall limestone islands that surrounded me. I was frustrated.  I have had pretty much every type of mishap you possibly can have in my short 1 year of diving experience.  Mishaps are what make you improve and I understand this, but was a bit distraught with myself nonetheless.  It was bothering me to the point I was questioning if I should continue with this new hobby of mine.

One thing I did not want to do was quit on account of one bad dive. If I was to quit it would be after a good dive so that mentally the door for scuba diving would remain open. With the help of my new dive buddy, Danny, I regained motivation and within the next two dives had overcome the anxiety that was plaguing me. I ended the trip with only seven dives, which I was more than happy with, especially since they only improved once I got back into my rhythm.

A few days later Danny and his girlfriend Rahwa and I met up on the Pei Pei Islands and got to spend a couple days snorkeling and just hanging out around the island having a blast.  Danny had been to this island 10 years prior and introduced me to a speak-easy hidden inside a scuba shop which somewhat resembled a scuba museum with a beautiful wooden bar and some fine whiskeys.

This scuba experience yet again assured my confidence in my diving abilities and the scuba community. Nigel is 2 for 2 with his recommendations so far, and my next trip here I will certainly be reaching out to him.  That will most likely be sooner than later. Thanks again Nigel, Danny, and Rahwa.

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ExNotes Review: Operation Mincemeat

Susie and I were channel surfing on Netflix the other night and a trailer for Operation Mincemeat appeared.  It looked like it might be interesting so we hit the play icon.  Wow, this movie is great.  The story is about the British military intelligence deception operation to convince the Nazis the 1943 Allied invasion of Europe would begin in Greece and not Sicily.  Everyone knew Sicily was the logical choice, including the Germans, but the Brits managed to pull off a miracle and the Germans diverted the bulk of their forces to Greece.  I won’t tell you much more about how MI5 did this (beyond what the trailer below shows) because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.

Operation Mincemeat is a dark, foreboding movie, as it should be.   Literally tens of thousands of lives and indeed, the future of humanity, hung in the balance.

One of the interesting characters in this true Operation Mincemeat story is a mid-level British Intel officer named Ian Fleming.

Johnny Flynn playing Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat.  Here Fleming is intrigued by a Q Branch watch with a bezel that becomes a buzz saw. You have to pay attention or this and other scenes that inspired 007 will zip right by.

Yes, that Ian Fleming…the one who went on to create and write the James Bond stories.  He and several other MI5 officers were working on spy novels while the real Operation Mincemeat was unfolding.  At one point, the man in charge (played to perfection by Colin Firth) exclaimed, “My God, is there anyone here who isn’t writing a spy novel?”  There were other James Bond references, including the senior MI5 person everyone referred to as “M,” Q Branch, and more.

Trust me on this:  If you are a James Bond fan, you will love Operation Mincemeat.

Nah, that’s too restrictive.   Anyone who enjoys a good movie will enjoy Operation Mincemeat.  It’s on Netflix and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time.  I enjoyed it so much I watched it again from start to finish the next day.  It was that good.  You can thank me later.

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Bond. Titanium Bond.

A watch is a personal and emotional purchase, much like a motorcycle or a rifle.   By definition, whatever you choose is perfect and the best; what anyone else chooses is not and is somehow indicative of a deep-seated character flaw.  I get that.

Having said that, I never got the attraction of an Omega wristwatch.  I know some folks love them and if you wear an Omega, more power to you.  It’s just not me, which is why I found the attractive young lady pushing the latest Omega at me amusing.

Omega, you see, never misses a marketing opportunity, and their latest product placement achievement is the new Bond movie, No Time To Die.  In it, 007 wears a titanium Omega Seamaster. The high end watch store in Palo Alto had a couple of the titanium Bond Omegas in stock, and the young sales lady was attempting what could only be described as a hard sell.  She was new to these shores, I think, and evidently convinced that if James Bond wore a titanium Omega, every man in America would want one as well.

“Bond wears,” she kept repeating, as if that was all it would take to get me to plunk down $9800 for an Omega (it would actually take a lot more, like maybe a $9700 discount).  Before I realized it, she had unbuckled my Casio Marlin (the best deal in a dive watch ever and one I wear frequently), and she had the titanium Bond on my wrist.  She would have made a good pickpocket.

“Bond wears,” she said again.

I wondered if she realized Bond is a fictional character.

The titanium Seamaster was light, almost like a plastic watch.  I could barely detect its presence.  I didn’t care for the look of the mesh bracelet, but damn, that thing was a feather.

“NATO Bond,” she said, pushing another titanium Bond Seamaster at me, this one with a cloth NATO band.  NATO watchbands…that’s another fad I never fell for.  They look cheap.  I was in the US Army and the only special watchbands I ever saw were the velcro bands paratroopers wear (they tear away if your watch gets caught on the door when exiting an aircraft…you lose your watch but you get to keep your arm, which isn’t a bad deal if you think about it).  I’m pretty sure guys in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization don’t actually wear NATO bands, but what do I know?

I like the look of a dive watch and I own a couple of them.  My tastes run toward high quality and low cost, so my personal favorites are the Casio Marlin (a watch I’ve written about before) and a Seiko Batman I bought at Costco a few years ago.  The Marlin was $39, it keeps superb time, it looks good, and it works well (it’s the watch I wore when I rode through Colombia).  The Marlin did just fine in the Andes’ torrential rains.  I’ve never tried the Marlin in the deep blue sea, though.  I’m not a diver and I really don’t know how well it would work as a dive watch.  I’m not a fictional British secret agent, either, so unlike Daniel Craig I don’t need the titanium Bond watch.  If I need external inspiration, I’ll take it elsewhere. Bill Gates wears a Casio Marlin and even though he doesn’t have a blog or a motorcycle, he’s real and he seems to have done okay.  But I don’t need to emulate other people.  I just wear watches I find appealing.

I asked the young sales lady where she was from and she said Cupertino.  No, originally, I asked.  “China,” she said.  I asked where and she told me (it was a city in Hebei Province), I told her I had been there, and we chatted about the ride Gresh and I did across China.  She told me I had been to more places in China than she had.  I wore a Timex on that ride, I told her, like Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (the Chinese guys called me Dàshū, which means “big uncle,” so it sort of fit).  She laughed, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t know what I was talking about. Sometimes that makes for the best conversations.

Keep us in clover!

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Pffffft…Bond…James Bond

Like everyone else on the planet except the nefarious bastards of SMERSH and SPECTRE, we mourn the passing of Sean Connery, the great talent who defined and was the ultimate Bond.  James Bond.  Checking out at age 90, Sir Sean lived a long life.  With that many years and many wonderful roles under his belt, he got his money’s worth, I think.  So did we, speaking as one among hundreds of millions of people lucky enough to enjoy his work.  Still, it was tough to hear of his passing.

That poster of Sean Connery above?  A lot of gunsels may not know this, but the iconic early James Bond movie posters showed Sean Connery armed with…a pellet gun.  A Walther LP53, to be specific.  Take a good look, and then look at this photo of my Walther.

I’ve owned my Walther for a lot of years (I wrote an ExNotes blog on it a year or two ago that tells a more complete story of the Bond connection, with a bit of pellet pistol bragging rights thrown in for good measure).

Rest in peace, Mr. Connery, and thanks for the many good stories you brought to us.