Author: andrasthehun

Comments on Book “Enemy Contact” by Tom Clancy

August 17, 2025

I read many of Clancy’s books, such as The Hunt for Red October, and enjoyed them. This book, Enemy Contact, entertained but frustrated me. Published in 2019 and written by Mike Maden under Clancy’s name, this book leads the reader through numerous locations around the world and has multiple plots. But it does not hang together and leaves many questions to the reader’s imagination.

The best thing about the book is that it has a lot of action, and it’s a page-turner. Many of the chapters contain complete short stories but with further reading in the book, one understands how these fit into the overall theme. For example, in chapter one, the action takes place in Argentina and is a complete story. The context of how it fits into the overall narrative becomes clear later on. This happens many times in the book. I found this truncated structure frustrating, but it may be a popular trick to draw the reader further into the book.

The story unfolds in numerous locations, including Luanda, Angola, Gdansk, Poland, Washington, DC and Berlin, Germany. I have no problem with different parts of the world described, except that each location includes description of its architecture and streetscape. I understand the author needs to provide background and context, but the amount of information seems overkill.

And it is not only the description of all the locations, but the politics of the region is also covered. If you are a news hawk, then you are aware of many of the situations described, such as those in Angola, where the Chinese are building their “road and infrastructure” program using Chinese labor that creates friction with available local labor in the country.

The major theme connecting all the local stories revolves around an international crime syndicate involved in the production and distribution of drugs. Another theme involves a super sleuth, who is utilizing data mining techniques on secret U.S. cloud storage sites to gather and sell this information. The connection between these two themes is tenuous and artificial but I read the book for its entertaining value and did not spend time on trying to follow the logic of the stories.

The characters in the book are all unique. They include brothers who served in the French Foreign Legion; a visionary who developed a world-leading security system used by the U.S. government, and his attractive wife, who oversees technical development for the company and recruits the best programmers in the world. Among these programmers is a Chinese individual who was raised in the U.S. and whose friend in Thailand is undergoing gender transition. I wondered why eeverybody in the book has to be a unique character, the best programmer, a good-looking woman techie, and ex-French Foreign Legionnaires. Couldn’t. there be average people accomplishing challenging tasks?

There are several loose ends in the story that feel unfinished to me. For instance, Jack Ryan, the main character in the book, and his his attrctive female assistant in Poland develop a close friendship. He visits her home for dinner and bonds with her toddler. This friendship hints at a potential future relationship between Jack and the assistant. However, when she is drowning, she asks Jack to care for her young son, but nothing further develops. I found this aspect of the story incomplete.

And then there are some situations that are hard to believe; that are not realistic. When Jack arrives in the high mountains of Peru to honor a commitment he made to a friend who died in action, he gets drunk in a local pub, still nursing his guilt, feeling responsible for the death of his Polish assistant. A group associated with the international crime syndicate beat him up in his sleep and rob him of everything. Still, when he wakes up, he scrounges some clothing and climbs another few thousand feet to the top of the mountain without food, water and proper shoes and clothing. I hiked Machu Pichu and let me tell you, the air is thin, and it is cold and it is hard to believe that Jack, beaten up and without supplies, could accomplish the feat described. But reading the story is good entertainment.

The ending of the narrative felt brief and disappointing. As expected, the criminals are killed or imprisoned. There are no excting chases, or long-drawn-out tracking of the bad guys. The ending is just twenty pages long and comes quickly of a four-hundred-sixty-page book. An example is the end of Jack’s archenemy, a former French Foreign Legionnaire. Once located in Benghazi, Jack travels to Libya and shoots the Legionnaire, and that’s it. This resolution unfolds over just a couple of pages, which to me was a quick and decisive action but did not include a leadup with Jack’s feeling towards this gangster and the satisfaction that he undoubtedly drew from fionishing him off.

Overall, I thought the book was entertaining. It contains numerous plots, an abundance of colorful characters, and happens over a wide range of global locations. Additionally, it addresses an excessive number of current topics—political, moral, and technical—that could each have been developed into a story of their own.

While reading the book provided instant excitement, it was ultimately forgettable. It does not hold up to Clancy’s earlier works, which were much more focused in terms of geography and subject matter.

Building Friendships at the Cottage: A New Perspective

August 1, 2025

We know our neighbors better on the island where our cottage is, than those where we live. I found that curious and made me think why.

Many people go to their summer homes to relax, to leave the city behind, and to be alone to regenerate their physical and mental health. I thought that cottagers prefer to be left alone. But I found the opposite to be the truth.

Before I go any further, I should explain how we arrived purchasing a cottage that may have relevance to my argument. We camped and tented for our vacations in the beginning until our one-year-old child woke up in an inch of water from a downpour one night. This prompted us to purchase a tent trailer, ensuring we would be above ground in case of a storm.

The tent trailer took us to Florida, the west coast (Vancouver), the east coast (Charlottetown) and many camp grounds in Ontario and New York State. The whole family enjoyed traveling and sightseeing with a tent trailer.

However, as the children grew up, summer camps, sports activities, and jobs made it inconvenient to travel with them, and we sold the tent trailer.

At the time I sold the tent trailer, a friend invited us to visit their cottage, and we canoed to their place on an islad. We had so much fun on the lake that day that we stayed overnight, and I decided I must have a cottage on this island. When I found a cottage for sale, I made a stink bid in the fall, a poor time to sell it. Since the couple owning the property was going through a divorce and the wife wanted her share of the money at once, they agreed to sell it. That property had good “bones”, or structure, but was unfinished and needed a lot of work.

The first task with our newly acquired property was to finish the ceiling with the tiles already stacked in the cottage. When mice dropped from the ceiling onto Kathy while she was sleeping in the bedroom, finishing the ceiling became the number one task. Other projects followed, like building steps going up the hill to the cottage, where there was a dirt path that was slippery when wet.

We also joined the local cottagers’ association, a common group in such communities. The primary function of these groups is to have an annual meeting with a BBQ event, providing the opportunity to meet others. At these AGMs, there are also talks about subjects of interest to all, like water filter systems, and how to avoid mosquitoes and ticks. Once the ice is broken, friendships form. A few years ago, there was an even bridge club on the island.

This weekend’s visit with a few neighbors shaped my views on our cottage community. The next-door neighbor from New Jersey invited us for dinner, and the discussion flowed easily despite our diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. We learned more about the neighbors’ families than we ever knew about our neighbors in town.  

Our neighbors from Michigan invited us to their spacious deck that same weekend. During a discussion about where they met, we learned that the man’s Vietnam experience ended with an injury, resulting from a grenade blowing up next to him, with long-term consequences. This neighbor has done a lot of work on his cottage and has accumulated a wide range of construction equipment. I found one of his tools helpful, a heavy-duty jack that I borrowed to lift up my sinking dock.

We paid a visit to another old friend from Pennsylvania. His grandson was there keeping them company. During our visit, another neighbor dropped in and brought a bag of fresh samosas from Toronto. We all had one and admired the new ceiling completed in their large entertainment room.

Never to miss our Canadian friends from Ottawa, we walked over to their immense deck the next day, where they always relax with a book and a glass of wine in the afternoon.

Although socializing is fun, the weekend was also work; Kathy power washed the outside decks, which are substantial, about one thousand square feet, with a wraparound deck extending into steps leading to the waterfront. I used a weed-eater to clear the front and back yards. I shaved the grass to the ground to make sure no ticks would enjoy my yard, ticks thrive in tall grass, and I had some bad experiences with them just a few weeks ago.

Despite seeing these people only during the summer months, I found that we know more about them than we know about our city neighbors. It could be because in town, most people work. In cottage land, people take their time to hang out, relax, and enjoy seeing others doing the same. Vacationing is a good time to make friends, and cottaging offers such an opportunity.

Regaining Your Mojo After Tick Illness

July 22, 2025

Have you ever lost your mojo? Your ability to function? Do you enjoy making decisions and following through, but have lost the ability to do so? Have you ever felt in the dumps, with no ambition to do anything? Tired and spent, and the only thing you can do is sit around and maybe have coffee? In other words, you have lost interest in life and feel incapable of accomplishing anything, searching for a sense of purpose.

What would cause such a state? Perhaps you lost your job, were reorganized out of a job, or what they call today, the organization was right-sized! You may have lost your home to one of the out-of-control fires that have been spreading in many states and provinces. I lost my mojo due to a tick, a small bugger no bigger than a poppy seed. They are small, and most of the time, when they find you, you do not feel them. But when they get hold of you, they gorge on you and swell up, and that is when you can see them. If you discover them within twenty-four hours, you should liberate your body from them and go to a pharmacist who will give you a double dose of prophylactic, and that is the end of it. If, however, you never see and feel them, they can create havoc with your body.

I suffered the consequences of one of those nasty critters, ending up in the hospital for four days, trying to get my health back via IVs dripping medicine into my veins and also taking doxycycline for over a week. Yes, I lost my mojo for a few weeks; I was tired all the time, with no ambition to do anything.

When I was well enough to leave the hospital and, in a week, return to the cottage, most bothersome was my paranoia about walking in the tall grass around the cottage, the natural home for ticks, and fearing another one of those tiny monsters crawling on me again. I did not want to go through the hospital routine once more. So, what could I do?

I discovered a jacket in one specialty store that is both mosquito-proof and, more importantly, tick-proof. I had to have one of those. Based on this finding, I searched for other clothing that is tick-proof but could not find any, except for a pair of pants called “bug pants”, in an outdoor store, that are designed to protect against bugs. So, I had to have one of those. To protect my head, I decided to use my wide-brimmed Tilley hat, which I sprayed with an anti-tick chemical. Now I was ready to tackle the outdoors again. Once dressed, I felt as if I were in a hazmat suit. The bug pants and the protective jacket were hot, especially during the heatwaves.

I was still paranoid going to the cottage because that is where I think the tiny and nasty critter attached itself to me, sending me to the hospital. The problem was the tall grass that I had to cut back and trim down. Although I have a corded weed eater, I decided to buy a battery-powered one to reach every corner of the yard, both up front and in the back. There was no question in my mind that I had to clear the entire property of tall grass to make sure ticks would not feel at home there.

In addition to buying protective gear, I learned that I should also pull up my socks over my pants to create a firm closure so no ticks can wander onto my skin. Another tip I learned was to visually inspect myself when entering the cottage to detect any ticks on my clothing that I should remove, and also to check my body for ticks at night while showering. And place all the clothing I wore outside into the dryer to kill any ticks that may be on it.

Whenever I went outside the cottage to cut the grass, dressed up with all the protective gear, I felt nervous. But I knew that I had to overcome this fear and try to regain my mojo, the confidence to take care of the yard as I used to do before. And I am succeeding; the more times I work outside, the more comfortable I feel now.

The Art of Negotiating: Lessons from Hiring Experiences

July 17, 2025

This is just anecdotal and not based on any detailed research. But impressions are essential. The first story started with a knock on my front door. A young man introduced himself and offered to trim my cedar hedge, which is a bit disheveled and can be seen clearly from the street. My hedge needs a trim, so I asked him to provide an estimate. He walked along the hedge and came back to say that his team could do it for $250. Seeing my hesitation, he brought down the price to $200.

That sounded good to me, based on experience with hedge trimming. Before making any decisions, I wanted to learn about his experience and the composition of his team. Six recent college graduates formed a team, he explained, with three of them knocking on doors to generate business, and the other three handling trimming. I thought they had no experience at all. However, he assured me that they possessed all the necessary equipment, including tall ladders and trimming equipment.

Now I am always positive about young people initiating a business, and I told him I’ll think about it and to come back next week. I prefer not to make impulsive decisions. And he did come back a few days later. When I asked him when he could do the trim, he took another walk along the same hedge. He came back, explaining that it is a tall hedge on sloping ground, making it challenging to place the ladders. It is a tall hedge, over twelve feet. So, he concluded that the price would be $600.

I said what? Now, wait a minute, I said. You told me a few days ago that it would be $250. My voice indicated exasperation and disbelief. I even smiled at him, at his chutzpah in more than doubling the price. He suddenly changed his mind and offered to do the job for $300. That offer made me more than upset, and I said that I do not negotiate; you gave me a price, and I expected you to honor it. He decided to walk away.

By the way, I thought his final price was reasonable, but I did not like the way he behaved. What guarantee did I have that his work would be good and the cleanup complete?

Several thoughts crossed my mind. When one starts a new business, one marketing approach is to undercut the current market. One should demonstrate that the new company is superior to existing alternatives in at least one way. Why should anyone pay competitive pricing for a new product or service without testing it?

Next story. A couple of people were trimming the cedar hedge behind my house. I walked to the back of my garden and asked if they would be interested in cutting my cedar hedge as well. If so, I asked them to come over and give me an estimate. They did come over after finishing their job, and a young fellow said that he would message me his estimate later that day. Before leaving, I asked him about his background in landscaping and learned that he was studying to be an arborist. That sounded relevant to the job, and I awaited his estimate.

To my surprise, the estimate came in at $900, significantly above what I thought was fair (by the way, I had asked him to trim more of my cedar hedge than I had asked the young fellow I described above). To my response that he was way out of line, he messaged back that he was a bit high and that he could do it for $700. I responded negatively, to which he answered by asking me what I thought was a fair price so that he could learn from it. I give him high marks for sincerity, but why didn’t he work for a hedge trimming company and learn the pricing in the trade before starting his own business?

Now, these two stories do not provide a definitive characterization of today’s young people, millennials, to be sure. But I found it surprising that both started with a high estimate. Why did they not start with a low estimate (the first one did, but when it came to doing the job, he doubled the price)? Or, why did they not ask me what I would pay for the task? That would not be a bad approach; I think most people would come up with a reasonable estimate. When you start working, do you not need to obtain some contracts and build up experience that you can use as a form of advertising?

The new services introduced by the international telecom company I worked for were offered at less than half the price of those offered by our competitors. The purpose was to have our services used and tested by customers, demonstrating the superior quality and features of our services in comparison to the competition. The point is that the seller, a new entrant to an existing market, has to demonstrate the value of their services before prices can be raised.

I was frankly disappointed in the two young fellows trying their hands at establishing a new business without doing some background work, especially in asking for prices way above market rates.

My Emergency Room Journey: Insights and Reflections

July 6, 2025

I discovered I lost seven pounds. It was not a diet; I spent four days at the hospital, a day in the emergency observation unit, and then three days on a ward. What took me there was high fever alternating with chills in between and a general crappy feeling.

Kathy dropped me off at the Emergency entrance of the Civic Hospital, where I showed my health card and was told to sit down and join the fifty other patients in the waiting room. I observed with interest the people, some of whom did not seem to be sick at all, while others were in wheelchairs. There were people of all ages, and all ethnicities dressed informally.

The elderly gentleman, with a white beard and a black t-shirt featuring a giant fox on the front, impressed me because he wore a t-shirt befitting a teenager while having the demeanor of an academic. His partner gently guided him along while he also brandished a cane.

And then a huge African Canadian man squeezed himself into the narrow chair next to me, in a cloud of perfume, wearing multiple chains around his neck with his long hair neatly braided. Excuse me, I thought there were signs advising against using any perfume. Then he got up when the loudspeaker system called for Josephine.

Then the triage nurse took my vital health signs and gave me a bottle for a urine sample, assuming I could void at that time. I rejoined the waiting room after completing what I was instructed to do. An hour later, I was called to the registration station, where an agent placed a paper bracelet on my wrist with my DOB, name, and ID number.  

Then it was back to the waiting room again, where a sudden commotion broke out with three large policemen pushing a hollering woman into the room. Many people averted their eyes while I wanted to see why she was yelling, “I cannot take this anymore.” The policemen waited for the staff to take the hollering individual off their hands.

Complicating this atmosphere of general buzz, a young girl was throwing up, and people were getting up to register at different windows. Ambulance drivers were also pushing gurneys through the waiting room. You would think that waiting for treatment would be boring; I found the entire scene fascinating to observe. It appeared to be controlled chaos. 

I thought of getting a cup of coffee and some food to carry me through after a few hours of waiting, only to discover that the vending machines were not working. Kathy went outside and entered the main hospital door, where there were fast food places, and picked up some food for me. I wondered how people without a companion would obtain food without missing their turn when called. Finally, they called my name and instructed me to follow the yellow dots on the floor, which led to the “urgent care” door. Nine colored dots were running in parallel and then peeling off in different directions.

In one of the examining rooms in the urgent care unit, they took my blood from both arms and put me through tests. An hour later, a medical student interviewed me and said he would advise the emergency doctor, who would then advise me on the next steps. In the meantime, I socialized with my neighbor, a young woman with sepsis, who showed me a portion of her arm from where four skinny hoses hung out of a port. I did not think I wanted to further our medical conversation about her history of sepsis.

 I had been here for over five hours when the Emergency Department doctor showed up and explained that I seemed to be alright overall but had an infection and ordered a CT scan of my pelvic region. My mind did not connect the CT scan with my complaint that brought me in here; it was beyond my comprehension. I just waited to have the scan completed and then waited again until the nurse showed up with a couple of pages of text and a prescription for two medicines. One was an antibiotic, while the other had something to do with acid reflux and GERD; the latter was a complete mystery to me. But I was drained and happy to get out after seven hours in the ED without asking any further questions.

The antibiotic prescription did not work; after four days, I still had a fever and chills. I found antibiotics to work in a day or so in the past, so it was time to go back to the hospital, this time to another one, the Queensway Carleton. After seeing the triage nurse, I was pleasantly surprised when a young attendant quietly asked me if I was Andy. When I said that it was me, she asked me to follow her into the ED observation rooms, where they put me in a cubicle. I asked the attendant how she knew who I was and found out that I looked my age and was the only one of my age in the waiting room, one benefit of growing old.

They performed all the blood work and testing again, and then it was a matter of waiting again. However, I knew I could ask for some food that they provided for lunch, a nice feature. In this ED, a doctor came around to discuss my symptoms, and later the internal medicine doctor came and provided a diagnosis that was satisfying, knowing that he was pretty convinced I had a tickborne infection called anaplasmosis. The reason the previous antibiotic did not work, in his opinion, was that it did not address this infection; it targeted Lyme disease. By the way, I have recently read several articles about the proliferation of ticks in the Northeast, attributed to the warming climate.

So, the treatment started with an IV drip and doxycycline pills, a double attack to begin the healing, while waiting for the blood analysis proving that it was anaplasmosis. Start the treatment and save time while waiting for confirmation.

Now, if you have ever been in an ED space overnight, you know that it is not the place for a quiet sleep. The traffic was constant all night, in addition to the nurses taking your vital signs every couple of hours. So, little snippets of sleep, each two hours in duration, was my night. The next day, they found a room for me upstairs, advising me that my infection had to improve before they would let me go home.

I was miffed to find out that I was in a geriatric ward until my daughter informed me that I was one of them chronologically, if not by physical condition.

Sleeping in the ward was a bit better than sleeping in the ED space, although bells were ringing all night, patients were requesting attention, and the nurses still checked my vitals every three hours, day and night.

Furthermore, I found out I was in a ward with Alzheimer’s patients, and my next-door neighbor was either yelling, listening to a radio, or crying. I heard the nurse coming, informing her colleagues that she brought some “great” music for the gentleman next door: Nat King Cole and Dolly Parton. Fortunately, I enjoy a wide range of music. By the way, I couldn’t leave the ward without someone taking me, due to the type of ward I was in.

And then the nurse came in with the news that I would have to wear a pulsating sleeve on my leg, powered by an air pump, to prevent a blood clot from forming due to lying in bed all day (the name of the gadget was a sequential compression comfort sleeve). Wait a minute, I said, what do I do when I have to void at night? No problem, the nurse said, “You just take off the sleeve. I didn’t like the idea at all, since I get up a few times a night. Without saying another word, the nurse left and consulted with someone. When she returned, she explained that instead of the sleeve, I would get a shot in my belly to thin my blood. I had no choice at this time.

With the daily blood work showing improvement, they decided to let me go home in three days with a doxycycline prescription for another four days. And a follow-up visit with the infectious disease doctor.

Overall, I would have preferred not to have the experience. But going from feeling awful to good was worth it. The amount of attention I received from the nurses and doctors was genuinely excellent at the Queensway Carleton Hospital. Also impressive is the amount of paperwork I found on my account, which documents all the tests and the extensive reporting by doctors on X-rays, CT scans, ECGs, and the opinions of specialists in emergency medicine, internal medicine, and infectious diseases. And don’t forget, I’m still down seven pounds!